Miscellaneous Ramblings

Frerbruraryr 16, 2012

2012-02-16T16:36:00.001-08:00

Sorry for the abrupt cutoff of the story the other day, I had stuff. So, like I said, that wraps up the weekend’s tale, now I need to think of more stuff to say. I'm not sure where we are on the Super Karate-Monkey Death-Car trade. Turns out John left off a little tidbit of information when asking me about it: the car is in Oklahomo. Now, it is possible that he’ll convince the dude to come to us to make the trade, which would be awesome. Then again, I do enjoy the odd road trip to rescue a car. I wish I knew how to make that profitable. Oh well, I guess I'll be a railroad office guy until the day they either escort me off campus or I drop dead. Retirement? What’s that? I'll be working SOMEWHERE until the day I die, I can't afford retirement. Oh well, what are you going to do? Oh, speaking of Super Karate-Monkey Death-Car II, I was thinking about Japanese pop culture characters, and vinyl decals thereof, this morning when I had an idea. Since the B-310 we’re talking of trading for Super Karate-Monkey Death-Car is brown, I think I'm going to start calling it Domo. John, do you want to put in a link for those who don’t know who Domo is or do we want to keep it an inside joke? Either way, I'm easy. I suppose if the deal falls through and I go ahead with building the current Super Karate-Monkey Death-Car as the faux rally car, I could paint it brown and call it Domo. I don’t know, we’ll see. So, has this week taken forever for everyone else? I don’t know if it is having to account for my every moment while at work or what, but this has been the longest week ever. Longest. Week. Ever. Oh, I wonder if it might be because it is supposed to be a three day weekend for us here at BNSF. Hmm, I'm not consciously thinking about having Monday off, but I can't disprove the notion. I don’t know. What to say, what to say? Oh, I ordered a short shifter for Fiona yesterday. After shopping around, most of them run about $250.00 and look almost identical. In fact, I would bet that they ARE identical, made in the exact same Chinese factory, and just labeled TWM, Torque Solutions, or Ralco. But a company called Turn In Concepts has one for $125.00 which is of a totally different design. Instead of the rubber isolated stick, it is a one piece unit. I liked the way the one piece shifter felt and worked over the stock two piece unit in the Subaru, so I think I'll like this one as well. It is, according to the installation instructions I read on the intergoogles, going to be a total pain in the ass to install, but I think it otter be worth it. I likes me a short shifter. Snick, snick, snick. We’ll see, I suppose. Feh, y'all are not entertaining me to your full potential. I think I'm going to call it a rant for the day.

Frerbruraryr 14, 2012

2012-02-14T17:57:00.001-08:00

Happy VD. It’s a good thing I had most of this already written because I've got damned little time today. So, Sunday morning I headed to the shop when the guy called at 0730 h to say he was leaving. I rounded up all the parts for Nadine that I could find and got everything ready to go. Larry called. He was about to leave for the gun show so I said I'd call him when I was done with the car thing. It was still butt-assed butt-butt cold so I decided to wait in Fiona for the guy. While sitting there, I realized I should be waiting up by the gate. Within a minute of pulling up there, I saw a white Mitsubishi pickup pulling a trailer drive by. I called and asked if it was him. It was. I pulled out onto the road and led him to the RV waste dump by the park to turn around. Back at the shop we rolled John's B-210 out of the way and Nadine out to the trailer. We got it up and tied off then loaded up some more spares. I looked at the clock and saw I wasn’t going to be all that late meeting Larry after all and called him. He was in line so I said I'd be there as quick as I could. I changed clothes and headed to Will Rogers. The parking garage was full so I had to park across the street in the museum parking garage. I found Larry and we walked the show. Now, I have discovered that I can successfully conceal carry a full sized 1911 but the hammer pokes me in the side. I wanted to look for a rounded hammer… actually two rounded hammers as I have two 1911s. I found one for $50.00 and said I'd come back if I didn’t see any others. I found others. I bought a stainless one for $10.00 and then found black ones for $15.00 each. I bought them as well. I also bought some Girl Scout Cookies… Peanut Butter Patties to be exact. We took Fiona to Benito’s and had lunch then walked the second half of the show. Larry bought ammo and magazines but no guns. Eventually we took leave of each other and I went home to install my new hammers. I took Monty apart to install the hammer and found that I couldn’t quite get the last little pin out of the original hammer. I took it to the garage and finally knocked it out. Back upstairs, I installed the new hammer and reassembled the gun. As I feared, the hammer fouled the grip safety… just by a cunt-hair. I took the hammer back out and filed down the corner where the slide rides when fully cocked and reassembled it. It now just kisses the grip safety if I'm not holding the weapon. When I have a grip on it, there is daylight twixt the two. I oiled up the gun, after playing with it to make sure it was going to function properly, and moved on to Heldey LaMarr. Of course I forgot about the last little pin in the hammer while futzing with the other gun. I tried to replicate my actions in removing the first pin to no avail. I gave up for the time being and reassembled Heldey LaMarr. Then I thought, “I really otter carry the smaller gun when I conceal carry.” I took them both apart and put the new hammer in Heldey LaMarr and Heldey LaMarr's hammer in Monty. Then I realized the new hammer’s trigger pull SUCKED! I took it out again and filed on the sear. Back together and ooh yeah, that’s one nice trigger again. Well, that about wraps it up, and I have some folks coming to pick up a projector, so I'm going to call it a rant.

Frerbruraryr 13, 2012

2012-02-13T15:43:00.000-08:00

Ok, I was going to say “Sorry I didn’t have anything to say last week,” but I'm not. So there. Count yourselves lucky when I do decide to chat with y'all. Like today for instance. So the other day Fiona clicked over 6,000 miles. I'd decided that I'd have the dealer change the oil at 3k and 6k, and then I'd take over at 10k and every five thousand after that. That made for a nice 3k, 3k, 4k, 5k… break in and maintenance program. So I asked John if he’d mind meeting me at the dealer by my house before we went to the shop. I'd forgotten that the dude was supposed to come for Nadine, I hoped, on Saturday so we blew off the oil change. I met John at the shop around 0830 h and we built some spring perches for his 1200, “Timmy!” Oh, it was butt-assed butt-butt cold. We drug out the diesel/kerosene “Jet Engine” heater thingy and fired it up. Eventually we got the shop’s thermometer up to 45° from 27° I believe. We looked at a few other things, I don’t remember what, and eventually I decided it was time to poop or get out of the Ganges on Lil' Wiggly's dash vents. I decided that we probably wouldn’t be able to get the hoses from the shut-offs to the registers so we put it in without them. The ventilation air will just have to flow in and circulate around the dash as it will. We installed the dash. It was a total pain in the ass, but it is in. It isn’t hooked up, but it is in. I was just frustrated enough that we didn’t hook anything up because the car might have burned to the ground if we had and the gauges didn’t work. No, make that, “the car WOULD have burned to the ground if the gauges didn’t work.” I'm not holding out any hope that they will but if it is a fresh day when we test it, destruction is less likely. Oh, the water temp and oil pressure will probably work, as will the speedo, but the tach will probably be all fucked up and I can almost guarantee the fuel gauge won't do shit. I'm not even sure why I keep buying fucking fuel gauges. I've never had one work rig… oh wait, The Seven's gauge works. Never mind. Ah! But The Seven is using a matching Autometer sending unit! Oh well, we’ll see I guess. Anyhoo, from the shop we went to Mexican Inn for lunch and then parted ways. Since I hadn’t heard anything from the dude about picking up Nadine, I decided to go ahead and have the oil changed in Fiona. I drove across town to the dealer where I'd bought the car and had it done. They asked if there were any other issues so I told them about the volume control on the steering wheel turning on the Bluetooth. Of course it wouldn’t do it for them. I blew it off. I asked if they could check the alignment but blew that off too when it sounded like it was going to take forever. $37.00 later and I was on my way. Back at home, I finally heard from the dude about Nadine. He was going to come Sunday for the car. I texted Larry to ask if he wanted to wait on me or blow off the gun show. I didn’t hear back from him. I'm going to save Sunday’s tale for tomorrow even though I already have half of it written. I do that from time to time.

Frerbruraryr 10, 2012

2012-02-10T15:26:00.001-08:00

Haven't been feeling it lately. Maybe next week. If you're lucky.

Frerbruraryr 8, 2012

2012-02-08T20:04:00.000-08:00

I got an interesting e-mail today. John asked if I had any interest in a B-310. No, he doesn’t want me to take his “new” one off his hands, but that was my first thought as well. [ That's odd... - SM ] Someone is interested in Super Karate-Monkey Death-Car but wants to trade a two door B-310 sedan for it. I could be talked into that pretty easily actually. In fact, it will probably become Super Karate-Monkey Death-Car II and be built as the faux rally car I've always wanted. It already has the four link rear suspension I was going to put in the current Super Karate-Monkey Death-Car, and 280ZX struts will be much easier to install in a B-310. Oh wait, the Z-20 is set up for a 1200’s cross member; the motor mounts will be in the wrong place. Hmm, maybe the single DCOE A-14 should go in there and the Z-20 re-relegated to the Spit’. It would make Super Karate-Monkey Death-Car II slower but the Spit’ ever so much faster! I'll need to cipher and figger on this some more. I don’t know. We’ll have a look at it Saturday. Oh, I also found the form for titling a car without registering it to a license plate. I filled most of it out before printing but don’t have the vehicle’s VIN number for identification of the vehicle. Of course it doesn’t really matter because I can't go to the courthouse until I get paid next week anyway. The buyer is cool with not being the official second owner of the car and is willing to wait for my version of the title. I think they are planning to come get it this Saturday. At least I hope so because Larry and I were planning to go to the gun show Sunday. Of course having $300.00, from the sale of Nadine, in my pocket at the gun show will be a very bad thing, but we’re going to do it anyway. Since I'm not looking for anything in particular, I might be able to resist temptation. We’ll see.

Frerbruraryr 7, 2012

2012-02-07T15:52:00.000-08:00

Well, today would have been my father’s eighty fifth birthday. It’s hard to believe he’s been gone almost twenty years now. Hmm. So anyhoo, I got a text from the dude about Nadine last night. He asked what year was on the title. I had a look and found out something annoying. When she signed the title, she dated it AND put my name and address in the “Buyer” area. I'm going to have to go to the courthouse and transfer the title to me then sign it over to the other dude. What I'm going to do is try to just transfer the title without getting plates for it. Pat has done it in the past so I know it can be done. Hang on, I'm going to the intergoogles to see if I can finger out how that works. Well, I found out where on the intergoogles to look but the page is down for some reason. The good news is that I just found out vehicles over twenty five years old are exempt from the twenty working day deadline for title transfer. So, if I can convince the drones at the courthouse to transfer the title without registering it to a license plate, I'm golden. Of course I'm going to have to wait until after the 15^th to do it because, as I mentioned yesterday, I'm broke-ass until then. In fact, if I have to buy tacos tonight I'm not eating lunch at work the rest of the week. Meh, missing a few lunches ain’t gonna kill me. What IS likely to kill me though is some potentially good news I heard. No, I'm not going to say what it is, not in writing at least, because I don’t want to screw it up. And that isn’t me being superstitious this time, if it were to be read by one or the other of the parties involved… well, it could go the opposite direction in a REALLY bad way. Or it might not, I don’t know actually. Well, we’ll just have to wait and see. So I moved Super Karate-Monkey Death-Car from the “Dead to Me” list back onto the DLR inventory today because John said he might NOT have a home for the Z-20 engine we took out of the Chickenhawk. If it is just going to sit there, we might as well build the faux rally car I've always wanted, even if it is just to turn around and sell it. Yes, I know I'll never make back the money I put into a car I build to sell, especially with my half-assed build quality, but I'll make more selling a runner than a hulk. Besides, isn’t it the build that we enjoy, more than the ownership in the end? Yeah, I'm not really buying that one either… but it is what I'm going to say to justify things from now on. And, not to worry, it is in line behind Lil' Wiggly, the Spit’, George, the Chickenhawk, and the N-600. I really should get George up and running before starting on the Spit’, but that A-14 head with a side draft manifold and header bolted to it are really working me up every time I'm at the shop now. I guess it doesn’t help that it is sitting on the roof of Lil' Wiggly either. It mocks me. Yes, I could move it, but… shut up. Well, it is now 1600 h so I guess I'll start wrapping up my affairs here for the day. I'll talk to y'all again… well, sometime.

Frerbruraryr 6, 2012

2012-02-06T18:46:00.001-08:00

Well, as they are wont to do, plans have changed yet again. After doing stuff at the shop, which I will outline in a bit, I had a look at the single side-draft carburetor A-series manifold we have and decided to go ahead and build an A-14 for the Spit’. I found a round-port A-14 head and bolted the manifold to it. Then I began looking for the header we’d removed from The Seven. John eventually found it, in the first place he looked, in plain sight, on top of Pat's KA-24, right where I had walked four times while looking myself. I bolted it up to make sure both manifolds would work together… they do. Huzzah! I also think I'm going to plan on using that weird right angle air filter adapter thingy I bought on e-Bay… just for grins. Ok, so here’s how the day went down. I woke up late, again, and headed to the shop around 0830 h. When I arrived, John was already in the process of building his 1200’s suspension bits. I hooked up the trailer and we discussed how we wanted to arrange stuff. We shoved Super Karate-Monkey Death-Car over where the BMW IX had been and dropped John's B-310 in that spot. We rolled Nadine back where she had been and John's B-210 in behind that. We parked the trailer and went back in to work on John's suspension bits. While he was drilling holes for shocks and mocking up the parts to be welded, I was playing with the A-14 head and manifolds I mentioned before. While I was zooking his bits together, he found the header for me. I watched as he painted the suspension arms. No, I did not get any work done on Lil' Wiggly. No, I did not round up parts for, or change wheels on Nadine. I stood there and watched John work. My shop, my blog; sit on it if you don’t like it. After his parts had dried, he “installed” one and we had a look at the spring compression and suspension travel. It might just work this crazy idea of his. We cleaned up and went back to the same Italian place for another batch of calamari and split a Stromboli. From there I followed him home and we loaded his Goldwing in the bed of Fifi. We took it, and a bunch of parts, over to John Ullom’s house then. After I dropped him back home, I went home to find a text on the work phone from the dude wanting to buy Nadine. He thought they might try to come Sunday. I realized the wheels never got changed! Oh, while I was zooking his parts, after he found the header for me, John cut out the cross member we’d welded into Nadine. So at least I was that far ahead of the game. The wheels were going to be a problem though. I decided I'd go “first thing” in the morning and change them. I also decided to take Monty and use some valve lapping compound to really smooth up the interface twixt the barrel and compensator/bushing. I got to the shop and decided it was friggin’ cold. I sat in the relative warmth of the shop (at least I was out of the wind) and lapped the barrel and bushing. Oh yeah, she’s as smooth as a baby’s butt now. The gun doesn’t “stutter” when racking the slide like it used to. It is smoove! I cleaned and oiled the gun real good and popped it back in the holster. Yeah, I sometimes conceal carry a full sized .45 ACP 1911 WITH a one inch long compensator on the end of the barrel. I'm that badass. I looked around for other things to keep me inside and finally gave up. I had to change those wheels. I fired up the compressor and ran a hose to the back wall of the shop. “Hmm,” thought I, “There used to be a hole in this back wall for getting electricity or air outside.” I walked around back and saw that the facilities folk had patched it up. I went in and got a socket and ratchet and took out two of the screws then bent the metal patch out of the way. I fed the hose through and got to work. I aired up the four tires I was going to install on Nadine and drug the jack, impact wrench, wheels, and whatever else I thought I'd need out to the car. I jacked up the driver’s side and replaced the front wheel with a Toyota rim we had laying around. It went nicely. The rear, not so much. A 13” Datsun rim will not fit over the Triumph brake drum. I stole the wheels from the 200SX axle and put them on the rear, airing them up as I went. When I was through, my ass was thoroughly kicked. I put up the hoses and screwed the cover back over the hole in the back of the building. I hung out for a while waiting to hear from the dude. Finally I decided I was going to grab some lunch so I sent him a text asking his status. Halfway to Chicken Excess I realized that I was broke-ass and if I ate out I wouldn’t be able to eat lunch during the week here at work. As it stands I'm probably still going hungry the last half of the week. Oh well, I've got a badass car to drive. Anyhoo, I finally got a text back saying he wasn’t going to make it but could I send him some pictures. “Dude!” I screamed at the phone, “I'm already home!” I just replied, “Ok.” Later on, after I'd had a nap, I went back to the shop and took some really shitty pictures of the car to send to him. When I got home, mom wanted to go to El Fenix for their new brisket nachos. We did. They sucked. Back at home I watched the last few seconds of the second half of Puppy Bowl VIII then caught the Kitten Halftime Show. I just about peed myself when the “Popular Middle School Girls” GEICO commercial ran. “Eww.” “Seriously?” “So gross.” I'm still laughing at that… I'm not sure why. And I guess that gets y'all caught up to my weekend. Oops, just had to run across the street for something. While passing through the cafeteria I thought, “I’d like a diet ‘Tard Fuel.” I rounded up the requisite $1.25, plunked it in the machine, and pressed the button. Out popped a regular ‘Tard Fuel. I'd forgotten just how tasty a regular ‘Tard Fuel is. Mmmmmm. High fructose corn syrup and caffeine! I’LL BE BOUNCING OFF THE WALLS PRETTY SOO… OH, LOOKS LIKE RIGHT NOW‼‼‼‼ Bing, bing, BING! Ricochet Rabbit!

Frerbruraryr 3, 2012

2012-02-03T20:09:00.001-08:00

So Pat and I went to have bait for dinner last night. It was quite tasty. I was afeared he had some sort of announcement which could only be given in person and that was why he suggested meeting for dinner. Nope, he just wanted to socialize. He says he’s anxious to get to work on his Datsun Roadster and wants to pick up his KA-24 and transmission from my shop sometime. Apparently the car is over at AUTOCOMP waiting for him to poop or get out of the Ganges. I'd even forgotten he had a Roadster, to be honest. So there’s that going on. I'm not 100% sure, but I think there is some sort of Gay Pride thing, The Stupendous Bowel or something, this Sunday which might conflict with the Japanese Nostalgic Car meet. I just sent John a text asking if he and I are going to the shop tomorrow. I believe that was his plan as of last week, but these things have a way of changing on me. Ok, we are going to the shop. It is as I figured, until he has a car for the JNC meet, he won't be attending. Now we’re arguing via text whether the Puppy Bowl or the Kitten Halftime Show is better. I say anything celebrating kittens is automatically infinitely better than anything with… well yeah, anything. So there. Ok, so I think the plan for tomorrow is to unload John's B-310 and try to keep him from doing anything with it until his 1200 at least rolls. I also need to remove the cross member we welded into Nadine before the dude comes to get it. Oh, I guess we also need to round up all the parts and things for that car and get them together in a central location… like in the car itself. There are a few items I don’t want to put in the car, unless the dude says he is on his way and it isn’t raining. There are a couple books I've picked up about restoring and hot rodding Triumphs as well as that huge laminated wiring diagram. I suppose the wiring diagram would be alright for a while in the trunk, it’s not like the shop is all that much more weatherproof after all. I don’t know, I suppose it is actually. Anyhoo, we can get the nose and hood support framework off of the top shelf and put them in the car. Oh, and I do mean “hood” in the British sense, as in the top or roof. The windshield could be a problem since we removed one of the bases to which it attaches to the scuttle. I saw the base thingy on the floor of the car the other day so I know the dude will be able to reattach it… probably. Then again, it won't be my problem soon enough. I guess, since the car is dead to me, it isn’t my problem now. Ahh, that’s much better, not caring. I don’t think there are any other parts for him but we’ll have a look around to make sure. Well, there is nothing going on today at work so I'm having to really tax my creative writing skills to come up with “busy work” to report on my daily log. One of the things I came up with was that I'd go check out a certain room from 1100 h to 1130 h. Since it is now 1100 h, I guess I otter go do that. I think we’ll just call this rant done then. Ok?

Frerbruraryr 2, 2012

2012-02-02T19:48:00.000-08:00

I probably should have mentioned it being Superfluous “R” month again. I'm not sure if I did it last year, or the one before, but I'm sure as hell doing it this year. So deal wit it suckahs! Ok, since Spiderman put in links to the pictures yesterday I think I'll comment on them again. That metallic green car was virtually identical to the one I had in high school, right down to the wheels. It made me really want to look for another one. But it was the Pinto picture that really got me worked up. That car was so super clean that I'd give my left nut for it. The best part, it was a two door sedan rather than a three door hatchback. I don’t want a Pinto hatch. Sure, they are probably lighter than the sedans, but I still don’t like the hatch as much. Of course a wagon or panel van Pinto would be super awesome as well. Crap, now I want a metallic green, mid-seventies Capri, a two door Pinto, and a Pinto wagon or panel van… in addition to all my Datsuns. Psh, while I'm adding to the wish list, I guess I'll need to seek out another Cosworth Vega… then a Vega Wagon to put a Cosworth engine in. I always wanted to make a Cosworth Vega Wagon since the factory never did. Yeah, like I'm going to be able to make that dream happen! Ok, to be honest, the car from my past that I most regret selling would have to be Mr. Wiggly, the ’76 Dodge van. I should really have my ass kicked for letting that one go. Sure, without making that trade I wouldn’t have Lil' Wiggly back… but I'd have a bitchin’ van. I'm a fucking retard sometimes. Anyhoo, replacing the Capri would be cool and all, but I'm not going to make it a priority. Like I said yesterday, if one avails itself to me, I'll consider it. Since I never owned a Pinto, that little dream can easily go unfulfilled. Of course, if I found a poo-brown two-door, like my brother used to own, I could probably be talked into it… for the right price. Feh, like that’ll happen. So, what now? Well, Pat texted me the other day asking if I wanted to have dinner with him tonight. We decided on bait at Wild Sushi. He said to invite John so I did. I haven’t heard back whether he’s planning to join us though. We’re meeting at 1830 h so I need to think of a way to kill an hour and a half after I get off work. I imagine I'll head down to Bloodbath & Beyond and hang out for a while. Maybe I can talk Larry into going there. We’ll see. I think the dude is planning to come get Nadine this weekend. I sure hope so because I'm broke-ass again. I'm pretty sure John is planning for us to unload his B-310 off the trailer Saturday so I'll need to drive Fifi to the shop. Oh, and even if the dude doesn’t come for Nadine this weekend, we really need to get that cross member cut out of there. I think I'll plan on doing that Saturday. Yeah, I know I said that a few weeks ago. Shut up. The day I planned to do it, I was at the shop alone and didn’t feel like it when push came to shove. So there. Ok, I think I'm just about done talking to y'all today. Yeah, that’s all.

Frerbruraryr 1, 2012

2012-02-01T16:05:00.001-08:00

Yesterday on the shuttle, Larry and I saw a metallic green Fiesta and I commented that it was yellower than the metallic green I like. I like the metallic green that mid-seventies Mercury Capris were painted. I had a ’76 Capri in Neon Dick Green when I was in high school. I looked for a picture on them intergoogles and found one, believe it or not. However when I tried to send it to John, the link didn’t work. He found a different picture of a metallic green Capri and asked if it was the color I meant. It was, but that picture tinted it more to the yellow end than the picture I found. But that’s splitting hairs, I suppose. Suffices to say, I want a metallic green mid-seventies Capri now. John found an early model V6 in red on Craig’s List but I said I'd wait for the one I want, the aforementioned mid-seventies metallic green model. I think I'd prefer this one to be a V6 this time. Although, there are quite a few hot rod bits available for the venerable 2300 four banger. Ooh, the turbo motor from a Thunderchicken Turbo Coupe or Mustang SVO would be super-hot in a Capri. Of course I have that two liter Zetec engine sitting in Marty Smith’s shop, unless he’s given it away. A Miata five speed behind that engine in a Capri would be pretty nice. Hmm, think to come of it, a Miata five speed behind that engine would be pretty sweet in the Spit’ as well. Hmm. No! No no no no! If I'm keeping the Spit’ I think I'm decided on an A-12 with the five-speed from the B-310 we just rescued. Ok, I'm going to stop this line of thinking now. If a metallic green mid-seventies Capri avails itself to me, for a stupid low price, like less than $250.00 sort of thing, I'll consider it. Otherwise, I'm moving on with the cars I have. Is that last sentence a fragment? Hmm, doesn’t appear to be. Well, how about that? Anyhoo, there’s that going on. Well well well. I just went to a meeting with the individual who asked for the log of my hours. Apparently I annoyed a Veep by, get this, being in the cafeteria every time they were. They said to someone, something to the effect of, “Every time I'm in the cafeteria getting lunch, the A/V guy (they may have called me by name, I don’t know) is sitting there.” Hmm, think it might be possible I go to lunch at the same time every day, same as you? No, just jump right to “HE MUST BE GOOFING OFF! FIND OUT WHAT HE DOES HERE EVERY HOUR OF EVERY DAY! GRRR! I’M A BIG POWERFUL EXECUTIVE! GRRR!” I'm going to stop short of calling anyone names… especially since I don’t even know who it was. So, in my meeting I ‘splained that I go to lunch with Larry the shuttle bus driver every day from 1200 h to 1230 h. At some point during that lunch, Dennis from desktop support usually shows up and I finish my hour with him. I said that, on occasion, if Dennis shows up at 1230 h, I will wait his full hour and not leave until 1330 h rather than 1300 h like I should. But I'm rarely there more than an hour, and never more than an hour and a half. Now, I did admit to wasting time on the shuttle, but justified it by pointing out that on the shuttle I am five to ten minutes from anywhere on campus. It can take up to half an hour to get from my desk to the large conference room in the TOB. I, personally, think customer support is more important than “busy work.” But then, who am I to say? Suffices to say, I'm not as stressed out about making “Sitting at my desk waiting for emergency phone calls” sound productive. Oh sure, I'm going to try and keep those entries to a minimum, but I'm not going to stress out about it like I had been. Well, I guess I'm just about done talking to y'all today… no wait! John sent me a picture of a blue Pinto he passed on the road today. I replied, “Damn it! Now I want a metallic green Capri AND a Pinto!” Ok, so if I cull the current herd to The Seven and the Chickenhawk, then add a Capri and a Pinto…

1/31/12

2012-01-31T18:55:00.000-08:00

Sunday I took The Seven out for a hoon. It began as, “I’ll just roll it out and start it up.” That turned into, “I’ll just take it around the block for a shakedown.” That went out the window as soon as I took off up the street. It then became, “I’ll just run up the access road and back to the house.” Of course, once I ran through the gears and was doing sixty or seventy, I said “Fuck it!” and went for a hoon. And a super hoon it was. I did the usual FM5 run but kept going and went around Lake Weatherford. I'm not sure how many miles I did, but I was out for a good two hours. The hoon caused an epiphany of sorts. As much as I say I've always wanted a Spitfire, having one along with The Seven is superfluous. I think I might plan to let it go. And I think I might cull the herd even more than that. I think I might want to reduce it down to The Seven, a tin-top Datsun, and maybe one more toy… along with Fiona, Fifi, and the trailer of course. As for the tin-tops, we’ll finish Lil' Wiggly and I'll hoon it until George is done. When I'm able to hoon George, we’ll sell Lil' Wiggly. Now this doesn’t mean I'm going to build Lil' Wiggly to sell, or that it is dead to me in any way. I'll enjoy Lil' Wiggly but I don’t think I'm going to plan on it being a long term relationship. I'll then hoon George while we build the Chickenhawk 2.0, whereupon George can go up for sale leaving the Chickenhawk as my long term tin-top. So now we come to the “maybe one more toy” portion of the program. Since I've already mentioned letting the Spit’ go, this leaves us with the N-600 as the “maybe one more toy.” And as I write, and re-read it, I realize just how full of shit I am. Never mind, I'm probably not going to do any of the stuff you just read. I'll keep all of the above mentioned cars in the fleet… moist likely. I'll finger out a place to store them all somewhere, somehow. So I guess once Lil' Wiggly is on the road, we’ll jump on the Spit’ and make a viable car out of it. Of course if I get a nice enough offer for either of them, I'll walk away smiling, but that’s another story. Feh, with my latest epiphany shot to hell, I'm not really in the mood to talk to y'all any more. There’s another reason, but I'm not sure I'm ready to divulge it. Hmm, ok. So I get an e-mail yesterday asking me to submit a daily log of my activity here at work. I'm trying my damnedest to finger out how to make “Sitting at my desk waiting for an emergency to pop up” sound productive. I think I can bullshit my way through most of the hours of a day, but there are several where… well, I'm sitting at my desk waiting for an emergency to pop up! I'm a little worried. Psh, I may be FORCED to cull the herd. Let’s hope not. Well, I've depressed myself now so I'm going to go do something else. Have a day.

1/30/12

2012-01-30T18:04:00.001-08:00

To quote the late great Benny Hill, “Hory Makelor!” I am amazed at the difference that cold air kit made to Fiona's performance. The car feels lighter when I go to accelerate. I never would have believed it could make this much difference. I now believe the video from Seoulful Racing which showed an eighteen horsepower gain with the parts I just installed. Taking a 15% drivetrain loss into consideration, and assuming my car made the same improvement in wheel horsepower, I'm now looking at almost 336 horsepower at the crank! I just went in to the DLR Vehicle Inventory and changed the power to weight ratio using that number. The Chickenhawk still edges out Fiona by one tenth of a pound per horsepower… according to my math and assumptions. So, here’s what went down. I woke up at 0730 h Saturday morning. We had never set a time to meet, but I assumed 0800 h or thereabouts. I texted John and said, “Let me guess, you’re already at the shop and playing with springs.” He replied that he would be there in ten minutes… playing with springs. I got ready as fast as I could and hauled ass down there. I arrived to see he had already moved Lil' Wiggly out of the bay and was ready for me. I rolled Fiona in and we got to work. I asked if the “Disconnect negative battery cable” instruction was as much for resetting the ECU as it was for anything else. My thinking is, a fresh ECU reset otter make the butt-dyno feel a difference even if the CAI does nothing. Turns out, as I said before, there was no need to worry about that! We, mostly John, got the bumper cover off and the stock intake stuff removed. I got to work assembling the Injen stuff while John painted the fog light surrounds. I continued to assemble and install stuff while he disassembled the fog lights and surrounds. Well, as cool as those new surrounds would have been, they weren’t really very well designed as far as installation. I made the executone decision to open up the stock vents. Of course John took that matter into his own hands and did a bang-up job. He’s not happy with them but they look good to me. While I was finishing up the install of the washer bottle and CAI, he tinted the fog lights with the film I had bought for the black Versa before I found the Euro-stylee Angel Eye headlights for it. With the fogs tinted, he reinstalled them and the trimmed stock surrounds. He held it up and asked my opinion. I said it looked awesome but he was being a perfectionist and I don’t think he was ever really happy with it. Psh, it’s my car and I think they look good. I'll tell him to go soak his head if he keeps grinding on it. Anyhoo, we reassembled the bumper, again, John did most of the work, and hooked up the battery. I fired up the engine and the fog lights. Oh yeah! It looks and sounds great. Juan can just see the filter peeking out of the two oval holes John cut in the surround, but it isn’t obtrusive. Since it was still early-ish, and John was so impressed with the yellow film, he decided to do his fog lights as well. I set the ramps and he drove up on them. Then he got to work removing panels and stuff to get to the lights. With the lights out, he removed their surrounds and painted them flat black and tinted the lights. Eventually the paint was dry enough to install everything so he did. It looks good. When we were all done, we closed up and headed to… um, somewhere for lunch. Hang on, I'll think of it in a moment. Um, it was… we didn’t want buffet so the Indian place was vetoed. He’d had Mexican for dinner so that was out. Oh! We went to that Italian place at Hulen and Old Granbury that used to be a Dairy Queen. Calamari and Stromboli, it was quite tasty. From there I went to O’Reilley’s and bought a gallon of washer fluid to replace the stuff we dumped on the ground then went for a hoon. That was when I realized just how much of a difference the CAI made. Damn, that car is fast. I decided two things during that hoon: 1) Fiona needs a short shift kit, and b) people are either discovering FM5 on their own or they are reading this blog to learn about it. I choose to think it is the latter. There were several cars that looked like they were there to hoon “MY” road. Oh well, what are you going to do? Ok, I think I've said enough for today. I've already started tomorrow’s rant, but I'm going to save it for now. As a teaser, it involves another hoon and another epiphany.

1/27/12

2012-01-27T16:45:00.000-08:00

I haven’t had anything to say this week. Duh, or I would have been in here talking to y'all. So, what can I say today? I dunno. I think we’re planning to install the fog light surrounds and cold air intake on Fiona tomorrow. Oh, by the way, the fog light surrounds arrived from Korea the other day. They are really cool and will let in TONS of air. I can see now how Seoulful Racing got such high dyno numbers when they put them on. And they look bitchin’ too! They are already flat black but I think we’ll want to hit them with another coat of paint, just to be safe. Of course I'll leave all those æsthetic things up to John. He might say they are fine the way they are. We’ll see. We might look at putting that yellow film on the fog lights themselves while we have them out. I don’t know if we’ll have the time for that, but… well, we’ll see. John had suggested doing it before but didn’t want to without removing them. He was afeared that just filming the face might allow a ghost ring of clear to show around the edges. Perhaps we’ll film the faces and paint the edges. I don’t know, we’ll… have to look at them I guess. Yes, I did almost say, “we’ll see,” just then. Dang, a pictured of The Seven just popped up on the work computer’s screen saver. I haven’t driven that car since… November? Yikes! Almost three months! I guess I need to plan on bundling up and driving it to the Japanese car thing next Sunday… if it will start. I suppose I otter try and start it ahead of time so I can fix whatever ails it… be there such an ailment. Hmm, now what? Well, I guess I could talk steel buildings again. I asked for a quote from some Quonset hut style building places and have received three callbacks. Every one of them has a building which would suit my needs that, miraculously, was either returned or refused by the original purchaser! Every one of them has a $38,000.00 steel building they need to move for around $18,000.00 plus shipping. When I mentioned them to Gregg, he pointed out they were most likely monocoque style, free standing units. I thought about it for a moment and remembered that, since I started with a Quonset hut site, they WOULD be monocoque buildings. Yeah, I'm not so sure I want a monocoque building. In a tornado, a solid frame with a skin that can blow off as the safety fuse sounds a lot safer than the whole structure shredding around me. Besides, I want a contractor to give me a final budget for the slab, building, assembly, wiring, plumbing, finishing, and everything so I can see if I have enough credit to make this pipe dream happen. Well, it is now 1100 h and I'm really struggling to think of stuff to say. I guess I'll just call it a rant and go to lunch. Yeah, I'll talk to y'all again Monday.

1/24/12

2012-01-24T18:48:00.001-08:00

I was going to have a screaming fit about how every time I loan Fifi to someone the shift knob gets broken. But I sent it to John in an e-mail last night while I was still mad about it and I don’t really want to piss myself off again trying to remember what I said. Suffices to say, when I got home and found Fifi parked within fucking inches of the fucking garage door, a location which grinds my fucking gears like a mother fucker, it pissed me off. Then when I got in to move it around back and found the knob loose again… well, I'm surprised y'all didn’t hear the stream of expletives at that point. So I back the bastard around back and can’t get the front tires to roll up onto the concrete. I do a big smoky burnout until the ass end of the truck gets too close to the wall. I take another rolling run at it and get the damned thing parked. By now I'm fucking livid. I go inside and yell, “Every time someone uses that truck, the shift knob gets broken!” Mom says that the Chinaman said something about it and was really sorry. Fuck that! Don’t break my fucking truck every goddamned time you use it! How does that sound? I just keep walking. At this point I'm too mad to even pee. I storm into my room and fire up the laptop. I send yesterday’s rant and rant to John about the knob. He manages to calm me down by shifting the conversation to incredulity over his not jumping in the driver’s seat of the B-310 while I was pulling it out of the field on Saturday. Remember how I had to slip the clutch so he could keep up with me? Yeah, then. I told him that at the time I thought he just didn’t want to get dirty from that car’s seat forgetting that he had just been rolling around in donkey poo changing tires. After reading the two or three web sites I always read in the evening I was un-mad and went down to have dinner with mom. She was mad… at me for being mad about someone breaking my truck. I did not apologize but acted as if I was over it. She was cold and distant all through dinner. What the fuck ever. I'm thinking that I'll just fill that shift ball with grease so it has some resistance to falling off and vibrating, but take the mother fucker with me so anyone borrowing the truck gets a big-assed handful of schmort when they go to shift. That’ll learn ‘em. Ok, on to other matters. Sunday, while on my hoon, I managed to drop a wheel off in a turn. It made a horrible scraping noise as… well, something hit the pavement. I'm hoping it was just the plastic undertray but haven’t crawled to look at the suspension arms. It doesn’t handle weird or pull or anything so I doubt I did any damage. Well, we’ll see on Saturday… if my brake ducts arrive by then that is. I think they otter be here tomorrow or Thursday. John sent me a text earlier saying he saw 5 acres with a 5,000 square foot barn for sale north of Roanoke. I asked if there was a number but he said he went by too fast to catch it. I'm hoping it isn’t actually on 377 because that would be a little too frontage for my taste. That is one of the problems I'm having with Boyd actually. I'd prefer to be a little off the beaten path because it might afford some twisty bits getting to and from the place. Also, the further it is away from other people, the more likely I'll be able to set up a shooting range of sorts… I hope. According to my math, one acre being 208.7 feet square, gives almost seventy yards per side. Five acres would be… um, ok that’s giving me a headache. Suffices to say that if one acre is almost seventy yards, five acres otter be enough for a full 100 yard rifle range. I'm thinking that if it were dug in so that the targets were lower than the shooting bench, and there were a significant berm behind it, there shouldn’t be any stray bullets getting away. Also, I'd design the shooting station such that Juan would have to really work at it to point the muzzle upward without hitting something up close. It works in my head. Ok, I couldn’t leave it alone. I went ahead and fingered out how many yards per side of a five acre square plot: 155.6 yards. So, yeah I could probably do a 100 yard range with a bit of a safety margin. My eyes are so shitty that any more than that would be a waste of time. I really want a place where I can shoot my Saiga 12 and 7.62x39. Of course setting up a pistol and shotgun range wouldn’t be any great shakes, I wouldn’t think, but making it safe to pop off 7.62x39 ammo could be problematic. Anyhoo, I guess that’s about all I've got for today.

1/23/12

2012-01-23T15:38:00.001-08:00

Well, speaking as the guy who was NOT crawling around in the dirt changing wheels on a thirty year old Datsun, I have to say the rescue of John’s B-310 went surprisingly well. We met at the shop at around 0800 h Saturday morning and hooked up the trailer. I got totally pissed off when it appeared as though someone had stolen the tie straps but then remembered Gregg has them from when he picked up the BMW last month. We rounded up what we hoped would be enough straps and loaded them in Fifi's bed. We grabbed a few other items we thought we’d need and headed out. John topped off the tank at the QT station on 377 and we headed west. We made pretty good time so we decided to stop in “downtown” Cross Plains to visit the Veteran’s Memorial in honor of all the local CP folks who served in the military since the War of Northern Aggression back in 1861-1865. We found the stone with my father’s name on it, as well as Uncle Harold and Uncle Bill, and John took pictures. Now, part of me doesn’t want to be disrespectful, but there was a name on there that I'm having trouble believing: “Cody Ray Pancake.” John, care to post that picture? If not, no worries. After we spent a suitable amount of time there, we went back to the local gas station and peed. I bought a raffle ticket from the local Veterans of Popular Wars post for a Benelli shotgun and had a chat about the memorial with the guy. Eventually we headed out to get the car. We dropped the trailer and backed Fifi up to the car then hooked up a come-along. I gave it a few ratchets and the car moved some. John then suggested we just try to see if Fifi would pull her out. Yeah, not so much. Fifi just sank into the sandy soil. John then got to work swapping wheels. Again, as the guy standing around looking pretty, it went pretty easily. Once we had all the tires round and full of air, we tried to drag it with Fifi again. Yeah, still not so much. Both Fifi and the B-310 were sunk in holes. We decided to use the come-along and pull the B-310 out of its holes, slack the cable, get Fifi out of its hole, then go for the drag. This worked. Unfortunately, Fifi’s idle speed in first gear is just a few feet per second faster than a comfortable walking pace. I had to constantly slip the clutch to keep from outrunning John as he steered. We got to the trailer and John set up the ramps while I back up to the tongue. We pushed the bastard on and tied it down. John paid for the car… at least I think he did. Hmm, I don’t actually know that for sure. I believe he did, and that’s good enough for me. We headed back across the state. We discussed stuff there and back and I think we might have talked me into an A-series in Rhonda after all. John may have a home for the Z-20 which would cement that deal. Besides, a screaming A-12 would be a hoot and a half in that car. But we’ll see. When we got to the shop, John remembered that he had a subsequent engagement that evening and had to bail out without unloading the trailer. Ok, I'm making it sound like he stuck me with a car on the trailer. I really didn’t want to unload it either so it doesn’t matter. It’s not like this is the first car we’ve ever rescued that sat on the trailer for a few weeks once we got it home. Now the tough job is going to keep John from working on this car until Timmy! is at least rolling. He’s sent me a few texts already lamenting how hard it is to not let the new toy cut in line. Gee, I can't imagine what that would be like. Tee hee. So Sunday I slept in. Mom had promised Fifi to the church’s Chinaman again so I was going to have to fill it up before he came by. I took off to the shop and unloaded the ramps, some plywood, and the come-alongs from the bed then went and filled it up. I sent John a text saying we averaged 13.8 miles per gallon getting the car. He thought that sounded pretty good. I suppose it was. When mom and the Chinaman arrived, he took off in Fifi while mom and I headed out in her car to get some lunch at Red Hot & Blue. Now, mom made a comment about Fifi being “the church’s moving van” to which I almost replied, “Then the church needs to start paying the damned insurance on the thing.” I took the high road though and let her have her little joke. SHE, on the other hand, would have passive-aggressively MADE the insurance comment. But I digress. After we ate, I took a nap while waiting for the return of Fifi. Around 1600 h I finally decided I was going to go fill up Fiona's gas tank since the light came on on the way home from work Friday. I filled and went for a hoon. A couple hours later I returned home. Mom got a call from the Chinaman saying he’d bring the truck back in the morning if that was ok. I didn’t care. And there you have it. Oh, I used Shazam to find out the name of the song and artist in the latest commercial for The Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas. It is “Booty Swing” by Parov Stelar. I then went to i-Tunes and bought the EP. I dig it highly. I'm listening to it now in fact. It is kind of saccharine but very catchy. I think I'll make a Parov Stelar station on Pandora… and it is done. I wonder what we’ll be exposed to there! Well, I think I'm going to call it a rant for the day. I'll talk at y'all tomorrow.

1/20/12

2012-01-20T19:12:00.000-08:00

So my broke ass has been thinking again. I really need to get out from under that $600.00 a month money pit in Beenbroke, AKA the shop. I've been looking at the plans I have drawn up in Paint and am at a mental crossroads. Pouring a concrete drive around to the back of the house on Burkett and sharing a smaller shop elsewhere is one option. It isn’t a bad option either. The thing is the Burkett house is way too big for me and a cat. Oh sure, I could get more cats, but that house really is too big for me. Not to mention the fact that the shops John and I were looking at are all closer to my work’s side of town, and John's house, than they are to Burkett. If I were sharing a shop, and working, over here, I could stand to move over here. Of course that would get me into apartment rent or a mortgage as well as shop rent, and I'd be back in the same broke-ass boat I'm in now. So, Boyd? I've been looking at those plans… oh, I see I already said that. I like the 40’ wide steel buildings with apartments I have designed. One is 110’ long and the other is 80’ I believe. The 80’ one gets all of the cars I intend to keep inside and leaves two 15’x20’ bays open to rent to others. The 110’ unit gives me five bays available for rental. I'm sure I could squeeze some money out of John and Pat, “filling” two bays, but could I rent out the other three? Gregg would probably spring for one, which would thrill both John and Pat to no end! Gregg isn’t exactly a favorite person of either one of them. I can see it, and now that I think about it, I'm not sure I want Gregg in there either. Sorry dude. Ok, Larry might be talked into a spot, especially if “we” found him a project he wanted to get behind. Wow, I'm glad I saw that typo. I left the “o” out of the word “found” just then. We most certainly will NOT fund anyone’s projects. Anyhoo, so I guess I'm talking myself into a 40’x80’ steel building… again. I just have to convince mom that I'm still going to be into the car hobby in a few more years. Thing is, if the building isn’t anything super special, it could be sold as scrap at the very least leaving just a big assed concrete pad marring the landscape on the off chance I did decide I wanted to be out of the car hobby in the future. Of course another option would be to find some other piece of land, perhaps with an existing building on it, to buy and live/hobby on. I don’t know. That would add a lot to the mortgage I would think since I wouldn’t have to buy the land in Boyd, per se… at least I don’t think I would. Hmm, now I'm not so sure about any of this. Ok, so I've been on line looking at acreage for sale around here. There is a lot more of it available than I would have thought… and it isn’t as expensive as I imagined. I guess this economy has hit the real estate market pretty hard. Woo hoo! Buyer’s market! As if I had money to buy anything. What I'm thinking is I otter contact a few of these real estate agencies and see what is available in something I could use. I mean, I don’t need a four bedroom three and a half bath house on 0.73 acres. I need a few acres with a big steel building suitable to turn into my new shop… oh, and a one or two bedroom house sort of thing. I would imagine most of these “acreage with house” things I'm seeing will have an out building of some sort, but would it be big enough? I don’t know. Add in the fact that I'm far too lazy and short tempered with the intergoogles to search for very long, and we reach an impasse. Hmm, I guess I otter reconsider the reconsideration of reconsidering building in Boyd. I just sent a text to a contractor buddy asking what it would cost to get him to be the GC on the deal. Ooh, I'd really like to have that Mike Holmes dude from the TV come down from Canada and build me a place! That would be really cool. Maybe get it on the TV and everything! Yeah, like that could happen. Well, apparently my buddy isn’t interested. He just replied, “One MILLION dollars!” I guess he won't be building my shop. Oh, I asked Larry if he might be interested in a spot. He would. So I guess I might think about the 110’ building after all. Well, I think I've gassed on long enough for today. I'll tell y'all about the rescue of John's 210 on Monday. Toodles.

1/18/12

2012-01-18T16:36:00.000-08:00

Some idiot just said something or other was open, “twenty four, seven, three sixty five.” So I said, “Just a little over seven years then?” I really hate it when people use that progression. Yes, there are twenty four hours in a day. Yes there are seven days in a week. But three hundred sixty five weeks, which is the next logical progression in that statement, is seven years and one week. While that would be a pretty good lifespan for a Gumment Motors vehicle, advertisements for which being another place I have seen this retarded ass progression used, it does not denote a continuation in perpetuity. What they should say is, “twenty four, seven, fifty two” to mean all day, every day. Ok, Juan could use my argument against me on this and say that we’re now only talking about one year. I suppose he might have a point. But, by leaving it with a completed progression, the assumption could be made that the next year will continue the cycle. Besides, unless Juan was to include decades or centuries, there really isn’t a convenient block of years to continue the progression. I suppose, “twenty four, seven, fifty two, ten, ten” would cover one hundred years, but then we’re just getting outrageous. My point is, people are fucking stupid and I hate them. Ok, so what can we talk about now? I've been thinking again about Rhonda's engine. While I think a Z-20 would be really bad ass, and probably the way we’ll go since there is one sitting there collecting dust, a warmed-over A-12 with a five-speed would be pretty cool too. For one thing, stock for stock, the Datsun engine makes five more horsepower than the Triumph lump. The Datsun donk will be lighter due to (tee hee, I said "doo doo!") the aluminum cylinder head. The Datsun uses five main bearings instead of three. And we have a shit ton of the damned things! I think I have a single DCOE manifold for a round-port A-series which, along with a header, otter bump us up to more than fifteen or twenty ponies more than the Triumph motor. Then there’s the fact that a well-built A-12 will rev to the moon compared to the Triumph. I don’t think it would be as quick as the Z-20 though. In fact, I'm sure of it. Of course John will want to point out that an A-12 in a Spit’ will be a tad slower than The Seven removing the superfluousity of that vehicle. Yes, I did just make up a word. I do that from time to time. Anyhoo, there’s that going on in my head. I went on line and had a look for some cam specs earlier and found that any “late” cam can be used in any A-series engine, early or late, but an “early” cam can only be used in an early engine. This means that any cam for an A-14 or A-15 will work in the A-12. The problem is, while there are several different grinds of stock cams, none are really all that different from the A-12’s original. I don’t know. I'll probably just plan on using the Z-20 and have a bad ass torque monster. What I need to concern myself with is taming that swing-arm rear suspension. See, the problem is that in droop the rear tires want to go into massive toe-out. So under braking the ass end wants to jump out front. I wonder if we can get a live axle under the thing. Hmm. No, I'll probably just limit the droop travel of the arms so they can't go into toe-out. Yes, that will mean the thing will “hike a leg” like a dog pissing on a tree, but I'd rather that than swap ends in the middle of a turn. I'll have to zook up the spider gears in the differential I suppose. Meh, no worries. I probably would have done that anyway. Besides, with the torque of a Z-20 I'm afeared the thing would just do peg-leg burnouts any time you tried to take off. Wait, no the problem with Gil was it didn’t have enough torque and had to be revved up to get off the line. That was why it always smoked the right rear on takeoff. With the Z-20 you could probably just lift your foot off the clutch pedal without giving it any gas and she’d take off. Psh, as light as these things are, dumping the clutch probably wouldn’t stall it. Ok, yeah it probably would. Anyhoo, the point is… now I forget. Oh right, I don’t think the Z-20 will need a locked differential for takeoff but it will need one to put power down in a corner with the amount of droop limitation I think it will require. I don’t know, we’ll see. Feh, I guess I'm done talking to y'all for the day. Go away.

1/17/12

2012-01-17T20:43:00.000-08:00

Well, I've been doing some thinking…again. John asked the question this morning, “How important are disc brakes on the rear of Super Karate-Monkey Death-Car?” or something to that effect. He wants to use the 200SX axle I've been hording for Super Karate-Monkey Death-Car in his Sunny Cup B-310. I told him that it the only things keeping Super Karate-Monkey Death-Car in the fray are that axle and the Z-20 looking for homes. If he were to “dibs” that axle, and we were to delegate the Z-20 as Rhonda’s engine, then Super Karate-Monkey Death-Car could be put up on the block for sale. This, of course, is the wisest course of action. Therefore we won't be doing that. No, I'm kidding. That is exactly what I think we need to do. I need another project like I need a hole in my head. So I've moved Super Karate-Monkey Death-Car to the “Dead to Me” section of my inventory along with Nadine. Upon recalculating my guesstimated horsepower and weight ratios, it turns out a Z-20 powered Spit’ would be my third quickest vehicle behind the Chickenhawk and Fiona. Here, I'll give y'all a chart sort of thing:

Chickenhawk: 155-160 horsepower, 1,500 pounds, 11.3 pounds per horsepower, (1)

Fiona: 310-315 horsepower, 3,500 pounds, 12.1 pounds per horsepower, (2)

Rhonda: 120-125 horsepower, 1,300 pounds, 12.9 pounds per horsepower, (3)

George: 120-125 horsepower, 1,500 pounds, 14.5 pounds per horsepower, (4)

The Seven: 90-95 horsepower, 1,150 pounds, 15.5 pounds per horsepower, (5)

Bozo: 85-90 horsepower, 1,200 pounds, 16.9 pounds per horsepower, (6)

Lil’ Wiggly: 105-110 horsepower, 1,600 pounds, 17.5 pounds per horsepower, (7)

Fifi: 200-205 horsepower, 4,000 pounds, 21.1 pounds per horsepower, (8)

Herman: 70-75 horsepower, 1,400 pounds, 23.2 pounds per horsepower, (9)

Bobbi: 20-25 horsepower, 300 pounds, 25.8 pounds per horsepower, (10)

As a recap, the Chickenhawk is a Datsun 1200 with a KA-24e, Fiona is a Hyundai Genesis Coupe, Rhonda is a 1964 Triumph Spitfire with a Nissan NAPS Z two liter, George is a Datsun 1200 with a turbocharged A-12, The Seven is a replica of a 1967 Lotus Seven with a “warmed over” Datsun A-15, Bozo is a Honda N-600 micro-car with a Goldwing motorcycle engine, Lil' Wiggly is a Datsun B-210 with a hot-rod A-14, Fifi is a Ford F-150, Herman is a relatively stock Datsun 1200, and Bobbi is a Honda XL-250 motorcycle. If you are doing the math right now, and it isn’t adding up, here’s the formula I used: X=(W+280)/Hp where X is the power to weight ratio we seek, W is the guesstimated weight given (plus 280 pounds for my ass), and Hp is the mean horsepower. So, for instance, to get the Chickenhawk's power to weight ratio above, I took the weight of 1,500 pounds and added 280 to get 1,780 pounds. I divided that by 157.5 (halfway between the highest and lowest guesstimated power figure, AKA the “mean”) horsepower and got 11.3015873 which rounds to 11.3 pounds per horsepower. Voila! Ok, with that out of the way, I can continue with my ruminations. So, looking at that chart, I noticed that if I were to sell Bobbi and consider Herman “dead to me,” Fifi would be the slowest vehicle in my fleet. Fifi is no slouch in the acceleration department. In fact, I used to think it was somewhat spritely. I guess that is what torque will do for you. I guess what I'm getting at is, I'm going to have a pretty quick bunch of cars when… ok, if I ever finish them. I think making Nadine, Super Karate-Monkey Death-Car, and Herman “dead to me,” as well as selling Bobbi, could whittle my fleet down to an almost reasonable quantity. Sure, eight vehicles is a totally retarded number, but… um… shut up. Your face is a retarded number. I don’t know. I just deleted a big section where I justified all of the vehicles. I've gone over THAT so many times in the past that I'm not going to do it again. Ok, maybe just the high points. The Chickenhawk was my first 1200, George I got for $5.00, I built The Seven for my fortieth birthday, I've always loved B-210 hatchbacks (Lil' Wiggly), N-600s are so tiny they’re cool (Bozo), I've always wanted a Spit’ (Rhonda), I need a tow vehicle (Fifi), and I need a modern and comfortable daily driver (Fiona). To justify Herman and Bobbi I guess I'd say: Herman has a title and Bobbi is just cool. And I guess that’s all I have for today.

1/16/12

2012-01-16T19:22:00.000-08:00

Well, that was interesting. First off, I'd forgotten that I'd promised an axle to a guy here at work for his smoker trailer. He called Friday evening to see when I'd be going to the shop. I said I'd be there in the morning and made plans from there. John had something else going on Saturday so I was on my own. I cancelled plans with mom for lunch Saturday and asked her if she wanted to go to Two Brothers Bistro Friday evening instead. She did so we headed right back the way I'd just come from work. The whole way I was thinking, “This is really dumb.” Fortunately the food was so spectacular that it made up for the stupidity of traipsing all the way across town for it. Saturday morning I headed to the shop to round up an axle for Scott. I asked John if there were any particular axles we DID NOT want to give away. He replied back, “Mine.” I was a bit taken aback by that so when I arrived at the shop, had a look around, and decided that his was the only 1200 axle available, I called him for confirmation. He did confirm that he did NOT want his axle given away but was in the middle of some project and wouldn’t explain. I bowed out of the fight and began looking at the B-210 axle standing under the storage shelf. I thought it was the one from the Chickenhawk but it wasn’t. I'm not sure where this one came from but it was an open differential and was complete. It had some grinder marks where I'd tried to install it in a 1200, probably Gil, and gave up. I found a brake drum to replace the missing one and shuffled it to the door. Then I went out to remove some stuff from Nadine. I took all of the gauges out of the trunk and the fuel level sending unit out of the gas tank. I grabbed the Hot Rod Wires wiring harness and anything else I was going to keep. I had a quick look to see if I wanted to remove the cross member but decided I did not at that time. Eventually Scott arrived and we loaded up the axle into his truck. Then I showed him those ugly-assed wheels we got with Aaron’s HL A-10 Violet (510) and said, “You can have two of these for $100.00 or all four for free.” He took all four. Once he left, I cleaned up and called mom to see if she’d had lunch yet. I got the machine so I went for a hoon. Eventually I wound up at Chicken Excess where I ate lunch. I got a text from Emily asking if I wanted to meet her and Rob at the Flying Saucer for a beer at 1600 h. I said I did and went home to nap before getting ready. Around 1500 h I got up and showered then went to meet them. We had a few beers and discussed Rob’s heart attack and upcoming open heart surgery. It was weird. From the FS we went across downtown to Jake’s Hamburgers and ate some dinner before calling it a night. Since we’re all middle aged, the night was called before 2100 h. Sunday morning mom wakes me up at 0700 h and asks, “Aren’t you supposed to leave at eight?” I get up and get ready to ride across the state to look at a B-310… at least we hoped it would be one. I load Petey, my Taurus PT-29 9mm pistol, and a spare magazine into the holster in my waistband and go to put the Judge away. Then I think, “If we’re going to be slogging through a field, I might want the Judge.” I holstered that up on my left hip and strung a pair of speed loaders full of .45 Colt Cor Bon “Flying Ashtrays” onto my belt. My “T” shirt covered everything but the very tip of the Judge’s holster but against the black pants you would have to KNOW it was a holster to identify it. I waited for John to arrive. When I went to get in his car, I found that two guns made my already ample girth too wide. I had to take off the Judge and put it in the door pocket. Thus ensconced, we headed west. He looked up the address again and told me the car was in a little town called Cross Plains. My father grew up in Cross Plains! I told him if he does buy this car, I'm going to insist on him calling it Glen. After a stop for breakfast burritos at McDonald’s, we continued west. In Cross Plains we found the road to Abilene where the car was supposed to be and headed out. We found the place and were amazed that anyone could have spotted this car from the road. John had me wait by the car, and the Judge, while he went to the door of the house. Eventually the resident came out and we asked about the car. Turns out, it had been his father’s, and he would be glad to see it go, but he’d have to check with his brother. We looked the car over and declared it “perfect” for our porpoises. The engine was disassembled but it was a five-speed car. There was one piece of glass broken but the body was in decent enough shape. The interior was trashed but it was all going in the bin anyhow. We loved it. We chatted with the guy for a bit then headed home. We decided to take 377 back and headed back into Cross Plains to find the road to Dublin. On that road we had to stop when we found an original Fiat 500 sitting in front of a building. We grokked it for a bit then headed out again. I like these “shopping trips” out in the country. We may have to start doing it more often. Anyhoo, we stopped for sushi in Granbury then John took me home. I just got a text from John saying the guy has talked to his brother and we’re a go for getting Glen from the field. While I am looking forward to rescuing another car, I am not looking forward to dragging the damned thing out of that field. Oh well, what are you going to do? Oh yeah, I also got an e-mail saying that my fog light surround duct thingies shipped from Korea today. I don’t think they will arrive in time to cause a conflict of interest next Saturday but we’ll see.

1/13/12

2012-01-13T18:07:00.000-08:00

Oooh, Friday the 13^th! I'm so sca… crap, I just spilled my diet ‘Tard Fuel! Hang on, I need to clean this up. Ok, so Wednesday evening I get a text from the wife of an old college/high school friend “updating” me on Rob’s heart condition. What the fuck?!?!?!?! I didn’t even know Rob HAD a heart condition. Well, apparently he does. Some undetected, until now obviously, birth defect caused him to have a heart attack recently and I'm just hearing about it. Anyhoo, I get in touch with other folks who all know Rob to see what they know. Pat’s wife Nora works at the same company as Rob so had heard rumors and therefore Pat had a heads up about it already. I'm not sure how much Navajo knew beforehand but apparently Randy and Jana were in the dark like me. This kind of pissed me off. I was sitting there thinking, “Dude! What the fuck? Were you just going to drop dead without letting any of us know anything was wrong?” I was working up a good head of steam about it when I realized: wait, that’s exactly what I would have done. Since then I've been much more relaxed about it. When I told John about it, he asked if I, “Mr. Something’s Going to Kill Me Someday,” was finally feeling my mortality. I told him, “No, I always figured I'd be the first one of the group to drop dead. It is the realization of my FRIENDS’ mortality that freaked me out.” But that isn’t why I didn’t have a rant yesterday. I just didn’t get around to making one, so there. Ok, so I've been driving around with the Cold Air Intake in the trunk of Fiona. I was thinking “we” would install it tomorrow. Well, it doesn’t look like John is going to make it to the shop after all. Now, this isn’t such a bad thing, as it turns out. Since Sunday is the 15^th, I got paid today. Yep, I ordered the Korean fog light surround vent thingies. Hopefully they will arrive this week and “we” can install them when “we” install the CAI next Saturday. Oh sure, John invited me to come to his house tomorrow so “we” could install the CAI, but with the vents “on their way” we might as well wait and do it all at once. Then again, I might get a wild hair tomorrow and install the damned CAI myself. I have been known to turn a wrench on my own car from time to time. We’ll see. No, if I even go to the shop tomorrow, I'll probably just install Lil' Wiggly's dash. Of course I've already told mom I'm NOT going to the shop so even that might not happen. I think John and I might be making a road-trip out to Abilene on Sunday to see if there really is a B-310 out in some dude’s field in the “abandoned car position.” Apparently some friend of John's cruises a certain byway all the time and sees this car there. Neither of them knows anything about the car, the owner, or anything. We’re going to go chase that wild goose… apparently. I asked if we were taking the trailer but John said it might be more prudent to see if the thing a) exists and 2) is for sale before doing that. Not to mention, NOT having the trailer will keep him from making a stupid “knee-jerk” purchase. If he has a week or two to cipher and figger on it, it might not be the “great deal” it appears to be when a way to drag it home is sitting right there. Besides, he knows he can NOT count on me as a wingman for something like this. I don’t think I'm able to talk him out of buying a project car. John, have I ever successfully talked you down from one of those ledges? No, I think I'm more of a bad influence when it comes to buying toys. I'll bet if Samantha ever found out how bad I am at stopping him from buying cars, she wouldn’t let us go tilting at windmills like this. Well, it is now 1545 h. I think I'm going to call it a week.

1/11/12

2012-01-11T16:25:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I think the current plan is as follows. First we’ll finish Lil' Wiggly and get it on the road and out of the way. Then we’ll roll George in and finish him up. That shouldn’t take too… damn, jinxed it. Anyhoo, when George is back on the road well probably roll Rhonda in and begin stripping it down the way we did Nadine. I think unless there is some reason why the Chickenhawk engine won't “drop right it,” like the steering rack fouls the pan or something, we’ll go that route. Of course either way we go, NAPS Z or A-series, we’ll probably wind up putting that cross member we made for Nadine in there. So I guess that will be how we’ll start. I've been cipherin’ and figgerin’ on what zorst manifolds to use where and I think I'm going to go this route: I'll put the header that I built for the Chickenhawk in the Chickenhawk on the KA-24 and one of those four-to-two cast iron manifolds on the Z-20 in Rhonda. I might, just to be wacky, keep them split and run dual exhaust! No, I probably won't do that. I would like to keep the Monza, or Ansa, or whatever it is axle-back portion of Rhonda’s existing zorst though. I like those dual stingers sticking out back there. We’ll see. Ok, so I thought this was going to entertain me more than it has. I had hoped to go into all sorts of thoughts and stuff about the various projects but nothing is coming to mind. Hmm. Well, the cold air induction kit for Fiona did arrive yesterday. I took it out and had a look at all the components. It does appear that it will flow the hell out of some air. The instructions are a bit daunting because removal of the front bumper is called for. John says, and I quote, “I ain’t skeert.” So I guess we’ll be doing that this Saturday. This kit is by Injen. The AEM kit’s instructions which I found on them intergoogles made it sound like just the lower cover needs to be removed. I imagine the truth is somewhere in between. Juan can probably do the installation with only the lower cover removed, but it will go smoother with the bumper off. I'll leave the details up to John. Of course we didn’t have any trouble removing the bumper from Ms. Clio to install the Angel Eye headlights, why am I so worried about yanking this bumper? Oh right, because John didn’t want to remove this bumper to install the new grille back a few months ago. See, the thing is, if we do remove the bumper, I could be working on opening up the vent next to the fog lights which will let in even more air to the cold air filter. Relax John, I'm not going to take a hole saw to it like I did on the two Versæ. No, I'll cut out the bottoms of the individual louver thingies to open them up. You probably won't even be able to see it. Of course, if we had some mesh to put in the hole, the whole trapezedarhomboid could be cut out to flow stupid amounts of air in there! I don’t know, we’ll see. I suppose I could just order the fog light surrounds from Seoulful Racing which already have the cutouts covered in mesh. Perhaps the next time I have $189.00 burning a hole in my wallet. Then again, this would be the time to do it rather than remove the bumper twice. No, I think I can ventilate the stock parts well enough to suit my porpoise. Is anyone else picturing a dolphin in an Armani right now? No, just me? Kooky. Well, I'm tired of talking to y'all now so…

1/10/12

2012-01-10T16:26:00.000-08:00

Damn, damn, damn, damn. So Sunday evening, while I'm waiting to see if anyone was going to show up for the Japanese Nostalgic Car thing, I had a look on line at the JNC message board. There in Jeff’s signature was a little factoid: his MR2 is for sale. While we were all talking later, I resisted the urge to ask, “How much?” Unfortunately someone else didn’t. Jeff said, “Nine.” Now, while I thought it sounded a bit high, I figured perhaps a car of that vintage MIGHT be worth $9,000.00 in the right circles. I knew it was too rich for my blood and blew it off. Jeff texted me today and asked if I was interested. I, still thinking he had some solid unobtanuim thing of super value, told him it was too much for my passing fancy. Then on a whim, I went ahead and asked to clarify his asking price. As I sent the text, I said to Larry, “If this thing turns out to be $900.00 instead of $9,000.00, I'm probably going to buy it.” Yeah, I'm an idiot. Apparently I was totally high thinking the car was worth that much. He did mean $900.00 and, according to John, it is worth just about that. So now I'm trying to finger out where I'm going to get $900.00 to buy an MR2 that I don’t need. Actually, I'm trying to finger out where I'm going to get $600.00 for an MR2 I don’t need because I have $300.00 lined up from the sale of Nadine. I wonder if I could sell Super Karate-Monkey Death-Car for that much. Feh, I don’t know what to think. What I need to do is convince John to build a 1200 Sunny Cup Car instead of a B-310 hatchback. See, if John were to finagle Jeff down on the price of the MR2, I'd give John Super Karate-Monkey Death-Car and the $300.00 from Nadine to get me into Jeff’s MR2. We’ve actually discussed this, but there is a wrinkle. John has already found a potential B-310 body donor in Houston for his Sunny Cup project. I'm not going to press him either way, but if he buys the car in Houston I might just have to invest in some rope and noose-tying lessons. No, I'm kidding. I don’t care either way. In fact, his NOT buying Super Karate-Monkey Death-Car and my NOT buying the MR2 does make the most sense. Of course, having Super Karate-Monkey Death-Car off my plate, opens up the option of putting the Chickenhawk's Z-20 in Rhonda. By the way, the B-310 he’s found is a slush-box car with a similarly blowed up transmission as his B-210. Yes, it could donate the engine to Rhonda, but we’d have to find a transmission. I'd rather go with the Z-20 at that point. Ok, I think I may have come to a decision. I'm going to plan on putting the Chickenhawk's Z-20 in Rhonda, at which point it might be the fastest car in my stable. Ok, no it wouldn’t. The Chickenhawk and Fiona would still be faster… and I really should stop using that word. “Faster” isn’t really what I mean. I actually mean “quicker.” Even though the Chickenhawk will have a power to weight ratio advantage over Fiona, Fiona's aerodynamics will trump that when top-end speed is the goal. I've seen 120 miles per hour in the Chickenhawk, but lift off the gas and the car dumps 40 miles per hour like you dropped an anchor. Fiona doesn’t even notice 80 mph of wind resistance… psh, she barely notices 100 mph air! So, my point is, “Faster” is not what I actually mean. Ok, I seem to have lost my train of thought. So I guess I'll… no! I just remembered something else! Mom called a little while ago to say that my package finally got delivered! I do not have to trek into the ghetto to retrieve it. I wonder if “we” are going to install that cold air intake on Fiona this Saturday. I'll leave that up to John I guess since he’ll probably take the tools away from me and do all the work anyway. :^p [and that is probably the only time you will ever see an emoticon in anything I type]

1/9/12

2012-01-09T17:02:00.000-08:00

Ugh, I don’t feel… well, actually I feel like crap, but I really don’t feel that bad. I can't explain what I mean but… well, let’s see. Ok, I am all “symptomy,” and don’t feel good, but in my head I don’t feel all that bad. I guess it just isn’t getting to me like the common cold or the flu or whatever this is usually does. Whatever. Anyhoo, Saturday morning I met John at the shop. He was there already and had big ideas and plans for his 1200. I came in and immediately rained on his parade. Basically I told him what he had designed in his head wasn’t going to work. I was 100% sure it was going to bind up the bushings and not allow the shocks to move. We “argued” back and forth over it for a bit until he came up with a “new” design. I shot it down as well until we tweaked it some more. Once he had me convinced the “New, new” plan was going to work, we started building it. A pair of control arms from a 280ZX became the shock mounts for the control arms and I zooked one of them together. While that was cooling, we made an upper clevis to mount the shock to the unibody. John then crawled under the car and “installed” it all. It worked… at least with the upper clevis loose. That was the one thing we never did try: tightening up that nut. I don’t know if it will have an effect on the finished product but… Juan never knows. Of course, all of this took several more hours than I made it appear so when we were done we went to lunch. Oh, the reason I “convinced” him to skip the Japanese Nostalgic Car Show on Sunday and come to the shop Saturday was so we could sell Nadine to that dude, remember? Well, he has a hernia and couldn’t make it this week. He says he’s 100% sure he’s “in” on the deal and will buy the car… but just not today. I, after talking to John but before talking to this dude, had been convinced that I wanted to back out of the deal. John made it clear he would rather see Nadine done than the Spitfire… at that time. After talking to the guy, he guilted me into manning-up and going through with the deal I had agreed to. I could feel John's disappointment in me from across the room. What actually did it for me was when the dude promised that the restoration would be more along the lines of what Nadine, the lady from the church who originally owned the car, would want than how I was going to “bastardize” the thing. I think I can face Nadine, someday, and tell her that. He’s “rescuing” the car from me, basically. I think everyone will be able to live with that decision. Now, what changed John's mind was when we started looking at the Spitfire. He took one of those bitchin’ badass gold wheels he just bought out and set it next to the Spit’. “Oh yeah,” he said. “Get rid of that TR, we’re building this!” We talked engines a bit and decided that the Chickenhawk's Z-20 would probably fit. He cautioned me that with that engine, the Spit’ would probably be faster than The Seven… and maybe even Fiona. I have no problem with a car being faster than another car, especially if I own both of them. Besides, my daily driver doesn’t have to be my fastest car, otherwise why have the toys in the first place? His point was, though, if the Spit’ is faster and easier to get in and out of, would The Seven become superfluous? I assured him it would not. Then we got into a rather homoerotic conversation about how the Spit’ is a hot guy in an Armani suit whereas The Seven is a hot guy athlete, like a “Baywatch” lifeguard sort of thing. I then backpedaled a bit to say the Spit’ is “Posh Spice” whereas The Seven is “Sporty Spice.” The point being, while they are both Little British Cars, or LBCs, they are different enough to keep both around. Besides, c’mon… it’s The Seven! Of course further discussion probably made that point moo because the new plan is for him to find a B-310 hatchback to build into a Sunny Cup car and I'll get its engine and transmission for the Spit’. Although, now that I'm thinking about it, what engine was he planning to use in the Sunny Cup car? Shouldn’t it have a hot rod A-series? Perhaps he’ll let us know in the comments after he reads this… assuming he actually reads this of course. Ok, so then there’s Sunday. I lay in bed until mom came home from church with Captain D’s fish and chips for lunch. I ate that then lay in front of the TV, napping, until 1800 h when I took Fiona across town to the monthly JNC car thingy. I hung out with Jeff and a couple other folks until about 2000 h when I went home and went to bed. So there you have it, my weekend.

Side note: I'm a bit pissed that FedEx can't seem to be able to deliver my CAI because the seller required a fucking signature for delivery. I'll bet the dumbshit driver is going to the back door and knocking. Mom can't fucking hear when you're in the room with her. How the fuck is she supposed to hear someone knocking on the patio door? Now I have to go to the middle of the fucking ghetto, somewhere in the 820/287/Berry/Village Creek area and find the fucking FedEx Home Delivery depot because the one near work is only Express or some such bullshit. Now I hope I DID screw up the seller's inventory by accidentally hitting the "Buy It Now" button three times before actually completing the process.

1/6/12

2012-01-06T16:58:00.000-08:00

I've spent most of the day babysitting some installers. And I feel like hell due to a cold. Suck it.

1/5/12

2012-01-05T16:00:00.001-08:00

Ok, so we’re up to Sunday the first in the travelogue. Oh, I did nothing New Year’s Eve by the way. In fact, I was in bed by 2200 h I believe. I did wake up at 2359 h and saw the clock tick over to midnight, quite by accident I assure you. Anyhoo, Sunday was a gun show so I waited to hear from Larry. He called and I met him at the credit onion as is our usual MO. We went to the show and began walking the aisles. We made it halfway without finding the guy for whom we were looking. We decided against going out for lunch and went to sit down in the lobby instead. I'd had a hot dog a few rows earlier and Larry was getting a cold so wasn’t very hungry. We were tired enough to take a rest though. Back inside we walked the rest of the rows. Near the end we saw our guy but walked past so we wouldn’t have to lug our purchases the last few aisles. We went back and spoke to him. Oh, did I mention the other day that I'd sent this guy a text asking him to hold a “Commander” sized 1911 for me? Well, I did and he had. He also had Larry's Arsenal-converted Saiga AK-74 with the plum furniture. No, that isn’t a typo, an AK-74 IS different than an AK-47. An AK-47 is 7.62x39 caliber whereas an AK-74 is 5.45x39 caliber. Basically, 5.45x39 is the Russian answer to the NATO 5.56x45 or Remington .223 caliber. I fondled “my” 1911 while Larry looked over his gun. We both filled out paperwork and bought them. We took them to the truck and then went back in for ammo. I bought 150 rounds of .45 ACP from my re-loader guy and Larry bought 500 rounds of 5.45x39 from some other dealer. With heavy shit in hand, we called it a show. We went to linner, or is it lupper? What would the meal between lunch and the evening meal be called? Like “brunch” but between… oh never mind. We had a late lunch at Dairy Queen. He dropped me at my car and I went home. Monday morning I texted John to see if he was getting off work early and if so what was he going to do. He didn’t know so we decided against making plans. Mom and I spoke of lunch but then John called back. He was done and wondered what I was doing for lunch. I decided to blow mom off and have lunch with John. Mistake! She was pissed. Of course she didn’t SAY she was pissed, she just let me run off to lunch. When I got home I knew she was pissed. Anyhoo, I took her to run a few errands and bought Burger Street burgers so I think I'm off the hook. John is persona non grata though. Just kidding! Relax John, you aren’t in trouble. Anyhoo, now that I've got the timeline all screwed up I'll go ahead and say that John and I met downtown, had lunch at Razoo’s, and discussed a few things before I went home to find mom pissed off at me. Ok, so there’s all of that. Sometime in the afternoon Monday, I got a call from the dude at Eclectic Motorworks, the place I sold all of Nadine's superfluous-to-me parts. He was wondering if I still had the two Triumphs I'd offered to sell him last summer. I told him I did and he said he has a guy interested in Nadine. They are planning to come look at it this Saturday. I got a call from the actual guy this morning asking a lot of questions about it. I so wanted to say, “Dude! It is a $300.00 TR-3! What condition do you expect it to be?” Well, it turns out he’s actually a Spitfire guy so it may turn out he’ll be more interested in that car. Of course, of the two, I'd rather keep the Spit and let Nadine go, but if it goes the other way I won't be too upset. I have been pretty excited about the Spit all week now but thinking of all the stuff they would have to un-do and re-do to make Nadine viable, stuff I wouldn’t be doing were I to keep her, I'm beginning to re-think the situation. I'm going to send him some of the pictures I have of Nadine tonight and maybe it’ll scare him off. I don’t know. We’ll see I guess.

1/4/12

2012-01-04T17:23:00.000-08:00

So on Tuesday the 27^th mom and I went mattress shopping. Mine was plumb wore the fuck out. Ok, anyone who knows me knows it wasn’t actually fucking what wore it out, but we won't go into all that. We first went to Mattress Firm but they weren’t open yet. Next we went to Mattress Giant and had a look at their offerings. I laid down on a few and was completely “Meh” on them all. Some felt like they might be more comfortable… but who the hell knows? We went back to Mattress Firm just as the guy opened the door. We looked at a few and again I was “Meh” about them. Mom had me try one that was on sale. It was maybe a “Meh plus” so we bought it. They would have it at the store Thursday or they could deliver it and take the old one away for $75.00 more. We asked if we could pick it up Saturday and were told we could. Then we went to lunch somewhere and did something else that she wanted to do. Or was it the other way round? Yes, it was the other way round because we commented that we’d accomplished so much and it was still only 1100 h before we ate. After dropping her off at home, I took mom’s car to see about having the satellite radio installed. See, when the Hyundai’s satellite radio needed to be renewed, they talked me into a receiver for mom’s car. I gave it to her for Christmas. I eventually found a place willing to install it but they couldn’t get to it then. I needed to come back in the morning. I'm not sure what I did after that… nothing important I'm sure. The next morning, Wednesday the 28^th, I did go back and hung out for a while waiting for the installer to show up. He and I talked about the thing and he fingered out all the stuff he was going to need. They didn’t have something in stock. They ordered the part and said they would call Thursday when it arrived and would install it then. I'm not sure what I did the rest of that day either. One of the days I came up to the railroad and hung out with Larry then we went to Taco Casa for lunch. The other day, the one where I didn’t dine with Larry, I took Monty to the range to try out the new compensator. The gun worked fine for a while then began to fail to return to battery. I had to smack the back of the slide to get it to go completely forward. I unloaded it and racked the slide a few times. It seemed a bit “crunchy.” I took it out to see if they had any oil I could spritz on it. They did so I did. It was much smoother to rack after that. I took it back in and it worked flawlessly. The grouping was nice but it consistently shot high and to the left. Let’s say, just enough to rip through the aorta if I aimed at the lower left ventricle… were I to shoot someone with it… which I “hope” I never have to do. Wink wink. Ok, I'm not really hoping to shoot someone with it, even though there are plenty of people out there who need a good killin’. So I burned up the ammo I had and then wiped the gun down. I took it home and cleaned and oiled it. I took out the rest of the guns and oiled them too. Thursday the 29^th I eventually got the call from the installer and took mom’s car in. They installed the satellite radio and I played with it for a bit on the way home. Of course it didn’t work. I still had to go through the hassle of activating it. Speaking of people who need a good killin’. Anyhoo, it eventually began working and I programmed a few stations from memory. I printed out the channel listing and made a note card to keep in the car. I went out and programmed all the stations. Friday morning mom and I took off to Waco to do the annual Christmas visit with the Austin branch of the family. We listened to mom’s new satellite radio all the way down and back. She seemed happy with it. In Waco, we dined with my brother and his family as well as my sister who showed up somewhat out of the blue. Eventually we headed home. Saturday it was arranged that I would pick John up in Fifi so he could take some wheels and tires to the shop. This we did. We ate at the same breakfast place, which is rapidly becoming our Saturday morning thing, then went to the shop. John hung his wheels on his 1200 and they look totally super awesome. We installed and wired the gauges in Lil' Wiggly's new dash but stopped short of actually installing it. It was approaching noon and I knew installing it would mean testing it, and if it didn’t work, fixing it. We took off to get my new mattress. John pretty much did all the heavy, and light for that matter, lifting and we got it delivered and installed. Then we hopped in Fiona and went back to his side of town where we had sushi for lunch. So now we’re up to Sunday, but I'll save that and Monday for tomorrow.

1/3/12

2012-01-03T17:22:00.000-08:00

Well, I have quite a bit to recount since we haven’t spoken in almost two weeks. First off, there was Christmas Eve. For some reason, my sister wanted her step daughter to come to mom’s for lunch. I still do not understand why because we were all going to Granbury for Christmas day, but I'm not going to harp on it. Well, that plan shot down any chance of John and me going to the shop that particular Saturday. I hung out and helped my sister get lunch ready and eventually the step daughter showed up. WOW! Last time I saw Courtney… well, let’s just say Sir Mix-A-Lot would have been a fan. Her ass was HUGE! So when she walked in my jaw dropped. She’s lost a bunch of weight and looked super-hot! I fought not to stare. We all chatted and milled around until lunch then ate. As we were finishing up lunch, the step son showed up. Oh, he had been invited too but was running late because of an incident with the game warden at the deer lease. I'd go into it but I really don’t give a shit. While hanging out and talking to them, Courtney asked if it was bad that she had boxes of 9mm ammo but no gun to shoot it with. We agreed it was. I toyed with the idea of inviting her to the New Year’s Day gun show but decided against it. Eventually the step kids left and the rest of us took naps until we went to the Christmas Eve service at the church. Linda and Lester left from there while mom and I went to Aunt Margaret’s to drop off presents. Sunday morning sucked. Mom woke me up at 0530 h to say that the neighbor was on the phone and the police were there. Some cock-bite douche-nozzle punk-assed kids had broken out the driver’s windows in Fifi and the truck across the street. I dressed and went out for a look. I couldn’t see anything missing so I gave the cop my information and went back to bed. A few hours later, I got up and mom and I opened presents. I got socks but no underwear this year. Or was it the other way round? Anyhoo, after that we ate some breakfast and got ready to go to Granbury. Now, remember how I said Courtney was without a 9mm pistol? Well, I decided to give her Katey, the Kel-Tec P-11 9mm pistol I used to use as my main carry weapon. I fingered since I had bought that holster and was able to conceal carry Petey, the Taurus PT-92 9mm, it was a little superfluous. I unloaded Katey and packed it up in its original box, along with a spare magazine. I'd forgotten I had two spares mags for it and found the other one later. Anyhoo, with that in hand, mom and I took off for Granbury. There I asked Lester if he thought Courtney would like the gun and he said he’d pay me for it. I shrugged and let that slide. She was quite pleased with it. Her ex-boyfriend had a P-11 so she was familiar with it. The Hood County Sherriff was dining with us and said that it was a good reliable gun, unlike the similar single-stack Kel-Tec 9mm P-11 which, according to him, wouldn’t feed hollow point ammo reliably. After lunch, mom and I headed back home. I pulled Fifi into the driveway and covered the broken window with plastic then went in to arrange to have it replaced. I got an appointment for Monday morning between 0800 h and noon. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, John and I were planning to go to the shop at that time. Mom had baby sat the same folks when they changed the windshields in Fifi and Miss Clio back in the summer so I didn’t feel too bad about abandoning her. I don’t remember all the stuff we accomplished at the shop Monday but I'm sure it was a satisfactory day’s worth of work. John did stuff with his car, I did stuff with Lil' Wiggly, and we both helped each other with both. I think I started putting the dash back together and cleaned up some of the wiring harness. Oh, we also made a sub harness for the gauges and another to run out into the engine bay. We stopped short of putting gauges in the dash though. Around 1230 h, I went back home because my oldest brother was coming over with his family. I arrived not long after they did and we all had lunch. I tried to be cordial, not very hard mind you, to my nephew and his family but did most of my conversing with my sister-in-law until everyone left. Well, since I've filled a page already, and am about to start another story, I think I'll quit for today and save some for tomorrow.

12/23/11

2011-12-23T20:00:00.000-08:00

Well, this is probably going to be the last entry of the year. I'm not working at all next week and usually don’t do the rant thing when I'm not at work. This is not to say I don’t rant about things, but I don’t usually put them in writing and send them off to Spiderman for to be posting on the intergoogles. So anyway, at one of the gun shows recently I bought a 1911, remember? I call it Heldey LaMarr because it is made by Rock Island Armory which makes me think of Rock Ridge, the town in the Mel Brooks movie “Blazing Saddles,” which has a character played by Harvey Korman named Heldey LaMarr. Anyhoo, at one of the other gun shows I saw a replacement barrel bushing which incorporates a muzzle brake. I did not buy it. I regretted that decision at every subsequent gun show as I searched for it again. Well, I finally just broke down and bought one on e-Bay. It arrived yesterday. It didn’t fit. It was too tight on the barrel. Well, after a little futzing with it, I got it to go on to the barrel. Then I spent a few hours lapping the parts together so they moved freely. It also involved some work with an emery board but the thing slides smooth now. It looks so friggin’ bad ass now too. Unfortunately the gun is now too long to go on the rack on the shelf of my gun cabinet. I have to set it “upside down” with the hammer and beaver tail in the rack and the barrel pointing up. I need to get some sort of dust cover to put over the barrel to keep the innards clean. Also, this might require a new name for the gun. The slots in the muzzle brake makes it kind of look like, but not really, the helmet of one of the Knights who say “Ni!” or perhaps the Black Knight from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” I'm thinking I might change the name to “Monty.” Yes, despite the slightly negative connotation that particular name brings to my mind due to (tee hee, I said "doo doo!") a guy I know, I think I'm going to do that. Besides, I kind of have the hots for a “Commander” sized 1911 by Rock Island which would then assume the name Heldey LaMarr. See, there are three common sizes, at least, of 1911 pistols. Monty is what is known as a “Government” model with a 5” barrel. The “Commander” has a shorter 4.5” barrel. Then there is the “Officer’s ACP” with an even shorter 3.8” barrel. I’m sure the “Officer’s ACP” also has a shorter grip and the “Commander” may as well. Anyhoo, the point is I saw a “Commander” sized Rock Island at the last show and I think I'm going to buy one at the next. Well, it is finally 1100 h, ok so it is only 1050 h but that is close enough, so I'm going to call it a rant and go hang out in the shuttle with Larry until time for lunch. I may come back and rant some more, but I may not. We’ll see.

12/22/11

2011-12-22T19:41:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I mentioned the N600 yesterday, right? Well, here’s the poop. Last week some time I walked past one of the Mules that the facilities guys use around campus and glanced at the wheels. They reminded me that I have a set of super bitchin’ 12” wheels that came with the N600. I shot John an e-mail asking if there was decent rubber available for them. He sent me a link to some 215/50-12 Innova tires for $74.00 apiece. I haven’t ordered them yet but it is all I can do to stop myself. Here’s what I'm thinking for the car: the front suspension from a Datsun 1200 has “huge” brakes, compared to what the N600 originally had, and they ran 12” wheels. They should fit. As for the rear suspension… well, that’s where I'm a bit murky. I'd like to just plop a 1200 rear axle in there and bada bing, bada bang, we’re done. However, these wheels are such a CRAZY size and offset that we’re going to have to flare the hell out of the thing just to cover them even if the suspension width doesn’t increase. I think a stock 1200 axle would be too wide. Ok, narrowed 1200 axle? Possibly, but I'm not so sure I want to go through that. Of course that is moist likely the way we will go, but I'd like to explore other options right quick. Ok, so it is really only “option” rather than “options” but… whatever. So, the other option is an independent suspension. This was actually my original thought when I asked about the 12” tires. I was thinking inboard brakes, you see. Ideally we’d put one rotor and caliper on each side of a Hitachi R160 differential, but then we started thinking, “Why not just one rotor and caliper on the driveshaft?” Hell’s bells, it could even be right at the output flange of the transmission! Sure, in a 100%/0% traction situation the 0% traction tire would spin backwards and little to no braking would occur, but any time both wheels have even a teensy bit of traction it should work. Besides, the rear brakes don’t really do a whole lot of work anyway. Ok, so now I'm thinking that a narrowed 1200 axle is the right way to go so that we’d have a “balanced” system engineered by pointy headed pencil pushers who have forgotten more about brakes than I will ever know. Plus, that will get us a parking brake. Ok, I just did a little research and found that the 1200 rear axle is 1245mm wide… or at least that is the advertised track width. The N600’s track width is 1148mm. That means we’d have to trim a 1200 axle 97mm total to get it under an N600. 97mm is about 3.8” so we’ll call it four and say, “Chop out two inches per side.” Of course that is assuming we can get a 1200 front suspension tucked under the nose at the stock track width. Hmm, I guess what we’ll have to do is get the engine located in there, finger out how the front suspension is going to fit, then decide how much to chop out of the rear axle. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy! Actually, now that I think about it some, I doubt I would use the 1200 suspension as it came out of a car. Here’s what I'm thinking now. Take a 1200 strut and cut the tube off somewhere north of the cast knuckle. Fabricate an upper ball joint attachment, basically a stud pointing out the top, for a Heim joint. Build a set of upper control arms with said Heim joint as the outer apex. The lower arms can be regular 1200 lowers and T/C rods… probably. Although a set of lower arms that the lower ball joint bolts to wouldn’t be all that tough to build. The coil over shocks could pick up on the arms and go up to the regular strut towers in the chassis… if they still exist when the engine goes in. Have I mentioned the engine? We bought a wrecked Honda Gold Wing bike last summer to use as a donor for the engine and transmission. We fingered that since the bike used a driveshaft, it would be the simplest solution for our problem… well, once we decided to go rear wheel drive of course. Sure, we won't have a reverse gear, but the car won't weigh more than 1,200 pounds soaking wet. It should push pretty easily. I'm going to install a pair of grab handles on the “B” pillars and label them “Reverse.” Hmm, what is that, way up there in the distance, ahead of this horse? Oh, it is the cart! Yeah, I just sent an e-mail to a hot rod shop right down the road from my shop which does axle narrowing. Wait a tick! John just reminded me about that narrowed Toyota AE86 axle we had floating around for so long! If we still have that, I'll bet it will be perfect! And we can get just about any ratio we want from George. Unfortunately I think I sold the limited slip 4.11 it came with. Crap. Oh well, we think an open differential would be better in that short and narrow of a vehicle anyway. Hmm, interesting. Well, this project is dangerously close to becoming a front-burner, I need to tap the brakes and concentrate on Nadine before we go off halfcocked on this new bunny trail. So, on that note I think I'll call this a rant and go have lunch with Larry.

12/21/11

2011-12-21T19:01:00.000-08:00

Well, John has successfully made another complete trip around the sun today. Happy birthday dude. So he asked me to order some wheels for him the other day. See, I've got a Disco Tire credit card so I can buy wheels and tires on a moment’s notice if need be. Anyhoo, he offered to trade me a set of wheels and tires if I would buy these particular ones for him. They arrived yesterday. When I sent him a text telling him about it, and asking if we were going to the shop on Saturday, he offered to come right away and pick up the wheels… just in case we won’t be at the shop, you see. So I'm sitting there watching TV about half an hour later and the doorbell rings. “Who in the fuck,” I ask myself, “Is ringing my doorbell at 2000 h? This better be damned imp… oh wait.” Yeah, in just half an hour I totally forgot he was coming. Of course, knowing me as he does, John was not surprised at all by that. We loaded the boxes of wheels into his car then stood back to look at Fiona. He said he spent a couple minutes grokking it before ringing the bell. Apparently I got it right. I thought they looked good but he confirmed that I got it exactly perfect. “You couldn’t have planned that better,” he said… or something to that effect. It made me glow a bit. Yeah, I think I might be “done” modifying Fiona for a while. The only other thing I can think of would be a cold air intake. Unfortunately they cost almost $300.00 and appear to be a bit of a PITA to install. Then again, 13 horsepower is significant. That would drop my power to weight ratio to under 12 pounds per horsepower. Hmm, I guess the installation isn’t any worse than the springs… and John would probably “take the tools from me” anyway. I just need to finger out if I can afford to drop another three hundred bucks I guess. Perhaps after the middle of January paycheck. Yeah, we’ll see. Oh, one other “dress up” item I'm considering is different lug nuts. I'm not confident that the stock lug nuts are deep enough. The studs on those spacers are really long. I'm afeared that they have crashed into the closed end of the nuts. I can't see any evidence that they have, and they did seem to torque down fine… but still. I'm thinking of those lightweight aluminum nuts I see on e-Bay. I can't decide between red and purple though. Red would “match” the shift knob and seat inserts, but purple is my favorite color. Oh, another thing red has going for it is the fact that Juan can just make out, if he looks really closely, the red Brembo brake calipers through the wheels. Ok, I think I've decided to get red “Tuna” lug nuts. I guess since the tuna is a fast swimming fish they call the “racing” lug nuts that… I don’t know. I'd do it now but my work computer went into “screen saver” just as I typed in that decision. I don’t feel like entering my password and all right now. I'll do it later. Ok, so as to the wheels I mentioned at the beginning of the rant, before taking off after that bunny, John got a set of Drag something or others which are so totally bitchin’ that I am jealous as hell. Perhaps he has included a link to a picture of one… I'll see tomorrow. His offer to me was for the faux Panasports on his B-210 for Lil' Wiggly. Yes, I know they aren’t really faux Panasports, but at a glance they do resemble Panasports… sort of. Anyhoo, we’ll be putting those on Lil' Wiggly as soon as he’s back up and going… if not before then. There really isn’t all that much more to do to get that one back on the road. We need to install and hook up the dash and gauges, replace the rear brake and possibly the clutch slave cylinders, bleed the hydraulics, and… um, probably some other stuff. I won't have it at the January JNC meet, but Frerbruraryr isn’t out of the question. Yes, I'm going with superfluous, superfluous R’s again this year. Speaking of the January event, I wonder if it will be on the first or the 8th. Oh, I just got a series of e-mails and had to wake up the work computer. I guess I'll go look at red “Tuna” lug nuts. Still seems like a dumb thing to call them. Ok, they are ordered. Yes, I know John told me I didn’t need them, I didn’t need the whole damned car either. Besides, these were only $35.00 whereas the car was… never mind, I don’t want to think about it. Ok, so NOW the only thing left to do to Fiona is a cold air kit. We’ll see. And on that note, I think I'll call it a rant. Perhaps tomorrow we’ll discuss the new plans for the N600.

12/20/2011

2011-12-20T15:51:00.001-08:00

So to continue the narrative from yesterday, Sunday morning I waited for Larry to call and then met him at the credit onion to go back to the gun show. I brought along the Space Gun. I wanted some flip-up caps for the optics I have on there because keeping up with the removable caps is a pain in the ass. I also thought I'd allow someone to buy it if the price was right. I figured you couldn’t reproduce the package I was offering (the gun, eight magazines, the optics, ambidextrous charging handles, LOP extensions, sling, and 118 rounds of +P ammo) for less than $1,200.00 so that was my number. I knew I wouldn’t get it but I didn’t really WANT to sell it. I slung it over my shoulder and we walked the show. “My” AR was still there. They asked about the Space Gun but flinched at my price. Other folks who asked about it thought it was reasonable but didn’t come up with the cash. I asked around at every accessory table until I finally found a pair of flip-up caps which almost fit. I was sure I could make them work so I bought them. Psh, they were $10.00 so even if I throw them away I'm not out a lot. By the time we had walked the whole show, I was tired of the gun hanging off my shoulder. We went back to Larry's truck and put it away in its case. Then we went to lunch. We decided to try In-N-Out Burger. Yeah, fuck that. The place was packed. Oh, there wasn’t a line around the building like last time, but it was obvious from the parking lot that there wouldn’t have been a place to sit. We went to Dairy Queen instead. I don’t see how the Up-Ur-Butt Burger could be any better… and Dairy Queen has Dipped Cones! Back at the gun show we walked the aisles again and looked at everything once more. “My” AR was still, still there. Oh, by the way, they refused to trade the Space Gun straight up for it as well. Probably for the best. After we looked at everything again, and a few things more than once, we were back at the table with “my” AR. It was the last AR they had. I joked that I was the only person interested in that gun and they finally said, “Make us an offer.” Knowing I didn’t have the money, I declined and we walked again. I said I'd reconsider at the next show in two weeks. We walked some more and I finally weakened. I told Larry that I'd offer them $700.00 for it and put it on my credit card if they went for it. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t so I fingered it was a safe bet. As we walked up, there was a dude filling out the paperwork to buy it. I feigned being upset and said to the guys selling it, “Dude! What the hell? You’re selling my gun!” We all laughed and they pointed out the “snooze you lose” aspect of gun shows. I was actually cool with it because I really don’t need to go off into that whole world of expensive crap. We found a dude selling a couple Red Dot optics for $50.00 each and considered them. Larry decided that if he could find a side mount thingy for his Saigas, he’d buy one or the other. We went to look for the mount. He found one at the dude who sells all kinds of AK related gear and he bought it. He also bought a bunch of magazines from the guy so he threw in an AK poster. Larry already had one so he gave it to me. We then went back and bought both optics from the other guy. Larry's is a 1x, or no magnification, while mine is a 2x, or two times magnification. I'm not sure why I did it, but the price was pretty good. At the house, I put the flip-up caps on the Space Gun's optics and the new optics on the Neos Carbine. I'll use the optics I took off of the carbine on the Neos Pistol, I think. And that gets everyone caught up on my weekend.

12/19/11

2011-12-19T19:54:00.000-08:00

Well, the spacers did not arrive Friday after all. Now relax, they did arrive Saturday but that is getting ahead of the story. So, since we didn’t have the spacers for Saturday at the shop, I asked John if we were still going. He wanted to so it was agreed that I'd pick him up after checking the phone in the War Room Saturday morning. We went back to the same breakfast place as last week and discussed whether or not we were going to the shop. “Is there a gun show or swap meet this weekend?” John asked. I informed him that there was, in fact, a gun show about to start at Will Rogers. We went there. I wasn’t really shopping for anything but knew I'd know it when I found it. I found it. There was the exact AR-15 clone I would buy were I buying an AR-15 clone. It was a Smith & Wesson M&P with the triangular fore end and butt stock like a Viet Nam era M-16. It was quite cool. It was $795.00 though. Now, for some reason AR prices either have come down some, I'm noticing the lower priced ones finally, or I'm not as jaded about $600.00 to $800.00 for a gun. I thought those eight bills seemed like a reasonable price for that gun. I didn’t have it, but it seemed reasonable. All the rest of the show I kept thinking about that gun. We went back and looked at it again. I really wanted it by the time we left. I checked my account balances and saw that I really couldn’t afford it anyway and we moved on. We went to Academy to look at their guns. John, by the way, saw a few pistols at the show I think he was interested in and therefore wanted to see what Academy had. I wanted to see what ARs were going for. Academy had a composite lower and upper AR-15 clone, Bushmaster I believe, for $699.00 with some sort of optic already installed. It was quite lightweight and very cool. I wanted it too once I handled it. But then I remembered that I don’t want an AR-15, I want THAT AR-15 at the show. Besides, I couldn’t really afford the one at Academy either. They didn’t have the gun John was looking for, an Israeli Weapons Inc. Jericho, or “Baby Eagle.” They did have the CZ pistol that the Jericho is copied from though, the CZ-75. It was really cool. I really like the de-cocker it had. Anyhoo, we both decided against buying anything then and left. We went to Bloodbath & Beyond. There I looked at their “cheapest” AR clone, at $649.95 or something, but had him put it away before I did anything stupid. I had to keep telling myself, “I don’t want an AR; I want THAT AR at the show.” We left. From BB&B we found a sushi place at Beach and Western Center and had lunch. It. Was. Awesome! I'm going back. Hmm, I wonder what John is doing for lunch today. No, I otter eat with the guys here at work. Anyhoo, after having bait for lunch, and ogling the really cute waitress, I took him home and went on my merry way. When I got home, I found Fiona's wheel spacers on the front porch. I unpacked and grokked them. They are quite nice. I debated going to the shop but took a quick nap instead. Around 1600 h I did head to the shop with them. They installed in about half an hour, maybe less, and I stepped back to have a look. Oh yeah, that is the thing about which I am talking. The tires just barely peek out from the lip of the fender. They are quite aggressive but not ghetto looking. I tried to send John a picture but don’t know if I was successful. Besides, the picture I took was before settling the suspension so it didn’t look like it does now that I've driven them a bit. I hooned back to the house listening for scrapes or rubbing. They did neither. Ok, I've already written tomorrow’s entry but it made today’s way too long. I'll shoost it off to Spiderman tomorrow evening so he can post it up.

12/16/11

2011-12-16T16:00:00.000-08:00

Ok, so on Tuesday we got Fiona sitting pretty, if a little knock-kneed. I'll ‘splain that in a bit… if I remember. It was still “early” so John wanted to install his cross member. He crawled under and began fidgeting with it. I could see he was never going to get it by himself and asked if it was a two man operation. He said it looked like it so I crawled under with him. We fought with it for a bit until it was obvious that the “C” channel just wasn’t going to slip over the mushroom of the rubber bushings in the frame. I suggested spreading them a tad to get them on and allowing the bolts to squeeze them back shut around the bushings. He was on board. We took the cross member to the vice and chucked up one of the channels. He bent it open a bit then we did the other side. Back under the car… it still didn’t fit. No, just kidding. It plopped right into place and I got my bolts through the mounts and bushings. He got his side up and bolted and we crawled out to have a look. It is quite nice. He then grabbed the third-member he is going to use and took it to the vice. He removed the rear cover and filled it with oil. A “dab” of silicone (AKA half a tube!) and the cover went back on. Ok, he didn’t really use half a tube of silicone, but he always uses more than I think is necessary. He’ll argue that his shit don’t leak to which I'll reply, “Your face doesn’t leak,” or something. Anyhoo, with that done we called it a day. We headed downtown to Byblos for Lesbian food. We ate then stood around looking at Fiona for a bit. Ok, actually all of this next bit happened at the shop before we left. That is kind of important because I'm going to talk about taking measurements and anyone who knows me and/or John knows we don’t carry tape measures with us. So, we’re looking at Fiona and John says that when viewing the car from a ¾ angle, the tuck of the wheels annoys him. By the way, that is the knock-kneed aspect I mentioned above. I agreed, and we took some measurements to see how much the wheels needed to come out to fill the fenders. It was decided that the rears could come out 25mm and the fronts 15mm. A 25mm spacer is easy peasy lemon squeezy. 15mm? Not so much. As we left it, the thinking was 25mm all around and camber the hell out of the front to get them under the fender lip… I believe. We parted company and I went home to shop on e-Bay. Oh wait, while we were in the Byblos parking lot, John called Steve/John to see if we could get in to have a different resonator installed to tone down the rort of the zorst some. He didn’t have the right one but would order it and have it for Wednesday. I agreed to live with it one more night, THEN we parted ways for the day. At home, I got on the intergoogles and shopped e-Bay for spacers. There was a dude selling four 25mm spacers for $99.95 but he also had 20mm spacers for $56.95 in another auction. I shot him an e-mail asking if I could get two and two for that $99.99 price. (Eventually he replied that the $99.99 auction was for non-hub-centric spacers and that was why they were cheaper but I'd moved on by then.) I shot John a text assessing him of the situation and did a little cipherin’ and figgerin’ while waiting for the dude to reply. Yeah, it was after 1700 h here but “only” 1500 h in California. I was being optimistic. When it was obvious I wasn’t going to hear from him, I finally decided “Fuck it” and ordered two 25mm hub-centric spacers and two 20mm hub-centric spacers in two different auctions. Now, I've gotten so used to “Buy It Now” that I was surprised when I didn’t get the message, “Congratulations, you won this item!” right away. No, I had to wait another 52 minutes for the auction to end. Yeah, submit it to “my rough life dot com,” I know. I finally paid for them and then sat back to bask in my accomplishment. Wednesday morning I texted John from the toilet to say I was going to stop at Pearl Harbor for a new floor jack. The old aluminium jack has been plumb wore out for some time now. It was all the poor thing could manage to get Fiona off the ground. I asked if he wanted to join me there and he said he would be there in eight minutes. “Oh!” I replied. “I thought I had more time. I'll be there as soon as I wipe, dress, and haul ass.” We met at the store and picked out a jack. We shopped and picked up a few more items. At the shop John unpacked the jack and said they lied about the length of the handle. He was able to jack Lil' Wiggly up but I couldn’t manage to work the thing. See, I've had this pain in my side for the last few days. It feels like a cracked rib but I don’t remember doing anything to crack a rib. Probably just a strained muscle. Nevertheless, I couldn’t push the jack handle. I built an extension and painted it red. John cleaned and painted his third member, the one we’d left in the vice the day before. We then got to work on finishing the work on Lil' Wiggly's gauges. I removed the framework and trimmed it for the small gauges. John hung it up, along with the panels, and painted them. We made a couple wiring harnesses and got the under hood part hooked up. All I need to do now is install the actual gauges to the panels and wire them together. We left and went to Campo Verde for lunch. I LOVE their cheese sauce. Love it love it love it! We ate then went to see Steve/John. He moved a car off of the rack and I pulled Fiona on. She scraped this time. We debated the nice stainless steel Magnaflow versus the mild steel no name “hot dog” glass pack for a bit. I finally decided on the hot dog since it would probably attenuate the sound better. He cut out my factory resonator and zooked in the hot dog. It made all the difference in the world. The tone is still nice and rumbly, but it isn’t boomy in the cockpit any more. I like it. From there I headed to the railroad to get my keys and phone while checking to make sure there wasn’t anything pressing for Thursday morning. And that about wraps it up. Once we get those spacers, which hopefully will be at the house when you read this, installed I think I can call Fiona finished. She’ll be sitting pretty and sounding tough, just like her namesake on “Burn Notice.” Although, that Fiona is a bit of a “butter face” if I were to be totally honest. She wouldn’t have to beg me to do her, but she might have to ask politely.

12/15/11

2011-12-15T18:47:00.000-08:00

So I obviously took the last few days off from work. Well, I suppose it might not be obvious, but I did. John and I got a few things done over the weekend and early part of this week. We started out Saturday without any plans to go to the shop. I picked him up after checking to make sure the phone in the War Room worked and we had breakfast at a little “Mom & Pop” place by his house. I said I needed to swing by the shop and make sure Gregg locked up the trailer properly so we headed that way. There we locked up the trailer, taking his lock off and putting mine on, then went inside to look at stuff. We finished building the fuel filter mount I was working on when Gregg showed up to borrow the trailer last Saturday. I'm not sure we did much of anything else though. Neither one of us was all that interested in working there so we headed out to see Steve/John, our muffler shop guy. Yeah, I know, don’t fuck with your daily driver. Shut up. He wasn’t too busy so I drove Fiona onto the lift and we hoisted her up. We had a good look around underneath and held up a Flowmaster one-in/two-out muffler under the stock muffler. It looked like it would work with a little trimming on one of the tail pipes. I decided to gopher it. The old muffler was removed and the new one zooked to the intermediate pipe. The old tailpipes were cut off and zooked to the muffler outlets. When all the aligning was done, the muffler was set on the table for finish welding. It came out really nice. Unfortunately, as is usually the case, it was a bit too “boomy” in the cockpit. John asked if a “hot dog” could be added and Steve/John said yes. I said I'd live with it for a bit and see what I thought. I let John drive back towards his house. With him driving it wasn’t too bad. We went to a little Thai restaurant by his house and it was some of that good! When I hopped in the driver’s seat at his house, I immediately knew it was going to be too loud for mom. Sure, she could have lived with it. Sure, it really wasn’t “too loud.” But she would have given me a parcel of shit over changing the muffler. I needed to change the sound. Sunday I managed to deflect it by driving her car to lunch. Monday John and I met at the shop and got to work on our cars. I piddled with Lil' Wiggly until John was ready to weld in his rear cross member mounts. I hauled the gas welding kit over to his car and watched as he tacked them in place. Mostly I was watching to make sure he didn’t light anything on fire… like the rags on the jack stands. He did. I got some water and he doused them real good. He got the driver’s side tacked and moved to the passenger side. He got it tacked, or so we thought, and put out the rag fire on that side. Once he was done with the pyrotechnics, I went back to Lil' Wiggly. He took out the part and discovered that the passenger side was not as well tacked as he thought. We chucked the thing in the vice and I zooked the driver’s side on then moved to the table where I could get in and really weld the hell out of it. I got all the way around 100% of the contact areas. I don’t think it is going anywhere. We set the passenger side bracket on there and fingered out where it had been when he tried to tack it in place. He took a measurement and proclaimed it in position. I zooked it up. Again, I got 100% coverage and doubt it is ever going to fall off. He hung it in the painting area, otherwise known as those wires hanging from the ceiling next to the main door, and covered it in a nice thick coating of rust converting paint stuff. While it dried, we went to lunch. It was Mexican Inn on 8^th Avenue this day. After that we went our separate ways. At the house, I found that my springs had arrived. I texted John to see if we were going to try and do them at the shop or if I should call Kevin to see if they had a bay free on Tuesday. It was decided that we’d try to do them at the shop and I'd go to the Boys of Pep or Firestone or some place for an alignment if necessary. Tuesday morning I met John at the shop and we pushed Lil' Wiggly outside. I backed Fiona in and we got to work on the springs. And by “we” I of course mean John. It wasn’t so much that he took the tools out of my hand, as I am wont to accuse, but more a case of… um, him just jumping in and doing it, I guess. Anyhoo, “we” got the ass end up in the air, the wheels off, and then dug into the bolts. Oh, John “made me” buy a bunch of proper air fittings on Saturday, I forgot about that. We hooked up several air tools which I've owned for years but never used. John used them to make quick work of the job at hand. Once he knew to take the shock completely out in the rear, the old springs came right out and the new ones plopped right in. We dropped the ass and I took the car around the building to settle the suspension. I totally felt like I was “dragging ass” the whole time. It was probably psychological, but it felt like a tail dragger. I pulled the nose in and “we” jacked the car onto stands. Wheels off, John yanked the first strut. He handed it to me and asked if I'd swap the spring while he removed the other side. I couldn’t think of any reason why I shouldn’t do a little work on my own car and agreed. I did actually use a spring compressor to remove the stock springs. John only had to push down on the top to compress the new spring while I started the nut though. I started the nuts on the top of the strut tower, once the whole strut was reassembled of course, and moved on to the other strut while he buttoned up this side. He compressed the new spring and I put the second strut together. I started nuts on the tower and hunkered down on them while he assembled the rest of the suspension. We decided against using the crash bolts at this time and set all the negative camber we could into the stock bolts. With the tires on and the car settled, I stood back to have a look. It looks really nice, but the wheels need to come a little bit out toward the fender to finish filling the gaps. We took measurements so I could shop for spacers. We checked the alignment and found we had 2.5° negative camber in the rear and 1.5° negative in the front. One of the intergoogle pundits claimed that was the setting he uses for autocross or something so I'm going to live with it for a while. Of course another keyboard racing engineer said he runs just the opposite (1.5° rear and 2.5° front) on his track car. Again, I'm going to run what’s set and see what happens. We cleaned up and went to… no, we did more work. Hmm, I've gotten a bit long winded so I think I'm going to save the rest of Tuesday and all of Wednesday for tomorrow’s rant. Same Bat time, same Bat channel!

12/9/11

2011-12-11T08:27:00.000-08:00

No sign of my springs yet, of course that really isn’t surprising since I just ordered them two days ago. I suppose there is a slight chance that they will arrive today but I'm betting Monday is more likely. So I guess tomorrow (if we go to the shop) and Monday will be spent working on Lil' Wiggly and John's 1200, and Fiona will have to wait until Tuesday or Wednesday. No biggie, I can handle it. WHERE THE HELL ARE MY FRIGGIN’ SPRINGS!?!?!?!? Oh, sorry. Maybe I can't handle it. well, I'm going to have to, I guess. Ok, so what else is there to say? Yes, I see it there. No, I'm not going to fix the lack of a capital letter at the beginning of that sentence. Yes, it does piss me right the hell off. If I don’t move on I'm going to pitch a motherfucking fit over what a bunch of motherfucking retarded-ass dumb-shit fuck-tards computer programmers are. I motherfucking hate the ever living shit out of every last one of the goddamned shit-for-brains cock-suckers! Kill the shit out of them all! Ok, so tomorrow we need to work on Lil' Wiggly and John's 1200. I need to get the dash built and the rear brake cylinders replaced. I could stand to replace the clutch slave cylinder as well since it has the wrong one on there. See, the clutch slave for a 1200 is on the right side of the transmission whereas the one for a B-210 is on the left. If Juan uses a 1200 slave on a B-210, the bleeder is at the bottom below the feed hose and the last little bubble of air cannot be bled out. Kevin put a 1200 slave on Lil' Wiggly when his daughter’s boyfriend owned the car. I've fought through it until now because… well, I'm too lazy to change the thing and I hate bleeding hydraulics. If you pump the system up before driving it seems to work fine until parked overnight again. Meh, maybe I'll consider it a “Theft Deterrent.” Ok, being a 1978 Datsun B-210 is its biggest theft deterrent, I know. We’ll see what John has to say on the matter. Oh, speaking of John, the reason I called into question whether or not we’d be going to the shop tomorrow is I'm not sure if his wife will let him since he’s planning to be down there Monday, Tuesday, and/or Wednesday with me. I guess I otter check on that. He’s leaning towards “no” at the moment. We’ll see how it turns out I guess. I suppose I could help mom with the Christmas decorations and shit after checking on the War Room in the morning. Feh, I hate doing Christmas shit. oh you have got to be kidding me! You dumb shit motherfuckers won't capitalize after a motherfucking work ending in “IT” either? GOD DAMNED MOTHER FUCKING FUCK ASSED SHIT! ok, I'm fucking done for the week now. Fuck fuck fuckedy fuck fuck!

12/8/11

2011-12-08T18:38:00.001-08:00

No blog today. Suck on that.

12/7/11

2011-12-07T19:46:00.000-08:00

Happy… wait, no that probably isn’t right. Dang youse, Pearl Harbor Day! I don’t know. Whatever. So, you know how I'm always doing dumb stuff? Well, today was no different. I ordered a set of Tein S-Tech lowering springs for Fiona just now. They will hopefully be here in time for me and John to install them on our mutual vacation time next week. I called Kevin to see if we could use a lift and alignment stuff rather than trying to do it on the floor of the shop. He said we probably could but that after hours would be better. I'm not sure how much after hours John is going to be allowed by the high command so if we can't get in, we’ll suck it up and install them at the shop. I just read a few threads on the Genesis forum about the install and it appears that the whole thing shouldn’t take more than a couple hours… so a full day needs to be allotted. I can hardly wait. I wonder if John is going to try and talk me into painting the wheels black while they are off. (Looks around conspiratorially) Psst, here’s a little secret, he won't have to try very hard. Tee hee. Anyhoo, so there’s that going on. Hmm, I guess since it is now approaching 1120 h, I think I'll go hang out with Larry until lunch. I'll be back to ‘splain why I chose the Teins later. Feh, I ate way too much at lunch. I should not have had the bacon wrapped meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and spinach. I definitely shouldn’t have had the cookie. Bleh, I feel like crap. I'm going to have to eat very light for dinner tonight. Anyhoo, why did I choose Tein over Eibach, Megan, or any of the other springs for Fiona? Well it’s like this, I did a little research, damned little to be honest, and found that the Tein springs were probably going to be the smoothest riding of them all. The Eibach Sportlines would be the lowest and roughest riding while their Prolines would be probably just a tad more aggressive than the Teins. As for the Megan and others, I read nothing. Apparently no one runs them for some reason. As for price, the Teins came out ahead by several dollars whereas both Eibachs were the same price. So, I asked John for his opinion. His only question was, “Tein is at least an inch drop, right?” or something like that. I replied that the drop was listed as 1.1” in the front and 1.5” in the rear. We agreed that that sounded backwards but further research confirms it. The picture on the Tein website looks good, nice and level, so I'm not skeert… much. He convinced me that it would be enough so I went to order a set. I found the cheapest ones on e-Bay were in… um, well I don’t remember where they were but it wasn’t Texas… but I don’t mean in Not Texas either. Anyhoo, there was another set for one dollar more in Austin and a third set for yet another dollar more in Lewisville. I called the Lewisville auction’s number as asked if they had a storefront I could come visit. They did not. However he did make me an even better deal, I got them for about ten dollars LESS than what he had them marked on e-Bay, or $8.00 less than the cheapest ones. Now, I just had a thought that it is possible that it was a scam and I've been hoodwinked out of $154.00, but I won't make that paranoid leap until they don’t show up. Well, I've been looking for information about alignment settings. It appears that 2.5° up front and 1.5° out back for camber, and 0.3” front and 0.0” rear toe in are the numbers for which I otter be shoosting. I'm sure I'll settle for, “Meh, that’s pretty close” to those settings. I've been thinking about painting the wheels black. The more I think about it, the more I think he IS going to have to convince me. I'm just not so sure after all. Yes, they would look awesome in black, but could we get a good enough finish which will last? I just don’t know. I can see them looking like hammered dog shit and being stuck with them. Yeah, I think I'm going to forget painting the wheels for now, maybe next summer. We’ll see. And on that note, I think I'm going to call it a rant.

12/6/11

2011-12-06T19:45:00.000-08:00

I just deleted a big rant about “Indiana Jones and the Kingdumb of the Crystal Skull.” It was beginning to get too long and was really annoying me… and I only got up to the friggin’ rocket sled! That’s about ten minutes into the film! I hadn’t even begun to go off on the damned refrigerator. No, I'm just going to let that travesty of a movie slide and not comment on it any more… except to say: What kept them on the sled when it stopped? Why was Indy’s fridge the ONLY thing thrown from the nuclear, not nuculer, blast city? And Siafu are African ants, not South American, and they are regular ant-sized. Ok, I'm done with that. And now I've got nothing left to say. Since it is only 1030 h, I guess I might come back later to say more… but I might not either. Ok, so it is now 1420 h and I'm back at my desk. Ryan and Joe were talking at lunch about going over to Bloodbath & Beyond after… um, lunch. I wanted to go along but had a 1315 h setup to… um, set up. I just ran into Ryan in the hall and he said they did in fact go. He bought some ammo pouches and stuff. I'm not sure if Joe bought anything or not, Ryan didn’t say. It was probably a good thing I didn’t go because I really don’t need to blow any money from this paycheck of dumb stuff like… well, anything I might have bought at Bloodbath & Beyond. Having said that, I think I need a front sight adjusting tool for the 7.62x39. I don’t remember how much they are, but it can't be a lot. Hang on; I'll go look it up right quick on a few sites. Aw, who am I kidding, I'm going to find it on a site and buy the damned thing. Ok, Bloodbath & Beyond has the best price for one, at $5.95, so I think I'll just swing by there out of my way home and pick one up some time… maybe today. It’s not like I NEED one right now, but it would be nice to have when I do. I don’t know, we’ll see. Hmm, what to say now. Well, I was on e-Bay earlier and there is a guy parting out a B-210, literally. He has damned near every part from a car listed in a separate ad. Oh, and his prices are ridiculous! If Juan were to buy all of the parts this guy has listed, he would be able to build THE most expensive worn out old used B-210 EVER. Of course by that same token, if this guy manages to sell all of those parts he will have made the BIGGEST profit ever on a B-210. Some people have big-assed balls, that’s all I have to say. Oh, another thing I saw was a 210 in New Braunfels. It is very clean. I want it. his reserve hasn’t been met at $1,700.00 though. I'm not going to bid it up knowing I can't afford it. ok, Tiny and Flaccid is pissing me off again. Why in the flying goddamned fuck won't it let me end a sentence with the word “it”? it is about to get a motherfucking fist through the goddamned screen. In fact, it is pissing me off so goddamned motherfucking much I must shut the motherfucking shit pile off before I do smash the ever living fuck out of the goddamned motherfucker. FUCK!

12/5/11

2011-12-05T16:11:00.000-08:00

I really dig my 7.62x39 rifle! But I'll get to that in a minute. First off, Friday evening I'm sitting around thinking about what I'm supposed to do Saturday. Of course the first thing is to come in to the office before 0730 h to make sure the War Room is functional. After that, Gregg was going to meet me at the shop to borrow my trailer and move the BMW to his house. “Oh crap!” I thought, “The ramps aren’t at the shop!” No, they were sitting on the back patio at the house where I dumped them when that guy from the church borrowed Fifi a few weeks ago. I put on some shoes and drove Fifi around back. I loaded the ramps and straps in the back and parked. I hadn’t planned on driving Fifi but was stuck now. Saturday morning I went in to the office and sure enough, everything worked fine. While waiting for them to start their meeting, Gregg called to say he was on his way to the shop. I headed down there myself. When I arrived, I took the 7.62x39 out from behind the seat and chucked it up in the vice. There I leveled the scope to the gun. Then I set about making the cap of the cleaning kit fit with the scope’s Allen Wrench in it. I had to file a notch into the lid so it would fit with the wrench poking out the side. It works perfectly. Unfortunately it now doesn’t fit in the grip like it did without the cap. Oh well, what are you going to do? With all my “gunsmithing” done, I put it away and began tinkering with Lil' Wiggly. I installed the high-beam switch in the dash and wired it up. I connected the battery and tried it out. It worked. About that time, I hear Gregg pull up. I grab the keys to John's B-210 and head out to pow-wow with Gregg. Of course he has to come in and see Lil' Wiggly so we fire it up right quick before continuing with the move. It starts and sounds good. With that done, we go out and move John's car and Nadine out of the way. He huffs up the tires on the BMW and we shove it out. He has a Pearl Harbor winch which we attach to the trailer and pull the car up. It is very nice. I need to go get one of them. With the car on the trailer, we begin to look for a way to tie it off. Yeah, that car a) has nothing upon which to tie off and 2) is just a shade too long for my trailer. Oh, the wheelbase fit entirely, but it overhung on both ends. We hooked to the shocks on the rear and the sway bar up front. I wasn’t supremely confident, but it apparently held. We discussed lunch and it was decided that they would drop the car and call it a day while I went my way from the shop. They took off and I went to the gun range in Whiskey Flats. I took the 7.62x39 in and got in line for the rifle range. There were two other guys going in as well. We all went in and the range master set us up. I took my first three shots at the target. They were about three inches low and three inches to the left. But they made a nice line with the outer shots centered on the edge of the middle hole; say less than a half inch spread. I turned to the guy and said, “I’m happy with the spread, just not the location. He adjusted the crosshairs and had me fire three more rounds. The first shot went about right height wise but was still to the right a bit. The next was similar. Then I had a flyer low right. It was all me. He told me to take another shot. This time either I flinched or the gun went a bit wonky because it did a double-tap. Buh-Bang! I turned around and asked, “Did that just fire twice?” The range master confirmed that it had but the first was on the other two so he made one final adjustment to the scope and asked for another three rounds. I lined up and squeezed the trigger. I hear, “Bull’s-eye!” from behind me. I take another and hear another “Bull’s-eye!” On the third shot he says, “Your weapon is sighted in. You can keep shooting if you want but there’s nothing more I can do for you.” I emptied another couple magazines for a total of thirty rounds down range, 22 of which were in a ragged hole right where they were supposed to hit. A half dollar would cover them all, I do believe. That, my friends, is accurate enough for me. Of course I was using really good Hornady hunting ammo. The Russian stuff might not be as accurate. But I don’t think I'd hesitate to take a shot on a deer, or a wild hog more likely, if I'm ever called upon to do so. Zombies, look out! I'm ready for y'all. Back at the house I cleaned the gun and tried to use the laser bore sight thingy but couldn’t finger out how without a bench rest. I gave up on bench-zeroing the other optic and iron sights. I put everything away and goofed off the rest of the day. Sunday I met mom at church and took her and another couple to lunch at Applebee’s. They don’t have the Peppercorn Asiago Steak anymore so I ordered a different steak. It was not nearly as good, both flavor-wise and quality-wise. After lunch mom bought me a tank of gas and I dropped her at her car then went for an extended hoon. I had Heldey LaMarr with me and was thinking about going for a shoot. I wound up taking Silver Creek Road out and around Lake Worth then headed out White Settlement Road to Lake Weatherford. I did a couple laps of Lake Weatherford then headed down to FM 5. I turned off at Airport Road and went even further west almost to Weatherford proper. I headed back down 171 towards Cresson but turned at Bear Creek to hit FM 5 again. As I was rolling back on 1187, I decided to let the Suburban in front of me decide where I was going next. He turned right to continue on 1187 so I went left onto Aledo/Iona road and back to the house. I checked the odometer this morning and it was about a ninety mile loop. About 1730 h I sent John a text to see if he was going to the Japanese Car thingy. I told him I was NOT going to drive The Seven if I did go and he said he probably was going to skip it. With that information, I decided to skip as well. I watched the abomination “Indiana Jones and the Kingdumb of the Cristal Skull” instead. Holy crap! Even by Lucasian/Spielbergian standards, that was a mighty big pill to swallow. I'm willing to suspend disbelief… but… HOLY CRAP! And it isn’t even the premise I’m having trouble with, I'll go along with the aliens and stuff, it’s the HUGE logic and physics gaps that are troubling me. I might go into it tomorrow but I've gassed on long enough for today. Yeah, I just dropped onto a third page so…

12/2/11

2011-12-02T17:02:00.000-08:00

So I get a call from one of the telecom guys this morning saying that the phone in the War Room isn’t working. When I arrive to have a look at it, it appears as though the control system has locked up. Sure enough, rebooting it solves the problem… well, that part of the problem. A new problem has been placed on me though. Now I have to come in every morning and make sure that system is functioning before 0730 h. Ok, that’s not that big a deal. Sure it means I now have to actually drag my lazy ass in every morning before 0730 h, but that’s really not that great an issue. What is an issue is that they have this meeting six days a week. I am going to have to come in to work every Saturday morning before 0730 h for the next three weeks. See, we’re in what is called “Peak Season” due to (tee hee, I said "doo doo!") Christmas shipping and stuff. After the New Year starts I'll just have to “Check it on my way out Friday evening” and hope they don’t call me Saturday morning. Meh, at least I'll be getting four hours of overtime those weeks. As for the extra two and a half hours a week because of the extra half an hour each morning, psh, I waste enough time in a day that I can eat that time. Hell, I've probably already come in late and/or left early enough times to absorb a couple months of early mornings. Ok, maybe not months, weeks for sure. Let’s see, thirty minutes a day, five days a week, for four weeks comes to… ten hours a month. Yeah, I've probably wasted at least a month’s worth of those extra hours in the last ten years so I'm not going to say anything about them. In fact, I think I'll go ahead and earn some of that extra time now. I'm going to take a quick nap. Ok, I'm back but since it is now 1635 h I'm calling it a day. I'll talk to y'all again Monday.

12/1/11

2011-12-01T16:06:00.000-08:00

Well, yesterday after work I went to Bloodbath & Beyond looking for another quick release optic mount for the 7.62x39. I decided the other day that I really don’t need a 3x scope, which is almost as long as the gun itself, on the Beretta Neos carbine after all. I also didn’t want to risk losing zero on the holographic sight or the scope by swapping them Willie Nillie on the picatinny rail of the mount I had. No, I wanted another mount. Unfortunately they didn’t have the quick release mount I wanted. They had one which secured with Allen-head bolts though. I've used one of those before but it didn’t fit the Saiga without modification. I decided to not buy one at that time. I then went to the gun display to see what they had to offer. On the top rack was a Kel-Tec Sub-2000 folding carbine. You may remember I had the hots for one of those a few years back but never did buy one. I had the guy bring it down so I could look at it. It was quite cool. Unfortunately it was a .40 caliber. I want it in 9mm. That made it easy to be good and not buy it. Then I saw the Draco at the bottom of the rack. I handed the Kel-Tec back and asked to see it. Oh man, it is so friggin’ cool. I want one but after shooting the Mare's Leg I realize that a two-handed “pistol” like that really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. You really can't aim the damned thing worth a hoot out past five or six yards. I handed it back and said I wasn’t going to blow that kind of cash tonight. I shrugged and walked out the door. I was just about to put the key in Fifi's door when I said, “Fuck it! I'm going to buy the damned thing!” I went back in and walked up to the counter. I told the guy to get it off the rack for me and then when to pay. Yep, I went ahead and bought the Allen-head optic mount for the 7.62x39. What? You thought I bought the Draco or the Kel-Tec? No, I'm irresponsible but not THAT irresponsible. At the house I pulled the scope off of the Neos carbine and put the red-dot, holographic optic thingy on there instead. Yeah, that looks much better. Not to mention I don’t really need a 3 power scope on a .22 anyway. After “playing” with that for a little bit, I tried to install the new mount on the 7.62x39. Remember how I said I'd tried one of these before on another Saiga and it didn’t fit? Yeah, this one didn’t fit either. I fingered out what needed to be filed away to make it fit and sat on the edge of my bed with a file. I decided that I'd rather NOT file metal shavings into my bed or on the floor and took everything to the garage. There I filed away the offending material. Back in my room I slipped the mount onto the gun. It was a bit flollopy but tightened up nicely with the Allen-head bolts. I installed the scope and leveled it asbestos I could. Oh yeah, that looks really good on there. I didn’t swap out the tactical furniture for the wood because… well, I'm not sure why I didn’t actually. Hells bells, it looks so good in all black that I might never put the wood furniture on there. We’ll see. After I had the thing mounted and “played” with it for a bit, I took everything apart and went to look at storage solutions. The Neos fit in the exact same spot as before since the red-dot thingy wasn’t any taller than the scope it replaced. I just had to find a way to store the two Saiga side-mount optics I now had floating around. I had made little hooks to hang the holographic thingy and tried hanging the scope from them. By using one of the lightening holes in the side of the mount, it would balance nicely on one hook and just touch the side wall of the case leaving just enough room on the opposite side for the other optic. I tried to hang it from the other hook but didn’t like how it hung at a weird angle. I decided that another hole drilled in the mount would allow it to hang just like the scope. I took the mount to the garage and drilled said hole. Now both optics hang right above the muzzles of the guns as they stand in their respective positions. I just have to remember to collapse the butt stock on the Saiga 12 before putting it away. Oh, speaking of the Saiga 12, I tried the holographic sight on there for grins. It looks good but it sits too high to get a good cheek weld on the stock. You have to hold your head up off of the stock to see through the optic. Well, I wasn’t planning to use it on that gun anyway. And with that I think I'm going to call this a rant. Maybe I'll take some pictures of the guns and how they stack up in the cabinet for your perusal some time… and then again, I might not.

11/30/11

2011-11-30T15:54:00.000-08:00

I've spent most of the day today, when I wasn’t out doing my actual job of course, updating the DLR Inventory elsewhere in this computer. I added a section for estimated horsepower, estimated weight, and power to weight ratio. Fiona is the big winner in the power to weight race with poor old Herman bringing up dead last… if I remember correctly. Of course all the estimates are right out of my ass so none of the numbers really mean anything. I know, “Cool story, bro.” Well, it is my blog, so there. Anyhoo, while I was goofing off doing that, I also got in contact with the home office in Irving to see how many more vacation days I had left this year. I expected to hear that I had one or two, three tops. Turns out that since my five-year anniversary with the company was back in June, I now get thirteen days a year! Since I've used six already, I have SEVEN days to burn yet! When I told John, he said he’s taking three days soon and wondered if we should plan to spend them at the shop. I said, “Aw hells yeah, home boyeeeeeeeeee!” Ok, I didn’t really say that. So, once I knew what days he was taking, I asked for those days as well. I'm still waiting to hear back on that. I think the other four will be the week between Christmas and New Year’s. This place is a ghost town that week so I don’t even see the need for a coverage person. I'll take the work Blackberry and be “On Call” to fight fires and save lives as needed that week. Woo hoo! It looks like I got the same days off as John! I don’t know if we’ll spend all three days down at the shop or what, but it looks like we’ll be getting some more work done on… well, something. Now I am happy as a little girl! Und now iss ze time on Sprockets ven ve dahnce! Anyhoo, so there’s that going on. Gregg wants to come to the shop this Saturday and pick up the BMW IX out back. We should be able to wiggle it out of there without too much effort, I shouldn’t think. We’ll have to move Nadine and John's B-210, and then get Super Karate-Monkey Death Car out of the way, but I'm pretty sure all of them roll. Hell, SKMDC might not even be in the way actually. We’ll see on Saturday I guess. Ok, I'm bored with y'all now. I think I will go do something else. YOU MAY NOT TOUCH MY MONKEY!

11/29/11

2011-11-29T15:53:00.001-08:00

I realized while re-reading the rant this morning that I left a few things hanging. First off, I said I awoke dreading the headlight issue. Let me backtrack a little. What started the whole fiasco of Lil' Wiggly being down right now was the fact that the high beams didn’t work when I tried to get the car inspected last year. What I did was to wire them to a relay so that the headlights, and park lights for that matter, are on whenever the ignition is on. I then wired in another relay for the high beams. Well, when we tried to start the car on the 19^th they did not light up as they should. This was what I was sweating. So last Saturday, while John was piddling with something, I had a quick look round the wiring for the lights. I found that the ground for the main relay was disconnected. I hooked that up and gave the key a try. Huzzah! The lights worked again. I didn’t try the high beams because the switch for them wasn’t hooked up. I'm sure they will work and if not, they won't be any great shakes to fix. The other thing I forgot to mention was just how I felt after hearing the thing run. Remember last… what was it, Wednesday? Yes, remember last Wednesday when I said I had decided that as soon as it was back on the road it would go up for sale? Yeah, not so much. I'll finger out a way to keep it in the stable for a while after all. John was pussyfooting around the subject for fear of hurting my feelings. Finally he pointed right at the 800lb gorilla in the corner and said something to the effect of, “The car won't bring enough to make it worth our while to sell it.” I, of course, knew that going in but wasn’t willing to let myself believe it fully. Having heard the thing run now, it is worth so much more to me now than before. I think I'm going to reapply the giant Hello Kitty decal to the hood. Hmm, maybe repaint the center “stripe” of the car white around the Hello Kitty decal and paint the rest of the car pink? With that engine in there it otter be able to pull off that paint scheme. Ok, maybe not a true pink, maybe a “light red.” I made myself laugh with that one. I may have to do it just so I can say, “This car is NOT pink. It is light red.” No, it’ll stay white… but I do think I will put the decal back on there. I need to order some more AK-47 Hello Kitties in pink to go on there as well. I suppose a black AK-47 Hello Kitty would be alright on the hatch. I think that might become the de facto symbol of Dimlight Racing. John’s B-210 and Bobbi both have AK-47 Hello Kitty decals on them already. I suppose I should have put one of those on Fiona instead of the regular Hello Kitty head… but I didn’t… so there. I need to put one on The Seven now that I think about it. Oh man, it is going to be butt assed butt butt cold driving The Seven to the car show on Sunday. I am not looking forward to that. I'd say something about maybe I could have Lil' Wiggly ready but that ain’t happening either. Besides, Lil' Wiggly doesn’t have a heater anymore so it wouldn’t be that much better than The Seven anyway. I need to block off those vents from the scuttle for the winter I guess. No, I need to install those shutoff valve thingies over them so they can be opened and closed as needed. The big question is whether or not I'm going to try and plumb some of those Mustang vent registers into the dash. It all depends on how much room there is behind the dash versus how much room the registers require I guess. We’ll see. Ok, so I was thinking about that “light red” and white paint scheme just now. I think the thing that is making me not want it is that it would be so much “light red.” So now I'm thinking “light red” on the nose back to the Hello Kitty decal, that on a white stripe running across the hood and diagonally back down the fenders, with a similar white stripe at the rear of the roof running similarly down the “C” pillars and rear fenders, and “light red” in between and at the ass-end of the car. No, that would be too much like a candy cane now that I think about it. Hmm, I need a good picture of the side and top of a B-210 to play with. I did this with the Chickenhawk back in the day but wound up with the two-tone yellow over black scheme somehow. John, think you can find a line drawing of the side and top of a B-210 hatch somewhere on them intergoogles of yours? I tried to look for one just now but you know me and them intergoogle searches. We don’t get along, you see. I do not have the patience to wade through all the useless crap out there to find what I'm looking for. I suppose I could take a picture with my phone, print it out somehow, trace a line drawing of my own off of it, and make copies of that. I think that is what I did with the Chickenhawk now that I think about it. I wonder what happened to all of those drawings I colored when thinking about a paint scheme for that car. I'm sure I've got them somewhere in my room since I never throw anything away. Well, I guess I've rambled on long enough for one day. Hopefully I'll think of something to talk about tomorrow. Toodles.

11/28/11

2011-11-28T17:20:00.001-08:00

Well, here we are again, back at work. I'll skim over Thursday and Friday as I've already told y'all about them. They went exactly the way I said they would. Mom and I went to Aunt Margaret’s for lunch. My cousin Rob and his family were duly impressed with Fiona. We ate and went home. A few hours later my brother and his family showed up at the house and we hung out for about an hour. They left and Thanksgiving 2011 was officially over. Huzzah! If I can get through Christmas as easily I'll be truly happy… of course if I'm ever truly “Truly Happy” I'll probably drop dead, that’s the way of the universe I'll bet. Anyhoo, Friday I took the Mare's Leg to the range to try it out. It is going to be a devastating weapon if I ever have to use it. “Why?” you ask. Well, I have no way to accurately aim the thing out past three to five yards. Anyone… um, I mean anything getting hit at that range by a 230 grain, jacketed hollow point, .45 Colt round is going to be in a world of hurt. It is definitely a “last line of defense” weapon for sure. Otter bust up a zombie’s head pretty good though. I'll just have to watch out for overspray. But I digress. So after the range I cleaned the two guns… oh yeah, I took the Judge as well. I'm a little more accurate with that guy, although my accuracy was nothing to write home about. My target looked like a shotgun, or machine gun, had hit it rather than controlled fire. Of course most of that was due to (tee hee, I said "doo doo!") the Mare's Leg. Ok, so after cleaning the guns I goofed off the rest of the day. I think I might have gone for a hoon in Fiona, but I'm not 100% sure of that. Saturday morning I woke up dreading fingering out why the headlights in Lil' Wiggly didn’t work when we tried the fuel pump last week. I got up and went to fly a bombing mission. I got involved in reading a story by E. E. Smith on my Amazing Ken Doll and lost track of time. When I noticed my legs were asleep I looked at the clock. I'd been on the can for an hour! I did the post mission paperwork and texted John to see what his status was. He was already at the shop! Crap! I dressed and hauled ass down there. I brought a one gallon gas can with me from home and filled it on the way. We dumped it in the tank and hooked up the battery. Nothing. I went back for five more gallons and dumped that in the tank. Surely we should get something now. Nope. We pulled the inlet hose from the feed line before the fuel pump and nothing came out. We blew air up it to make sure it wasn’t blocked. It wasn’t. Finally we primed the fuel pump and tried again. This time we were successful. John set the fuel pressure and we gave the started a kick. It spun a few rounds and then began to struggle. We charged the battery for a while and worked on his 1200’s rear suspension. I guess all he needed was a little passive/aggressive prodding to get him motivated on that project again. He has made a lot of progress. I'm quite proud of him. When we had Lil' Wiggly's battery up to 13.3 volts, we hit the starter again. She fired! A little messing with some settings and she settles into a nice idle… well, as nice as that cam will idle. We re-clocked the distributor and John set the timing. Ooh, it sounds so nice. I piddled with the dash, sort of, for a bit while he finished up what he was doing on his car and we went to lunch. Benito’s, flaming cheese, one taco de barbacoa, and too much Dr. Pepper. I spent the rest of the evening wanting to go back to the shop and work on the dash but didn’t. Sunday, after lunch with mom at Papadeaux’s, I did go back to the shop. I cut out the holes for the speedo and tachometer. Unfortunately, the hole saw I had is just a hair too small. I spent a few hours with a file trying to open the holes. Eventually I found the die grinder and made quick work of it. After a test fit in the car, it began to get dark. I went home. And now, as I said at the beginning, we’re back at work. So there.

11/23/11

2011-11-23T16:38:00.000-08:00

Oooh, Apple! No, I'm not going to rant about Apple again today. I just wanted to make John roll his eyes. No, I really don’t have anything to say today. I may just sit here and rant about nothing. It’s my blog, what are you going to do about it? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Hmm, I can't even think of “nothing” to say. Well, I guess I'll… um, yeah. So, I think we’re planning to go to the shop again Saturday, but it won't surprise me one bit if it gets cancelled. The plan for this Saturday, last Saturday, was to bring a can of gasoline to “fill” Lil' Wiggly's tank and see if it will fire up. It would be nice to hear it bark again. As I have said before, that might light the fire under me to get the dash finished. Oh, I had an epiphany of sorts the other day. I'm about to be broke-ass-broke again when that Hyundai payment starts coming out of my account. I could really stand to be in less debt. I think I have definitely decided that Lil' Wiggly needs to go up for sale as soon as we get it driving. We won't wait for George to run after all. This lightens the burden of… what is the word I'm looking for here? Non-half-assedness? Sure, we’ll go with that. What I mean is, if I'm building it to sell, I don’t need to be as anal-retentive about how I'm doing stuff. Yeah, yeah. I should be MORE anal-retentive about it, blah blah blah. You’ll get more for it, blah blah blah. Think of the other guy, blah blah blah. I ain’t gonna do none of that. I'm going to get it going and let it go. I'm not sure what it’ll fetch, but it’ll be more than I have in my pocket right now. Of course all of that money would need to go to the credit card, so it wouldn’t be in my pocket at all, actually. So, I guess there’s that going on. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Fortunately, mom has NOT invited the family over for the big dinner like she usually does. She and I will go out to Aunt Margaret’s for lunch and then my brother Ted and his family will come by our house for a little while in the afternoon. It might not be such a bad… yeah it will. It will suck donkey balls. Holidays always do. Oh well, as long as mom is alive, I’ll have to put up with them I guess. Hmm, what to talk about now? I got nothin’. I guess I'm done. I doubt I'll send a rant tomorrow or Friday so it looks like we won't be talking until next Monday. Have a day… or two, or three…

11/22/11

2011-11-22T17:09:00.001-08:00

As if I needed more reason to hate Apple, last night I tried to synch the i-Phone to the laptop. I had gone into the laptop, at John's suggestion, and made a few “Playlists” to avoid having to listen in alphabetical order. I had been waiting to synch them until I'd used the thing in Fifi again. See, in Fifi the thing plays songs at random. This scrambles where in the alphabet I restart when I go back to Fiona. Well, since the motherfucker reset itself for no apparent reason, I figured “What the fuck.” Ok, so I tried to synch them. Yeah, no such fucking luck. “There are two updates from i-Tunes. Would you like to update your i-Phone now?” it told me. I clicked the “Yes” button. “There are purchased items on the i-Phone which have not been synched to the computer. Please synch these items before updating.” Or some such bullshit. Ok, I thought I just DID synch the two. Oh, that’s right, you have to manually synch them. I forgot since it is SOOOOOO intuitive. THERE IS NO GODDAMNED BUTTON OR ICON OR ANYTHING WHICH ALLOWS SYNCH FROM THE PHONE TO THE COMPUTER! Sure, you can synch from the computer to the phone. But you can't go the other fucking direction? What the fuck Apple? I used to think Tiny and Flaccid was the only company hiring fucking retards as their programmers. Apparently ALL motherfucking computer companies do it. Did Gates and Jobs have helmet-wearing siblings and therefore felt the need to hire only drooling fuck-tards as programmers? The average IQ of the nation would probably go UP if all Microsoft and Apple employees were put in a burlap sack and dropped in the middle of the ocean. And don’t even get me started on all of you dumbasses who put up with their bullshit. In fact, I hate you all SO much that I'm not going to talk to you any more today… unless I decide to come back later of course. Ok, so I had a look at the i-Pod function of the i-Phone just now and saw that you can make playlists on the phone. Or to be more precise, you HAVE TO make the playlists ON the phone. So, if you spend a few hours making playlists on your computer, you have to replicate all that work on the phone. Wow, that sure is intuitive. Sure, why make the thing synchronize when the idiot consumer can, and WILL, just do the work twice? They won't mind because it is an i-Phone! Cue the angelic choir, “Aaaaaaahhhhhhhh aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!” Wait, did I say “Angelic?” I meant sarcastic. So in summation, I fucking hate i-Products and i-Sycophants. The end.

11/21/11

2011-11-21T15:57:00.001-08:00

Why in the goddamned motherfucking hell would my goddamned motherfucking i-Phone suddenly restart at the goddamned motherfucking beginning of the goddamned motherfucking alphabet when I goddamned motherfucking tried to goddamned motherfucking play the goddamned motherfucker this goddamned motherfucking morning? I fucking hate Apple so goddamned much now. I think they might have replaced Tiny and Flaccid at the pinnacle of things I fucking hate. I didn’t think that would be possible, but it just might be the case. But I'm stuck with the motherfucker for two more goddamned years because of the goddamned way motherfucking phone companies lock you into motherfucking contracts… not to mention the goddamned Bluetooth in the motherfucking Hyundai is motherfucking dedicated to the motherfucking Apple bullshit and doesn’t work with GOOD phones. So I'm actually stuck with a goddamned i-Phone for FIVE motherfucking years because of my motherfucking car… which I didn’t need and shouldn’t have bought. Fucking goddamned motherfucking shit! I'm so goddamned mad I don’t even want to talk to you motherfuckers. Fuck off. Ok, I took off for a little while just now. I had Fiona’s oil changed and lunch with Larry. I'm much calmer now. Sorry about the “Fuck off” up there. Anyhoo, we got some work done on Lil' Wiggly Saturday! I met John at Mimi’s for breakfast then went to Lowe’s and O’Reilley’s for the rest of the fuel system parts we needed. John went to have some tires mounted while I was doing that. Unfortunately I still needed to go to the Boys of Pep for most of the stuff. I called John and we agreed to meet there since his tires were done. We did and picked out the supplies. At the shop we got to work installing stuff. I'm not going into a play by play of the installation but the fuel line from the tank to the pump, to the regulator, to the pressure gauge, and to the carburetors is all hooked up. We wired in the fan and pump to the relay and installed the new positive battery cable. I tried the key and we had fan and pump activation. We didn’t have headlights, but I'll worry about that later. We never got any fuel pressure but I think the tank is dry. We called it a day and went to Maharaja for Chicken Tikka Masala. Hoo doggies! Them’s some good eatin’ right there. From there we went to my house where I gave him the license sticker for Matilda. I then went to an oil change place and had the oil changed, duh, and inspection done on Fifi. While there, John called to ask if I'd meet him at the AT&T store so he could buy Samantha, his wife, a new phone. I said I would, and did. After that I wasted the rest of the day. In fact, Juan could argue I wasted the rest of the weekend because I didn’t do anything but go to the church with mom for Thanksgiving Dinner Sunday evening. So, now that you are caught up with my weekend… FUCK OFF!

11/17/11

2011-11-17T16:25:00.001-08:00

Bleh. Every month, around the fifteenth, they have birthday cake for the folks in the NCS Group. I'm usually invited to join them… and usually do. Well, since my B-day was Monday I made sure to be there. Oh, it was today by the way. Since I was the first to arrive, and since I don’t technically work for the NCS Group and therefore didn’t get my name on the white board, Jessica gave me the first piece of cake… a corner piece… a double-sized corner piece. I feel like crap on a cracker. Hence the “Bleh” as the opening word today. So, I think I'm going to cut out early today. It is now 1500 h, I think I'll probably stay one more hour and then I'm outta here! I have to go to the courthouse and renew the plates on Matilda for John as well. I tried to do it yesterday but missed it by five minutes. Now, someone wanting to bust my balls might point out that I was at my desk at 1625 h wasting time talking to y'all when I could be going to run that errand. And said ball buster would be correct in doing so because I totally forgot about the license until I went to put my laptop away for the evening. Today however I have no excuse. Ok, so remember Heeter’s van? Well, the dude who baby sits meetings for me saw a picture of it and said, “My neighbor across the street has an old van for sale. I'll shoot you a picture of it.” He sent me the picture and it is almost identical to how Heeter’s van looked before he had it primered. I forwarded the picture to John who asked, “Is the Celica for sale?” I hadn’t even noticed the fender of an old Celica in the lower corner of the shot. I asked Jeff about it and was told that they were both for sale. This morning Jeff was here to baby sit another meeting and I told him I'd trade the motorcycle for the van. See, Jeff wants my motorcycle so I fingered he could buy the van and then I'd trade him for it. I don’t think it’ll happen because the dude wants more for the van than a) my bike is worth and/or 2) what Jeff is willing to pay for it. But we’ll see. He went on to tell me that the neighbor has quite the Dimlightian collection of stuff. I told John this and said we might have to make a road trip to Denton to check out his collection. He agreed. On the minus side of the van deal is the fact that while the thing has a rebuilt engine, it was started with a dry oil pump and seized up… or something to that effect, according to Jeff. That otter cause the guy to come off of his asking price but he thinks he has something special. I don’t know, we’ll see. Well, I'm not coming up with more to say so I think I'm going to stop trying. So suck it.

11/16/11

2011-11-16T17:54:00.000-08:00

Man, this has been a day from heck. No, I'm not getting soft; it just wasn’t quite bad enough to be from hell. But I'm not going to get into it. It might piss me off. What I will get into is the fact that I am dumb. Yesterday I told Larry that I was thinking about going to Bloodbath & Beyond after work. He said he was thinking about it too. We decided that we’d go and then have dinner at Taco Casa. He really digs Taco Casa. I waited for him to finish with his day and then we headed over. They, once again, did not have a regular Draco in stock but did have a mini. I looked it over and decided that since I couldn’t change the front hand guard, I'd hold out for a “full sized” Draco. Then I made the big mistake of the evening, I asked if they had any Mare’s Legs. They did. They even had one in .45 Colt. I played with it for a bit and thought it over. Just as I was deciding that it was fifty dollars more than I'd seen them at the gun show, the dude told me they weren’t charging sales tax. We did the math and it turns out that after tax on the gun show gun would have been only ten dollars cheaper. “Get the paper work,” I told him eventually. Yep, I bought a Mare’s Leg last night. We hung out for a bit longer and then went to eat. I got home around 2000 h and cleaned the cosmoline, or whatever the modern equivalent is, out and off of the gun. I cycled the action for a little while to loosen it up. It feeds my snap-caps perfectly and spits them across the room just like the other lever gun. Me rikee rots. I would like to see if I can find someone with a small-hoop lever who’d like to trade for the large-hoop on my gun. I just don’t like the large hoop. It’s only there for that Hollywood spin-cock action which will just get your ass killed if you tried to do it when the fit hits the shan. I'm just not sure how to go about finding a small-hoop lever. Anyhoo, that’s about all I have time for today. It is already 1625 h so I guess I'm going to call it a rant and finger out what I have going on in the morning. Toodles.

11/15/11

2011-11-15T19:14:00.000-08:00

So, Sunday morning I met Larry at the credit onion and we went to Whataburger for breakfast. We fingered we’d eat before the gun show and then have a late lunch rather than break in the middle as we usually do. We got to the parking garage and noticed a lack of cars. Not like, no cars, but very few. I stopped at the table where the cops tie off any guns people bring in while Larry peed. Oh, I decided to try and sell the 7mm Mauser. It is so inaccurate that Juan would have a tough time hitting the side of a barn… from the INSIDE! It is a pretty gun though. The first aisle there was some interest in looking at the thing but no one offered any money. Most said I was low-balling myself with the $200.00 price, but no one offered any cash. One guy did say that we could talk after I'd walked the whole show since he wasn’t ready to offer my price. Eventually, on the second or third row, someone did offer me my price and bought the thing. So now I have $200.00 burning a hole in my pocket. Fortunately nothing in that range caught my eye. I did see several “Mare’s Leg” pistols which interested me. Well, they didn’t at first, but when there were no Dracos to be seen I began to think about them. See, a “Mare’s Leg” is a lever action rifle cut down to become a pistol… at least originally. One was made famous by Steve McQueen in the TV series “Wanted, Dead or Alive.” Nowadays such a gun would require a special tax stamp from the BATFE as an “Any Other Weapon.” So how does Juan get around that? Well, he would manufacture it from the start as a pistol. Taurus (Rossi), Henry, and a few other manufacturers are doing just that. By the way, that is also how the Romanians are “getting away with” building and selling the Draco AK-47 pistol. The receivers have never been assembled as rifles but as pistols so… nanny nanny boo boo, stick your head in doo doo! Anyhoo, there were at least a dozen of them spread about the show. Normally we may see one. I briefly considered a Mosin Nagant at $99.00 but thought better of it. When we’d walked the whole show, we left to go have lunch. We went to Benito’s and I overdosed on cheese. We discussed what we saw, and didn’t see, at the show and wondered if we should go back again. I said, “Let’s see if they will let us back in the garage. If not, we weren’t meant to go back.” Larry wasn’t convinced. I hemmed and hawed as we drove back to the credit onion and finally said, “Ok, I want to go look at those ‘Mare’s Legs’ again.” So we did. They let us in the garage and we wound up walking the whole show again. There still wasn’t anything we “needed.” I talked myself out of buying the “Mare’s Leg” this show, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to wind up with one in the near future, moist likely at the next show, if there aren’t any Dracos. See, I think I want a Draco more than the “Mare’s Leg” so if it comes down to one or the other the Draco will win. When we were absolutely sure there weren’t any guns we needed, I bought a couple 12 gauge and 7.62x39 Snap-Caps and we left for good. Larry dropped me at my car and I went home. These 12 gauge Snap-Caps work ever so much better than the plastic things I had bought before. They cycle perfectly in all of my shotties. The 7.62x39 caps cycle perfectly in the 7.62x39 rifle as well. So well in fact that I've already lost one of them when it ejected across the room into the quagmire that is my closet. Yesterday, as I mentioned, was my birthday. Mom took me, my sister, and brother-in-law to dinner at The Silver Fox. Oh man, is that place good. I had a steak and lobster. Mmm, mmm. I tried to see the bill as mom was paying it but couldn’t quite make it out. I think it might have approached $300.00 for the four of us. Wow, thanks mom. And that gets y'all caught up. I guess we’ll talk about the plans for Saturday at the shop tomorrow… if I feel like it.

11/14/11

2011-11-14T19:39:00.001-08:00

I was going to try and avoid mentioning that it is my birthday. But then I thought, a blog has to be one of the most narcissistic things on the entire intergoogles, if not THE most narcissistic, so what the fuck? Happy fucking birthday to me, assholes. Suck on it! And now, having said that, here’s what happened over the weekend. Saturday morning I sent John a text when I rolled out of bed. He replied as I was flying the morning bombing run saying he was leaving home. I said I'd be off in a few minutes and finished getting ready. Eventually I arrived at the shop to find him under his 1200 working on putting the front suspension back together. I guess he got tired of me bustin’ his balls about it in the rant last week, even though I wasn’t really trying to do that. I began searching for Lil' Wiggly's fuel pump and helped him as he needed me. Eventually I did find it and began looking at spots to mount it. We decided on one and jacked the corner of the car up to remove the wheel. Three of the lug nuts wouldn’t budge with the impact wrench as long as the tire was in the air. We dropped it again and I broke them loose with a breaker bar. With the car in the air and one wheel off I drilled the first hole for the pump. Yeah, I marked it too low. I relocated the bracket on the pump and tried again. Now it fit. I drilled the second hole and began to install the pump. John made me stop because we didn’t have the nipples for the fuel line. Oh, he was still working on his car off and on while helping me. He didn’t “take the tools from my hand” as I am wont to accuse. While I contemplated the fuel pressure regulator’s location, he finished up his car and got the nose on the ground. Eventually we decided on a spot for the regulator and made the bracket fit. We didn’t install the regulator either because of the aforementioned lack of nipples. I made a list… well, added to the existing list, of stuff we’d need to make that car run. Gregg showed up to drop off the blue engine hoist and we broke for lunch. We all went to Razoo’s. It was quite tasty, as was the wait staff. From there John and I “raced” to Dave Heeter’s house. John led the way and I followed. When we got to the part of Loop 820 after the I-20 split but before the 287 split, we got stuck behind a slow car. I goosed it and went around. John followed. I let him back in the lead and we took off. We got a clear section of road and I saw him begin to accelerate. I rolled into it as well. We approached the 100 mph mark and had to back off. I thought I saw it, John said he only hit 98. When we got to the Hwy 10 exit we were still zipping along… well, it was just the speed limit at that point, but I had to hit the binders pretty hard on the ramp. See, I don’t like braking on the freeway. I'll wait until I'm on the ramp before hauling down my speed. John commented when we got to Heeter’s that he thought my nose was going to scrape the pavement, I was diving so hard. At Heeter’s we… ok, John “tuned up” Barbecue Bob and made it drivable. They then convinced me to drive “my” van. Dave pulled it out into the road and I hopped in. I slid it into gear and took off. It hesitated a bit but drove nicely. It locked up one wheel at the stop sign so I fingered I needed to brake earlier and easier. I went around the block and back to Dave’s. I parked and got out. John then started hammering Dave for his bottom dollar. A number was arrived at but I reiterated that if he gets an offer he should take it and not wait for me. As much as I'd love to have it, 1) I don’t need it, and b) I can't afford it. We’ll see. And what I just wrote about Sunday has filled an entire page. I'll save it for tomorrow.

11/11/11

2011-11-11T16:06:00.000-08:00

Woo hoo! 11/11/11! The intergoogles are going to be atwitter with bullshit like, “This date only come around every 437 years,” and the like. Seriously, I do not understand where these people get their information. I, of course, just make shit up from time to time. What are they going to do, take my birthday away? Oh, speaking of trolling, my favorite trolling T-shirt out now has a picture of Patrick Stewart next to the quote: “Use the force, Harry!” –Gandalf. It cracks me right the hell up every time I see it. Usually the trolling shirts have two mismatched items in it (for example, “The problem with internet quotes is the difficulty in verifying their authenticity” –Abraham Lincoln), but to get a four in one is pure genius! I love it. When I first saw it on the intergoogles, one of the comments almost made me pee myself. Some chick piped in, “Oh man! ‘Stargate’ was one of my favorite shows!” She got it and added another layer to the trolling. I wanted to seek her out and marry her. Ok, not really. Especially since, if she even was a chick, she’d probably look like… well, an intergoogle troll in female form. Ok, so enough intergoogle bashing. I've been “worried” the last few days about Fiona. You see, my memory of that Altima Coupe I drove a couple years ago, and mom’s Altima for that matter, is that they seemed to be faster. I can't help but feel like there’s something amiss… or even a mister. I began to wonder if I might be locked into some sort of “Valet Mode” or something. For that matter, I thought maybe I've been using the “Valet Key” this whole time. By the way, no I have not tried the other key to test that theory, shut up. I posed the question to John and he said he thought he felt a difference the time he drove mom’s car. His suggestion was to a) drive another Genesis Coupe back to back with mine, or 2) ask the dealer about a “Valet Mode.” I took those under advisement. Well, I may have been worrying over nothing. Apparently I've been driving like a pussy. This morning I discovered just how stupid fast this car is. Well, actually there were a couple incidents the other day but I'll tell that story in a moment. This morning I was tooling along in the fast lane behind another car. We were both stuck behind an even slower car doing probably sixty or so. When “Slow Poke Rodriguez” moved over, the other car began to accelerate. I began rolling into the throttle as well. That car then moved over so I said, “What the fuck,” and rolled into it a bit more. I zipped past both of them and began thinking about shifting over for my upcoming exit. I glanced down and was just about to pass 100 miles per hour! I had to look at the shifter to make sure I hadn’t done another fifth-gear blat. See, I'd done a pretty impressive throttle roll-on in fifth the other day and was quite impressed. The other incident was when I pulled away from the Tim-Off yield going from Mk IV Parkway onto the Loop 820 access road and romped on the gas to get ahead of two slower cars. As I hurdled through the sweeper towards the entrance ramp, I noticed the G-forces building more than expected. As the road straightened, and I could divert some attention from driving, I looked at the speedo to see that I was going to have to shed some forty miles per hour to slow down to sixty for the merge onto the freeway. Go ahead, do the math. I'll wait. Right, yet another one hundred mile per hour blat… and Fiona wasn’t even breathing heavy! I sent John a text this morning saying, “Never mind. This car is STUPID fast.” It was then that I decided I must be driving like a puss. Now, does this mean I'm going to start flogging Fiona? I don’t think so. I mean, she outperforms Ms. Clio when I am driving like a pussy, and Ms. Clio was an adequate performer for daily driving duties (tee hee, I said "doodies!"), so I think I'll continue to “putt along” like grandma but know that the balls are there in reserve. Besides, NOT driving like a douche will keep the insurance rates lower. Of course the problem is I hate people so much that the “Red Mist” does overtake me from time to time when some ass-hat is driving like a total fuck-nut. In fact, it was partially an ass-hat which caused the hoon this morning. See, behind me was a truck coming up fast when the second car moved over. Said truck began to move over two lanes to pass all of us on the right. That was what inspired the “What the fuck” this morning. It wasn’t actually so much a “What the fuck,” as an “Oh no you don’t.” Did I mention Fiona is stupid fast? Oh right, that was the whole point of this part of the rant. The only other times I can remember a car shooting up to the ton this quick for me were in a third generation RX-7 and the Chickenhawk. Perhaps I'll tell those stories some time. As for this week, I think I'm though ranting. I'll let y'all know how the weekend went Monday.

11/10/11

2011-11-10T16:43:00.000-08:00

Well, John has said that he is for sure going to go to the shop on Saturday. We haven’t discussed which car we’re planning to work on though. Logic says… wait, logic has never had any relevance to plans at the shop. What am I trying to pull here? I'm not sure, but what I was going to say was we should probably try to make some more progress on Lil' Wiggly before moving on to John's B-210 to swap trannnies or engines or whatever we decide we’re going to do with it. Now Juan might be thinking that’s just me being selfish and wanting to work on my project instead of his. But let me say this before you pass judgment, “Shut up, it’s my shop.” Just kidding. No, what I was actually going to say was “If we’re doing an engine swap, it should wait. If we’re doing a tranny swap, it can cut.” Now, having said that, I have no intention of trying to talk John out of doing an engine swap in that car. Like I said the other day, I think an L-series in a B-210 would be totally bitchin’ and would like to see that happen. But it just doesn’t make sense to sideline yet another project to start in on that one. See what I mean? Of course even a tranny swap could turn into an ordeal which puts Lil' Wiggly on hold even longer than it should. Ok, here’s the statement that is going to look like I'm bitching about John's 1200 being disabled in the other bay, but really isn’t. I wish John's 1200 wasn’t disabled in the other bay. That would give us room to piddle with Lil' Wiggly and do the tranny/engine swap in his B-210. But short of committing the total resources of the shop to making that car roll, we’re stuck with it on stands. I know, someday we’re going to have to commit to making that car roll, why not this weekend? I don’t know. I guess now it is time to admit to being selfish… and lazy I guess. Yes, an IRS 1200 would be cool, even with the swing-arm design of the 510, but it just doesn’t seem worth the effort TO ME. Oh well, it isn’t my car any more. He can do whatever he wants with it. Anyhoo, since that car in that bay is a moot point right now, I'm going to ignore it and move on. So here’s what I'd like to see happen Saturday: I'd like to replace that fan and install the fuel pump on Lil' Wiggly. I think with that stuff done we might be able to try and start the thing. We won't have any gauges to keep tabs on anything, but if we’re just making it fire for a few seconds I doubt we can destroy anything. Of course, just “making it fire up right quick” before it was time was the bane of George. I don’t know. We’ll see. Well feh. I think I'm going to go do something else for a bit. I may be back later. Ok, I'm back but I really don’t think I have anything to add. Hang on, let me go back and re-read what I've already said to see if there’s anything I can add. Ok, I feel like I was dumping on John for having a car disabled in the second bay of the shop. I’m not. And I don’t want it thought that I'm being passive/aggressive about the car either. I'm not. Sure, it would be nice if it weren’t there. But it would also be nice if the “Paint Booth” was cleared of all that crap, the “Machine Shop” area was clean and useable, and the mill was hooked up. But all of those things are just the way things are at Dimlight Racing. I'm just as much to blame as anyone. Hell, Juan might argue that I am MORE to blame for the place being only marginally useable. Well Juan can fold his opinion until it is all sharp corners and shove it into an inconveniently located orifice. So, as far as John's Albatross… I mean 1200, in the second bay, it’s all good. No worries. We’ll get to it eventually… I hope. So, on that note, I think I'll call it a rant for the day.

11/9/11

2011-11-09T17:37:00.001-08:00

So Monday evening while having dinner, the phone rang. Mom answered it and asked me, “Would you like to go see ‘Shrek, the Musical’ at Bass Hall tomorrow night?” I said, “Nnnnnnot really.” She was taken aback. “Will you go anyway?” she countered. I agreed but do not look forward to it. All evening I'd remember that I'd agreed and it would piss me off all over again. All day yesterday I would be happily be-bopping along when I'd remember it and get pissed again. I didn’t even bother with a rant (that was Monday’s you saw yesterday by the way) because I knew I wouldn’t be on line until late last night because of the show. I got home and she was still excited about going. I was not. I sent John a text saying, “No rant. I have to go to the Bass for ‘Shrek, the Musical.’” He replied, “File that under ‘Words I never thought I'd read.’” I sent back, “Cross referenced to ‘Words I thought I'd never type.’” Mom and I ate at Applebee’s on the way to the Bass. Sure, scoff at the chain restaurant but they really do have a pretty bitchin’ Asiago Peppercorn Steak. I began to lighten up on my attitude as time got closer and by the time we were in the hall, I was pretty much normal. As soon as the first song began, I knew mom was doomed. I could barely understand the singers and make out the songs… and I knew the story! I pretty much new then and there we wouldn’t be staying after intermission. As for the show, it was pretty good. It was geared more for kids, but it wasn’t bad. I was wondering how they were going to do the dragon, and it was pretty much exactly as I expected. She was rather impressive even from the nose-bleed seats. Oh, and the way they did Lord Farquaad’s costume was hilarious! Think of Tim Conway’s “Dorf” character but mobile. Instead of standing in a pit like Dorf, Farquaad was on his knees with the costume’s feet attached… oh, you get it. It was very well done, quite funny looking. I didn’t like how the actor playing Shrek tried to affect Mike Meyers’ accent because all it did was make him hard to understand. Plus, it wasn’t really necessary to the story if you ask me. Donkey was well played but I could see it being potentially offensive in a “black-face/Amos and Andy” sort of way. I couldn’t tell the ethnicity of the actor for sure, but I do not think he was black. Yes, I understand he was “doing” Eddie Murphy’s act as Donkey, which is fine when played by Eddie Murphy, but if Juan were to come in cold, it could sound a little racist. That’s all I'm saying. Of course, I could be projecting my own “racism” onto the affectations of Donkey because I know the original was Eddie Murphy and therefore that character “sounds black” to me. I guess if Lewis Farrakhan, Al Sharpton, and John Wiley Price don’t get up in arms about it, who am I to stir the racism pot? Fiona looked good… from the upper balcony. She might have been a total butter-face up close, like it matters. The singing and songs were good and I'm sure the kids liked the show. I didn’t hate it, and would have stayed for the second half had it not been for mom’s suffering. Although, since she forced me to go, I SHOULD have made her stay for the second half, out of spite. But no, I'm not that petty. Ok, I am EXACTLY that petty… for anyone else. Mom’s eighty-two years old and I knew it would be bad enough getting her back to the car with no crowd. We did leave at intermission. I explained the story, what she missed while there and what we skipped, and promised to watch the DVD with her some time. So there’s that. If you have kids, I recommend “Shrek, the Musical.” If you don’t have kids… well, it wasn’t a bad show for adults who have seen the first movie and know the story. Yeah, I say go ahead and see it, kids or no. Oh, one caveat, that recommendation is totally based on the first half of the show. I suppose it could become total crap after the intermission. Now, as for important stuff, John sent me a video of some show in New Zealand about the good old days of small-bore racing when Datsun dominated over there. It has me even more fired up to work on stuff this weekend. I even went in and looked at my “George to do list” elsewhere in this laptop. I'd been avoiding it like the plague ever since that project stalled. Having looked at it again, I really am close to being finished with that car. We gotta get it back on the road! Well, I've got to pee and I have a meeting in thirty minutes so I think I'm going to call it a rant for the day. Perhaps I'll have more tomorrow. We’ll see.

11/7/11

2011-11-08T17:32:00.000-08:00

Well, I have a few things to report. Nothing major, no earth-shattering news, but… well, ok so it is really trivial stuff actually. First off, I was a good boy and didn’t buy a Draco over the weekend. Oh, I wanted to, but I didn’t… mainly because Bloodbath & Beyond didn’t have the one I wanted and the one they did have was about a hundred bucks more than I'm willing to spend. They had a Mini Draco which is an even SHORTER version of an AK pistol, believe it or not. I don’t like them, not to mention the ridiculous price they were asking. So, there’s that going on. I'll probably get one at the next gun show if my resolve doesn’t hold out. On another front, I spent a few minutes the other day browsing e-Bay for Datsun 1200 parts. That got me somewhat excited about finishing Lil' Wiggly. Not excited enough to actually DO anything, but at least it dulled the funk a little. Well, I say I didn’t do anything; I went to the shop yesterday and made a preliminary list of stuff the car needs in order to be finished. Of course all I could think of was a positive battery cable and new electric fan. I'm sure there are plenty of other things it needs. I also had an epiphany of sorts. One of the projects which have been slowing us down on that car is the installation of the fuel pump. Neither one of us is too excited about crawling under the ass-end of the car to install, plumb, and wire the damned thing. I realized yesterday that the pump I have should work just as well as a “sucker” as it would a “pusher.” I posed the question to John last night that since I have a similar pump on George, mounted under the hood as a “sucker,” we could probably get away with it on Lil' Wiggly as well. I asked if he thought the existing feed line would suffice and was assured that it will feed a dual Weber L-20b, it should feed a hot-rod A-14. So, I think we’ll be installing that pump under the hood now. Huzzah! Kevin has already replaced the rubber line between the tank and hard line at the rear of the car so with fresh stuff up front I otter be good to go as far as fuel lines are concerned. I think that is the last of the major hurdles (Salutes and says, “Major Hurdles!”) to making the car run. I still have to install, wire and plumb the gauges, but hopefully hearing the thing bark will inspire me to get off my lazy ass in the cockpit. Wow, I don’t believe it. I really AM getting excited about working on this car again! If I can keep this attitude up until next Saturday we’ll be golden. Now, here’s where I might be dooming the process. I think after we get Lil' Wiggly back on the road, we otter concentrate on finishing George. I mean, come on! It is so damned close to being done I really should finish the motherfucker. Oops, sorry. Pardon my language there. I think if I finished that one “right quick” I could feel better about getting back on the Nadine project. At least that is what I'm telling myself right now. Of course, the dude in the CRX at the Japanese Classic Car thing last night really has me hot and heavy to do something with the N600. No, no, no, no, no! I must NOT start another project until Nadine is done or totally abandoned. No, I do not consider “Finishing George” as starting another project. In fact, it makes even more sense once Juan considers that Nadine cut in line ahead of finishing George in the first place. So there. Oh man, I am laughing at myself right now. I just looked at my desk clock and saw that it was a quarter to twelve. “Holy fucking hell!” I yelled, thinking I was about to be late getting to the shuttle to go to lunch with Larry. Then I remembered that I hadn’t reset that clock for Dumbass Stupid Time. I have now reset said clock. I know I ask this every time DST comes around but, seriously, does ANYONE like the stupid time change bullshit? Or clowns, does ANYONE like clowns? I know of NO ONE who admits to liking either one. Why do we put up with them? I’m stumped. But back to shop stuff. I think that if I had George going I could very easily sell Lil' Wiggly. Since I will probably take a few weeks after putting Lil' Wiggly back on the road before George is ready to take its place, I'll have time to enjoy the super hot-rod engine for a while. Especially if after Lil' Wiggly we move on to making John's B-210 road worthy again before we get back on George. Then again, it is entirely possible that Lil' Wiggly will get rolled out for a few weeks while we tackle John's car “right quick.” He asked me if I thought he should put the A-series five-speed in behind the existing engine or go ahead and plop the L-series in his car. I said something to the effect of, “Expedience says leave the A-series in there since it could put the car back on the road sooner.” I don’t want to tell him NOT to put the L-series in there but it just puts his car in “my” bay that much longer. Now, having said that, I am not going to be a dick about it and try to talk him out of an L-series in his B-210, because I think it would be a really cool engine swap. In fact, I WANT him to put an L-series in his B-210 because it WOULD be such a cool swap. I'm just afeared it will become another long term project that could stagnate in the main bay of the shop… yes, just like Lil' Wiggly. Shut up. Also, there’s his 1200 sitting in the corner that we really otter be working on. Ok, here’s my “problem” with that project. I'm scared to weld in his rear suspension stuff. I can weld… most of the time. I can even weld really thin metal like the stuff a 1200 is made of… some of the time. But it scares the bejeebers out of me thinking about zooking that stuff, upside down, under his car. First off, there’s the whole safety issue. If I weld something on MY car and it fails, I kill me. If I weld something on someone else’s car and it fails… gulp, I don’t even like to think about it. Then there’s the whole alignment issue. If I don’t zook those pickup points in right, the car could crab sideways and I'd never hear the end of it. I would SO rather he came up with a way to make it all bolt-in. I'm just not sure if that can be done. I don’t know. I guess we’ll see. Well, I think I may have gassed on long enough for today. Perhaps I'll have more of this free-form, stream of consciousness falderal tomorrow.

11/4/11

2011-11-04T19:50:00.000-07:00

“Hey-are-ya? Hey-how-are-ya? Woo-woo-woo-woo!” Yes, that was my “racist” rendition of an American Indian chant, “song” thingy. Yesterday was the Native Am… no, I can’t use that term. I was born here; I am just as “Native” as any descendant of the aboriginal people of this land. Y’all came across the Bering Land Bridge at some point in the past so you are just as “invasive” a species as I am. Well, unless you want to believe Zecharia Sitchin’s theory of the Annunaki, or ancient astronauts, but I won't go into that just now. Anyhoo, yesterday was the American Indian Heritage Day event. I. Hate. That. Event. If it sounds like I'm being a tad bigoted… well, I'm going to have to admit that I am. I don’t like being a bigot but I am a big enough man to admit that I am about a few things. I do not trust Muslims. Any “religion” which preaches “You are GUARANTEED a place in heaven if you kill a non-believer,” is a threat to civilized people everywhere. “Native Americans,” and the whole Political-Correctness Kit Gloves with which we whiteys are supposed to treat them, piss me right the hell off. Actually, Political Correctness in general pisses me off, but that’s another rant altogether. “But that’s another rant.” Did you say it with me? Never mind. The point I'm trying to make is… well, I've forgotten what point I was trying to make. Perhaps I should start over. The reason y'all didn’t get a rant yesterday is that my laptop never even made it out of the car… sort of. I got to work and immediately had to help someone set up a meeting in the Bored Room. From there I went to another room where I had to pull the projector and clean all of its air filters. I had hoped that would solve its “shutting down” problem. Turns out it didn’t but I found that out today. By the time I was finished with that, I had to go across the street to help set up for the aforementioned Abo-Heritage Day. Ok, THAT one was a bit over the top bigoted/racist. Sorry. When I returned from that, I had to set up another projector and screen in some dude’s office. By now it is time to go BACK across the street to kick off the Heritage Day thing. When I got to the lobby to catch the shuttle, I see it full of the folks coming to “perform” at the event. I ask Renee if they are all planning to take the shuttle. “Not all at once,” she said. I decided to drive over. I did and got them going… sort of. I had to come back to this side of the street one more time for another meeting but promised I would come back to baby sit their damned thing if I could. I did. Turns out that when I went back to catch the shuttle, having driven Fiona back to her parking spot, I was met by one of the ladies in charge of the event and the last of the Color Guard dudes. They were waiting for HIM to get the event started. Yay. I wouldn’t miss one second of the thing. We rode the shuttle back and I sat through the excruciating mess that is always this event. Have I mentioned that I hate this event? Fortunately they broke about fifteen minutes early, because I totally forgot about a meeting which was about to start at the scheduled end-time of the heritage thing. I caught the shuttle and just made it to that next meeting. I came back across to the event and ate the free lunch provided. At least they had that going for them. American Indian food is not nearly as good as… ok, I was going to be bad again and say “real food,” but I won't. It was ok. By now it is 1430 h or so and I just didn’t feel like getting the laptop out of the car again. Ok, I did take it in with me at first but when I drove over that time, I dropped the ‘top in the car and just left it there. I wasted the afternoon either at my desk or picking up the projectors I had spread across campus. So, there you have it. That is why you didn’t get a rant yesterday. Suck on it.

11/2/11

2011-11-02T18:49:00.000-07:00

Did I mention Dave Heeter’s van yet? If so, bear with me while I gas on about it again. See, one of the things John and I did Saturday, which I totally forgot the other day, was to take Dave a hood latch mechanism for Barbecue Bob. Remember, he bought Barbecue Bob from me? Hey, have I ever received any money from that deal? Hmm. Anyhoo, while at his house, I began to grok the 1964 Chevy van he has. Man, it is so friggin’ cool. I was jealous as hell when he bought it but this was the first time I'd seen it in person. As I was grokking it, I noticed the “For Sale” sign on the windshield. “Aw, crap!” I thought, “I’m going to wind up owning this.” His asking price is a bit steep but it turns out, according to John, he’s an intergoogle haggler. It was all I could do to NOT ask what his “Buddy Deal” price for me would be. Oh, I guess some more about the van itself might be in order. As I said, it is a 1964 model. Some previous owner has removed the “Six Shooter” and manual transmission and put in a 350 and auto-tragic. It has late ‘80s Camaro wheels, which I don’t hate but I think John does, dual exhaust, and a receiver hitch. On the minus side, in addition to the slush-box tranny, it is a four-wheel drum brake car. Fortunately, since it is a beam axle, I'd bet a lowering axle with discs is available, or at least wouldn’t be too tough to adapt to it. Also, said dual exhaust is not the newest thing on the vehicle. I'd probably have that replaced pretty soon as well. Ooh! Side Pipes! Hmm, what is that on the horizon, way out in front of my horse? Oh, it’s the cart! Anyhoo, I just sent Dave a text asking for the “Buddy Deal” price. He replied with two pictures of the thing before he sprayed it in primer. I wonder if he has some auto-reply thing on his phone when he gets a text with the word “van” in it. Nah, probably not. So, the point of this is, I'm trying to finger out where I'm going to get the money to buy this van. Well, I thought I might have a solution yesterday. Jeff, the dude who baby sits meetings for me on occasion, was here to… well, baby sit a meeting yesterday. He was giving me, what I thought was, a sob story about how they were a “one car family” since his step daughter was in a wreck in their other car. I thought about it later and here’s how the process went in my mind. “Hmm,” I thought, “I suppose I could offer to loan him Fifi until he finds something. Or I could tell him about Heeter’s van. Maybe if I did that, I could ask for ‘First Refusal’ rights when he decided to sell it. Screw that! Why don’t I sell him Fifi and buy the van myself? Hey, if I ask enough for Fifi I could get the van AND pay off that credit card! Wait, Fifi isn’t worth that much. What if I ‘threw in’ the motorcycle? Yeah, I'll ask him!” Ok, so once all that ran through my head, I texted John to see if he thought the van would be a suitable replacement for Fifi. He said that except for the lack of air conditioning, oh I forgot to put that on the “Minus List”. I guess, it would be an eminently suitable replacement for Fifi. He went on to point out that it wouldn’t be too tough to add. I agreed and told him the “Plan.” I then sent a text to the baby sitter asking if he’d be interested in the truck. He called me back almost immediately. We discussed it and he wasn’t too interested. John called later to ask if Fifi was dead to me. I told him about Jeff’s lack of interest in the deal and went on to say that while I was WILLING to sell Fifi to get the van, I didn’t necessarily WANT to sell Fifi. I'm not 100% sure where we left it off last night, but while typing this I've been in texting with both John and Dave about the van and stuff. Dave gave me his “Buddy Deal” price, which is probably not a bad number but still more than I have right now, and John has said he’ll do what he can once the Versa is paid off. Dave and I also discussed what I'd do with the van and I told him basically what I said up above about the zorst, manual tranny, and lowering axle. John’s biggest concern is “Can Tim own a Chevy?” I told him, “I have a Windows laptop and an i-Phone, why not go for a trifecta?” He sent back a “Raspberry” smiley face. :-p sort of thing. Which is just about how I feel about talking to y'all right now. I think I'll go play solitaire until lunchtime. Toodles.

11/1/11

2011-11-01T18:20:00.001-07:00

Yes, I did drop the “20” from the date this month. Next Friday, on 11/11/11, it will look cooler. For that matter, today’s date looks pretty cool. Anyhoo, so I told y'all about the weekend. I guess I should have saved some of it for today. But I didn’t, so there. Hmm, I got nothin’. The only reason I'm talking to y'all at all right now is there are guys testing the smoke detectors in my area and I wanted to look somewhat busy. Ok, they’re gone now. I still got nothin’. Yeah, in fact I'm going to go do something else for a while. No, wait. They may be coming back. I thought I heard the far door open. Perhaps it is a ghost. I do hear a weird sound from time to time coming from the cable rack on the other side of my cube wall. Good thing I'm not easily out-freaked by stuff like that. Ok, I guess it wasn’t them after all. I'm going to goof off in some other way for a while. Ok, I'm back. Since it is now 1555 h and I'm about to call it a day, I thought I'd come back and say some more to y'all. Unfortunately, I still got nothin’. So on that note…

10/31/2011

2011-10-31T17:25:00.001-07:00

Well, it is Halloween. And that’s about all I have to say about it. So, what did we accomplish this weekend? Not a whole hell of a lot, actually. Saturday morning John came to the house to follow me while I drove The Seven to the shop. I did not put the charger on the battery Friday evening because I didn’t really trust it to sit there over night and not start a fire. I fingered if I had to use the jumper box, it couldn’t kill the battery any worse. Mom had other plans for me though. She wanted me to take her car to Disco Tire and have her tire pressures checked. She also wanted me to fill her gas tank before she went to Arlington for a birthday party. I huffed up her tires with a little portable compressor thingy and then John snuck off with the car and filled the tank. Thanks again for that, John. He and I then tried the starter on The Seven. It fired right up. I decided that I wasn’t going to take it to the shop after all and we hopped in Fiona to go there. At the shop we put the license plate on the trailer, with bolts instead of zip ties this time, and then went inside to see if we wanted to work on anything else. Turns out, we didn’t. We hopped back in Fiona and headed across town to look at that shop between the railroad and John's house. I like it. John's contact at the location told us that the landlord has another location at 287 and I-35. We took off to scout that location. As we got close, John called said landlord and got better directions. I like that place as well. Unfortunately, the last unit in that one just rented. Oh well. John is going to chat with the guy and see what is available, what is coming available in the near future, and stuff like that. I think a move may be in the card soon. Bleh. After that… um, I'm not sure. We went to lunch at Benito’s and then he took me home. Oh, did I mention John insisted on driving Fiona the whole time? Ok, so he didn’t insist, except for the first trip to the shop. I allowed it the rest of the day. I'm not sure what I did the rest of the day. Sunday I got up and headed to the British Emporium for the car show. As I approached Grapevine I realized I had no idea where this place was. I pulled over and consulted the intergoogles. I sort of got a handle on where I needed to be and headed that way. As I was turning back onto Main Street, I saw an Austin Healey 100 at the light. “I’ll follow him,” I said to myself. Well, he had a BMW on his tail which took each and every lane change just as soon as the Healey. I fingered it must be his chase vehicle. When they lost me in some traffic, I fingered I'd just keep rolling in the same general direction and hoped to stumble on the place. It wasn’t too hard to spot. There were at least forty LBCs in the parking lot. I pulled in and was directed to a spot between the Triumph/Norton motorcycles and Rob Roy’s Sunbeam Tiger. Bernie Long’s Birkin was on the opposite side of Rob’s Tiger from me. I got out and greeted the folks I knew. We walked the show and then heard a rumbling. I looked up to see a friggin’ six wheeled British army tank pulling in! It parked right in front of my car. “I guess we’re here until he leaves,” I said to Bernie. John showed up with his family and we chatted for a bit. Gregg showed up with his daughter and friend Dave and we chatted for a bit. All of my visitors left and I hung out with Bernie for the duration of the show. Eventually everything wound down and people started to leave. When the tank was out of our way, Bernie, Rob, and I all took off as well. The Seven drove virtually perfectly the whole day, except for one “sneeze” out of the carburetors while holding a speed the car didn’t particularly like. I took a quick hoon around Lake Worth and got home eventually. No sooner than I had walked in the door, John called to ask if I'd mind helping move a mattress. I said I'd have to change shoes first but was willing to help. I headed over to his house in Fifi. We took off to the other side of town and got the mattress. Back at John's, my phone rings. Mom wanted to know how long I'd be before getting home because she wanted to get out of the Little Orphan Granny costume but wanted me to see it first. I apologized and said I'd see the pictures later. I took my leave of the Ropers and headed home via Burger King. I shouldn’t have, but I had two Whoppers for dinner. Back at the house, I got comfortable and settled in to waste the rest of the evening. Now we’re back at work and stuff so… I guess that’s it. There you go.

10/28/2011

2011-10-28T17:02:00.000-07:00

Remember all that falderal yesterday about a “hunting” 7.62x39? Well forget it. I put the wood furniture on the 7.62x39 last night and discovered I really don’t like it very much in that configuration. So I'm going to leave the gun set up as a tactical rifle and burn the “hunting” bridge if and when I get to it. So, now I have fifty rounds of ammo on the way for nothing. I guess I'll be taking that gun to Elk Castle again to see if I can shoot on their rifle range. I would like to sight in that optic I have on there. I have it “sighted” to the laser bore sighter thingy, but knowing where the actual bullet is going to hit would be nice. Besides, I really like shooting. I probably won't keep ant of that ammo on hand because if I were to go hunting I'd probably use the Wolf hollow points I already have. Well, unless a game warden says I can't. But, then again, if I'm going hunting it’ll be for food because the shit has hit the fan and I gots to bag my own lunch or starve. At that point the game warden might even be on the menu! Mmm, long pig. Oh, don’t give me that look. If you were hungry enough, you’d eat your next door neighbor. Don’t deny it. Anyhoo, so there’s that going on. As for my next frivolous gun purchase, I think I'm not going to look for another Saiga just now, because of the aforementioned dislike of the wood furniture. No, I think my next dumb purchase is going to be a Draco like I mentioned the other day. I mean come on, a 7.62x39 AK-47 pistol? How friggin’ cool is that? Well, I've got to go to a retirement party, wish it was mine, and probably won't be back until time to send my timesheet and log out. So on that note, I guess I'll say smell ya later.

10/27/2011

2011-10-27T19:08:00.000-07:00

I don’t thank Spiderman enough in here for constantly posting these inane rants. Thank you John for constantly posting these inane rants. Having said that… I got nothin’. There is a British Car show Sunday at the British Emporium in… Grapevine I believe. I asked John if he wanted to go to it and he said he did. I imagine we’ll be doing that Sunday. Now, whether or not that means we’ll be going to the shop Saturday is still up in the air. If I'm going to take The Seven to the show I'll need to replace the battery. I suppose I could attempt to do that at the house, but it sure would be easier at the shop. Here’s what I think I'm going to plan on doing, I think I'll try and get just enough charge in the battery to fire the car up, drive it to the shop, and change the battery there. Of course I haven’t looked at the weather to see if this is a viable option. Ok, current forecast shows sunny and 69° on Saturday. Hmm, I wonder if the formatting will transfer that degree symbol when I send this to Spiderman and when he posts it to the rant. I guess we’ll see. Anyhoo, with that forecast, that sounds like a viable plan now doesn’t it? So I guess I'm going to put The Seven on the trickle charger tomorrow evening and see if it will start on Saturday. John, feel free to come by and follow me to the shop Saturday morning, if we’re both going that is. I think I am going to do the battery swap no matter what because I'll “need” the car next Sunday for the JCS thing at Freebird’s. Hmm, what now? Oh, I think I might have a solution to my jones for a hunting Saiga. I think, for the time being, I'm just going to plan on swapping furniture from tactical to hunting on the 7.62x39 I have if ever I “need” to go hunting. I might go buy another side-rail optic mount and a scope for the hunting configuration as well. Then again, I might mount the cheap assed “holographic” thing I have on the Beretta Neos .22 carbine and move the scope from that to the 7.62x39’s new optic mount. In fact, I think that is exactly what I will do. I may swing by Bloodbath & Beyond after work and pick up one of those side-rail optic mounts. I need a battery for the cheap assed “holographic” thing also. I might as well pick up some “hunting” ammo in 7.62x39 while I'm there. I'll need something other than the Russian stuff in my inventory if I'm ever going to get to shoot this gun anywhere so I might as well. You see, gun ranges in this litigious nation have a morbid fear of lawyers. They don’t want to do anything which might open them up to liability. They really don’t want someone firing armor piercing ammo at their backstops for fear of penetration. This I can understand. However, just because a bullet is magnetic, does not mean it is armor piercing. All of the ammo I have is a gilded metal shell over a lead core. It does NOT contain a steel penetrator in the middle. I have sawn a bullet in half to look. It isn’t there. But does that matter to the gun range? No. If it is magnetic, it MUST be a penetrator! Ok, I'm being a bit harsh. Yes, I understand erring on the side of caution… but it still pisses me off! So, I guess I need to buy some 7.62x39 “hunting” ammo. Let’s go have a look at prices right quick, shall we? Oh, y'all are still here. Oops. I went on line on the other computer and got involved with other stuff. It is now… several hours later than before. Well, I bought fifty rounds of Hornady SST ballistic tip ammo way back when, when I went shopping. The price was just a tad higher than the gilded metal Russian stuff I priced at Bloodbath & Beyond so I went for it. If I take ten rounds to the range in Whiskey Flatts, that’ll leave me with forty on hand for hunting… or going back to that range I suppose. Then again, I could always take it to Elk Castle for some practice as well. We’ll see. Well, I'm just about bored with talking to y'all right now. I think I'll go do something else for a while. We’ll chat again soon.

10/26/2011

2011-10-26T20:52:00.000-07:00

So, we’re up to Sunday in the narrative. I'd told Larry on Thursday that I wasn’t going to East Texas for the tour and said I wanted to go to the gun show with him. I got a call from him saying he was getting ready and would call again when he was leaving. I got dressed and went back to the intergoogles, where I'd been wasting time waiting to hear from him. He finally called and I headed out to meet him at the Credit Onion, as we are wont to do. We met and rolled to the show. I had no money so it was just a wish trip for me. We walked half the aisles then decided to not risk the parking fiasco of last time and ate Convention Center Hamburgers. They were… well, they were Convention Center Hamburgers. We walked the rest of the show and saw a few things of interest. Since I haven’t seen the gun I've been shopping for, a .308 Saiga, I decided I'd just go for another 7.62x39 Saiga as my hunting gun. Of course I found a .223 Saiga which piqued my interest as well. After we’d seen all the booths we went back to a few we wanted to look at again. Larry bought an Arsenal modified Saiga in 7.62x39 and a few magazines. I ogled the 7.62x39 and .223 Saigas I'd seen before. I decided I would be a good boy and not buy a gun I couldn’t afford at the moment. Oh, I also thought long and hard (tee hee, I said "long and hard!") about a Draco “pistol.” What is a Draco? Well, it is a short barreled AK-47 with no butt stock sold as a pistol. Oh, someday I will probably have one, not today though. Eventually we left and headed back to the Credit Onion where I hopped in Fiona to go home. On the way home, I stopped in at the costume shop to look for a wig. You see, on that show “Hot in Cleveland,” Betty White’s character had bright red hair for some reason once. When she saw it she said, “I look like ‘Little Orphan Granny!’” I laughed so hard I almost peed myself. I told mom about it and she thought that would be a good Halloween costume for her. I found a red wig a few weeks ago but it just wasn’t right. At the costume shop I looked at some other options. When nothing really excited me, I left. I told mom about some of the wigs and it was decided that she and I would go to the costume shop and then have lunch at Papadeaux’s. Monday morning we took off on this errand. Of course we first went to the downtown courthouse to replace the lost trailer license. From there we went to the costumery. She saw a realistic-red curly haired wig and we asked to see it. It was even called “The Annie.” We exchanged the wig I'd bought before and were on our way. We ate way too much at Papadeaux’s then went home. After a nap, I headed back to the office to see what I was up against first thing Tuesday morning and to retrieve my keys and phone. The dude who was supposed to be covering for me was nowhere to be found. I'm not even sure if he came in at all on Monday. I read and replied to a few of the dozens of e-mails then went home. Now I'm back at work and… well, I'm back at work. That’s about all I have to say about it.

10/25/2011

2011-10-25T20:51:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I'm back from “vacation.” Here’s how stuff went down. First off, I was right about having to come in to work on my first day off. But I'll get to that in a moment. Wednesday, after I signed off with y'all, I went over to the TOB to see if I could nig… uh, jury rig the system so they could have their Town Hell meeting on Thursday. I fingered out how to switch the video signals and could combine and divorce them at will. I could not however finger out how to combine the audio. I finally said “Fuck it,” and hard wired the two amplifier’s inputs to the output from Room A and moved on. I called Telecom to ask for an analog phone so I could dial into the conference bridge but was told I'd have to send an e-mail request. I did that but then used a desktop conference phone as the dialer and made the room functional. Thursday morning I came in and began looking for the guy who was supposed to be covering for me and fixing the control system. When he wasn’t at my desk, I headed over to the TOB to get them going in the Town Hell. I ‘splained to the worrier in charge what I'd done and showed the “baby sitter” (AKA Audio tech) how it was rigged up. I finally got a hold of the coverage and repair dude by calling my desk… again. He came over and I showed him what I'd done to make the room work. It was agreed that the “baby sitter” would cover the campus once the Town Hell was over so the other dude could get to work fingering out what was wrong with the room. Eventually I bailed out and went to Alan Samuels Hyundai to get my license plates. As I was driving off, I realized I'd left my jacket in the large conference room. I wasn’t about to walk in to the meeting in progress so I decided I'd come back after the license plate trip. This I did. I chatted with the “baby sitter” after the meeting was over and then headed home. I was in such a crappy mood I pretty much decided then and there I wasn’t going to east Texas. I got home and had a word with mom on the subject. She pointed out that I was planning to spend three hours in Fifi, by myself, driving out there. Then I'd spend a little time with the folks from the group and go back to a hotel room, by myself, for the night. Then for the next three days I'd be driving, by myself, in The Seven a couple hundred miles all day. I'd return to the hotel room at night, by myself, and get some sleep. Sure, there would be stops and lunches and dinners and stuff with the others, but the majority of the time would be spent by myself. I pointed out that I also didn’t need to spend the money for three nights in a hotel, plus meals and gas. We decided that I probably shouldn’t go. I cancelled my reservations and then called Phil Anderson to give him the news. He convinced me that what I needed after such a shitty week was precisely the weekend ahead, or at least one day of it. I conceded that he was right and that they might see me one of the days after all. I went to the shop and got the trailer after all. I loaded The Seven and parked the rig in the driveway. Friday morning at 0445 h I headed towards Marshall Texas to meet up with the gang. I stopped somewhere between Kilgore and Marshall to gas up Fifi and noticed the trailer’s license plate, the one I'd just paid $67.00 to renew, was missing. I was not happy. Had I been closer to home, I might have turned around and quit. Turns out I was just about an hour away from Marshall so I continued. When I arrived I was greeted by the group. They seemed happy to see me. I unloaded the car and filled it up at the Conoco station by the hotel. We headed out on our tour at 0900 h. It was quite nice and exactly what I needed. Many “beans” were given and much ass was hauled. It was very enjoyable. We ate lunch at a little winery and then headed to Pittsburg Texas to see a museum about a turn of the last century “Ezekiel Airship.” Apparently some Baptist Minister in the late 1800s built, and supposedly flew, an “airplane” before the Wright brothers. We watched a video about it and looked at the recreation model. Meh, it might have glided if he had gotten enough ground speed, but as for a controlled flight, I doubt it. From there we headed back to the hotel where I loaded the car back on the trailer. 240 some-odd miles and a whole day later I took my leave of the folks and headed home. It didn’t seem to take as long this time. I checked with John about Saturday morning’s plans and it was decided that he’d meet me at my house where we would unload The Seven and then go to the shop. He later sent me a message saying I could sleep in since his wife had an appointment of some sort. Whether or not this was a ruse to allow mw to sleep in, I didn’t really care. I acknowledged it and went to bed. I awoke at 0830 h and sent him a message that I was up. When he replied he had a fever and wasn’t going to make it after all, I stayed in bed with the laptop until about 1130 h. Eventually I got up and went out to unload and park The Seven. The fucking battery was dead! I had just driven the damned thing 240+ miles the day before! How could it be dead? I hadn’t left the master-kill on or anything. I was stumped. I went ahead and unloaded it and pushed it into the garage. I moved Fifi and the trailer to the street and parked Fiona in the drive. Mom and I had lunch then I took the trailer back to the shop. I grabbed the battery charger and loaded it in the back of the truck then decided I'd swing by Batteries Plus to see if they carried Miata batteries. They did so I went ahead and bought one. The first battery lasted about three years and I've had the car about six now so I guess it was right on schedule. I haven’t installed it yet, I finger I'll do that next weekend. Back at the house, I goofed off the rest of the afternoon and evening. Well, I think I'll save Sunday’s and Monday’s tales for tomorrow. Toodles.

10/19/2011

2011-10-19T16:43:00.001-07:00

This has been the shittiest day ever. First off, I get a call from the Board Room saying that the projector keeps shutting off. I had “installed” a set of fans just yesterday to try and alleviate the heat in that cabinet. Apparently that didn’t work. Now, the kicker of this particular shut down issue is it was a CEO meeting this morning. Yeah, that kinda sucks. Well, I get reamed for my company not having the problem fixed yet, and am told, “We’re working on it,” is not good enough. Well what the hell else am I supposed to tell you? Then, I get a call from the TOB saying they are having issues. I head back across the street to see what’s going on there, by the way I was in the TOB when I got the CEO call and came across the street to see about that. Now I head back across to check on them. Well, turns out my control system has crashed and nothing I try fixes the problem. One room is “fine” and able to continue but the other is hosed. They bring in a projector and we get them up and running, sort of. The group in the “A” side, the one which is “working,” finishes up and I get the next group up and running in there. Fortunately they don’t need the telephone system because… well, it’s fucked along with the rest of the controls. Unfortunately, I'm informed that there is a Town Hell in the morning and it will need the phone. I'm going to have to go over and finger out how to combine the rooms and make a phone call through the system without the control panel. Yea! Then, to top things off, I'm looking forward to having Chicken Tikka Masala in the cafeteria for lunch. I've helped another group get their presentation up and running, half assed I might add, in the Grand Canyon room and am about to get on the shuttle to go to the Employee Center with Larry. Oh no, that ain’t gonna happen. I get the call from the pipe and drape guys saying they are here and ready to pick up their P&D. CRAP! I call Larry and tell him I'm driving over to the TOB and we’ll have the Tikka Masala there. I let the guys in to strike the P&D and get in line for the CTM. The lady in front of me says there is one piece of chicken left. I'm about to lose it. Fortunately for all involved, she only got an order of rice. I got the last Chicken Tikka Masala. I called Larry to tell him if he wants CTM he’ll need to go to the Employee Center because I'm eating the last order in the TOB. He says he’ll bring in his lunch from home. I apologize but go ahead and eat it in front of him anyway. Yeah, I'm in just exactly THAT shitty of a mood. When the guys are done packing and loading the pipe and drape, I head back across the street in Fiona and take my usual parking spot. Now I'm back here at my desk telling y'all about the morning. I'm going back over to the TOB in about half an hour to see if I can use some Afro-American Engineering to make the Town Hell tomorrow work. I'm afeared I'm going to have to come in tomorrow and make sure they are up and running before heading out to east Texas… if I go at all. I'm so pissed off right now that I'm not even sure I'm going to. I just asked John what we’d do if I did skip it. I'm waiting for his reply. I guess that’s about all I have for today.

10/18/2011

2011-10-18T17:39:00.000-07:00

So as I mentioned yesterday, there was more to the wheel center cap story. As I approached the car to go to lunch with mom, I saw that the passenger side rear cap was hanging loose and about to fall off. I pulled it loose and dropped it in the trunk of the car. We went to a little Chinese buffet and ate way too much. The whole time I was thinking of how I could better attach the center caps. I came up with nothing. After lunch, and a nap, I went to the shop to see with what I could up with come. First I tried more silicone on the one which fell out. I wasn’t happy with that so I removed all of them. I cleaned off the silicone and began thinking of other options. Cyanoacrylate ester kept looking like the best solution. I knew I didn’t have any cyanoacrylate ester so I began thinking of other options. I actually had the two tubes of JB Weld in my hand and was looking for a mixing vessel at one point. I decided to hold off for a bit. I looked around and found three of the old caps in good order, except for the hole drilled just off center of each, and decided that I'd do something with them after all. That is, if I could find the fourth. I did find it finally but it had been run over in the gravel and was a little worse for wear. I decided I couldn’t make it any more broke and took it to the grinder. I fingered I could grind it flat, as in take the “H” down smooth, and maybe apply some sort of inoffensive decal. The grinding revealed that the surface was a façade which I subsequently pried off. Then I finished grinding down the “H” to reveal a smooth-ish surface. “Yes,” thought I, “this I can cover with vinyl and move on with life.” I set that cap aside and pried off the façade from the second cap. This time, rather than spend the time to pick and peel the double stick adhesive off, I took it to the wire wheel of the grinder before grinding the “H” down. Yeah, that was a mistake. All it did was melt the foam stuff into a gooey mess on the surface. I ground down the “H” and set it aside. With the third and fourth caps, I took the time to pick all the adhesive off before grinding. They turned out the best. They will go on the driver’s side. So, now I'm at a crossroads. I can go to the store and buy some vinyl. I can go to the store and buy some cyanoacrylate ester. Or I can blow the whole project off and drive with no center caps. I head for the store to buy vinyl. I'm thinking I'll get some of that fake carbon fiber stuff so that I have to do something with it in the near future. Instead, I wind up stopping at the Mobil station and buying cyanoacrylate ester and heading back to the shop. I clean the silicone off of the KDM caps some more and glue them in place. At first I'm not sure if the glue is going to hold. The caps doesn’t seem to be… oh, there it goes! It finally stuck. I held it in place for a bit and then moved on to the next wheel. Again I cleaned some more silicone off and wiped the inner surface of the wheel before attempting to glue in the cap. It eventually stuck and I moved on. When I was done with all four wheels, I stood back and waited for a bit. I was not confident at all. In fact I said several times to myself, “If those make it home I'll be surprised.” They did make it home. They made it to work Monday. They made it home from work Monday. They made it back to work today. I guess they are stuck good after all. So there you have it. Hopefully those caps will be on there until I need to remove them. Of course, new wheels might be needed before long. The driver’s front has a curb rash. I don’t recall hitting anything, John was never out of my sight long enough to have hit anything I don’t think, and I think I would have noticed it in the five weeks since the window tint guy drove the car, so it probably happened at the car wash two weeks ago. But then again, I didn’t notice it earlier in the day when taking that cap off and cleaning up the center of the wheel, nor did John say anything about it on Saturday when we were messing with the wheels. I only saw it when that spoke was at the top. It might have been that way all along. Then again, it is fun to blame things on John so… DANG YOUSE JOHN! GIMME YOUR KEYS!

10/17/2011

2011-10-17T20:07:00.001-07:00

There is an internet clip of some black dude ranting about the government and the budget and stuff. He gets so mad at the end that he is inarticulate. Words fail him. That is how I feel when I start thinking about i-Shit. Friday’s rant, before the bacon calmed me down, was just getting going. Fortunately a hoon around Lake Worth “on the way” home that evening gave the car a reprieve. Saturday though… AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHH! First off, Thursday I swung by the courthouse to renew the license on The Seven and the trailer. I didn’t have any paperwork on the trailer so they couldn’t do it. Ok, Friday I brought the title to the trailer with me and stopped at the courthouse again. This time they could renew the plates. Plates which were two years out of date I might add, but I won't because I haven’t been using that trailer… yeah, that’s it. Anyhoo, after the courthouse I was still early going home and hate it when mother points it out to me. So I went for a hoon around the lake. T’was quite nice. Saturday morning John met me at the house and drove Fiona to the shop while I drove Fifi. We were going to re-deck the trailer and finally install the aftermarket grille on Fiona. I also had a set of KDM Hyundai Genesis wheel center caps to install. First we went to Lowe’s for plywood. We bought that pressed board crap instead since this is a temporary fix and it was cheaper. Yes, by “temporary” I do mean I'll get around to replacing the deck in a few more years. Anyhoo, we loaded the wood into Fifi and went to take off again. I hooked the i-Pod to Fifi’s radio and fired it up. I was parked too close to Fiona and the Bluetooth connected. The motherfucking i-Pod shut the fuck off and would not fucking restart. I almost threw the fucking phone out the window into the back of the truck. If I had been sure John would have seen it, I would have. I curse your name, Steve Jobs! Rot the fuck in hell you fucking sack of shit bastard! At the shop, we had a look to see if there was in fact room to park John's B-210 when it came off the trailer and decided we did. We hooked up and dropped the car off then parked it. We re-parked the trailer and got to work on the decking. It was decided that we would not remove the old plywood and that we’d overlap the seams. We cut and laid the first and second sheets then cut to length and width the third sheet and placed it. John then screwed them down and we had a look. We both stood over one of the holes in the old deck, calculating that the two of us weigh about half as much as The Seven, and felt no movement. I was pretty confident that even if we balanced The Seven on one jack stand right on top of one of the holes it would not break through. We declared the trailer done and moved on to Fiona. John painted the grille while I got to work removing the old one. While we waited for the paint to dry, John drilled out the old wheel centers. We decided against jacking and removing the wheels because, “We’re never going to reuse these centers, right?” Yeah, that turned out to be a mistake. The new centers don’t fit. They are too small. We wrapped them in electrical tape and pookied them in with silicone. When John was happy with the paint on the grille, we installed it. It looks so much better! He convinced me that we needed to put the “Roadruns” emblem on after all so he did. Once we were “certain” that the silicone had had enough time to set on the wheel centers, we closed up and went to lunch. I followed in Fifi and noticed that the driver’s side center cap was about to fall off. I ran up and retrieved it from the wheel at the Hulen stop light. I'm sure the other drivers were wondering what the hell that was about. Oh, as soon as I pulled up behind Fiona in Fifi, the Bluetooth connected and shut off the fucking i-Pod again. I was goddamned mad at that, I will tell you. Fortunately there was a stop for gasoline between that incident and the wheel cap almost falling off. We decided on Hooter’s for lunch and John reinstalled the cap in the parking lot. We ate and hung out for a bit to let the silicone set again. They made it all the way home but the passenger side rear cap was falling off when mom and I went to lunch on Sunday. But I'll tell Sunday’s tale tomorrow.

10/14/2011

2011-10-14T16:46:00.000-07:00

I am really, really, REALLY, dumb sometimes. I am beginning to regret the purchase of Fiona. Here’s why. First off there’s going back under $20k+ debt. That otter be enough reason right there. And, to be honest, it really is only a minor contributor to my current funk. It isn’t insurmountable and isn’t going to break me, I can afford it. It’s just… well, you know, a lot of friggin’ money, right? Anyhoo, there’s that. But what has me not only regretting the decision, but almost resenting the car, is the goddamned i-Shit that came as a consequence. Today I forgot my badge to get into the office. “No biggie,” I thought. “I’ll just pull up to the front door and get a temporary.” I parked out front in the “horseshoe” and ran in leaving the i-Phone hooked up to the i-Pod cable in the console. Yes, I did shut everything down before going in. She didn’t have any badges so I had to go downstairs to the police office for one. When I had my badge, I went back up to park the car. I fired it up and hit the power button on the radio. The i-Pod function started playing again. Well, as soon as the Bluetooth reconnected, the motherfucking i-Pod shut the fuck off and wouldn’t restart! I almost ripped the fucking cable out of the console and threw it out the fucking window. “Well, duh!” Some i-Sycophant is saying, “You HAVE to reconnect the integration function of the interface to the positronic sub-mask in the isomeric continuum transfunctioner ANYTIME the Bluetooth’s tetrahelical array of dichromium phase modulators recombine with ANY non-Euclidian flux capacitance mono-flippy floppies through Higg’s Boson paired turbulence interference. That’s intuitive.” No, that’s technobabble. Even the ACTUAL technobabble explanation is technobabble. You are all a bunch of fucking sheep who have been programmed to accept this technobabble bullshit with a shrug of your shoulders and a, “Meh, what are you going to do?” It pisses me right the hell off. Oh, and another thing about the i-Phone that pisses me off, WHERE THE HELL IS THE CAPS LOCK KEY? Seriously, how fucking difficult would it have been to include a fucking CAPS LOCK key? SOMETIMES I WANT TO SHOUT IN A TEXT MESSAGE, DAMN IT! {shift}I{shift}T{space}{shift}I{shift}S{space}{shift}A{space}{shift}P{shift}A{shift}I{shift}N{space}{shift}I{shift}N{space}{shift}T{shift}H{shift}E{space}{shift}A{shift}S{shift}S{space}{shift}T{shift}Y{shift}P{shift}I{shift}N{shift}G{space}{shift}T{shift}H{shift}I{shift}S{space}{shift}W{shift}A{shift}Y{space}{space} Add a mother fucking CAPS LOCK key damn it. But I digress. The point is, if I had not bought, on a whim I might add, this car, I would probably not have replaced my Blackberry with an i-Phone. Sure, I probably would have still broken the Blackberry and had to replace it, but I sure as hell would not have bought an i-Phone if I hadn’t needed that particular model to interface with the Bluetooth in the Hyundai. The Blackberry almost always connected to the Nissan. I can think of maybe three times in as many years that it didn’t. Damn it! Some knucklehead wants me to come sort out an audio issue in a meeting room. I'm sure it is operator error. Hang on. Ok, I'm back. They had bacon. I'm much more mellow now. Yep, the audio cable was plugged in too far cancelling out the signal. How were they supposed to know that? They couldn’t have; which, along with the aforementioned bacon, is why I’m not pissed about that trip down the stairs. In fact, the bacon has made me happy enough that I'm not even going to rant about i-Shit any more today.

10/13/2011

2011-10-13T16:45:00.000-07:00

I really don’t have anything to say today but I am so bored I feel the need to just type. I just placed a couple orders on line for parts Larry needs for his second Saiga 12 which he bought at the last gun show we both attended. Not the last gun show, that one I missed when my foot went all wonky. Not that it matters all that much, I just like being pedantic. Anyhoo, I ordered the parts so he can convert this one like we did with our others. That’s all I'm saying. While on the Mississippi Auto Arms site I noticed they had .308 caliber Saigas in stock again. I can't justify $499.00 plus FFL and shipping right now though. I really want one so I can use that furniture I bought a few months ago though. Feh, I know it is a dumb reason to want it, but there it is. Actually, since these are 16” barrel guns, I can convince myself to hold out a little longer. I really want a 23” barrel on my .308 Saiga. I don’t know, we’ll see. I otter go check with that little gun shop by the church and see of his importer has any .308 Saigas. No, I really shouldn’t do that because if he can get them I'd be tempted to gopher it. I really don’t need to spend that kind of money on something so frivolous. Hells bells, I really otter sell off some of the other frivolous guns in my collection. Seriously, how many 12 gauge shotguns do I need? Ok, so one of them was my grandfather’s so I can't sell it. Then there’s the Saiga. Well, that’s just too damned cool; I “can't” sell it. The Terminator is pretty damned cool too; I guess I “gotta” keep that one as well. Ok, so I guess I “need” all three 12 gauge shotguns after all. All right, what about…? Yeah… ok, I “need” all of them too. I'm not even going to kid myself with making lists. It is the same way with the cars at the shop. As soon as I start thinking about one of them, I can come up with a reason to keep it. Bah, feh, and psh. I think I'm going to go hang out with Larry in the shuttle until lunch… then I'm going to have lunch. I'll pro…ssibly be back later to continue this mindless rant. Don’t hold your breath though. Wait, if I do came back, you’ll see it already as more rant. Hmm. Go ahead and hold your breath then. See if I care. Ok, so I went to lunch with Larry just now. We went to Rosa’s where I had a taco salad. It was tasty. Yes, in fact that was the whole story. I sure hope you weren’t waiting for something interesting to happen. Actually, now that I think about it, I really couldn’t care less if you were waiting for something interesting to happen. So there. Ok, so now I'm killing the next thirty minutes before I head back down to the War Room for birthday cake. No, not my birthday, they throw a birthday shindig every month for the folks with birthdays in that month. Next month I'll be an honoree. Maybe. Actually I'm not sure if I will be on that list. Not that I care, I'll still go for cake. Well, unless it is a carrot cake. I hate carrot cake. Bleh. You know, that would be about right for them to have carrot cake on MY birthday month. Bastards! Ok, next week at this time I'll be in east Texas for that Sevens thing. I really need to do something with the trailer this weekend. I'd love to go ahead and re-deck it with “C” purlins but I don’t see that happening. No, I think we might just slap another layer of plywood on there and let that go for another year or two. Oh shit! I should probably look at getting the license plate renewed on it as well. Damn, I totally forgot about that. Hmm, I guess since I'm flush with cash at the moment I'll swing by the courthouse and do that today or tomorrow… or Monday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday. Sometime before next Thursday for sure. Hmm, come to think of it, The Seven's license might need to be re-upped soon. I probably otter look into that as well. Hmm, I've managed to kill fifteen minutes of the half hour before cake. I think I'm going to call it a rant and go play solitaire for the rest of the time. Have a day.

10/11/2011

2011-10-11T16:02:00.000-07:00

I never thought anything could make me hate it more than I hate Tiny and Flaccid, AKA Microsoft. Apple is working hard at it though. Ok, here’s the thing. All the Apple sycophants out there want you to believe that i-shit is so intuitive and easy to use. No, no it isn’t. i-Tunes is a pain in the ass. i-Phones are a pain in the ass. i-Pods are a pain in the ass. To everyone out there grieving about Steve Jobs dying I say, “Psh, good riddance.” The only computer geek asshole I'm going to rejoice more at his death is Bill “Tiny and Flaccid” Gates. Believe me, there will be a “Huzzah! He’s Worm Food!” party when that shit head dies. But back to i-Shit. Can anyone tell me why when you synch your i-Pod to your i-Tunes only the songs you bought from i-Tunes synchs automatically? Why don’t all those CDs I spent hours importing to i-Tunes, which show up in the i-Tunes library on the computer by the way, why don’t they synch to the i-Pod? No, you have to go in and MANUALLY tell it to put them on the i-Pod. Oh, and if you don’t go in and tell it not to, it puts multiple copies of each CD each time you back and manually force it to synch them. So, if you spent a couple hours importing a bunch of CDs into the i-Tunes library on your laptop, then force it to synch to your i-Pod, then come back the next day to import more CDs to the i-Tunes library, when you force the next synch, you get TWO copies of the CDs you imported the day before! Seriously, what the fuck? “Well yeah,” say the sycophants, “You have to go into the ‘Properties’ and reset the blah blah blah.” How in the fuck is THAT intuitive? No that is fucking computer retard justification for some retard programmer’s fucking… retardation. Then there’s the i-Pod controls. Now this might be a Hyundai problem but… I mean, fuck! How in the fuck are you supposed to play an album? The only thing I've gotten this fucking retarded thing to do is play all the fucking songs in alphabetical order. Ok no, that isn’t exactly true. I did get it to play an “album” once. But did it move on to the next album after that? Fuck no, it restarted the same “album” over again. Now this wouldn’t have been so bad if it had been something like “Dino: The Essential Dean Martin” which has thirty songs on it. No, it was two songs by Tom Tom Club which I had downloaded. And while I'm admitting to making it do things, I did get it to select a certain genre of music for me once, but it still just plays the songs from that genre in alphabetical order. “So what?” Wait, did I actually just hear someone say, “So what?” Well, I happen to like listening to whole albums. I get used to hearing songs in a certain order. If the artist put the songs in that order they wanted them in that order for some reason. Besides, while it is true that I chose every song in the library because I like all those songs, for the most part, jumping from Henry Mancini’s “Baby Elephant Walk” to Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” is… jarring, to say the least. Sure, in the genre based scenario I managed to make work ONCE, this kind of dichotomy wouldn’t occur, but most of the time the fucking thing plays ALL THE DAMNED SONGS IN ALPHBETICAL ORDER!!!!! No, i-Shit is not intuitive. It is not user friendly. It is not the be all and end all of everything technology, like the i-Sycophants want you to believe. It is a pain in the ass and I hate it. The end.

10/10/2011

2011-10-10T19:24:00.000-07:00

Feh, and now I'm thinking about selling all my “toys” and getting out of the car hobby again. Ok, not ALL of my toys, I'd keep The Seven, but the rest of them… feh. Meh. And psh. And of course if I had The Seven, which of course I will, I would keep a toe in the car hobby, of course. Yes, that last one was just to be redundant over and over again. Indulge me for a moment. I think my big tool box, welder, plasma cutter, air compressor, and that rolling metal work table in a two car garage with The Seven would not be an unreasonable maintenance shop. I think I could even get all of that in one side of a two car, or in a one car for that matter, garage leaving the other side for Fiona, or not as the case may be. Hell, the garage at the Burkett house has that nice little kick out which could be used for the above listed items, minus The Seven of course. And it has the back patio where I could park the trailer fairly securely. Oh shit! The trailer! I just realized, ok I actually realized it this last weekend and it is one of the things annoying me about the car hobby right now, that John's B-210 is sitting on the trailer which I'm going to need for that East Texas Sevens tour next weekend. Not this weekend the 15^th and 16^th, next weekend the 22^nd and 23^rd. We have to do something with that car, and possibly re-deck the trailer again, this weekend. I'm thinking we can drop the car into the spot where the trailer is parked and I can take the trailer home for the week. I don’t really want to do that though. I'd rather it remain at the shop, but we don’t have the room. I suppose if we had John's junk guy come haul off a dead car or two we’d have a space for it. I guess we’ll see. Ok, I just took off for a few minutes to drop the kids off at the pool and now I'm back. I've totally lost that last train of thought so I'm going to move on. I drove The Seven to the shop Saturday to install a vent in the side in an attempt to keep my feet and legs cooler. Yeah, it didn’t work. Here’s the story. I first went to Sutherland’s to look for those 3” soffit vents I'd found a few weeks ago. They had 2” and 4” but not the 3” I wanted because I had a 3” hole saw at the shop, or so I thought. In hindsight, I should have bought the 4” and a hole saw blade. Anyhoo, I left Sutherland’s and went to Lowe’s. They had the 3” vents. I bought a bag and headed back home. There I hopped in The Seven, along with the scoop thingy I'd bought on e-Bay, and headed to the shop. No, it was raining when I got home from the hardware store. I took a nap and went to the shop later when it looked like the rain had let up. It was a lull. I got rained on as I was driving down 2871 between I-20 and 377. It wasn’t too bad though. At the shop it stopped raining and I got to work. I looked for the 3” hole saw and found that what I actually had, and this makes perfect sense now that I think about it, was a 3 3/8” hole saw. Let’s see, how would Juan put a 3” zorst pipe through a panel in a Lotus Seven? With a 3” hole? No, he’d use a 3 3/8” hole, wouldn’t he? So yeah, I don’t have a 3” hole saw after all. I began to cipher and figger on it and then found a piece of silicone hose with a 3” ID and about a 3 3/8” OD. I also found a piece of aluminum with a 3 3/8” hole cut in it and gave it a test fit. “I think this might work,” I said to myself. I grabbed the drill and the hole saw and went to work on the side of the car. Yeah, I drilled it a little too far forward. It is right next to the clutch pedal and goes through the fiberglass end piece of the foot box. I'd hoped to hit just aluminum but alas t’was not to be. I installed the soffit vent with its corresponding silicone filler and sat back to have a look. I don’t hate it, but I don’t particularly like it either. I did a test fit of the scoop but when I couldn’t think of a way to mount it, I gave up on it… for the time being. I may revisit it at a later date. In fact, now that I think about it, sine it didn’t work so well suing the soffit vent, and I don’t particularly like the way it looks, I will probably revisit the scoop. Anyhoo, after getting that vent installed, I put the bonnet back on. I decided I'd go ahead and replace the safety wire on the passenger side hood pins, since they were both broken. With that job done, I locked up the shop and headed home. At first I thought the vent might be working, but then realized it was that my left shoe was wet from washing my hands and not cooled by a nice breeze. What I really need to do is close off the other wind intrusions from the engine bay. The worst offender, I believe, is around the steering shaft bearing. I'll have a look at that someday I'm sure. I took the south route back to the house and had a mini hoon. Yeah, The Seven will remain in the fleet no matter what… barring a stupid money offer, of course. So, I guess that’s enough for today. I'll have more tomorrow for sure because I want to rant about Apple and all the i-shit.

10/7/2011

2011-10-07T19:39:00.001-07:00

I spent a few minutes typing in here yesterday but it was all drivel… ok, it was even worse drivel than usual, happy? I deleted it all and decided, “No rant for you!” Anyhoo, on the way home from work I saw a red C3 Corvette with black wheels rolling down the freeway. Last week some time I saw something else red with black wheels as well. It got my gumption up again about Nadine. I liked the way that car looked on the black Bart wheels off of Lil' Wiggly. I think I'm going to finish what we’ve started on that project and go ahead with the Chickenhawk's old engine in there. I want to spray the car a uniform shade of red, possibly a flat or matte red, and run some 15” black steel wheels on it. I've talked it over with John and we’re on the same page with that plan… I think. Then again, I might leave the patina after all. I need to have a good look at how much more damage it will sustain, and/or how much we would be preventing with a coat of paint. You know what? The more I think about it, thirty miles away from the car mind you, the more I like the patina idea. No one… well, very few would fuss about the “bastardization” if it still had patina. Maybe. I don’t know. Yeah, the purists are all going to complain about it every time they see it. Fuck em. I've given a few of them the opportunity to “save” it from me in the past. No one came up with an offer. I'll do it my way. So, now I need to think about what I'm going to keep in my long term car collection. One of John's first statements last night in our discussion was how Lil' Wiggly was the one Datsun in my fleet which doesn’t make sense. I ‘splained that after I became too hipster for the Z-car but before Marty Mary introduced me to the 1200, the hatchback B-210 was my favorite Datsun. I went on to say, “Having said that, Lil' Wiggly has not been on my long term keeper list for some time.” I'm not planning to “build it to sell” per se, but after it is up and running, and I've enjoyed it for a few weeks, I do plan to put it up for sale. So that gets one Tin Top Datsun off my plate. I think we have convinced me that the Chickenhawk and George both otter be kept. Those two should scratch my Tin Top Datto itch. The Honduh of course is another Tin Top, but it is a special case. Besides, it won't take up much room. And like I've said before, I’m sure I could get it and The Seven in the garage together with little effort. Oh, of course The Seven is a long term keeper… well, unless someone offers me stupid money for it. I think my price to let The Seven go is right around $20,000.00 right now. Psh, what would just about pay off Fiona. No, I'm not selling The Seven. Ok, so if I have The Seven, why do I need Nadine? How many LBCs does one need? Well, here’s our thinking. The Seven is really cool. It is pretty quick. It is an absolute hoot to drive. But, it is not the most comfortable car in the world and ingress/egress can be downright embarrassing. So, for more relaxed cruising situations, we feel that a more comfortable car is in order, hence the need to keep Nadine. Yeah, it is totally justifying a stupid car. I know it. You know it. The DOG knows it! (Quick, name that movie! BZZZZZZZ! Time’s up. It was “Brain Candy.”) Ok, where was I? Oh right, justifying Nadine. So, we now have a collection which consists of the following: The Seven, Nadine, the Chickenhawk, George, and the Honduh. A five car fleet of toys should be manageable. Oh, I suppose Juan might argue that Fifi and the trailer otter be counted on that list. Yeah, I guess he’s right. Ah, but I don’t really need to find storage for The Seven, the Honduh, and Fifi. They can all live at the house even as it is configured today. And if a simple driveway were to be poured around back… no, I'm not going down that road again because it always leads back to building a shop at the house on Burkett. Feh, I'm not sure where I am going with this now. Let me go back and collect my thoughts. Ok, I think I know where I was going. John knows of a shop space near his house, and my office for that matter, which we need to go look at. If it will store Timmy! (John's 1200), Nadine, the Chickenhawk, George, and the Honduh, while still affording room to work on a couple projects, we’ll probably gopher it. Oh, and it needs to be cheaper than the Beenbroke shop, but I think John will be willing to kick in more rent if it were more in a more convenient location. So it doesn’t even have to be all that much cheaper. I'm also not out on looking for a smaller house to move into. The Burkett place is way too big for me, mom, and a cat. It will be downright Brobdingnagian once it is just me and a cat. I've been waiting weeks to use that word! It is such a great word: “downright.” I love it. Anyhoo, as for smaller houses, the one next door to John is, I believe, still for sale. He and I had discussed knocking out the wall between the master bedroom and the garage to make that whole half of the house the shop. I don’t think I'd do that though. Not at first for sure. Perhaps, once the projects are all runners and all I need is a maintenance shop, but not at first. Well, I guess I've gassed on long enough for today, not to mention I've got to pee like crazy, so I think I'm going to call it a rant. Buh bye.

10/5/2011

2011-10-05T19:16:00.000-07:00

I got nothin’. Well, I suppose I could tell y'all about the follow up trip to the doctor on Monday. I cut out of work about 1445 h thinking my appointment was at 1530 h, right? Well, I didn’t get there as quickly as I'd hoped but I was still there before what I thought was the appointed time. I arrived at 1527 h. Yeah, the appointment was at 1525 h after all. Now, I'm not sure if they decided to “punish” me for being “late” but I did sit in the waiting room for about half an hour. When they did call me back to an exam room, I sat there for, and this is no exaggeration, a solid hour waiting for the doctor. When he came in he looked at the chart, he looked at my foot, and asked me if it felt better. When it all appeared to be going well he said, “I guess it was just Achilles tendonitis.” All that time just for, “I guess it was just Achilles tendonitis.” He recommended that I take three more of the prednisone, then start taking half pills for a couple more days, and hold back a few pills for future flare ups. Tomorrow I start cutting the pills in half. Oh, mom also bought a pair of those Dr. Sholl’s “Custom Fit” orthotics for me. I've been wearing them for the last two days. I think they are working. My feet don’t hurt nearly as bad by the end of the day as they usually do. So, I guess I've got that going on. There’s still no word on the “Hot Rod A-14 + John's B-210 for the 510 Wagon and RX-4” deal. I'm not getting my hopes up John, stop worrying. I'm just reporting. Having said that, if I do get the RX-4 (henceforth to be called Rex because it is easier to type) I plan to keep the “Magic Spinning Triangles” engine in there. I have always wanted a rotary powered… something, so Rex makes sense. Sort of. Shut up. John, is Rex a Manuel or automatic? I can't remember. Suffices to say, if I own it, it will have a Manuel. By the way, I have decided that my writing style otter be called “Faux Auto-Correct.” There are many times when I use the wrong word because a) it is similar to the correct Juan, and 2) because it amuses me. What it looks like, however, is Auto-Correct has changed a word to what it thought I meant. Of course I do have to work hard when sending texts to make sure the A-C doesn’t fix one of them. Sure, I know that SOUNDS like I'm making excuses, but I really do mean to use “Juan” instead of “one,” “otter” instead of “ought to,” “Manuel” instead of “manual” and other stuff like that. What is a true typo in one of my rants would be a “then/than” mistake or a “your/you’re” error. Ooh, “then/than” pisses me right the hell off! I stopped reading, and cancelled my subscription to, a magazine because one of the idiot writers constantly misused “then/than.” John, what was the name of that VW Jetta sycophant who wrote for SCC I was always complaining about? Was that last sentence even remotely grammatically correct? Like I care! I just realized, if John (aka Spiderman) does answer those two questions posed above when he posts this rant, it won't show up in my archived version on the laptop. Hmm, again… don’t care. Ooh, Lordy Lou! I've got to pee! Be right back. And I'm back. So, speaking of archived things on my laptop, I was beginning to get pissed because I couldn’t convert my Open Office spreadsheets to Excel. My “Firepower Inventory” was the one I was going to be the most annoyed at loosing. Finally I realized I could convert them on the old laptop and save them as a file Tiny and Flaccid could understand. I took the old Linux laptop, the one without a monitor, hooked it up to an external monitor, went in, and saved the pertinent files as Tiny and Flaccid versions. Once those were moved to the new laptop, I had to go in and reformat a few things, but now all is well. Ok, so what else? Oh, I decided I needed some Billy Joel music last night. I went in to i-Tunes and sought out what I thought I remembered to be a really solid album: “Glass Houses.” As it turns out, the actual album I was thinking of was “The Stranger.” Now, “GH” isn’t a bad album, but it is no “Stranger” either. Having said that, I bought both of those, as well as “52^nd Street.” Here’s my thinking: I took a look at Mr. Joel’s library of work and gave a listen to the songs I did not recognize by title. His debut album, “Piano Man” I gave a passing “meh” review. Sure, there are good songs on there but, “meh.” His sophomore album is the aforementioned “The Stranger.” Awesome! (By the way, that was supposed to be read in the “Barney Stinson” falsetto.) The follow up, “52^nd Street” is also pretty awesome. “Glass Houses” is the last huzzah of the old (and some, me for example, might say “good”) Billy Joel. It is beginning to show some of the schlock of the later albums but I still feel it is, overall, a stronger album than “Piano Man.” After that we get into his ‘80s crap. Oh sure, there might have been a song or two in the ‘80s which were passible, but for the most part… well, “meh” isn’t strong enough. Perhaps “bleh” is a better way to sum up my feelings towards ‘80s and later Joel. And there you have it. Well, I think I'm just about talked out for today. So… yeah. Smell ya later.

10/4/2011

2011-10-04T19:15:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I wasn’t as correct as I could have been when I said y'all were caught up with my life. I realized while reading last week’s sole rant that I hadn’t told y'all about my new phone or laptop. Obviously, since I mentioned signing up for i-Tunes, I now have an i-gotta-be-just-like-everyone-else-Phone now. Here’s that story. Sunday morning, that would be 9/25/2011 by the way, I went to lunch with mom then went to the AT&T store for a new phone. My Dingleberry pissed me off to the point that it died the night before you see. So I go in and show the dude the remains. We talk phones for a bit and I finally just say, “Fuck it,” to myself. I ask him to show me the i-Phones. I decide I don’t need 56 terabytes, or however much the “big” i-Phone has, and settled for the… I don’t know, 8 gig? Whatever. I bought it using Samantha’s upgrade since hers was the only one eligible at the time. Yes, I called John to confirm that she didn’t need to upgrade right away. Mine would have been eligible in a month so we’re cool. Besides, it is my plan after all. Not that I would play that card… probably. Ok yeah, I probably would have. Anyhoo, they try to load my contacts and stuff from the Dingleberry’s SIM card to no avail. I was screwed on that front. Psh, oh well. Oh, here’s why I decided to go ahead and give in to peer pressure on the i-Phone: Hyundai’s Blue Tooth system recommends the i-Phone as the most compatible. Psh, whatever. I went ahead, obviously. From there, I think, I went to Best Buy again to look at the notebook John had picked out for me. Nope, I still didn’t like the size. To be honest, I want my pr0n bigger than that screen would have allowed. By the way, tiny pr0n and a slow connection was what killed the Dingleberry. So there. I chatted with a sales dude and he showed me a display unit. “Sure,” I said, “let’s get that one.” He grabbed it and we went to the Nerd Herd counter so they could clean up the hard drive and load Windows and stuff. As he was ringing it up, he saw that they had new units just like the display and went to get me one of them instead. I'm not sure if I got the display price for the new unit but at that point I didn’t really give a shit. I went home and goofed off the rest of the evening. Monday I came to work with the dead laptop in hopes that it was just the monitor. I borrowed a 750 gig external hard drive from someone and came up to my desk. I hooked the bottom half of the old laptop to my desktop monitor and fired it up. Huzzah! Success! I managed to transfer all of my data from the old laptop to the hard drive so my pictures, rants, spreadsheets, and all that malarkey are safe. After work I went back to Best Buy to pick up my laptop. I decided to go ahead and buy myself an external hard drive thingy like the one I borrowed. I found an identical unit and thought, “I’ll just get this and replace the one I borrowed with it.” Then I saw that a full terabyte was only like ten dollars more. I bought the 1TB unit instead. Once they were through loading all the stuff onto my new ‘top, I took it home. It has been a while since I've used Tiny and Flaccid (Microsoft for those in the back) so it hasn’t pissed me off too bad yet. And, since it has been a while, relearning how to do everything required by the total redesign of Windows 7 hasn’t been the total ass-whip it could have been. So, now I think we can consider ourselves caught up. Moving on. John texted me last night with a proposition. He asked if I'd be willing to trade the hot rod A-14 from Lil' Wiggly for an RX-4 he has in his garage. I asked if he meant just the engine or the whole car. Turns out the California based owner of the RX-4, and a 510 wagon also here locally, was considering trading them for John's B-210 with that hot rod engine and a five speed. John would get the wagon and I'd get the RX-4. I told him I'd gopher that and he replied it was still way too “up in the air” to get our hopes up. We also discussed what we’d put in Lil' Wiggly if that engine went away. Of course it would be an L-series. So, I guess that’s just about all I've got for y'all today. Toodles.

10/3/2011

2011-10-03T15:48:00.000-07:00

Well, it has been a while since we last spoke. Anyhoo, Wednesday I skipped work because I had a dentist appointment. I paid Jeff to cover for me all day while I ran around and did stuff. Said running around apparently aggravated my left foot. I began to limp by noon. I was visibly in pain walking by evening. That night, all hell broke loose in my heel. I could not put any weight on the foot at all. None. Fortunately mom has a walker thingy in the trunk of her car and my aunt has a pair of crutches. I hobbled to the bathroom and such with the walker until the crutches arrived. I called the railroad and told them my plight and it was decided that I'd cover things asbestos I could with the Dingleberry and hope I didn’t leave anyone hanging. Turns out I did leave a couple people hanging. Oops, sorry. Anyhoo, that afternoon I went to see the walk-in nurse at my doctor’s office. She looked at it and said, “I dunno.” She sent for my doctor. He looked at it and said, “I dunno.” They took a blood sample to see if I had an infection or diabetes or something and prescribed the steroid Prednisone for the inflammation. Oh they also sent me to the hospital down the road for an X-ray. Back at the house I sat on my ass all afternoon hoping the pain would lessen. It didn’t. I took the first steroid Thursday evening and by bed time... no, I won't commit to any improvement that quickly. By morning however, I could actually put some weight on the foot. Granted, it was on the ball of the foot and I still needed the crutches, but I could get around better. I still didn’t feel comfortable trying to go to work so I called the RR again. We went with the same plan as before. Yeah, I think I hung some more folks out that day as well. One of the folks I know I left swinging was the guy in charge of the Family Day car show. I had sent him a message Thursday saying I probably wasn’t going to be bringing the car even if I did come to work, so I guess I didn’t leave him hanging, technically. I sat in bed playing with the computer all day Friday as well. I got the call from the doctor saying that the blood work came back normal and the X-ray showed nothing but some minor arthritis. We’re still not sure what’s going on in there. By Friday evening I could put my foot flat on the floor but it wouldn’t support me yet. I had ditched the crutches for a cane and tip-toe walking as well. Saturday morning, I could actually stand on the foot. I couldn’t walk on it, but I could stand. By Saturday evening, I could stand and walk on it. I kept the cane just in case. Sunday I was actually able to walk without the cane. I kept it though, again, just in case. It was decided that I would not attempt to drive The Seven to the first Sunday car show thingy. I took Fiona to the car wash and then installed the road wheel center cap decals. Oh, the shift ball had arrived as well and I installed it on Friday. It has a bit of a “Clown Nose” look to it, but I'm getting used to it. I like the way it shifts. Another thing I did to pass the time while laid up was to sign up for i-Tunes. I bought a bunch of music and loaded it to the phone. While I was getting the car washed and putting on the wheel decals, I fingered out how to use the i-Phone interface in the car. I think. At least I got it to work. I still need to fine tune it but it works. I drove Fiona to the office so I could check e-mail and see what I was supposed to do first thing this morning. I limped my way up the fifty stairs to my office without the cane, just to see if I could. When I was satisfied that I was “caught up” with work, I headed back to the car to go to the Japanese Classic Car thingy. I sent John a text asking if he wanted me to stop by and show him what all I had done with the car but didn’t hear from him until I was already at the location of the meet. I almost bailed when there were only two cars there and no one standing around. I noticed it was still early so I waited. When Tim arrived on his scooter, I got out to hang with him. A few more folks arrived and we all chatted for a bit. Eventually we went in for burritos and ate them on the porch. A few more folks arrived and we looked at their cars then I went home. Oh! I just remembered something else! One of the things I did while running around on Wednesday was to pick up my Korean grille from the post office. I dropped it off at John's so he could paint it then we were going to install it Saturday. You’ll notice we didn’t install it Saturday. He was playing golf with his brother and I was laid up. We’re planning to try and put it in tomorrow evening. I hope we can because the ugly-assed US spec grille is the only thing with the Hyundai emblem left on the outside of the car. So, that gets y’all caught up with my life. Hope you enjoyed it.

9/27/2011

2011-09-27T15:48:00.000-07:00

I had to revert to being a Tiny and Flaccid… I was going to say “guy” but realized that made me look bad. No, I'm now a Tiny and Flaccid user again. You see, Friday evening my laptop “crashed.” Yeah, it crashed into the back wall of the closet when I threw it across the room. This time it borked the monitor. I was without a computer after that. Saturday morning John picked me up in his bitchin’ new ride and we went to get mom’s computer fixed. The place she recommended wasn’t there any more so we went to Best Buy. John heard that my laptop was gone and suggested that they had the best price for a new one. They did, but it was a notebook and just a wee bit too small for my taste. We got mom’s computer fixed and went on our merry way. We did a few things at the shop then went to look at those Mercedes Benzes John knew about. The first one we looked at was a four door 190d. It wasn’t too bad, in retrospect. When we saw it though, it was way too rough for me to consider. Oh, and it was a diesel. It was a four cylinder diesel. It was a four cylinder, non-turbo diesel. No thank you. We rolled to the next place to look at the two door coupe. Holy crap! I thought the first one was rough! Yikes! Had I seen this one first, I might have bought the other. No, no no no no! We walked away. From there we went to look at another pair of cars. These were quite nice. Unfortunately the owner knew how nice they were and they were out of my price range. Psh, as if I could have bought one anyway! And I do not need any more projects. It was easy to walk away from them actually. From there we decided to see if we could find the Triumph repair place where I'd sold many of Nadine's parts last year. I wanted to know if he’d be interested in buying the two cars from me. We rolled to Arlington and did find the place. John took point and told the guy about the cars but turned to me when the question, “How much do you want for them?” came up. I hemmed and hawed a bit then said, “If I could get $500.00 for the pair I'd be happy.” They discussed and thought it over for a bit but no final answer was given. I'll probably come back with, “Make me an offer,” because anything he does give me is profit, as we discussed the other day. Well, it won't really be profit because whatever he gives me I'm going to offer to Nadine as an apology for not going through with the restoration. Anyhoo, after a while of talking to them, they got a call to come rescue one of their friends. John and I talked to the owner’s son for a bit about the Datsun pickup he’d just bought. John showed him all the stuff he’d done right, wrong, and should do in the future. Then we went to Campo Verde for lunch. I love Campo Verde’s cheese sauce! Love it love it love it! We ate then headed out again. John asked if I wanted to go to the Hyundai dealer to look at the new Velociraptor… or whatever the hell it is called. I said I did indeed want to go look at it. About halfway there he got a call from his wife asking his ETA home so they could go to a birthday party. We diverted to my house where John dropped me off and went on his way. The trunk badge for Fiona had arrived while we were out. I set forth de-badging the car’s ass and installing the new badge. I got the “Genesis” and “Coupe” badges off and cleaned up the tape residue. I got the “3.8” and “R-Spec” badges off and cleaned up their residue. Then I set to removing the liner of the trunk lid, as per the instructions on line. Yeah, you don’t really need to remove that liner. I began prying the emblem and got it to come off without removing the screws from the plastic alignment thingies. I cleaned up that tape residue. I knew that this was going to be under the new badge so I wasn’t too concerned about scratching that paint. Good thing too because… well, there are some scratches hidden under the new badge. Not bad scratches, like down to metal, just blemishes were they to be out in the open. Anyhoo, I got that installed and stood back to admire my handiwork. Me rikee rots! I goofed off the rest of the evening until the internet failed me on my Dingleberry. Yep, I needed to go to AT&T on Sunday and get a new phone. But I'll tell that story tomorrow.

9/23/2011

2011-09-23T18:41:00.002-07:00

Well, John is tempting me with another project. He has found a 1962 Mercedes Coupe somewhere. It apparently has no drive train and possibly was a Manuel transmission when it did. We are thinking L-28 and five-speed if we gopher it. Of course it will have to be very nice and very cheap for this to happen, and something in the current fleet would have to go away. I'm beginning to give serious thought to dragging both Triumphs to that shop in Arlington and asking what he’d give me for them. If the Spit brings in more than $100.00 I'm ahead. No, I'm not even going to put a number on Nadine because, technically, I'm already $500.00 ahead on that one. So, I guess I otter say that if the Spit and Nadine don't cost me $400.00 to get rid of, I'm ahead. “But didn't you buy a bunch of stuff for Nadine when you were hot and heavy to do that project?” I hear someone asking. Yes, I did. But I can keep all of it for other projects, can't I? I don't think there was anything TR-3 specific... other than the reproduction Lucas wiring harness, but I sold that with the engine and transmission. The other harness is a generic Hot Rod Wires harness I can use in... oh, I don't know, the Honduh or that Mercedes? Hmm, for that matter, using it in Lil' Wiggly might simplify... no, I'm not going to further derail that project. The harness was fine, I just need to integrate everything and make that project... um, be finished. Yeah, so there’s that. OK, so I need to discuss the fate of the Triumphs with John and then poop or get out of the Ganges. The thing that would be the toughest about getting out from under Nadine is explaining it TO Nadine. No, I don't think I need to have a heart to heart with a car before selling it, I'm not... THAT crazy. I'd have to ‘splain it to the lady from the church from whom I bought the car in the first place. If I told her someone made me an offer I couldn't refuse, I'd feel obligated to give her more money. And, to tell the truth, I probably would just go ahead and give her anything that car brought in, now that I think about it. Hmm, that could work. In my mind, once a car is “Dead to me,” any money spent on it in the past is long forgotten. It would be the same as if I just walked away from it. I'm not in this for a profit. Obviously! OK, you realize I'm just “stream of consciousness” typing here, right? If any of this comes to pass... well, it just might not ever come to pass. That’s all I'm saying. John could talk me out of... no, that’s not likely since he’s actually the one who talked me into this school of thought. The “You’re already ahead even if you just walk away from them” school of thought, that is. On another note, mom just called to learn me a new word. Carcheology: the collection, renovation, and restoration of old cars. And the related word, Carcheologist: a person who collects, renovates, and restores old cars. So, Dimlight Racing is now a carcheology firm while John and I are carcheologists. I like that. So, where was I? Oh, I guess I was pretty much done with that line of thinking. I guess I'll move on to more Fiona info. I went ahead and ordered those wheel center caps with the “Eagle Wings.” I also got a red shift ball on the way. Why? Well... um, I'm not really sure. I looked at some others but thought, I guess, “Hey, the seats are red. Why not a red ball?” Besides, it is aluminum so it should get really hot in the summer time. Shut up! I never said I was very smart. I mean, I am, but I do dumb stuff from time to time as well. At least I only paid $14.00 or so for it. I didn't gopher the $150.00 knob from TWM. I mean seriously, who the hell pays $150.00 for a fucking SHIFT KNOB? They were nice, but not $150.00 nice. Some people are REALLY dumb. So, the cosmetic modifications to Fiona are about to commence. Let’s see, I got a grille, rear badge, wheel (steering and road) badges, and a shift ball on the way. Did I buy anything else for it yet? Hmm, not that I can think of. I'm thinking about removing the “Genesis Coupe,” “3.8,” and “R-Spec” badges as well. John, thoughts? The KDM cars, I believe, have a “380 GT” badge in place of the “3.8” and “R-Spec” guys on the right side of the trunk. I don't think I'll do that though. I mean, I would if someone else bought it, but I don't think I'm going to get that one. Especially if I remove the “Genesis Coupe” from the other side of the trunk. Yeah, Fiona will probably have a nekkid ass, with the exception of the “Eagle Wing” emblem in the middle. Oh yeah, that says “Genesis” in the middle shield. I gotta remove the rest of the badges from the trunk. OK, so decision made. Well I've got to go pee, and it is approaching almost lunchtime, so I'm going to call this rant complete and quote the Von Trapp kids from “The Sound of Music” when I say, “So long. Farewell. My feet are saying goodbye!”

9/22/2011

2011-09-23T18:41:00.001-07:00

Well, I've ordered a few more items for Fiona. I decided that the stock grille is downright ugly. I found one I like and ordered it. Then I thought, “Well, if the front Hyundai badge is gone, I might as well replace the rear badge as well.” Unfortunately, the badge the “matches” the grille is just a black oval with the words “Roadruns Motor Sportivo.” I do not like it. Why is it the badge that “matches” the grille, because the grill I bought is by Roadruns. No, I decided to go with the KDM (Korean Domestic Market) “Eagle Wings” badge for the rear. I'm not in love with the shield in the middle which says “Genesis” but I like that badge the best of the ones I've found available. I also bought the matching “Eagle Wings” steering wheel badge. I'm debating going all out and getting the road-wheel center badges as well. Psh, who am I kidding? We all know I'll get them eventually. I might as well do it now while I'm thinking about it. I don't know, we’ll see. I guess I'm really getting used to this car now. See, I park Fifi on the street in front of the house. On Wednesday, trash day, I have to move Fifi from the street so the trash and recycle can be picked up. Now, I have the choice of shuffling cars around on Tuesday evening so Fifi is in Fiona's spot and Fiona is parked behind mom then driving Fiona, or I can just move Fifi behind mom and drive Fifi. I finger driving Fifi once a week is probably a good idea so I usually choose the latter option. Well, yesterday I found myself missing Fiona. I never did that with Ms. Clio. Sure, after driving Fifi for a while, say several days, I'd get back in Ms. Clio and realize I really like driving a car, but I never missed it while driving Fifi. I guess Fifi and Ms. Clio just drove so much alike... somehow. Not so with Fiona! Oh no! Worlds different. I guess I need to stop “bashing” Ms. Clio and Versae in general. It was, and still is I suppose, a very good car. Well, it was a good car. Maybe not “very good.” No, it was a very good car for what it was designed to do and I had a lot of fun with it. Any disparaging remarks I might make about it, especially these last few weeks, are probably based on me trying to justify to myself that buying Fiona was the right thing to do. Yeah, I can see that being the case. So... um, there’s that going on. Speaking of “Goings On,” there is some sort of hootenanny going on at the Enkei Wheels facility up on 171 tomorrow evening. I asked John if “we” were going and if “we” wanted to bring The Seven to it. It would mean driving The Seven to work tomorrow though. I guess I need to look at tomorrow’s schedule to see if that is an option. Hang on. Hmm, I have an 0800 h meeting. I don't think I'm willing to risk it. So, I guess if John and I are going to this thing we’ll either take Fiona, his car, or both. Oh yeah, I think it is safe to tell y'all that he went ahead and bought a Focus the other day. It is a dead sexy black five door sport model. I would bust his balls about getting an automatic but a) it is actually one of those “Twin Clutch” jobs which are almost kind of cool and 2) he obviously doesn't have balls anymore because he bought an automatic. “Oh snap! He went there anyway!” No John, I'm just kidding. I'm kind of, almost, nearly, warming up to the “Twin Clutch” thingy. I can see how it would be really fast at shifting. I understand how it could lower lap times. I can see why it is becoming the technology to have. I just, and I think John understands this, I just want to shift my own gears. I just do not like the video game driving experience. Holy crap! Where has the morning gone? It is 1130 h! I guess I'll call it a rant and go have lunch with Larry. Talk to y'all tomorrow. If you’re lucky!

9/20/2011

2011-09-20T18:15:00.000-07:00

OK, when we last left our intrepid heroes, they had parted ways on Saturday evening. My sister was to be in town to spend the night so she could cater some breakfast thing at the church. I fully expected to get home and hear, “Where have YOU been?” from her and mom. Neither of them was home. I called the church and, sure enough, they were there. They didn't ask me to come up and help so I didn't. I did, however, find that the new water cooler I had just bought had leaked three more gallons of water over the course of the day. I. Was. Pissed. When they finally got home I told my sister about the cooler before mom could find it and had her tell mom. I was too fucking mad about it to be rational and calm in the telling and it just would have upset her. As it turned out, Linda broke the news and mom appeared to take it in stride. In the morning they both left for church telling me to come along later and bring stuff if they called for it. I got to the church around 0830 h and helped with the breakfast. I helped clean up afterward while mom was in Sunday school and then Linda and I convinced her that she needed to go home and rest rather than stay for church. She acquiesced and took off to the house. There we all took naps and eventually all got up around 1600 h. I was thinking of going to a hardware store because I had a revelation. “What if,” thought I, “I were to take one of those dryer vent hood thingies you see on the side of houses and attach it to the side of The Seven as a scoop to force cool air in on my legs?” I sent John a text asking his opinion and he thought it might work. I got dressed and was about to leave when I was told we were going for Mexican food. “Meh, whatever,” I thought and that’s what we did. After I dropped mom off at the house, I did go to the hardware store. I couldn't find the vent I was looking for but did see something that might work. They are little 3” diameter louvered soffit vent covers. I didn't buy them though. I'm not sure if they will “cheese grate” the air into the foot wells or not. John suggested Ford Mustang vents as an option so I headed to the shop to have a look at some I knew were there. I took the long way to the shop. Yes, I went for a hoon. I'm beginning to get used to the size of Fiona but I'm still not quite comfortable wicking up the speed. Eventually I get to the shop and have a look at the Mustang vent. I don't think it will work. I think it will be all or nothing once wind hits the vanes of the vent. John also sent me a link to an e-Bay auction for a little hood scoop. I went ahead and bought one of them because that will probably be the best item for this job. Then again, I might go back to the soffit vents. I don't know. Well, I'm just about bored talking to y'all so I'm going to stop.

9/19/2011

2011-09-20T18:13:00.000-07:00

Well, that was a weekend. Friday evening I drove through a “Frog Strangler” down pour of rain to go to the shop for the trailer. I hooked up in a light drizzle and went back to the house. There I waited until John arrived in the morning. I had The Seven out and turned the right way round just as he showed up. We rolled it on and tied it down then headed to the shop. We stopped at Lowe’s for the fittings we’d need for this installation then went to O’Reilley’s for a wee little fuel pressure gauge. At the shop we rolled Lil' Wiggly out and The Seven in and got to work. John jacked up the ass end and we set it on stands. I removed the roll hoop and boot tray while he put together the nipples and such on the pump and pressure regulator. We scratched our heads for a bit as to where we would mount the regulator until I saw a pair of empty bolt holes on the back of the head. It looked like a good spot so we went with it. At the back of the car we unhooked the electrical hoses first and got them out of the way before pulling a fuel line to drain the tank. Yeah, I had just filled the damned thing before parking it last time so there was at least nine gallons in there. We got most of it into buckets and swapped out the pumps. We poured in one gallon and looked for leaks. We turned on the switch and looked for... “Shut it off! Shut it off! Shut it off!” No, it wasn't a leak. It was a geyser! We replaced the fuel line from the regulator to the fuel rail and tried again. Much better. Unfortunately, the pressure was over 15 psi. We turned the adjustment thingy in and it got worse. We turned it out and it got better... just not enough. We could get it down to, I think, ten psi but no lower. We shut it down and had a pow wow. It was decided that shortening the spring in the regulator SHOULD lower the pressure. We had a “spare” in the one I bought for Lil' Wiggly so we went for it. John clipped off a coil from the spring and we reinstalled it. He did a guesstimate setting of the knob and I hit the switch. Four psi! He’s good. We adjusted it for between 5 and 6 psi and looked for leaks again. T’was dry so we fired the engine up. It ran fine and the pressure held fast. We set the ass end back down and I went around the building with it. Everything seemed fine so we put the rest of the car back together. By now it is getting late so we close up to call it a day. It is decided that John would drive The Seven back to the house so I follow in Fifi. We get it in the garage and head out to look at that shop. About 1/3 of the way there, John pulls off to the side of the freeway. I hear a god-awful racket as he’s pulling to a stop. I hear him spin the starter to no avail and meet him at the front of the car as he’s raising the hood. He has me try the starter and it spins in a weird way. He comes to the door and says, “The flywheel bolts either sheared or came out.” He stayed with the car while I hauled ass get the truck and trailer. Adequate ass was hauled that it took just... was it just under or just over and hour? Anyhoo, about an hour later I had Fifi parked in front of the B-210. Now, I'm not sure how this happened, but we pushed the car up on the trailer in one stab and neither of us were breathing heavy afterward. No, it was not a downhill run onto the trailer. It was, in fact, a slight UPHILL run onto the trailer... in addition to the usual uphill of the ramps of course. Neither one of us could believe it. We tied it down and headed back to the shop. When we had dropped the trailer and car off, we headed for “lunch.” I use quotes because it is 1600 h by this time. We decide to stop in at the Ford dealer to look at Foci and Fiestae... just in case he decided to go ahead and bite the bullet instead of waiting until next spring for his new car. That “quick peek” turned into a four hour ordeal, the final results of which are still up in the air. Since it is not my place to say what went down, I'll leave it up to Spiderman to say what the final outcome is/was... if he feels like it. So, now it is 2000 h or so and John is getting the “Where are you?” phone calls from home. We blow off “lunch” and go our separate ways. And I think I'm going to save Sunday’s tale for tomorrow.

9/16/2011

2011-09-16T20:28:00.000-07:00

Well, my fuel pumps arrived the other day. I'm a bit worried that they say “high pressure” on them. Not like “fuel injection” high, but like “14 psi” high. They came with regulators and I'm hoping they will stem the flow down to the five to seven psi that carburetors like. We'll see. I suppose, worst case, I could run a return line to the tank and bleed off the excess pressure that way. I'm not going to sweat it right now though. We'll burn that bridge tomorrow when we install it on The Seven. So, the plan as it stands right now is that I'll go get the trailer tonight and John will meet me at the house in the morning. We'll load up The Seven and take it to the shop where we’ll replace the fuel pump. Hopefully that will fix that car and make it roadworthy again. I don't think there is an electrical issue... but I suppose there could be. Of course we’ll check that out as well, maybe even before replacing the pump. I don't know. Once The Seven is up and running, and I'm sure that is all we are going to accomplish tomorrow, we’ll caravan The Seven and Fifi back to my house. From there we’re going to look at a potential new shop location John has found. It is way more convenient for him from home and me from work, but just a little more convenient for me from home. It is at the intersection of 377 and Western Center meaning most of my drive there would be freeway. The current location has half, or more, of the drive on surface streets. It takes half an hour to get the 12 miles from my house to the shop. The new location would probably only take ten minutes off the trip, but it still would be more convenient. I do not relish the idea of moving, but for slightly more convenience and less in rent, I'll suck it up and do it. Oh yeah, the rent would be about $150.00 less than I'm paying now as well. That will be nice. OK, so that’s the plan for tomorrow. Hmm, what to say now? Well, with a new shop location potentially in the works, I don't really need the driveway poured around to the back patio at the house. I think I'd still like to look into it, just to know for sure what it would cost. I would like to be able to park more stuff there eventually. Of course that is assuming I plan to stay in that house forever. I really hate moving but that place is rather big for just me and a cat. I don't know if I could afford a mortgage along with the shop rent and car payment, but a smaller place, closer to work and the new shop if we get it, might behoove me. Aaaaaaaand it doesn't look good. I asked John how much they want for the house next door to his just now. He told me and I plugged that into a mortgage calculator. Yeah, I'm not sure I can swing...um, that amount on top of the other stuff. I may have a chat with the credit onion about it... no, I probably won't. I don't want to move and then there’s mom to consider. No, I think I'll stick it out where I am for the time being. Hmm, what now? Well, I've been struggling with the name I've given the Genesis Coupe. I'm just not happy with “Jenny.” 1) it is too derivative and B) that name holds less than stellar memories for me. I think I'm going to go a little more obscure... not too much if Juan thinks about it, but it will be for those who do not watch “Burn Notice.” Yes, I'm now thinking of calling the car “Bruce” after Bruce Campbell. No, of course I'm going to call the car “Fiona” since she drive a Genesis Coupe on the show. Besides, it is a much better “car name” than “Jenny” ever could hope to be. SLUT! WHORE! BITCH! Oh, sorry. Was that out loud?

9/14/2011

2011-09-14T17:23:00.001-07:00

So I've been playing the “How cool would XXX be?” in my head with regards to what “Toys” I'm going to keep. I think it is a foregone conclusion that The Seven is staying. I'm also pretty sure I'll keep one “Tin Top” Datsun, most likely the Chickenhawk for purely sentimental reasons, but both George and Lil' Wiggly are still in the running. What has been bugging me is the Honduh and the Spitfire. I've been thinking, “Well, one more ‘Toy’ can't hurt, can it?” because of them. I've been weighing the pros and cons of each and the Honduh’s lack of title is overpowering its coolness right now. As for the Spit, if I kept it John has expressed interest in Nadine. An A-14 powered Spitfire would be pretty awesome. And it wouldn't take up much more space than The Seven. Hell, I could probably get both of them in one side of the garage with just a little work. Hmm, I just checked my spreadsheet with all the car dimensions on it and it looks like I'm about 8” too long for those two fitting nose to tail in the garage. Then again, I just assumed the Spit was the same length as The Seven when making that list. I need to measure the actual length of the Spitfire this weekend. Of course I know I could get the Honduh and The Seven in one bay of the garage, but I think I'm going to go ahead and consider that car... well, not “dead to me” yet, but a “build it to sell” car. Yeah, that sounds like a reasonable plan. Yeah, I know, if we ever get it up and running I might not want to sell it. We'll see. Now, back to the merits of George, Lil' Wiggly, and the Chickenhawk. Like I said, the Chickenhawk has sentimentality as its main keeping point. It was my first Datsun 1200. It was a damned fast car. we’ve been through a lot together. But... It is kinda rough. It does need to have the windshield replaced. It’s kinda rusty. And it has sat for quite some time with no engine. I know it would sell better as a “runner” rather than a “roller” but I think I could watch it go off on a trailer easier than I could watch it drive off. Especially if I've done the work to make it roadworthy again. I think an inspection of that vehicle with a level head is in order. George is probably just as rough and rusty as the Chickenhawk but it has at least a “running” engine in it. All it needs is to be sorted out and put back on the road. Oh, and there’s the fact that I only paid $5.00 for it originally. Also, it is white. Now that isn't some sort of racist remark. Its “whiteness” would a) match Jenny and 2) make it less hot in the summer. I almost said, “Lil' Wiggly has ‘it is running and driving’ going for it,” but... no, not quite. Looking at it honestly, it really isn't any more roadworthy than George. Less so if Juan considers that the engine in George has actually RUN in George. Oh, another thing going for George, and the Chickenhawk for that matter, over Lil' Wiggly is that it is a 1200 rather than a B-210. Yes, I have always loved the B-210. In fact it was my favorite Datsun until I found out just how much lighter and more sprightly a 1200 was, then that model became my favorite. So in almost any situation where I had to choose one Datsun over another, I'd chose the 1200. Having said all of that, it looks like it is now “Poop, or get out of the Ganges” time between Lil' Wiggly and George... and the Chickenhawk too I guess. Yes, “Poop or get out of the Ganges” IS some sort of racist remark, sorry. So I guess, sitting here twenty some-odd miles away from all of them, I can honestly say that my current order of preference, logically speaking, is: George, Lil' Wiggly, then Chickenhawk. I never thought I'd say that the Chickenhawk is the lowest on my list of “keepers” but there it is. I think, however, looking at it with the rose-colored glasses of sentimentality on, the actual choice of which to keep is going to come down to George versus the Chickenhawk. It might hair-lip John, but I think Lil' Wiggly otter go away once I have it running again. Oh sure, I can be talked out of that. And if he tries, I'll listen to his arguments and weigh them with the seriousness they deserve. But for now I don't think Lil' Wiggly is a long-term keeper. Wow. You might not realize just how significant that “decision” is... but... wow. Of course I'm still cipherin’ and figgerin’ on all of it. Nothing is carved in stone until cars go away. So there.

9/13/2011

2011-09-13T17:11:00.000-07:00

Well, I still haven't heard from John as to his attitude towards continuing to play with old cars. [ Don't want to influence your decision, so I thought I'd let you twist a bit... - SM ] I do think I'm ready to pare down my fleet to one or two “Toys” along with the daily driver and tow rig. As I said yesterday, The Seven will remain with me, most likely, no matter what. That leaves one more potential spot for a “Toy.” Oh, I don't think I'm going to count Bobbi, the motorcycle, in this culling of the herd. It doesn't take up much room and, I mean c’mon, you gotta have a bike, right? Besides, it is really cool and I already have it and it runs and stuff. Someone suggested I make a tow dolly for the bike to drag it along behind The Seven for events where I might want to a) show both of them or 2) have a “pit bike” sort of thing. I poo-pooed the idea originally but now I'm giving it some thought. Not too serious a thought, but a thought nonetheless. The biggest hurdle I can think of right off the bat is: how the hell would I hook it up to The Seven? There is the spare tire mounting boss in the middle of the rear panel of the car. I wonder if the bosses for the bottom of the spare tire rack are there on the frame. They would have to be... but I sure as hell don’t remember them. Besides, the license plate is affixed with that spare tire bung. No, I'd have to come up with something else for the bike’s hook up. I suppose I could finger out a way to mount a receiver hitch to The Seven's frame. OK, this is beginning to sound like serious thought. I'm going to move along now. I've been playing around with the plans for a shop at the house all week. Psh, “all week”? It’s only Tuesday! Anyhoo, I've been playing with them and I think I could get by with just having a driveway poured to the back patio. I'd have to clear out the garage for all my tools and stuff, but the garage needs to be cleared out anyway. Of course what I'd like to have is a little 36’x20’ shop building, along with the drive around to the back. That is one of the plans I have drawn up by the way. That building would allow me to consider another “Toy” or two though. Hmm, I guess I really shouldn't be thinking about a building. I should just look into the cost of the driveway. Of course I could always build that deck dad always wanted and use it as a car port over this new driveway. Hmm... possibly... possibly. Of course anything built over the drive would add to the difficulty of backing the trailer to the patio. But it would give Jenny some protection from the elements. I just had a look and it appears as though I can park both Fifi and Jenny next to the house on the driveway I have designed. All I'd need is the deck/carport above it. Hmm, interesting. Shading the outside unit of the HVAC couldn't hurt its efficiency either. Interesting indeed. I need to cipher and figger on this some more. Perhaps John will be willing to help me change The Seven's fuel pump at the house and we can discuss the merits of all the plans. Of course changing the fuel pump will be easier at the shop. Yeah, I think what I'm going to suggest is the following. I'll go to the shop Friday evening and get the trailer. John can meet me at my house Saturday morning and we’ll load The Seven. We'll drag it to the shop where we’ll change the fuel pump, and maybe put one on Lil' Wiggly... time permitting. Hell, maybe he’ll have the hots to work on his 1200 too, I don't know. Anyhoo, once we have The Seven back in order, we’ll caravan back to my house. He can drive The Seven while I drive Fifi. Or, if he wants air conditioning, I'll drive The Seven. I'm easy. The point is, we’d drive both vehicles back to my house... that’s sort of what I was getting at. Of course if he has other thoughts as to what we otter be doing, I'm not going to force my plan on him. I guess when he reads this he’ll let me know what he thinks of the idea. The only “pressure” I'm going to put on this being the plan is to say that I need The Seven up and running by the 30^th for BNSF Family Day. Oh, that would be one of those “events” where I'd want to use the tow dolly to haul Bobbi behind The Seven. In fact, it was in reference to me saying, “I wonder how the hell I'm going to get my motorcycle and The Seven to Family Day,” that brought up the idea of a tow dolly. I'm still not sure how I'm going to get both of them here. I guess I'll burn that bridge when I come to it. Well, I don't know what else I want to say to y'all today so I'm going to just stop now.

9/12/2011

2011-09-12T16:19:00.000-07:00

I have no idea what I did Saturday. Oh wait, I remember going to the shop and “Swiss Cheesing” the air box of the Genesis. OK, yeah. Now it is all coming back to me. So, I go to the shop and since it hasn’t quite been 48 hours since the windows were tinted, I had to get out to enter the gate code. I drove to the back and parked. I... wait, this is stupid. I'm not going through a step by step. I took the air box out, drilled four 3” holes in it, reinstalled it, and left. I hooned back to the house listening for added intake honk. Meh, there might have been a little more, I'm not sure. Back at the house I'm told that we’re waiting for someone from the church to get through buying a car and we’re taking them to lunch. I sit down to wait. I continue to wait. At 1439 h mom calls to see how they are doing and we go meet them. We have barbecue at Spring Creek. I head out for another hoon. Gregg calls while I'm hooning and I head his way. He digs the car, as I was sure he would. After taking him for a ride I head back and stop at Cabela’s for an IWB holster for the PT-92. I buy one and head home. I test it in the waistband of my shorts and declare the PT a concealable weapon. I waste the rest of Saturday evening. Sunday I meet mom at church so we can go to lunch and then shop for a new water cooler. Our old one began leaking and lost about a gallon and a half over the course of Saturday. The two stores we checked did not have them so we gave up and I ordered one on line. I think I went for another hoon after a nap. Eventually it was time to go to the Japanese Old School car thing so I put on my driving shoes and rolled The Seven out. It fired right up and ran fine. I took off but only got about half a mile from the house before the fuel pump quit. I called mom and she came to get me. We took a tow strap and went back for The Seven. I turned it around in the street and got it rolling down the hill. It made it about one third of the way home on gravity. I tried to hook up the tow strap but apparently Nissan didn't see fit to put a tow/tie down hook on the back of the Altima. I started pushing it up the next hill. Fortunately the car only weighs 1,145 pounds so I didn't have much trouble with the actual pushing. It was the act of pushing it which almost killed me though. I'm not used to that much activity. I got it up to the top of the hill and hopped in while it was rolling. Yeah, I guess I wasn't quite to the top of the hill after all. I cranked the engine in first gear to get it moving again and began rolling toward the house. I had plenty of speed when I got to the house and rolled right up to the garage door. I sat in the car, panting like a over-excited Chihuahua, and waited for mom to open the door. When she did I pulled the car in and parked it. I went in and collapsed in my chair to cool down and get the blood pressure back to normal. After almost an hour I finally felt better. Another hour and I was normal again. So, I think this has cemented my resolve as far as the old car hobby is concerned. I'm going to keep The Seven of course, but in order to maintain it and enjoy it, I'm going to get rid of most, if not all, of the rest. I’m not ready right now to say for sure that I'm not keeping one “Tin Top” Datsun, but it is a possibility. I think the absolute maximum will be one “Tin Top” Datsun, the Honduh, and The Seven. Which “Tin Top” will I keep? I don't know. My knee-jerk reaction is the Chickenhawk of course. But George is closer to running. Lil' Wiggly could be a contender since it is next in line to finish. As for the LBCs, both Triumphs just need to go. Sorry Nadine, but I really do not have any interest in that TR-3. Perhaps John will convince me to go ahead and finish it, I don't know. The thing is almost dead to me. In fact, almost everything down there at the shop is almost dead to me. If it all went away, I don't think I'd lose too many night’s sleep. Of course, I haven’t heard John's take on the big Japanese Classic Car Show he attended out in The People’s Republic of Kalifornia. This last weekend either. He might have the hots to get back into this hobby full-force, dragging me along with him. We'll see.

9/7/2011

2011-09-08T12:36:00.000-07:00

My apologies to John for accusing him of being lax in his duties (tee hee, I said doodies) as far as steering me towards a Hyundai Genesis Coupe in 2008. Apparently, as he pointed out to me, Hyundai didn't introduce the Genesis Coupe until 2009 so he COULDN’T have steered me towards one when I was in the market in January of 2008. So, sorry about that. Anyhoo, I'm really digging having, what to me is, an abundance of power. Yesterday I was tooling along in the middle lane, doing about 65-70 with traffic when suddenly a wild “Slower Car” appeared in my lane. The left lane had a few miles per hour on me when I slowed behind this car, he was probably doing 60 or so, and I waited for a gap to the left. As it appeared I rolled onto the throttle, still in sixth gear mind you, and squirted into the gap at virtually the same speed as the car now in front of and behind me. I smiled. I rolled back over into the middle lane and let the lefties continue on with their day once I was past the slow car. “So what?” you are probably saying. Well, I haven’t had the torque to do that... hmm, probably since the Chickenhawk days. Come to think of it, I haven’t had a two-door daily driver since the Chickenhawk days either. I've been saddled with four-door, “under powered” cars since 1996! it is about time I took my balls back. Of course I'm not counting the two Fjord Rangers I had as they were pickup trucks, not cars. Sure, I used them as daily driver “cars,” but... your face is a two-door car. And shut up, it’s my blog. Also, I used quotes up there because, while the Subaru was no slouch in the power arena, it couldn't hold a candle to this car’s output. The Pimpmobile probably came close, but it weighed several hundred pounds more than Jenny and had a “Granny Tranny.” In fact, the automatic’s tendency to down shift when I tried just such a maneuver was the Pimpmobile’s downfall in my mind. Well, that and I discovered the Versa came with a with a six-speed manual. I do not regret my time spent in Versae. They were adequate cars, quite fun, powerful enough (although just barely I'm suddenly realizing), and until recently, somewhat unique. I see way too many of them on the road now for the “Hipster” in me to tolerate. No, the Versae were not mistakes. Well, perhaps buying Ms. Clio while not having a solid, dependable buyer for Matilda (my first Versa) was not the smartest thing I could have done. But I do not regret having the car. Mom asked me to list all the cars I've had as daily drivers in the past. I did. There was the 1973 Fjord Courier pickup I was provided in high school. My brother had named it the Hiccup. Then I bought the 1976 Mercury Capri which I called the Indy Car because it was ND, Neon Dick green. In 1985 I bought my first new car, an ‘85 Dodge Shelby Charger, Myrtle. Next I think would be the Tick, a 1985 Toyota Pickup. Then the Chickenhawk came along. That would be a 1973 Datsun 1200 with the 2.0 liter engine from a 1980 Datsun 510. Damn, that car was fast. In 1996 I bought a nameless blue, four-cylinder Fjord Ranger. In 1998 I bought a black, V6 Fjord Ranger, also nameless if I remember correctly. In 1999, during the rainy season, I got tired of the back window leaking on my neck and flooding the cockpit and traded it in. That brings us to the 1998 Subaru 2.5 GT called, uninspired enough, Scooby-Doo. When its air filter caught fire in the Red Hot and Blue parking lot, I began driving Maxine, a 1984(?) Nissan Maxima wagon. Then I got the wild hair up my butt and wanted to see how those new Chargers drove. I saw an all wheel drive Magnum on the lot and was hooked. Yeah, until I drove it with mom. The AWD system added another ton to the car and the V6 was really struggling. On the way home from that test drive, mom suggested I look at the Vanilla White, 2005 Magnum on the Honda used car lot by the house. I bought it and it became the Pimpmobile. Matilda was next in the summer of 2006. Then in December 2007 I got the hots for a two-door coupe and set my sights on a V6 Altima Coupe. As we were driving to buy it, John made his feeling clear that he didn't approve of the “Secretary Car” I was getting. I was a bit taken aback, and was convinced when he compared it to a Fjord Probe or Mitsubishi Eclipse. I told him, “Ok, if there is a black six speed Versa on the lot, I'll buy it instead.” That would be how I came to have Ms. Clio, or Darth Versa as it was called originally. And now I'm in Jenny, my 2012 Hyundai Genesis Coupe. So, how many is that? Hmm, I would have thought it to be more than thirteen. I guess I'm still thinking about the dozens of other cars which never really saw daily driver duty (tee hee, I said doody). Well, I've got to pee and there is a meeting coming up so I guess I'm done talking to y'all for today.

9/6/2011

2011-09-06T18:52:00.001-07:00

Wow! Jenny is one hell of a car. John, why didn't you steer me to one of these back in ‘08 when I was looking at the Altima Coupe? If you tried, and I “poo-pooed” the idea for some reason... well, shame on me. But you could have tried harder! No, I'm just kidding. So Monday I went for a hoon. I took off out I-20 towards... crap, I can never remember the name of that road. Well, it is the same little cutoff road going between I-20 and Aledo/Iona Road that I always take. If its name is that important, look it up your damn self. I took the exit from Loop 820 to I-20 at a brisk pace, probably 60 or 70 miles per hour, and it felt good. The little cutoff road didn't take as long as it usually did to traverse and was quite the fun little hoon. I got caught behind a tank truck on Aledo/Iona and we all got stuck at the railroad crossing. The truck turned off about halfway between the tracks and 1187 so I got to pick up some speed finally. On 1187 I hauled ass until I got stuck behind a Hardly. We both turned right to stay on 1187 when we got to the FM5 split by the high school but they turned right when I took off on the road to Anetta. I cruised that semi-twisty road and was pleased with the way Jenny handled. At the FM5 intersection in Anetta, I turned left and took off up the hill. Oh yeah, that is how I want a car to accelerate. Ms. Clio, and even The Seven, have a bit of trouble getting up to speed on that hill. Jenny? Not so much. She hauled ass right up to 70 or 80 before I reigned her in to a more legal speed. I took most of the twisty parts of FM5 in fifth gear. I'm sure I was a bit more tentative than I could have been, but I still think I did the road quicker than I ever did in Ms. Clio. I probably am not up to the Subaru’s pace on FM5, but this was my first crack at it. The only time I had an incident was in the really tight “S” curve by the water tower. Coming out of the second half, entering the straight away, the car would have gotten totally “Ass Out” had not the traction control taken over. It gave a short “WHOOOMP” of intake honk, and the rears broke loose. The ass started to the left and as I began steering into it, the power was “shut down” and it settled back into line. I'm sure I could have caught it, but it was nice to have the nanny for the time being... until I'm more settled into driving 300 horsepower through the rear wheels. I ran the rest of the road and then headed toward 377 on 1187. In Whiskey Flatts, I decided against going to the shop and headed towards the Motorsport Ranch instead. I didn't see any of Ray’s cars so I headed west on 171. I turned off at Bear Creek and took that semi-twisty back through Muir Road to the far end of FM5 again. I hooned that again with the intention of taking 1187 up to Boyd and then down to show the car off to Larry. I turned the opposite way at 1187 and went to the shop instead. I took the little cutoff I take which twists around by the lake after turning off of 377 again. When it came time to get back on 1187 I had the second traction control induced incident of the day. I began to accelerate onto 1187 as I normally would but apparently Ms. Clio or Seven throttle application is too much for that intersection with the aforementioned 300 horsepower. The rears broke loose and tried to do a big smoky burnout... until traction control took over. I need to re-learn how to take off quickly I guess. Once the tires were happy with the grip, she took off and flew up to speed. I got to the shop and immediately removed the “Allen Samuels” badge from the trunk. I spend half an hour or so removing the residue from the double sticky tape they applied it with then stood back to see how much better her ass looked. “Hmm,” thought I, “It seems to be lacking in Hello Kitty.” I went in to see what I had by way of Hello Kitty decals. I decided on one of the black faces rather than one of the AK-47 Hello Kitties. I sized up the location and saw that if I lined up the backer paper with the window defroster lines the face would sit in a nice location. I applied a decal to the passenger side in this manner. I like it. Then I decided that a Badtz Maru would look good on the opposite side. I did the same alignment process and applied the decal. When I was done, I realized Badtz Maru would probably look better on the passenger side due to (tee hee, I said doo doo) the angle of his feet and the angle of the glass. I didn't change them though as I'm going to wait for John's opinion. Besides, he’ll probably freak out and say I applied them wrong and want to re-do them himself. What ever. When I was happy with all I was going to do at the shop, I closed up and left. I took a fairly straight run back to the house and declared the hoon a success. This morning the drive to work was uneventful and I got the parking spot at the very edge of the upper deck where I used to park the two Versae when they were new. I'll give it a year before I'm parking next to people down in the shade. We'll see. Well, it is 1440 h and I'm beginning to have a little trouble with my eyes. Yeah, I just can't see me staying until 1700 h today.

9/5/2011

2011-09-05T11:40:00.000-07:00

OK, remember how I was thinking about putting a header on Ms. Clio? I talked to Mr. Wet Blanket, AKA John, who totally rained on my parade by pointing out that the header deletes a catalytic converter and that I'd never be able to sell that car because of it. Well, I practiced him! Yesterday I bought a Genesis Coupe! Nanny nanny boo boo! Here’s the story. Saturday, mom and I took a load of stuff to Granbury to the Boy’s and Girl’s Club Resale Store figuring we’d have lunch at Niester’s afterward. Well, we were about an hour early for lunch so I stopped in at the Hyundai dealer to see if they had any Genesis Coupes. They did. All but one were automatics though. Oh but what a car the manual transmission car was! It was a 2.0t R-spec in black. It was so sinister and awesome that I was pretty sure I was going to buy it. All I had to do was convince mom. Shut up! Yes, I'm 45 years old. Yes, I make my own money and pay my own bills... for the most part. She does provide me with food and shelter so I gotta listen to her. Get over it. Anyhoo, I did not drive the car. I knew that would just be the end of it. I had the out of saying, “Mom won't let me buy it,” which I totally expected. So, she and I go to lunch and then head back home. I immediately go to the credit onion to get a letter of credit saying I could buy the car. When the payments came back at $350.00 a month, I thought they were a bit steep. John and mom on the other hand were shocked I could get so low a payment. Hmm. So, before heading out to Granbury to see what they would give me for Ms. Clio, I talked to John. He called Allen Samuels Hyundai across town to see what they had in stock. They had one R-spec six-speed... in white! Yes, the black car was terribly sexy. Yes, I would have looked awesome in it. But I have learned from Ms. Clio that they never look clean and they are hot as hell when parked in the sun all day. No, it was time to get back into a white car. It was decided that John and I would stop by and look at it on our way to Jeff’s birthday party in Grapevine. We stopped and found that the only six-speed car on the lot was an R-spec V6. I'd always thought I wanted the V6 more than the turbo four but had allowed myself to be talked into the hype of the four being better for “racing.” I re-convinced myself that the six was what I wanted. John pointed out later that this car was what I should have been shopping for back in 2008 when I was looking at the Altima Coupe as it has the V6 and manual transmission, but is rear wheel drive. We went to the party and stopped to look at it again on the way home. I decided I'd come talk to them on Sunday. See, car dealers have a choice in Texas as to whether they will be open Saturday or Sunday. Allen Samuels chose Sunday. Sunday I picked up John and we went to talk to them. We found a sales person, Karon Key was her name, and began the process. She found the keys to the car and had Ms. Clio appraised. I drove the Genesis and was hooked. No, I was hooked before the test drive, I'll admit it. I was willing to walk away if they wouldn't give me enough for Ms. Clio to get the drive off price down to the credit onion’s letter of credit though. And I was still prepared to do that. They came back with an offer. It was $2,300.00 more than I “had to spend” as it were. I said, “Well, here’s the thing. I don't need to buy it as much as y'all need to sell it. I've been approved for $20,000.00 from EECU. Make this number,” pointing at the bottom line, “$20,000.00 and we’re on.” She went back to the manger who “gave me” another $1,005.00 for Ms. Clio getting that “bottom line” to $21,995.00 or so. It almost worked. I almost saw $21,000.00 and thought, “Meh, close enough.” Then the $995.00 flashed in my mind and I thought, “Whoa! That’s another grand!” I sent her back to see if they would meet me half way at $21k even. She came back with $21,345.00 or something. John and I went outside. He pointed out that it was halfway between my “definite yes” number and my “definite no” number. He then asked if I was going to let $1,300.00 queer the deal. We went back in and I signed. After a few more hours, it seemed like, we got through with all the paperwork and were on our way. I felt a little guilty and bid Ms. Clio a farewell as I got my glasses from the overhead console for the last time. I'm not sure how long it will be before she’s dead to me. Probably the first time I drive Jenny, that’s the Genesis Coupe’s name for the time being, on Highway 5 in Aledo. In fact, since it is a holiday, I think I'll go do that now. Excelsior!