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Archive for October, 2004

October 26th, 2004 6 comments

So here’s the story. I was following Andrew home from karting on Sunday. It had been, as Adam (Alacrity024 on nabisco) so eloquently put it, “blowing piss” all day. just drizzling and misting. very cold as well. Anyways… when we got on the ramp for the pike, something black and obnoxious tore past the nose of my car. I’m pretty sure it was an Evo but I was too busy not dying to take note. Like a complete moron I hit the brakes. I went into a plow, pitched the wheel, swung around, counter-steered, slapped back, bounced off a curb, and smashed into the guard rail while partially airborne (as I’m told by Andrew). Andrew was too far ahead of me to seemuch of anything. He said he looked back and just saw the SVX fly into the guardrail.

Seth and I met up with Andrew just before the tolls. We got out and inspected the car. Here are the pics:

If your car looks like this, you have hit a guard rail (56k warning)

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SVX may be totalled

October 25th, 2004 9 comments

Pics of the SVX at the karting meet:

The photographer (golfa on nabisco) even got her good side. Or, what was her good side.

These very well may be the last pics taken of the car in this condition. I’ll post pics of her as she is now tomorrow. It’s not pretty. I have a couple minor airbag burns on my arms, and Seth took a knock in the face from his airbag but he’s fine too. Still too chagrined to post details.

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October 22nd, 2004 No comments

Yesterday I was in the break room, and a pair of people were sitting in there chatting. Apparently they were suits visiting the company that we rent space from. They were both speaking to eachother in French. Oddly, I could understand everything they were saying and follow their conversation perfectly. I’ve taken a total of ~6 years of Spanish and ~4 years of French. I haven’t touched either subject in about 4 years. It’s interesting to see how intrinsic language becomes when you take the time to really get into it (IE, more than 2 years or so).

Later I tried to form phrases at conversational speed in my head just to see what I could remember, and I wasn’t able to do that much. I could use all the tenses enough for conversation, but I was slow (and I imagine disjointed as well). My accents are still pretty good in each though =D. 1 for 2 isn’t awful.

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October 18th, 2004 2 comments

My week just took a turn for the better. I got in at 7:00 in the morning. I was really stressed since I wasn’t able to come in on sunday and get caught up with a shitstorm of paperwork I had waiting for me. not to mention a bunch of scans. So I get in, get the paperwork and scanning started, and generally get my productive groove on. I think ahead and it looks like at least a 10 hour day.

A note on overtime… Usually people like overtime. Generally I don’t. Overtime to most means time and a half, or double time, or even double time and a half depending on the generosity of the company. I don’t get paid for overtime. It’s not that I don’t get paid time and a half or double time or whatever… I *don’t get paid* for overtime. It’s basically work done out of the goodness of my heart if it’s past 40 hours. which tends to be most weeks. I consider this time to be “good worker points” I build up for when I need to lean on Bob to get in late or out early without dipping into “personal time” or sick time or whatever. Also, I’m not usually working at 100% efficiency (aside from these past couple) so I think of the extra time spent as being my way of making up for slacking. I simply won’t leave unless X or Y project is done. Usually it doesn’t get recognized that I work all the extra hours, but usually my slacking doesn’t get recognized either. A fair trade IMO.

so I’m looking at a long week this week and again next week. There are 2.34 fucktons of work on the project board. And ONE microscope to scan it all with. So Bob comes in, and says a phrase. “I think I can get overtime approved for these next couple weeks if you want to work some extra hours”. I hear this little bell in the back of my head ring. I routinely work 50 hour weeks as it is. if they want to let me work 60-70 hours and PAY me for the extra time…. well, I’ll show them how little sleep a well conditioned geek can function with. It’s not like I have any pressing social engagements this week.

Wow… this ended up a little long. I suppose a simple “I’m getting paid overtime w00t” would have been fine.

It’s getting close to 6:30 now… It’ll be the first in a string of 12 hour days for sure. w00t!

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for those that are following the adventures with the SVX…

October 16th, 2004 No comments

Well… The SVX is still embarrassingly, loud in all it’s obnoxitude. it’s not the exhaust seals. I cleaned all the crap out of the seal sockets with a wood chisel and hammer, and cleaned the remaining foo with a die grinder. After several hours of labor, this is about how the conversation with Andrew and I went:

Me – If this isn’t whisper quiet, I’ll be at my wit’s end
…car cranks
…car starts
Car – RROOOAAARARARARRRRPOP POPPOP P-POP POP
Andrew – I believe that’s the sound of your wits coming to an end.

I went back under the car to replace the spring bolts with something more secure and see if maybe there just wasn;t enough tension. I noticed something odd. One of the flanges and the attached pipe (which were partially enshrouded by heat shields) would rotate…. but the pipe 3 inches or so up the way would not. so my pipe is severed. It’s broken somewhere under the head shield. This is:

A) t3h sucks. because I can;t fix it “good and proper” with the tools and resources I have.

B) Not all bad, because it’s not broken where the pipe meets the flange. I can wrap it with some muffler tape for a temporary fix. That is, until I can arrange for a threesome with my car, a sawzall, and a friend with an arcwelder. Yeah, it’s gonna be that kind of party.

Anyways…. Wasn’t a terrible day all in all. There’s always that sense of satisfaction that comes with having been wasit-deep in a car all day. Even if it;s still broken, at least I tried. next time. And I’ve never seen as many colors drain off my head during the post-work shower. It was a delightful mix of rust bits, exhaust seal shavings, and die grinder dust. even with no hair to speak of, my scalp retained a surprising amount of debris. isn;t that fascinating?

Edit – Ranty section removed. It could be worse. It can always get worse. Not worth the whining =P

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October 16th, 2004 3 comments

working on my exhaust today. I’ll be under the SVX with a die grinder for a couple hours. then I get to go into work tomorrow to finish up a ton of stuff that has to happen. last week just wasn;t long enough =/. I was even working all week… no slacking. but still I need to be in over the wekeend to get the project list down to size.

I remember when weekends were breaks. not so much anymore it seems. Last week was pretty vile, and I could realy use the time off. It was all I could do to keep in a neutral mood… it really was “one of those weeks”. I would *greatly dislike* it if this week turns out at all similar. To quote my 6th grade sceince teacher: “I gotta get outa the business”

anyone accepting resumees for IT positions?

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October 15th, 2004 11 comments

Thomas’ bagels are far superior to store brand. I will gladly pay the excess of 60 cents for a bag of 6 of these uberbagels. when I split them, they fall into halves… much unlike the yin-yang-like cross sections of a store brand bagel which can’t decide which side of the split it wants to be on. Also, my uberbagels have some substance to them, unlike the store brand bagels which look more like bagel-shaped english muffins inside. It’s a bagel, dammit! keep your nooks and crannys to yo damn self, bitch!

it’s a pitiful rant/rave, but it’s 7’o-something in the fucking morning and this is all my mind can muster. I am tickled by my purchase of these delightful bagels. so deal.

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The strangest thing…

October 14th, 2004 No comments

I had a dream last night. It’s one I’ve had a few times before, but not for a couple years. The strange part is that teh last couple times I had the dream, a few of the characters were “strangers”, in that they appeared to be constructs of the dream while other characters were people I actually knew. So I had this dream again last night and it had that “familiar” flavor recurring dreams have… only this time, when I woke up I could identify all the people in the dream. I actually know them now. It’s not that the characters changed to suit my life as it is now… these people that were once “constructs” of my dream are people I’ve met since the last time I had the dream. It’s not that it’s a dream of any significance, in fact it’s more mundane than some I have. It’s just odd.

Dreams are strange things.

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October 13th, 2004 No comments

Started watching Twin Peaks the other day. Dan0’s been getting the series via NetFlix. I have to say that so far it’s pretty damn interesting. Funny and creepy at the same time. The line between the two is often blurry too. I’ve only seen the first two episodes so far. Looking forward to the rest. I think I saw some of the series “back in the day”, but I don’t remember any of it.

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October 11th, 2004 3 comments

It was an interesting weekend.

As I mentioned, I went up to NH to work a road rally. dr_death35 picked me up in his RX-8 at around 11-ish and we headed “up noath” to meet up with the rest of the guys working the rally. We met up at a Jillian’s and played some pool while we waited for the workers to trickle in. We got to the first checkpoint we’d be running at around 6-ish. We worked checkpoints till around 11, and the race ended at midnight. it was a very successful event from everything I gather.

I got to do some “spirited driving” in Brian’s RX-8. The car is wonderful. for all the driving we did, we almost never heard the tires squeel. it’s a very stable machine. Took a while to get used to the clutch and the ratios, but it was a ton of fun to drive.

We slept up there at Casa de James, and spent most of the next day playing this crazy game called Katamari. it’s this crazy game where you roll around and collect stuff, making your “ball o junk” bigger… it’s very strange but really cool.

anyways… that’s the short “LJ” version… good weekend.

EDIT – there *may be* cockpit vids of some of the driving if any car-folk are interested. Email me if you want a linky to them. I’d post it up, but I have very little bandwidth from my home server to go around. keep in mind it was ~11 at night on boonie back roads in the middle of a road rally. don’t try this at home, kids.

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