June 2004
06292K3
Added Suburban Pimp, E-Thug's Ballad, E-Thuggin' It and Thought Stream to the poem section of the text archives.
Craig, stop reading this. You're on vacataion; you're on a cruise. Go find something to do.
06252K3
As I believe I've mentioned before, driving is not something my grandmother is great at. In fact, she does this particular activity quite poorly.
Yesterday we were going to Ocala to meet some judge and his assistant at the conference room of a Hampton Inn about getting some social security stuff straightened sideways. Or out, if you don't like alliteration. Instead of taking forever to get there by taking 441, we got on I75. We were just cruising along and came up behind a truck. The left lane was clear, so she went to pass the truck, but instead just stayed in the left lane, doing about 75-80. This may be pretty fast for an old woman, but not for the two dozen or so cars behind us. At this point both the middle and right lane were wide open. Cars were weaving through the two slower lanes to pass us in the left. Even other old ladies were passing us.
On the way back we got behind some slow guy in the left lane on 441. "I don't know why people like that just don't get over to the other lane to let everyone by," said my annoyed grandmother. Neither do I.
And of course the trip was filled with such fun things as speeding up at red lights and slamming on the breaks, nervously changing empty lanes, coming to a dead stop 30 feet from the line at red lights and creeping up to them while riding the breaks, blocking other people from changing lanes and illegal u-turns in busy traffic.
06212K3
It's about 8:25 AM. Got approximately three hours of sleep in between my uncle nailing shingles to my roof and my brother, room mate and friends doing their impression of geekfest noise-a-thon. I just got out of the shower. Putting my shoes on, looking for my phone. The batteries are almost dead. I rarely use it for anything important, so I put it on the charger, grab my keys and wallet and head out.
Open the door, pop the hood, grab my propping stick and use a paper towel to clean the driver side valve cover and the intercooler shroud from the oil that's leaked out from various spots. Put the hood down, crank it. Sounds normal, RPMs are normal, oil pressure, yadda yadda. Normal brief smoking from oil burning...
Put it in reverse, hear/feel the clunking of the u-joint. I think to myself everyday that I should probably take a look at that. Back up onto the street, put it in drive. Tires chirp with the break depressed. Brings a smile to my face everytime it does that. I take off, slowly at first, then I make my way around the bend, hear the whistling and build it to about 5 pounds, and then coast to the end of the street.
Get out onto Westward Ho (or Southbound Skank as I affectionately call it) and open it up, keeping an eye on my knock gauage as I hit 10 pounds. I let off when I hit 75 mph on the 25 mph road and coast to the end, and turn left onto SR 46. There's a Chevy S10 riding my ass, so I leave him. KR at 0.0, 12 pounds of boost. Clean straightaway, I punch it to 16 pounds and I start floating. KR at 0.7. I back off.
Nearing the bottom of the decline I coast to about 55 mph and then hit it to get the amber traffic light. I hit 10 pounds as I get to the intersection. To my right in the turning lane is a silver Honda Accord. The window's rolled down and there's a middle-aged woman at the wheel. She screams as she hears what sounds like a gunshot.
I recognize the sound, and my boost gauge confirms what I'm thinking when I fail to build boost. I turn around in a bar parking lot and head towards home, but I can't make it past 35 mph, so I pull over in the grass. Fortunately I have all my tools with me from the weekend -- everything but my ratchet and the socket I need. My hand reachest for my ash tray, where I normally keep my phone. Memory catches up with my fatigue.
I pop the hood and get out. It's hot and humid, and instantly I start sweating balls. Prop the hood up with my ghetto stick to see my up pipe coming from the intercooler to the throttle body butted up against the side of the throttle body. I use a cresent wrench to loosen the nut on the t-bar clamp, but it won't move. So, I snap the bolt sideways and it breaks loose from its loops, and I now have a broken clamp and a cut thumb. Reach inside to pull out a screw-type hose clamp that I fortunately had in my car for my air intake pipes. The hose fitting won't go on the TB just right, but I tighten it anyway, and head back home after almost ten minutes of that. I start building about five pounds on the incline, and then *puffff*. I put on my hazards and slowly creep to Southbound Skank, and back to my house.
I take my phone off the charger and let Craig know I'm going to be late. He's amused by my car trouble, which surprises me because he goes through clutches like the Mystery Machine goes through tires. I go outside and pop the hood, loosen the clamp at the intercooler and pull the pipe off. A bit of oil spills onto the intercooler shroud. The image of my online bank statement enters my mind as I ponder the cost of rebuilding my turbo. I clean the oil and slide the pipe down about half an inch from where it was, and rotate it to the right about three degrees. It lines up perfectly with the TB, so I slide it on and tighten the clamps.
I get in and drive around the block. There's a noticable vacuum leak, but just as I'm about to park it, it begins to run normally. I drive it around the block one more time. All seems fine. I park it and go inside to grab a towel and my phone. Get back in the car, crank it, reverse and..stall. Crank, rev, reverse, tires squeel, drive, rubber burns. Stress test time. 14 pounds, 0.0 KR, 502~ o2 mv, 80 psi oil pressure. I get it to 16 pounds down 46, and let off when I start getting knock, half-way expecting to hear the pipe pop off again. Nope. It's all good. Show up to work at 9:36.
Time flies for the rest of the day. I guess it's because I'm half asleep.
06182K3
Today has been the most boring day of a span of something like three days, which is a long time when you're bored. The phone has rang maybe ten times. Or I picked it up maybe ten times, anyway. No interesting phone calls or emails. My car's burning oil, but that's not very interesting at all. In fact, it just pisses me off to the point of extreme uninterest; a boring discontent. Now, if my car were exploding, that would bring on a less boring discontent...a much more expensive and most likely fatal discontent, but less boring nonetheless.
It's hard as shit finding 275/50-/16 tires. They probably don't even exist.
06132K3
Saturday was a day of productivity; a day of disciplined schedule-keeping and a test of focus and time management skills that only true Olympian busy-guys such as myself can pass and of which make complete use of available possibilities, whatever they may be.
It started with me waking up at about 11 am and finding this thing in my chair:
Then I screwed around for a while, forgot what I had originally planned to do and went driving, hitting the roads with no clear destination.
The reason I woke up so late is that Heath and I were up installing my scanmaster, and then driving around aimlessly.
Here's Heath doing the wiring. My role in the project was that of a supervising cameraman.
Here it is, eletrical-taped above my AC controls. I'll have to get some velcro tape or something.
I found the original owner of my GN, who happens to post on the GN forums I now frequent, so now I have a better idea of what's stock and what isn't. Now I just need some cash.
06092K3
Looking through my long ass list of referers, I found some guys who like my car:
Click.
Found out the topic creator lives across the street from my mom. Small world.
Is anyone else getting a metric fuckload of German spam? I'm getting about 100 a day of the German spam alone. I don't know what it is they're trying to sell me or inform me of, but I admire their determination.
06052K3
Saw this on a GN board, thought it was funny:
Sonic was virtually deserted last night. Someone must have warned them. Fuckers.
06032K3
I took my GN to ricer hangout Sonic last night and got laughed at because no one knew what it was or what it could do, so Friday I'm gonna go back and see if I can get a pink slip or two. Anyone want a stock Honda Accord with a dozen stickers, neons and a wing?
I received in the mail today a credit card application. Yay! I sent them back quite an extravagant package!
Contents include: 7 Eleven sandwich wrapper (spicy Sicilian, baby), 3 rubber bands, 4 paper clips of various sizes, a Clermont Chrysler Jeep business card, and the paper lining from a box of Penguin mints.
Boy, I hope they like it.