is it better to be safe than sorry

The Malibu just had its first fill-up since getting the spark plugs changed, and it looks like that may have done a bit of good. It certainly wasn't any conscious effort to be more economical, because I got pulled over yesterday for speeding after I finally got off work - hosed again, the other quality person bailed around 4:30 without even asking if I could be the one who had to stay late.

new grille

as our good city lays still

In Seattle. No Firebirds up here either. I am not real good at the touristy stuff because I hate big cities and mobs of people and stupid one way system roads in a tight grid. Fortunately I am not listed as a driver on the rental so I am barred from driving the stupid SUV. GPS navigator is a fun change.

Got a book about car modifications - kind of interesting because they have to explain how everything works before they start talking about how to screw it all up. Wish I could get a disc brake conversion done on the Malibu's rear wheels but probably doesn't even exist. Might look into doing something with the air intake though - that looks like the easiest thing to do.

Didn't get internet set up before we were out and about for the day, so still pulling down the latest Top Gear. No cables with me so I will probably just watch it myself...the laptop should be able to convert it for iPod though.

car maths

I'm doing car math again. According to my current formula the Malibu may be capable of 139 MPH, although the only thing I can find online suggests more along the lines of 105 MPH. Maybe it's electronically limited...obviously I need to conduct more research in this region.

The objective of my car math is to look at the balance between fuel economy and speed to work out the furthest you can possibly get in a given period of time. Obviously if you drive faster you run out of fuel quicker. However, if you drive really slow you get excellent mileage but you don't actually get anywhere. I am trying to investigate where the breakeven point is. Among other things this involves working out the power required to overcome wind resistance, which is where the first paragraph came from.

Also, even though the Malibu has independent rear suspension it has drum brakes on the rear wheels, which is rubbish. Next car might have four-wheel Brembos...

don't let me go falling from the sky

I can't tell yet if the mystery powder did anything for the Malibu's slow coolant leak. I did go buy it another present - new wiper blades, which I found I needed after trying to wash the latest layer of filth off the windshield. I went out to a NAPA store and went past a big Corvette club outing at the car dealership across the street.

I went to go check some other dealerships, as I'd located a manual '93 Firebird Formula after another thorough scouring of the internet. The listing seemed kind of sketch to me but I figured it would be good to look at it anyway. I didn't find it on the lot it was listed at, and while driving around I found it on a subsidiary lot for used cars. The Firebird turned out to be an auto instead of a manual as listed, so that was a dealbreaker. The dealer also wanted a lot more than I'm willing to dump on this endeavor, and additionally mentioned some undefined 'damage' that had ostensibly been repaired. Unfortunately I kind of dropped by on a whim so I didn't have much of a plan, so in an effort to play my cards close to my chest the salesman probably thought I was an idiot. I did get TO'd to another guy before managing to get out, but it wasn't too bad. Still back to square one on the stick though.

seems the sun had gone too soon

I did a thorough cleaning of my car today and found the original window sticker. To my surprise I discovered the Malibu has independent rear suspension with multi-link geometry. I knew it wasn't tuned at the Nurburgring or anything but I didn't expect even that much.

Also, the Delorean apparently had a weight distrubution of 35/65, which is rubbish. On the plus side, there is apparently an achievement in PGR4 for driving a Delorean at 88MPH when lightning flashes.

Speaking of games, a new racing game called Grid comes out this week. It has the Challenger and Camaro, but only in concept form. I tried the demo and it seemed like an OK game, I don't know if I will get it though.

regularly scheduled programming

Lisa & Jeremy were at the Cerimeles' reception tonight - they had driven down from Oregon and got in late last night. At one point I was showing them how my Oregon driver's license has my name mispelled. Between that and the sticker for my new address smearing I'm going to get a fresh one from the DMV.

Lisa mentioned how she wanted to have Oregon plates but a Washington license, and had her lawyer uncle look into it - apparently Washington doesn't allow it, but Oregon does not technically mind if your license and plates are different states. Well, there goes my incentive to swap the Malibu's plate. In fact, one sad fact I had been prepared to accept was that getting a new car would mean Oregon plates, as I am still exiled out here by the Michigan economy. But here's an alternate strategy: I can fly out to Michigan, get the car there, register it in Michigan, drive it back (thus breaking it in) and the cycle continues. It's not entirely daft - I would then be able to draft the help of family members who have been through the car buying process before. Genius.

Speaking of cars, I have to give up my holiday romance tomorrow as the Impala SS goes back. I think I pretty much disliked it except I became so enamored with the engine I glazed over everything else. I will have to make sure that doesn't happen when getting a new car.

but i think we can starve the city from our minds

I kept all my CD keys in an Excel file. It seemed a good idea at the time to encrypt it, but I apparently needed to back the keys up when I did the reformat. Now the file is inaccessible and I've lost almost all of my serials.


I'm trying to get used to the RAZR. It's annoying because I'm not able to strip away the stupid Verizon branding yet, and the $50 Motorola software I bought is useless and won't install, and the speakerphone is crap and the menus are stupid.

One thing that does work around here is the Malibu. I took it in for a checkup today and they couldn't find anything wrong with it. I also got new tires, finally. They're called Firehawk GTs. I may do a shakedown run tomorrow.

50k

i would read that page every day for the next year

I brought in a picture of the stricken Malibu on the back of the tow truck, but everyone expected it to be wrecked or something. Even though it was just a bad battery I still wasn't going anywhere. Philistines.

Since I can't spend money on an iPod or a car, I might buy a digital projector. I did all of five minutes of research and found a good looking one. So tomorrow I may go get it and rack up a million Best Buy reward points and turn my wall into an 80" TV. May as well get an upconverting DVD player while I'm at it. That way when my Project Gemini DVDs show up I'll be ready to rock.

On an unrelated note, there is apparently a Project X at work. I had never heard it before and then heard it twice today. If they wanted to name it something generic and low key, they picked the wrong name. What is Project X?

there's beauty in the breakdown

Today was an adventure day, as much as I didn't want it to be. The company picnic was today. I figured I would hit Best Buy quick to see if the new 5.75G iPods were in and then head straight over to the picnic for lunch.

However, when I came out of Best Buy the Malibu wouldn't start. At all. It was totally dead.

I walked to the nearby gas stations but they were useless, so I had to call a tow truck. It eventually showed up and the guy broke out a battery booster, and after two attempts we got the engine running. However, when he removed the booster the engine died again. Tow Truck Guy declared the alternator broken, so I had him load the Malibu up onto his truck in the middle of the parking lot, causing a bit of commotion.

Tow Truck Guy kindly hauls my sorry ass over to Sears (saw a Ferrari 360 on the way) and dumps me in their repair bay, effectively allowing me to jump the line. After I settle with Tow Truck Guy, Sears Guy runs some more thorough tests and said it was the battery that was bad after all.

I went to pass the time in the waiting room, where a very static-y TV was showing U-O whoop on U-M, a game I didn't think I was going to catch any of. I also read an interesting article in one of the magazines about the roots of GM racing. I had a bag of salty stuff from the vending machine, which combined with the emergency Mt. Dew I had in the car amounted to everything I'd eaten so far today.

At one point Sears Guy came back and said they'd discovered my serpentine belt was badly cracked. I told them the go ahead and fix it and then, since I'd never heard of the damn thing, checked to make sure it wasn't in the same category as headlight fluid. Turns out it does exist, so good catch, Sears Guy.

I wasn't the only one in automotive purgatory. Another guy kept wandering in and out. After he wandered back in I asked him "So what are you in for?" So I talked with him a little bit. Mostly about how we wanted U-M to lose. Same with some of the other Sears Guys who were checking the score. One of them was once a Buckeye, so we were united by our common enemy. I thought the score was 12-7, but when I went to squint at it it looked more like 39-7. At that point the TV says "If you're wondering what the numbers at the top of the screen are, they are 39 and 7." Uncanny.

Eventually the Malibu is repaired and I am freed from automotive purgatory. I pull out of the Sears center and punch in the coordinates for the picnic in my GPS. Of course, following GPS to an unknown location is a tricky thing and I am nearly T-boned en route, but I eventually show up to the park around 4:30. I wander around for a little bit before finding a guy I know from work, who says the picnic has been over for half an hour. He then gives me a short tour, pointing where the tables of ribs and the raffle prizes were, and then shows me where the food was, which is now reduced to trays of baked beans.

So I got hosed. And now I have to spend all Monday explaining why I skipped the picnic.

And no, the new iPods aren't in yet. Lame.

day of the $115

By coincidence I spent $115 today both at work and when I got off work. The work one was buying 600' of Teflon-insulated wire for the Mk. V circuit I've been building. Since I was the one ordering it I got to pick the colors, so I went with gray orange gray. (Bonus points for getting that reference.) For the Mk. IV circuit I got stuck with red and yellow, so it looks like a condiment bar.

When I got off work I went down to Best Buy and got a new car stereo. The old stereo may have been reparable, but I decided $115 installed is not a bad deal. Especially for a stereo that actually has a knob and a front auxiliary jack.

On an unrelated note, as I was coming back from Best Buy I saw an H2 on the road equipped with FLIR on a telescopic mast. I have no idea what that's about but it was kind of cool.

i guess i'm doing this old-school for a while

Wireless network is still not working. Jim is having the same problem so at least it's probably the neighbor's fault. Until wireless network returns, I'm back on dialup. Fun. Our own DSL is maybe a week away. So don't expect any more photo albums to go up until I get somebody's broadband.

I didn't get the Malibu into the shop today because the part I need didn't show up yet. At least I got a bit of sorting done today.

A little over a week until I leave for Oregon, so my days are naturally getting filled with things that at least peripherally relate to that. And yet technically my summer isn't even half over. I got out the first week of May and I don't really start being a grad student until the end of September (One reason I wanted to get a job - that's a long time to be idle.) Tomorrow I'm hoping to get the Malibu's A/C fixed and I'm going to look at luggage. We're also having another garage sale on Saturday to get rid of the crap we didn't sell the first time. Exciting stuff.

The last Pistons game has started, so I guess I should get some token watching in.

i'm a sad pirate

Yahoo Photos decided to work again, so I fixed the new photo albums. However, my wireless network connection has stopped working for some reason. I can't receive packets from the network. I am trying to fix that, but I'm hoping to get the Malibu into the shop soon so I'm not going to mess with it for much longer. Computers suck.

pictures

Well I uploaded a bunch of pictures to my photo album site, but I've come to the conclusion that Yahoo Photos sucks. I'm working out a better way to do pictures but I haven't made the new program completely bend to my will yet, so it will be a day or two before the new and improved albums go up. In the meantime, enjoy some pics of Oregon and today's car show. Thanks to Yahoo I currently can't add captions or change the order, so you'll have to enjoy them out of context for now.

In other news, the Malibu goes back to the shop tomorrow for a new Freon-carrying tube and another A/C recharge. Hopefully I can keep some of the Freon this time, I'd like a cold car.

updates

I actually updated my website. It's been neglected ever since I started ranting here. It needs some more attention though - maybe I will watch some new movies to review or something. I was very close to buying Bulletproof Monk the last time I went to Best Buy, but then I remembered I wanted to see Cradle 2 The Grave (the movie with Jet Li, DMX and Tom Arnold) and I wanted that one so much that Bulletproof Monk went back on the shelf. Unfortunately they did not have any copies of Cradle 2 The Grave, so I left Best Buy empty-handed, always a sad event. I think I'm also going to try to update my pictures site, that's been completely forgotten.

I sorted a bit of stuff today, but I think that was more to settle into my room than get ready for Oregon. Even though I've been graduated for over over six weeks. I might take a crack at sorting stuff for real tomorrow. So far my list of things has:

1. my George Foreman grill
2. my pillows
3. my laptop

Now I can probably get pretty far with these three items, and it's pretty symbolic of grad student life (eat, sleep, and compute), but I'm gonna need more than that.

I might also take a look at the Malibu. I could stand to get some of the leaves and crap out of the air intakes, and it could stand to be waxed.

I read some of the news today. Not the crap on CNN, real news. I really hope they impeach that son of a bitch George W. Bush and his whole damn administration. I used to trust CNN. I got mad at them after they dropped the ball on the SpaceShipOne flights, and the current media environment is just ridiculous.

car stuff

I took the Malibu into the shop to get the A/C looked at. They had put a special UV dye in the Freon last time, and today it's all over the engine compartment. It leaked all of my Freon in a couple days. I've got a line leaking Freon pretty bad, and the compressor might be leaking a little bit too. I'm going to replace the line and see if I can get away with just that for a while.

My dad brought home a black 2006 Chevy Corvette Z06, he has it for the day. It has a 500HP engine. It was almost scary to ride in. Really freaking cool though.

peaceful day

Today was mildly productive. I finally got around to calling some of the apartment places in Corvallis. The situation out there is better than I thought, I'm catching the peak time between people moving out and people moving in. Hopefully I'll find something good. I have to do more calling tomorrow.

The A/C in the Malibu is dying again, I'm pretty certain there's a freon leak or something. So it's going to have to go back into the shop and get looked at again.

I'm typing this outside on the deck, in the hammock. Life is good.

addendum

I had lunch with my old physics teacher Mr. Burdick today. He's doing good, it was pretty fun seeing him again. I gave him the physics shirt I slated for Brian Greene but never got around to mailing. I think it means more for Mr. Burdick to have it, especially since I don't know if or when I'm going to bring the shirts back.

The Malibu was in the shop all morning so I had to borrow my mom's Buick Rainier. I hate SUVs. I was very happy to get behind the wheel of the Malibu again. I wish I knew someone with a Prius so I could see what they drive like (just to satisfy my own curiousity).

I brought my iPod everywhere today, so I could listen to my music in either car. Even though my Malibu has an MP3 CD player, I like having the depth and flexibility of the iPod. I can easily make playlist changes, or play something completely random. I definitely have no regrets about the iPod, especially since in the past few months I've been finding more solace in listening to my music.

My sleep schedule is a little off because last night I went to bed at 3 AM again and got up around 6:30 AM. I'm pretty wiped so I think I'm going to listen to some music and go to bed.

tune-up

My car is now all set for the trip to Oregon. I got the oil changed, the brake pads replaced and the air conditioning works again. Add to that the Rain-X and new windshield wipers, and the Malibu is in fine shape for travel. I am leaving for Oregon on July 2nd or 3rd, we are still finalizing the timing and route.

It was grey and rainy again today, but the rain finally brought cooler weather so we turned off the A/C. The fresh air is nice.

I don't officially have plans for tomorrow, but it's getting close to 2 weeks until I leave for Oregon so I really need to work on apartment stuff and start sorting all of my stuff. Especially since Friday I'm going to be up in East Lansing to have lunch with the guys and Saturday I'm meeting another friend for lunch.

I got Dungeon Siege yesterday, but the fun is already starting to wear off. The game isn't outstanding, and EB Games ripped me off by not giving me the expansion pack when I thought I was buying it packaged with the original game.