jeffoverip.com

In my last post I mentioned the computer that got stolen in June of 2006. Well, I have a rather large MP3 collection. I had gone through about half of it on that box, getting everything sorted and ID3 tagged. It was frankly a massive undertaking. Here I am almost two years later and I still haven’t picked that project up again. So, with the new box, I think it’s time.

I’m going to do it differently this time though. I’m re-ripping all my CDs, getting things organized from the get-go. I’ll add the music I’ve gotten from Amazon as I go, and pull over stuff from my existing collection as the need arises. I won’t be deleting anything.

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I want to put a suspension on the Protege. I’m thinking Racing Beat springs from the Protege MP3 and Tokico Illumina struts. This might sound odd, but now that the Protege has been aligned I’m noticing body lean in corners.

I finally got the summer tires put back on the Protege. Holy instability, Batman. Car was squirrely. I had to take it in for its yearly inspection anyway, so I had them do an alignment too. Dropped it off this morning, picked it up after work. Goodness, what a difference. They gave me the measurement sheet and I’m not surprised the car felt the way it did before. And, one nice touch, they aligned the car with 200lbs in the driver’s seat to simulate being loaded with just a driver. Sweet.

I built myself a new computer. The last time I built a computer for my daily use was right at four years ago. That box got stolen during our trip to Seattle in June of 2006, so I pressed another box into service. Not a bad box - 2.4Ghz P4, 2Gb RAM, two 250Gb SATA150 drives, DVD burner - but it was initially going to be a server for the home tech support business I was thinking of starting. It was never meant to be my daily machine. So, new box time. I’m pleased with this one - Abit IP35 Pro, Intel E8400, 2Gb RAM, one 250Gb SATA300 drive, DVD burner, 256mb XFX 8600GT video card. I intend this one to be a four-year box as well, though I’ll be upgrading the hard drives as time goes by.

Three things I have definitely had enough of this week, in no particular order: Attitude-driven 18yo boys, cigarette smoke, and large American cars with handling best described as theoretical (my rented 2008 Impala and my mother’s 1991 Cadillac Seville).

I am in the Seattle area for ten days to see my mom and some friends. I lived here for nine and a half years, from May 1995 to November 2004, and it’s good to just be here among the mountains and water again. The part of North Carolina I live in is flat with little water. I don’t know that I’ll ever get used to it. But I digress.

I reserved a compact car from Avis. I showed up at the Avis office yesterday to pick it up and was given a free “upgrade.” Call me twisted, but I don’t consider this Impala to be an upgrade from the Aveo I was expecting. I’m a small car guy, and this Impala is huge.

I’ll get the good points out of the way: XM satellite radio, near-perfect HVAC controls, a real-time fuel economy readout, and a V6 with a seamless three-cylinder mode. Highway fuel economy is better than I expected.

The bad points: Everything else. The ride is floaty enough to eliminate confidence in turns. The driver’s seat is hard - you sit on it instead of in it. The headlight control makes no damned sense whatsoever. You have to hold the “accel” button on the cruise control down for a solid five seconds before the car does anything. The car is also very heavy, making the 233hp engine seem barely adequate.

It wouldn’t be a bad road trip vehicle, but I would never own one of these as a daily driver.

Why do new jeans have to look like they’re either eight years old, been worn for three days straight by a farmer, made from an old canvas tarp, or some combination of the three?

In a small midwestern conservative town, there wasn’t a place to get a drink for miles around, so a local entrepreneur saw an opportunity: He started to build a tavern.

Liking a “dry” town, the local church started a campaign to block the bar from opening with petitions and prayers. The businessman was polite when congregants came to protest, but work continued on the tavern.

But the night before the grand opening, a lightning strike hit the bar and it burned to the ground.

The church folks were rather smug in their piousness after that — until the bar owner sued the church on the grounds that the church was ultimately responsible for the destruction of his building, either through direct or indirect actions or means.

The church vehemently denied all responsibility or any connection to the building’s demise in its reply to the court.

At the first hearing, the judge held up the paperwork and took in the lawyers and both sides of the lawsuit.

“I don’t know how I’m going to decide this,” the judge said, “but as it appears from the paperwork, we have a bar owner that believes in the power of prayer, and an entire church congregation that doesn’t.”

My buddy Chuck takes delivery of some UPS batteries.

A distinguished young woman on a flight from Switzerland asked the priest beside her, “Father, may I ask a favor?”

“Of course. What may I do for you?”

“Well, I bought an expensive woman’s electronic hair dryer for my mother’s birthday that is unopened and well over the Customs limits, and I’m afraid they’ll confiscate it. Is there any way you could carry it through Customs for me? Under your robes perhaps?”

“I be glad to help you, dear, but I must warn you: I will not lie.”

She nodded and accepted the risk. “With your honest face, Father, no one will question you.”

When they got to Customs, she let the priest go ahead of her.

The official asked, “Father, do you have anything to declare?”

“From the top of my head down to my waist, I have nothing to declare.”

The official thought this answer was rather strange, so he asked, “And what do you have to declare from your waist to the floor?”

“I have a marvelous instrument designed to be used on a woman, but which is, to date, unused.”

It took a moment for the customs man to absorb the statement, but once he did he had a hard time keeping a straight face as he called out, “Next!”

Linkage.

Makes me wish there was something like this available for the Chevy HHR.

I ordered a pair of vehicle ramps from Amazon. Note the word pair. There is clearly a pair in the picture on their website and it clearly says, “Sold as a pair” in the product description.

What did I receive today? One single ramp. The right model at least, but there is one ramp where there should be two. I know they only shipped one package, and the cardboard wrapper most certainly will not fit around two ramps, so I know that one didn’t get left in the UPS truck or something.

I called Amazon customer service. The hold time was impressive at less than a minute. I explained the problem to a very polite man in India. He asked me if I’d like to return the item for a refund, or if I’d like to return the item and still receive the item I ordered. I said, “Well, if you could just send me one more ramp, that would solve the problem nicely.”

His response? “I’m sorry sir, I cannot do that. These are only sold in pairs.”

I have a ScanGauge II in my Protege. Yesterday I switched one of the gauge readouts to display gallons per hour. There is an obvious inverse correlation between GPH and MPG. I was thinking about this last night when an idea sprang to life.

Take a small car, say something the size of a Fit, and give it a two-mode drive by wire throttle. Normal mode would be just that. But there would also be an Economy mode where the GPH is never allowed to exceed, say, 1.5 GPH. This would electronically enforce good fuel economy, but of course at the expense of acceleration.

What do you think?

A little snippet of irony spotted on the internets: Writer’s need websites.

We have a ton of books in the house, but so far we’ve only built one large bookcase. We decided today to build another. We went to Lowe’s and grabbed six 1×6x6 pieces of pine. The quality of the wood is a bit better than I’ve seen at Lowe’s in recent months. This bookcase is going to be six feet tall and three feet wall, with the shelves sized for paperback books. I’ll post a pic when it’s done.

I have a Delta sliding compound miter saw, but I’ve barely used it in the 15 months we’ve lived in this house. One reason for that is that I had to disassemble it to fit in the back of the Ranger when we drove back from Seattle in June of ‘06. The fence had to come off, and I had no way of squaring it back up. Well, that problem has been remedied. I bought a combination square a couple of weeks ago and used it to square up the fence. Took all of 90 seconds. I should have done that last summer.

The first thing I did with my once-again accurate saw was to make a set of legs for the futon we have in the guest room. My mom visited recently and the futon needed to be higher off the floor so she could get in and out easily. I bought some 1×4 pine, cut 12 pieces 15″ long, screwed pairs of them together along a long edge to form an angle, then attached them to the bottom of the futon frame. This made the bed the perfect height. And, as an added and unexpected bonus, the miter saw fits perfectly under the futon when not in use. The saw previously lived in the living room on top of the heavy wire rack shelf we use as an entertainment center. (I don’t have a garage/shop, so I have to make do with what I have, don’tcha know?)

We’re replacing most of 160 computers this year. The first batch of 25 arrived last Friday. Monday was spent imaging the first machine so we could roll out the rest. I installed six Tuesday and another seven today.

This is just the front office. We still have to do the pathologist admins, client services people, transcriptionists, lab PCs, and then finally the hospital PCs. It’s a good thing I enjoy installing new PCs.

You just can’t get away from idiots that don’t know the difference between there/they’re and you’re/your. It’s even showing up in ads. Here’s a snippet of a Tire Rack ad from the latest issue of Winding Road:

At least they got ‘their’ right.

I came across this Toyota 4×4 with a Flip-Pac shell over a year ago. I had reason to revisit it because of a post on Winding Road. That Jeep is cool, but damn - six figures?

Here’s an engine swap idea: An older Toyota 4×4 with GM’s 6.5 turbodiesel and an NV4500 tranny.

Well, new to me anyway. A 2000 Mazda Protege ES. Black, 1.8, 5sp, alloys, loaded. I’m bringing it home Monday.

The place I’ve been contracting at since January made me an offer last week. I accepted. I sign the paperwork tomorrow. Finding a non-contract hands-on tech support position has been a goal of mine since February of 2000. It still hasn’t completely sunk in that this goal is now behind me.

To celebrate, I did some shopping Saturday. Sears was having a really good sale on a number of things. I snagged a new air compressor along with a new pair of shoes and some shirts for work. Next weekend is my birthday, so my gir;friend snagged me some jackstands for an early birthday present.

We’re having a party next Sunday for my birthday. My best friend of 25 years is flying in from New Jersey on Friday. I’m looking forward to him being here for the weekend.

We have at least one of these running around Greensboro. Makes me wonder if I can buy one.

The Metro got new brake pads over the weekend. While I was doing that, I noticed grease sprayed in a very nice line around the driver’s side wheel well. Yep, the outer CV joint boot is split. Lovely. I guess I get to replace a halfshaft soon. Might as well do new brake rotors while I’m at it, along with the passenger side halfshaft. If I’m going to go to all that trouble, I might as well yank the tranny to replace the original 138k mile clutch. If I’m going to yank the tranny, I should go ahead and drop in a flywheel and clutch from a 1.3 to take advantage of the extra clutch surface area. Would be handy for the planned turbocharging. Also if I’m going to yank the tranny, I might as well see if I can acquire a rebuilt shortblock to go with the rebuilt cylinder head I’m going to buy. If I have to free the strut from the ball joint, I might as well go ahead and yank the strut to replace the cartridge. While I’m doing that, I should go ahead and install my 1/2-coil-cut springs to get the drop I want.

Oy.

Build it, and offer the 2.8 CRD. You’ll have avid off-roaders lining up around the block.

I first mentioned this book here. I got a copy from the library and read it over last week. Mr Iacocca pulls no punches, letting the establishment have it right between the eyes on a number of issues. The trade deficit, health care costs, the merger between Daimler-Benz and Chrysler, unions, what it will take to get American auto manufacturing back on top, and many other things. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Jeff recommends.

redvalkyrie over at the GRM forums is building up a 1982 Toyota Starlet. He’s doing a great job, even powder coating a lot of components at home. I dig the Supra wheels.

I’d like the ability to search for wheels based on size, bolt circle, offset or backspacing, and center hole diameter rather than by “what fits your car”. Is there such a thing online anywhere?