Saturday, July 30, 2005

Korean Cars First Impressions Part Two

I haven't made mention here, but suck-ass Infinity Insurance of Arkansas is still dragging their asses on getting me any sort of settlement, so until last Thursday I was still driving around in that suckey Kia. Its really not such a bad car, gets great mileage and has a nice ride and supersonic good stereo. Its just ugly and gutless. Anyway, the rental company called me on Wedenesday and said they wanted it back to close out the account and do maintenance on it, which I figured would happen. I just so happened to have a doctor's appointment the next day for my back pain, which has been fairly constant since the accident. Afterwards, I went to the rental place to exchange for another car. Apparently they did not have any comparable cars, so they comp'ed me up to a Hyundai Sonota. I knew that Hyundais have really come up in quality since their first days of turning out junky little cars that didn't last, must have to offer 10 year warranties. I'll say this, I'm impressed!!! Probably helps that this is a nicely optioned car, with the V-6 and lots of power goodies. It has a sunroof, which is great for me, because I usually have the windows cranked down instead of running the A/C. This thing, for its prodigious size, has some BALLS!!! I was punching it on the way home, going "YEAH!!!" The Kia, I'd have to drop it down into 1st gear to climb up the hill to my home (approximately 1/4 of a mile on a 10% grade, I'd say) to keep it from upshifting and not having enough torque to sustain speed, having to floor it to get it to downshift, having it shift back up after its to speed, etc, etc... I went to climb it in the Hyundai, and it squeaked the front tires a bit, then climbed that sucker like a mountain goat!!! I had it up to 40, and it was pulling for more like it has a bottomless well of torque and loves nothing more than to show off!!! It's not quite up to the level of the Camaro or Falcon, but it pulls!!! Now I've been looking on eBay for Hyundais. They seem to all be in Texas, for some reason. The thing has a plush interior, too, nice seats, plastic burled wood... I feel just like a Korean pimp!!!

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

I never cease to be amused

My work has sent me to CNC training this week. The manufacturer of the extra machine we have at work offers free training on their equipment as long as you own it, for as many operators as you have (or would like to have) running it. Its been working out quite well for me, its only from 8 AM until 2 PM, but its Monday till Friday, so I won't get my Friday off this week. Everything that they've been teaching me is fairly simple and basic, but near impossible if you don't know what your doing, so this is great for me. My classmates include three Guardsmen from Missouri and a young black kid of only 17, among others. The kid (funny how you get to thinking of teenagers as kids at some point there) is quite vocal and has a lot of questions and comments, and he is so green!!! He can't picture life outside of Cali I don't think, and his interactions with the guys from Missouri have been most amusing. They've been to Iraq and Kuwait, so they have a lot to tell about. They keep trying to convince him that he should join the Guard, and of course he's having none of it. I wish I could remember some of the exchanges between them to relate here, but of course I can't. The Guardsmen wanted to go see the world-famous West Coast Choppers down in Long Beach, so I gave them directions on how to get there the other day. They went down there yesterday, and then on to Boyd Coddington's shop, who let them into the machine shop to check out what he has in the works. Good that they were able to get that in on their visit out here. They've got a Chrysler 300 for their rental car, which reminds me, I saw one of those on the road the other day that had been stretched into a limo. And I thought they looked massively slab-sided before!!!

Sunday, July 24, 2005

Triple Strike!!!

This has been a good weekend. Last night I picked up a bootleg of Star Wars episode 3. It was good enough quality, although it was letterboxed in such a way that it cut off some heads. Went to Quizno's for lunch today (because Subways no longer has seafood and crab, they just lost my business!!! Not that I'm a huge fan, but its about the only one my firstborn eats), then swimming at my parents house for a while. I had gotten an E-mail invite from my cell phone company, Virgin Mobile, for a bowling and karoke night they were having, RSVP for the first 300 responders, and that was tonight. Momma decided she didn't want to go at the last minute, so just myself and Joey the elder boy went. I don't think there were over 150 or so people at the most. It was a really trashy little bowling alley only a couple miles from my home that I didn't even know existed. They were giving out T-shirts for strikes and spares, but after I rolled 3 strikes and one spare in my second of two games (117 points total), they were either out or ignoring me. Oh well, I don't really need any more. Two free games of bowling, some video games and dinner with my boy was good enough for me!!! Thanks for a great night, Virgin Mobile!!!

Saturday, July 23, 2005

With a vengeance

It feels like summer has finally come, and with a vengeance. Very warm, and it doesn't cool off much overnight so you wake up feeling all sticky. Wery pleasant. The news keeps going on about how there's going to be thunderstorms and rain and such, but, as usual, they're full of shit. I tend to think its because they've shifted their focus from being in L.A. proper and the true southland basin to all these outlying desert areas that have been graded and developed into houses in the past dozen or so years. I think that has a lot to do with the "power crises" we keep having, too. Everyone out there running their air conditioners. You know, back when I was growing up, I don't think I even knew anyone who had an air conditioner!!! Now they go on and on about schools not even being air conditioned, how can the chillun learn anything without air conditioning??? I did OK, and I didn't have air conditioning at my school growing up!!! How did I learn anything under those deplorable conditions???

OK, there's my geezer rant for the day...

I went down to my parents house yesterday and did some paint stripping on my Falcon. I left it down there back when I broke my finger, because my dad was taking body shop class again and was going to be taking it in and doing some paint prep on it. I hadn't been driving it too much because back when I got in a wreck in it it threw off the alignment and has subsequently worn out the front tires. I didn't want to get the alignment done because I wanted to drop the front end a little (which I did, but of course broke my finger in the process) and fabricate a brace between the lower A arms and a monte carlo bar, to beef it up and hopefully help it hold alignments better. Probably improve the handling too. I know there's a trick where you can re-locate the holes for the upper A arms it improve handling (an old Shelby trick), but I don't know if I'd go that far. Anyway, I did make up a template for the cross brace I want to make, too. Time to get that thing to where I feel more comfortable taking it on the road!!! Kind of sucks paying insurance on it and not driving it.

Saturday, July 16, 2005

"Laughter is the smile of the world"

I took the family to the library yesterday. As part of the summer reading program they're doing special events every Friday, and yesterday they were doing balloon hats for the kids. I pictured something totally lame, along the lines of someone making 'em up and going "here's your damned hat kid, now scram!!!" It was actually pretty cool, they had the balloon guy there, and he had movies and slide shows and stuff. He's been all over the world (except for Australia and Antartica) and, well, makes balloon hats. To be educational he discussed world, national and local geography. Who would have thought you could finance your world travels doing balloon hats??? Wonder if the government if paying him somehow for that??? Anyway, they had a segment where they asked indigenous people that he had made hats for, what is laughter??? One of them was a young zen Buddhist monk (I think it was) and his answer was "Laughter is the smile of the world". I liked that, and made a note so I could pass it on to yall!!!

I'm making chicken chili today. For the first time I actually didn't make too much stuff to fit in the crock pot!!! Usually I make it in my 4 quart pot, but have too much and end up making close to a full pot in my 2 1/2 quart one. Good thing I didn't make too much, because my wife broke my 4 quart one a few months back. I got up this morning and started prepping the stuff and putting it in. Of course, when I'm dumping it in and adding some beer I had to take a couple sips. It tasted so good I had to open another one to wash it down!!! I usually don't drink this early in the morning, but today I made an exception!!! I tried this beer back last time I was making chicken with a beer can shoved up its ass (thanks for the recipe Sammy, I'd never even heard of such a thing, but it makes for a great visual effect and a tasty chicken!!!) because you want something with a lot of flavor to cook with, and I think I have a new favorite!!! Heineken dark lager, if you haven't had it, you should try it!!!

I updated my wallpaper page this morning. I did some stupid-shit-at-work editorializing on there that I decided would do as well on here, since I already had it all typed out. If you've checked it out already you can ignore the rest of this paragraph except the last line. I made mention on my blog last week of having to work late hours. One of the projects I was working on had been a package for a DVD burner. The customer (well, not the real customer but the damned middleman who was no doubt jacking up the price and generally fucking things up) took the measurements for a cardboard insert and made it up while we were making the tool. He also had the drawing it was based on. Well, the dumb motherfucker did nothing to account for the corner radii, and couldn't be bothered to pick up a sample between the Wednesday I made it and the end of Tuesday, the day before the day he wanted production. Naturally, he gets there and sees it and declares it will not work, and he will not re-make the inserts, so I have to make mostly completely new tooling, naturally at no cost to the customer, wasting a bit more than a full day of my time. I was reminded of a sign that I'd gotten at the place I worked at before it was bought out by these no-business-sense clowns. I have it prominently displayed in my area, but after this I decided I needed more, so I made this up in Paint Shop Pro and set it as wallpaper on my work comp. Not that anyone ever pays attention, lack of planning on other peoples parts always makes for an emergency on my part, justified or not. I'm sure several of you can relate. If you're reading this after I have changed it, you can see the image here or just know it says "The lack of planning ON YOUR PART does not justify an emergency ON MY PART".

Sunday, July 10, 2005

Come Forth, Creatures of the Night!!!

Its been a while since I've posted here. At least, for me it has been. This last week I've been working until pretty late. On Tuesday, I had a Dr. appointment for my broken finger (it finally seems to be healing, thanks for asking, guess the EBI bone growth stimulator works), and it ended up being almost 11 by the time I got in. While I was on my way in, my wife called saying she wanted to go to the emergency room when I got home. She had twisted her ankle over the weekend and it was bothering her alot. I told her it was going to be around 9:30 when I got home, are you sure you want to do that??? Why don't you call our doctor and see if they can get you in tomorrow??? Well, she did and they could, right at 11:00, right in the middle of my work day!!! She didn't want to drive because she was worried they'd put a cast on it and she wouldn't be able to drive home. Anyway, took her to that, it was noon before they even got her in the back, and way longer than that before they saw her. They sent her to radiology across the street, didn't even wrap it up or anything!!! I've never heard of a doctor looking at a potential sprain and not at least putting an ace bandage around it!!! Radiology took a long time, too, and it ended up being 3:30 by the time I got in, so consequently it was after 1 A.M. by the time I left. Traffic was nice, for a change!!! Naturally, the next day I wasn't up that early either, ended up getting there at 1 P.M., planned on leaving at 11 P.M., but then there was a mess on one of the tools they were trying to set up. I repaired it, but I was there until almost 2 A.M. For those of you who don't know, I normally have Fridays off, 4 10 hour days, but I ended up coming in on Friday too. Only 12:30 till 5, so not so bad.

My good buddy Sammy called me up while I was there and said he'd like to come up this weekend and grill and hang. He's an EXCELLENT chef. We picked up some salmon steaks and shrimp, hit Wal Mart for some of the weekly essentials, and had some chow at Mustards Chicago style hot dogs in Los Altos. He's from Chicago and is always going on about how great the dogs there are, and I've been telling him forever that he's gotta try Mustards. He gave them the thumbs up, even tho the ones we got were grilled instead of boiled and were a little lean on the relish. Got to my house later, went on a beer run, then decided that we were hungry. We ended up grilling up 2 of the 6 salmon steaks and several shrimp at 2 in the morning!!!

The next day I took Sammy up to In the Skin in Pasadena where I'd gotten my Piercing done some time before. He wanted to get both of his nipples pierced too, and was also considering a tattoo of the Chicago Cubs emblem. The guy who does the piercings was at a memorial service when we got there, and they told us he'd be back in a couple hours. We came back, picked up a couple more things we needed for the rice and fish and prepped a little, then we went back, but we rode the gold line up there this time. That was pretty cool. He got his piercings, but decided to wait on the tattoo. The price went up some on the piercing since I got mine done. I took some pics with his phone. Oh, and he called me today and was telling me that his mom was all pissed off at him for doing it!!! Calling him white trash and stuff (which is pretty funny, he's an Asian boy, but in reality is probably "whiter" than I am). In all, it was a very enjoyable weekend.

Now, off to bed with me so I don't have another week like the last one!!!

Monday, July 04, 2005

Sounds like a plan, dude!!!

Did not make mention here of the scare I had last week. I think it was Monday evening I was watching TV and my son and I both had our computers running. The power went off for just a split second. My son's comp came right back on, but mine wasn't doing anything, completely dead when you hit the power switch. Needless to say, this put me in a foul mood to say the least. Fortunately, I was eventually able to get it going again by yanking it out and clearing the BIOS. Anyway, I was waiting for the Sunday specials in the paper today, and I went out and bought a UPS. Only $29.99 after rebate, not bad, and well worth it if it keeps me from having to go through that again!!!

I've gotten quite a few hits on Wheres George this weekend. My favorite so far this weekend was one from Connecticut where the guy commented "it's a bit beat up... and now im going to go spend it on a blunt to smoke drugs!" Sounds like a plan, dude!!!

Friday, July 01, 2005

Likening Idi Amin to Luther Vandros

There was a news teaser on the TV tonight that made mention of the death of Luther Vandros. My wife draws in a gasp and goes "Luther Vandros died!!!" Knowing that she doesn't really know much of Vandros, I asked her to name a single one of his songs. She says no, but I've heard of him for a long time!!! I reply, "oh, like Idi Amin." She replies "what does she sing???" LMAO, thank you for that!!!