Jim's Blog

Thursday Progress

2009-12-19T15:13:00.002-05:00

On Friday we left for the inlaws' house, so I wouldn't be able to work on the motor over the weekend, so I snuck out to the garage for a couple hours on Thursday night after the baby went to bed.

I pulled the timing chain cover off, then the oil pump, then the timing chain and gears. After that I pulled the cam retainer plate and slid the cam out of the block. Around the back side of the block I pulled the rear cover, the cam sensor, and the crank sensor. Pulling the rear cover was a pain in the ass... I had to pick the motor back up with the lift so I could pull the engine stand bracketry off teh back. While I was in there I forgot to pull the dumbell (it's an oil plug), but hopefully I can get that out without re-lifting the motor again.

I took pictures, but I'm in CT right now, so I can't post them. In any event, the only thing left to pull out of the block now is the rotating assembly, but that won't happen until after christmas. I asked for a tray that holds the rotating assembly parts (minus crank) for christmas, but if I don't get it I'll buy it myself so I can start pulling it apart. Once that crap is out I'm going to clean up a lot of the casting crap in the block with a die grinder prior to sending it to the machine shop.

Right now I'm pricing out my new rotating assembly, and starting to think about my strategy for the machining. I suspect that after I get the block torn down I'll have to bring it to the machine shop in order to see what amount of overbore we'll need. Once we figure that out, I can order my rotating assembly. Once that comes in the machine shop should be able to do the overbore. I'm going to need to talk to the machine shop to get an estimate on the cost of the machine work. Since that cost is going to hit me at the same time as the rotating assembly, I'm going to need to be sure that I can afford it! That rotating assembly isn't going to be cheap. :(

An ever so slight amount of progress

2009-12-16T11:33:00.002-05:00

Not much going on with the motor right now, but I've managed to nake some progress. My clutch master cylinder finally arrived, and I managed to buy an f-body oil pan. I also cleaned up a lot of the truck parts like the heads, oil pan, etc.

After Christmas I hope to pull apart the short block, then start talking to the machine shop about the rebuild.

Intake Manifold arrived

2009-11-24T08:37:00.003-05:00

Last night the intake manifold that I bought arrived. I bought this used from an individual who owns a brand new 2010 Camaro that he upgraded. The intake has 400 miles on it, and as expected, looks brand new. After my motor & clutch nonsense, this was a breath of fresh air. I got a great deal, and it came very well packaged, and looked perfect as promised.

on with the pics.

As it was after unwrapping it:

on it's back:

fuel rails removed:

Insulation piece removed:

Additional parts that came with it:

I need to verify what the additional parts are. One appears to be the vacuum line that would go to the master cylinder. Another is a fuel line, though I can't see how it attaches to the rail. The third is a mystery, though I suspect that it's a vacuum line or a PCV line. It's unlikely that I'll use any of them anyway, but for now I want to know what they are.

One neat thing is that this manifold has the plastic piece with the foam insulation that covers the actual runners. If I keep the stock fuel rails, it might work well to paint just this piece in order to enhance the appearance. Originally I'd planned to paint the whole intake, and I still may, but this will be a good way to decide if I like that look or not.

More good news!

2009-11-20T13:53:00.003-05:00

The used clutch I bought (yeah, I know...) came in yesterday.

It's trashed. Fortunately the seller has been great so far and is supposed to refund me right away.

Pressure plate:

Clutch:

backside of flywheel. How hot do you think it got to turn purple on the BACK side?

Buying used stuff is awesome!

Well that bubble burst in a hurry...

2009-11-18T14:19:00.002-05:00

Today I finally got around to running a carfax report on the VIN that was on the tag that my new motor came from.

It turns out that the vehicle had 130,000 miles on it when the salvage title was issued, not 62,000 like the salvage yard indicated. Awesome! My motor has over twice the miles I thought it had.

On the other hand, there's an extensive service history showing that most work was done at the dealer, which means that it spent it's live soaked in Mobil 1 synthetic oil. Visibly, the motor is in excellent condition, so maybe I'm getting worked up over nothing, but now I have to at least crack the main caps and connecting rods to see what the crank journals and bearings look like. :(

Another oddity is that the carfax shows that the milage jumped from 43,000 to 93,000 miles in a 14 month period. Holy frig! I guess one bright side is that most of the miles are apparently highway miles.

I guess it's time to start pricing stroker kits.

Motor Tear Down has started!

2009-11-18T08:38:00.005-05:00

My good buddy Lance and his wife Phaedra came out to visit on the weekend before last. I always enjoy the time I get to spend with Lance because he's one of my only friends that's a fellow gearhead. I have a couple friends that are into cars, but not into turning wrenches. Having a friend to turn wrenches with is one of the most enjoyable experiences I have outside of my family, so having the rare opportunity to actually do it is something that I really look forward to. This opportunity did not disappoint.

Lance and I spent most of Saturday tearing the motor down. I'd left it untouched until he got here so that we could start from the beginning.

First order of business was to start pulling the wiring harness off. We labeled most of the connections as we unplugged the connectors, and unbolted various connections holding the harness in place. We then removed the coil packs from the valve covers. This was the result:

We then pulled the intake manifold off:

Here's a glory shot of it next to it's new home:

Next we popped off the valve covers and the lifter valley cover. The valvetrain looks outstanding. Everything was nice and clean under the valve covers:

Off came the heads. You can't see it in the pic, but the cylinder walls all look outstanding, with a nice cross-hatch pattern still clearly visible.

That's where Lance and I stopped. I had hoped to continue by pulling off the oil pan, but we ran out of time.

One issue that I ran into later on was trying to get the pulley/damper off the crank. None of my pullers were adequate for this job. Over this past weekend I borrowed a puller from Advance Auto and was able to get it off with only a mild amount of drama. If I ever get time to work on it again, I'll pull off the oil pan, and then pull off the timing chain cover, pull of the timing chain & gears and pull the cam out. That'll basically be the end of my motor work until I get all of my new parts so that I can re-assemble.

Speaking of parts, I've been buying up stuff as the deals come up. I've purchased most of the parts that I need for the transmission swap (minus the transmission itself) along with some of the new accessories that I need for the swap (water pump, power steering pump, alternator, etc). Just yesterday I finally landed a deal on an intake manifold, fuel rails & injectors off of a 400 mile 2010 Camaro SS.

The last big items that I need to buy for the motor is the cylinder heads, camshaft, and f-body oil pan. Once I've got that stuff bought, I'll be able to start putting the motor back together. Ideally I'd like to have the motor together sometime over the winter, and then sell the Corvette as soon as possible in the spring so that I'll have the money to buy the rest of what I need to do the installation. I'd like to have the new drivetrain running by the end of the summer so that I can get it tuned and use it a bit before next winter.

Whether or not that actually happens remains to be seen. :)

And finally it begins!

2009-10-15T08:08:00.004-05:00

Well, here we are. After a number of years of dreaming about it, I've finally begun the process of replacing the motor in the IROC. The one that's in there really hasn't lived up to my expectations, and has never been quite right. I could get it "right" but ultimately it's still not going to perform at the level that I'd like it to, so it's time to replace it. Fortunately, it should find a great home under the hood of my GTA, and will get some upgrades in the process.

I've decided to use this blog to track my progress, though a number of these posts will probably be repeated on some message forums. I realize that very few people who read my blog (does anybody even come here anymore?) give a shit about my motor, but this is the best place for me to keep track of my progress.

So... on with the progress.

On Tuesday I finally received my motor. That fiasco is a story unto itself, but I'm not going to bother. The motor is a 62k mile LQ9 from a 2003 Cadillac Escalade. I paid $1,000 for the motor including the complete wiring harness, computer and starter. The motor itself is complete from intake to oil pan, except for the accessories (a/c compressor, power steering pump, & alternator).

Last night I pulled the flexplate off the back of the motor, then mounted the motor to my engine stand. I expect that will be about all I manage to accomplish for a while. I need to finish up my workshop and finish the baby's room, and I've also got a pair of speakers that I hope to build before I take on this project. And of course, I've got to deal with a snowblower that doesn't run, and get the sleds ready for winter.

Looks like it might be a while before I update this again.

An interesting new twist on an old favorite childhood game

2009-09-01T15:06:00.000-05:00

I've decided to celebrate my new-found disdain for my job by concurrently chugging 3 24 ounce bottles of mountain dew as fast as possible, and running around the office belching as loudly as possible in an impromptu game of Duck-Duck-Goose where the "goose" will be represented by the person whose cube I ultimately wind up vomiting in.

Last night I discovered my guitar's true value.

2009-05-21T07:35:00.004-05:00

Yesterday was a shitty day. I'm not at all happy with how things are going at work in my new department, and yesterday I got a bunch of long-term shit work dumped into my lap. Even though I tried to roll with the flow, I could tell that it wasn't working. When I get stressed, I can feel my heart rate increase and my heart feels like it's pumping itself out of my chest. I usually get fatigued and sometimes light-headed when I get like that. I was like that for most of the day, and things didn't get better on my ride home.

After I got home, I got the cats fed and went upstairs right to the guitar. I decided a couple days ago that I was going to start learning to play Hotel California. Anybody who knows me knows that I'm fanatical about that song, and I've finally decided that I've progressed to the point where I can start learning it. As tired and stressed as I was, as soon as I started practicing the guitar, I started to feel better. Playing the guitar, especially when I'm learning something new, requires an intense focus and concentration on my part, and because of that, all of my worries of the day disappear as soon as I start. I played for a while and was satisfied with my progress. Best of all, I'm in the beginning stages of being able to play my favorite song.

Today I've only been at work an hour, and my heart rate is already going bullshit. Good thing I have my guitar at home. Now I just have to hope for time to play it.

Sinus headaches vs. Meth Labs

2009-04-20T08:11:00.002-05:00

Wow... you're all shocked and amazed... Jim's actually updating his blog again. So... what is it that finally pissed me off enough to blow the dust off my blog page?

A freaking sinus headache, that's what.

I get sinus headaches fairly regularly, and it doesn't seem to take much for them to occur. If it's too dry in my bedroom, I get them. If I oversleep I get them. If I get drunk the night before... oh man, I REALLY get them. This is why I rarely drink excessively anymore. The pounding headaches leave enough of an impression that it really takes the fun out of getting sloshed.

Lately, I've had a lot of sinus headaches... almost daily for the last few weeks. I think it's due to the change of weather that we go through every spring, and since this spring has been a lot drier than normal, I think it's making my headaches worse.

So... to help deal with these sinus headaches, I take Pseudophedrine. This is the crap that's in Sudafed and other sinus/cold medications. This is also the same stuff that meth head idiots buy to turn into methamphetamine. We've all seen the pictures on the 'net of meth heads who went from normal looking folks to a total trainwreck within a year, and we've all seen tv shows where some moron with a meth lab wound up blowing up half of a city block. Nasty stuff.

The primary source of my anger is that, like with most things, rather than produce legislation and laws that effectively target the illegal activities and those who perform them, our spineless no-nut do-nothing politicians have discovered that it's easier to simply make it harder for people to get the materials/resources necessary for the law breakers to do their thing. This is why it's so hard for a law abiding citizen to legally buy a gun, and it's why it took me a fucking half hour to buy a fucking box of Sudafed yesterday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now, keep in mind that I've actually been trying to buy a box for over a week, but Wal Mart keeps the shit under lock and key in their pharmacy, which of course isn't open when I shop there on Sunday evenings. So yesterday, I stopped at CVS for some. I brought my little fake empty box of Sudafed to the front counter as instructed. I pulled out my driver's license and gave it to the clerk, as instructed. The problem was that Vermont still issues non-photo licenses unless you renew in person at the registry, so the licence I gave her was an old license. Nevermind that it's still me, it's still the same license number, and it's still got my fricking DOB clearly posted on it. So after she gets a manager involved, I whip out license number 2, this one being the valid one without a picture. The manager pumps the keyboard like a certain horny cocker spaniel likes to pump my leg (you know who you are). Eventually Mr Fingers finishes his amazingly complicated orchestration of keyboard theatrics and it's up to me to particpate in the frenzy through the display panel of the credit card reader. I see a line and a bunch of buttons, including "Disagree" and "agree". I push the agree button and the screen disappears. Apparently I was supposed to sign on that line before hitting the "agree" button, because the whole fucking transaction just voided itself and our fearless CVS manager now had to start the whole process all over again.

Eventually I was able to finish paying for my 2 boxes of CVS-branded Nasal Decongestant. After I finished paying, the clerk slid the two boxes and the receipt toward me. At this point I screamed something about a bag and almost made this poor chick cry, but that didn't stop her from pissing me off 1 last time by putting my boxes of Crystal Meth ingredients into a bag so fucking small that it reminded me of all those fat Canadians in Speedos that I used to see on the beach in Maine.

So, now, here are some interesting facts that I dug up on Meth and its production and the restrictions imposed on Pseudophedrine and Epedrine.

1. As of 2007, drug and lab seizure data suggests that approximately 80 percent of the methamphetamine used in the United States originates from larger laboratories operated by Mexican-based syndicates on both sides of the border, and that approximately 20 percent comes from small toxic labs (STLs) in the United States.

This means that my inability to buy a simple over the counter box of cold medicine has become a never-ending cluster fuck simply because the government thinks that a slight reduction in the number of meth labs that only account for 20% of the fricking stuff in the first place is worth putting millions of honest, law abiding cold & sinus headache sufferers at a fairly ridiculous inconvenience all so that some moron in Alabama doesn't blow up the Shasta RV sitting in the back of some redneck's corn field.

2. The National Drug Threat Assessment 2006, produced by the Department of Justice, found "decreased domestic methamphetamine production in both small and large-scale laboratories", but also that "decreases in domestic methamphetamine production have been offset by increased production in Mexico." They concluded that "methamphetamine availability is not likely to decline in the near term."

So, for all of this bullshit, Mexico just picks up the slack, making the product just as readily available. Plus, let's face it, at least when Americans are making the meth, the money stays in the US economy instead of going to Mexico.

Info on the purchase of Pseudophedrine:

The House passed the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005 ("CMEA") as an amendment to the renewal of the Patriot Act. Signed into law by president George W. Bush on March 6, 2006, the act amended Title 21 of the United States Code (21 USC 830) concerning the sale of pseudoephedrine-containing products. The Federal statute included the following requirements for merchants ("regulated seller") who sell these products (pseudoephedrine is defined as a "scheduled listed chemical product under 21 U.S.C. § 802(45(A)):

-- A retrievable record of all purchases identifying the name and address of each party to be kept for two years.
-- Required verification of proof of identity of all purchasers
-- Required protection and disclosure methods in the collection of personal information
-- Reports to the Attorney General of any suspicious payments or disappearances of the regulated products
-- Required training of employees with regard to the requirements of the CMEA; Retailer must self-certify as to training and compliance
-- Non-liquid dose form of regulated product may only be sold in unit dose blister packs
-- Regulated products are to be stored behind the counter or in a locked cabinet in such a way as to restrict public access
-- Daily sales of regulated products not to exceed 3.6 grams without regard to the number of transactions
-- 30 day (not monthly) sales limit not to exceed 7.5 grams if sold by mail-order or "mobile retail vendor"
-- 30 day purchase limit not to exceed 9 grams of pseudoephedrine base in regulated products (misdemeanor possession offense under 21 U.S.C. § 844a for the individual who buys it)

So, as part of the PATRIOT ACT, I can't buy my fucking sudafed without the government keeping tabs on my purchases for a period of 2 years. The government knows how much I bought it, when I bought it, where I bought it and whether or not it gave me an erection.

So in other words, buying my cold medicine gave me a bigger fucking headache than the one I bought the cold medicine to fix.

I saw the EAGLES!!!

2008-07-30T15:27:00.003-05:00

Holy shit! I'm finally updating my blog for the first time since March! Since March work has actually been busy (imagine that!) and in what little free time I had, I wasn't motivated to write anything. A lot of the reason is that things have been going pretty well, which leaves me less stuff to bitch about.

So, let's get to the Eagles. On Monday Kristin and I left home on our way to some fancy hotel on the original site of the Boston Tea Party. All was going well on the ride down, except that the GPS was being a bit finicky and kept losing satellite signal. Just as we were about to get off of I93 in downtown Boston, it went tits-up and refused to work at all. Fantastic timing. The one thing I immediately realized upon being in the middle of downtown Boston with a non-functional GPS and a wife that hates it when I lose my cool, is that I was over my head and way out of my element. I've always felt that I have a very good sense of direction, and if I don't have somebody screaming "stop and ask for directions!!!" in my ear every 30 seconds, that I can always find my way anywhere. I may not get there on the first try, but if I just think my way through, I'll find it. Boston, however, has shaken that confidence in a way that I never expected. Boston is nothing but a clusterfuck of 1 way streets, all of which change name every fucking block! When you finally get your bearings straight and realize where you need to go, the street name changes, or the place you need to be is at the wrong end of a 1 way street. Unlike any other city in the country, you can't just go "around" the 1 way street, because the next 5 are likely to take you to entirely different parts of the city. It's like you just got sucked into a black fucking hole and without warning, you're at the other end of the universe.

So anyway, an hour later we got to our hotel which was about a half mile from where we got off of I93. Nice place. Valet parking. $39/day to park. It's free to park at Alwife, but apparently there's a $39 stupid-fee. No, the fee isn't stupid, it's a fee for retards who are too short sighted to realize that driving in Boston is just plain stupid. But at least some other dude parked the Jeep for me. Thank God I didn't take one of my cars or I would have had to kill the guy instead of letting him park the car for me.

The hotel was nice. It was expensive, and the bed was just as uncomfortable as in cheap motels, but the place certainly was nice. After a few minutes that I needed to decompress, we took a walk to Quincy Market. We walked around there for a while. We had burritos for lunch and enjoyed the weather. Other than the great selection of foods, Quincy Market is a bit of a let-down. There aren't really any shops that appealed to me at all, and even Kristin found very few that she wanted to look in. After we had enough of that we decided to go through the acquarium. The acquarium was fun. We saw a variety of very large fish in the tanks along the walls as we walked up the outside spiral. In the middle is one very large tank with another spiral walkway. In the large tank there were some sharks, some very large turtles and a bunch of other crap. Overall, it was a nice time.

So anyway, back to the hotel, then onto the T to get to the Banknorth Garden. We got there early and ate pizza across the street. Finally, we got over to the Garden, stood in line, then took our seats in the 18th row directly across the floor from the stage. They weren't the best seats, but they weren't the nose-bleeds either.

At about 8:20, the lights went dark and on walked a lot of the "other" musicians to the stage, followed by the 4 Eagles. Recall that there used to be 5 of them, but when they shitcanned Don Felder, they replaced him with a guitarist who isn't really part of the band, which I think is a shame. The 4 line up straight across the stage, with the guitarist shoved way over to the right.

They opened with "How Long". It's a great song of their new album, but it sounds like old-school Eagles, and for good reason. It's a song written by JD Souther, who wrote a few of their earliest songs. They've performed the song live since the early days, so it really is an old Eagles tune that just took until now to get released. After that they played about 4 or 5 more songs off their new album.

And then, there it was. The stage went dark, and a single red light was illuminating a trumpet player at the rear of the stage. As soon as he started playing, I recognized it as the intro to Hotel California. Over the years they've made subtle changes to the song to keep it fresh, but I immediately recognized this intro because it's the same intro they used on their "Farewell 1" DVD. The rest of the crowd apparently didn't recognize it yet, because they were completely silent. After he played his part, the first 6 familiar notes on the guitar were played and the crowd went bullshit. I couldn't even hear the next bar of the song. The crowd settled, and I got into my "Hotel California Trance". This is something that Kristin can tell you all about, and she'll probably laugh at me the whole time she tells it. Every time I hear that song, I sit there like a retard at the Chuckie Cheese rocking back and forth, completely consumed by the sound. Nothing interrupts me, and I wind up in a place that I can't really describe. The sound of those 3 guitars plus Schmitt's bass guitar playing that funky rythm mesmirizes me every single time. Seeing it live took that to an entirely different level. Sure, the sonics are nowhere near as good as what I hear at home, but there's something different about it when you hear it at this level, with that much sound and that much energy. My eyes were glued to the big screen monitors, watching how Joe Walsh and the new guitarist (Stewart something) played those notes that I've heard a million times. I listened to henley sound as good as ever, although I couldn't wait for him to finish so I could hear the solo. Finally Henley was done, and Stewart started in on his portion of the solo. It was magic. His guitar screamed with all of the passion that he just didn't have on the Farewell 1 DVD. He's no Don Felder, but he sure fooled me on this song. Quickly his solo transitioned into Joe Walsh's part, which sounded as perfect as always. After Joe's part, the two of them both play the last 1/3 of the solo together, which gives it a bigger-than-huge kind of sound, but also requires them to both be in synch with each other. This part of the solo pretty near made me piss myself. It sounded bigger, fuller, richer than I've ever heard it in any of my recorded versions. When the song finally came to an end, I think I screamed like a sissy who just saw a spider in his boyfriend's hair. I could have listened to that song 50 more times and not gotten the least bit bored with it.

The only problem with playing your biggest hit that early in the set, is that it really doesn't give the momentum anywhere to go. I've always felt that a band's "signature" song should be played near the end, perhaps right before the final encore. That way the entire evening can build up to that one moment, and then just give you that last encore to help bring you back down to earth. When you show your best hand so early, you just can't keep the same level of excitement out of the crowd for the rest of the night. Of course, that's not to say that the rest of the concert was dull. It was every bit as good as you could expect, but I got so into Hotel California, that I was actually a bit burned out afterward. But, that didn't stop me from enjoying every single song they played. All told, they played 12-13 songs off their new album, and the overwhelming majority of their previous hits. The concert didn't end until around 11:45, and they played pretty much non stop except for a 20 minute intermission between sets, and a couple very short breaks before their two encores.

I've wanted to see the Eagles since they re-formed in the 90s, and I'm incredibly happy that I finally was able to do it. I regret that I wasn't able to see them while they still had Don Felder, but at least I got to see the rest of them, and to hear so many of my favorite songs sung live. It was an incredible experience and I'm glad that I got to share it with Kristin.

By the time we got back to our hotel at around 1:00, we were beat and after quick showers, we were done. We got up on Tuesday morning, packed up and got going. Rather than hop right onto I93, I wanted to shoot through town over to Commonwealth Ave (rt 2) so I could check out the Boston Guitar Center. This time we were armed with a detailed map so getting there should be a simple matter of just 2 or 3 turns.

Wrong. The clusterfuck that is Boston once again showed me that my navigation skills are nowhere near adequate to pilot an automobile in that fucking city. For the first few hundred yards it was all going fine, but we came to one of those wonderful 5 way intersections where the road we needed to be on was apparently not one of the choices, and within a block or two after that we were completely lost and had no idea where we were on the map that was so clearly drawn. After my usual bout of swearing at everything that I can find a swear word for, and being yelled at and given more directions from my copilot, we found our way and just had to shoot up one more street to get to our destination. As usual, when we get to that street, it's a 1 way, and not the way we need! Using my typical navigational skillset, I figured that we could go up one more light and take a 1-way street going the right way and get us where we needed to be. But as usual, Boston streets follow absolutely no logic whatsoever, and when I did what I'd hoped would bring us sucess, it wound up dumping us on the goddamned Mass Pike!!! No signage at all when I turned onto that godforsaken road, but instead of being yet another road to oblivion, this was an onramp for the pike. I can't tell you how badly I just wanted to throw my still non-functional GPS right out of the fucking window. The only reason that I didn't was because Kristin, who was already so pissed off at me that she wouldn't talk to me, would have probably demanded a divorce on the spot. I can't ever remember being so pissed off in my life as I was during my 2 driving excursions during my 30 hour stay in Boston. At that point I was able to get myself back to rt 2, but I was far too pissed off to even want to see the guitar store, so rather than back-track on Rt 2, I just drove home. Just to add insult to injury, as soon as I got off the pike onto I95 (toward Rt 2), the stupid fucking GPS started working and didn't so much as hiccup for the rest of the ride home now that I had no use for it and knew exactly where I was going.

The long lasting effects of War on soldiers

2008-03-05T11:17:00.003-05:00

Today has been a very interesting and uncomfortable day so far. One of the guys that sits a couple cubes away from me is moving, and new guy is moving in. The new guy's name gives the indication that he's Vietnamese, or similar. The guy who sits across from me (who is a very nice guy) made a very strange (and I thought very rude at the time) comment this morning something to the effect that if he shot this guy it wouldn't be the first vietnamese he shot. I gave my usual smile then walked away. All morning, the guy has been obcessing about it, making non stop comments abot gooks and the like. This guy sounds just like my grandfather talking about the Japenese.

the way the guy has carried on has been a little wierd. Then he started talking about how he hopes it doesn't cause any flashbacks. He was laughing when he said it, but he had this unnerving look of true uneasyness in his eyes. He mentioned some of the flashbacks he's had in the past. He had one at BCC when he saw a ladder sticking out of a manhole. He had another when he went hunting and heard gunshots. Every time he was smiling and making light of it, but the look in this guy's eyes told an entirely different story.

He truely is dreading having a vietnamese guy sit next to him. I think it has nothing to do with racism or his dislike for them. I think it's fright. He's afraid of his thoughts, and he's afraid of what could occur if they return. I think he's covering his fears by making the off color jokes. I'm really nervous to see what happens on Monday when the new guy gets here.

Let it snow, let it snow, let... it... uh... not snow.

2008-03-03T09:29:00.006-05:00

I love snow. Everybody knows that. I get excited every time it snows. As a result, I've gotten excited a LOT this winter. We've had a lot of snow. I still get excited every time it snows, but now snow removal in my yard has turned into such a pain in the ass. My yard is full, my driveway is full, and I really don't have anywhere else to put it. I'm also aggrivated because when we get the snow I spend 1 or 2 nights cleaning up, but thanks to all the frigging rain we get right after every snow storm, half the time I don't get to ride the sled until after the nice new snow gets rained on. Fortunately, I got a couple good days of riding in this weekend, but I didn't finish my shovelling and snow blowing until sunday afternoon.

Just to show how much snow we've got, I took some pictures. Keep in mind that most of north adams probably has less than a foot on the ground, and pittsfield has grass showing. Click on the pictures for a full size version:

This is a picture of the house. Notice the massive snowbank behind the mailbox. Keep in mind that there's a rather large fence that's almost completely burried:

Here's another pic of the fense and the front yard:

Here's the other end of my driveway where my dad pushes the snow. The state has used their loader to push it back, which is why it's so high. What you can't see from the pic is that this mound has basically taken the last 30' of my driveway, and has almost blocked me from being able to get around my garage. This mound goes all the way from the brook at the edge of my property, almost up to the corner of my car port:

Here's that mound from the path I snowblow behind the garage:

Here's the path over to the propane tank behind the garage:

Here are the steps to the house. The mound on each side is above my head:

Here is a pic of the back yard. It's hard to see in the pic, but at the top of the hill is the very top of our septic vent sticking out of the snow.

They stab it with their steely knives, But they just can't kill the beast

2008-02-25T14:03:00.003-05:00

As many of my friends (along with my vast network of fans) know, I'm a bit of an Eagles fan. Because of this, I also find interest in many things that are linked to the Eagles in one way or another. I enjoy listening to my Joe Walsh and Don Henley cds. One of these days I'll start building my Glen Frey and Timothy B. Schmidt catalog. Since the Eagles were formed while Henley and Frey were both backup singers in Linda Rondstat's band, I will sometimes listen to her music to try and find some roots in the Eagles style. I also enjoy listening to Jackson Browne music, since he was responsible for writing some of the Eagles better tunes.

Where my fascination with eagles-esque music has always been a bit strained is with Steely Dan. Steely Dan is always right alongside the Eagles whenever there is anything written about them. The famous line of Hotel California that I used for this blog's title was there in response to Steely Dan's lyric "Turn up the Eagles, the neighbors are listening" in their song Everything You Did. The popularity of both bands was on the rise at around the same time, and like the Eagles, Steely Dan broke up and then reunited after a long wait.

But that's really where the simularities end as far as I can tell. One listen to Steely Dan makes it pretty apparent that they shared virtually no musical style with the Eagles. Steely Dan's sound is somewhat of a progressive-jazz-pop sound, with a squeaky clean (some would go so far as to say sterile) presentation of the instruments, where the Eagles have a sound much closer to what you'd call a "70s classic rock" type of sound, with their share of effects and dirty guitar distortion.

I can't help but wonder if Steely Dan's sound was representitive of the "east coast" sound whereas the Eagles represented the west coast sound. The "east coast" sound was one that had stronger roots in a more conservative, "clean" type of upper class sound while the California sound was more influenced by the southern rock and brittish type of sound.

I hate it when I get partway through a thought, get an ADD fit and completely lose inspiration to keep writing. I can usually go back to anything I've written and find the point where my somewhat coherent thoughts suddenly get all scrambled and from that point on most of what I write is all rubbish. Happened right about the beginnng of the 4th paragraph this time.

But in closing (with what little dignity this rambling ADD-laiden vestage of mental vomit has left), I'm listening to some Steely Dan, not really enjoying it, and still trying to figure out just how they've managed to be linked to the Eagles for all this time.

For just pennies a day, you could help feed a starving kid that'll just grow up to father another bunch of starving kids...

2008-01-28T08:38:00.000-05:00

...or you can buy a really sweet tv. :D

I've been wanting a big screen tv for a very long time, but I wouldn't buy one until I could get hi-def service, because I hate stretching the image to fit the wider aspect ratio of the tv. DirecTV finally added the albany stations in HD recently, so we decided it was time. I had been saving my spare change for a while... somewhere around 10-12 years. I had a giant plastic beer bottle full of change that I'd been adding to for a long time. It weighed too much for me to carry it upstairs, so it's been sitting in our foyer since we moved into the house a year and a half ago.

On Saturday Kristin decided that it was time for the tv. I poured the change into a 5 gallon pail so that I could carry it to the Coinstar machine at the Big Y. The change filled approximately 2/3 of the 5 gallon pail, and it weighed over a HUNDRED POUNDS!

Carrying this 100lb bohemith was a feat in itself. The 5 gallon pail was barely able to hold up to the strain, and I wasn't doing much better with trying to carry it. I lugged it into the Big Y, and immediately drew a crowd. The coinstar machine is great because you don't have to deal with the pain in the ass of rolling it all... which honestly, for me, wouldn't have been possible considering how much change we're talking about. The problem with coinstar is that they take 9% of your total, which in my case, would have been a fairly significant amount of money. But... you have the option of getting your redemption on a gift card instead of cash, and when you do that, you get the full value of your change... i.e. no 9% fee. Circuit City was one of the gift card options, so we did that. Below, you can see our totals from our receipt:

So... off to Circuit City we go! We intended to head to Keene to get our new TV in order to save on sales tax. Unfortunately, Keene didn't carry the TV I wanted. Of course, thanks to the fact that Circuit City only employs idiot teens who don't know anything about their job, it took me most of the day (and 3 different sales guys over the phone) to learn this. So, we headed to Holyoke after dinner on Saturday for our TV. In addition to our $782 in coin money, DirecTV also gives you $300 off any HD TV when you sign up for DirecTV Hi-def service, which we intended to do anyway. So, all totalled, we only wound up spending a few hundred dollars out of pocket for our snazzy new Sony KDF-50E3000 that now resides in our living room. :)

God Bless New Hampshire!!!

2008-01-22T11:22:00.000-05:00

http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/21/2179.asp

Right now legislation has been proposed (by a democrat no less!) to raise the speed limit on some highways from 65 to 70mph in New Hampshire. Oh wait, it gets better! As part of this proposal, it would become illegal for those left-lane-squatters to hold up the left lane with their holier-than-thou bullshit antics. Somebody's actually listening to my prayers!

If this bill gets passed, I'm going to celebrate by taking my Camaro to Laconia for a nice weekend of nothing but high speed highway driving. As part of this celebration, I'll be making citizens arrests on every left lane nut-hugger that I get stuck behind!

God Bless New Hampshire!

I wish California would just fall into the fucking ocean

2008-01-17T16:19:00.000-05:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/11/us/11control.html?ex=1357707600&en=608b7b5bb2921934&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Read up. California is about to pass a law giving THEM control over residents' thermostats! That's right! New thermostats will be remotely controlled, so that when they feel it's necessary, they can set the temperature of YOUR home.

Big Brother at it's finest. Unbelievable.

Go back to Mexico... or not?

2008-01-17T14:10:00.000-05:00

I've decided that the illegal immigrant issue is quite a bit more complicated than it might seem. I've always been of the opinion that we should close our borders to illegals, and send all of the current ones home. Stupid bills like the one Elliot Spitzer tried to pass that would give drivers licenses to illegals in NY make my blood boil. Don't get me wrong... legal immigration I have no problems with. Most of us wouldn't be here if it wasn't for that. My great-grandparents came over on the boat, just like most other's did. I just don't like the ones that are here illegally, and I sure as hell don't want to see them getting any kind of special rights or pardons. We don't need to encourage it!

So, round them all up and send them back, right? Well... maybe not. Unfortunately, our economy might depend on them. There are jobs that they are willing to do at pay levels that no American can do. These illegals cost employers far less money than even a minimum-wage employee would cost. These employers include many farmers with large crops to harvest, construction companies, builders, and many service industries. so what happens if we send all the illegals back? Vegetable prices skyrocket. Construction costs increase. Hotel prices go up. So on and so on and so on. I can't help but wonder just how much of an impact losing 11 million illegals would have on our economy.

Something tells me that the money we saved on police, courts, INS, healthcare, uninsured accidents and all of the other problems they cause would more than offset the higher prices of lettuce.

Chicken Soup really IS good for the soul!

2008-01-15T14:15:00.000-05:00

As some of you may know, my grandfather had gotten pneumonia before Christmas, and wound up in the hospital, followed by a short stay in Sweetbrook Nursing Home. All said, it was somewhere around a 3-4 week period of time that he wasn't home. During that time, it was so hard to see him. He was still sick, and had very little strength while in the nursing home. Worse yet, his spirit was broken. I think he had himself convinced that he wasn't leaving... that he was there for good. During those weeks, things were turned upside down because we were going over there after work and on weekends. Christmas wasn't the same with him there. When he was finally able to go home, it was a huge weight off of everybody's shoulders. He was certainly the most relieved, but we were all very glad to get back to a more normal type of routine. But, even after he got home, things weren't the same. He was still weak, and unable to get up and down the stairs. This left him unable to do his daily routine of grocery shopping, preparing lunch & coffee, and all of that sort of stuff. Slowly he started to come back to normal.

Yesterday, he made his first batch of chicken soup since he got out of the hospital. His making this chicken soup really is a symbol that things are back to normal now. He drove himself to the grocery store to get everything he needed. He spent the morning cutting up all the veggies and preparing the chicken, then he spent the afternoon boiling it and stirring it all, then finally bottling it for all of us to take home our portions. Picking up that chicken soup last night was one of the biggest emotional pick-me-ups that I could have had. It was really an indescribable feeling to get that soup. Things really are back to normal, and boy is that a great feeling. I haven't had any of the soup yet, but I absolutely can not wait to have it for dinner tonight. This moment has been a long time coming, and one that I'm going to remember. A cup of Campbell's Chicken Noodle may not do shit for your mental health, but this jar of Nono's chicken soup is worth it's weight in diamonds to me.

:)

6 Empty Stalls

2008-01-10T09:45:00.000-05:00

There are 7 stalls in the men's room near my cube. Due to the rarest of all finds - the seat up on one stall, indicating it's unused since being cleaned - I take the 2nd stall from the right instead of the one all the way to the right that I usually occupy. I'm enjoying my personal time, when somebody else comes in. He's got 6 empty stalls to choose from, with the ability to get as many as 5 stalls away from me. So what one does he choose? The one directly to my left. 6 fucking stalls and you need to sit in the one right next to me!? Are you lonely?

While I'm on the subject of inexcusable bathroom etiquitte, I'd like to remind all men reading this that when standing at the urinal, the same rules apply. It is imperative that you provide the maximum buffer zone between you and other pee-ers. If you cozy up to the urinal next to me, I just may feel the urge to mark my territory. And don't talk to me. What is it with guys that feel the urge to talk to me while we're pissing? I'm touching my junk. This is a private moment, not happy hour.

Pictures from my Opening Day (12-16) ride

2008-01-08T10:47:00.000-05:00

I finally got these pics uploaded so I thought I'd post them. Click on all of the pics for a larger version!

Most people haven't seen the Woodford trails like this, especially on opening day.
These pics were from my ride on Sunday Dec 16. This was the morning after we received about 12-14" of fresh snow, which fell on top of nicely groomed trails which were completely unridden because the trails hadn't opened yet. This resulted in trails that were perfectly smooth under that new powder. I rode until I ran out of gas (oops).

Here's the Heartwellville parking lot. No cars in sight, and not a single sled track:

Here's the trail behind me:

And up ahead:

How many guys have seen BN5 look like this? For refrence, to the left is 7A back to the power lines. To the right is 7 North.

Here's my sled parked at BN5. The only tracks were mine:

Here's BN8. Just as I approached this intersection, I saw the two Ski Doos that left these tracks just seconds before I was able to come up Airport Rd. Since they turned left onto the Glastenbury Loop, I decided to go right and stay on Airport Rd. The couple miles between the Somerset parking lot and this intersection was the only stretch of trail that had tracks on it before I got to it.

I rode all the way up to Kelly Stand Rd, then turned right to stay on 7N. I rode to the spot where the Weenie Wagon used to sit where I snapped this pic:

After that I turned around and headed for home. Then I decided to shoot over to the Harriman Reservoir, which is where I ran out of gas and wound up walking out!
I've never ridden in conditions like that before. It was absolutely amazing to be riding on perfectly smooth trails, with a 14" cushion under me. My sled just floated right on top of that powder (as you can see from my 2nd pic), and never sunk more than a few inches. Between the amazing conditions, and having those trails totally to myself, this was absolutely the best ride I've ever taken... right up until I had to start walking!

_______________________________________________________________________

Here are pics from Saturday's ride (1-05) that Kristin and I took together.

Here is Kristin in the driveway, all ready to go!

Here is Kristin at BN5 in Woodford:

And the two of us:

A Very Snowmobile Weekend

2008-01-07T14:09:00.000-05:00

This past weekend was a truely impressive weekend for snowmobiling. I had the good fortune of being able to go on Friday, again on Saturday, and again on Sunday. All 3 rides were very different.

On Friday after work I decided to take a ride. I knew that it would start warming up on Saturday, and I prefer riding on the trails when the snow is colder and powdery instead of wet and compacted. I left the house at around 5:30, and found that the trails were ungroomed and very bumpy. Sections were as bad as I've seen them in recent memory. I have to admit though, that sometimes I really enjoy thrashing the bumpy trails, and I had a blast pounding 2' moguls at 50mph. While I was out riding, I came across all 3 groomers, so in addition to the major bumps, I also got to ride some perfectly smooth virgin groomed trail. There's nothing quite like a perfectly smooth snow highway with not a single snowmobile track in sight. I managed to get in a good 65 mile run and was home by 7:30.

On Saturday morning, Kristin and I got ready for our ride together. This was Kristin's first ride, and she was nervous about going. I certainly wasn't nervous, but I also really had no idea what to expect. I was excited to get her out there, but was also fearful that I was going to wind up with one of those major pain-in-the-ass situations that would result in a ruined day and an unhappy wife. Fortunately, that couldn't have been farther from reality. She did great all day, and she had a blast. We found something that we can enjoy together, which is really something great. She managed to ride almost 60 miles on her first trip, and the more she rode the better she got. I need to make some adjustments to the sled so that she'll have less trouble with darting and turning, but once I do that I think she'll quickly get good enough to be able to keep up with us on a normal ride. She can't wait to go again, and I'm looking forward to it too.

On Sunday, I rode with Mike and Ben. Rather than ride the regular trails, we decided to head East past the Harriman Reservoir, and down to the power lines, then up to Jacksonville, which is a route that we don't typically take. Unfortunately, shortly before we got to the power lines, the trail turned into garbage. We continued on until we reached the power lines, but the trail got even worse, so we turned around and headed back to the main trail. We took the main trail to Jacksonville, where we got some lunch at the store, then headed home. Riding over that way is a very different experience than the usual Woodford riding that we do. Woodford trails are big, wide, and usually well groomed. They're also pretty much all in the woods. When we head east, we ride smaller, bumpy trails that go through individually owned segments of property. This includes many trails that pass right through people's yards. It's an interesting experience to ride through these more populated areas. All said and done, when we got done, we'd racked up about 60 miles on Sunday.

I tried to get a lot of riding in, because this week the weather is warming up, which is going to ruin the trails. I won't be able to ride again until we get colder temperatures and more snow. Hopefully it won't be a long wait.

I should have pictures to add in the next day or two.

Mother Nature... Typical Woman

2008-01-02T11:48:00.000-05:00

Mother Nature Can't make up her mind.

We get absolutely blasted with snow, which wound up nearly waist deep not too far north of my house a couple weeks ago, only for it to get warm and for heavy rain to cause massive amounts of melt, which of course causes a lot of run-off, and shitty snowmobile trails. The trails were outstanding after we got the big snow, and then the rain pretty much ruined them.

Over the last couple days, we got another 20+ inches of snow. I expect the trails to be absolutely fantastic... until the end of the weekend when it's going to warm up. Next week, rain and the chance for 50 degree temps , potentially for as long as 2 weeks. More melt, more run-off and more shitty trails.

On Saturday I think Kristin is going to attempt to make her maiden voyage. This is a bittersweet event. I've been looking forward to getting her onto the snowmobile and getting her riding, but now that it's almost time, it's begun to dawn on me that now instead of 100 mile days, I'm going to have 20 mile days, at least at first. This wouldn't be so bad, except that now with the crazy weather, my opportunities for long rides are becoming quite limited.

But, that's ok. It will be fun to get her out there and get her riding. I don't really know what to expect from her. Riding a snowmobile is a very different experience than what most people are used to, especially if they've never spent time on ATVs and motorcycles. It's very intimidating at first, which results in a lot of timid reactions to some of the dangers that you encounter. When you see dips and open water, slamming the throttle all the way to the bar isn't exactly intuitive, but it's often necessary. Likewise, there are a lot of situations where more throttle is better than less throttle, but it takes a big leap of faith to try that for the first time, especially when you're still not used to the huge amount of power that these machines have. Even though more throttle is better than less in many cases, in almost all cases, too much throttle will put you into a world of hurt. It also takes a lot of getting used to when it comes to cornering. Snow is slippery, so it's just not natural to expect a snowmobile to be able to turn a corner at 50 mph. It takes some faith. Then when you get over that and you start gaining that faith, you start to see that inside ski lift and it scares the shit out of you. Holy crap, I'm going to roll over! I'm going to slide off the trail! No you aren't. You get used to seeing that inside ski in the air after a while, but it's just another one of those things that will scare the hell out of a new rider at first.

Hopefully it won't take long for her to start to feel comfortable on the sled and gain the confidence it takes to ride at a pace that allows her to stay with the group, and to gain the stamena to enjoy a 100 mile ride.

Either way, it'll be an adventure. :)

Dear Jim, Screw You, Love, General Dynamics

2007-12-10T08:09:00.000-05:00

I'm rapidly starting to dispise my job. I never really liked it, but I quietly (at least while at work) tolerated it. Lately, as they've continued to take more and more away from us, I've started to become less quiet. This morning they flat out pissed me off. Over the last 2 week pay period, I worked about 13 hours of overtime in order to finish up a project that needed to be completed. Once we go to a new timecard format, we will no longer be paid for our first 8 hours of overtime, which of course means that I will no longer work any overtime. Up until then, we're still being paid for pre-authorized overtime. There has been an unwritten rule, however, that if you work less than 3 hours of overtime, that you charge it to casual overtime and not paid overtime. I think the rule sucks, but I play along by simply making sure that if I'm working any overtime, that I work enough to get paid. For the last couple years, we've been on an 80 week pay period instead of a 40 hour pay period. This just means that everything is done on a 2 week period. Because we get every other friday off, I got the bulk of my overtime in on the first week by working a full day on my friday off. On the second week I managed to squeeze in one extra hour of overtime, for a total of 13 hours of overtime for that pay period. But, my manager called me to let me know that the "1 hour of overtime" still looks bad. Nevermind that it's one of 13 hours that I worked over for this fucking company instead of working on my snowmobile and spending time with my wife. So, I had to let them stick that one hour of overtime up my ass and take 12 hours instead of 13.

So, because of that, this is the last overtime that I will ever work for General Dynamics. I don't give a shit if the fucking pope needs personal protection, they better only expect me to do it during my normal pay period, because the second I hit hour number 80 I'm leaving this place from now on.

The Pussification of America

2007-11-21T13:51:00.000-05:00

First, read this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/magazine/18wwln-medium-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Take it with a grain of salt, because after all, it's funny. Then think about it. Then it's not funny. It's tragic. It's tragic because it's a perfect, living example of the pussification of America. You want to see why America churns out so many mal-adjusted, sissy kids who immediately try to shift the blame of all of life's problems to somebody else? This is why. Society is so afraid to send the wrong message to kids that ultimately what has happened is that we send them no message at all. Kids grow up in this little utopian bubble, totally oblivious to issues that effect people every day... issues like dealing with mistakes (yours and other people's), unfair situations, and competition. When that bubble bursts and kids are thrown out into the real world, they are not properly equipped to handle the stresses and struggles of life. When I grew up, I learned the value of taking chances, as well as learning when not to take them. I learned that failure is a necessary part of life, and that failure is what motivates you to suceed. I also learned that competition is vitally important, because if you're not better than your peers in what you're trying to accomplish, you're not going to accomplish it. When you're competing with 20 other guys for a single job, like it or not, not everybody is a winner! Not only do you need to know how to deal with losing, you need to learn how to win. Someday you're going to be put into a position where you have some hard decisions to make. It starts pretty early in life, when you start dealing with the pressures from your peers, including making huge decisions about smoking, drugs, drinking, sex, and all kinds of misbehaviors. How do you expect kids to react to these very important issues if they grow up in a bubble where these kinds of problems are swept under the rug? If you constantly shield your kids from this stuff, your kids aren't going to be prepared to make these decisions when they're forced to.

It's about time we get back to reality. Kids need to see that the world isn't perfect, and that they will always have to make the best of it, and that starts by taking accountability and making your own opportunities, instead of worrying about what kind of roll model Big Bird is. Anybody who thinks that Snuffleupagus is responsible for children's problems should have taken the blue pill. In fact, maybe they should do the world a favor and take the whole bottle.

Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, GET OFF THE FUCKING ROAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2007-11-20T09:15:00.000-05:00

Every year the first "real" snow of the year is a cluster-fuck, because all of the boneheaded idiot drivers somehow forget how to drive in it over the summer months. The minute they see a snowflake, they freak out and bring traffic to a standstill. I could understand this incompetence farther south where driving in the snow is an uncommon event, but if you live in Berkshire county, then God dammit, learn how to drive in it!!!!!!!!!! My ride to work usually takes 45 minutes, but an hour isn't all that uncommon during bad weather. It's the same routine every time. Black wet roads, and idiots that still insist on doing 35. When the roads actually are slippery (10% of the time), I don't get upset at the slow ride, but today brought an entirely new level of idiot out of their houses and on to the road. My ride took an hour and a half, and for about half of the ride, it was a 5 mph tapdance of stop and go. The goddamned roads weren't even that bad! On harbor hill, which tends to be slippery, it was a parking lot. Nobody was moving, and I saw flashers all over the place. There were a lot of cars pulled over to the side of the road, either stuck or just too scared to drive. I still have the summer tires on the Camry, and I had absolutely no problems stopping and going up the hill. The stop & go continued for 15 more miles all the way into Pittsfield, even though the rest of the ride is flat and mostly straight.

The other bulk of my wait was waiting for timid women to pull out of the goddamned intersections even though nothing's coming for 2 miles!

I think I bent my steering wheel from pounding on it so hard.

God Dammit I hate stupid people.

I like Beer in a glass

2007-11-08T12:09:00.000-05:00

I've always drank my beer out of a bottle (or can when I like to live up to my redneck reputation). I always thought that pouring your beer into a glass was for sissies and people who give a shit about etiquette (who, by their nature, are usually sissies). Unfortunately, this foundation upon which my entire beer drinking redneck viewpoint was based on has been shaken to its core recently. When Kristin and I were at the Budweiser brewery, I was blown away by the aroma in the fermentation room during the tour. It was an amazing blend of sweet and bitter beer aromas that made me want to tap one of those giant tanks open and chug right from the nozzle. After the tour I was able to enjoy a fresh draft beer, and I was clearly able to notice a less powerful version of that same wonderful aroma coming from the beer in my glass. Why hadn't I ever noticed this before!? Oh yeah... I always drank out of cans and bottles, which don't let the aroma escape.

So now I pour my beer into a glass. I enjoy my beer quite a bit more now. It smells better, which makes it taste better. It also helps get rid of a lot of the carbonation, so it drinks easier... more like a draft beer. And that's the thing... beer out of a can or bottle tastes a hell of a lot more like it does on draft when I pour it into a glass first.

So next time you see me pour my beer in a glass, rest assured that I haven't turned into some sort of tea-drinking tinker-bell, but in fact I've found a way to take my Man drink to an entirely new level of manly goodness.

The Eagles - Again

2007-11-08T12:05:00.000-05:00

So it's been a week since I bought the new Eagles album. When I first got the album I spent the time to post my feelings on every song. I see from my site meter that virtually nobody read it. That being the case, chances are pretty good that nobody will read this one either. Anyway... after a week, I have to say that my overall opinion of the album has changed. I've listened to it almost every day at work, and that proved to be the right environment to get acclimated to it. My biggest complaints with the album were that the lyrics are too hippie-pinko for my tastes, and the music was a tad bland. When I listen to tunes at work, I don't really pay attention to them, as they're just a way of reducing other audible distractions (like having a fan on when you sleep). After listening to the album this way over and over, I've become very familiar with the music, and have largely ignored the lyrics. In doing this, I've found that I've become very fond of the album. It's still not ever going to match the quality of their older stuff, but it is an album that I expect to keep in my rotation for a long time to come.

Eagles - Long Road Out of Eden

2007-10-31T09:10:00.000-05:00

Last night I stopped at Wal Mart and bought a cd. This is the first time in probably 15 years that I've bought a cd there. I generally refuse to buy cds from them because I strongly oppose their fraudulent schemes of selling modified cds to unknowing customers. Wal Mart has had a long standing policy not to sell cds with explicit lyrics or content, which is fine. If you want to play a holier-than-thou role in your music department even though you seem to overlook the bikini posters, trashy romance novels, r-rated movies and whore dolls (bratz), then fine. But what pisses me off beyond belief is that Wal Mart does not tell you what cds have been altered, so you can not make the decision for yourself as to which you'd prefer. Unless you already know the album well enough to know whether or not it's likely to be altered, what you buy may or may not be the "actual" album. It's this shuck & jive that I think is unethical and deceptive.

But last night, thanks to the Eagles almighty greed, I was forced to buy their new 2-CD set at Wal art, who is the exclusive seller of the album. I do hope that my contribution is able to help Don Henley get back on his feet.

Anyway, criticism of Don Henley aside, I wanted to post a review of the album. This is the Eagles first cd of all new material since... shit... a long time ago. I think that their last all-new album was in 1980 or slightly before that.

The album opens with a 2 minute track (dispite the album cover's advertisement of a 4:00 length) titled "No More Walks In The Wood". The song is a sappy 4-part harmony with a little big of accidental guitar play. I'm not sure what to make of this tune. It sets the tone for the first cd as very somber and lackluster. I could have done without Henley's tree hugging lyrics.

The second song is "How Long" which is their release that's on the radio and getting moderate airplay. Unlike the first song, this is an upbeat song that has a great beat and has a little bit of that old Eagles sound. This isn't surprising considering that it is written by J.D. Souther, who wrote a lot of the classic Eagles tunes, including Take It Easy, which this song is fairly reminescant of. It's got a clean snappy sound, with similarly clean and snappy vocals that roll off the tongue and whether you want to or not, your foot will start tapping along with the spunky beat. This is the song that should have opened this album.

The third song, Busy Being Fabulous" is one of many Henley & Frey written songs on the album. In general, the songs that these two have written have a clearly different sound than their older stuff, and definately shows a more relaxed and mature side. Unfortunately, it seems that without the cocaine and alcohol-fueled songwriting binges of old, their lyric writing really has gone to shit. Like a lot of their older stuff, this song is pessemistic and a bit dark, the slower tempo and lackluster music and lyrics just wind up sounding like complaining instead of a finely woven tapestry of intentionally vague lyrics and powerful guitar work. I think Don Felder's absence has taken away that amazing dual-guitar sound that makes the old Eagles sound so recognizable.

Song 4 is "What Do I Do With My Heart". This is a Frey tune. This song sounds like it's straight off some sappy made for TV movie chick flick soundtrack. I think Henley was on a piss break during this song, so they just set up a computer beat box instead of using live percussion. Joe Walsh sounds like he's getting ready for a Weather Channel background music gig. It's sure no Desparado, that's for sure. Glen Frey sounds as good as ever though. Later on in the song Henley sings too. Somebody could pull this song out of the shitter and make a good duet out of it, but not with 2 dudes singing it.

Song 5 is "Guilty Of The Crime". This is one of the few songs that Joe Walsh sings. This song wasn't written by any of the band members. Joe Walsh reminds me of Ozzy. The dude did way too many drugs and drank for way too long, and it shows. He can barely talk, but oddly enough, as bad as it probably is, I still love his singing voice. This is an upbeat song, and Joe's guitar work is very reminescant of the older Eagles stuff, but the mix subdues it too much and makes it sound too "pop" oriented. This song would probably sound great on a live album, but whoever mixed it in the studio killed it.

Song 6, "I Don't Want To Hear Any More" is sung by Timothy B. Schmidt. This song sounds like a blend of Beegees and James Taylor. It's a bit sappy for my tastes, but I have a feeling that it'll grow on me. It reminds me of the Schmidt-sung song on Hell Freezes Over (Love Will Keep Us Alive), but like with the other songs here, without that 2nd guitar from Felder, the music is just flat.

"Waiting In The Weeds" is a henley tune. This song has the lyrics. The negative air, and the somewhat vague point. Unfortunately, the music is missing. Needs more cowbell!

"No More Cloudy Days" is a song that the Eagles performed on their last live DVD. It's a pretty good Glenn Frey tune, and the music isn't bad either.

"Fast Company" has a nice bass guitar beat. Henley is singing in a pretty high octave, and when combined with the low octave harmony, it really seems to produce a sound reminescant of Prince. It kind of wierds me out hearing the Eagles sing like Prince.

"Do Something" opens very similarly to "Friends In Low Places" but instead turns into a ballad sung by Schmidt. Lyrics are good. This has a nice southern balad sound to it, with guitar work that has a steel lap guitar kind of sound. This song is rapidly growing on me.

"You Are Not Alone" is another slow one, and it ends the first cd. This is a Glenn Frey tune. Upbeat message, downbeat tempo. This sounds a little like christian music but without mentioning god. This seems like it would make a good theme song for that Joel Osteen televangelist show. Fortunately, it's short.

The second cd starts off with the title track, "Long Road Out Of Eden". It opens with a very middle-eastern type of sound, then transitions into a slow keyboard solo. Guitar comes in right before Henley's lyrics. The lyrics paint a picture of despair, confusion, internal conflict. The music paints a setting of mystery, dark, and is a perfect compliment to the lyrics. This song really works. Without a doubt, this is the best song on the album. Unfortunately, it's 10 minute length means it'll never get put on the radio unless they come out with a shortened version. Guitar work, though subdued in the mix, has a great Walsh sound. In fact, about 5 minutes in, Walsh belts out an 80's power balad-esque guitar solo until you think the song is over... but oh no, there's more! More creepy middle-eastern sound effects, then the song slowly picks up again, continuing past the 10 minute mark before finally coming to an end. The only part that is strange, is that the very end of the song goes out with a single drum beat like what you usually hear in war movies. I really can't figure out the significance of it, and it doesn't match anything else in the song. Overall though, this tune almost sounds like what I think an Eagles cover of a Mark Knopfler song would sound like.

"I Dreamed There Was No War" is the 2nd song on the 2nd cd. I figured I'd hate this song, and I prepared myself for a Don Henley "why the war is bad and why republicans suck" political statement, but instead I was treated to a short instrumental with a guitar and some violins in the background. This reminds me of the "Wasted Time Reprise" bit on the Hotel California cd. It's damned good. Too bad Henley couldn't pick a more neutral title for it, but then again, I think its title and it's position after Eden were completely intentional. I can't shake this feeling that the Eden song is a disguised anti-war, "it's all about oil" statement, and making this a pseudo "Eden-reprise" with an anti-war name helps make it a bit more obvious for those of us who aren't quite insightful enough to fully realize what the Eden song is about.

The music picks back up with "Somebody", another one of the songs not written by the Eagles. There's good bit of bass guitar work that sounds very similar to the bass style that you hear from John McVie from Fleetwood Mac. In fact, this whole song has a Fleetwood Mac kind of sound.This song is sung by Glenn Frey. He sings in a style that's a bit out of his ordinary, and I'm not sure he pulls it off. Music is upbeat.

"Frail Grasp Of The Big Picture" is another one of Henley's complaining songs. Henley is The song isn't bad, just not overly inspiring. As he does far too often on this second disk, Henley can't refuse the opportunity to let his anti-American views shine through. "Good ol' boys down at bar - peanuts and politics, they think they know it all, they don't know much of nothin'"...And we pray to our lord, who we know is american... he speakes to us through middlemen and he shepherds his flock...he supports us in war, he presides over football games." Too repetitive, too much chorus, too much goddamned complaining.

"Last Good Time In Town" is next. Did Carlos Santana join the Eagles? Nope, that's Joe Walsh singing. But is Santana playing guitar? Nope, just walsh, but I'll be damned if it doesn't sound like Santana. This is a pretty cool song. Upbeat sound, typical Joe Walsh sound once it gets going.

"I Love To Watch A Woman Dance" is another song that the Eagles didn't write. Glenn Frey sings it. This sounds like something from Winnie the Poo.

"Business As Usual" is a Henley tune. Seems like mainstream Henley here... not much different than a lot of the stuff on his solo albums.

"Center Of The Universe" is a slow song. Love songs aren't exactly an Eagles strength, and this song certainly isn't changing that.

The second cd finishes with "It's Your World Now", written and sung by Glenn Frey. This song has a mexican salsa kind of sound. Makes me want tacos. And a labotomy.

My overall impression of the album is that it was worth the money. However, I just can't escape the sheer irony of the Eagles, who for years have sung about corporate greed, and in just yet another example of "do as I say and not as I do", choose Wal Mart to be the sole seller of their new album.

Say something God Dammit!

2007-10-29T15:01:00.000-05:00

I haven't said much on here lately. I haven't really had much motivation to post. I guess the "coolness" of telling the world about my daily exploits has begun to glaze over. I think a lot of it has to do with how things have been going lately. When shit pisses me off, I have a lot to write about, and of course that also makes me feel better. But lately, I haven't had much to complain about. Life is good right now. I'm still employed, though if I did have anything that I could bitch about, it would certainly be my asshole job and my asshole employer who keeps taking incrementally taking things away from us. But other than that, things are great. I'm loving my wife, I'm loving my house and my garage, our yard is being worked on to help eliminate the water issues, and the colder weather means that it's almost time to use the snowmobiles. My projects have been a lot of fun lately too. I've enjoyed working on the truck, and now I'm working on my sled and loving every minute of it.

Saturday night we had friends up for a fry party. A lot of my friends chipped in and bought us a frier for a wedding present, so we decided to let them be the first recipients of it's bounty. It was the first time that all of us had gotten together in around 2 or 3 months... even at our wedding they weren't all there because half of them were off having babies and stuff. Speaking of which, it was also nice to see Brayden and Abbey now that they're old enough to look more like grapes instead of raisins. It's also very interesting to see the different personalities of the two babies, and how much they echo that of their parents.

So that's why I haven't written much. I've thought about providing snowmobile progress updates, but my guess is that out of all 2 or 3 people that read this regularly, nobody gives a shit. I may post some in the next day or two anyway once I get pics uploaded though. :)

Where's the snow!?!?!?!?

2007-10-08T13:21:00.000-05:00

This time of year is such a hard time of year for me. Car season is winding down, so I try to get as many rides in as I can in order to help get it out of my system before it's too late. On the other hand, this is when I usually start looking forward to snowmobiling. Over the past week I've picked up a few of the snowmobile magazines that have hit the shelves, and have resumed my viewing of the snowmobile message boards that I haven't looked at since April. This year I'm jonesing even harder because I just bought my new sled last spring, and I want to ride it so frieking badly! Fortunately, in a couple weeks I'm going to be able to start feeding my addiction by tearing into my old sled, which needs some significant work before it can be safely used this winter. Last year I hit a water bar while riding, and found out later (200 miles later!) that I badly damaged the tunnel of the sled right near the driveshaft. As a result, the driveshaft bearing is badly tweaked and will no doubt fail very soon. I'm lucky it didn't fail when I was riding alone at night. But anyway, since the tunnel is basically what every part is attached to, this means I need to completely disassemble the sled. Once it's completely apart, I'm going to pound the aluminum back to its original position, or at least as close as I can get it. Once I'm satisfied, I'll rivet some steel reinforcing plates to the inside of the tunnel, and perhaps add some sno-pro style braces to the outside. This will result in a tunnel that's much stronger than the original one was before I bent it. What I'm a bit unsure of is just how straight I'll be able to get the aluminum. If I can't get it nice and straight, adding the steel plates to the inside may not provide the level of strength that I want. Also, if I don't get it perfectly straight, there still may be some funny side-loads on the bearing that could shorten its life. Only time will tell I guess. Fortunately, this will be just a spare sled that will be used by Kristin, my dad, and some of my friends. None of them will ride it as hard as I did, plus none of them will be riding it alone, so it's reliability isn't as much of a concern. Still, I'm hoping that my repair will be good enough that it will be reliable enough for me to continue riding it by myself without fear of breaking down. If I can afford it, I would like to address some of the sled's shortcomings and make it into something that I'll still enjoy riding. While it's apart I intend to clean up and repaint the front suspension, upgrade the shocks and springs (especially the front skid shock & spring) and if money allows, to convert to a 136" track, which would make this sled a lot of fun in some of the deep snow around the small trails of Stamford.

Oh man I'm excited.

I think tonight I might have to start the sled and sniff the exhaust for a few minutes.

holy crap

2007-10-02T12:46:00.000-05:00

This is going to be an extremely long entry, so it will be broken into sections based on topic. The reason that this is so long is because I've had a dozen or more things occur in the last 10 days that each could get their own entry.

So, in chronological order, here we go:

Wedding preperation
In the days leading up to the wedding, what had been a fun process of decision making turned into a mad rush to finish all of the little details that hadn't yet been dealt with. Over all this went very smoothly thanks to kristin's extremely good planning and orginization. Most of the problems were, of course, my fault. I ordered my grooms gifts weeks in advance, only to find out at the last minute that "same day shipping" doesn't apply to items that get custom engraving. I paid extra for overnight shipping, then never heard back from them. At the last minute I had found out that they were shipped, and that they were in my dad's car. He just forgot to tell me. So, they were handed out at the rehersal dinner unwrapped, but otherwise just fine. Of course, my honorary best man (my grandfather) didn't get a keychain, because honestly, it would be completely useless to him. Instead I decided on a practical gift for him: A new coffee pot to replace the partially non-functional piece of crap that he's been using for the last 25 years. Wal Mart was the only place that had one that fit the requirements he needed, and they were out of stock, so he got an "IOU".

Kristin and I had an "open house" of sorts for our family members from out of town who were interested in seeing our house. In preparation for this, I spent a lot of time installing our last remaining screen door, along with a kick-sill below it. I finished this on Friday morning, and barely had time for my wedding haircut and 3 hour lawn mowing job that I managed to get done in 2 hours. Talk about a thrash. I was just out of the shower when guests started showing up. After they left and after our rehersal dinner, I had to get home and get the Camaro detailed so that she looked good for the wedding. That didn't get started until around 11:00, and finished up sometime around midnight.

The Morning Of
Saturday Morning. T minus 4 hours and counting. I receive a call from Scott, my best man. Scott's wife was pregnant and about ready to pop. We all had our fingers crossed that she'd hold out just long enough for us to squeeze our wedding in. Nope. Scott called at around 9:00 or 9:30 to let me know that she had gone into labor and was at the hospital. Fortunately, we had planned on this situation, and my father was ready to step in. I was very calm and in good spirits prior to Scott's call. I had a very odd reaction when Scott did call. After I got off the phone with him, I found myself in a very excited state. I went from calm to crazy. I was extremely excited for him and Julie, and when that combined with the realization that I was about to get married, and now we had a last minute change of plans, I got overwhelmed with excitement and wound up turning into a blabbering fool who couldn't even put his own tie on. I made last minute calls to the DJ so that he would be aware of the changes, and I got myself ready. While I was getting ready, scott called back, which put a lump in my throat. Why is he calling? Is the baby ok? Yup. Baby was fine (but still not born). It turned out that our friends Jay and Jill, who were due in about 5 weeks, just had her water break and were also having a baby on our wedding day! Holy crap! Before I finish my section on the pre-wedding issues, I've got to say "THANK YOU!!!!!" to Phaedra. She was at the house on Saturday morning, and was the only reason that I was able to get to the church fully dressed and on time. I was virtually useless on saturday morning and needed help with just about everything, which she was happy to do.

Jimbo Got Married!
So I make it to the church on time. The car didn't break down or anything. I stood there for about 45 minutes until the priest showed up.

The rest was pretty much a blur. I stood there with my grandfather and my father by my side while the most beautiful woman I've ever seen walked toward me, escorted by her father. Then we stood there for a while, we exchanged vows, I kissed her, then we stood there, then we kneeled, then we stood, then we left. We sat in the rolls limo for 10 minutes while the driver and I tried to unscrew the fricking champaigne. Then we got into the IROC and drove to the Clark Art for pictures. We took a thousand pictures, which really tired out my grandfather. He did a great job though, and looked chipper all the while.

From the Clark we drove to Berkshire Hills. Oddly, this was one of my favorite parts of the day. It was Just Kristin, me and Maria (The IROC). This half hour ride was the only part of the day where we were alone and able to just be our usual selves. We didn't really talk too much, and just took in the moment. We got to think about what just happened, along with what was still yet to unfold. For me, it was one of the most memorable points of the day, probably because it was the only time that things happened slowly enough for me to actually absorb it.

Then there was the reception. One big blur. 10,000 camera flashes, one creepy guy with a video camera who danced with half of Kristin's family, and a bunch of people that we never got a chance to visit with.

Kristin and I stayed at Jae's Inn in Williamstown. On Sunday morning we went back to pittsfield for brunch at the crowne plaza. We got to see everybody before they left for home.

Honeymoon
Sort of. Kristin and I took 5 days to go to Laconia NH. Her parents have a nice condo that has a beautiful view of the lake. Every time that we had gone there in the past was for a weekend or similarly short trip. This time we finally had time to see some of the sights. We drove the jeep to the top of Mt. Washington, which was a definate highlight of the week. We took the top off of the jeep at the bottom and enjoyed a nice slow ride up, which allowed us to take in some of the most amazing views that I've ever seen. I would highly reccommend this to anybody who is in the area. The drive up Route 16 toward Mt. Washington is also fantastic.

One day we went down to Merrimack to the Budweiser brewery for a tour. This was quite a nice experience. From the clydesdale horses, to the amazing aroma of the fermentation room, it was a great tour.

I also test-drove a C6 Corvette, we did some shopping, a lot of eating and some relaxing. It was a great 5 days.

My honorary best man made me tired
Sunday night Kristin and I had dinner with my grandfather, as we do every sunday. He had a couple dizzy spells, where he would get a head rush and his ears would ring. He said the he's had these before and they always pass. At 10:00 he called us because they were still happening, and he was concerned. He wanted to go to the hospital. So, we drove down and brought him to NA hospital. He was still having these dizzy spells, so they put him on a heart monitor and I couldn't believe what I saw. Each time he was having one of these spells... his heart was stopping. After 5-8 seconds, it would start pumping again. For a couple hours we sat in the waiting room, and every few minutes I would watch this happen, and shit my pants a little bit each time until his heart would start beating again. At around 12:00 or 12:30 he finally started to relax, and when he did it seemed like his heart beats went back to normal and the episodes stopped. At around 1:30 they finally moved him to Albany because the team of cracker-jack doctors at NA couldn't do shit nor could they find somebody who could. Pittsfield was full, and apparently Bennington gets their doctors from the same Cracker Jack Med School. So, at 2:30 he arrived in the Albany emergency room. A Cardiologist in training (Reminder: Don't ever get sick on a sunday night, because you get stuck with the absolute bottom of the barrel) decided that since he's now stable, that rather than instert a temporary pacemaker, they'd just wait until the next day and put the permanent one in. They moved him up to ICU, and at 6:00 AM Kristin and I finally decided to go home. We arrived home at around 7:30. At that point, we had both been up for almost 24 hours. I was brutally tired, and throughout this entire ordeal, I was dealing with a nasty head cold that made me want to pass out. This was a highly unpleasant evening. Getting home didn't really help much. I was too worked up and too worried to get a good night's sleep. Later that day at around 1:00 or 1:30 we got up, cleaned up and headed back to Albany. At 5:30 he went in for surgery to have his pacemaker put in, and came out about 2 hours later. The surgery went well, and he was half out of it thanks to the anesthesia. We stuck around until around 9:15. By then he had become pretty much awake, had some dinner, and was ready to get some rest.

They're keeping him through today so that he can take in the antibiotics that they gave him, but he is doing extremely well. I'm headed back to Albany after I get out of work, but I intend to keep this visit short. Now that he's doing well, I need to try and get caught up on my own sleep. I'll be out of work for some or all of tomorrow in order to bring him home, but once he's home, things should get back to normal pretty quickly. He'll be complaining about the price of butter and about his neighbors by the end of the week, and I can't wait. :)

Are we there yet?

2007-09-18T10:15:00.000-05:00

I can't wait for Sunday to get here. Sunday will be the first day of the rest of my life, and will also be the first day that I won't have a thousand things to do. Getting ready for the wedding is finally starting to take its toll on me. I'm very busy at work trying to get stuff done before I leave, and on top of that I'm also very busy trying to deal with all of the millions of wedding issues that keep popping up. Fortunately Kristin did a great job with all of the planning, so right now we just have to deal with a lot of little things, but even those add up. I'm also getting anxious, which is starting to impact my sleep.

Saturday will be an amazing day, but I'm really looking forward to Sunday. :)

The universe, the stars, and Dale Earnhardt

2007-09-04T21:10:00.000-05:00

Tonight on CMT they aired the Dale Earnhardt Movie. It wasn't so much a movie as much as a documentary, but they called it a movie. I had been looking forward to watching it since they started hyping it a couple weeks ago. I sat down at 8:00 (after watching a 1 hour pre-movie show that wasn't terribly interesting) with huge anticipation. I was glued to the tv throughout the entire show. After the return from each commercial, they showed some footage of the 1998 Daytona 500 race. Each clip progressed a bit through the race, painting the picture for the last half hour of the show. At the last half hour, they showed his win at the finale of that race. For those who know Dale Earnhardt, they know that the Daytona 500 is the absolute biggest race in all of NASCAR, and that day, on his 20th attempt, NASCAR's biggest driver, and Daytona's winningest racer, finally one the biggest race of NASCAR and of Daytona. I still remember watching that race from my apartment in Rochester back in 1998. I was so excited that Dale finally won the big race that I couldn't hold the phone steady enough to dial my parent's phone number to share my excitement with my father. He must have have known, because just as I was about to give up, the phone rang. He knew before he called how excited I was.

Right after they showed his amazing victory, followed by the overwhelming images of every crew member of every team lining up to greet Dale on his way down pit road after the race, they fast forwarded to the Daytona 500 three years later... specifically February 18, 2001. On the last lap of the race, with dale running 3rd behind two cars that he owned, 2 turns from the finish line, dale crashed into the wall and lost his life. Just like the date 3 years earlier, I vividly remember exactly where I was and exactly what I was doing. I was complaining because dale wrecked on the last lap of Daytona... again. It wasn't for a couple hours that it was known that Dale earnhardt had died. In that moment, I was in shock and disbelief, astonishment, and total lonliness. I was in a funk that lasted for weeks. The worst part of the experience is that nobody understood why I was so upset about the death of a person that I had never met. Hell, I didn't even understand it. I couldn't explain it, but I sure felt it. Watching that show tonight, I felt it all over again. I got a tear in my eye when I watched the footage of his 1998 Daytona 500 win, and I cried like a teenage girl being stood up on her prom night when I watched the footage of the 2001 race, and the subsequent races after that one. It was just like reliving those weeks prior to his death again. As I watched those races back in 2001, I sat there with tears in my eyes, with friends and family completely unsure of why I was upset. Tonight I sat there with much the same feeling, hoping that kristin, sleeping next to me on the couch, wouldn't wake up and see me crying like a fool.

So what do the universe and the stars have to do with this? Two nights ago, I stood out on my deck, staring up into the sky. One of my favorite things about living up here, away from the lights of town, is that you get an absolutely jaw-dropping view into the vast universe that we're a part of. On a night with no moon, the view is absolutely breathtaking. I stood there thinking about how absolutely massive of a place the universe is, and how absolutely, completely inconsequential we are in relation to it. The universe is unfathomably huge. Just think about how far of a drive somewhere like florida and California are, then think that light can travel that distance in an almost infinately small period of time, yet those stars in the sky are so far away, that the light you're seeing took hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of years to get from those stars to your eyes. That's a kind of huge that I can't even begin to comprehend. We are such a small part of that universe that we absolutely don't even count. So here I am, mystified by how absolutely meaningless everything really is, then two days later, I find myself completely overwhelmed with emotion by somebody whom I've never met, and who died 6 and a half years ago. Two days ago my life, nor no part of my life seemed to really have any significance at all, yet tonight I was completely overwhelmed by something as truely insignificant as a tv show. It's amazing how rapidly your perspective can shift. Now I think I'm going to have a bowl of cereal.

Security restrictions on my PC are pissing me off

2007-08-29T12:56:00.000-05:00

Every day it seems like I get an email from IT telling me about yet another security "upgrade" that will be implimented soon. It's bad enough that we already have to use a password so cryptic that no normal human can be expected to remember it, but they make us change it every 90 days. Some mornings I sit there for 30+ minutes trying to feed it a new password that pleases the Password gods, and by the time I actually find one, I've tried so many combinations that I usually can't remember what I just chose. Then they went to mandatory screen savers that kick on every 15 minutes, which of course require your password. These screen savers display a bunch of propaganda bullshit security messages. They've taken my google toolbar away from me, and they keep taking more stuff. Now they're getting so anal retentive that they're disabling the cd autoplay feature. I have no idea how this can possibly make my computer more secure, but it certainly does make my day just that much less pleasant.

Thank god that my company treats the employees so well with great pay and benefits and schedule flexibility... wait, why do I work here again?

It's not for sale!!!!!!!!!!!

2007-08-29T10:08:00.000-05:00

Sunday I had somebody leave a note at the house, asking me if my truck was for sale. This is the 2nd time this has happened. I realize that my truck doesn't move much, and it is parked next to the road, but there's nothing indicating it's for sale! Monday night I finally made up a sign for it. "NOT FOR SALE".

One thing that is amazing is just how popular these trucks are. The first guy that stopped offered me $1,000 more than I paid for it even after I got done telling him about all the things that were currently wrong with it. These old Chevy & GMC trucks are getting to be in very high demand.

But mine isn't going anywhere. This weekend Lance and I finished getting the bed unbolted, so now as soon as I get some help I can get the bed off the truck and go to work on the gas tanks, brake lines and fuel lines. I'm also searching for a nice used bed to replace the one that's currently on the truck, but if that doesn't work out I'll repair the one I have. I'm excited about working on the truck and even more excited about getting it back on the road soon!

I took a very rewarding shower last night

2007-08-20T09:26:00.000-05:00

Last night I took what could be the most rewarding shower I've taken. Last tuesday I discovered that the copper water pipe that delivers cold water to the shower had a pinhole and was spraying water all over a spot under the bathroom floor that was already in pretty bad shape. I used gasket material and a hose clamp to temporarily fix the hole. Yesterday my father and I finally fixed it properly. Though I'm very good at soldering electronics, I've never soldered pipes before, so my father helped me with it so that I could learn the new aspects associated with soldering this type of stuff. After spending a good part of the day replacing a few sections of water pipe, I took a shower with a very rewarding sense of accomplishment and having had learned something new and no doubt very valuable. :)

I finally accomplished a longtime goal - and celebrated solo

2007-08-16T08:07:00.000-05:00

Back around 10 years ago, before I even owned my IROC, my father and I built a motor that at the time was intended to go into my firebird. The motor was built with the hopes of achieving 13 second 1/4 mile times at the dragstrip. The motor wasn't built for the purpose of drag racing, but your 1/4 mile time is the way of measuring how fast your car is. Back then 13s were fast. The most affordable new car that could accomplish such a feat was a $40k Corvette. Of course now you can buy a brand new Dodge Neon that can do the same thing, but that's not the point. So anyway... 10 years ago I built this motor with the hopes of running 13s. When I finally got it installed into my IROC and went to the track for the first time, I ran a best of a 16.1. That's a fairly pathetic time, especially considering that the good running motor that I took out of the IROC to put this one in was capable of a mid 15 second time. Getting that motor to run right has been a very long, frustrating journey. It's still not "right" but it's not too bad right now. I've slowly chipped away at it, and a few years ago when I finally ditched the original 85 computer and installed a newer style computer and started burning my own chips for it, I started to see some real gains. I got the car down into the mid 14-second range, which was at least an improvement over the stock motor. A couple years ago I ran a 14.3, but had terrible traction due to tires that were almost 7 or 8 years old. I started to see that I was getting close. Last fall in nice cool weather I ran a 14.1 with bad traction. I knew I was close. A few weeks ago I got new tires for the car, so I couldn't wait to get back and try again. I just had to wait for a nice cool night. Last night I went back, and was soooooo close. My first run was a 14.043. I spun off the line but still had a much better launch than I ever did with the old tires. On my next run I launched differently but had similar problems spinning the tires. I improved slightly to a 14.021.. 19 thousanths of a second away from my goal!. My third run sucked. I had time for one final run, but bogged hard off the line and figured that was it. I experimented with shift points to see if I could salvage my run, and wound up with a 13.997 at 99.50 mph. 10 years after building the damned motor, I finally ran my 13 second 1/4 mile. What a great feeling to finally meet a goal that I set 10 years earlier! The fact that I got outrun by a kid in a Honda Del Sol in the lane next to me didn't even matter. I finally met my goal.

Then it was time to come crashing to earth. I wanted nothing more than to be able to share my accomplishment with somebody and maybe even get a little pat on the back. I called my father, all excited, and about all he had to say was "did you break anything?". Thanks dad. When I got home, I couldn't wait to tell Kristin, and then study my time slips to help best understand the dynamics of the 4 runs I made. I wanted to let the moment last a little longer. I was only home about 1 minute and I was already getting yelled at for not folding clothes and noticing that the house was clean. My mind was a hundred miles from "chores" but nobody gives a shit. It's not easy being a gearhead when none of your family and friends are. Sometimes you just want somebody to share your accomplishments with.

Next time kristin comes home all excited about something new she bought, or my father is all excited about something for his truck or camper, instead of paying attention and pretending to give a shit, maybe I'll just find something to complain about and watch the twinkle in their eye disappear.

Not a good day for the animal kingdom today

2007-07-19T09:53:00.000-05:00

Today hasn't been a good day for God's creatures. In Cheshire on my way to work, I saw a dead kitten laying in the road. It looked like it was about 6-8 months old. It was a female with very nice black, white and tan spots. I hate seeing dead cats in the road, but this was the first time I've seen a youngin'. This bothered me. I would have preferred to see the cat's owner dead in the road. Maybe next time this prick either won't get another cat, or will at least be smart enough to leave the goddamned thing in the house.

About 5 minutes later I hit a chipmunk. The stupid bastard ran halfway across the road, but upon seeing the car in front of me, he turned around. Well that only lasted until the car went by, then he shot out right in front of me. THUMP THUMP. I've been fairly proud of my ability not to hit anything. I think my total amount of creatures killed in all my years of driving was one squirrel and one pigeon. Now add a chipmunk.

Maybe I can hit Bambi on the way home.

Wow, I'm finally back!

2007-07-12T14:46:00.000-05:00

Not that anybody is reading this anymore. My busy streak has come to an end, and I'm very glad. I travelled from kristin's grandmother's on the NY/NJ border, then to North Reading MA for a week of Teradyne training. I got back from that, thrashed on the cars to bring them to a friday night cruise, then caught up on yard work. I immediately started thrashing on the GTA to get it ready for Carlisle, but doing brake work turned into a 3 day process as I kept needing more stuff and the half-whits at Advance Auto didn't order the right stuff. I finished the car on Wednesday, then on Thursday departed for my 500 mile journey to Carlisle PA via Syracuse NY. Amazingly, the car did great, and Lance and I had yet another memorable Carlisle show under our belt.

I got home from Carlisle at around 10:00 Sunday night. I dumped my clothes out of my bag, and filled it for my 2nd trip to North Reading at 5:00 AM Monday morning. I got back from that on Friday afternoon, and on Saturday made another day trip to kristin's grandmother's on the NY/NJ border for a surprise birthday party. A lot of travelling, and I'm glad it's done.

Shifting gears here, one of the yard projects I did last week was to fertalize and re-seed the hill in the back yard. Since there's virtually no soil up there, the grass growth has been rather dismal. I'm very happy to say that last night I took a stroll up there and my thin yellow grass has quickly turned into a lush dark green thanks to all the recent rain finally allowing the fertalizer to soak into the ground. The difference is so profound that it looks like a mini football field up there now... the spots I missed with the fertalizer are still light yellow. It looks like somebody striped the lawn!!

Anyway, as long as work doesn't keep me too busy, look for more frequent updates.

I'm busy as hell

2007-06-18T15:36:00.000-05:00

I'm right in the middle of an extremely busy streak for me. After a trip to New Jersey, we made a trip to Kristin's grandmother right near New Jersey a week or two later. Last monday I drove down to North Reading (near Boston) for 5 days of training. Thursday I head to Carlisle PA for the GM Nationals show. I get back on Sunday night, and on Monday morning I head back to Boston for 5 more days of training. I get back from that on a Friday, and Saturday we head back to Kristin's grandmother's house for the day.

I'm getting dizzy just thinking about it. :-/

My solution to the Welfare Crisis

2007-06-09T20:37:00.000-05:00

Welfare is a joke, especially in Massachusetts. It's a perfect example of why I hate the liberal mentality. Liberals think it's everybody's responsibility take care of everybody, including fat lazy slobs who are completely content to keep taking the handouts and have no intention of doing anything to earn an honest buck.

So who pays for this? The rest of us who actually have enough ambition and ethics to work for a living.

So what's the answer? Very simple. You treat welfare as a job. First of all, before anybody gets a check, they need to be screened so that the 1% who actually have a legitimate disability of some sort can be exempt. For the rest, we do the following:

For starters, your welfare check is based on your education level, just like real life. I don't care how many skinny dirtbag kids you have thanks to those conjugal visits you've had with your deadbeat husband. If you have a college education, you get more money than a high school education than a dropout dirtbag. Speaking of whom, since dropout dirtbags won't get much money, the least we can do is offer free GED education classes for them as a motivator to help them better themselves. For those with a high school education (or their brand new shiny GED), a discounted college education at an inexpensive state school or community college will be offered at a discount.

Now, here's the real beauty of this idea. Everybody who is not pursuing an education gets put into a job pool (much like a giant temp agency), and is sub-contracted out to whatever type of places need cheap labor. Right now there is a tremendous amount of cheap labor available to people, but because it's not enough for most people to survive comfortably on, they generally get filled by those who are willing to work mostly for nothing, including a lot of illegal immigrants. To hell with that. Let the welfare people work these jobs. Take whatever you would have payed that person in welfare, and instead pay that to the employer to subsidize his low paying job, in turn allowing him to pay a higher wage (one that's higher than the welfare person would get for sitting on his fat ass watching Rosie preach her liberal garbage all day) to the worker. It's a win-win. We get these fat lazy welfare cases out there actually earning a living for a change, and we feed that welfare money back into local businesses instead of directly to the slobs who don't deserve it. This gets that other 99% into the workforce and on their way to earning a legit living, and maybe even having the skills and opportunities to move on to higher paying non subsidized jobs in the future.

Now I just need to get a politician to agree with me.

Garbage Plates explained

2007-06-06T14:48:00.000-05:00

I talk about garbage plates constantly. It's because I miss them. Weekly I would get a 'plate at Nick's when I was in school, and now I'm lucky if I get one a year. For those who have heard me talk about them, I'm finally posting pics.

First a little refresher course.

A garbage plate is a meal that Nick Tahau's in Rochester makes. For my example, we'll consider the ever-popular cheeseburger plate with everything. It consists of a paper plate (or styrofoam container if you get it to go) on which the server dumps a couple scoops of mac salad and home fries, followed by two cheeseburgers, two big scoops of hot sauce (in Rochester, "hot" sauce isn't tobasco or red-hot, it's hot-dog sauce, which is similar to sloppy joe sauce without ketchup), a couple scoops of onions, a slathering of mustard, and finally two stale pieces of bread. Back when I was in school, such a cullinary masterpiece would set you back $5.25 plus beverage. The beverage of choice is a large soda, which comes in a special Nick's cup with bendy straw. Upon taking ownership of your plate, it is necessary to drown it in ketchup and red-hot. Shown in the pic below are three plates along with the necessary fixin's.

In the next pic, we have my personal garbage plate, which is a ham & egg plate without mustard instead of the traditional cheeseburger garbage plate with everything. For anybody who's seen me take my egg yokes and put them on top of my home fries when eating breakfast, you now know why. It's my pathetic need for a garbage-plate fix.

And finally, we have the last picture. This is my plate with the first layer of ketchup and red-hot. More is applied as the plate is consumed. Generally 3 guys will go through 1/2 bottle of ketchup and 1/2 to 3/4 of a bottle of red hot when eating a plate.

Enjoy!!!!

Jupiter, Mars and Pluto are warming up too - must be too many SUVs there

2007-05-21T15:07:00.000-05:00

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=551bfe58-882f-4889-ab76-5ce1e02dced7

More information that helps prove that the whole "CO2 causes global warming" bullshit is a pile of crap. All of the other planets are warming up just like Earth.

Sleep is a fickle beast

2007-05-15T09:17:00.000-05:00

Sleep is funny. For the last few nights, I haven't slept well. I kept getting woke up by the cats, and I kept having stupid nonsense dreams that made it impossible for me to fall into a good sleep.Then last night, I slept like a baby. I slept all the way until my alarm went off for the first time in months. No stupid dreams, and no cats waking me up. For the first time in as long as I can remember, I wasn't half asleep on my ride to work. I was awake, and even forming coherent thoughts. Usually I'm on auto-pilot in the morning. I felt great when I got to work. I sat down at my desk, booted the computer........and fell asleep.

Nice weather brings about fun times

2007-05-09T13:20:00.000-05:00

This week, because of a combination of absolutely stunning weather and the fact that my Corvette is apart and taking up my garage space, I've been driving the Camaro to work every day. This is the first time that the car has been driven 3 days in a row in who knows how long. Driving the car is finally, after years of struggle with it, an absolute joy. It still has a long way to go, but it's got reasonable power, sounds good, and is just very rewarding to drive. I've got the new headliner and compass/temp mirror installed, so the interior is looking better than ever. Yesterday after work I pulled the t-tops off for the first time of the season and just did not want to stop driving. I can't wait to get out of work and go drive some more!!!

Ribbit Ribbit mofo

2007-05-02T09:43:00.000-05:00

Our yard has reached a new low as of last night. It's now officially a frog pond. Last night in bed that's all I could hear was frogs from the back yard. :(

Immigration protests and rallies piss me off

2007-05-01T09:58:00.000-05:00

What the hell is it with all these immigration rallies lately? Every bleeding heart pinko leftist feels compelled to open the gates to anybody who can get here. Do they not understand the term ILLEGAL immigrant? Nobody is complaining about those who come to this country legally. Hell, that's what this country is founded on, but the ILLEGAL part is the part that pisses me off. I have the follow the law, and so do immigrants. Many of these rallies call for the illegals to be able to become legalized, which of course undermines the entire legalization process that is in place for a reason. As it is, many illegals are collecting government benefits including welfare and health care while a number of legal American citizens go without.

Another thing that frosts my ass is the attitude of a large number of immigrants, both legal and illegal. Why in the hell does my ATM machine require me to "choose" english? Why do I have to "choose" english when I make phone calls? This is America! English is our language. If you "choose" to live here, learn our fucking language! Have a little respect for this country that you obviously felt was better than yours.

My grandfather's parents came over on a boat from Italy in the early years of last century in hopes of finding prosperity and the American dream. They rapidly learned English, and would not permit their children to speak Italian. They were Americans and they would speak English. These were proud people. Proud for the opportunity to be American.

Where in the hell is that pride now? Press 1 for English my ass.

Ever want to choke somebody who DIDN'T deserve it?

2007-04-25T13:53:00.000-05:00

I can say that I have. Last night, I spent a few minutes staring at the cess-pool in my back yard, taking particular notice of how the water now has a lovely green layer of scum at the top. Nearby you can see the carnage that remains from Marshall's emergency excavation needed to make the water drain. My yard looks like a complete piece of shit, and is still mostly under water.

Last night the neighbor 2 houses down was watering his lawn. Holy shit, I wanted to kill the guy. The poor bastard would have never seen it coming, because I would have used my ninja skills to slide through the woods as stealth as a fox. I'd sit perfectly still until I could go all kung-fu on his ass. Just for watering his lawn. Damn him and his nice green grass!

The above picture is a dramatization. No ninjas were harmed during this writing. Price does not include tax, title, license. Your milage may vary. LLC, Reston Virginia.

Catholicism: Now with 25% less guilt!

2007-04-16T10:20:00.000-05:00

Yesterday Kristin and I had to sit through 3 hours of pre-marriage training. Although not nearly as bad as I expected, it was still jam packed full of bullshit. The first hour or so involved a guy with a hell of a tan talking about the sacraments and why you're a disrespectful asshole for wanting to get married somewhere other than in a church. He also got into a little bit about respecting each other, which certainly is good information for those who are too stupid to marry somebody who isn't already respectful. Next we had the pleasure of having a couple who were married for 55 years give us some insight. It was cute and heartwarming to see their happiness and love for each other, but a lot of that heartwarming emotion turned to boredom as she rambled on and on about her kids. As much as I appreciate their advice, the fact that only 2 of their 5 kids are happily married makes me wonder...

The last hour was by far my favorite. It's in this hour where we got to hear a registered nurse tell us all about "natural family planning" (NFP for the hip youngsters out there) which should be renamed "have unprotected sex and pray to god that you don't knock her up". In this gripping tale of fantasy and love from above, we learned all about how to identify the point in a woman's cycle based on the condition of her, um, motor oil. I shit you not. Between the terminology and the pictures in the handly little pamphlet, I was about ready to hang myself from the cross. The fact that the Catholic church actually expects people to follow this bullshit reinforces my opinion that this entire religion is a crock of shit. What reason could the church possibly have for being against contraception, yet they aren't against this NFP method. Now, no matter how you look at the churches stand on contraception, you have to appreciate the bullshit here. If you believe what the church says about contraception interfering with God's will, then you have to dismiss all medicine, and subsribe to the belief that God will let you roam the earth for as long as he deems necessary. After all... if contraception interferes with his will to bring people into this world, then all modern medicine certainly interferes with his will to take them out. Secondly, how does using the NFP method in any way not interfere with God's will, unless of course it's because it simply doesn't work! If that's the case, then the church is flat out lieing to you, and promoting irresponsible behavior that can result in unwanted pregnancy. Either way, it spells the same word: Bullshit.

Was this comic written about me?

2007-04-11T13:06:00.001-05:00

Click on the pic to see the whole thing.

April Snowmobiling!

2007-04-10T14:46:00.000-05:00

Well, it's official. I went snowmobiling in April, specifically, April 8th (Easter Sunday). I rode 25 miles. The trails were a bit foreign to me because they were ungroomed and had a combination of deep(ish) snow and eroded areas where the ground was clearly visible. Overall though, not too shabby.

Now Accuweather is forecasting 6-12" for Thursday, so we may have extended riding. Unfortunately, I've got some major obligations this weekend, so I won't get the chance to ride before the trails are officially closed on the 15th. But, maybe I'll get lucky enough to ride a little on Thursday and friday nights, and maybe early next week on the non VAST trails.

It's so strange. I drove my Camaro in January, and now I'm snowmobiling in April.

What to do with a pain in the ass cat

2007-04-06T07:12:00.000-05:00

Lately one of my cats has decided that when I'm behind a closed door trying to get a good night's sleep, that she's going to meow and bang on the bedroom door all night. Of course I can't let her in because then she raises hell and keeps me up half the night. I've tried yelling at her, I've tried holding back her "treats" and I've even closed her into the other bedroom. I'm about ready to buy something to show her where she's going to go if she keeps it up:

And.... back to winter

2007-04-05T10:46:00.000-05:00

8" of snow overnight, and it was still snowing when I left the house this morning. The first two inches is very heavy sleet that's so dense that I walked entirely on top of it without sinking at all. The remaining 6" was lighter stuff. I'm debating whether or not to go through the work of getting the sleds back out of the garage for the weekend. Kristin mentioned that her parents may enjoy tooling around on the old sled a little bit, and I'd sure love to rack up a few more miles on mine. But, the VAST trails, if they're not closed already, still won't be very good because all of the water bars will be wide open. But, it might be fun to tool around in the field and up the road a little bit. I guess I'll see if I'm motivated enough to bother.

Human Resources = idiots

2007-04-03T14:33:00.000-05:00

I've never met an HR person that had any sort of a grip on reality. Then again, I could probably extend that comment to virtually all Psychology graduates. But even of that group, the bottom feeders seem to all wind up in HR positions.

Today we all got a "gift" at work. Wrapped in a very high quality, glossy cardboard package is a piece of shit compass. The outside of the package says "Navigate Your Future" and the inside says "Map Your Sucess". Are these idiots serious? Can't I just have the fucking $10 they spent on this piece of shit?

Springtime excitement

2007-03-29T09:34:00.000-05:00

Every spring once it starts to warm up, I start to get all excited about resuming my summer hobbies, and just enjoying the great weather. I usually get motivated to do some outside chores. Even when I lived in apartments, I couldn't wait to get out into the yard and start raking, and repairing sections of the lawn that the plow messed up. This is my very first spring as a homeowner, and I'm really looking forward to doing some of these things, as well as plenty of other chores to spruce up the property. Before we do that we've also got to finish our winter-long half-assed attempt at repainting our living room. Once it warms up enough to keep a few windows open, we'll get that living room painted and be able to enjoy that room a little more.

In addition to all of the springtime cleanup type projects, I hope that I can also find time to start playing with some of my hobbies again. I need to do some work to the truck, and I especially want to resume my kick panel speaker project, since I expect that to be a good source of income once I get it produced. So much to do!

There is a season - turn, turn, turn

2007-03-26T10:21:00.000-05:00

Wow, what a difference a week makes! A week ago I posted my pictures from my Sunday snowmobile ride. I also rode on Monday, tuesday and Wednesday. On thursday the warm-up came, and now a few days later it's like a different world out there. Bare lawns are now the norm down in North Adams and into Pittsfield, the sun is shining and temperatures are in the 50s. Of course we still have a ton of snow in our yard, but I suspect that by the end of this week all that will remain will be snowbanks and a huge mound of snow on the deck.

On Wednesday I went out for my final ride of the season. I had hoped to do a nice long ride, perhaps as much as 100 miles. The trails were still fantastic, but with Thursday's impending warmup, I had decided that Wednesday would be my last ride. About 30 miles into my ride I was approaching Kelley Stand road in Stratton when my oil light started flashing on the sled. I pulled over and investigated. Well apparently when I filled my oil tank before Tuesday's ride, I never put the oil cap back on. All of my oil had splashed out of the oil tank, all over my engine bay. Brilliant! Fortunately I found the oil cap wedged down between the body panel and the exhaust can. It was half melted, but still able to function properly, so I reinstalled it and headed toward home. I rode very easily so that I didn't run out of oil. Once I got back to Woodford I called Kristin and had her bring me some oil from the garage. She was of course thrilled to have a chance to come help me out of a jam instead of sitting home watching TV. She met me with a coke and a smile!

By that point I was so pissed that I had done such a boneheaded thing, I just decided to ride right home. Since this was the end of my last ride, I rode really agressively and actually managed to get home before Kristin did. All in all, I managed to put just a tad over 500 miles on the new sled, which gave me about 750 total miles for the season. Not stellar by any stretch, but not too bad either. On Friday I washed the sled and de-greased the engine bay to get rid of the oil that splashed all over the place. When I get time I'll wax it and install the new accessories that I bought for it. Pretty soon it'll be off to PLT to get the tunnel supports installed. Once I get all of my car issues straightened out and get the Corvette out of the garage, I'll pull the old sled in and start the dis-assembly process on it. I'm looking forward to working on the sled, and I can't wait until next year when I'll finally have a 2nd sled available for people to ride.

With this warm weather, it's awful hard not to start looking forward to summer. Now I really need to get the cars straightened out so I can start driving them.

Snowmobiling in late March!!!

2007-03-19T08:38:00.000-05:00

I had quite an interesting ride yesterday. We left the parking lot in Heartwellville with almost 8" of fresh powder on top of Saturday's substantial snowfall. Trails had been groomed since saturday's snow, but this new powder had very little traffic before us. We made it up to the Route 7 corridor in Woodford, but because of the conditions, decided that instead of going to Jenks like we originally planned, we'd head over to Peter's in Heath MA. Here's a pic at the corridor intersection in woodford:

The groomers hadn't been out toward Harriman Reservoir since before Saturday's snow, so it was a bumpy ride. We were one of the first out that way after saturday night's snow, so there was a lot of power covering the bumpy ride. My next pic shows my sled parked next to the damn, followed by two pics of the trail. The first pic is where we came from, and the second was where we were headed.

One of the sleds in my group is a Polaris 440 race sled, so we have limited range. Much to our surprise, when we got to Peter's store, we discovered that he was out of gas. This posed a major problem. We decided to ride over to Charlemont for food and gas. Specifically, we were headed for the Hawk's Nest Pub in the Warfield House. The problem was that nobody had a Massachusetts trail map, and the markings and signs for the trail system in that area absolutely suck. Here's a pic that I took somewhere in MA:

Every intersection has signs pointing you to other trail names instead of towns/destinations, which is completely useless if you don't have a map. Because nobody had been over the trail yet, we were on our own trying to find our way, which was made even more difficult by the poor markings on the trails that wound through the woods and endless fields. At one point about 3 miles from our destination, the trail came to a road, and we couldn't find where it picked up on the other side of the road. After riding down miles of paved road, we got directions from a local who got us back on track. Eventually we landed at the Hawks Nest and had an absolutely FANTASTIC lunch. This is definately a destination to go to! While we were there we tried to figure out how to gas up. The station at the bottom of the hill is closed on Sundays, and the other station is on the other side of town, and the Charlemont Police aren't real fond of sleds riding up the road. After a few calls, the gas station owner got back from snowmobiling and opened his store to help out some fellow riders. I don't know his name, but he gets a big thanks from me! He's the fellow on the right side of the pic of me getting gas.

After gassing up, we headed home. We got back into Vermont through the Yankee Rowe power lines, but on the way home decided to head to the Readsboro Inn instead of going right home. Here's a couple pics from the intersection on the power lines.

After refreshing there, we headed up through Readsboro on Howe Pond Road and up to the backside of Dutch Hill. Dutch hill is only a half mile from my home, but I had never been up there. The view from the top of the hill is absolutely breathtaking.

After leaving Dutch Hill, we went across the street into Alpenwald village and back to the Heartwellville parking lot. All in all, about an 80 mile trip. I enjoyed going to a lot of new places that I had never been to.

A River Runs Through It

2007-03-15T17:55:00.000-05:00

Not the movie, my yard.

Our septic problem was that we had a MASSIVE amount of water, snow, slush and ice surrounding the pump tank that holds the liquid overflow from the septic tank, then pumps it up to the leach field. What happened is that this massive amount of water was getting into the tank and the pump was overwhelmed. Not only did this tank fill with nearly a thousand gallons of water, but the pump pumped as much as it could up into our leach field until it was completely saturated and the vent pipe was actually draining the water back into the tank. There was so much water that when we lifted the lid, it didn't even smell. That fluid should smell like sewage and be murky, gray/brown. It was clean. No smell, no color. Completely diluted because of the massive amount of water. The lid was under almost a foot and a half of water. Usually, even after a super heavy rain, the lid is 6" ABOVE water. In addition, the area behind my garage was flooded, and the flooded water was actually running right through my carport and under my truck that's parked next to the carport. It took the excavator half a day of pushing snow/ice to create a drain path from the water to the brook. What amazed me was that after he did this, instead of just draining standing water, it actually became a path for running water of endless supply. There's an endless supply of melting snow above us. Attached are pics that I took this afternoon. The first pic is a shot of the trench he made to drain the water. The second shot is a closeup of how much water is running continuously. I took these pics many hours after the work was done.

Life in a small town is never as dull as one might imagine

2007-03-15T07:59:00.000-05:00

Last night at 10:30 (Halfway through LOST!!!!!!!!!!), my septic pump alarm went off. For those not familiar with mound type septic systems, there's a holding tank after the main tank that has a pump in it. When the water level rises, the pump turns on and pumps the liquid up to the leach field. Well my pump stopped working last night. Fortunately the guy who installed the septic happened to be meeting my father today, so they're headed up there to try and straighten it out. The guy thinks that the float in the tank may be tangled.

Thanks to this little mishap, we haven't been able to use any water or flush the toliet since last night. Yay us.

Finally some closure, an endcap on part of my life, time to move on...

2007-03-14T13:13:00.000-05:00

That's right. The snowmobile season has come to an end. I took a 70 mile ride last night and the conditions were absolutely terrible. Considering that they were still very good on Monday night, this surprised me. Slush, rocks, dirt, snirt, blah blah blah. I didn't enjoy the ride. I can't really explain why, but while riding in these conditions, it brought about a feeling of anxiety & perhaps a bit of depression. Not unlike the feeling you had when you were 15 years old and finally realized that your favorite blankie, which was full of holes, dirty, and smelled bad, had perhaps finally outlived it's usefulness and was ready to be retired. And so it was as I made my way back last night. Snowmobiling in 50+ degree temps with dirt and rocks all around just isn't fun. But, it was a good thing that I went anyway. For the last week after getting my new sled, I've been absolutely insanely obcessed with riding. By taking this ride in such lousy conditions, it allowed me to close the door on that obcession and now I can confidently say that I'm looking forward to spring.

Time to play with cars again.

Snowmobiling in the rain sucks

2007-03-12T07:23:00.000-05:00

As I pulled the sled into the yard yesterday evening, the odometer casually flipped from 188.9 to 189.0 miles. Not bad considering that I took delivery of the sled on Wednesday with 0.1 miles on it. On Wednesday night I limited myself to a quick 20 mile ride to Harriman Reservoir and back. I didn't dare go any farther (or faster) since I didn't have registration or insurance yet. On Friday I spent the morning getting the reg & insurance taken care of, and then in the afternoon I rode into Stamford by Sucker Pond, over County Road and eventually came out on a logging road at the end of White Oaks Road in Williamstown. I put approximately 50 miles on the sled on small back-woods trails. Now that I live so close to the Stamford woods and also have a network of trails that connect right from my house, I really enjoy exploring and learning my way around up there. On my way to County road I ran into a guy from Pownal who showed me around over there and over toward Williamstown. Now I just need to find my way to Winchester's so that I can ride over there for lunch!

On Saturday morning my father and I went to PLT to pick up my old sled, and I promptly transferred my VAST sticker to my new sled to finish out the season. I went through Woodford all the way to Sunderland where I did a little bit of exploring and found a couple nice trails. I also found a trail that took me over Glastonbury Mt. I should have turned around when the trail got small, but I figured I'd go a little bit farther. Once I did, I found myself on a trail so small and tight that I couldn't turn around if I wanted to. The trail kept getting steeper and twistier, and I started seeing a lot of ruts from other sleds that had gotten stuck. I felt very fortunate that I had the new sled with the long track because I was able to go right through these areas that swamped other sleds. I was also very nervous, because when you get a long track sled stuck, it takes twice as much effort to get it unstuck. I continued on, going by more and more spots where others had gotten stuck. After a couple miles, the uphill turned into an equally difficult downhill. By this point, it had started to rain, which certainly didn't help things. The last thing you want is to get soaking wet, then get standed in the woods. It made visibility difficult. Eventually the trail flattened out and opened up to an old log road, which was a welcomed sight. After a mile or two of that, I found myself on the Glastonbury Loop section of the groomed trails. I headed straight home, and by this time the rain was coming down pretty good. I couldn't see with my face shield down, so I had to ride with it up, which allowed the rain drops to hit my face and eyes at 40+mph, which made it feel like a constant barrage of needles in my eyes. Riding in the rain sucks and I was glad to get home.

On Sunday I headed out once again. I met up with the Tatro clan up in the hills of Stamford and rode around a little bit. In truth, we did more sitting and talking than riding, but it was a good time just the same. After heading back toward home, I took a quick jaunt up to Woodford to get in a few extra miles.

By now the trails are almost gone. The groomer was out yesterday, but he was moving slush around more than snow. I think that the warm weather won't be too much of a problem over the next couple days, so I'll get a couple more nights of riding in, but I think that once the 50+ degree rain comes mid-week, that'll about do it for the trails. Overall this has been a rollercoaster snowmobile season, but I'm satisfied that I was at least able to get a couple hundred miles of riding in on my new sled, and now I can look forward to next winter!

Attached is a crappy picture that I took with my camera phone on the trails in Woodford yesterday.

Here's my new sled :)

2007-03-08T09:56:00.000-05:00

Last night I picked up my new snowmobile from Pittsfield Lawn & Tractor. I have to bring it back when the tunnel supports are in, but at least I'm getting a chance to ride it a little bit. So far I'm quite happy with it, though I definately need to make some adjustments to the suspension. Right now it doesn't turn well because there's not enough ski pressure. The throttle response is impressive, and once I get used to the machine I think I'll be very happy with the handling. Right now it's so much different than my current sled that it feels unnatural.

Last night I took it for a short ride up to Whitingham Lake and back. I made myself very sea-sick. Sometimes when I ride at night I get like that because the tunnel vision makes you get a bit of a disconnect between the motion you're feeling and the motion you're seeing. I made it a lot worse this time because I kept yanking on the throttle to feel all that new power. :) I'm still a little sick today from it. I'm also very tired, which isn't helping. But in any case, tomorrow I'll get it registered and insured so that I can take it for a ride on the trails during daylight.

Here are a couple pics I snapped last night:

In other snowmobile news, my insurance claim finally got straightened out. Last week I got my estimate for the damage claim on my old sled and it came in almost $900 under what I expected because they gave a $35/hr body shop labor rate instead of the $70/hr snowmobile mechanic rate. We got that straightened out yesterday and my check is on the way now. Once I get that check I'll be able to pay off my Corvette loan and then my new sled loan will be the only loan payment I'm making on vehicles. Over the summer I plan to fix the old sled (with a lot of help from Dad) so that I can have a 2nd sled for Kristin/Dad/Friends. I'm very excited about that because it will give me the opportunity to introduce some new people to snowmobiling and to ride with them.

Stress level back to normal!

2007-02-27T14:36:00.000-05:00

This morning I went to the credit union to get info on my accounts for my loan application. I found out that I only owe $3200 on my Corvette, and I have a $1,000 surplus in my car-payment checking account (I have a direct-deposit checking account set up whose only purpose is to hold money for the bank to automatically withdraw from). This means that between my insurance check from my current sled combined with the change I've got to roll, I'll be able to pay off the Corvette right away. This means my only "vehicle" payment will be my $230/month sled payment, which will save me $35/month compared to the Corvette payment. Since I've still got $450+ funneling into that account every month, I'll build up a sizable surpless by the time I need it for a Camaro down payment.

Yay me. :)

My stress level went from 0-60 in 5.2

2007-02-26T12:58:00.000-05:00

That's a bit of a play on a line from an Alabama song that none of you probably heard of, but I like it.

Since Saturday, a TON of shit has happened (mostly good) that has elevated my usually very low stress level up very high. I've been very jumpy, and I haven't been able to sleep. It's like my hyperactivity from childhood came back for a visit.

First of all, on Friday I discovered that the damage on my snowmobile was a lot worse than I realized. That got the stress ball rolling. Friday night we booked the Bounti Fare for our rehersal dinner. While that certainly wasn't stressful, it was certainly part of the many things we had going on. On saturday we met with 2 more floorists and went to Morningside bakery to talk about cake. While each of the two floorists had their high points, it was an easy decision for us to decide on the first guy that we met with last week. The cake was also an easy decision. Morningside can do exactly what we want, and they're only $80 more than the cake nazi we met with a couple weeks ago. We got done with all of that stuff early enough that we also went to the tux place and got a lot of that crap taken care of. After lunch, it was off to Pittsfield Lawn & Tractor to look at sleds. An hour later, I became the proud owner of a new 2006 Arctic Cat Crossfire 700 Sno Pro. After that, we swung by to check out a jeep that kristin saw in the paper. I just got back from giving him a deposit. Kristin decided to buy it. Now her and I are both in the process of getting financing. To add to that, I don't have transportation because I dropped the Camry off at Tommy's to get the shitty rear struts replaced. That is a cluster fuck in it's own right because they don't want to warranty them because I don't have the receipt. So, although almost all of this is good news, it's an awful lot to juggle at once and my head is spinning from it. The fact that kristin and I just took on another $21k in debt isn't helping matters either.

It's only monday, and I already need a weekend.

I bought a sled

2007-02-26T08:47:00.000-05:00

Friday I was headed out on a nice day-long snowmobile excursion when I stopped to show the damage to my sled to a guy I know. With him looking at the sled with me, he noticed that the damage is quite a bit more severe than I had realized. It extends all the way up into the tunnel and is badly bent around the drive shaft bearing.

$2100-2500 in damage. So, I put my tail between my legs and went back to the house. I filed a claim with my insurance company after I found out that I have accident forgiveness, so I won't be surcharged. Since I've been wanting a sled anyway, I decided to put this money toward the new one. I went to Pittsfield Lawn and Tractor and struck up a deal with my sales guy. Now I'm in the process of filling out the loan application. Greylock's rate isn't very good, but the difference between Greylock's rate and somebody elses still only comes up to about $4/month, and for that amount of money, I'd rather have it stay with Greylock because it comes out of my account automatically and I don't have to worry about it.

The real pisser is that by the time I get the sled, there won't be any snow left to ride on. :(

some people will believe anything

2007-02-20T09:24:00.000-05:00

Flat Earth Society FAQ

Holy. Shit. What I've apparently found is a group of people with stupidity that's run so rampant that they think the entire world's governments are working together to conspire against the populus to fool us into thinking that our world is round, when in fact it's totally flat. Nevermind the fact that no two govermnents in the world can agree on anything, but these idiots think that they've pulled the wool over our eyes for centuries. Add to that the fact that these people can't even figure out why the conspiracy exists, though they are sure that it's due to money. How a flat world makes governments rich, I couldn't begin to imagine.

I think somebody had a little too much LSD in their corn flakes the day they came up with that idea.

Thinking about snowmobiles...

2007-02-19T11:59:00.000-05:00

Now that I'm finally able to ride my sled, I immediately started thinking about a new one again. I've gone back and forth now for a couple years trying to decide whether or not to get one, and every time I've decided not to. The specific circumstances surrounding my justification process seem to change every time, and this time is no different. There are places offering great prices on 06 leftovers right now, but this is a double-edged sword. There are so many sleds because nobody is buying them. While this would be a great opportunity to pick up a 2nd sled, it's awfully hard to sell the one I have, which is a necessity because I really don't want to pick up a 3-4 year payment on a new one. On the other side of the arguement, is our new house and its very close proximity to the trails. Because we're so close, I've had fantastic opportunities to ride since we've gotten the snow, and this will always be the case. I'm so close to the trails that I can ride any time I want (for as short a period of time that I want) as long as we have snow. The pain in the ass of trailering it up there (which often prevented me from taking short rides) is gone. So there's your plus and minus list to consider.

However, this gets a bit more complicated now because Kristin wants a sled. This complicates things a lot more than I ever expected. For starters, is she going to enjoy riding enough to justify the expense of the sled? It's a huge waste of money if she buys one and then never finds the same interest in the sport that I have. Secondly, what kind of sled best suits her? That's almost impossible to answer right now because she's so new to the sport that she hasn't developed a riding style, so we can't decide what sled would best suit her. There's also the issue of buying a used sled, which often results in you getting stuck with somebody elses junk.

Then of course there's the issue of whether or not she should buy my current sled. I'm REALLY up in the air over this. I hate my sled because it doesn't suit my fat ass and my very agressive riding style, but that type of sled would suit her nicely. I'm also familiar with the sled, which is nice. Reliability has been exceptional, which is very important. What concerns me though, is whether I've done enough damage to the sled that the reliability and ridability have been comprimised. I turned the sled over yesterday and noticed that the belly pan of the sled is pretty beat up, although that's of no concern. What did concern me is that I actually managed to tear a section of the chassis that's made out of rolled-aluminum, which is very strong. I didn't look at it enough to determine whether this is a new tear or old. Where the tear occurred is in a very strong section of the chassis, so it may not have much of an impact on on the sled's integrity, especially with somebody that weighs 1/2 what I weigh and won't ride as agressively. But, I'd still feel like I'd be selling her a junk sled.

So, what do I do? I think I need to forget about buying a new sled right now. Finish out the season using this sled, and while I do, pay attention to the damage to see if it gets worse or if it stays the same. Once summer gets here, I can pull the sled apart and make a repair to the damage or if I'm confident that it isn't getting worse, put a skid plate over it to protect it from further impact and to hide it in the event that I decide to sell. If I can ride it for the rest of the year without worsening the damage, I'll have enough confidence to have Kristin use it without worry. Since sled sales are so bad that there are a bunch of 2006 leftovers still in showrooms, chances are pretty good that next fall I'll be able to get a good deal on a 2007 leftover.

But man I just don't want this sled anymore. :(

A little shakeup at work, and mixed emotions as a result

2007-02-16T09:25:00.000-05:00

I just got called by my unit manager (he's the one that manages the people, not the projects) to tell me that the program I'm on ran out of money and they have to pull me off. I'm not getting laid off or any of that sort of crap, so there's no sort of danger in that sense. But, after getting smoke blown up my ass about how this project is such a long-term type of project, and that even though product development has ended, that obsolescense tracking will continue indefinately, the program suddenly ran out of money and I'm getting moved onto another project. Like I said, it's bittersweet. It pisses me off that I have to change and jump into the "unknown" but on the other hand, I really haven't enjoyed this assignment very much, so how bad can it be? The guy that I'm going to work for is a great guy who spends most of his time doing hands-on type of projects, and if I get the chance to get involved in that, maybe I'll actually enjoy my job.

The more I think about this, the more I think this is a good thing. Getting around that sort of hands-on work might be a Godsend.

Gentlemen, Start Your Shovels!

2007-02-13T08:10:00.000-05:00

NASCAR and snowfall. This winter is finally turning into something! Just as the NASCAR season starts back up, we're facing a storm that has the potential to provide the heaviest snowfall in around 4 years. Generally I've always found that channel 6 has provided the most accurate snowfall predictions for our area, but this time it seems that 10 and 13 are both showing very similar snowfall maps, with a ridge from the berkshires right through Stamford & Readsboro that's higher than the surrounding areas. Since that always seems to be how the snow actually falls around here, I'm putting my faith into 10 and 13's predictions more than channel 6. No matter what we get though, it will be significant compared to what we've gotten so far this year.

Channel 6:

Channel 10:

Channel 13:

Getting old sucks

2007-02-07T11:34:00.000-05:00

This morning I pulled a muscle in my back. All of a sudden, I got this stabbing pain in my lower back and I almost fell over. You may be wondering, was I lifting hundreds of pounds of heavy weights? Was I saving a child from a burning building, or perhaps killing ninjas that broke into our house?

No. I was taking a piss. That's right. 5 seconds into my morning piss, while standing perfectly still, all of a sudden I got this wrenching pain in the left side of my lower back. I had to fight through the pain to avoid a disastrous misalignment in my aim. It's almost noon now and my back is still killing me.

Stay young kids. Getting old ain't pretty.

Yet another Superbowl has come and gone.

2007-02-05T10:38:00.000-05:00

Yay. Is it February 18 yet? I'm jonesing for some roundy-round NASCAR action, although with the addition of Toyota to the mix, I'll probably be even less interested than last year. But that's another complaint... this one is about the boring football game that put an end to a boring football season. Every year I like college football more and NFL football less. This year's superbowl was the dullest that I've seen since the game in the mid 80s where San Franscisco pounded the shit out of Cincinnati. Both teams played sloppy football.

The commercials were even a letdown. Of course, I missed half the good ones because I was outside changing the battery on the Jimmy in 5 degree weather. I missed the Bud Light "Auctioneer Wedding" ad, which was quite funny. One that I didn't miss was the Bud Light "Fist Bump" commercial that featured a nice 89 IROC-Z in the commercial.

See the commercial here:

Massachusetts 0, Aqua Teen Hunger Force 1

2007-02-02T11:06:00.000-05:00

What we have here is yet another situation that supports my theory that the United States would be a better country if Massachusetts was forced to rescind their statehood and recede from the Union (Along with California and maybe Utah). Yesterday it was all over the news that the city of Boston came to a complete stand-still, and the city somehow managed to spend a reported HALF MILLION DOLLARS in order to remove 38 Auqa Teen Hunger Force advertisements from various spots across the city. Apparently a few proud Massholes mistook this for a bomb:

Way to go, geniuses.

In the other 10 cities where these advertisements have been displayed for as long as 3 weeks, apparently people were capable of going on with their lives without fear of being blown up by a neon cartoon giving the finger.

To top it off, Massafuckits arrested the two guys who were hired to put these advertisements up, and also demanded that Turner Broacasting pay the 1/2 Millon back. Holy shit Boston! You fucked up and now you're trying to blame everybody else for it. Let the poor bastards go, and chalk up your half-million dollar bout with stupidity to a hard lesson learned.

Passing the hat for coworkers

2007-01-31T11:27:00.000-05:00

I'm sick of donating to every frigging charity, event, person, and idea that goes through my office. Every time somebody's family member croaks, they pass the hat. Ok, fine. Maybe money helps a grieving person. When somebody retires, they pass the hat. Fine, let's pitch in to get them a gift. I usually donate if I know (and like) the person, and if not, I don't give. Now that I'm in a new office space, everybody has that "happy family" mentality and the hat gets passed for everything. Somebody has family members in Iraq, so the hat got passed at Christmas time. I felt bad for not donating to that one, because I like to support the military when I can, but that one came and went without me having cash on hand.

But now, one of the women in the office is leaving because she accepted a position for the government. She'll still work in the building, but now it'll be for the Navy instead of for us. Pay raise of course. So why are we passing the fucking hat? She just accepted a higher paying job. Everybody is going out to lunch at the shittiest chinese buffet in Pittsfield, and I'm not going. (I ordered Tahiti Takeout instead!) Explain why I need to pay? I got cornered by my boss and had to cough up $2.

I don't want people passing the hat for me, and when my grandmothers died, I specifically kept my mouth shut so that people didn't know, and I asked my managers not to say anything and not to pass the hat or a sympathy card. I want my business private. I guess that's why I don't want to give every time they pass the hat for somebody else.

Thai Food: Not my cup of, um... tea

2007-01-31T08:57:00.000-05:00

Last night after we got done with round 1 (of 4) with the priest and his silly marrage questions, Kristin and I went to the Thai Garden in Williamstown. She really likes it there. My previous experience with Thai food was less enthusiastic. Don't get me wrong, I liked the taste, but the portion size was a joke. But, this is a different resturant and I figured I'd give it a try.

I ordered some teriyaki beef that was said to come with carrots, cucumbers, zucchini and rice. Sounds filling. Price was about $15 or $16... a little steep, but worth it if it's good. Well what I got, while technically fitting the description, was a joke. It came with a pre-cut piece of steak that was elegantly spread out across the plate to give the impression of being large, when in fact, was probably 4 ounces or less. That's a good size for a hamburger that you're going to have 2 of, but not so good for a $16 steak. The "veggies" consisted of 2 half-dollar sized slizes of zucchini, 2 half-dollar sized slices of cucumber and two small pieces of carrot. The rice was the sticky shit that cafeterias serve. I upgraded to "jasmine" rice. I really have no idea what the difference was, but it tasted like unbuttered microwave popcorn.

I had a bowl of Crunch Berries when I got home from dinner.

Unfortunately, Kristin felt bad that I didn't enjoy my experience, but hey, what can you do? We still had a good time, and she got to have her bait platter that she really enjoyed. Overall, a good evening.

Getting better...

2007-01-30T11:22:00.000-05:00

So far I've found time to practice the guitar almost every night, and usually it's for an hour or 2 each time. Right now it's still very rewarding because every single day I can see noticable improvements in my playing. I guess that when you know virtually nothing, it's not hard to improve on a daily basis. So far I've concentrated on learning small parts of songs that I like because hey, that's the fun stuff. You want to be able to pick up the guitar and play something familiar. One thing that I couldn't do was play any rythm stuff because my strumming was a disaster. So, last night I decided to practice my strumming, and I made great strides at it. I can strum fairly consistently now, although I'm still getting screwed up on the strum pattern. I'll do it and get into a good rythm, then after a couple minutes I'll botch it up.

But at least I can strum somewhat now. :)

Sandman

2007-01-29T12:33:00.000-05:00

Here's an Enter Sandman tutorial. I've been struggling at learning this from my Metallica song book. Hopefully this will help me. Too bad I don't have fast enough internet access at home to watch this where I need it. :(

Smells Like I suck at Guitar

2007-01-29T10:21:00.000-05:00

Kristin and I are trying to learn a song, and there's not much easier than Smells Like Teen Spirit. We've both been struggling with certain parts of it, so I found this video that should help us both.

Note to Kristin: In the beginning, he shows how to hold the chords without the "barre" chord style that I use with the flat fingers. This may be easier for you to do. He also shows the string mute that I need practice on:

Priests, Religion, and Morality

2007-01-24T13:13:00.000-05:00

Kristin mentioned on her blog today that she called a priest and that we're scheduled for a bunch of meetings that we have to go through before he'll marry us.

Part of this involves a bunch of questions and a compatability test. This of course, creates a major problem for me. For starters, I think the Catholic religion, like all others that I have some famialiarity with, is a complete and total pile of steaming shit that's more corrupt and full of bullshit politics than Washington.

I don't even want a catholic wedding. I'd be perfectly happy being married with a Justice Of The Peace. The problem is, I need to be able to bring my kids up with religion as a part of their life so that they can decide for themselves later on that it's all nonsense and should be avoided. But without having religion as a part of their life, they can't make that choice for themselves. But... the Catholic religion, in yet another bonehead move, won't allow me to baptize my kids if Kristin and I aren't married in a Catholic wedding. So... now comes the moral dilemma. I'm not a liar. I'm a straight-shooter and I tell you how it really is, but now I have to lie to the church and tell them all the bullshit that they want to hear so that I can be married in according with the bullshit religion for kids that I haven't even had the opportunity to create yet. I don't like to lie, and that's exactly what I have to do as part of this bullshit excercise.

How the hell does a single parent raise a catholic kid who was born out of wedlock? Are they not allowed into the church either?

I wish that there were more people who would wake up and realize that religion is a bullshit idea that's nothing but a creation by PEOPLE who don't want to deal with the fact that when you're dead you're gone. Everybody around me is so blinded by the bullshit that they're unable to see religion for what it is, and for fear of retribution, continue blindly believing in something that is so riddled with bullshit and lies and couldn't possibly be taken as truth by anybody with even a fleeting moment of mental clarity.

Guitar lessons

2007-01-22T16:27:00.000-05:00

This is here strictly for the benefit of Kristin and I, but if I have any aspiring guitar gods in my audience, feel free to follow along.

This is a set of lessons I found on Youtube that I really like.

Lesson 1:

Lesson 2:

Lesson 3:

Lesson 4:

Lesson 5:

Lesson 6:

Lesson 7:

Lesson 8:

The rest of his stuff:
http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=geetar01&page=1

book:
http://www.australianguitarlessons.com/The%20Guitar%20Players%20Secret%20Weapon.pdf

No wonder I like this guy, he's a frickin' engineer and he teaches guitar like one.

Guitar Fever Strikes Readsboro Home

2007-01-22T12:10:00.000-05:00

Playing my new guitar has been a lot of fun. So far I've found time to play every day, but that's no surprise considering that the guitar is still my primary interest. I've noticed a steady imrpovement in my abilities every day, though I suppose that when you're this bad, it's not hard to see big improvements. I do think that if I don't get set up with some lessons soon though, that my improvement will begin to decline rapidly. Kristin and I are hoping to take lessons in North Adams together, but the guy that offers them doesn't have any sessions open right now. The other option is to take them in Pittsfield, but then Kristin won't be able to take them with me because it's too far for her to drive after work. So... I'm in a bit of an indecisive moment. I want to start taking lessons before I begin losing interest, but I'd really rather take them with Kristin because I think it would be great for the two of us to finally have a hobby that we both enjoy together.

Because of our new-found interest, Kristin is also interested in buying her own electric guitar. She's discovered that the electric is quite a bit easier to play than the acoustic is. This weekend we're going to check out the guitars at Falcetti and Wood Bros in Pittsfield. There's a beautiful used Fender Strat at Guitar Center in Albany that she likes, but she doesn't want to jump into a purchase until she's a bit more sure, and unfortunately that guitar will be long gone by then, so we'll have to see what else is around. Fortunately, Fender Stratocasters seem to virtually grow on trees, so finding another one shouldn't be too hard. I also mentioned the option of having me build her a kit. There's a strat-style guitar available in kit form very affordably, and since it's a kit and not a scratch-built guitar, it's a fairly simple procedure of painting it whatever color you want then putting it together. But, she's dead set against this idea, which is a shame because everything I've read seems to indicate that it's a good guitar for the modest investment.

Having a strat would be nice because it would be the perfect compliment to my guitar. Between the two guitars, there really isn't any type of music that we wouldn't be able to accurately play.

Below is a pic of Eric Clapton with "Blackie", the most famous Stratocaster ever used.

Here's my guitar

2007-01-19T09:03:00.000-05:00

Well, I now own an electric guitar. As I posted earlier, Guitar Center was supposed to ship me the guitar. On wednesday it came in. It was shipped in a Schecter box and not the original Ibanez box, which is no big deal except that I don't have the owner's manual. No big deal, it was only a 4 page pamphlet anyway. The clearcoat finish on the back has a couple small cracks, but nothing worth sending the guitar back for. The 1/4" cord plug was apart when I took the guitar out of the box, but fortunately all of the pieces were in the box. It doesn't want to stay tight, but a little lock-tite will fix that. The front of the guitar looks great, and I'm real happy with the pattern of the quilted maple.

I enjoy playing on it, as it's easier to play than the acoustic when I'm seated, because I can keep it closer to me. Kristin agreed, and now I think she's got a bit of an interest in getting an electric to learn on.

Anyway, here are the pics:

Freezing Rain Sucks

2007-01-16T11:01:00.000-05:00

I hate freezing rain. I think I mentioned this yesterday in one of my posts. Well, now I really hate it. Somewhere around 11:00 AM yesterday our power went out at the house, thanks to a very large tree limb on Dutch Hill that took out 3 power wires during it's rapid descent to earth. Of course, this limb fell because the massive weight of a 1/2" thick coating of ice was too much for it to handle.

I called the house every hour to make sure that the answering machine was picking up (a sign that the power was on). When I called at 11:30 it no longer picked up. I got home at around 12:45, and by that point the sump hole was almost full of water. I hauled water out 5 gallons at a time until I couldn't deal with it anymore and then my father and I set up his generator.

The generator ran erratically, and would stall often, usually after between 2-20 minutes of running. It was a non-stop effort through most of the afternoon and night to try and keep the generator running, as well as to plug and unplug the heater and sump pumps into the circuit that we were back-feeding the generator into. At around 10:30 I was unable to keep the generator running. At around midnight I cried "Uncle" and my father brought up his gas powered water pump, but fortunately he was able to dick with the generator and keep it running long enough to help get the basement back under control. We found that the carb was loose, and after we got the basement under control we were going to try and work on the carb so that it would run better. Finally at 1:00, just as we were preparing to screw with the carb, the power came back on.

All night long I was up and down the basement stairs, and yanking on that generator pull cord. From around midnight on, my father was there doing most of the work on the generator, which is probably a good thing because I was exhausted. If it wasn't for the non-stop dicking with the generator and my father's tremendous help, my basement would have taken on more water than I could have hauled out one pail at a time, and would likely have caused significant damage.

The next step is to get that generator running reliably or to get a new one so that in the future we can handle these power outages better. It's also time to rig up a battery powered pump system so that we'll be covered even when we're not home.

If we could have just gotten a normal frigging snow storm instead of this freezing rain bullshit, I could have spent last night snowmobiling instead of dicking with a pond in my basement.

No Guitar Yet

2007-01-15T10:47:00.000-05:00

I should know better. Every time I jump the gun and mention anything that I'm "going to get", something winds up happening and I don't get it. Such is the case with the guitar that I thought was on hold for me. Last Saturday I found a guitar that I loved, which I posted a picture of below. When the sales guy was showing me the guitar last week, there was a person standing right behind me listening in. Apparently he bought it as soon as I left the store. So, when I called on tuesday to put it on hold, the dipshit just assumed that I meant a different color, so he put a red one on hold for me. So, when I went in on Saturday, no guitar.

Fortunately, there are still some in stock in the Rochester store, so they're going to ship one to me. But, since no two pieces of wood are the same, it's highly unlikely that the quilted maple top on this one will be similar to the one that's already sold. The one that was in the store looked a lot nicer than the one shown in the pic below. I guess I'll just have to wait and see what this one looks like, though I doubt it'll look bad, even if it's not as nice as the other one.

So right now I have a guitar stand, an amp, a cord, a case and even the strap. Just no guitar.

In other related news, I spent a good solid 2-3 hours practicing on Kristin's acoustic guitar last night after I replaced the strings. The new strings are fantastic. Not only does it play much, much easier now, but the tone is significantly better. Those old strings were so stretched that I had to wind the piss out of them to get them in tune, and as a result they played very hard. Kristin found it much easier to play. I spent a couple hours practicing a few chords along with some tablature for a couple songs. While I still suck so bad that I can barely stand to hear the noise, it was encouraging to see that after that much practicing, my hands did not get the least bit fatigued nor did my finger tips get sore. That's certainly a good thing.

So... yeah.

This weather sucks

2007-01-15T10:39:00.000-05:00

For chrissakes, just when I think that this shitstain of a winter can't possibly shit any harder, it proves me wrong and gives us this shit. As if a wet, rainy, warm winter isn't pathetic enough already, now we get a massive dose of freezing rain that will likely coat our area with huge amounts of ice buildup that's sure to cause a power outage at the house. Because there is likely to be widespread power outages, that means that it'll take them forever to get the power back on. My shitty little battery powered bilge pump isn't likely to be able to keep up with the MASSIVE amounts of water that is going to come in to the basement thanks to the fucking lake in my back yard. If our power goes out, chances are our new hot water heater will wind up submerged.

All of the people who like this warm winter can individually kiss my ass. Not only does it suck for those of us who enjoy winter activities, it completely fucks the economy in regions that depend on on it for income. Ski areas are taking a beating, as is every secondary business like motels, resturants, and whatnot. This isn't Florida. This area needs the winter weather as badly as florida needs old people and Mickey Mouse.

Ibanez Guitar

2007-01-10T15:42:00.000-05:00

Last week while out with my dad, I found a guitar that I liked. Monday I called and had them put it on hold so that I can go pick it up on Saturday.

Below is a pic of the guitar, though the actual one that I'm getting has a much nicer quilted maple pattern in the veneer:

The guitar seems to offer quite a bit for the money. All of the hardware is of good quality, and the finish is far beyond what other guitars seem to offer in this price range. Even if I never get good at playing it, at least it'll look good in my office!

Green Goblins Go Splash

2007-01-08T14:34:00.000-05:00

For those of you who attended my 30th birthday party and enjoyed some of the delicious cake with black frosting, you no doubt got a big kick out of everybody with the black mouths.

I just wanted to pass a tidbit of somewhat useful information in order to help prevent you from getting unnecessarily nervous. By now you've no doubt used the toliet, and were probably a bit surprised to find that your business was black or dark green. Don't worry, you don't have a moldy GI tract, it's just the food coloring from the black frosting. It's entirely normal for your toliet to look like it's full of green Cool-Aid. I would, however, advise that you don't drink it.

Camaros in January

2007-01-08T09:49:00.000-05:00

Yesterday marked the very first time that I've ever driven my Camaro in January. Usually we have multiple feet of snow this time of year, and I'm always out trying to get myself killed on the snowmobile trails. This winter has been a huge disappointment because I haven't been able to use the sled at all. That's really frustrating because that's the only outlet I have in the winter to get my fix for speed that every horsepower junkie craves. Fortunately, after some rain and warm weather, the roads were dry and clear of salt, and the sun was shining, so I got to take the Camaro for a short ride, and oh boy did it feel good. I drove the Corvette to Pittsfield yesterday too, and hopefully I'll get to take it to work a few times this week. With the inability to use my sled, this was just what the doctor ordered!

Turning 30 isn't so bad

2007-01-08T09:16:00.000-05:00

On Saturday, I turned 30. Horray for me. Kristin, of course, had no intention of letting such a milestone pass by unnoticed. I knew that she was up to something, and knowing how big of a deal birthdays are to her, I knew that she would do something impressive, but she still managed to shock the hell out of me. I got guilted into going to a camper store with my Dad on saturday, so I knew that something was up. I had figured that when I got back, that I'd see Lance and Phaedra's Grand Am in the yard, and I was looking forward to finally showing them our house and showing Lance some of the crap that I've been working on that I knew he would be interested in. After all, it's not too often that there's somebody at my house that actually gives a damn about all my cars and my speakers. When my father and I pulled up to the house, instead of seeing Lance & Phaedra's car, I saw about 15 cars (including theirs), some of which I didn't even recognize. After I got the car parked, I went up to the house and couldn't believe what I saw. In the house were 30+ people, all there to celebrate my newfound oldness. What was even more amazing is that Kristin managed to assemble a group of people that consisted of a few friends that I hadn't seen or even spoken to in a number of years. My very good friend Liz, who I don't think I've even seen or talked to since she got married a few years ago was there with her husband and their adorable (and exceptionally well behaved) 2 1/2 year old son. Michelle, who I've only seen a couple times since Liz's wedding, was also there with her new boyfriend, who appears to be a MUCH nicer guy than her old boyfriend. Matt and Nicole were also there. Though they just recently moved into a house a half mile from us, used to live an hour away and I haven't seen them nearly as much as I should have over the last few years. Kristin also invited my buddy Todd from near Rutland, but unfortunately he has a sick kid so he wasn't able to come down. Hopefully his kid is feeling better now. Aside from those people who I don't often see, almost all of my regular friends and family were there to wish me well. It's really overwhelming when you see this many close friends and family together, because you don't realize just how many people there are that care about you until you put them all into your dining room!

What was even more overwhelming though, was Kristin. The minute I walked into the door, it was obvious that she put a tremendous amount of time and effort into making sure this party was absolutely perfect. For her to work so hard at doing this for me really means the world to me. It's just one more reminder that I'm damned lucky to have her, and that it's a good thing I put that ring on her hand before she found somebody else to do it!

Just incase any of you are actually reading this (Hi Jill!!), I want to thank all of you for participating, and sharing my old-man day with me. This old man feels very much alive!

The audibility of ignorance

2007-01-04T11:31:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I make dumb mistakes. Other times, I make well intentioned mistakes. I haven't decided which one this was yet, but I definately made a mistake. Back in November I made a blog entry about choosing a surround sound system for my aunt. I started that entry with a comment about whether she was actually unhappy with what she had, or if she just wanted to upgrade because people told her she should. Ultimately, what I was saying, was that I wondered whether she could ever hear the improvements that this new system would provide. I just didn't want to say it that way.

Unfortunately, last night as I installed it for her, it became painfully obvious that she simply doesn't know what she's hearing, and has no interest in a proper surround sound system. She just wants to be constantly bombarded with noise from 360 degrees. After I hooked it all up, she kept asking me why all the sound was coming from the front instead of all around her. I explained a dozen times that's how it's supposed to be, that the surround channels are only used when something is supposed to be happening off screen, such as fly-bys or ambiance effects. She had absolutely no idea what I was talking about and just wants to be able to hear stuff from the back speakers all the time.

The only audible improvement that this system now provides is a much higher clarity compared to the old one for the simple reason that the old speakers were such a pathetically poor quality, but since she's going to hang some stupid assed doll over the center channel speaker, that'll go a long way toward fucking up most of that improved clarity.

Ultimately, she could have yielded similar results with a system that cost 1/2 or 1/3 the price. I completely over-estimated her abilities to recognize good sound, as well as proper surround-sound. I had assumed that she just didn't realize what the proper sound was because her current setup was so awful, but that wasn't the case at all. She prefers a completely fucked up surround sound environment that is not only completely unrealistic, but is so bad that anybody who hears it will immediately doubt my abilities to even design a reasonable system.

The one thing that I'm trying to take from this experience, is to try and learn how to suggest products to other people who "aren't as into it as I am" as my parents would put it. Frankly, I don't know how. My aunt has proven that some people have a desire for something that's so completely fucked that I simply do not know how to provide something that suits their needs.

Fuck me. Right now I want to go smash something.

Jimbo wants to play the gui-tar

2006-12-29T09:08:00.000-05:00

So as I approach my 30th birthday, suddenly I want to learn to play the guitar. As I listen to the music I love, I find it painfully obvious that I really don't know what I'm listening to, because I don't have any familiarity with the instruments that they are using, nor do I understand the structure of the music. I really feel like I'm missing out on a huge part of the music, and I'm also severely limiting myself in my abilities to properly evaluate the sound of the audio equipment. This is why I want to learn the play the guitar. Well, plus, who doesn't want to be able to pick up a 'strat, crank the gain on the amp, and whail out some ZZ Top riffs? It's in my "man" gene. I also think it'll be fun to get into building my own guitar amps.

I've started looking at guitars, and given myself a crash-course on how they operate and what I should be looking for. I've found a couple that I like, including a couple used ones that I'm waiting for a price for from an online buddy. Kristin has an inexpensive acoustic and she's adament that I learn on that before spending money on a new toy. I'm indecisive at this point. Kristin makes a very good point... learn first, then buy the toys. On the other hand, everything that I've read says that if you learn on junk, you'll lose interest much faster than on something that you like. I suppose that makes sense. The other issue is that her guitar is a very inexpensive model, which is likely to constantly come out of tune, which will make the whole experience very frustrating. But, I may at least try a couple lessons with it before I buy my own. I think it'll depend on the price that the guy gives me on those guitars online. If I buy a modestly priced used guitar, I could get most or all of my money back if I decided to sell it, although honestly, I kind of like the idea of having one around, even if I don't wind up getting good. On the other hand, there was a more expensive guitar that I really preferred the sound of, so it may benefit me to put up with the acoustic for a while, then if I find myself getting good enough to stay interested in it, then just buy the better guitar.

Who knows.

Right now the biggest unknown is whether or not I'll actually stick with it. I have a gut feeling that unless I completely suck and never show any signs of improvement, that I'll be likely to stick with it a bit longer than some of my other passing interests. Ultimately, my desire to learn the instrument stems from my strong interest in audio and my desire to learn more about audio. Maybe the benefits gained from this experience will keep me interested even if my playing skill doesn't progress as rapidly as I hope for. Then again, maybe there's already an Eric Clapton inside of me waiting to show himself. :)

Twas the 2nd day after Christmas...

2006-12-27T10:13:00.000-05:00

...and all through the house, Christmas is over, now get it out of the house.

blah blah blah. I had the play-by-play for the entire holiday typed out, but who really gives a shit. Or maybe it's just me that doesn't give a shit. As much as I like the whole festive season between Thanksgiving and Christmas, once it's over, it's done. I don't carry the Christmas spirit past Christmas. When I was a kid, I never wanted Christmas to end, and watching my mother take down the Christmas tree was a traumatic experience, but now I'm the same way she is. Once it's done, get it out. I guess this has evolved from how it was when I was a kid. When I was a kid, I had the same extreme excitement that every kid had for Christmas. I didn't sleep the night before, and I woke up way too early and dragged my parents out of their beds so that we could open presents. I'd rip open the presents as fast as humanly possible to quickly reveal that toy that I had lusted after since Sears sent out the toy catalog back in November. The only thing more exciting than that was the next present. It was like an endless roll of scratch tickets, with every one being a winner. When I finally got to that last present, my excitement shifted from the rush of opening toys, to the joy of playing with them all. What one do I play with first!? In my manic state, I'd quickly play a little bit with each one. And then it set in... Post Christmas Depression. I opened everything, and I played with all of my toys. There was nothing left to do. This was the dose of reality that it was all over, and all I had left was the crashdown from all that adreneline that had run its course and dissipated from my veins. I think this is why I hated to see the Christmas tree go away... it was the last remaining symbol of that sheer excitement and jubilation. It remained long after the extitement was gone, but stood as a reminder of just how great it was.

As I grew up, my interests in Christmas matured and the aspect of Family and giving was what I looked forward to more than the receiving. While I still like getting presents as much as everybody else, I take greater pleasure in giving to my family, which is why I put so much effort into making sure that everybody gets at least one or two things that puts a genuine smile on their face as they open it. Seeing that smile, along with spending that valuable time with my family is what interests me the most in Christmas now, but just like when I was a kid, there's that Post-Christmas Depression. Now it occurs after everything is opened, the smiles have subsided, and the people have gone home. So now, it's over, and it's time to get rid of Christmas. That's the part that changed... now I no longer want the Christmas tree to stick around and remind me of the great holiday gone by.

Then again, maybe there's another reason. When I was a kid, putting up the Christmas tree was a grand event. We spent the whole day putting the tree together, decorating it, and having a great time.

Now Kristin and I have a real tree instead of a fake one. I have to freeze my ass off looking at 200 trees until we find the "Right" one. Then I have to tie it to the roof of the vehice, get it home, untie it, break my back getting it into the house and into the tree stand, only to find that it's got to be trimmed, so I break my back getting it back outside. I cut it, usually freezing through the entire process. I break my back getting it back inside. By now I'm sticky with pine sap from head to toe, I have needles all over the house, and Kristin is bitching at me because I've been complaining and swearing the whole time. Of course, she can't understand why it's a pain in the ass, because all she has to do is hold it upright while I lay on my stomach, fighting with the tree stand and getting whipped in the face with tree branches. By the time we finally get the piece of shit standing somewhat vertical, I've had enough frustration to completely ruin the whole event, and Kristin is pissed off because of my swearing and complaining. So now that we're both pissed off, we have to tolerate each other long enough to put up the lights and ornaments. Putting up the lights never goes well because we don't tend to work well together when it comes to that sort of things. By the time we get to ornaments, I just want to get the hell out of there, so I put them anywhere I can find a spot, just as long as I get them done.

No wonder I can't wait for that tree to get out of my house. It's not Christmas I'm tired of, it's that fucking tree.

Merry Christmas, part 5

2006-12-22T08:00:00.000-05:00

One of those neat music-activated light shows, performed to one of my favorite christmas songs:

Merry Christmas, part 4

2006-12-21T13:59:00.000-05:00

Canon Rock

2006-12-19T13:20:00.000-05:00

pachelbel's Canon is far and away my favorite classical piece. It's also a favorite of Kristin's and it's what she's going to walk down the isle to. I happened to come across this today, and not only was I blown away by the outstanding guitar work, but this is a 15 year old kid!!!!

Apparently this was started by a Korean guy that calls himself "JerryC", then the guy linked below received so much attention that he's got the most popular video on all of Youtube. When you listen to him play you can see why:

Speakers

2006-12-18T11:50:00.000-05:00

Here is my post about the pair of speakers mentioned below that I built for my in-laws for Christmas this year. I had wanted to post numerous progress reports, but for fear that they may have wandered into this blog, I didn't want to spill the beans until after they got them.

Kristin and I started talking late last year about the idea of me building some speakers for her parents. At the time, a few ideas were discussed but nothing came of it. Fast-forward to late September or early October of this year, and the discussion resurfaced. Kristin seemed to think that her parents would like something, and I'll take any excuse that I can get to build speakers without having her nag me constantly, so we decided that we'd do it. The stipulations were that we had to keep it affordable, and they had to fit in with their lifestyle, which meant small and unobtrusive. After going back and forth between a tiny subwoofer/statellite system, on-wall speakers, and conventional 2-ways, I picked the 2-ways. The on-wall speakers would have worked well except that I don't think they ever would have allowed speaker wires running up the walls to the speakers. The subwoofer/satellite option tanked because by the time I built the passive network or bought a plate amp, it would have gone over budget, and I still would have been stuck with the issue of what to do with the satellite speakers. So, stand mounted 2-ways were chosen. I could have built floor standers that actually had a smaller footprint, but these look less intrusive, plus it gave me a lot more options in terms of pre-existing designs to choose from. I'm still way too stupid with my Soundeasy measurement software to design my own system that can compete with some of the better sounding designs that are already out there. I knew I'd never get it done in time. John Krutke "Zaph" has a very good reputation for designing good sounding speakers, so I chose his budget design that uses a 5.5" Silverflute woofer and a 1" Vifa D27 tweeter. I've wanted an excuse to build this speaker for a long time, and here it was!

The first part of construction was nothing special. I rough-cut all of the pieces in my workshop with my circular saw and a straight edge. I brought all the rough-cut pieces to Dad's and cut them to size on the table saw. Every time I use the table saw I get better with it, and this situation was no different. All of my cuts were precise enough that when I assembled the box, everything went together with nice tight seams, and no overhang or underhang. Sanding was minimal on the enclosures, which is always good. The front panel was cut 1/4" oversized so that I had 1/8" overhang on all sides. This way I could trim it down with the router to ensure a 100% perfect fit. From that point on, speaker "1" and speaker "2" was labeled and the baffle stayed with the proper speaker even though the fitment was good enough that they could have interchanged if needed. Any differences from one to the next were so small that they would be dwarfed by the thickness of the veneer, poly and paint.

While working on the front baffles, I discovered that my current home-made circle jig didn't allow for small diameter cuts necessary for the tweeter, so I had to make a new improved model. Now I can cut holes all the way down to approximately 2 3/4" diameter. If I was a little smarter when I made it, I could have allowed for even smaller cuts, but I guess I'll build version 3 when I need to.

Thanksgiving came and went, and at that point I had the boxes built, the baffles were built and had the driver cutouts, but that was about it. Nothing had anything resembling a finish yet, and things weren't close to assembly. Kristin's parents came over for Thanksgiving, but I made sure I kept them out of the workshop.

After Thanksgiving I started piling up the sanding sealer on the pieces that would be painted, paying particular attention to the end grain on the roundovers. In hind-sight, it still took a ton of primer, and I think the sanding sealer wasn't really worth the effort, though it did seem to harden the wood a great deal, so in that sense I suppose it still had merit.

As I worked into the first week of December, it started to become obvious that I was going to be under a time crunch. We celebrated Christmas with her family on December 16th (The weekend before Christmas weekend), which left me a full week less time than I'd anticipated. At this point, I became a slave to the garage. Kristin prepared all the meals and cleaned up while I got back out to work, where I usually stayed until 10:00 or later every night. To make things worse, during the last week, I was battling a cold with a sore throat. The baffles & stand pieces that were to be painted black were given their final preperations and brought to Dad's shop where I sprayed them with a black Urethane basecoat/clearcoat finish. The clear flowed beautifully out of the gun and required only minimal sanding before polishing. The main areas that had to be sanded was the buildup around the driver cutouts, and a run or two here and there on some of the stand pieces. While the paint was still drying on those, I began to veneer the enclosure, 2 sides at a time to get them done as rapidly as possible. While that continued, I wetsanded and polished the black painted parts, began to assemble the stands, and covered the grills with cloth. Once veneering was completed, I put a couple coats of polyurethane on the veneered surfaces. The problem with this is that the only surface that builds up a suitably thick coat is the horizontal surface. On all of the vertical surfaces, you can't build it thick enough, and you wind up sanding through it before you're able to sand it flat. I of course learned this the hard way, and had to touch up some spots with stain, then re-varnish. This time I had to do one side at a time so that I could allow it to build up to a proper thickness, but I was running out of time. I decided that I was only going to be able to do the top and sides. The back was already thick enough, and nobody sees the bottom anyway, so it was also good enough. On Wednesday night I put poly down on the top, then a few hours later I laid them over and put poly on one side. Inbetween I built the crossovers. Before work on Thursday I had hoped to lay the poly down on the last side, but the poly on the side I did the night before was still tacky. Since I had to lay the speaker on that side to poly the other side, it had to wait. Thursday night I sanded and polished the two sides that I had already put the new coat of poly on, then I began assembly. I couldn't find my padding that I line the inner walls with, so I had to put them together without it. I got them all assembled, and brought them up for an audition.

Though they were nice overall, they certainly wasn't what I'd hoped for. bass sounded good on some things, but on Hotel California it was thick, resonant, and lacked any distinction between notes. Vocals had a harshness and an echo that drove me nuts. As far as I'm concerned, if speakers sound bad on Hotel California, I might as well throw them away because I'll never like them.

Knowing that adding the padding inside would fix a lot of what these speakers did wrong, I took them back apart and put the poly on the remaining side of each speaker, and off to bed I went at 1:00 Am.

At 8:00 in the morning I woke up with a pounding headache. I took 4 advil and 2 sudafed and thankfully, by 9:00 the headache was mostly gone. I sanded and polished the last side that I put the poly on the night before, then went back around to all pieces and re-polished with a finer compound. I wrapped everything up, but left the speakers apart since I now had no choice but to stop at Home Depot to get the padding, and finish them up on-site. I built a care package that consisted of all the tools I figured I'd need, plus a few that I hoped I wouldn't need.

On Saturday morning, I took over the downstairs bathroom and went to work. I cut the padding and began installing it. One big piece wrapped around the back and side walls, followed by 2 pieces on the top and 2 pieces on the bottom above the crossover. During the process Kristin's parents began to think I was ill, and at one time asked Kristin if they were going to need a new toliet downstairs! 2 hours later, I had them all together and was glad to finally be done... or so I thought.

To go with the speakers we bought them an Onkyo TX-SR504 receiver, and Kristin's sister gave them a Sony DVD player that I picked out. The dvd player is unimportant since I'm using it only as a cd transport. The receiver handles the D/A conversion, which eliminates the cd player from the "sound quality" chain. Thus, I chose the cheapest DVD player that still had at least a reasonable build quality and tasteful appearance. Unfortunately, since their TV downstairs is so old that it has only a coax input (no RCA input even!!), it wasn't possible to hook up their VCR and the DVD player, so the new DVD player went upstairs, and their DVD/VCR combo went back in downstairs. But, at least it was a Philips and not some insanely cheap Christmas brand. Through the coax output, the audio sounds just as good.

So anyway, on Saturday night, with a crowd of 5 people watching everything I did, along with Kristin providing a non-stop intoxicated commentary of my every move, I hooked everything up. I popped in a cd, and to my extreme dissatisfaction, there was a heavy rightside bias to the midrange. After some experimentation I realized that the mid was not hooked up on the left speaker. In my haste to assemble everything, I forgot to re-attach the leads. I popped the speaker open (Thank God I built a removable front baffle!!!), hooked it back up, and tried again. Plenty of midrange, but now something else is wrong. Now the tweeter doesn't work. Apparently I dislodged the tweeter wire when I opened it back up to hook up the woofer. Take it all apart again, hook the tweeter back up, and try again. This time everything sounded great! For the next half hour or 40 minutes, a bunch of cds were put in and out of the player, but by then I didn't give a shit and just wanted to go to bed, which we finally did shortly after 11:00.

Finally on Sunday I had an hour to myself where I was able to do some real listening to my new creation. What I heard really impressed me. The highs, while nothing spectacular, were extremely natural sounding. The midrange really impressed. It offered up a ton of detail, but not at the expense of a balanced response. Usually people mistake "detail" for too much high frequency output. It's amazing that these woofers are under $20 each. The bass response, while seeming very taught and precise, did seem to blur some bass frequencies together on certain tracks. On the Hell Freezes Over version of Hotel California, the bongo beats have two distinct tones that are only a few hz apart. On many speakers, including these, you can't tell the difference. Hopefully once these break in that will come around. With everything else, the bass sounded very natural and realistic, especially considering that these are only 5.5" woofers. The integration between woofer and tweeter was absolutely seamless, and off-axis listening made it obvious that these have a very good power response. Overall, I'm amazed at how "big" these speakers sound. My main criticism with almost all small speakers that I've heard, is that they all sound their size. These speakers don't. While they certainly don't have the dynamics of much larger speakers, they do have the full, rich, lively sound that I do not expect to hear in small speakers. John Krutke designed an amazing speaker here. In terms of improvements, I do think that a better tweeter could certainly provide a noteworthy improvement, and I think supplimenting these with a good quality subwoofer would also provide an improvement, but for what these cost, I am simply amazed. I am most amazed at how good that Silverflute woofer is.

I can't really compare these to any commercial speakers that I've heard, because I haven't really heard anything that quite has this balance of sound. I've certainly heard some better sounding speakers than these, but most of those were $5,000 or more. I remember listening to some $3,000 floorstanding Dynaudio Audience 72se speakers that I was very fond of, but still didn't have the same type of detail in the midrange that these do. I really think that if a company sold this design, that they could price them at $1,200-$1,500 and have a very sucessful speaker. Of course, for the amount of time that I spent building these, if somebody offered me that much to build them a pair, I'd probably tell them to piss up a rope.

Overall, Kristin's parents seemed to be very happy with their Christmas present. They both spent some time listening to it, and although they both have a tin ear, I think that if they take the time to sit down and actually spend some quality time with their classic rock collection, that they will find it to be an enjoyable experience, and they just may find that after a while, without knowing it, that they become good enough listeners that they'll start to really be able to appreciate not only the music, but the sound.

Christmas in Connecticut

2006-12-18T11:22:00.000-05:00

This past weekend we traveled down to Simsbury CT to Kristin's parents for an early Christmas. We did it this past weekend because Kristin is working all of next weekend including Christmas day. There were two noteworthy aspects of this trip; the speakers, and everything else. The speakers will be handled in a separate post, which will actually wind up above this one on the site because that's how blogs apparently work. That also means that you already either read that entry, or glazed over it and came down to this one. In any event, this one deals with the rest of the trip.

The ride down was a pain in the ass. The car was full of precious cargo (speakers), and every fuck-nut who shouldn't have a license seemed to find the Turnpike on Friday, myself being one of them. As I almost got run over by a car rapidly approaching from behind as I merged onto the 'pike, I quickly realized that the good ol' Camry is a gutless pig above 50mph. The well chosen gear ratios in the transmission and in the differential provide tolerable acceleration dispite the anemic motor, so long as you're going under 50mph. Once you are at 50 and try to accelerate, as I quickly discovered, you'd better give yourself PLENTY of room, because you're going to be doing it for a while.

Anway, we got there and nobody got killed this time. On Friday night we went to a Wolfpack game. As always, that was a great time. On Saturday morning I finished the speakers, then did a little Christmas shopping for my parents.

On Saturday night we exchanged gifts, which is always very interesting. Kristin got a bunch of girly shit that she really seemed to like. I was the proud recipient of a Johnny Black gift set that included the booze and a couple Johnny Walker glasses. I also got a badly needed pair of pants, a neat t-shirt, Dunks Coffee, a Camaro sign, and other trinkets. Kristin and I together got a Target gift card from her grandmother, and from her parents we got an outdoor fireplace thingie and an ass-ugly painting for our living room. I can call it ugly without offending her parents because she picked it out, not them. :) It's a painting of some kind of bowl with twigs sticking out of it. I can't imagine why you'd want a painting of that shit, but who knows. I couldn't find any cars or breasts anywhere in the painting, so I quickly lost interest. The fireplace, though in reality a good gift that will probably prove to be very useful, was a bit disappointing to me because I had planned on constructing a very nice stone fireplace at the back of our property. But, since Kristin is afraid of basically everything, she'd probably never walk through the back yard, so the fireplace would never get used. Though this shoots down my aspirations of building such a grand container of nature's fury, in reality this will probably get used much more often.

I spent sunday hanging around and listening to the inlaw's new stereo. I must say, they have great taste. It sounded wonderful. :)

Overall, it was a very good weekend spent with Kristin's (and soon to be my) family. Every time I go down there, I feel a bit more "at home" and feel more welcomed all the time. This christmas felt more comfortable than last year, and I also noticed that their gifts had a level of thoughtfullness that made me feel like part of their family.

The stages of a cold

2006-12-14T09:15:00.000-05:00

Getting sick is something that doesn't happen very often for me. Fortunately, when I do get sick, it also tends to be very minor. This week I've been battling a cold, which is the first one I've had in probably a year or more. Most of my colds seem to follow the same progression. On the first day, I wake up with a tickle in my throat, unsure if it's the start of a cold or if it's just a dry throat from snoring all night. Shortly after getting up it's gone, and doesn't return until late that night. On the second day, the throat hurts a lot more, and I get some sinus pressure and perhaps a runny nose. On the third day, my throat hurts less, but the sinus pressure is so strong that I want to run a drill through my eye to relieve the pressure. Copious amounts of sudafed and Advil usually help. Then there's the fourth day (that would be today). On the fourth day, the sore throat is gone, the sinus pressure feels like there's a truck on my face, and since the cold is breaking up, every time I cough or sniff, I get a throat full of thick, chunky mucus that tastes absolutely disgusting, and thanks to the little chunks, feels pretty gross too. And oh the color! Such beautiful hues of bright yellow, greens, and brown chunks suspended within.

At least the cold is almost over. Tomorrow I'll be tired, but otherwise feeling fine.

Building a good box with shitty tools

2006-12-13T10:16:00.000-05:00

Every so often I come across a post online where somebody is attempting to build a speaker box, and fails. Sometimes it's just due to the usual stack-up of dimensional errors that occurs when you're free-handing everything, but sometimes it's due to a person's complete inability to focus their brain cells at the task at hand and actually think about what they're doing before they start a project. Those people should spend more time studying in school so that they can get into a career that pays them well enough to just go buy the shit they want.

But in any case... for those that just want to learn a technique for building good boxes with minimal tools, follow along. This tutorial will show you how to build a square looking enclosure with minimal tools and skill by showing you how to cut everything oversized, and trim it to the proper size using a router. Since most people who have a router have other tools too, you may be able to simplify a lot of this process with the use of a circular saw or table saw, but if you're a beginner and you can only afford one tool to start out with, make sure it's a router. Even when using a table saw, if you're not very precise and careful with your cutting routine, you can wind up with nice straight cuts that wind up being just a tad too big or a tad too small, resulting in a box that doesn't have nice flush edges. This tutorial will also help you eliminate those problems by demonstrating the technique of cutting oversized pieces and trimming with a router.

Necessary equipment: Router, framing square, clamps (pipe clamps or similar device), flush trim bit (the type that's got the bearing below the cutting area), drill, 7/64 drill bit, philips screw attachment for drill, wood glue, #8 sheetrock screws, 1 sheet of 3/4" MDF and a flat work area (I usually use the piece of MDF that I'm cutting from on saw horses).
Useful tools: Circular saw (or better yet a table saw), tape measure (necessary if your framing square doesn't have units of measure).

It's important to start out with a sheet of MDF that's square. Most factory-cut 4x8' sheets are very good in this regard.

This tutorial assumes that you're screwing the panels together. If you decide to clamp the panels, that's fine too.

So, on with the step-by-step:
1. The first task is to cut the rear panel, and along with it, the top & bottom panels. This is probably also the most important piece, since it's what you're going to build the whole box from. If you look in the pic, you'll see that this piece's dimensions are 6.5"x10.5". "Final" and "first cut" dimensions are the same because this piece is what it is and because of that, you need to cut it well. What you're going to cut here is a piece that's 6.5"x24" Start from the corner of the MDF so that you'll be nice and square. Use your framing square to measure out and draw the 6.5"x24" piece. Set up your router (or circular saw if you've got one handy) and determine how far your straight edge needs to be positioned so that you cut along the measured line. You'll cut the 24" length first. Once it's set up and is verified square by using the framing square, clamp it into place, and use it to guide your router or circular saw along the cut. Cut beyond the 24" measurement to ensure that it's cut all the way through the wood at that point (important with circular saws). Now you should have a clean, straight 24" cut.

The next step is to measure 10.5" down from the corner and set your jig up the same way to cut across the wood. Once you do, what you should wind up with is a perfectly square (as in, nice 90 degree cuts, not square in the sense that all 4 dimensions are the same) piece that's 10.5"x6.5", or close to it. Having it square is more important than having the exact dimensions. The next step is to cut across again at the 7.5" mark, then do it again. Now you've got your top, bottom, and back pieces cut, and all 3 should be the exact same width. Figure 2 shows the pre-cut layout of what you should be cutting from your sheet of MDF.

2. Now that you've got your back and top/bottom cut, you need to put them together. Let's start with attaching the bottom and the back. Stand them up on their sides and align them so that the end of the bottom is flush with the back of the back. This is how they'll be attached. Smear a little glue in the appropriate spot and put them back together, this time using the pipe clamp to keep them positioned. If you're glueing this with no screws, use a 2nd clamp to make sure that you have even pressure on the joint. If you're screwing it together, use your drill bit to pre-drill the holes, then sink a couple screws in. Make sure that you stay 1" to 1.5" away from the end, and drill 3/8" down from the back to make sure the screws go into the center of the back piece. Once this is accomplished, do the same procedure for the top. The finished result should look like Figure 3 and will be referred to as "BTB" (Back Top Bottom) from now on.

3. Now it's time for the sides. Cut the 2 sides out of the MDF in much the same way you did the back/top/bottom, but keep in mind that this cut doesn't require ultra precision because you're cutting them a bit oversized.

4. The next job is to attach the sides to the BTB section. Start by standing the BTB so that the end pieces that the front panel will attach to are facing down on the work area. Set one of the sides into position with the square "factory cut" MDF edge is facing down onto your work area also. Position it so that your overhang past the sides of the TBT sections is roughly equal. This isn't real important, but it is absolutely necessary that you have overhang at all spots! Remove, glue the right areas, and reinstall. Clamp the piece into position and drill/screw or just clamp to attach. Do the same for the other side. Now what you have is a pice that should have a nice flat surface for the front panel to attach to, as well as a nice set of sides that are parallel to each other. Figure 4 should help you see the positioning of the sides vs. BTB pieces:

5. Using your router with the flush trim bit attached, go around the sides to trim them flush with the BTB pieces. The result should look like Figure 4.

6. Finally, cut your front panel out of your remaining MDF. Cut it to the "first cut dimensions" listed in figure 1. Set it on the front of the enclosure and verify that you have overhang in all dimensions. Next you want to clamp it into place, and run the flush trim bit around the 3 sides that the clamp doesn't interfere with. Once that's done, clamp from the other side, release the first clamp, and trim that last edge flush.

7. Now you can remove that front panel, and do whatever else you need to do, including cutting your driver holes, roundovers, etc. Once completed, you can reattach, this time with glue and clamps or screws.

Conclusion
What you'll wind up with is an entire enclosure that's pretty close to square, but even if it's not dimensionally perfect, should appear square to the naked eye, and best of all, has nice flat edges that can be easily wrapped in vinyl laminate or veneer, or painted with very good results. If you've got some small gaps between the pieces, you can fill them with bondo or wood putty and sand smooth when dry.

Merry Christmas, part 3

2006-12-12T15:07:00.001-05:00

12 pack a Bud...