The last couple of weeks since my last entry have been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster all things considered. I’ve had good days at work and bad days. I’m starting to see light at the end of the tunnel as regards some of my major projects, and I’m looking forward to some other projects that are coming down the pike that I really like the look of. Should be an interesting couple of months in Infrastructure Engineering.

One bit of amusing news, my website appears to have made it onto some proxy blocks from work. Hmm… was it something I said? Nothing I can do about that I’m afraid, many work proxies block personal sites as much as they do porn sites. Doesn’t make much sense to me either; especially in technical circles it’s not uncommon for people to create technical articles to assist others in performing a task, then link that from a bulletin board. So, you can get to the board, but can’t read the solution. Hmm. Thank your personal choice of deity that we still have the Google cache to rely on 🙂

No news on the bike per se… it’s still pretty much maintenance free except that I’ve tightened and lubricated the chain recently. Helped a lot, but at first I got the rear wheel slightly misaligned. I couldn’t see it, but when I got the bike out on the road I could feel it; the ride was a little more squirelly and sometimes just plain harsh… so I adjusted the wheel again and the problems went away. I do think I probably need to replace the chain sometime soon… and I’ll probably replace both front and rear sprockets while I’m at it. That’s a crisis for another day.

My car threw a fit though recently. I’ve had one of the two electric fans in the car out for a couple of months since it started a pronounced wobble that would actually shake the car when standing still. Really… it was THAT bad. I disconnected it. I guess I should have replaced it, but hindsight is 20/20. SOOOO, I went out for a drive in the hot weather recently, and I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised when I looked down after 30 minutes driving and the temperature guage had moved from it’s normal 50% position and was climbing visibly toward redline. It’s fair to say that I immediately pulled over to the side of the road and shut down. I sat there for another 30 minutes in the blistering heat, nothing I could do except wait. When I finally cranked her again she was still hot, right around the normal running point. So I popped the hood. Lo and behold, the other fan had died. I guess that was inevitable. Rather than put the other fan back in operation (because the noises it makes now actually scare me), I got back in the car, opened the windows and roof and turned on the heating on full blast. This has the effect of giving a small amount of cooling to the car when you have no other options. I got up on the highway as soon as possible and tried to drive home without stopping. Of course, that involved me going 12 miles out of my way to avoid the “traffic lights from hell” on highway 94, but I made it home only stopping for about 20 seconds at one point.

So I parked the car, priced up new fans; $200 each!!! Yikes! I guess she’s gonna be parked for a while.

To add insult to injury, on the 4th of July she was parked out the front of the house, and a failed “cake” firework tipped over and repeatedly blasted the drivers side door of my car with flaming balls. So now I have some new dings to add to my existing collection, and the rest will come out with some serious buffing… but it’s still frustrating. I love my neighbors…

So here we are… it’s a Sunday and in the last two days I’ve spent almost $1500 on my future plans for October. Painful… but at least I HAVE the money (thanks to a good friend) to spend on it. Just a few more items and I’ll be ready…

I’ve also found a pair of fans for my car on ebay for $45 each including shipping. Needless to say, they’re in the mail.

I’m going to run now… got some work to do today. Email me if you wish, don’t if ya don’t 🙂