Sphere Quest

For our vacation this year, we did similar to how we've done in years past, where we went to one area on part of the vacation, and another area for the other. Instead of one part being in Catalina, as we've done twice before, we did the first half in Carlsbad, and the second in Ventura!!! Since they are in different directions, we did a layover at the Green Palace for a night not in a strange bed!!! Before heading on, I was looking at the map to see if there were any other attractions we would want to check out in the area, and I happened upon this!!!

Usually when we head out that way, we take a direct route, but by heading up past Magic Mountain and then across, we could stop in Santa Paula and see a floating granite ball!!! It was similar to the time we took a side trip to see the Bronze Fonz statue.

It's located in a little park right along the railroad tracks. I've seen two other spheres like this, both of them in Disney parks, one in Disneyland, the other in Disney World. Every time I'd encounter one, I would always spend some time playing with it, so this seemed like an opportunity to do so without spending hundreds of dollars just to get close to it!!!

Of course, it wasn't up to Disney standards. The area seemed pretty nice, but there were a half dozen bums hanging out at one end of the park, and, if you look close, you can see someone tagged the poor defenseless sphere.

There were a couple of other sculptures in the park. A mama bear and her two cubs.

Had to take a picture of mama bear on the mama bear!!!

At the end of the park near the main road it's located on, there is a monument to two Highway Patrolmen who alerted the residents to the St. Francis dam failure in 1928.

The drive going out this direction instead was very scenic, compared to the way we usually go. I was glad we went that way, and made friends with another granite sphere!!!

Gone Back to Legoland

Day two of our vacation this year, as noted, was Legoland day!!!

As you can see, they are gearing up for Halloween, and there were touches of it all around!!!

We started heading towards the Mini Land area, always cool to see, and if they've added anything new. We did drop into the Ninjago ride on the way past.

There was a double headed dragon on the monument in the DC area.

Of course, a shot of the Capitol biulding so they can make a spurious accusation that you're attemting to overthrow the government...

As I mentioned, it's been a while since we've been to Legoland, since before The Lego Movie came out, so of course there's movie related stuff that's been added. This was in the build area, suspended from the ceiling.

And a big head of Princess Unikitty, one of my favorite characters from the movie.

I'm not sure what area this was supposed to be, but as you can see, there's a big flying monkey with a skeletal wing on the roof.

The only addition I found in Mini Land was their attempt to go green, wind turbines added. They turn. Ironically, they actually use power instead of generating it!!! The other change is that they had a bunch of Star Wars scenes last time I visited, which were gone now, I wonder if it was a limited time presentation. Didn't get to every area, I know there was a full size Vader and X-Wing there last time, too.

They have the adjacent Sea Life Aquarium, I'm not sure how much business it does, but somewhat related, they've added in a submarine ride with fish and sharks.

We had headed over to the far side of the park, searching for the Sky Cruiser ride (that you pedal around an eleated track) pictured in a previous post here but it's been removed. Just a bit further is The Lego Movie World area. One of the cats from the second movie, and the biulding in the background is shaped like Princess Unikitty's head. It houses Emmet's Flying Adventure, a hanging flight simulator. Emmet has constructed a triple-decker flying couch!!! It's one of the better rides there, but was also the one we had the longest wait for, almost 10 minutes!!! It was honestly a great time to go, almost every ride was a walk-on, and several of the better ones (both coasters operating, The Dragon was shut down and this one) they ran us through twice!!!

I hadn't picked up on the fact that the cat lady in the 2nd movie was named Mrs. Scratchen-post!!!

And, finally, the internal steampunk workings of a unicorn!!!

Going Back to Grandview

A couple weeks back we took another vacation. I'd had the week sceduled off for some time, and leading up to it, I was considering where to vacation. The Disney parks are doing a locals special where you can go 3 days for less than $100 per day, and it's been years since I've been there, so I was thinking of doing that. My wife was on board, but when I ran it past my son, he was less enthused. See, for several years his school had gone on regular outings there, so he's had a pretty good fill of them. He opined that for himself, Legoland was some true nostalgia. It's been a while, and I've always liked it, so we decided to go there.

The first night we were in the area, after we ate and checked into our lodgings, the boy and I headed over to Encinitas to revisit the beach we'd gone to five years ago, and this time to take some pictures!!!

Once again, it was dark by the time we got there, but the stairs are illuminated, and phone cameras actually do an amazingly good job of gathering the available light!!!

The tide wasn't at it's highest this time, but there still wasn't a lot of beach showing.

After taking several pictures, we stashed our phones and put on our swim trunks, but didn't do much more than getting wet up to our knees.

The water wasn't nearly as warm as last time we were there, but we still enjoyed it.

One of my favorite pictures is this "shadow selfie", that I hadn't even realized I'd gotten until I looked at it later!!!

Badge Engineering

As I'd previously mentioned, I had picked up a Scion badge for the Matrix when I was at the junkyard. This is the tale of how I modified it to make it fit!!!

To start off with, here's a close up of the grille as it was when we got it.

I picked up a sheet of black plastic from my work and cut a section into an oval. I actually did two ovals, but this one is the one I sanded to the size of the badge, the other one is slightly larger, to sandwich to the back of the grille.

The little hole aligns with the pin molded onto the back (the one that didn't break off when I was removing it!!!)

After I sanded the scratches out of it, I drilled a series of holes and threaded them. I put some long rounded head screws on either end, and some short flat head screws in between.

The long screws end up going through the empty area of the Toyota logo area in the grille and mounting to the back oval. The flat head screws I put between with the idea that the epoxy I was using to mount it down would get some grip around them and hopefully hold on well.

It didn't come out perfect, but it looks fine at a casual look, which I imagine is all it will usually get!!! I'm pleased with the result!!!

Oh, and since I'd made mention of the Voltz that was sold in Japan, a blatant case of actual badge engineering, I figured I'd include a picture of one of those, too!!!

Wild Dreams

At the beginning of the week, the boy and I both some pretty wild dreams, and as I've said before it's pretty rare that I remember my dreams. I heard a few days ago that it was World Lion Day, so now I've got to share.

I dreamed that I was remembering back to when we had lions. The rest of the dream was mostly a flashback to those times. They were outdoor pets, and of course our yard has no fence. We had two, a male and a female. I remembered how they would come up and snuggle us when we'd come out of the house, just like a house cat, except they are several hundred pounds and the snuggle would almost knock you down!!!

I remembered feeding them big old hunks of raw meat, they loved that!!! I remembered them bounding down the canyon across the street. I thought to myself, "Wow, that was a hell of a liabilaty!!!"

I had another dream that night, too. My dad was still alive, and a bunch of us were getting together on a Saturday, something like the third time in a month we were all going out somewhere for a big family lunch. I was thinking, wow, that's gotta be a few hundred dollars every time!!! They told me that after we ate, we were going to see Martin Luther King III give a speech or a sermon or something. Huh, I didn't even know there was a Martin Luther King III!!!

My son's dream was he was at a pizza place. Not a full-on restraunt, it was just a take-out window in the side of a wall. He orders his pizza, and it comes out, but it's not just a pizza, there's hot wings, a big bag of them!!! And hard shell tacos!!! And a video game!!!

As his order is coming out, another guy who had ordered close to the same thing after him starts to grab it, and he tells him, "Hey!!! That's mine!!!" The guy backs off, and he takes his huge haul of food and game. He says the tacos were amazing!!!

Randoms

It's been a while. I've taken a few decent pictures and had some adventures.

A couple of weeks back I took one of my vacation days, and the boy and I went for lunch then to the beach. I had been thinking of getting some breakfast food at the Golden Star in Long Beach, but since the day had gotten away, we opted for Denny's, in fact went to the one near where I used to work. He'd never been to this beach, and it's been years since I've been there, Cabrillo beach down by San Pedro. It's got a beach facing the port, and another facing the ocean. We opted for the ocean side one, for a little more surf action.

It was a pretty good time at the beach, except it was SUPER windy, and we were getting sand blasted except for the part where we were in or near the water. He found a shell that's the hugest I've ever seen in West Coast waters!!!

We saw this pretty elaborate artwork on the dust of a car in the next lane, so I took a picture.

Last week I was on my walk during the Golden Hour, and I came across a fairly large murder of crows. I walked to the far side of the road so as not to disturb them too much.

I heard recently that cats will respond to 2 dimensional squares just like they do to boxes. Of course, I had to try it, and it seemed to work!!!

Remember last year when I began my working from home position??? I haven't made mention, but I ended up transitioning to another department, doing the pre-catalog work of getting the information on dimensions, and just recently there's been some department consolidation, and starting this week, I'm going to be the only one doing this work, going from 3 of us to just lucky me. Anyway, I'd realized not long after I'd done the CAD design of an Ion rim back when I was just getting started, it wasn't very accurate in the shape of the openings. I went back and made a new one just recently.

Upgrades

As with any used car we buy, there's usually a few things that it needed. When we bought it, the paperwork was a mess (honestly that was the thing that gave me the most pause about buying it) and it took quite a bit of going back and forth before it looked like it's squared away. Now that it appears that everything is in order and in process (we still don't have the title in hand, but it appears that we have it all sorted, and have mailed it in and payed it, and the web portal seems to have it cleared) I felt OK going ahead and starting in on a few things.

Last weekend I stopped by the junkyard to see if I could get some of the specific parts. There were 4 Matrixes (Matrii???) and 2 Vibes. The Matrixes were all fairly picked clean, the only thing I could find was a gear shift knob that's not split open. I think the XR designation that ours has, one of the things they come with is leather-wrapped steering wheel and gear shift. The wheel is OK (at least on the leather grip surface, the Toyota logo in the center is badly scratched up) but the gear shift knob is, as I said, split open. The replacement I found is rubberized instead, and worn a bit smooth, but still looks better. When I was pulling it off, it has a little button under the gear change knob to switch the overdrive on and off, and I ended up breaking the wire off figuring that it would have some kind of plug, but saw how to remove that portion and use the one from what's on there.

On to the Vibes, that seems to be the hot ticket if you're looking for parts!!! Found most of the other things on my list on the first one I looked at. The center console is a double unit, with a shallow storage area in the lid, and a deeper portion under that. The lid for the top was not only split open, too, but the hinge is broken. The one I got is in much better shape, but one of the 2 hinge ends is broken. Still better than what was on there. Also, the gear selection indicator was broken on ours, but the Pontiac had one that's still intact, albeit it has some stress cracks showing already. It's a pretty basic piece, so if it ends up going eventually I can probably fabricate something better up. Perhaps I'll have a 3D printer by then, and can do something very stylized. I also got the cover for over the 3rd brake light. It wasn't bad without it, but having it on there gives it a finished look.

It also had both of it's dome lights, something that has never worked on ours. They have the slider switch, which some of the others didn't have. Unfortunately, it didn't cure the problem, so I'm back to the drawing board for those. It also had a very clean steering wheel center that I grabbed. It has the Pontiac logo, of course, but I like the look better. Another thing that's missing is the grille logo. I couldn't find one, but even before I'd gone, I was telling my wife I'd like to find a Scion logo and slap that on the front, because they appear about the right size and it's a Toyota brand, so why not??? I also found out that they had sold the Pontiac styled ones in Japan as Toyota Voltz, with the Pontiac V replaced with a chrome V for Voltz. I looked around to see if I could find some of the badges online for the rear hatch, but no dice. ANyway, found a nice Scion badge, I've got to do a little modification, but the size is right.

I figured it wouldn't be too hard to swap the center console lid and gear shift knob, so I tried doing that last week after work one day. The center console lid was easy, but the shift knob didn't go so well. I was being careful to not break the wires to the switch, but I wasn't able to get it detached. I'm not sure how it's going to go, but I'm thinking of adding a plug under the shift. While I had everything apart, I changed the stereo. The one that was in there was a Dual that cycled through whorehouse colors. AM stations were always terrible on it, too. I might have been able to change the display, but I really don't care much for it, and I had the stereo from 3 that I really like, so in it went. The AM reception is no better, so a new antenna is probably in order. I had been thinking about grabbing a different mast from the junkyard, but never got it on my list, and didn't remember. If the thread is the same, I'll try the one from Scruffy on it sometime and see if it's any better.

Bought a bunch of stuff from Rock Auto, too. Not having had taken a look at the air filter, bought one sight unseen, as well as an activated charcoal cabin air filter. The engine filter looked pretty decent, so I've saved the old one, but the cabin one was filthy, and full of leaves and sticks. That was quite easy to change. Bought wiper blades, the one for the back glass is missing it's rubber completely. I'll probably wait until the weather starts turning to change them, lest they bake in the summer sun. The airbag light on the dash has always been on, and a bit of online sleuthing showed that it's often a part called the clockspring, located directly behind the steering wheel. I'll do that at some point and see if it fixes the issue, and do the center for the steering wheel at the same time. One of these days, we've got to get in touch with a Toyota dealer and see if the Takata air bag recall has been done for it!!! Under moderate to hard braking, it would give the warped rotors (or biuld up on the rotors) feeling, so I bought new rotors and ceramic brake pads. Those went in yesterday, as well as some new fasteners for the under engine panels and the rocker panel extensions. (The one on the passenger side felt like it was barely holding on) One thing that I forgot to mention having removed from Jade on her way out was the horn. I did this because the horn on the Matrix sounds like a little Japanese import car's horn, a little 'beep', while the one in Saturns sounds much bigger than the car it's from, a commanding 'HONK!!!'. I put that in at the same time. I've got a front and rear view dash cam to install someday, and I still need to come up with a decent phone holder!!!

The Mountain Getaway

A couple of weeks ago I took the week off. I've got to use up some of my days off so I don't have a bunch to carry over or cash out at the end of the year!!!

Since there is a shortage of rental cars at places we might have wanted to fly to for vacations, I had been thinking of going up to the place we've had our anniversary weekend the last couple of years, right on the beach. It would be the first time the boy would have gone. However, when I called to see what kind of deal I could get, they told me a price around $450 a night!!!

Guess the time we normally go has been "off season". Scratch that, I'll come up with someplace else to visit. We decided to head up to the mountains for a few days instead.

As seen in the first picture, Running Springs is the town we were staying in. It was a very reasonable price, not a lot of amenities, but it was fine. They do have an indoor pool and hot tub that we jumped in for a while.

We drove out to the same forest service fire lookout tower that we'd gone to a few years back. It's a ways out to get to it, and this time we pulled off to the side of the road heading out there to take pictures of the impressive rock formations.

Speaking of driving out, it was the first long trip for Keanu-Kutcher, and it performed without a hitch. The driving dynamics aren't Saturn S-Series, it is close to 1 1/2 tons compared to just over a ton for the Saturns, and you can feel it. The Toyota 1.8 engine is, of course, different from the Saturn 1.9, which has more torque at lower RPMs hauling around less car. Climbing up the mountain, there are signs to turn off your A/C. We didn't, although I kept an eye on the temprature guage. Guess what, it didn't move!!! The transmission did a lot more gear changes, and the RPMs were in the higher range, but no undue dramatics anywhere, so I'm calling it a complete success!!!

The boy & I went on evening walks. The first one, we went across the road to a large turn out area, and followed a path that seemed to go down the side. It connected to a trail that went on a long while, then connected to a paved road and eventually connected another road, then came up and back the road we'd started on. I'm pretty sure we were on a private road for part of it.

The propieter of the place we stayed had told us the place across the road (towards "downtown") has the best breakfast in the area, so we went there the first morning. It was closed for construction. We went to another place.

For dinner one night, we went to a pizza place (Neo's Pizza, since we were in the Matrix, I guess we had to go there!!!) and they had some of the best pizza I've had since we'd gone to Chicago!!! Cheese garlic knots, which were excellent, too.

There was a candy store we stopped into and got some goodies, and a thrift store that we bought a couple of shirts from. The day we left, we were able to stop in for the best breakfast in Running Springs, and it lived up to the hype!!!

We pulled off in a very large turn-out on the way back from the fire tower, where someone had made up a very large eye design!!!

The last night we were there, the boy and I went on another night walk, and did some geocaching, since it turns out there were a ton of them up there!!! We found three, and took over a Pokemon gym.

It was a great little get away!!!