Category Vehicle Maintenance

When I got home last night I got busy.  First I jumped on the tractor and finished mowing the back half of the back half of the yard, giving it a much more uniform cut than the first time.  I am hoping it is the last time I have to do it in quite awhile as the wet season weather pattern seems to officially be behind us.  Cutting the grass that late in the day is actually a good thing.  The grass is completely dry so all the clippings that pile up on top of the mower deck could be blown away with some brief work with my leaf blower.

While I was out front I pulled out the WD-40 and sprayed a couple points on the Tacoma driveshaft.  You see ever since I bought the truck back in 2000 it had an off and on problem with a horrible sounding metallic squeal that I determined was the driveshaft after much investigation.  During that investigation I found out that my truck was in a pretty serious accident while being driven by the prior owners 16 year old son.  That accident I assumed caused the driveshaft problem and is also the cause of the ugly section of the exterior of the truck where it was repainted poorly.

Well the noise was quite annoying, annoying enough that I eventually bought a used driveshaft to silence the squeal years and years ago.  It worked, for awhile.  In the past couple years the noise has been gradually coming out of retirement, occurring more and more frequently.  Since it is a different driveshaft making the same noise I can only assume it is because something in the factory geometry of the drive train was altered in that accident which over time causes the driveshaft problems.

Now I am certainly not going to put another driveshaft on the truck.  I am however thinking about jacking up the back end, putting it in DRIVE and seeing if I can pinpoint exactly where on the shaft the noise is coming from.  If I can, I’ll see if I can take that area apart and lube the shit out of it.

So since I had a freshly mowed and completely dry flying field behind the house I figured it was a good time to take the Tuffwing out for it’s initial flight.   I eyeballed the ailerons to make sure they looked like they were even and at a small angle upwards so the wing would go up instead of down after launch.

My Speedwing had a small wooden frame/handle on the bottom which I would use to launch it.  The Tuffwing does not have this.  Instead the recommended launch technique is grabbing a wing and sort of flinging it Frisbee style.  I was a bit nervous about launching it in this manner.

I shelved my launch anxiety, powered up my transmitter and plugged the battery for the plane in.  After hearing the series of beeps that indicates you are ready to go, I held the right wing, applied enough throttle where I could feel the plane pulling strongly and gave it a little flick.  Within a half second the plane had barrel rolled left and was upside down.  A split second later it was nose first into the ground where it bounced high off the ground like a super ball.  I killed throttle before it came back down.

The good thing about EPP foam planes is they designed to crash, hard.  Besides some grass stuck to tape I didn’t see any noticeable damage although the prop adapter was a bit loose.  My non-expert flight crash analysis seemed to indicate the plane was trimmed too far left which caused the immediate roll.  I used the trim adapter on the transmitter to compensate right a little bit, hoping it would prevent a repeat impact.

So once again I found myself at launch time.  Again I throttled up, tossed the plane and before I could get both hands on the radio it again had barrel rolled and found it’s way into terra firma, this time impacting in such a way that sent the plane into a cartwheel knocking off one of the glued on wing tips, great.

Well I was annoyed.  I mean the plane was not even close to being stable or gaining altitude.  I will need to repair the wing tip and do some more tweaking of it’s set up.   I am hoping I will be able to get this thing in the air before I push the impact resistance of the EPP foam to it’s breaking point.

The majority of the rest of the night was spent attending to running club and race timing issues.  I did manage to find about 45 minutes to play a little Hearthstone.

Hey the government is open for business today again!  The republicans finally conceded that their ill advised hostage taking of the federal government was doing their cause more harm than good in the big picture.  I am glad the doors are open once again.  Do I wish that the federal government wasn’t 17 TRILLION dollars in debt? Of course.  Do I think I will ever see that debt eliminated in my lifetime? Not a chance.

The bottom line is massive federal debt is a deliberate act, masterminded by those deviously brilliant crooks at the Federal Reserve.  They want the government to owe money, lots of it, it’s good for (their) business.   Short of nuking the planet, I really don’t see any scenario where the corrupt system that is in place can be rebooted.

Today is Cindy’s birthday, wish her a happy one if you see her.

I call nights like last night character builders.  The task for the evening was to replace the front brake pads on Cindy’s Miata.  I had done my normal video tutorial before going into the job, I didn’t expect any major speed bumps.  The job started at 5:45pm. It ended at 11:05 PM. There were bumps.

When I went to take the wheels off with my newly acquired spline lug nut adapter I had my first minor issue.  It looked like someone else that did not have an adapter tried to remove a lug nut via brute force, it was all mangled.    I got around this by using my hammer to drive the lug adapter on the nut.  Luckily it wasn’t on all that tight and I could break it loose.

Once I had access to the brakes on the driver side I removed the lower caliper bolt which is supposed to allow it to flip upward, giving access to the  brake pads. Well it didn’t want to move.  It felt like the top caliper bolt was very tight and not allowing the caliper body to move.  I pulled out the Miata Haynes repair manual to double check what I recalled from the video, yep it should just flip up.  Well this one wasn’t.

So I figured the easiest way to address this was to loosen that top 17mm bolt.  Well that was easier said than done, it was almost welded in place.  I beat on it with a wrench and mini-sledge for a looong time until it started to move.  I was worried I would snap the head on it, it turned so hard.  Eventually I got it a few turns looser which allowed the caliber body to flip up.

The old pads, which looked thin to me when I peered at them with the wheel still on were actually not that badly worn, there was still a good amount of pad material left.  Well of course I was going to replace them anyway.  The actual act of replacing brake pads is pretty damn simple.  You just pop the old ones out and pop the new ones in, assuming the retaining clips stay in place.  I put the new pads in.

The old pads did not have the anti-rattle springs that I used with other brake work.  They are used to keep the pads off the discs when the brake pedal is not applied.  I wondered why they were missing but based on other shortcuts that have been done on the car, I wasn’t all that surprised.

I put the caliper back in place and spun the brake disc.  It seemed to be making more contact with the pads than it should be but I wasn’t sure if this was just because I didn’t seat them yet.  I put the wheel back on and went to passenger side.

As soon as I worked on the caliper on that side I knew something was up on the driver side.  When I removed the lower caliper bolt on the passenger side front brake the assembly lifted up easily with no resistance from the top bolt which “floated” back and forth.  There was no float in the driver side bolt.  I knew I was going to have to revisit it again. Replacing the pads on the passenger side was a piece of cake.

So I hopped back over to the driver side and removed the wheel once again.  I found that by turning the top bolt out a few more turns I had more clearance for the new pads but I still could not get any float from the top caliper bolt.  I buttoned the driver side back up and took the car out for a test drive.

When you first put pads in you are supposed to “seat” them.   The way you do this is via several hard decelerations.  I got the Miata up to about 60 and then hit the brakes hard.  After I did this the second time I heard the unwelcome sound of metal on metal.  I turned around and babied the Miata back into the garage.

By this time the sun had set and an army of flying insects had invaded the garage, drawn to the bright overhead light.  It made for a nice annoying distraction if I didn’t have enough annoying me already.  The noise was clearly coming from the driver side so I pulled that wheel.  I felt like punching myself in the face when I pulled the inner pad. It was in backwards, with the pad metallic backing plate against the brake disc.  What an idiot.

Luckily the disc itself felt ok, despite my boneheadedness. Now I could have flipped the pad around and tried to use it again but I didn’t feel good about doing that to Cindy’s car.  It also appeared that I lost one of the pad retaining clips (which I later found) so I figured I need to buy a brake hardware kit and a new set of pads.  I hopped on the Autozone site first seeing if they had these kits.  They did but not in stock.  I checked the Advance Auto web site, I found the part at exactly one of their stores.  I called to verify they had it in stock and in hand, I didn’t want to do a 30 mile round trip for nothing.  The clerk said he definitely had it.

By this time it was 8PM.  I asked him how long they are open? “Till 9…” Ok I will be there.

Besides being frustrated I was starving by this time.  I figured in transit to the auto parts store I would swing through McD’s for a fish sandwich.

Well I was unaware that 8:20PM was prime time for the McDonalds crowd.  The drive thru line was 5 cars deep.  I figured I may as well just park and grab something to go. As usual, the McDonalds crowd didn’t disappoint in interesting visuals.  The most interesting to me was the woman in  front of me.  She was probably 5′ 5″  and if I were to guess 300 plus pounds.

She had a few musical notes tattooed behind her right ear.  I wondered to myself what was “music to her ears”, perhaps the sound of opening a Big Mac wrapper? I was sad to see this women had two young daughters, both well on their way to continuing the proud American childhood obesity epidemic thanks to mom’s thoughtless guidance.

Mom was actually getting quite annoyed, her food order was not coming out as fast as she wanted.  In fact my order was handed to me before hers which really made her mad.  As I shuffled out of there I heard her chastising an employee behind the counter, wanting to know “What is going on???” Poor woman….

So the McD’s experience at least was a nice distraction from the Miata brake job headache I was in the middle of.  By the time I got home with the brake hardware kit and new pads it was now after 9pm, sheesh.

So my focus was now getting that top caliper bolt completely out on the driver side.  I needed to see what was going on.  Getting the bolt out was ridiculously difficult.  Despite having it turned all the way out on the threads, the smooth part of the bolt was hanging up.  I only got it out after a long grueling battle using a needle nose pliers to apply outward force while continuing to turn it with a socket.

Once I finally got the bolt out I saw why it was such a bastard.  It was bone dry and rusted, two things you don’t want for a caliper bolt.  I used a bunch of caliper grease on the bolt and made love to the bolt hole,  working the bolt back and forth to lubricate the fitting. By the time I was done the bolt once again was able to slide back and forth in the caliper housing as it was designed to do.

I put the driver side back together and then had to redo the passenger side once again, despite it not having a problem.  I didn’t want to have a different type of pads on one side.  I got everything back together and did a final test drive.  This time the brakes grabbed well with no metallic sound aftertaste, finally.  By the time I pulled back into the bug filled garage it was just after 11PM. Whew.

Now I should have gone straight to bed. However for some reason I had a second wind, instead of taking a shower and collapsing on my pillow I instead found myself in front of my computer processing the video from the brake work, which is pretty funny if I do say so myself.  By the time I actually went to bed it was 1AM, craziness.

This weekend has a loose framework, just as I like it.

So on Tuesday night I had managed to get fire ants on my sneakers in the few seconds it took to grab the trash bins.  It took them awhile to make their way to my shins, I didn’t feel the bites until I was inside.  I looked down and saw a number of them crawling on my sneakers.  I quickly go out in the garage, rip off my sneakers, and start beating them together furiously, swearing loudly with each impact for emphasis.

Well about 15 minutes after that I noticed my right ring finger looking swollen.  It wasn’t painful but the swelling  made the finger stiff.  I dismissed at as odd and carried on.

Well yesterday I looked down at my finger and realized it was now discolored, a reddish pink that stood out like a sore thumb.  It still didn’t hurt and only felt slightly swollen.

I posted the pic to FB and got all sorts of opinions, mostly bad.  This also just happens to be the finger that I cut badly last week.  If it was an infection I would have other symptoms and the discoloration would spread beyond the finger.  It still is just confined to that digit.  My noneducated  guess is when I was banging the sneakers I managed to sprain/damage something in that finger which is causing the discoloration. Of course I will keep an eye on things but if nothing changes I will just expect it to fade away.

So I had Cindy’s Miata at the house because of the iffy brakes.  Last night I planned to pull a wheel to take a closer look at the brake pads.  I pulled down my floor jack and quad lug wrench to the car to accomplish the task.  There was one problem, my lug wrench didn’t fit.   The custom wheels on the Miata had very minimal clearance around the lug nuts but that wasn’t the biggest problem.  Upon closer inspection I saw the lugs were the splined variety, requiring a special adapter to remove.

Ok no problem, surely the prior owners included the adapter with the car.  I looked in the console, the glovebox and the trunk, three times, looking for anything looking like an adapter.  Nothing was found.  Fck…  I texted Cindy and asked her is she recalled ever seeing anything like a lug adapter in the Miata, nope…..

Great. So I decided I would head to AutoZone to see if they sold the adapters for this style of lug nut.  I took the Miata there so I would have a visual reference handy.  There was good news and there was bad news.   They did indeed have the adapter I needed to remove the lugs. Unfortunately the only way I was able to get my hands on it was to buy a complete new set of splined lug nuts. Argh.

I had done a visual inspection of the brake pads, the best I could, at home with the wheel still on.  The back pads looked good but the front pads appeared to be thin.  I picked up a pair of front pads along with some Brake Klean for the job.  I returned home confident I had the stuff I needed to complete the job, hopefully tonight after work.

When I got home and opened the garage I immediately was hit with stench, the same stench I had smelled for a few days.  I assumed there was something in the trash that was stinking although I had no idea what that would have been.  Well as my nose was getting stuffed with the foul odor I just happened to look down at the corner where the garage door is seated.  There I saw a flat toad that was in the process of being taken apart by fire ants.

I recognized this toad, it was the same one I scared out of the garage several days ago.  He was a rather large toad probably the size of a racquetball. Evidently he ignored my verbal warning I gave him as I shoo’d him away and returned.  The idea of him getting inadvertently squashed by the garage door made me sad and guilty.  However I had to get his carcass and the associated smell out of there.

I grabbed my wonder bar to pry the pancaked carcass off the floor.  As I did, maggots started to spill out from the inside, it was f’ing disgusting.  I quickly flipped the poor toad into the middle of the yard like a sand trap chip shot.  I then sprayed the spot on the floor where it was with WD-40 to discourage ants from scouring the area for crumbs.

Unfortunately during my 12 years out at the house I have probably been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of frogs/toads inadvertently.  It’s a sad reality of living on the edge of the Everglades.

So this morning I was running behind schedule thanks to playing a couple games of Hearthstone before getting ready.  I grabbed my stuff and headed out the door and into the Miata.  As I put my stuff in the passenger seat I felt my pant pockets as I normally do, feeling for two things, my phone and my wallet.  Phone, check, wallet, wallet, wallet? I did not have my wallet.  Oh silly me, I must have left it inside.

So I head back inside, say hi again to Tuki and look at the spots where my wallet would reside.  All these spots came up empty.  Hmmm, that is odd.  So I did a quick retrace of when I had my wallet last.  I paid for the stuff at Autozone and then headed home.  Autozone is the last conscious use of my wallet I could recall.  Maybe I left it in the Miata?

So I head back out to the Miata and rip it apart, looking everywhere for my wallet, under, beside the seats, in the console, glovebox and even the trunk even though the only way it would have gotten in there was via magic trick.  No wallet.

So now I am entering freak out mode.  I start thinking about what a monumental pain in the ass it was going to be if I actually lost my wallet.  I went back in the house one more time.  SURELY I just wasnt seeing it.  I look everywhere, even places that made no sense for my wallet like the bathroom, nothing.

Ok my last hope was that it somehow fell out at Autozone in the parking lot.  Perhaps my wallet was still lying there or a good Samaritan turned it in to the store.  I hauled ass the best I could in the Miata, cursing out the school buses that were clogging the traffic along the way.  I pull in the lot and park in the exact same spot as last night, no wallet was there.  I walk inside and ask the manager if a wallet was turned in last night.  He checked the safe.  He had a wallet! It wasn’t mine. DAMN IT!

So I walked back out to the lot despondent, thinking about just how in the world I was going to replace everything that was in my wallet.  I literally have dozens of id’s and cards in there along with cash and credit card receipts.  I was so desperate I even dug through the Autozone trash cans, thinking maybe someone cleaned out the cash but tossed the wallet. Nope, only trash was found. For the THIRD time I reexamined the Miata, thinking perhaps somehow I missed it.  I moved both seats forward and felt around for anything resembling leather, nothing…..

I even opened up my lunch box, wondering if perhaps I shoved it in there for some reason. Nothing but food looked back at me.  I then unzipped my gym bag just because it was the only other thing I hadn’t checked.  There, nestled in my t-shirt was my wallet!  Relief flowed over my body like 6 foot wave.  What was moments before going to be an awfully dreary and frustrating day suddenly transformed into bright blue skies with rainbows everywhere.

I have no idea why I would have dropped my wallet in my gym bag last night.  I am just beyond thankful that I found it before I started the credit card cancellation parade.

My new LG tv showed up on Friday.  I didn’t waste much time before I unboxed it and had it set up in the bedroom.  The new bigger set was a much better fit for the wall it occupies than the 32 inch set it replaced.   The set was an “open box” Amazon warehouse deal so I was a bit nervous when I unboxed the set and saw all of the accessory bags free of the tape that once secured them.  I was afraid there could be some sort of flaw in the tv.  I felt better when I turned it on and the picture looked beautiful and bright.

I do have one issue, I can not get the tv to connect to my home wifi network.  It sees the network but fails when I try to authenticate to it.  Luckily since my house is hard wired with ethernet in every room I was able to jack the tv in that way and flip my Xbox over to a wireless connection.  I perused some of the massive amount of features and apps available on the tv but only enough to know I needed to spend some serious time familiarizing myself with just everything the tv can do. I also slapped on one of the 4 pair of 3D glasses to do a static test of 3D picture, low and behold the image had 3 dimensions, very cool.

Saturday was a busy day.  Because of my on again off again right knee pain a long Saturday morning run was off the menu.  Instead I worked on various things around the house.  Cindy was off on Saturday and was nice enough to help me get stuff done.  The messiest and largest time consumer of all of the chores was attending to the yard.  I have been putting off mowing/weed whacking the grass, hoping that the regular downpours that have drowned my property in standing water would  subside.  Unfortunately that has not been the case.

Well the yard HAD to be addressed at this point.  Cindy was happy to run the tractor.  I told her to avoid the high water areas, that I would weed whack them down.    I donned my mid shin water proof boots and embarked on a wet, muddy and slimy 90 minute plus weed whacking session.  I knocked down everything I could, including the trenches out front.  At some points the water was a couple inches below the top of my boots, threatening to flood my feet.  I am so tired of all of this water.

On Saturday night we went to go see Gravity, a movie I was looking forward to seeing.  The movie was suspenseful and visually amazing.  I have no idea how they did some of those shots, it looked so damn realistic.  It made space seem like a very, very beautiful but terrifying place.

The odd thing is overall, I don’t have a pristine rating for the movie, I’d give it a B+ . Maybe it was the routine lack of believability in the outcomes of dire situations, maybe it was the miniscule cast of characters involved.  I remember when the previews came out I was wondering how they were going to build an entire movie about the space shuttle getting blown apart.  After watching the movie I would have to say the answer is, they didn’t do it as well as I hoped.

Yea it is a movie that benefits from a movie theater 3D environment.  It may be worth seeing for the visuals alone.

We took the SSR to the movies.  When I was driving it I immediately noticed the clutch feel was different, the engagement felt sloppy.  I was concerned I had another automotive issue to worry about.  Well shortly before getting to the theater I looked down.  I noticed the rubber floor mat was pushed way forward.  It was piling up under the pedals, causing the weird feel.  Once I pulled the mat to it’s normal position the clutch went back to feeling more or less normal, whew.

On Sunday morning Cindy and I had decided to try a different bike ride, from the house out to Ave Maria, or as I like to call it, Catholic Town.  The ride would be a long one since the town center is 15 miles from my house.  I never have logged 30 miles on a road bike.

On the positive side, much of the ride was on the newly widened Oil Well Road.  The road, except for a small section is wide with tons of room and small amounts of traffic.  It is a great road to bike on.

On the way out there was a headwind that was just enough to be annoying.  Cindy and I took 5 mile long shifts of leading so the other could benefit from the draft.  By the time we got out to Catholic Town my man parts were killing me, despite wearing two pairs of bike pants/shorts and swapping my more comfortable seat onto the Dawes.  I have no idea how people do century rides (100 miles) without a stream of blood running down their thighs.

We parked at Publix and went inside for a chocolate milk recovery drink.  Walking on the hard store floors in bike shoes requires very small strides and a slow pace unless you want to wind up on your ass.  While we were finishing our drinks outside we saw a couple walk up with a big but young lab named Oscar.  He was funny, he was friendly but afraid to come right up to you.  Instead he would bound around, doing circles just out of reach.

Ave Maria had changed since I have been there last.  The gas station that was started but left uncompleted for years is finally open.  There also was a lot of construction going on and the most people milling around that I have ever seen.  We were there right around church time so that might have explained the additional activity.  Before we headed out we took a quick selfie behind the extravagant church at the center of town.

The ride back was tough.  We had better wind conditions but we also were maintaining a higher pace, mostly in the 19-20 mph range.  My crotch pain made things even less fun.  The total ride of 30 and a half miles was a milestone for me.  We covered the distance in a little less than 1:45 which worked out to an average pace of 17.7 mph.  I was quite spent by the end of it.

I picked up the dogs so they could spend the afternoon out at the house.   I got back just in time for the Eagles/Giants game.  The Giants so far this year have established themselves as awful, they were 0-4 and their defense actually appeared to be worse than the Eagles.  You can imagine my excitement when the Giants took their opening possession and marched right down the field and scored a touchdown.  I was quite ready for the Eagles to deliver yet another underwhelming performance.

Mike Vick, who literally did nothing with his arm in the game before going out with a hamstring pull, made his contribution on the ground, scrambling for a lot of yards.  When Nick Foles came in right before halftime I really didn’t care.  I figured the Eagles would find a way to lose the game no matter who is behind center.  The defense was once again poor but luckily the Giants shot themselves in the foot enough for the Eagles to prevail in the end.

It is pretty laughable that the Eagles are tied for first place in the the division with a 2-3 record.  This years NFC east might be the weakest NFL division in DECADES.  Any wins the Birds get this year are just gravy to me.  A team with this defense just has no shot of going anywhere.

Thank goodness for Tony Romo, his MASSIVE numbers in the Cowboys loss to the Broncos looks like it will single handily get me my first fantasy football win of the season.  Much like the Eagles, my fantasy team appears to be in for a long year.

Last night I watched Flight, a movie I wanted to see for awhile.  The movie was quite good and did a great job of making a person never want to fly or be an alcoholic.  A-

I also put the new TV to it’s first 3D movie test, watching some of Avatar in 3D.  The picture was fantastic and the 3D effects were every bit as good as anything I have seen in theaters.  I’m quite happy with my new piece of entertainment tech.

The Tacoma flipped 160,000 miles this morning.  I have never driven a vehicle as many miles as I have on this truck.  When I bought it back in 2000, it had right around 30,000 miles on the odometer.  It has been a very faithful and reliable companion for most of the journey.  I hope to be able to ride on to 200k and beyond.

As predicted my weekend was busy since it was my first official weekend since returning from the trip.  On Saturday a bunch of my time was consumed by working on the van exhaust pipe problem.  Early in the morning I headed to Advance Auto to pick up a flange repair kit.  I didn’t know the diameter of my exhaust pipe but the kit accommodated up 2.5 inch pipes, I figured I would be good to go.  I grabbed oil and a filter while I was there to do the oil change on the van which was necessary after 5500 road trip miles.

While I was out I made another stop at Wal-mart to pick up random items like a new watering can to replace my old which is falling apart, a container to hold bird seed to keep cockroaches and other undesirables out and a bag of weed and feed.  The weed and feed purchase was the one that got my attention, even meriting a FB update where I said:

One bag of generic weed and feed was like $30.  If I were to buy enough of the stuff to sufficiently cover the grass just on the house mound and immediate surrounding area I would spend a small fortune.   Unfortunately the dollar weed is starting it’s annual attempt to overtake large portions of the yard so I have no choice but to lay out a kings ransom to combat it.

So when I got back home my work on the van began in earnest.  As is often the case with my repairs and projects I had a loose game plan in place but I rarely expect things to go as planned.  This was once again the case.

So the flange on the muffler had one bolt intact, one bolt that had half remaining after I beat on it and a third bolt that was broken off inside the hole of the flange, with only a small amount left.  I figured this should be my first target as it would be the easiest to remove. The flange repair kit I bought at AA proved to be useless, the exhaust pipe was much bigger than what the kit would handle.

At first I had my cordless DeWalt drill and two of my generic metal/wood bits to use to drill out the small remaining portion of the stud.  I used my big floor jack to raise the side of the van to give me as much space as possible since the car ramps didn’t do much that far back.  Even with using the jack, it was quite awkward trying to apply pressure on the drill while laying flat on my back. I used vice grips to temporarily hold the joint together and give me something solid to drill into.

Before long it became obvious that the cordless drill was not going to have the staying power needed for this job as it seemed I was making minimal progress.  I pulled out my new DeWalt corded drill and ran a long extension cord down to where I was working.  I also pulled out other bits I had that looked to be about the right size and have a non-masonry head.

I tried all of them with my high power drill and got nowhere.  I burned up two or three bits before I gave up and resigned myself to buying a new bit designed for metal.  So for the second time in a few hours I was back out on the road running errands.  I incorporated additional to do’s into the second run as well, emptying my two oil containers and stopping by my mom’s work as well.

Mom had called me on Friday and told me she had her front end clipped of her Rav 4 by a big flat bed that changed lanes without seeing her, hitting her front end with their big tire in the process.  I stopped by to survey the damage.  This was the first time I have seen the shop where my mom works.  I was familiar with Flamingo Island but had not been there in over a decade.  I wasn’t quite sure where in the complex the store was so I just fast stepped it looking at store signs rapid fire until I stumbled across her store since I didn’t ask my mom for directions ahead of time.

So I found mom and she took me out to her Rav 4.  The bumper on the passenger side was intact but sitting a couple inches low.  The passenger side fender and trim piece had some damage as well from the impact with the tire.  I laid down on the ground at took a look inside to see if any supporting braces were bent up.  They all seemed intact.  I grabbed the bumper as my mom protested, and was able to get it back in place.  The only thing it would need to keep it there is fixing a mount where the bolt secures it.  From 15 feet away you can hardly tell anything was wrong with it. I told mom she still needs to get a quote from a body shop for the damage since the truck driver is responsible for whatever it would cost to repair.

So I got a brand new drill bit at Home Depot as well as some bolts and nuts to hopefully be utilized in the repair, assuming I was successful punching through the stud.  When I got home I returned to my uncomfortable position under the van, loaded in my fresh bit and had at it.  This time I utilized lower rpm’s as I read online was the best way to utilize a metal bit.  Even with the new bit and the slower drill speed I was seeing precious little metal shavings dropping out of the hole.  I was really fcking frustrated.  At this point I spent at least 90 minutes under the van between the two sessions and had absolutely nothing to show for it.

I took a break from the drilling that was seemingly going nowhere and grabbed my big center punch and mini-sledge and started pounding on the stud, it was more of a stress reliever than a technique for stud removal.  Again my flat on my back orientation made hammering difficult.  As I hammered away, with each impact reenforcing an obscenity in my head, it felt like I finally had some movement on the frozen stud.  A few more whacks and the tiny stud remnant popped out, finally….

Examining the stub nub revealed all that work was to punch out something that was barely a half inch long.  The splines on the stud confirmed it was pressed/hammered into place however many years ago it was installed.  I used the hardware I bought to firmly attach one of the three flange holes.  I had hopes of threading a nut onto the one full stud that remained however multiple attempts to do so failed because both of the substantial rust that had accumulated on it and the damage I had caused to the end of the stud while pounding on it initially.

I started the van up and listened/looked at the joint.  It sounded quiet, the combo of a fresh gasket and at least one bolt securely tightened seemed to be an adequate but less than ideal band aid for the problem.   I am sure a muffler shop could pop out those other two bolts with significantly less effort than I expended.  It’s all about the tools.

Despite being pretty spent from fighting with the van I had more yet to do.  The grass which has been unmowable due to standing water had to be addressed, despite ample standing water still spotting the yard.  I used variable mower deck height to get the job done, raising the deck to max height when I would be going through underwater sections.  These ponds also required me to have a good head of steam before hitting them.  If you go slow you wind up getting stuck on the slimy ground below.

The mower was a disgusting mess by the time I was done but I at least got a good portion of the grass mowed.  Unfortunately the forecast calls for another few days of significant rain which will submerge things further. My Saturday of work/chores didn’t really end until after 6pm.

On Sunday Cindy and I had intentions of doing a run/swim training brick.  The last time I ran was the 10K I did with her where I felt absolutely awful and wanted to quit which was at least 3 weeks ago.    Part of the reason I felt awful was we didn’t start running until the sun was well into the sky, not taking our first strides until around 8:30.

This time I suggested that we get up early and try to start around 7, missing some of the heat of the day.  We figured after we were done running we could fill in the dead time drinking coffee at DD until the pool opened.  I also suggested we run the square in a counter-clockwise direction.  Although the distance is identical, to me the run seems less mentally fatiguing when taken down in that way.

The two changes did make the run go better although the 9:44 pace was far from blazing.  Even with the early start it didn’t let us escape the humidity, my shirt was absolutely soaked from the 6.36 mile run.  I need to keep the long runs going for the next month or so since I need the cardio base for the Tough Mudder I am doing the first weekend of November.

So we headed to Dunkin Donuts, grabbed our go juice, and were sitting outside drinking it while playing with a bulldog puppy that a couple had with the them.  His name was Logan and he loved everyone.  As I looked at my watch I saw we had over an hour to go until the water park opened.  I said to Cindy we could be spending the time changing oil.  She was ok with axing the swim portion of the brick in order to get to her oil changing lesson.

Once we got back to the house I changed into my oil changing gear and pulled the needed equipment out.  Cindy always had wanted to learn how to change oil but never was in a situation where someone would teach her.  I was happy to give her a tutorial.

Even with the Miata up on ramps, there was precious little clearance to work under the car since it sits so low to the ground.  It was so low I had to abandon the Kreepy Krawly and instead just shuffle under the car on bare concrete.  I located the oil drain plug and filter.  The only thing I did was initially break the drain plug loose, after that I just gave Cindy guidance on what to do next.  She did great and was surprised how simple an oil change can be if you don’t mind getting a little dirty. I followed up with putting the van on the ramps to change it’s oil as well.  Once again Cindy did the majority of the work and loved doing it.

I pulled out the pressure washer to do some more work.  Tuki’s cage was in need of a good cleaning and I wanted to blow off the crust of sand, dirt and grass on the tractor as well.  A hose just does not do the job when it comes to tractor cleaning.  I used the floor jack to lift the front end of the tractor to get better access to blast away.  By the time I was done the driveway was covered in green sludge.

Sunday night I watched Django Unchained.  I thought the movie was extremely well done with a few caveats.  I was already prepared for the abundance of the n-word, a word I find repulsive when used in a racist context.  In the timeframe of the movie the word was commonplace so it’s use was merited although it certainly could have been used a little less without affecting the authenticity of the movie .  Tarrantino’s movies always seem to feature very graphic violence and this was the case once again with Django.  I thought some of the scenes were really gruesome, needlessly so in my opinion.

However overall I thought the movie was really, really good.  The acting in it was top notch and even though it was quite long, I never found myself bored.  The movie also puts a big spotlight on the days of slavery and just how horrific it was when looked at through a pair of 2013 eyes.  I found myself wondering how enslaving human beings was viewed as totally normal behavior by white people, treating slaves as objects that were discarded as trash when their usefulness ran out.  I also wondered if  someday some of our modern day prejudices/practices will someday be looked back on in a similar fashion, uncivilized, cruel and ignorant.

Anyway, I’d give the movie a solid A.  If you go into it knowing there are going to be some bumps in the road you should appreciate the film more.

On the way home last night I stopped at Ali’s place to give the girls the presents I bought from the trip.  Of course Sadie was very happy to claim the stuffed mule from the Grand Canyon for herself.  From Durango I got a miniature NICK license plate and some venison dog treats.  I also picked up 5 funny dog drink coasters.  I told Ali to pick out her favorite 3 and I kept the other two. I talked to Ali about the trip a little bit but it was awkward as I kind of expected it would be.  I understood and cut the storytelling short.

When I got home I wanted to take a closer look at the exhaust joint that was leaking.  My hope was to remove the remaining bolts and gasket to take with me to the auto parts store to get suitable replacements.  I headed out to the van with car ramps, PB blaster, my socket set, wonder bar and two hammers, figuring that should cover my bases.

Even with having the van up on the ramps my working space was pretty limited.  The first thing I noticed was neither of the two remaining bolts in the flange joint had nuts on them, that’s odd.  I took my mini-sledge and started banging on one of the bolts, hoping I could punch it through..  After several whacks the bolt broke off, great.  Before I started banging on the other bolt I took a closer look at the head of the bolts that are on the muffler side.

There was no conventional head at all, instead the heads of these bolts were round, like they are pressed in place, not turned in.  So now I had two broken bolts in the joint and one that was still intact.  I whacked the remaining bolt a bit and then used the wonder bar to pop the joint apart with the bolt still in place.  These old bolts aren’t going anywhere, they feel like they are more or less welded in place from the years of extreme heat and exposure to the elements.

The van sounded quite ominous with no muffler attached as you can hear above. I put my tools away and went inside to do some further research.  I came up with several options.

One option is to take the van to a garage and see if they can remove the bolts by heating and beating the shit out of them.  However I think doing so would destroy the flange part of the muffler.  Replacing the muffler is the quick but expensive solution as a muffler for a full size van with labor costs could easily reach $300.  I didn’t like that option.

As I dug around on the internet I stumbled across exhaust flange kits, hardware designed to serve the purpose of a flange when there is a problem with the original.  I think a new gasket and one of these kits will be all I need to get the pipe securely together for less than $50.  I am hoping I can simply leave the old studs in place and offset the fix-a-flange around them.  It should be yet another interesting automotive repair experience.

So I was considering going to Zookies to watch the Eagles game but my eyelids were already feeling heavy at 8:15 so I opted to just listen to the game on Sirius, streamed to my surround sound system.  The game was pretty much a cluster fck from the get go with the Eagles turning the ball over with alarming regularity.

After an exciting 30 minutes to start the season, the team that has taken the field since then has been exposed as one that still has many holes, despite Chip Kelly’s up tempo offense.  Going fast doesn’t make interceptions or fumbles any less painful.

I didn’t get too bent out of shape about the game, as I have had the typical high hopes but low expectations for the team this year anyway.  I am happy about the new coach, I’m not thrilled still having Mike Vick behind the center. Like the Eagles team so far this year, Vick had a short flash of brilliance 3 years ago but since then has been nothing but mediocre and injury prone.

It must of been a sweet “FU” moment for Andy Reid to roll in here with a team that was 2-14 last year and beat his old team on their home field, convincingly.

Speaking of home field, despite the beauty of The Linc, the Eagles modern stadium that was completed several years ago, it SUCKS as a home field.  The Eagles have never had a significant home field advantage at this stadium, nothing approaching the days of the Vet when the deafening roar of fans in the closed bowl stadium combined with the rock hard and treacherous playing surface struck fear into opposing players.  The Linc scares nobody and for whatever reason the Eagles have played some of their absolutely worst games at home.  It’s maddening.

Last night I had a funny dream.  I had installed iOS7 on my Iphone yesterday and despite reports of problems reported by others, my install went smoothly.  I like the new UI although I find it ironic that it reminds me in someways of the Metro interface in Windows 8.  So anyway, in the dream I had also just completed the os upgrade on my phone.  It was plugged into the computer with a USB cable.

All of a sudden I smelled something burning.  I looked down at the power plug for my pc and it was starting to melt.  I looked at my Iphone and it was glowing red hot in the middle.  The glow was working outward, towards the USB cable, almost like a bomb fuse in reverse.

I instinctively yanked out the USB cord, hoping it would stop whatever was going on.  The PC was saved but the Iphone continued to glow.  As it heated up it started to roll up, like a tube of toothpaste.  By the time it was done it looked like a small log.

I was in disbelief of was just happened but I recall thinking to myself “Well I guess it’s time try out a Galaxy S4”

This weekend will be quite busy.  If I get any sort of break in the rain the grass severely needs attention.  I also will be working the exhaust repair in the van as well as changing the oil since it just pulled what is normally 9 months of driving in 10 days.  I am going to show Cindy how to change the oil in her Miata while I am at it.  She is very interested in doing car work for whatever reason.  I’m happy to share whatever little automotive knowledge I can with her.

I need to mix in a training brick with the various chores I will be mucking my way through as well.  For fun there is a mountain of Tivo content yet to be digested.

So yesterday was the last day of freedom before returning to work.  I had a pretty diverse day.  My ideas of mowing the grass were washed away by yet another very wet afternoon.  I attached the new stickers we picked up on the trip to the back of the party van.  The back window and bumper are getting filled with lots of adhesive proof of the various adventures the van has taken me to.

I also did a little digging into the additional noise I was hearing out of the van the last few days of the trip.  I turned it on and laid on the driveway to listen/look.  I saw the joint in the exhaust pipe in front of the muffler had only one of the original three bolts in place and I could see the joint was loose, leaking condensation and exhaust.  That would explain the extra noise I was hearing.  I should be able to fix it up myself this weekend with a new gasket and a few bolts.

Later in the morning I stopped by my mom’s place to give her a few souvenirs we picked up on the trip.  She was at the community pool with her “pool lady” friends, both of whom are two decades older than she is.  Mom liked the stuff although the small ceramic mask we picked up for her in New Orleans had a small piece crack off of it that I took home and glued.  I hung with mom at the pool for awhile talking about the trip and other things, it was nice.

Tuesday afternoon I did various things at the house like more computer work, planting the Joshua tree seeds I bought out west and getting a workout in although it was a big failure.

Last night was a running club board meeting but I skipped it.  The weather was shitty, the meeting agenda wasn’t pressing and I didn’t really feel like driving all the way into town for it.  Instead I used the time to do some spur of the moment work on the SSR.

Ever since I installed the Pioneer radio in my SSR I have had an annoying problem, I would get an engine whine coming through the speakers that corresponded with the RPM’s.  I have tried to address this problem a couple times, once by turning down the gain on the potentiometer on  one of the 3rd party modules in the install and a second time by relocating the ground to a different location.

Recently I was contacted by someone on the SSR fanatics site asking about my stereo install since he was installing a Pioneer radio in his truck as well.  During the conversation he mentioned how he simply used the ground built into the radio harness and did not run a separate ground wire to bare metal.  He said he has no electrical feedback in his install.  This got me thinking…

Prior to doing my install I looked into how others have done it.  The guideline I followed included a physical ground so that is what I did in my install.  However from my Tacoma radio swap I did no additional grounding and just used the factory wire harness and it’s built in ground.  So to test this theory I ripped into the dash of my truck for the 6th or 7th time.

I am disgusted at the rats nest of wires every time I pull the radio out.  Despite multiple efforts, I never found a way to clean it up that actually fit in the space I have available.  It took me awhile to dig through the cluster of wires to find what I was looking for.  When I looked at the ground connector I realized there were two black wires.  One of the wires was bare and meant to be used to ground other parts of the system, the other was wired into the factory ground in the harness.  Well I realized I had basically double grounded the system which surely was the source of my problem.  To verify this I removed the auxiliary ground and powered up the radio.  It worked fine. Doh.

Realizing this stupid mistake was aggravating but a relief at the same time.  After a difficult struggle getting the radio and it’s tangle of wires back into the dash I turned the truck on and revved the motor, verifying my noise gremlin was gone.  It was.

Putting the front dash panel back on was a pain in the ass but I already knew it would be, just as it was every other time I have had it apart.  Once it was all buttoned back up I did one more test run and again all I heard was music, finally.  Persistence pays off.

Last night I stayed up way too late getting caught up with Breaking Bad, watching the last two episodes.  Wow, some crazy, crazy stuff went down.  I had a hard time falling asleep afterwards even though I was exhausted.

I figured I might as well get the blog post done since the following few days are going to be quite full of trip related prep.

My return to race timing was a rocky one.  Leading up to the race I have been doing some testing of new features of the latest version of the timing software I use.  However all my testing was of the new features, not the old ones.

Well on the morning of the race I discovered that the new version had some bugs, like I was unable to use two laptops at the same time to do data entry like I normally do.  This meant that Ali had to handle all of the paper entries herself, luckily her fast typing ability kept her ahead of the roughly 70 people that walked up the day of the race to sign up.

This was also the first time that we accepted credit cards on race day.  We processed them using a Square reader attached to the club Ipad I recently purchased.  It worked very well, the only issue I had is the Square card reader can be a bit inconsistent.  I had to manually key a couple of the transactions in which takes longer.

Another difference was I planned to use our Time Machine to capture the start race time instead of the boring old Timex stopwatch I normally use.  I further planned to use it as a back up to the chip timing system, where I would manually be punching in runner bibs and times as they crossed the finish line.

So our club president starts the race, “Ready set GO!” I hit the ENTER button to start the Time Machine.  Nothing happens, I hit the ENTER button again and again, nothing happens…  Then I realize I am hitting the wrong button, I hit the START TIME button (imagine that) and the finally the seconds start clicking off.  Unfortunately almost 10 seconds had already passed by the time I figured out my mistake.  Luckily I also wrote down the race start time on my watch.

So I had forgotten to lay out the finish line mats ahead of time.  After speed walking back to the finish line I hurriedly laid out the mats, hooked up the lines, tested the field strength and got it synched with the computer with about two minutes to spare before the first kid came flying across the finish line just after the 16 minute mark.

Somewhere around the 4th or 5th finisher I noticed something was whacky with the finish times, they were all reading about two minutes longer than they should be.  I looked at my time capture screen and noticed in my rushing around I typo’d the race start time, making it two minutes earlier than it should be.  F me….

So I changed the start time on the fly which corrected the time for the first 4 or 5 finishers however I then had a new problem.  Every runner after that was showing the time of day as their race time, so instead of saying Sally Smith finished in 29 minutes it said Sally’s race time was 7:59.  Argh….

In order to get correct results I had to wipe out all of the real time data collection and do multiple imports from files I captured off the timing box.  It was a real mess but thankfully it worked out ok in the end.  On a good note, I was able to post the finish line results directly to the internet from the race site.  Runners were able to scan a qr code and check their times on their smart phones.

Cindy ran the race and managed a 5K PR which surprised her since she said she didn’t feel like she was running all that well.

Once I got home I was tied up with race related stuff for quite awhile, longer than normal because I also submitted an in depth bug report to the race timing software author so he can address these bugs before my next race at the end of the month.

On the way home from the race I grabbed the girls to spend some time out at the house.  They always appreciate open yard time, despite it being BRUTALLY hot and humid Saturday (and the entire weekend for that matter)

On Saturday afternoon I knocked out outside chores while Cindy was nice enough to help me with some of the indoor to do’s.  By the time I returned inside I was really, really tired because of the 4 AM alarm for the race.

Saturday night I saw Argo, a film I heard a lot of positive buzz about.  I mistakenly thought it was about rescuing the Iranian hostages we all heard about as kids.  It is actually about rescuing 6 or 7 Americans that were not taken as hostages but were hiding from Iranian authorities.  The movie was good but once again I suffered from drowsiness during it.  I need to either take naps before or drink coffee during these things.  As is I’d give the movie a B+. Good stuff.

Sunday the training brick was instead turned into a single training event, a swim.  It was hot as hell once again and time-wise, a swim only exercise plan worked out better for both motivation and time constraints.  Since I didn’t pre-fatigue myself with running or biking beforehand my swim was good, for me.  I averaged right around 10:30 for each of my 500 yard swim segments.

Cindy had not one but two different people jump into the lane she was swimming in without asking and start swimming as well.  Cindy seems to have this happen to her a lot when we swim there.  For some reason some people don’t see the problem with swimming towards a person that doesn’t know that you are there.

When you stop and call them out for this stupid behavior they are always apologetic but it seems there is another person lined up and ready to go to commit the same brain fart shortly afterwards.  I mean it is a combo of common sense and common courtesy to make sure a person is ok with sharing a lane with you before jumping in.  Unfortunately both of those things seem to becoming endangered species in 2013.

So when I was driving the van on Saturday I noticed the check engine light come on.  What perfect timing, I have had the van for 4 or 5 years and never seen a CEL.  A few days before I am ready to push it cross country to the Grand Canyon it makes it’s first appearance, awesome.

Later in the drive the light went back out but when I got home I threw my code reader on the van, not wanting to tempt fate.  The code it threw had to do with a failure in the EGR valve. An EGR valve has to do with capturing exhaust gases and reusing them in the combustion process.  When I looked into the side effects of a faulty or failing EGR valve like hard starting, bad idle and dramatically decreased gas mileage I sprung into action.

If I was doing my normal dog taxi driving, a bad EGR valve could be overlooked/ignored for awhile.  However with over 4000 miles coming up, any significant reduction in gas mileage could have a pretty big impact in my wallet with more fuel costs.  I figured I would just replace it after verifying doing so wasn’t outside of my normal low end mechanic abilities.

Replacing the valve wasn’t too bad although doing anything in the engine compartment of the van is not exactly fun due to the limited access.  I utilized my long socket extension to get to the two bolts holding the valve in place.  After replacing the part I fired up the van to verify no CEL had returned, so far so good.

The van also gained a brand new battery on Sunday.  The battery has been clicking off the built in battery saver switch after shorter and shorter durations lately.  The switch basically kills all the power to the van once the voltage level of the battery drops below a certain point.  When the battery was new, I could not drive the van for 2 weeks and not have to hit the reset button on the battery switch.  Well recently the switch would be tripped after not driving the van for a day, a sure sign the battery is going south.

I pulled the battery out, which had a 12/10 manufacture date and took it to Wal-mart, where I bought it.  I figured since the battery was not totally dead they weren’t going to give me any warranty consideration, leaving me on the hook to just pay the $100 for a new one.  However, if I have learned anything over the last few years, it is if you don’t ask for something, you are pretty much assured you will never get it.

I asked the manager if he could scan the battery and see if I can get it covered under warranty.  He checked it and verified it was weak but not dead.  However he said he will just exchange it for a new one, no charge, SWEET.  I returned back to the house with a little spring in my step, free stuff does that.  I am hoping the new battery and EGR valve will set us up for a trip devoid of mechanical issues.

I had hoped to be out mowing the grass this morning, knocking out another must do before the trip. Unfortunately a deluge on Sunday washed away those plans.  I did put on my water proof boots this morning and weed whacked everything at least, coating myself in wet, green organic material.  I am hoping one day this week after work things will dry out enough for me to get a full mowing session in.  Unfortunately for the last 2-3 hours it has been pouring once again, oh well….

I plan to spend the rest of my Labor Day doing little labor instead filling it with maybe some Tuffwing construction or perhaps even some time in Azeroth.

I swapped vehicles with Cindy yesterday so I could do some more work on her Miata.  The rear finish panel on the car has been broken since she bought it.  It was the major exterior flaw on the vehicle.  The Miata has had a number of mechanical issues that took priority over this visual flaw until last night.

I found the replacement panel on Ebay, it is from a 96 Miata, luckily the panels from 1990-1997 are all compatible.  From what I read, the first couple years of production, the plastic used for this panel was not great and became brittle.  By the time 1996 rolled around they switched to a higher grade, more flexible ABS style plastic.

I was really impressed with the replacement part.  The seller packed it VERY well, ensuring it would arrive undamaged.  The part itself was in great shape, looking practically brand new despite coming off a 17 year old Miata.

The replacement process was not difficult, the funniest moment was when I pulled part of the broken finish panel off and found an abandoned wasp nest inside of it. After removing the busted up old panel I had to move some of the mounting hardware to the new panel before mounting it.  All in all the swap went very smoothly and it really cleaned up the look of the back end of the Miata.

I didn’t see any other how to videos pertaining to this on YouTube so I had no choice but to create the first one.

So the situation in Syria has been in the news quite a bit.  The latest information casts doubt on John Kerry’s seemingly irrefutable evidence that the government was behind the chemical weapon release.  The UN is urging that inspectors are allowed to complete their investigation before any additional action is taken.  Britain whose leader, David Cameron, was very gung ho about military action, has now officially backed away after Parliment voted it down.

My initial reaction on Monday, supporting military action, was based on several presumptions, that there was  iron clad proof that Asaad was behind the attacks and that any military action would be a joint effort by multiple nations.  Despite the absence of both of these things now, there is now talk of the US going it alone and striking out at Syria.  I do NOT think that is a good idea.

There is a clear and recent precedent for our intelligence being incorrect (or us being outright lied to) and using that information to get the country into a long, pointless and infinitely expensive military conflict in Iraq.  I have no doubt that capability for the government to deceive is still there even with a different face in the oval office.  I would find it hard to believe that the Iraq lesson would not be heeded.  Going into another Mideast conflict on questionable intelligence, solo would be pretty stupid, frankly.

Let the inspectors finish their job and depending on what they come back with, reevaluate from there.

Tomorrow I step back into the race timing saddle.  The Labor Day weekend event is a pretty good size, we should have 400+ runners participating.  I am testing out some new integration with this event.  If it works as hoped, I will be posting finish results right from the finish line, providing runners with the ability to check their results online instantly using their smart phone. I also am testing pushing race results to runners via email or text messaging notifications that they were able to sign up for.

I am hoping it all works as planned, crossing my fingers.

This long weekend will be put to good use preparing for my upcoming road trip.  I have a list of things that need to be taken care of.  Unfortunately that list only resides in my head currently, not the safest place for it to be with my sometimes hit or miss memory.  I probably need to jot some things down.

The place where I work is typically pretty boring,  It got a big dose of excitement on Friday afternoon however when a a joint connected to a ceiling drain let loose in the middle of a downpour.  This was a big pipe, probably 5 – 6 inches in diameter.  By the time I got up front to see it there was already an inch of water on the floor of the department with a non-stop waterfall coming from the ceiling.

I felt sort of helpless, not having the means to stop the water although I wondered if I could stand on something to push the pipe back onto it’s fitting.  In total the water was pouring in for a good 15 minutes until someone from the maintenance department got up on the roof and plugged the drain.  Of course as the network administrator my first concern was the equipment.  Luckily most of the computers were off the ground although there were a number of live power strips/bricks laying in the water with juice still flowing to them.

Our department got busy disconnecting the computers and getting them up on the desks.  Within 90 minutes Fire Service was on site starting to suck up the excess water and hooking up their huge collection of dehumidifiers and fans. When I got into the office this morning that department was a mess.  All of the furniture was moved around to gain access to the walls where they drilled multiple holes to help dry out any moisture that seeped in there.

We have been told certain areas might not be completely dried out for a week.  We are going to have to juggle things around to keep at least bare minimum services available while allowing the repair/clean up to complete.  It will be a a frustrating week for sure.

Saturday any sort of mowing was cancelled due to the huge amounts of rain that fell during the week, I have standing water everywhere.  Of course I had no shortage of other things to do.  I did a bunch of work on Cindy’s Miata as well, replacing the spark plugs, fuel filter and troubleshooting a pesky water leak problem.  The fuel filter was much more inconvenient to change on the Miata than the van, surprisingly enough.

I brought the girls out to play with Lucky on both Saturday and Sunday.  They had a lot of fun.  Watching Lucky chase Sadie around the house brought instant smiles to my face.  It reminded me of how Sadie and Nicki used to play years ago.  Nicki still tried to get involved in the play the best that she could however nowadays that is relegated to a bit of squaring off with her dropping the “big paw” now and then.

On Saturday night we went out to see Kick Ass 2.  I saw the opening week box office for the movie was pretty poor, something like 16-17 million.  I was kind of surprised, until I saw it.  The original Kick Ass was a mostly light hearted movie about a kid who winds up being a real life super hero.  I recall there being a few moments in the first film that seemed overly graphically violent but for the most part they were minor.  Well Kick Ass 2 took it to a new, highly inappropriate level in my opinion.

The movie  vacillates wildly between a light hearted, silly theme to a Schwarzenegger in Commando style of violence. One minute you are laughing out loud at the snooty high school girl puking and shitting herself and then the next minute you are seeing Kick Ass’s dad brutally strangled in a jail cell.  It was ridiculous and in very poor taste.  Machetes through the chest while a guys dogs is watching, jokes about not being able to get it up to rape a woman, and graphic close up headshots of cops vaults over the line of good taste.  I was feeling legitimately disgusted during certain parts of the film.

It’s a real shame because the movie would have been quite fun if they would have dropped all of the graphic violence.  It was totally unnecessary and irresponsible.

If I wasn’t annoyed enough by the film, we had to deal with some young kids that decided out of an entirely empty theater, their best seating option was directly behind us.   The movie was rated R and most of these kids were probably 14 or younger, kudos to to whatever adult allowed them into to see the movie, idiots.

So of course the film is going to get a bad rating from me, it could have easily been a B+ if they dropped all the unneeded bullshit, instead I would award it a C- and would not recommend you waste money seeing it any format that requires you to pay for it.

During the day Saturday I had another annoying encounter at Dunkin Donuts.  I documented it pretty well on FB so in order to save time I will take the easy way and copy and paste.

So I am ready to turn left into DD and a Mercedes sedan comes whipping around the corner and turns in ahead of me (no turn signal). For some reason this man and female companion stopped for 30 seconds at the entrance to the drive thru before finally approaching the ordering area.

After I realize he has been at the ordering window for awhile I turn off my radio so I can hear what is going on. I see this asshole’s triple chin wobbling as he is chastising the young girl for not having the variety of donut he desired. He asked her “what the hell is going on in there?” in a total condescending prick tone as if this girl was responsible for making sure his favorite donuts are available at all times.

He instructs the girl to read him every donut variety they DO have. She does so without losing one ounce of pleasantness in her voice. Asshole says he guesses he will have to take a key lime donut since he has little choice.

He whips around the 90 degree corner of the drive thru. The girl hands the fat fuck his donut and then hands him his receipt which he promptly throws on the ground before he speeds away.

This is the exact type of affluent individual that I despise. I hope his key lime donut gave him explosive diarhea.

Moral of the story – don’t be an asshole

My post struck a chord with many people who chimed in with their thoughts about this chode.

On Sunday I decided to keep my brick close to home instead of spending three hours away from the house.  It was Lucky’s last day with me so I figured he would appreciate it if I stuck around.   I did a relatively quick 4 miles on the treadmill, most of it spent with Lucky observing me.  I made the time on the spinning belt more bearable by watching YouTube RC videos on my Kindle as I was running.  It definitely helped pass the time with less mental anguish than normal.

After the run I jumped in the pool and did around 30 minutes of swimming.  Since my pool is only 28 feet long I only get 4 or 5 good strokes in before having to spin around but it was good enough.  Again Lucky spent most of the time watching me, he is so funny.

On Sunday afternoon I thought I would take my Blade quadcopter outside.  Although there was standing water everywhere I planned to keep the copter up on the mound where the house is built, keeping it high and dry.  I had a huge scare while I was out there.  I was flying around cautiously when a gust of wind pushed the copter farther away from me than planned.  At the same time the copter gained altitude rapidly, almost like it had lost contact with my transmitter.

Before I knew it the copter was at least 150 feet high and moving away from me.  I was freaking out.  At that height I could not tell the orientation of the Blade at all, I was just trying to use trial and error to get it closer to me.  I wound up doing a huge high C shaped path over the house.  I was trying to cut throttle to get the damn thing down but at the same time not too much so I could keep bringing it towards me.  I somehow managed to get it somewhat close to me and cut the power just before it hit the oak tree branches.  I felt very lucky to have gotten it back dry and in one piece.

Sadie and Nicki were not fans of the copter, they both scurried inside when I started flying it.  Lucky on the other hand saw this as a flying dog toy.  As I was hovering it he would jump up and bark at it, he thought it was the best thing ever.  I had to keep calling him off of it, he almost got his nose nicked by the blades a few times.

My buddy came to pick up Lucky around 5.  It was sad to see him go, he has so much fun out at the house and just loves everything.  He’s a good boy.

Sunday evening I saw the latest GI Joe movie.  I was very tired and dozed off multiple times, especially towards the end.  What I saw was decent, I’d give it a B.  If I saw more I might have rated it higher, or lower, who knows?