The two new pads are on the left. Two of the old pads are on the right. See how worn down the old ones were? Incredible. Pardon my awesome aiming job here. I had the camera wrapped in a paper towel so I wouldn't get any wheel bearing grease on...
Color me baffled. I've got my wheel bearings and discs all bolted up properly but I can't get the pistons pushed back into the brake calipers far enough to accept the new brake pads I bought. Any tips on how the hell I can do this? I've used sticks and...
Kirby over at Eastside Machine (not that Eastside Machine) did a great job dealing with my brake discs and even came in to work on the weekend to finish things up in time for me. Great guy, great price, and definitely decent work. I would say something better about the...
Rogaine for the tree? Or hair plugs, maybe? Moving the tree away from the window helped immensely, and it also helped keep the soil much moister. Unlike the last two weeks—where I've watered the plant daily and still struggled to keep it wet enough—the last week I've hardly had to...
We have a moss problem. Lots of lawns in this part of Washington do. This particular part of the lawn is right around 80% moss by area. There are some parts where it's worse....
I'm still not sure which is the best part. Is it the paint job? The doors? Or is the awesome sideways photo of the interior (complete with "HONEY BROWN WOOD GRAIN")? Courtesy craigslist. P.S. Please remember that the ad says, "NO STUPID OFFERS." Serious offers only. P.P.S. Click on the...
The US House did the right thing today by voting down the delay in the digital switchover. The advertisements describing the change have been going on forever. Consumers who really needed the $40 vouchers had plenty of warning and probably could have guessed that this would get bungled by the...
Alfa Romeo hasn't sold cars stateside since 1995, but rumors of their return have been circulating across the internets for a few years now. Originally slated for 2007 (and confirmed by savior of all things Fiat and all-around übercoolguy Sergio Marchionne) the date has since been pushed back year-by-year until...
Here on the left coast, Chinese is a bit more common on government publications than, say, Spanish. Coming from New Mexico, this is a bit of change. Also, we had an election. During the general election, we made the director of elections an elected position. Now we're ... electing the...
I bought a memo book yesterday. Very handy....
I feel like I posted this at some point, but now I can't find it. We got a boatload of insulation blown into the attic in November. The house isn't warmer at all, but the furnace does run far less often and it feels like the rooms near the edge...
Apparently shifting into 2nd gear on Ford C6 transmissions will cause it to lock completely into that gear, even when moving at speeds when 1st is typically selected (and when accelerating from a stop). I wish I had known this when it was snowing a few weeks ago. That would...
I have no idea why this irks me. But it does. A lot. if( NULL != ptr ) { hr = func( ptr ); } if( S_OK != hr ) { // blah blah } Highlight that text with your cursor (but not the whole post—just the, ahem, "code" snippet)....
You know those obnoxious difficult-to-replace rubber wiper blades that don't come attached to a whole wiper arm? The local auto parts store apparently stopped carrying them. That sucks, because I actually love those little refills. The big three points here are:they're like, half the cost they're far less wasteful (no...
But, all is quiet on the western front as far as I can tell....
Yesterday's Indexed appears to have struck a nerve with the commenters. Typically Indexed gathers ten or twelve comments per post. Unforeseen Difficulties has picked up over one hundred so far. Controversy in the interspheres!...
Perhaps you're wondering, "what is this?" Well, it's a 1973 Corvette frame with a Cadillac Eldorado body dropped on top, and it's called the Corvarado (get it?) It was one of eight built by Les Dunham—one of which made it into the Live and Let Die Bond film. It's quite...
We saw The Wrestler at the local luxury theater last Saturday evening. Interest in (or hell, even knowledge of) wrestling is absolutely not required to enjoy this film. Those of you who have seen Pi or Requiem for a Dream will appreciate that The Wrestler was directed by uberawesomeman Darren...
My bonsai is losing more leaves than it should. I think the problem is that I'm keeping it right up against my office window. It certainly gets the most sun sitting right next to the glass, but it's also subject to the heat loss through the (reasonably thin) pane. Since...
I'm not particularly excited about the events tomorrow. This is yet another marker in a process that is inevitable and incredibly important. The beginning of the next four years isn't nearly as exciting as those four years themselves. Let's get it on. But, I am incredibly excited about how the...
Rich and I went snowboarding today. The mountain has gotten above freezing nearly every day this last week, and the cycle of melting and freezing has resulted in awful conditions. The groomed runs were rock-hard and slick, and the areas where the powder usually is was covered in big frozen...
We went to Gold Class Cinemas last night, a local luxury movie theater. It's quite an experience. Instead of being crammed into a theater with a bunch of other people, you get a recliner to yourself and wait staff who serve drinks and dinner. The film itself is just the...
Some stuff is originally supposed to be cool. As it becomes pervasive, cool stuff typically becomes lame, and has the potential to be exploited for satire. Stuff White People Like started out being satirical. Now that it's reasonably pervasive, I have to admit that I almost feel like using it...
Starting on the 1st of this year, every chain restaraunt in Seattle (and King County, where I live) is required to post the caloric content of everything on their menu. In case you're wondering, "chain" equates to more than 15 stores nationwide. The thing is that up until today, I...
I sold the transmission. To Dirty Dan. Of Dirty Dan's Tranz. Good luck with the rebuild, Dirty Dan....
Well, the battery is dying. As far as I can tell, there's nothing wrong with the rest of the phone. I'm torn because I'm always down for new toys, but I'm also not particularly interested in smartphones—the net effect is that I'd sortof like a new phone that makes reasonable...
I usually associate fog with early morning. No idea why that is, since we're clearly getting a big load of it late tonight....
Sorry to see you leave the planet....
I spotted this Rolls-Royce at the post office earlier today. I'm thinking it's a Silver Cloud I. Swanky....
I have to admit that residual microwave time drives me crazy. When someone leaves a few seconds on the clock, I feel obligated to clear the value out. Also, lazy! But, I'm not quite this passionate about it. Photo from passiveaggressivenotes.com....
Color me surprised. Seattle's Alaskan Way Viaduct is in such poor shape that a reasonably sizeable earthquake would topple it—so local leaders have been trying to find a replacement for the last few years. There have been three somewhat viable solutions proposed: rebuild it, replace it with a surface street,...
Sortof. Yes, it's that Mouser, but no, that's not him pictured. Mouser's post about this is way more detailed than I'm willing to write, so read that instead. The short short version is that the city of St. Paul has a sizeable population of urban explorers who cause enough of...
I don't think it's any sort of news that the transaction costs for credit cards starve businesses of loads of cash. Small businesses with small individual receipts (think restaraunts, gas stations) are particularly hard hit when it comes to the fees associated with accepting credit, due to the way the...
Not this old truck, this old truck. I took the F-250 down to Dan Fast Muffler & Brakes yesterday and they did a great job fixing the horrendous exhaust problems on the vehicle. In fact, they fixed it too well. See, the truck used to make a ton of grunty...
I found this outside my house today. I left for the office around 2pm and noticed this ~1930s pickup truck on a tow dolly in the middle of the road a few hundred feet from my house. When I got home a few hours later, it was being loaded onto...
Here's how part of my evening went last night. I heard a news story about the fly ash spill in Tennessee. Since I had my laptop in front of me, I fired up Wikipedia, and visited these pages in approximately this order:Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill Exxon...
There was an outdoor orange neighborhood cat with only one eye that visited our backyard often and who drove Fifo absolutely batty. Today the cat died near the side of the big road near our house. It's possible he was hit—I'm not sure. It's a reminder of how delicate life...
I'm planning on getting the exhaust fixed on the truck tomorrow morning. I've lived with a huge hole just past the passenger-side header since I've owned the damn thing, and it's noisy enough that I'd rather not live with it forever. I don't (yet) have a welder so I can't...
These days, I work on two big categories of things: code, and standards. On days where I work on code, I spend:About 80% of my time staring at vi The remainder staring at Outlook On days where I work on standardizing specifications, I spend:About 70% of my time staring at...
I got my window office today and celebrated with plants! Here I've got a big schefflera, some manner of leafy agave thing that apparently grows great with practically no light, and a teeny tiny bonsai of a variety that I can't recall at the moment. All three are stuff into...
...that boy needs therapy. I was kicked out of my office today for the move so ... I went snowboarding. The conditions today were awful. The temperature came up and the rain came down, and the powder all turned to slush. The only thing worse than slushy snow is concrete...
I'm selling my amazing non-functioning Ford C6 transmission core for the unbelievably low price of only $50! Come buy it today and get a free torque converter. Really though, I've hung on to this thing for almost exactly 4 months since I finished the transmission swap. It's time to be...
The thermometer and watch battery people appear to be in cahoots. We've had this outdoor digital thermometer since we bought our house, and in the ~20 months since we've moved, it has displayed this "change battery soon" warning for nearly 15 of them. I'll put a new battery in it...
Layla spotted this (cached) for sale earlier today—it's a presale for a house that doesn't yet exist. And the artist's rendition is ... something else. Be the first person on your street to own clipart of a Lexus in your driveway!...
I didn't go snowboarding today. And I don't think I'll have a chance to go this weekend, either. So here's a shot of the mountain that I took earlier this week....
It may have something to do with the pile of nuts perpetually stocked right outside our door....
I'm trying to figure this one out. It's difficult. The chart at right shows my heart rate (red line, at top) and the speed at which I'm running (blue line, at bottom). In both cases, up is faster. Ignore the weird jaggies in the blue plot. The GPS track isn't...
