Phat Tuesday
February 28, 2006 12:00 am [No Comments]
I took off early from work to work on my truck. Fixed the parking brake. Felt good to hurt my hands and get dirty. It took me 4 hours to fix my parking brake and it was more fulfilling than the last 12 months of programming I’ve done.
Then Lake picked me up and we hit Harpo’s, Kelly’s and Grinders. Charles and I hit some punk club down the street and now I’m doing other shit. The band had already finished.
This post was longer when I wrote it last night but I’ve edited it down. You didn’t wanna know all that stuff anyway.
Mine! Mine! Mine!
February 27, 2006 12:00 am [1 Comment]
And it’s mine! All mine! With broken parking brake and *everything*.
I picked up my truck tonight and it’s totally super great. I’ve found a few little things wrong after about a 2 hour inspection but they are little things and it’s all totally great. The only big thing so far is that the parking brake is dead. The guy that sold it to me told me his wife drove around with the parking brake on for a while last week. Woops. He didn’t mention that it completely trashed it. Oh well. Now I get to learn how to fix the parking brake on a 1996 Ford Explorer. I’m not expecting too much of an ordeal.
The other little things are:
Power antenna is broken. Doesn’t go up and down but you can hear the little motor trying. The wire that goes up into the tube is probably just dead. Let’s call it $50 if I even bother to fix it. I already hooked up an iPod 
Right rear door handle doesn’t work from the inside. It looks like it was pulled too hard and might have pulled free from the latch. I’m betting I can fix that for free by taking it apart. So let’s call that $0.
And the parking brake. No idea what that’s gonna entail but I’m still not gonna call it more than $50. Even if it’s a few hundred I’ll be thrilled.
So, what I DID get is a 1996 Ford Explorer that appears to be in basically pristine condition. It’s the Eddie Bauer Edition so it’s all leather and all power everything. All wheel drive, luggage rack, 6 disc changer, power moon roof. All the fixins. It runs great as far as I can tell but I’m certainly no expert on these things. The center console seemed to vibrate a little at 80 MPH on the highway, which could mean the tires are out of balance or it could mean you aren’t supposed to drive a 1996 Ford Explorer at 80 on the highway.
Paid $3900 for it and I couldn’t be happier. I can’t wait to go to the lake!
whiteboardwisdom
February 27, 2006 12:00 am [3 Comments]
You should be posting your funny office whiteboard stuff to whiteboardwisdom.
Srsly.
If you’ve never used Flickr, it’s great. You should. They’ll host your photos for free. The innovative thing about Flickr is that if you add a tag (just a name) to a photo and anyone else uses that same tag than a special gallery is available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/tag_name containing all the photos from everyone. Like whiteboardwisdom.
Now go post!
Excitement!
February 27, 2006 12:00 am [3 Comments]
Oh man, I’m going to pick up my brand new (to me) 1996 Ford Explorer at 7:30pm! Woooo! I can’t wait to have a truck again, and neither can Sonja!
Lost
February 24, 2006 12:00 am [2 Comments]
I’ve been doing the dieting thing again. It’s going pretty well. This morning I was 203.4 so my neverending goal of 199 is well within sight again. I’ve got a dinner to go to tonight but it’s Greek so I might be able to eat sorta healthy. Party on Saturday and if I can manage to take it easy hopefully I won’t lose all the progress I’ve made this week. Waverunner season is fast approaching and I wanna look good! I’ve worked really fucking hard for the past year and a half to turn my body into something a little less hideous and now it’s time to enjoy it.
Speaking of waverunner season, I’ve finally saved enough money to buy a truck! I’m gonna shop around this weekend and see what I can find. I can’t wait. Ever since I bought the RX-8 (which I love) I’ve been unable to move my waverunner, take my dog to the park, buy lumber and all that kind of stuff that a real macho kind of guy like me does every single day. (What?)
Being able to move my waverunner is important, even now. I think that I cracked the hull two years ago (the last time I used it!) and I need to get it cleaned up and do a water test on it to be sure. Hopefully not, cause I’d really like to take it out this year but I imagine a cracked hull is not a cheap thing to fix.
In other news, vPod 2.0 is coming along nicely. I have really good iPod detection code in place which should help me avoid the fiasco that is finding your iPod’s drive letter. That seems to cause a lot of problems for less computer savvy users. Now vPod searches all your drives for iPods and it detects when an iPod is inserted or removed.
What else? I smacked up my car again. I posted about it as soon as it happened but I was so angry that the post was full of bile and bitterness so I deleted it. I’m much more calm now. Basically, there was a teeny amount of snow on the ground when I left a club last Saturday. I made it all the way to my road and then very slowwwwwwly slid into a curb. Nothing I could do about it. Slowest accident ever. That didn’t stop the curb from doing about $1000 in damage though. The car is still completely road worthy and while it looks bad it’s not THAT bad. I’ll fix it myself when I have some extra cash. Right now I need a truck.
I also bought a Valentine 1 radar “locator”. I’ve wanted one forever but they are so expensive I put it off. Well, two speeding tickets later I decided it was time. It’s absolutely incredible. I see cops before they get out of bed in the morning. Before they even start thinking about setting up a speed trap. I know more about their radar than they do. I’ll never let it go.
My side work is going pretty well. Making some extra cash and working on interesting things. Keeps the drudgery of my day job at bay though I can’t say I love working all day and then working all night. Still though, truck.
And finally, check out the awesome tissue box diorama I made while waiting to do an interview yesterday. If you can’t tell it’s a guy and a dog throwing a ball and having a good ol’ time. I like to think they are at the dog park because the slacker guy finally got a truck and took his dog out.
