Be Sure to Drink Your Ovaltine

I will be offline for a few days. Better things to do than hang around here writing mundane blog entries. We are heading down to see Mickey and Donald for a few days.

When we made the trip a few years ago, I took my laptop with me. The only time I took it out of the bag was at the airport. This year I will leave it at home rather than lug it all over the southeast. Surely I can last a few days without internet access.

See you in the funny papers.

The Elves are dressed in leather ...

So my seester has run out of room on the old HD and wanted to replace it with a larger one. The current was a 60 gig-ger. We went to Best Buy on the 24th and obtained a new 250 gig-ger to replace it.

Her computer had been acting up so I decided a clean install on the new HD was the correct route rather than attempting to backup/restore the existing image.

After dropping in the new HD and booting the Win-XP-Home CD, the thing booted installed a few drivers and then BSOD'ed. Something about 'pci.sys' yada yada yada. Google was fine enough to tell me I needed to install XP SP2 (service pack 2 for the mere mortals) and all would be excellent.

Having no SP2 disk, I spent a few minutes reading up on slipstreaming SP2 and proceeded to make a new Win XP Home SP2 disk? This requires using an real XP disk, downloading the SP from MS, and downloading a few more utilities to extract a boot image from the XP disk, and create a bootable disk from the existing disk with the SP integrated into it. I got most of my useful info from a site called "theeldergeek" or somethink like that. Very useful that site was.

The truth of the matter is I tried a few things before I took the slip stream approach. None worked. Very frustrating at times. When I finally got around to making my own disk, the first disk would not boot (due to a parameter in Nero Rom which should have been a '4' being a '1'). My bad.

Messing around with computers can certainly be trying. There are several times during the whole process I was reminded of a song by Spinal Tap. Christmas with the devil, in this case the devil is Terry's computer.

Things are now rapidly progressing towards various stages of completion. Next comes the hunt for all the required drivers to get that laptop back in shape for the Happy New Year.

Happy Christmas

We had an enjoyable Christmas. Christmas eve consisted of a short service followed by dinner with the family including my sister and in-laws at our house. After dinner we continued our tradition of opening all the presents. Not to worry, we still have stocking to go through on Christmas morning.

Christmas Days consisted of a trip to Albertville to have lunch with G's father's extended family.

Tomorrow I will be heading over to Atlanta with my sister and my brother's two sons. We are going to load all of T's stuff into a U-Haul truck and drive it back to HSV. That should make for a nice short day.

Merry Holidays to everyone.

It got cold again!

I am still working on painting the cabinet doors. Twelve doors total. I decided to paint them before hanging them to keep the paint off the hardware. One coat of primer, two coats of paint was the plan. I have finished the primer and the first coat of paint. I plan on making more progress tomorrow.

The Winter Break of Rick

After finishing my final final on Tuesday, I found myself in a unique position. I had nothing to do. Nothing.

When your a student there is always an assignment due. My normal modus operandi is to just work on whatever is due next. Well the calendar said I was done. No more school for 3 weeks. Awesome. I could get use to this.

Actually I do have a few things on the calendar in the next three weeks: Celebrate Christmas, Trip to Disney World, and Celebrate the New Year.

Things will be rough for me for the near future. Think of me as your working through your daily grind.

Yesterday I made my periodic pilgrimage to the dentist. As I was getting strapped into the chair to begin the genetic experimentation - wait that is a different story.

After sitting down on the chair, the hygentist gave me a warm next pillow. It felt really nice (it was cold outside) on the back of my next and I said so. She asked if I wanted to turn on the massage/heat features of the chair. I had always declined in the past but thought the additional heat might be nice. And the chair went brrrrrrrrmmm. Nice.

I was kidding around about how nice it was to be pampered at the dentist and the hygentist asked me if I had ever had the hand dip. She said I absolutely had to try it if I was feeling adventurous. Next thing you know, I have had my hands dipped in warm paraffin and I am wearing big white mittens.

For the rest of the day, my hands smelled like lavender.

And then I got my teeth cleaned.

Last Tuesday I left the house headed for school in the Miata running on fumes. The gas station I have been frequenting is about halfway between home and school. Once I arrived there, I discovered I had left my wallet at home. The tank being empty, I realized I didn't have enough gas/time to head to back the house. I also didn't have enough gas to get to school.

After briefly panic'ing for about 7 seconds, I collected all the change from the car and went inside the station to proudly request $1.50 on pump number 8. The price of regular was $1.55 per gallon which bought me most of a gallon. With my most of gallon of gas I was able to make it to school and back.

Two days later, I was in the Miata again, once again heading for school. This time with my wallet in my pocket, I stopped at the gas station and filled up the tank. Here is the amazing part. I filled up the tank for less than $20. To be more precise it cost $18.99. Gas mileage on this tank was down: about 28 MPG, but still nothing to complain about there.

It has been a busy busy week. During times like this I usually have a lot to write about unfortunately most of it never gets written.

This semester of school is almost over. I took my final for the second of three classes yesterday afternoon. The final final will be on Tuesday.

Over the last week I have managed to effectively procrastinate on several occasions by building a set of wall cabinets for the garage. I build three cabinets spanning a total of 12 feet. Hopefully the extra storage space will allow me to finally get the work bench cleaned off.

That is all for now. I am heading to the high school to sub in a Spanish class. (School started two hours late today due to possible inclement weather. We all knew it wouldn't really snow, didn't we?)

Ouch!

I forgot to mention I shot myself in the finger yesterday with a nail gun. Fortunately it wasn't loaded but it still hurt. A lot. And it still does.

I just breezed past here and noticed I have been delinquent. And then I was hit with a little deja vu. Last year about this same time the blog was idle for a few weeks. School was keeping me busy then as well. Only about ten more days until I can stop using that excuse for a few weeks.

What's Up in the Shop?

After getting the laundry done, I headed out to the shop the create some more dust. After a couple of hours I had managed to make some new cabinets. I built the case and face frame today. Still need to putty, paint, and hang the doors. That probably won't happen for a week or so.

One can never have too much storage space and cutting up some wood creates more free space.

A few days ago while watching a movie, I commented that I don't recall ever seeing a film with Morgan Freeman that wasn't good.

Today I read that they are bringing back "The Electric Company" on PBS in January.

Like I said before, can you think of anything Morgan Freeman was in that wasn't good.

(Sure, your going to mention that movie, but for the record, I haven't seen it.)

The Big One that Got Away

I spent the last week watching a local car on Ebay. The car was a 1968 Corvette convertible. I was very tempted to buy this car. I contacted the seller last Thursday and arranged to look at the car on Saturday.



This car was very sound mechanically and it looked pretty good from about 10 feet back. Did I mention I was tempted. After giving the car a good look over I went home to sleep on it.



I eventually decided to let it pass. While the price was right, there were just too many little things that it needed. All these little things could add up to many-many weekends of work (and a empty wallet). I don't need another project right now. I already have a few.

Stay tuned...

Goals and Procrastination

My goal for today was to write two papers for school. Having gotten one out of the way I decided to take a short break before finishing the other paper.

I decided I would use my break to do a little home maintenance (one of the toilets was stopped up). Now your thinking someone must really be wanting to avoid writing the next paper to tackle a glorious job like unplugging a toilet.

A mere three hours later after completely taking the thing apart, putting it back together, a trip to home depot, and taking the thing apart and putting it back together again, it was working. The entire episode was also a comedy of errors. Fortunately for me, know one was around with a video camera.

Guess what stopped it up? I little plastic Dixie cup. I have not idea how it got in there and at this point I don't want to know.

Now it is time to work on that other paper. What a glorious day it has been.

More Interesting Bits About Diagnosing A Tractor's Electrical System

I somehow managed to forget to post the follow up on the tractor. Until now. Lucky you!

Testing the alternator determined it was good (as was probably the voltage regulator). It turned out one of the wires to the regulator was bad. Upon close inspected it appeared to be smashed. It turns out it had melted. (Can you say "too much current"?). I ended up unwrapping the wiring harness and replacing a section of wire that had been melted. After wrapping it all back up, we jumped the tractor off a car (because the battery was dead). The tractor cranked and ran fine. White it was running I used my voltage meter to measure the alternator output and the battery voltage. The alternator output was fine and the battery was charging.

Using my twenty/twenty hindsight, it makes perfect since that a wire was bad.

1972 GMC Frame Pictures

Here are a few picture of the 1972 GMC pickup frame. This has been a very slow process. A few years back I bought a truck to restore. First I completely disassembled it. The frame has been sandblasted and painted along with all the suspension and steering components. These pictures were taken before the front wheels were back in place.

This first picture is where the trailing arms connect to a cross member. The differential is mounted to the other end of the trailing arms.



This is picture of the entire assembly. Finally I can see my progress.



Here we see the trailing arms again, this time showing their attachment to the differential.




Looking down the length of the frame from just above the second cross member. The cross member you can see is blocking the view of the trailing arms and the differential. My '06 Dodge Charger is trying to hide behind the rear tire.



The front end of the frame. The first cross member will be below the radiator. The second is below the engine and was quite heavy.



The rear view of the differential. The truck originally had leaf spring suspension. I am in the process of completing the conversion to trailing arm suspension.



This is the front suspension, passenger side. Shown here are the upper and lower A-arms along with the coil spring and the spindle. I mounted the brake rotors on the spindles today and put the tires on the front end.

GMC Progress

This afternoon I put the front wheels on the '72. There was actually more to it than that, but visually that is what you would notice. Also included was the installation of the brake rotors, inner and outer bearings, and other miscellaneous foo foo.

Wood Working SkillZ

Saturday's adventure was hardly as glorious. I re-sawed and planed a few pieces of scrape pine that were originally destined for the refuse bin.

The wood was actually 8 pieces of 2x4, each about 14 inches long. Really too short to be useful. (Unless one decided to make some small boxes to practice making dovetail joints.) I have certainly got a fair amount of use out of these boards. Their last use was as part of a large dolly I built to move the truck frame around on before it had its wheels back on. I recall at that point I was recycling the wood from another project though I don't recall exactly what it was at this point. Not that it matters, but I certainly felt good about using the pieces of that 2x4 three different times on three different projects.

After many past attempts, I did finally manage to get the band saw tuned up sufficiently to re-saw the wood without any wander of the blade. The solution was so simple, I can't believe I hadn't spotted it before. (One of the blade guides was misaligned.)

2007-2008 F1 Championship

This weekend was the final race in the 2008 Formula One World Championship.  The race held in Sao Paulo Brasil was on Speed at 11:30 AM central.  Per our normal modeus operandi,  we Tivo'ed the race to watch it that evening.

 

Middle of the afternoon I was online reading the news and I accidentally saw a headline stating who won the championship.  Bummer dude!  The headline stated that Lewis Hamilton (McLaren) won the championship.  I had been pulling for Felipe Massa (Ferrari) all season so I was disappointed.  Going into the final race, Lewis was ahead of Massa by 7 (or was it 5) points.  This meant Lewis needed to finish in the top 4 cars to win the season.  Massa needed to finish first with Lewis outside of the top 4 to win. 

 

The race turned out to be a thriller.  Even though I knew how the season would end, I didn't know the results of the race. 

 

Massa started from pole and maintained the lead most of the race, but that wasn't enough.  The race was actually decided in the final turn of the final lap when Timo Glock (Toyota) slowed down due to the rain and not having the correct tires.  I couldn't believe what I was seeing, nor could the folks in the Ferrari garage on TV.

 

This season was absolutely the most exciting season for F1 since I have started watching.  (Though I would like to see Michael Schumacher come out of retirement.)   Alonso who was stagnant most of the season, was showing his skill toward the end of the season.  Kimi Raikkonen who I thought would win his second championship this year showed he was a team player (and that he could smile).  Kubica showed his skill as well as a promise to be a future F1 champion.  

 

This year also marked the final season for David Coulthard and possibly for Rubens Barrichello.  We also saw the demise of the Super Aguri team.

 

Next season should be exciting (if the FIA doesn't mess it up with more stupid rules).  Maybe next year will be Felipe's year.  And maybe we will see F1 return to the United States in 2010!

This weekend Capn. Dan became a grandfather again. As I predicted, the baby and Danny both share several common family traits. Neither have any hair and they both drool a lot. Congratulations Danny.

For your viewing pleasure, here is a picture of the new baby Sean Connery Steve Jobs Danny. Note he is not drooling in this photo.

The End

Sorry iMike, I hate to be the one to break the news to you but the old truck has found a new home. Here is a final picture of Jordan at the wheel of the 1925 Chevrolet Superior Series K truck. (This is the vehicle he learned to use a clutch on.)

And here is a picture of the new caretaker loading it up to take it to its new home in Fort Payne Alabama.

Trick or Treat

Here is a picture of my neighbor Brian with the saw blade in place. He was going for a Norm Abrams "New Yankee Workshop" zombie look complete with flannel. It wasn't until I looked at the photo this evening that I noticed he didn't put on the beard. Proabably too much effort. The over all look was well done though.