Matt D's Blog

My day was all over the place…Got up at 8 AM…Ate a quick breakfast, shaved, and showered…Was ready by about 9:40 to…Go to the NY Auto Show.. We left my house about 9:50 AM, and got there about 11:10 AM…We took a convoluted way of navigating through NYC lol…Anyway, spend from 11 AM till about 4:30 PM at the Jacob Javits Center…They had some really nice cars there this year…I liked Ford’s stuff, I liked the Lincoln Aviator and Mark LT Concepts….The Dodge Viper didnt have too many people around it lol…The GT kinda drew the crowd away I think…I liked the Infinity G35, they have a AWD model this year. There were a few hybrids that were nice…Also, Dodge had a crazy car there..some older musclecar body, Viper V10, Viper interior, oh..and the V10 had a Novi 2k superchager on it lol…Most of the show was pretty normal looking..the usual types of way-out-there concepts and standard production vehicles…We also got to go on the Jeep course..which was cool…So 4:30 is when the better part of my day ends. Then begins the “huh??” part…I was supposed to meet KP this evening when I got back from the Auto Show…I was going to help him with some of his homework, then we were gonna go out to the movies…Well, I tried calling him at like 4:30, no answer. I figure, no problem, went to bed later than planned, slept later than planned. No problem. He was planning on going to bed at 1 AM…Which would have 2 PM be 13 hours of sleep..so 4 PM would have been 15 hrs…which would have been fine cause of the lack of sleep earlier in the week. So then I say..ok, maybe went to sleep at 6 AM or something crazy..ok..will wait. Call KP back when we were heading out from the Auto Show. No answer. Call again when I get home about 45 mins later. No answer. Hmm..that’s odd..6 PM. Still saying ok could have stayed up late. Call at 7 PM. No answer. Call at 8 PM. No answer. Call at 8:30. No answer. Call at 8:45 PM cancelling plans for the night. Too late to start stuff at that point. So..As of now, I STILL haven’t gotten an email, call on my cell, or call on my landline from KP. I’m halfway torn between being worried, and being upset. So thats how my day went from good to bad really quick. Aye….

One day I’ll have my car on the road, and I will be driving. Who knows when that will be, however. My uncle tells me today that I really should consider buying a new clutch…soon. The one I have is on it’s way out. I need to do:
Exhaust
Speedometer Cable
Emergency Brake Cables
and now, Clutch.

Well, in order to do the emergency brake cable..need to drop driveshaft…In order to do exhaust..need to get the catylitic converter out of the way…and then remove the existing y pipe…now that you have the driveshaft off, and the exhaust out of the way…you might as well do the clutch while you have that stuff off. Given availability to a lift…time to do: a whole day. Without…a bit longer

THIS SUCKS.

My uncle Eric recently got a white F150… That for some god-forsaken reason, he decided to put…Spinners! on the truck lol…See for yourself and decide…

The Human Element – I got an advance copy from a friend of mine…This stuff is pretty good…I’ll definately be buying a copy from Amazon (get it here) when it comes out…This stuff is great…“Rock Opera” is what they call it…Theres like 2-3 or more lead singers on each track…Definately worth it.

 
Well, the good news is that I got my Y pipe and gaskets from Nissan today, and that would have been my last major parts trip from Nissan until either the rebuild, or changing the timing belt, which doesn’t seem like fun. BUT..Of course, they were missing my speedometer cable, so I STILL don’t have a working speedometer, nor do I have a working emergency brake because of the fun we’re having fixing it. Other good news is my uncle got his truck started, so, once he finishes up little stuff, he can help me get this thing finished. Then, I will be happy.
 

Happy Easter everyone. My grandmother got me a nice gold bracelet for Easter (supposedly was my graduation gift but she got something I’d like more ??? lol) but I dunno…It’s nice..but..I’m not a bracelet person.

This movie was a bit out there at times, but was pretty cool overall…It was about Chuck Barris…The creator of all those game shows like The Gong Show, The Dating Game, etc….who supposedly was also a CIA agent…Brought to you by Charlie Kaufman (Of Adaptation fame) and directed by George Clooney…I give it a 3.5 out of 5. A little boring at times, but good overall.

First my uncle wakes me up early, when I planned on sleeping in late. Then I get up, eat breakfast, clean my room a little, and proceed to jack up my car to get it ready to do the emergency brake cables with my uncle. After doing so, he returns from getting parts for his truck, and starts getting things disassembled. I start taking the e-brake handle off in the car. 2 screws come off fine. 1 bolt comes off fine. But that last bolt…broke clean in half So we then tried for the next half hour trying to get the bolt out. Gave up. Tried to get the cable out…that didnt work either…there was an obstruction of some kind. Then…the mail comes. American Express writes me to inform me that they are raising my interest rates, becuase of something that should never have happened, and wasn’t my fault. Then, to top everything, I never got to go to Nissan to pick up my last (hopefully) batch of parts before I get this car on the road. Now hopefully I can get my parts Saturday before they close, and then work on stuff on Monday. Aye.

3.5 more weeks to go, 1 more OS program, 1 more Christian Marriage paper, 3 projects for Computer Engineering Design, then finals. Unfortunately I’m running out of motivation lol. But, almost over. My job is over at the end of the month. Time to find a new job.

Well, I got my Sprint PCS phone yesterday, and I must say I’m rather impressed by it. It’s got a color screen, like every phone these days, it’s small, and light. It’s the Samsung VI-660. The only thing that stinks is the lack of Caller ID on the outside of the phone. I have PCS Vision service, so I get to use the web as much as I want, as well as AOL Instant Messanger. It runs Java stuff, but the GPS info isn’t availabe to the end user Oh well. I have uploaded pictures and ringers to it (free I might add hehehe) to customize stuff. I have to stop being used to dialing people by spelling out their name, but then again I have voice activated dialing in the phone (that works quite well I might add). Oh, and I got to keep my number - it was ported over in less than a day! The other pet peeve is no quick way to go into a “silent” mode. Other than that, as my CD-ROM that came with my phone said “Welcome to Sprint, we’re glad you joined us.”

Oh, and to top things off…Nissan ordered the wrong part for my exhaust…So now I have to wait until Thursday to get my Y pipe..they ordered me a muffler. lol.

Well…I had a fun time with the replacement of my speedometer cable. First my uncle had me taking apart way too much stuff…But thanks to some great people on Club S12, I was able to take off the instrument cluster with relative ease (it’s only held in by two screws for the dash, pull up, and then 4 screws on the cluster itself.). So I got that in, no problem. Snake the new cable in next to the old. Connect it to the transmission. No problems still. Then. Try and put it on the instrument cluster. No go. Cluster won’t go back far enough. Look on the back of the cluster…DOH..Piece of old cable…Remove it. Note there’s a spring on the end of it still, don’t think anything of it. Cluster goes back fine. Screw cluster in. Take car off jackstand. Go for test drive. Speedometer works for about 2 seconds and dies. What the? Go back…Take it apart…See the spring. ALL MESSED UP. It broke the cable. Grr..Had to order a new one. Ah well. Thus is life.

Well…..Here I am, trying to do my uncle a favor, backing up all his files, and re-installing Windows XP. Of course, backing up the files isn’t as easy as a simple cd / ; tar jcvf backup.tar.gz * command….Nooo…Windows has to be
difficult…stupid Dr. Watson dump file I can’t read..So the file copy stops. So I try ZIP…Sorry.. 4GB and 65,536 file limit…OOOOOK…So I finally got it to work using WinRAR. BUT. It’s SOOOOOOOOO slow. Zip did 4 GBs in like 10 minutes. It’s at 3.05GBs…at 1 hour 45 mins. With 4.5 hrs to go. So I’m gonna let that run overnight. Install XP in the morning, and then reinstall his software. Much fun. :-/

The Chilton service manual for my car says “remove the two screws and 7 pawls to release the instrument panel” … yeah, real helpful. Needless to say it’s not quite so easy. Gonna have fun tomorrow with that…Hopefully someone can scan in the Nissan manual for me…

Rain rain rain..That’s all it’s done for these last few days. I gotta do my essay for Christian Marriage by Monday (didn’t quite make it to class today, oh well), and I got my Telecommunications test tomorrow…Which isn’t going to be fun either…Too many tests. I also have CMPT Design stuff due by Monday. I should have emailed the DSP homework in…should really hand that in tomorrow too…DOH. Maybe I’ll take a closer look at it tonight.