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August 3rd, 2005 3 comments

Bah! The cretins at the Honda dealership have pushed off the date of my car’s delivery till Friday. FRIDAY!! UNACCEPTABLE! A plague upon their houses!

As a result, I’m bound to driving my father’s Explorer for a couple more days. Driving an SUV isn’t all that bad. I’ve likened it to driving an apartment to work and back, and I stand by that. It’s been pretty comfortable except for the one or two times I’ve had to come to a short stop. In those cases, the thing gets all squirrely and feels like it’s going to fall to pieces and/or roll end over end or something. not at all stable.

One thing about it that strikes me as quintessential American engineering is the cup holders. there is one normal sized one, and then one other one. It has a rubber insert in it with a hole that’s the same size as the other “normal” sized one. you remove the insert if you’ve gone to any number of fast food places that serves cylindrical drinking troughs (aka “super size” soft drinks”). Additionally, with the insert removed there is a small cut that goes beyond the radius of the cup holder to accomodate a handle… like, from a regular uncovered coffee mug. This being for those who absolutely can’t be bothered to go so far as to use a travel mug. In no country is the engineering involved with laziness as highly developed as in America. Cup holder technology is absolutely paramount here… We can design a cup holder to accomodate a beverage of any size and shape, yet we still use pushrod engines. mmmmm… coffee……

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August 3rd, 2005 3 comments

…also, an update on the SVX. you all care, dammit. admit it.

I drained the coolant and filled it with water and some magic radiator-cleaner goo. it says to run the engine as normal for like 3-6 hours with this junk in it. So I drove around on it today. went to see Seth for lunch and then poked around at a few dealerships. The temperature rose a couple times when I came to a stop, but not too high. And it was HOT out today. high 80s. The temp went right down when I started moving and the water pump started…. pumping. The coolant was clear when it went in, and is a sickly orange right now. That will be that much more crap that leaves the engine when I drain it and put coolant back in. For all intents and purposes, the cooling systemis fixed (w00t). Now all that’s left is the transmission. Oh, is that all?

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Humble as it may be…

August 3rd, 2005 9 comments

As you may have gathered from recent entries, I’m sick of working on cars. It wasn’t so bad when I had a garage, but I don;t anymore. With a garage, I can work on a car from the moment I get home up till 2 in the morning or whenever I need to. even on a weekday. I can get jobs done on demand and spread the work over a couple days. Without these sorts of facilities, I can’t keep a $2000 car going.

So today I put a deposit on a 2005 civic coupe. Looking at a 5speed in black. Talked them to around $14,800. I’m waiting to hear back from the financing people, but hopefully I will be picking it up tomorrow. w00t. not the coolest or sportiest car in the world, but it’t not all that bad looking IMO. and it will do the pointA-pointB thing reliably. and with crazy good gas milage. I don;t really have any complaints. now if only that call would come in.

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August 1st, 2005 3 comments

Trash chutes are the coolest thing ever. I had a bag of trash that would normally have to be lugged down 4 flights of stairs and into a dumpster. but not here! I simply walk to the door next to my apartment’s entrance, open the magic door to refuseville, and drop the trash into oblivion. Disposing of “whatever the hell” was never easier.

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The state of things

July 28th, 2005 9 comments

What has Igg been up to? Flavor behind the cut. If you dare. I’m glaring at the screen with an evil eye as I type this. That’s how you know this cut means business.

Story!!

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I’m alive!

July 28th, 2005 5 comments

T3h my plane landed in Florida and all was well. if a little hot and humid. They gave out an infinite amount of oversalted peanuts and crappy pretzels while we waited and watched them work on the engine. When the plane taxied into the gate, I guess the engine was leaking hydraulic fluid of some flavor or another. They put a pan under the engine to catch the fluid and opened the engien housing to fiddle with the magic bits inside that make the plane worky. At this point, something large and metal falls out of the engine and into the pan, spraying everyone with hydraulic fluid. dispite the potentially dire consequences of such a thing, everyone couldn’t help but laugh a little. then we get the call that the flight will be delayed further. This is when they roll out the free munchies/soda and blankets. We eventually got on the plane at around 9:30 (which is not the same thing as 5:00 when we were supposed to. you can even check the math if you want).

I finally got to FL at 12:30 or so, I want to say. I was a little groggy from sleeping on the plane. I woke up about 30 mins out from the airport, and had the pleasure of seeing a large thunderstorm from above. Snakes of electricity would dance across the cloud canopy. It was quite stunning to watch. We landed safely without anything falling off or leaking (much to everyone’s surprise).

I could have used more time down there (and I say that with more emphasis than usual), even though I ended up missing my plane (what’s new, really).

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I’m using the internet!!!

July 23rd, 2005 7 comments

“Attention passengers waiting for flight 2026 to west palm beach, the plane scheduled for this flight has been taken out of service. We will be getting a plane from the hanger that was undergoing maintenance, having an engine replaced. Once they are done making sure the engine functions, they will send it to the gate for us”.

Not the most comforting thing I’ve heard while waiting at an airport terminal. Oh well, I’ve had a good run.

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COEN OF DARKNASS

July 21st, 2005 4 comments

I’m sitting in a cone of darkness. Normally my workplace is well lit, even during 3rd shift. In fact, most of the ops center here is still well lit. except my little area. Every light in the ceiling is working…. except the one over me. I sit in a cone of darkness. Lit only by the soft glow of my screens (and, I suppose, the ambient light from the dozens of other light fixtures), I go about my task. I feel no fear or hesitation due to my environment. I own this cone of darkeness. it does MY bidding.

True story.

…Oh damn I need coffe.

…DARK coffee.

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June 28th, 2005 5 comments

Recently Reesey mentioned to me what a trend it’s become to be nerdy or appear enthralled with nerdiness. The specific example was all the girls wearing the “I love nerds” shirts and stuff like that. Also people tote around how great they are at computers (HAX!!!!111eleven) and such. It’s so true. everyone wants to think they’re tech savvy. I blame the rise of video games to the point where they’re visually appealing enough to catch everyone’s attention. all the sudden being good at all things computer is a social boon.

I was kickin it with my bad self at Panera earlier. I had some time to kill before work, so I thought I could combine the delights of eating and free internet access into one holy union of bliss. Unfortunately the internet gods didn’t want me around, and gave me a hard time when trying to get access at the breadery. I told the guy at the counter I was having issues getting connectivity. He asked me if I’d tried restarting the computer (universal Windows fix). I said I had, and he was all “Ok I’ll come help in a second. it’s no trouble, I’m kind of an expert”. riiiiiiight. He waddles himself over to my table. I show him I can ping to localhost, but not to my DHCP assigned address (or the router for that matter). I show him an ‘ipconfig -all’ readout to show where I got the values. He let his tongue dangle stupidly from his maw for a while as he stared blankly at the weird black window with the funny white letters. Clearly he was searching the dozens of mighty synapses of his “expert” brainlet for some nugget of compu-jargon he heard in /general while playing counterstrike to try and equate all these mysterious numbers with. He walked away and came back with a number. “This is the helpdesk’s number. they should be able to help you.” I smiled and thanked him for his valuable time.

The second little encounter I had today was at Starbucks. There was a couple in front of me in line. One of them smiles and says “Sick shirt dude.” I thanked him for the compliment. I also noticed how he looked just like the sort of people that used to make fun of nerds like me in higheschool and whatnot. Cargo shorts, sandals, hemp necklace, bleached hair, “cheerleader” model generic girlfriend unit ™. Apparently very scene/trendy/etc. I found it funny since it was his sort that used to delight in teasing my sort. Not to generalize… it’s just what I’ve experienced. Odd how these things come around.

Ranting aside I had a good weekend. Back to the grindstone.

PS – Stuff that sucks: catching planes you wish you’d missed.

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Don’t cry for me, I’m not dead

June 22nd, 2005 5 comments

Ok, so how big of a geek am I? I was at a tux rental place to get a tux for Brian’s wedding. I’m looking at the piece of paper the attendant girl was scribbling on. It had the info for all the people in the wedding and all the codes of the items reserved for them. I was worried for a second when I saw the coat column, as it looked like they couldn’t find a coat for anyone in the party! They had the code “404” listed for everyone on the list. yeah. I’m that bad. Took me a second to realize my folly.

In other news, camping is fun. I have to do it more. Florida is also fun, but I need to remember sunscreen more often.

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