Mon, 14 Sep 2009

The Caprice has gone to live on a farm.
I'm sure it will be very happy there.

posted at: 21:59 | permalink | 100 comments

Wed, 27 May 2009

I put passenger pegs back on the bike.
Darthane from the badweather bikers forum gave me a set for the cost of shipping. What a great guy! I'm looking forward to riding with a passenger. I don't know if you can tell, but I used my camera phone, because that's all I had.

posted at: 23:09 | permalink | 100 comments

Tom's gone.
He's off to greener pastures. But I found these pictures of him in my phone. The first one is still my phone wallpaper. It's Tom in full Tommy Boy mode. The second is him looking like that big guy from the Stargate show who has the half dollar glued to his forehead.

posted at: 23:07 | permalink | 100 comments

Sun, 03 May 2009

I have a new project
I'm going to mate a Jaguar XJS with a Chevrolet Caprice. The end result will be a Jaguar with an LT1 engine. Read all about it on the Jaguar Project Pages. Linda made them.
Oh yeah, this is the first update in like a year and a half.
posted at: 22:24 | permalink | 100 comments

Sun, 09 Sep 2007

I got some more house pictures.
I was supposed to meet Chris there to do some measurements, but he couldn't make it, so I just wandered around taking pictures and looking at possibilities. His guys cleaned out the pole barn today, and found this riding mower. It's never been run. It isn't even completely assembled.



Here you can see the two-car garage, with attached apartment. The garage is of course what has my interest. It even comes with a compressor (may require some small maintenance).



It's got well water. There's city water also, but the well water will help to irrigate the yard into an oasis.



The apartment is attached to the garage. It's a 1/1. It's covered with that T1-11 siding (or however you spell it), but the siding seems to be in good shape. There's no interior shots because all of the doors and windows are boarded up to keep out the homeless.



The town hall is directly behind the garage and apartment. Do you think they'll notice if we don't pull permits? Apparently they are just happy that someone is finally cleaning up the place after fifteen years. There's a nice ball field next to the town hall.



The pole barn is almost certainly coming down. Actually, there's no almost about it. What hasn't rotted has been eaten by termites. It's rustic, in a filthy, trash-strewn sort of way.



Here's two shots of the complete garage/aparment structure, with the pole barn gleaming next to it. You can see the vast expanse of yard. You may say rutted, weed-covered dust bowl, but I say... go-cart track. There's also the start of a nice tire collection piled up next to the fence.



Here's the house from the rear, and the front. I think it's got curb appeal, don't you?


posted at: 20:35 | permalink | 100 comments

Sat, 08 Sep 2007

We may be moving to a new house.
We're excited. Our friend Chris will do the work. It's going to be great, once we get the homeless out of there. Although if they're living in the home, they're not really homeless, are they?

Here's some interior shots. That's Chris all blurry in the first one. The house is filled with stuff.


posted at: 22:11 | permalink | 100 comments

I guess we know that Suntrust Bank is using XP for their ATMs
I went to get some money out, and was faced with the XP login screen. At least it wasn't the Blue Screen Of Death.
(I don't know what that stuff at the top of the ATM screen is. I didn't see it when I looked at the ATM.)


posted at: 16:32 | permalink | 100 comments

Wed, 05 Sep 2007

Here's some more shots of the house.
These are actually from the first time we saw the house. It was just a quick look, in the rain. Chris walked around the property with us, while we all threw out ideas for what we could do with it.

I think the first thing we are going to do is cut the grass.


posted at: 23:22 | permalink | 100 comments

Mon, 04 Jun 2007

We went to the Love Doctors bowling charity thing last Friday.
We were there to support our friends TJ and Christy. It was okay, but we left after the fifth time the power went out. Hmm, I notice that they're both drinking beer in their pictures. And Christy has some weird blue Negative Zone thing going on with her eyes.

posted at: 07:11 | permalink | 100 comments

Sun, 03 Jun 2007

My cow-orkers.
Always the first ones to the meeting, and the last ones to leave.

posted at: 22:13 | permalink | 100 comments

Ugly Betty rides again. On fresh water.
It was Darren's first time on the Betty, although he'd seen her before at the party a couple weeks ago. In the second shot, where he's looking up in awe, you can see me reflected in his sunglasses. You might need some image enhancement software, though.



We put in by the airport. That's mostly a jetski ramp, but we were able to squeeze in. There were lots of low bridges. You can see the first bridge we came to. It was too low for the Betty, so we turned off toward the Palm Beach canal. There were a couple skis coming up behind us.



We came to another bridge. This is Congress, and it's pretty high, so we had no trouble getting under. I don't know what the rusty trombone thing is. And the skis were back behind us, jumping the wake.



The next bridge was pretty low. We had to taunt Rob a lot to get him to go under it, but we made it. There was at least a foot or two of clearance. He wouldn't do the next bridge, at Military. We turned around there.



The Palm Beach canal runs by the airport, so we could see the tower from the canal on the way back. After we got back to the lake by the ramp, all the skis had fun jumping the wake.



We had a little trouble getting Betty back on the trailer and out of the water, but we got 'er done.


posted at: 22:09 | permalink | 101 comments

Sun, 13 May 2007

The boat has a name now!
She's the Ugly Betty. Rob picked the name the night he bought her. He even knew the typeface he wanted. I found a guy selling 8" letters on eBay for $1.29 per letter. It took a little while, but I finally got the letters this past Thursday, and we put them on on Saturday. Rob had already painted and sanded the hull a couple times. It's not perfect, but it's a lot better. Here you can see the mockup of where the letters will go.



We were fortunate that Chris just happened to have worked at a vinyl sign shop somewhere in his past. He had a different technique than the one in the directions that came with the littering, so we did it his way. First you tape the lettering at the top. Then cut the strip of letters into individual letters. Spray down the surface behind the first letter, and peel the backing off the first letter. Now use a squeegee to work down from the tape "hinge" at the top, keeping tension on the letter. Work the squeegee side to side, going 1/4" lower each pass. When the letter is completely stuck on, peel the front paper off, using a "sheer" technique. This means to pull the paper back as close to the surface as possible, so the letter won't lift off the surface.

Here's Rob squeegeeing down the "tty" in "Ugly Betty", since the three letters were all connected.



And the finished product:


posted at: 09:43 | permalink | 100 comments

Back out on the boat again last weekend, blah blah blah.
Here's the usual array of photos. The first one's a heroic pose of Rob silhouetted agains the sun, steering the boat past Peanut Island on a dead calm morning. We got out early, so the water was flat and the boat ramp was empty.



The others are pretty much the same as last time. You can see a couple condos in the second photos. Then there's a shot of the old faithful Johnson 175 engine. Random shot of the water, random shot of the shoreline. But we did have fun out there.


posted at: 09:19 | permalink | 100 comments

Sun, 29 Apr 2007

Yet another successful boat trip.
This time Christy came with us. We met at Phil Foster park, and put the boat in the water without incident. It was pretty busy at the ramp today.



First we headed out the inlet and then south. There were some tricky moments on the way out that got Christy excited. We ran south to the Clarke beach, south of the Breakers. It was good, but not great. Then a detour out to some 50' water to practice free dives, and a run back up to the inlet. There was a regatta of some boats that looked like Lasers, but werent', right by the inlet. Rob successfully evaded all of them. Then we grilled out by Peanut Island.



We spent some time just sitting in the boat, and swimming around it. We put Christy out as trolling bait, but didn't catch anything.


Then we headed back to the ramp, loaded up the boat, and went home. Another good day on the boat.
posted at: 21:20 | permalink | 100 comments

Tue, 24 Apr 2007

The Seven Mile Bridge was as good as always
The gun went off at 7:30 am Saturday morning, and 1500 runners set off. Plus the bandits. I ran with Bashr for most of the way. The second shot is what we saw ahead of us as we came down the span about three miles in. At mile five Bashr started skipping, and just pulled away from me. I finished in 1:08. Kevin and his sister were selling shirts back at the start.



That night me and Lisa and Holly went down to Key West. Holly and Lisa got their picture taken in front of the Hog's Breath, after their first Key Lime Shooter. Then we stopped by several other establishments on Duval, and finished up at Sloppy Joe's. The band was good, and there was a bride buying shots for the wedding party at the bar.



The next day we wandered around the island. We saw the southernmost point, and this neato geeky charter boat sign. Later we ran into Laura and her boyfriend at Schooner Wharf.



That evening we saw the crazy French guy and his trained cats at Mallory Square. I got this artistical shot of one of the cats silhouetted against the sun and a Disney cruise ship. That night we went to Irish Kevin's for some good old fashioned singalong.


posted at: 21:21 | permalink | 100 comments

And now, heeeere's Ruibin.
I wish somebody had taken a picture of me doing my first shot. Years from now Ruibin will look back on this with fond memories.



Mindy was there to act as a witness.



Ruibin's also had some trouble with keeping track of his computer equipment lately.


posted at: 21:04 | permalink | 100 comments

Sun, 15 Apr 2007

We went back out on the boat yesterday.
The seas were a lot higher than last time, 2-4 feet, with 15 mph winds out of the southeast. This time we went out of the Boynton Inlet, after launching at the Boynton Inlet Boat Club Park. I hadn't been there before. It cost us $10, but it's right by the inlet, so there's no 20 minute ride like there would be if we had launched at Lantana like we usually do.

I took a couple photos on the way from the boat ramp to the inlet, but once we hit the inlet I put the camera away and held on with both hands. It was pretty rough going out, but Rob kept the boat from rolling, or taking a wave over the transom. Thankfully he ran up to the wreck of the Loftus at a slow speed. Rob's friend Patrick had joined us, and had brought his spear guns. Patrick was ready to shoot something, and so was Rob, so both of them went right over the side once we had the anchor set (that was a little exciting). Rob's last words before he went over were "if you don't go in you're going to get seasick". Great. I hadn't even thought of that until he mentioned it, but suddenly I was feeling queasy. I rocked, rolled and pitched for about 20 minutes, and finally gave in and went over the side. I watched Rob and Patrick chase fish for a while, and finally swam in and sat on the beach. Eventually I saw them get back on the boat, so I swam out and we pulled up the anchor. We all knew it was going to be a challenge getting back in the inlet, but Rob did a great job, surfing us all the way on on the backside of a wave. We recovered the boat, took it home and cleaned it up. Then I had to clean out a filthy apartment, but that's another story.

posted at: 21:31 | permalink | 100 comments

Tue, 10 Apr 2007

I was out on the water with Rob last Saturday.
He found a new boat on craigslist.com. It's a 22' Wellcraft with a 175 Johnson, and a tandem trailer. GPS, sonar, VHF, live well, 100 gallon fuel tank. For only $1600. Oh, and it's really ugly. We met a Chris' house and loaded up.


It was really easy to launch. I backed the trailer up, and Rob floated the boat off. We were on the water before we knew it. The engine ran great. It was a little top-heavy when we tried putting two people up on the um steering platform in rough seas, but other than that, no handling problems.



We had to drop Linda off early, so she got these photos as we left the dock. In the very last one you can see how far forward the superstructure is. Then we headed down to the Breakers' reef for some snorkeling.


posted at: 22:11 | permalink | 100 comments

Sat, 07 Apr 2007

I've got what looks like a head gasket leak, so I asked for suggestions on the
NAXJA board. I got lots of good ones.

I liked the suggestion to pressure test the cooling system. I couldn't find a pressure tester at an auto parts store this morning, so I made my own. I hacksawed a Schrader valve off an inner tube, and zip tied it into a short piece of tubing I put the tubing on the overflow connector of the radiator filler with a hose clamp. When I put a bike pump on the valve I found that the radiator cap was actually blocking the overflow hole and not letting air into the cooling system, so I used a C-clamp visegrip to push the top of the radiator cap down so it would seal and let air into the cooling system.



The pressure gauge on the bike pump is not accurate, so I used a digital tire pressure gauge to find that 25 psi on the pump meant 16 psi in the real world. The radiator cap said it holds 16 psi. I pumped the system up to 25 psi indicated and left it for 30 minutes. It didn't leak any pressure. So maybe I don't have a head gasket leak.



I also flushed the radiator because it was pretty dirty, and changed the oil and filter because it was time. I drove the car around for the rest of the day with no problems. I'm going to keep a real close eye on it, and watch for white smoke.


posted at: 17:30 | permalink | 100 comments

Mon, 12 Mar 2007

Here's a picture of a Karmann Ghia with a jet engine
We saw it in Daytona Beach at Bike Week last weekend. Actually, it looks more like it's supposed to blow flames. There are three spark plugs in the nozzle. Sorry about the picture quality, but it was dark.

posted at: 21:37 | permalink | 101 comments