11/9/2012

I’d like to promise that I won't be quoting old rants anymore… but I just can't do it.  I'm sure I'll find something else I just have to remind y'all of.  Speaking of which, I saw another funny which made me laugh out loud:  “Tonight on ‘NOT a Euphemism Theater,’ mom walked in on me ‘cleaning my carbine’ the other day!”  That is comedy GOLD right there!  Ok, so what’s new?  Well, there appears to be a gremlin in the system here at the railroad.  Wait, or is it a Pacer?  No, it is definitely a gremlin… assuming it isn’t just coincidence.  First off, something crashed yesterday and… well, it was bad.  NOT MY GEAR‼‼‼‼  I want to stress that fact, it was NOT any of my equipment!  Anyhoo, a server or something went down and so did the railroad for a little while.  Have you ever kicked over a fire-ant mound?  That was how the telecom and technology geeks looked out here yesterday.  They got it back up and working within minutes, I believe, but it was bad for those few minutes.  Then, this morning when I went to dial in the 0800 h War Room call with the auto-dialer thingy, I was told it dialed an un-recognized passcode.  I tried to manually enter the passcode and was told the same thing.  I hung up and tried again.  This time it went through.  “Kooky,” thought I.  I did it again and it went through again.  I waited for the meeting to start so that I knew THEY got in.  They did.  I came up to my desk.  When I logged in to my desktop, somehow the screen resolution had changed from 1280x1024 to 1024x768!  I switched that back and moved on with my day.  The one thing on my schedule was another damned Council of Native Americans Heritage Day event.  Have I told y'all how much I hate CNA events?  I know I have.  Anyhoo, while waiting for that beat down to occur, I get an e-mail saying that the group in Building B can't show their videos.  The description is identical to a problem we’d had in that room before.  I said it was some kind of incompatibility between different versions of Windows and was backed up by the lady I'd worked with the previous time.  I fingered it was over but kept getting “It still doesn’t work” e-mails.  I knew it wasn’t my gear so I left it for the voodoo priests to exorcise the demon.  Then, while goofing off on the shuttle waiting to set up the CNA event, I get the e-mail and phone call saying I MUST go down there and sort it out.  I wanted to say, “It isn’t my fucking equipment fucking up you fucking fuck-tard!” but left it at, “I’ll go there as soon as I get the CNA folks set up.”  Well, to make a short story long, the guy who built the presentation and made the videos went to the room and… I don’t know, sacrificed a chicken to the Tiny and Flaccid gods or something.  Suffices to say, he got it fixed and I was off the hook… in that room.  Now I got the “Stand down” e-mail while waiting for the shuttle to take me to the room, after bowing out of staying with the CNA event.  I decided I was NOT going back to that.  I went to my desk where I got a call from the lady doing the CNA event saying that the video guy hadn’t shown up yet.  I tried to call him but finally just went and got him.  I took him over and helped him set up to tape the event.  Now, I don’t want to sound too happy about this… but I'm shitting kittens right now!  There were in the room, in addition to the three BNSF CNA folks and the five or six visitors, TWO people there to attend the thing!  Buwahahahahahahahaha!  I hope they decide these events aren’t worth the effort and just quit trying to do them.  The last CNA thing, outside in the heat of the summer, was a total flop too.  After that, I went to lunch with Larry and now I'm back at the desk.  I asked Dennis, the desktop support guy I usually eat lunch with as well, if he had been swamped with gremlin calls.  He, surprisingly, had NOT.  I was perplexed by that but when he thought about it said that there were a few odd calls about stuff on the dance floor this morning.  So, my theory is vindicated, there ARE gremlins in the system today.  Ok, so I think we’re planning on going to the shop tomorrow.  John has been working with the current owner of Barbecue Bob and has retrieved the fender flares from that car for Lil' Wiggly.  It looks like we are going to go with a 245mm rear and 225mm front tire setup.  I really hope that axle is an 8” and not a 7.5” ring gear.  I can see us ‘sploding a 7.5” if we get too much tire back there.  We’ll see.  Oh, in other news, while re-reading old rants I saw that the $1,000.00 cylinder head DID work just fine on a stock A-15 bottom end in The Seven so I think I've convinced John that is what he “needs” in his 210 “racecar.”  His question to me was something to the effect of, “What is THAT going to cost me?”  I suggested an Edelbrock Top-End Power Package.  He counter offered a set of GT40-P heads.  Since that was what I really had in mind, I jumped on the suggestion.  So, he is supposed to be looking for a set of those for me.  Now the question is: do we stick with the cast-iron two barrel manifold or gopher an aftermarket four barrel manifold.  The smart thing to do is stick with the two barrel since I have both manifold and carburetor.  Ok, well I'm off to the Summit website to shop for four barrel manifolds and carburetors.  Talk to y'all again Monday!