Restless
I’m really itching for a project of some sort. I have some ideas, but they all would cost a fair amount of money that we don’t really have to spend. So I’m trying to think of what I can create using pretty much stuff I already have.
One medium that comes to mind is video. I’ve got a cheap HD camera I borrowed from work and I’ve got all the video/audio editing software already. But I’m completely coming up empty when it comes to content. I really enjoy watching Classic Game Room and would love to do something like that, but I don’t really want to just emulate something someone else has done already. Though heavens knows I have enough old games to get started.
Another topic I thought of was using video to document a project build, though that puts me back into the lack of funds category.
A long term goal of mine is to get all of my vintage systems off the HDTV in the den to a more period correct setup. Kinda like a dream setup from 1995. Haha! I want to make them all easy to pick up and play without having unplug wires and power adapters to get the system you want working. Just select the system on a switcher, turn on and play. I think I can knock that out fairly cheap, but I’m going to have to take advantage of Garage Sale season which I plan on hitting the circuit hard this year!
For now I’ll just keep the gears turning. When I break through, hopefully it’s something I can go full blast into. Or maybe I’ll discover something completely new and fall in love. Who knows.
Status Update
What a windy good for nothing day. You know those pictures NASA sends out of the Martian landscape they get from the rovers up there? Desolate, windblown, frigid… yeah, that’s today here in Great Bend. I opted out of walking to work today. Take away my street cred if you must, but I just wasn’t feeling it.
Andrea and I have been talking about whether or not to get our free membership to the gym going again. I’d hate to get it and not use it because it costs the station money whether we use it or not once we sign up for it. I know it’d be a good thing, but that place just closes too early. If you’re not wrapping up your workout by 8:30 then you’re liable to get locked in. And heading down anytime before 7:00pm is just madness. I know I’d be good for us though.
Everything at work is really starting to come together. It’s hard to believe the hell we were going though back in September with the whole system change. There’s another radio station here in town that has been stuck on the wrong satellite all day. Been giving Charlotte traffic reports all day. Nice to know that we’re not the only place in the world that’s had a rough time.
Other than that, just plugging along. I’m so darn proud of myself. I’ve got almost all of my Christmas shopping done already. Between the radio auction, and Black Friday deals online, I’ve knocked out about 90% of the Christmas list. It’s a big stress reliever actually. The money is spent already, so that’s behind us, and I don’t have to fret about what I’m going to bring as gifts for that trip to someone’s house we’re making THE NEXT DAY. I know nobody’s suprised, but there’s been several years I’ve been wandering Wal-Mart at 8PM Christmas Eve hunting with all my might to find a somewhat reasonable gift. This year… a breeze!
So keep on keepin’ on. And I’ll try to do the same on my end!
Blazer Update
Well, I’ve gotten to the point where I can’t progress any further on the Blazer without spending some money. Now that the weather is nice and Andrea and I have been talking about camping a lot this summer, we decided that we need to get it running ASAP. Especially since we’re already paying for insurance on it (which isn’t much, but still).
So I finally think I’ve got the fuel pump wiring straightened out and working like it’s supposed to. I decided to tear into the engine and inspect the fuel injector and fuel lines for any leaks and see if anything under the intake could be causing problems.
Upper intake manifold removed. You can see the injector in the middle and the fuel lines on the right. Do you notice anything odd? Look closely...
WTF!? A HOSE CLAMP to stop a leak? Just when I thought it couldn't get more rednecked!
I was amazed. To think that someone would go through all the trouble to remove the upper intake manifold and put it all back together and not spend the $50 on the new lines to just fix it. You can see the bright silver finish from leaking gas washing the wall clean and a puddle of gas and gunk down by the bolt at the bottom. ”Well there’s your problem!”
So with new parts in hand we set out the replace the leaky fuel lines and the injector.
Old injector vs. New one. Pricey little bastard ($270). The old one's lines were so brittle they stayed in the position they were installed.
Yup... it's old.
Yup... it's new.
These are the nozzles that spray the fuel. Not the best technology today, but it works.
Old fuel line from inside the intake. This is the one that had small cracks leaking fuel inside the engine.
Those fuel lines were the hardest part of the job. They were obviously installed in the truck before the engine was put in at the factory. There wasn’t a whole lot of room and ended up having to get some smaller tools to get the job done. But after a bit of swearing, we got ‘em out.
Ready to install!
With all the stuff out of there, cleaned all the gunk out of the intake. Didn't worry about making it spotless... not like anyone is going to see it.
My favorite part. Looking at all the new stuff perfectly in place.
Andrea got her hands (and face apparently) dirty with this job too! I love having a wife that's interested in this stuff!
As we were putting everything back together it started getting dark.
Before I tried to start it up, I told Andrea that I was nervous. That either it was going to do the same thing it was doing before, or it wasn’t going to start at all. Turn the key…. and it cranks over but wouldn’t start. I could get it running with some starting fluid, but it dies once all the fluid is burned up. It’s just not getting any fuel.
So I’m thinking we’re gonna need a fuel pump too. I don’t regret spending the money on these parts as the both were shot, but it sure would have been nice if that were it. Future updates to come. I’m definitely in too deep now to turn away.
Whew, busy!
Man alive!
Ever since our radio auction at work I feel like I’ve been playing constant catch-up. That was several weeks ago yet, and still I find myself scrambling to fit everything done I need to do into a short day. Now with a short week I’m trying to squeeze as much stuff in as I can. I need to be able to let a few things slide and deal with the recovery when I get back… but for some reason I keep thinking I can do enough not to be behind when I return. Yeah right!
So I’ve been sacrificing some time on the net to get some other things accomplished around the house. Got the valve cover gasket changed out on Andrea’s car this past weekend which seems to be holding well. Got my old cracked tail light lens swapped out on the Toro. Did a bunch of dishes and laundry the past few days. So I’ve been productive, which when you’re busy I guess that’s all you can ask for!
My Funk
Well I get into these little funks every now and then. Where I just feel very passive. Usually when I get in these ruts I find myself doing a lot of things that don’t involve much input on my part. I haven’t even been much into gaming lately. I’d rather do something that I can just absorb and not have to push something forward, whether it’s a character, thought, a project, a goal or what not.
I’ve actually spent a decent amount of time just looking up random topics on wikipedia just to soak up a quick general understanding of things I’ve never really put much thought into before. Make myself a little more well rounded, if you will. Sure you can’t trust wiki for a lot of details, but they usually get the big picture of a topic pretty well.
I’ve been watching a lot of Big Bang Theory catching up on Season 1 & 2, and just discovered that Quantum Leap is on Hulu now! Man I LOVED that show. Can’t believe that it is 20 years old!
I haven’t even made a post on any of my regular message boards for a couple weeks, and I’ve been on my messenger almost as scarcely. It’s weird to not feel like doing things I know I like to do.
I think part of it is I’m just not passionate about anything right now. As far back as I can remember, whatever it is I’ve been interested in at the time, I’ve been fanatical about it. Whether it was Mario Kart, the Toronado, building computers, the old radios, or whatever. Not to say I’m not interested in those things anymore, I’m just not passionate about much of anything right now.
I think the best thing to do is to just ride it out and see where I end up. I know I’m not going to feel lethargic forever. I just need some kind of spark. But for now I apologize for being somewhat of a hermit lately. I’m sure SOMETHING interesting will happen.
What to do with the Blazer?
Worst case scenario should I go fuggin nuts.
Damn. I missed a day of posting. Oh well. I’m back and beating my average. =)
So the Blazer has been for sale for a few days now. Gotten at least a call or two a day on it. I don’t want to turn this into a complain-fest. But I REALLY hate selling stuff. Half the people that have came and looked at it so far act shocked that it has issues. And the other half have been, “TOTALLY AWESOME“, then never hear from them again. Okay. I get it. I mean, I’m the same way. Always looking for the deal of the year. I can’t hold it against anybody.
So the reality is what do I do with this machine. I’ve been driving it to work this week and it hasn’t had any problem getting me the three blocks back and forth. But I’ll be honest. If I want to go across town, I take the Toronado. Ha ha! If I could figure out the bogging down thing, I wouldn’t hesitate to keep it. But before I can get that far… I’m going to have to throw some money at it. So I’ve been tossing it around in my head and can’t really decide what I want to do.
So here’s some options, regardless of your automotive knowledge what do you think makes the most sense. Feel free to offer other options than the ones listed. I am choosing to list them from “cheapest” to “fully financially committed”.
1) Keep it for sale at $800 until it sells.
2) Keep it for sale, but lower the price until I at least get what I paid for it.
3) Keep it for sale, but keep trying to fix it in the meantime.
4) Not for sale. Invest in the proper tools to figure out what’s wrong. Possibly (but rarely) ever use tools again.
5) Not for sale. Start replacing parts that might be bad (could be cheap, or end up being VERY expensive)
6) Not for sale. Take it to a shop and have them find out what’s wrong and then try to fix it myself.
7) Not for sale. Take it to a shop and tell them to fix it.
So there ya go. I suppose this is a decision I should have made BEFORE I bought the thing, hehe, but I’m interested to see what folks think. Now, I’m looking for candid opinions here. I welcome those who would tell me how crazy I am for wanting to keep it, or those who think it has tons of potential. It’d take a chunk of change, but hell I could drop a Chevy 350 in there if I really wanted to. And that would solve my engine problems for SURE.
It moves… but not quite fixed.
Its new home.
Well, Biebs and I may have killed a few brain cells in the process from all the fumes… but we managed to drop the gas tank and rewire the fuel pump CORRECTLY. Note to anyone who’s looking to attempt any gas tank removals on these vehicles. Removing the bumper makes the job 100x easier!
So once we got the tank down and could get a good look at the wiring it was clear there was some real Frankenstein stuff going on. I pulled the tape off one of the connections and the wires were literally just connected by a thread. Hmm… that can’t carry much juice I wouldn’t think.
I hate wiring.
When the previous owner (whom I’ll refer to from here on as “Captain Genius”) put the new fuel pump in, he decided that there’s no need for these fancy schmancy “connectors”. So he just spliced into the existing wiring. This adequate, but you gotta at least give it a good college try. Some of this wiring was so weird that I don’t even know what a person was thinking. There was wiring run underneath the weather stripping for the tail gate, which basically kinked it around a sharp piece of metal. And the funny part is that there was an access hole drilled under the carpet like six inches away from where they tucked the wires. And some of the wire was spliced two or three different times within a yard of each other! It was ugly.
It's not that hard.
So we got it put back together and fired it up tonight. It runs a lot better, but there’s still some gremlins in this thing. It still sputters when you really get on the gas, but it’s much more driveable now than it was. It will get up and go if you were driving normally, but if you wanted to mash on it and pass somebody, good luck. I still think it’s something electrical, so a few more things to try before I decided it’s worth it to get tags and insurance! haha!
Trying to adjust.
It goes without saying that there’s been a lot of change in my life lately. And I wouldn’t change anything about it. Married life is great, the job is great, all is well. If anything, I’m just having a little difficulty adjusting to my schedule.
I’ve always had trouble getting up in the morning, but lately it seems like everything is rushed in the mornings. A lot of that has to do with I’ve gone from going in at 11:00 at my old job, to going in at 9:00 here. So I get up at the same time I used to, but have a lot less time in the mornings. I’m considering getting up a couple hours earlier everyday, but that puts me at less than 6 hours of sleep, and I’m not sure how my body will handle that in the long term, and I don’t really want to go to bed any EARLIER than I do now!
How much sleep does everybody get at night? I’m getting about 7 hours a night right now, and feel like I’m sleeping too much of the day away. Does anybody get less than 6 hours and wish they could get more? Everybody’s going to be different, of course. I just don’t want to waste anymore time snoozing away time I’ll never get back!
Strike One
Got my rejection letter from the FSA yesterday. Apparently the interview DID go better for someone else, ha ha!
Still kind of excited had a good phone interview the other day for a tech job down around Wichita. Gotta harass ‘em until I get a live interview. It’d be right up my alley and quite a bit more money, so I’m hopeful for that.
Also have a phone interview with a radio station in Great Bend tomorrow at 9:00 am. Don’t really want to just make a side move, but I am getting desparate to get out of here!
I’m also exploring to options of finding a better job in the Manhattan area. Andrea got a new job here Saturday that pays a bit better and has better benefits. We’ll just look at all the opportunity we have an try to pick the best.
Keep prayin’!
Stressin’
I don’t usually worry about much…but I’ve been getting kinda stressed out lately. Seems like there’s a lot to do, not a lot of time, and a whole bunch of uncertianty. Between the wedding plans, looking for a job, and wondering where we’re gonna be living in 2 1/2 months, it’s wearin’ on me.
I keep sayin’ whatever happens will happen. Trying to have faith that God will open the doors. I at least take solace in the fact that by July 1st all those questions will be answered. Spare a few prayers if ya got ‘em.
I guess I don’t have enough compassion.
What’s up with everybody going nuts around the Olympic Torch? So far London had 25 folks arrested, and in Paris they actually had to put out the torch because people are going nuts about the Olympics being in China this year.
From the little (very little) I’ve read about this it has something to do with monks, yaks, Tibet, and China being a-holes. But I’ll be honest, when it boils down to it. I really don’t care. I don’t care enough to read up on the situation, and I certianly don’t care enough to show up at the nearest torch relay and get belligerent. I just find it odd with all the injustice in the world, this sets people off.
First of all, what is this about? Is it about the Olympics? Or is it about Tibet? I’m inclined to think it’s about Tibet, and the torch run thing is just a convenient photo op. I mean, who really cares about the Olympics anyway? It’s just one of those things that gets plastered all over the news and TV so you feel like you have to be interested.
But then again, who really cares about Tibet? Who sits around and says, “That torch is coming through here headed for China, I’m going to stop it! That’ll sure help out those Tibetans!“
So China’s gonna go, “OH HEY, see all those violent people being violent in peaceful events? They’re right, we’re totally handling this the wrong way. GG Tibet.” When’s the last time China gave two —-s about what anybody else thought?
There’s a fine line, I think, between compassion and contempt. Maybe I really don’t care about the plight of the Tibetan people. Or maybe I think me going out and being a d-bag isn’t going to do any good.
What happened to Stuart Smalley?
I was joking with a friend at work yesterday about how she needs to work on her self esteem and that she should watch some Stuart Smalley. You know the motivational speaker guy from SNL back in the day? Well I scowered to the best of my ability. And it looks as if there isn’t a SINGLE “Daily Affirmations with Stuart Smalley” clip on the internet ANYWHERE. I was just shocked that my searches turned up nothing. I know that it’s not the most popular Saturday Night Live character, but you’d think it’d be popular enough to warrant at least one clip buried somewhere on the ‘net.
The question is what’s up? It’s all a little mysterious isn’t it? In the several searches I did. I did uncover tidbits of what might be going on.
The Stewart Smalley character was played by Al Franken back in the day, right? Well now Al’s running for the US Senate and is known for being quite liberal. And apparently Bill O’Reilly has gone to referring to Al Franken as “Stuart Smalley” in his broadcasts in effort to be clever as conservative talk show hosts do. So my logic tells me that either Al Franken’s campaign cronies or an independent group of Al Franken supporters has been scowering the internet to get all the clips removed for whatever reason (other than that pesky copywright reason).
It was just all so weird I had to post about it.
Laugh Out Loud!
Ha ha! “Proof” that all those studies that tell us what’s good for us and what’s going to kill us are B.S. But if they’re B.S. then this one is B.S. too! GAAHH! It’s a paradox!
Time for a test run.
No wisdom, no rant, no enlightened thought…I am just seeing if I do this right. Oh wait, I do have a question. How do I know who makes a post? I don’t see any names. Is that a silly question?
Educate me, please…
You all will surely be able to tell me what this is about…
I was buying dvds last night and picked up a package marked “DVD-R” and this guy standing there said, “You don’t want ‘DVD-R’. You want ‘DVD+R’.” Huh? Is there a difference? I got the ones the guy said to get. Am I gullible? Was he telling the truth?
Twinkle, twinkle, little planet?
Someone step outside at nightfall, gaze up to the SW and let me know what that planet is…or is it a planet? We are guessing Venus…. And if you have a neato site that keeps tabs on what is out when, where and so on, then share up!
an article i read
An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State
An Objectivist Review
by Robert Tracinski | The Intellectual Activist
September 2, 2005
It has taken four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can’t blame them, because it has also taken me four long days to figure out what is going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a natural disaster.
If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city’s infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.
Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists–myself included–did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.
But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.
The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong.
The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over the past four days. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.
The man-made disaster is the welfare state.
For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave in an emergency–indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what we expect from a Third World country.
When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care of us. I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous response of New Yorkers to September 11).
So what explains the chaos in New Orleans?
To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a description from a Washington Times story:
“Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on.
“The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire….
“Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders.
“‘These troops are…under my orders to restore order in the streets,’ she said. ‘They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will.’ “
The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows National Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests, riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad.
What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to drive away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Super Dome?
Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help them?
My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage last night on Fox News Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. “The projects,” as they were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since, mercifully, been demolished.)
What Sherri was getting from last night’s television coverage was a whiff of the sense of life of “the projects.” Then the “crawl”–the informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels–gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the city’s public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional, crucial fact: early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city’s jails–so they just let many of them loose. There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two populations–that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa.
There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit–but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals–and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep–on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.
All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. But in a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters–not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency.
No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact, some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American “individualism.” But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism.
What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider “normal” behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don’t sit around and complain that the government hasn’t taken care of them. They don’t use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.
But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don’t, because they don’t own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.
The welfare state–and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages–is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting.
Source: TIA Daily — September 2, 2005
Copyright© 2002 The Intellectual Activist
hmmm what should i do…?
ok here in a few days ill have some money. im going to be asking a certain girl on a date and i need to pick out a resturant. Im trying to decide whether i want to take her (if she goes out with me ) to Rooftops our fancy resturant or go to applebees, carlos o kelly’s, or some place like one those.
Andrea….are you out there?
Is there any way I can give you the pepsi lid codes for a few free songs over this? Brian tried to download them on here and this wonderful computer can’t handle it…too old, I think he said. I hope he was talking about the computer and not ME! heehee
L-YA, S
