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.