Trucks first snow and 4 wheeling

I think I'll let the pictures speak for themselves on this one.

Ok one comment, it actually looked more muddy after it dried later in the day

New M3 exhaust

Installed a new exhaust on the M3. That was probably my least favorite part of the car previously due to how it looked, this one is a little quieter i think, but MUCH nicer looking and it sounds clean. The fit was a little interesting to make work, but its about as good as it can get now. Only busted one bolt in the whole exhaust job and none were totally seized, not bad. Next will be all the exterior lighting, HID lights and some clear lenses to replace all the orange. It should be a much cleaner look on the blue car and they are already ordered.

Update: Here's a daylight shot

"My" new project car

Its a 1995 BMW M3 with a nice Vortec supercharger. Here are a few pics. Enjoy, I know I will!

oops, forgot to post during on call

I actually got paged a few too many times this time around, but oh well. Good news for tonight is that I just installed a rebuilt and upgraded transmission with a new twin disc clutch in the Eclipse. I still have a little more work to come on that one I think with a modified slave cylinder, but it runs and is quite grabby.

Still ringing, but life goes on

So I went to the Specialist the other day and they basically said that there is nothing they can do about the ringing in my ear that started over a month ago.  The sympoms he can see are just that I have a slight high pitch hearing loss in my left ear.  Which he said looks to be about normal, but I notice it because it was about perfect before.  I'm kinda thinking it might be worth a second opinion.  Not that they will definitely be able to do anything, but his explanation doesn't even address the fact that I was near deaf for a week in that ear and the doc saw swelling so gave me meds that helped.  

Bottom line: I can hear ok, but ringing is still there and still feels like a little pressure as well.

Since last post I went to Cedar point which was awesome, also a DSM get together and race.  My Eclipse is currently undergoing a transmission upgrade as last time at the track made me angry at the current one.  Oh and tonight I had a bunch of people over for a game night, good times!

New Truck!!

So it turns out that high gas prices make for cheap trucks! I have wanted a full size pickup for the ability to tow a vehicle for a long time now. I had a ranger, but that wasn't cutting it. After looking around at every place i could find lately i noticed all brands had huge rebates til the end of the month. The one that really caught my attention at first was a 30% off sale at Nissan! And that's right off the bat no fighting for it. That makes a 37,700 sticker price truck down to around 27,700 out the door after taxes tags etc. Nice deal! Thought that's about what I'd be getting after trying all brands. Then I looked on the internet to make sure it was the best nissan deal. Turns out it wasn't! There was a 40% off deal and they had a fancier truck. It made a 41,000 truck down to about 27,100 out the door. Needless to say more options and less money sounds like the way to go. Some of the options weren't deal makers, but there were a few I really liked and hey if it costs me less money why not? It went from an SE to a PRO-4X for those interested. It's color is listed as smoke which is a nice dark charcoal gray.

Needless to say i'm excited and this is made to haul so hopefully it will lead me into my other car hobbies that will go better with a car trailer =)

On another note i have a weird ringing in my ears that has been there since saturday. went to the doc today hopefully the meds will fix it pretty annoying to test the new car stereos and be like, well i think the one side sounds good. Left ear is very muffled and ringing though.

World of Coca-Cola!

So had to go to Atlanta for a class for work and it turns out that's where the world of coca cola is. You might have guess that I'm a Coke fan so this was definitely a good time! The class was ok, but I was very glad to go to the Coke Mecca for the first time. They have a museum of different coke historic items and art. There are a few movies, one is the happiness factory (the ones in the coke machine where the quarter rolls in) another was "4d" or 3d with moving chairs and similar additional effects. The best part though is the sample room where they have cocacola products from around the world. There were about 63 flavors and i sampled most of them right away. I didn't waste room on the ones that said diet and might have skipped a few US ones, but there was Bibo from south africa (mango), Inca Cola from south america, and the infamous Beverly from italy to name a few. The Beverly is one that every has to try when they go there hehe. I didn't even get very sick afterwards....just wasn't really hungry from all the sugar =)

Hmm, never posted about that?

So a few weeks ago i went to a rally race! It was awesome as was expected. It was kinda hard to pull off though as i had to work the day before and after the 3hr drive. I'm willing to sacrifice sleep for that though. Saw some cars hit a bank pretty hard, one jumped up in the air with all 4 tires when it hit. Overall it was nice to see now that i have a little more background from the team o'neil course over the winter. I could see where they took the lines and which worked and why some hit the wall.

Another fun part was the day before i went to the rally the gutter decided to fall off of my backporch. The roof definitely needed to be redone, but i didn't think it was as drastic until that happened. I ended up putting it back up myself with some nails and a little handy work for a temp fix so i could go to the race and not think about it, but i still needed a real fix.

Now it's been redone with new decking, fascia boards (it had none before, part of why gutter fell), rubber roof and soffit. All thanks to some friends that hooked me up with the skills and tools/materials. its all done now and looks good and i don't see water getting in now.

Unusual twist of fate

So yesterday I went to the garage and heard a noise in the attic which I've heard many times before. The lovely sound of the metal trap rattling because it caught a squirrel. About two days before this I had caught another one and let it go about 30 miles away so it wouldn't come back.
This time it was a little different though. When I picked up the cage the weirded thing happened. I believe the direct quote from my own mouth was "Darn it this one's cute!" It was a tiny squirrel so I didn't feel as happy about releasing him miles away as usual. I figured at least a "last meal" was in order.
So my brother and I went to get some peanut M&Ms (squirrels actually shell even chocolate M&Ms) and went to the park. We left the little guy in the cage and tried to feed him the treats, but he wasn't eating. We sat and ate a few to make sure he could tell there were peanuts inside and even opened some up for him.
After that got boring we figured it was time to open the cage and let him go to the pile of M&Ms we left for him. So I spring open the cage and he stays put. After a little coaxing he finally got out, but instead of going to the food he went towards my brother. This kinda freaked my brother out so he shouted "ahhh!" and kinda ran a little. Then the squirrel turned around confused and started going towards me. Nothing aggressive or fast, but just coming closer.
This went on for a little until I said to my bro: Ok, if it goes back in the trap we'll take him with us. So I set up the trap with no bait and stepped back. I don't think it was even 30 seconds later the squirrel had gone back in the trap as if it knew what it meant.
Needless to say neither my brother or I actually thought we'd be taking the squirrel back with us, but we did. We were both hungry though so we went to eat while trying to figure out what to do with it.
Finally we took it to a friends house and pampered him a bit. He is pretty cute and actually fun. He slept a lot, but when he was awake he chased me slowly around the kitchen and crawled up our arms and sat on our shoulders. Not bad for a wild animal we tamed with a bag of M&Ms that it didn't even eat. He didn't draw blood or anything and I think everyone is just as healthy as they were yesterday too incase anyone was worried.
So if you have read the rest of my blog you'd know I'm probly the last person you'd ever expect to end up with a squirrel as a pet, but thats kinda what happened. What a start to my first weekend without work since early April.

GPS enabled for htc touch

I recently spent some time updating an unlocker i made for the htc vogue aka touch. The new unlocker i made now makes it possible to use GPS on any brand of CDMA touch, Sprint, verizon, telus, etc. Link to a nice write up below:

http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=24925

For my non ppc phone readers:
I went to a leadership conference today. There were about 2 hours of good speakers today and more to come tomorrow and sunday. I think this puts me close to the half way point of my month with no days off so we'll see how the rest goes.

Unlocking that GPS was fun, and i think having the eclipse running will be enough to keep me sane.

YAY! Eclipse again!

So the ignition wasn't working, but it turns out it was just a fuse that blew. This model has a known issue so if it does blow a few more times i'm going to have to send it it for a replacement, but at least i know what it was now. I might take the car out for a spin tonight to test it out more. Super happy about this!

Also a little happy bout some phone stuff, but thats kinda boring to most so i'll spare you. The weekend at guard was ok, actually went faster than i expected. I guess i'm about 25% through my month of 0 days off.

Good weekend

Well i never got paged all week so that was awesome. On top of that i didn't have to go into work today until 2pm. The best part of the weekend was Saturday until about 3pm though. I managed to get my Eclipse running finally! Put the starter in friday night, then charged the battery over night. Since it was warm saturday it started right up after a little work and running out the fuel from the lines. After that i took it for a little spin and showed it to a friend. All went well.

The friend brought over a mini motocross bike. I never rode one before so the little 125cc was enough to have some fun, but small enough that if it got away i could just stand up. Definitely a good time and my yard was ok for a bit of a run with it. Did a little bit of accidental wheelies or going into neighbors yard, but overall not too bad for first time, no big spills or blood or anything.

Later I decided the eclipse needed some more time on the streets so i went out some more. Found another friend to give a ride to, drove around a while. Went under a bridge with the wastegate wide open. Good times. Then it was time to take him back home. Got off the highway and stopped at another light. Third in line with three behind me the tach jumps around a bit and car dies. No chance of restarting but it does crank. After a bit of troubleshooting and friends stopping by it turned out it was time for a tow from AAA. its home now, but it seems the ignition box i bought last year might be fried since it doesn't seem to be sparking (Wrench stuff: Coil on plug is a little harder to check, but the timing light which worked before doesn't show any flashes indicating inducted current while cranking).

haven't gotten to the car yet, but yesterday I hooked up a friend with an AT&T tilt unlocked to work with their t-mobile plan. Today i pulled the railing off the back porch so i have more room for the Grill i got yesterday too.

Lot more happening this weekend to write about than there has been for a while. Guess i liked the warmer weather!

Apparently I only blog when on call now

Well i am on call, but today was pretty cool because i got an AT&T Tilt to play with. Its not for me, but i'm setting it up. I'm currently unlocking it to use on a different carrier and loading it with a new ROM. Check out my nice assortment of PPCs (and the on call phone).

On Call, PC, and phone stuff

Well so far this week of on call has been interesting. Got a call on wednesday that our main system was down so i had to log in and get it running again. That was kind of fun since i tried something new to speed up the process and it worked. Normally a few people log in to do the process, but i did the repair faster and by myself by adding 1 line to a script basically.

Got another call today which was kind of odd, but seems to be working now. Hopefully this is it cuz i'd like to have Easter be somewhat normal.

On a side note my pc USB ports all stopped working a few days ago and i found the solution to that today. Digging through the registry for driver entries yay. Windows can be a pain, but it is still the main os i use so i'm glad to have USB back.

The usb ports broke while i was trying to troubleshoot a windows mobile phone (htc Titan, sprint mogul) That phone is still not working, but i'm much closer to a workaround for that and USB coming back should help speed up that process.

Warm day!

Today was awesome, at least for a while. It was almost 60 degrees outside so I washed the miata and bro did the same. Then we went for a convertible drive. Not super far and had coats for later, but still worth it. It's great to get a little taste of spring during a winter, but i still love snow. Now the ground is all mushy.

I really should have more to write about, but oh well.

random entry

Just thought about how i haven't updated in a while. I guess i need to go do some more interesting stuff so i have more to write about. I've been good, and things are going on, but just not too much that i can think of for the blog (and any readers i have hehe)

Gotta get truck inspected this month still i guess i've been putting that off, didn't want to send it away during the weather, but looks like theres more to come and i still need to do it in a week or so.

Miata was fun in the snow last night, hopefully more tonight to play in as well.

Work's good....i guess there's more to talk about there, but more for a call or visit or even email than for a post =)

Last week

So i guess this week getting back to work must have thrown me off a bit cuz i intended to write about my trip to NH.

I did end up going to the team o'neil rally school (www.teamoneil.com) and it was incredible. I thoroughly enjoyed it and it was well worth the money. Unfortunately to continue honing my new skills requires even more money in the form of a rally car =) Don't have one yet, but definitely interested.

At the school we started out in FWD jettas and the roads were pretty icy. I was totally amazed at how backwards the concept of FWD on ice is compared to RWD, but also amazed at how well it worked once you get the hang of it. I did some nice left foot braking amd made it turn in when i thought i'd hit stuff which was fun. Then the fun part was pendulum turns. It seems backwards as you line up on the inside of the turn, slide the opposite direction and then flip it back to get the car the way you want. My first few tries all went pretty well so i was psyched. Then when we switched cars it didn't work so well, but i def still had the idea cuz it worked on the rest of the cars i was in.

After FWD we did some AWD little different and much faster cuz lets face it, ice doesn't have much traction. I liked these audis and the one suby quite a bit. Then last day had a little RWD, but it was so icy that day that it was more just countersteering than driving so i only drove it a little. Highlight reel for me would have included when i launched the suby up ontop of the snow bank. Some said it looked like it was going to flip, but in fact we just backed it down and drove it again, didn't hurt a thing. Definitely a combination of more confidence and worsening conditions on the test road. By the time we went on real trails through the woods i was pretty good at not letting something like that happen.

Feel free to ask about it anytime, but i might talk a while =)

guess where

Well i'm not in PA today so if you read the last post you can probly tell i'm really excited!

Short post

Phone works now!

Got an email about a huge discount on a rally school in new hampshire that i have been thinking about for a while. Trouble is it's for next week. Hmmmmmmm.....

Snowboarding and phone issues

Well today was fun, i went snowboarding this evening with some of the people from work. It was my 3rd time and i haven't gone for like 2-3 years, but i don't think i have any bruises. I am definitely sore and used muscles that i haven't used for a while, but it was good overall. I was just impressed i could still turn without catching an edge and falling every time. Thought i would have lost that after a few years and barely learning it in the first place, but it came back. Not gonna say i didn't fall by any means, but it was decent enough where i didn't get really hurt and i had a good time. In fact i even gingerly went down a double black diamond. I'm sure i'll be pretty sore come friday when i play street hockey though!

In other news my phone isn't working there was a VERY unusual issue where my account and phone were set up like they should be. When calling my phone though it didn't work and calling out didnt either. then they did some resetting type stuff on the tower and tried calling again. My phone still didn't ring, but a woman answered! It turns out they gave her my number which was still on my acct in good standing as a temporary number, but til then neither of us were able to get calls on it. so far they ported hers away, but my phone isn't working, i'll give them another call here shortly and hopefully that will resolve it though.

Jury Duty

Yesterday and today i actually sat on a jury rather than just the assembly room chairs. It was interesting and a fairly clear case. The deliberation is interesting though to see the dynamic of the 12 people involved in the jury. Everyone focuses on different parts or questions different things etc. Fortunately, we were able to agree on a verdict in a reasonable time, but not all necessarily for the same reasons. I go back tomorrow, not sure if i'll sit on anymore, but i think the experience so far was one of the better ones.

Imax Legend

Guess what I saw this weekend? Wow you figured it out from the title huh? Yep I am Legend at an IMAX theater. It was ok, nothing incredible that everyone has to see though. I went with some friends though and we visited a bit afterwards so that made it worthwhile.

I also played a game of street hockey again finally. First time being very active for a while (lazy over the holidays). Cold air doesn't get along with my lungs too well when sprinting. I wasn't too bad though and our team won which was fun. Mostly cuz the kids that were super into winning were on the other team.

Next i get to go to jury duty this week, hope that goes well.

"January post"

Well here it is, first post of the new year. I've been on call this week at work and had guard this weekend. Also, in that time went to a friends on friday night til about midnight. So not too much sleep as usual. On call wasn't too bad at work though and guard drill is still interesting since i've become an LT. Still learning all i can as quick as possible and having no clue what i'm really supposed to be doing though. Just like the ohter 4 of us =).

Around Christmas my brother got me a 1 yr xbox live membership and we haven't really been able to get it up and running until today. After all the hassles though i'm not even that excited and i went on today for about 10 minutes. Oh well, i'm sure it'll get used somehow.

Oh yeah i really gotta get to work on my eclipse too, i haven't even started any kind of troubleshooting, but it wasn't starting for me last i tried.

Happy New Year!!