Let's hope this stain lasts longer than the last one....
Continue reading Deck is done.
May 2009 Archives
It's about time....
Continue reading Man bites dog.
I was about to post about switching back to Dvorak for writing documents and email at work when I searched across this-here-blog for ... Dvorak. I found this post about how flawed the MS 8000 keyboard series is. ...but I just bought one for the PC in the living room....
Continue reading I said what?.
Due to a last-minute change in stain, I've put off completing my deck refinishing day-by-day until ... well, probably tomorrow. That means that I've had a sanded deck for the last few days sitting out in the open, collecting bird crap. Washing the bird crap off would reset the timer...
Continue reading Just sand it off.
Say it with me now: WD-40 is not a great lubricant. Number of times I've used WD-40 in the last year: once. I sprayed down my shears at the end of last summer so they wouldn't rust while hanging in the garage all winter. WD-40 works great for that, since...
Continue reading I think you're looking for the silicone spray lubricant.
I got an email (rather, four emails) about this over a month ago but spaced posting it until now. Apparently Capsule Inn Akihabara is closing down for some local building development. It's weird because neither their English nor Japanese websites mention it. Their reservation pages do show no open spaces,...
Continue reading Goodbye Capsule Inn Akihabara.
This car's front-end reminds me of the Ko-Dans1 from The Last Starfighter. You remember—there's that assassin who climbs off his ship at one point and who always gave me the heebie-jeebies before he looked through his bizarrely-shaped binoculars. The SsangYong design team sure does have some interesting, uhh, taste. 1...
Continue reading SsangYong Actyon.
I rented a drum floor sander from the local equipment rental joint and sanded down the deck. In all, it took about seven hours to take off all of the funk, stain, and mildew. Sometime later this week I'll re-stain it with a semi-transparent deck paint. I went with the...
Continue reading Decked.
I built an HTPC earlier this week. I hit three snags:The 200GB Western Digital drive I had lying around happened to have a dead controller. The machine would take over a minute to POST with this old drive. I replaced it with an even older 45GB WD unit which makes...
Continue reading HTPC.
There were two flights Wednesday morning, so I got a chance to film the B-17 leaving (WMV, 10.9MB) and arriving (WMV, 1.85MB)....
Continue reading It's a manoeuvre.
Taken yesterday, some video from the bombardier's position (3.80MB, WMV)....
Continue reading View from the front.
I flew on Aluminum Overcast today. This was an amazing experience. The roaming tour is put on by the Experimental Aircraft Association: they run the flights and coordinate everything. The flights for the next few days are being run out of the Museum of Flight, which is convenient since I...
Continue reading B-17.
Let's go for three in a row: this jacked-up Taco with double-wide mud flaps was spotted near a movie theater in Redmond. I thought parking like that only happened in the southwest....
Continue reading Goofy car hat trick.
I ran across this Mercedes-Benz SL in front of the local Fry's. Check out the plates. Yesterday was a good day for spotting silly cars....
Continue reading Predatr.
This one's for Rob E. What you see here is an Action Package-equipped seventh-generation Toyota Celica GT with homebrew two-tone paint, and some aero effects mounted on the ... hood. Right in front of the wipers. I'm pretty sure I've seen these "splitters" optionally available below the front fascia on...
Continue reading That's not where those go.
Those damned robocallers have annoyed enough of the higher-ups that they've been slapped with a restraining order. The restraining order will hold until a hearing for an injunction (scheduled for the end of the month). I hate (hate hate hate) those warranty robocallers and am as pleased about this as...
Continue reading Hallelujah.
Welcome to Socorro (beware: audio starts automatically)....
Continue reading For all you techies.
Hello, ... everybody- I had a work meeting from 4:30pm until, well, evening. And then I caught a ride back to the office, and rode home. Enjoy....
Continue reading Work meeting.
This is the steering rack, fuel pump, and brake master cylinder underneath the front end. Usually this is all covered with a skid plate. This shot shows the new fuel lines, but there was some additional reassembly required before buttoning it all up....
Continue reading Bonus under-body shot.
All done. It's been about 75 days since I blocked the car to pull the tank, fix the blower motor, and otherwise clean things up. I did most of the reassembly yesterday (and even went for a spin to ... fill up the tank) but I didn't have a chance...
Continue reading Ride.
As far as I can tell, this bolt sheet-metal screw is wedged between the rim and the bead, and isn't actually puncturing anything. Also, I think this is the OEM spare tire. It doesn't appear to have ever been used, and is covered in a whole bunch of freaky-deaky German....
Continue reading Well that's not good.
After the hell I put it through, the lawn is growing back. It's now absent the yellow-green moss everywhere, so even though there are still some brown patches left over from the dethatching, overall it's a much deeper green than before. I took this shot earlier this week and things...
Continue reading Lawn update: as exciting as watching grass grow.
This is how the 914 has been sitting in the garage since approximately November. I've got the front wheel off so I can get to the gas tank. The targa is off since that makes it really easy to get in and out while ripping apart the heater controls....
Continue reading The setup.
When I go to work tomorrow, I'm going to take with me a ziploc baggie full of dirt. You may recall that I have plants now. I repotted two of them a few weeks ago and since then the soil has settled into the pots considerably. Since I'm riding my...
Continue reading A baggie of what now?.
Found hanging out of the bottom of the stereo in the 914. Someone decided to splice the red and white pre-amp lines (shown here) onto a "fresh" set of RCA plugs. Unfortunately it appears the only means of affixing the ground and signal feed lines to their counterparts was via...
Continue reading How not to splice a two-conductor wire.
Raven figured it out on his first guess, although Rob Williams ran across it too in his fusillade of responses. The two copper prong things bridge a grounding plate and one of three fan speed lines. The big black piece you see in the first photograph really is just a...
Round two. Here's where we left off last time. Sorry for the fuzzy. Any more guesses? P.S. One guess per round, please....
My friend Rich's birthday was at the local Family Fun Center. It's like a Chuck-e-Cheese with different franchise rights...and fewer gropings. Let's skip past the games, food, and overall atmosphere—what was most interesting was the patronage. It seemed like half the people there were attending a 1980s party. Lots of...
Continue reading Family Fun Center.
Taking a page from Mouser's flickr feed and innumerable kids shows and brain teaser games, here's a game where you try to figure out what something is from a photo taken horrendously close to the object in question. Sorry for the focus. My Canon point-and-shoot has decent macro, which means...
The local NPR affiliate has an incredibly good Saturday morning lineup. 9am starts with Car Talk. 10am follows up with Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me And 11 to noon closes out with This American Life. Once the ball starts rolling at 9 I find myself stuck doing things where I...
Continue reading Saturday mornings.
