ReDecorating

I had made mention of a couple of items recently. One was that I would likely be replacing my printer in the near future. The other was the lack of content I've had recently.

Well, I took care of both of them today!!! I was going to try and scan a form the other day, and I couldn't get my printer to get past the “Print Head Not Installed” portion. I messed with it for a few minutes, then called it, and ordered a new one!!!

I stuck with Canon, since I've been happy with the one I had, present experience excluded. Got a Canon Pixima G6020, another all in one with print, scan, and copy functions. Since it's a much newer model, it's also wirelessly connected, and since ink has been a major expense with my previous printer, this one is an ink tank model with big reservoirs. Oh yea, I can also scan and print from my phone now, as well.

As a side note, I had long ago mentioned the artwork on my file cabinet upon which my desktop computer tower and printer have always sat. Never had an actual picture here, only a link to a page on a long gone Geocities site. When we were living in Long Beach, my wife had saved up and bought a set of chairs and a love seat that were black with blue and maroon pattern shapes all over them, and when I got a 2-drawer file cabinet, I painted it black, and hand painted similar blue and maroon pattern shapes to match. The chairs and love seat are long gone, but the file cabinet remains, so I've included it in the picture here!!!

A little over 12 years ago, I had painted the bathroom in a black and white theme. My dad made up the custom painted toilet seat that has been the base for many of the pictures posted on this blog, and when I'd painted it up, I picked up three black 5”x7” picture frames, with the idea that I could rotate in various black and white pictures. (The only picture that actually shows much of the black and white was the third on this post) The first three, I printed out pictures of Mochi sleeping on the top of the cat tree, Leo relaxing in the sink, and a vertical picture of both their paws. I'd added the picture frame effect in Paint Shop Pro, and had them printed at WalMart. Well, those pictures have stayed there since that day, until today!!!

After setting up my new printer and printing the test page and a test picture, I printed out these pictures to replace the old ones. The first two are from out Texas trip from a few years ago, both taken in Galveston. The first was looking out from the window of the Best Western (second picture from the end of this post). The next was on the beach on the Gulf of America (the final picture on this post). When I saw both of these pictures, I knew they'd work great for the theme I was using in there!!!

For the third, I kept with the theme of having a cat picture. I used Sid's X-ray showing the repair!!! Hey, it cost me a lot of money!!!

The Follow Up Random Post

I feel like I'm lacking content to blog about these days, so I'm going to post a few minor things somewhat related to previous posts!!!

A couple weeks ago, I bought myself a rechargeable battery type tire inflator. It's a no name deal, and wasn't very expensive, but I'm quite pleased with it. You can set your desired pressure and it'll turn off when it hits the correct pressure. The tires on the Falcon tend to lose pressure while it's sitting, and with the Moon hub caps, it's more involved than most to top them off. This is when I took off one of the caps, you can see the levels of receding waters from the rains of January!!!

I'd gone down to sweep up some of the constantly falling pine needles a couple weeks ago, and there was a ticket envelope on the Falcon, and the tires had been chalked, so apparently we've got a bitchy neighbor. I moved it, then topped the tires. Last week we took it to the car wash, and it cleans up nice!!! There was quite a bit of silt under the hub caps, so it took some cleaning out.

I had completely forgotten back when I did my Literary Stack post about a couple of books I'd read. The first was an autobiography of Mark Thompson of the Mark and Brian show, which had been one of my long time favorites. It's entitled, “Don't Bump the Record, Kid”, and I learned of it from Woody of the Woody Show. He was listening to it as an audio book, and was enjoying it. Of course, I prefer an actual book, but this appears to have been a limited release. When I first went looking for it, there was only one available, for over $50. I wasn't going that high. I checked back around a month later, and someone was selling a copy for around $20, and it was signed!!! I'd heard a lot of the stories, and lived a good amount of them, and I enjoyed the book quite a lot!!!

Another book I found in a give away box probably a couple years ago was the Jack Kerouac classic, “On the Road”. It was “The Original Scroll” version, and it had a lot of the history and told of the edits that were made for various publications. It's one of those I'd heard of forever, so I had to pick it up and check it out. It wasn't a great book, but it was an enjoyable read, and now I can speak of it from having read it.

A couple weeks ago I picked up a pack of Mountain Dew Baja Blast, thinking it was just the classic Baja Blast, not realizing it was Tropical Lime. It tastes better to me than the canned classic Baja Blast, but not as good as the on tap that you get from Taco Bell.

I took the younger to a dentist appointment the other day. In the stairwell, they've got one wall that's painted a little reminiscent of my license plate frame!!!

Last week we went to the beach with a huge and shifting group of friends. Surrogate son and his brother were there, a couple of other families, and a couple of our other friends. In the afternoon, one friend left to get his girlfriend when she got off work, which took more than an hour. The younger fell asleep for a bit while this was going on.

A couple more friends showed up around when the sun went down, and a little after that, SpaceX did a launch from Vandenberg!!! I'm pretty sure it was dropping off Starlink satellites.

I took a couple of pictures of the younger and a friend in the dark with no flash, and they came out kind of fuzzy, and each picture had one looking good and the other not so much, so I did a merge of the two pictures!!! You can totally tell it was two different pictures, but it's plausible!!!

The Happy Day After 512 Day Random Post

Yesterday, of course, was 512 day. In honor, here's my latest 512 shirt!!!

I've had the concept of Mystery 512 for a long, long time, with the idea to have it on a shirt. It was something of a time consuming process the last time I made up a 512 shirt. I recently heard of StickerMule, where they print stickers and T-shirts from your design. I took a little time in Paint Shop Pro and made up the design, pretty much freehand, so the proportions aren't exact, but it came out good enough. Of course, as with anything you are having made, the more you buy the cheaper the unit price, so I bought four!!! Gave one to the boy. I'm very pleased with the results!!!

Haven't posted about Sidney the Kidney in a while, maybe since we got him!!! He's awesome, a real people cat, and a welcome member to the family. His love language is licks, but don't be too flattered if he gives you licks, here he is being a weirdo licking my son's dumbbell!!!

The boy has been doing workouts regularly for several months now. During the stupid times, I packed on several pounds, and outgrew several of my T-shirts. I picked up a couple of Sky T-shirts, one that has a yellow Redline on a black background, the other has a basic profile drawing on a yellow shirt.

This type of thing probably doesn't help, but we went back to the Charley's Phillies I'd mentioned before, and actually got a picture of the cheesesteak this time!!!

At the beginning of April I took a week off and had a little vacation. We headed down to Carlsbad with no particular plan on what we would do once we got there. Stayed at a place that looked like nothing but a concrete block from the outside, but it had some really great rooms inside!!! Very spacious!!! We soaked in the hot tub and swam in the pool. They had outside barbecues and a fireplace that I would have liked to have enjoyed a little, but that didn't happen.

Ended up going to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, and it was pretty excellent. As we were leaving we were looking around for somewhere to have dinner. Came across Seoul Cord Dog & Fried Chicken, and I've gotta try that!!! We got corn dogs with crunchy sweet rice puffs all over the outside, and sausage and cheese stick on the inside. Wow!!!

There was a boba place on the other side (it was in a pretty decent mall) and I got myself a honeydew drink that was really good as well. Afterwards, my son wanted the same thing, so I got another, and of course my credit card company questioned the double charge for the same amount!!!

Last week was my in office week. Had two real nice weather days where I was able to drive the Sky with the top down. Third day I had to take the Matrix to do the “Will It Fit: Matrix Edition” featuring several pieces of 8-foot 2 x 4's!!! I feel like I could have gone up to 9 feet, or even 10 feet if it was up to the corner of the windshield.

One of the posts I've been meaning to do, but haven't (naturally), is an overview of the work I've done on the cars of late. Sometime at the end of last year I took the Sky to my tint shop and had the limo tint removed from the front windows, and replaced with a barely there tint. Came out great and makes it much better driving with the top up, especially at night. I'd had my wife following to give me a ride back while it was being worked on, but by the time she arrived they were pretty close to having the job done. I asked if they could get the Matrix done as well (it came with limo tint on the front windows as well, and I've been wanting to get it taken care of since we got it). Ended up waiting until the Sky was done, and left the Matrix there to get the same level of tint. I like it much better as well.

Well, for a 512 day wrap up, we were driving in the Matrix in the Fast Track lanes, moving right along, and here come the fuzz!!! Pulled me over for speeding, but after checking my license and registration, came back and just tagged me for an equipment violation for the front windows having tint on them!!! Thanks, officer!!! Now I've got to get the tint removed and signed off on, then more than likely put back on. I'm fine with that!!!

Here's your one picture of a giraffe from the Safari Park, looking a little derpy.

I had to go take a look at this, also at the corn dog mall!!! They put you in a harness and you get to grab your prize. We didn't do it. According to the sign, we all exceed the weight limit.

Perseverance

Last week NASA & JPL landed the Perseverance rover on Mars. I don't know why, but it seemed like there was a lot more attention paid to it than previous landings. Of course, like all the others, it's going to find evidence of life on Mars.

The landing went off without a hitch. While it was supposed to be live webcast, all they showed was computer generated graphics, and frankly, I've seen better on video games!!! Several minutes after the landing (which was, of course, several minutes behind already, because of the signal lag) Perseverance sent back it's first picture from the surface. In black & white. What is this, the 70's??? Cool that they pulled it off, and it's supposed to do some neat tricks while it's there, but the whole event was rather underwhelming.

Anyway, we all know Mars is the red planet, so I took it on myself to colorize the first picture!!! Fixed it for ya, NASA!!! Your welcome!!!

Super Blood Wolf

Tonight was the lunar eclipse. I attempted to get a few shots with my phone's camera, and then broke out my Pentax to see how I did with each.

Probably haven't made mention, but that was my Christmas present to myself, stepped my phone game up to the Galaxy S8. Better everything than the S5 I'd had. My younger boy is saving up for the S9, for the improved camera it has. Anyway, the first couple of pictures here are what you can get with that!!!

Next, I got out my DSLR to see what I could do with that. Caught the blood effect much better!!!

I've got a couple of tripods, as well as a remote shutter release. I was going to set it up on one for these pictures, but come to find out, the wing screw I have for them is too long to clamp down the camera!!! I'll be getting a new one of those from my work at some point.

Anyway, I was able to get some fairly plausible pictures with the 300mm lens just resting it on an edge!!!

(The more you crop it, the worse it looks)

Maximum Cuteness

Finally did it!!! Spent some of the money my parents gave me for my birthday and did as I said I was thinking of doing, and got a new pair of headlights for 3!!! They look great!!! When I'd swapped the ones into Scruffy that I'd gotten from the junkyard, I just took the before and after pictures with my phone, and the GIF I made up you can totally tell the angle wasn't the same. To try and get a better effect this time, I used my Pentax DSLR for the pictures. I knew there were some old pictures on there, so I retrieved them while I had the card out. Guess what!!! They were almost all cute grandkitten pictures!!!

Look at that upside down snuggle head!!! Squweeee~~~~!!!!

Loves for grand-cat-ma!!!

I think he knows when the flash is about to go off, more often than not when taking his picture, he's got the semi-squinty eyes!!!

There's an open-eyed shot!!!

A lot of the pictures I was trying to get him with his tongue out, licking water from the faucet, as he does. Since I was already in the GIF-making mode, I made this one up. Like most of my GIFs, it's not great, but gets the idea across.

Lick it up, boy!!!

And So It Begins

That tenuous transitional step between concept and reality, to actually stop just thinking about something and start doing something. I suppose the real first step was finding Jade (thus far the name my wife has decided on for her new ride, as good a name as any, I suppose. She is SO happy with her, you'd think I bought her a new Cadillac!!!) so I can get to modding on Scruffy. The next, and and finally getting some actual skin in the game, step occurred on this last Friday. New tires are a very soon necessity for her (Scruffy), and prior to doing that, I'd wanted to locate the next set of rims, to keep from having to pay to get the tires moved around. Currently she's rolling on the alloys that came on 3, which are also the exact same style as jade has. All that works out, because one of them on Scruffy was said to have been bent, and feels like it at certain speeds. A couple on each also have some curb damage, so between them there's likely a good set.

SO, I had the idea to find some steelies I could moon-cap and maybe do in the contrast color, whatever that turns out to be. I slightly rued having sent the originals of Scruffy's west with Baby, but in the interest of saving alloys, it was necessary. Also, it looks like the profile of Saturn steelies isn't well suited to having a center cap hub cap. Lots of cars have the same bolt pattern, so it shouldn't be too difficult to find a junkyard set that would work, and over Thanksgiving weekend, my dad and I were thinking of heading over for their sale day. That never happened, I worked Black Friday for the double time and a half, as well as my normal Saturday shift, and it was far too busy to get that in.

Another thing I'd been looking at was some manufacturers are now making larger rims of steel. First noticed this on the lady friends' Scion, which has hub caps on 16" wheels. I was going to jam her up and see if she'd be interested in trading for some factory Saturn alloys that would have a lower cost to put tires on, but alas, it's the newer model with 5 lugs. As is my custom, I kept looking around to see what people might be selling, and came upon these!!! Not what I had in mind, but a good looking style that will go fairly well with the primer black aesthetic I have in mind, and are also larger diameter. Currently they have 205-40R-17's on them, which are shorter but wider than what I've got, but by just a tad each way. Nets about 3/8" of drop. There's probably a year's worth of tread left on them, but I'm planning on going with 35's eventually, which will be even smaller than what I've got, as well as surprisingly affordable!!! That will get a total drop of about 3/4", plus the around 1 1/2" that dropped springs get. Of course, that's a ways out still, and will give me plenty of time to decide if I like it fine with what I've already got. Speaking of affordable, the guy only wanted $200 for the whole set, which of course is almost less than just getting 4 tires mounted!!! No curb rash whatsoever. Ironically, they were off the earlier model Scion with the same bolt pattern as Saturns.

So now it's time to start getting other things in order. The wear patterns on the current tires suggest that things aren't right with the alignment, and I know the tie rod ends are shot. At 190,000, likely that's not all!!! If I'm going to be putting in dropped springs, she'll be needing an alignment anyway, and may as well refresh everything before that happens. Of course, while I'd be putting on new springs, new struts are only logical. I have ordered both the springs and struts thus far, and will soon be ordering tie rod ends and ball joints. May also get some polyurethane bushings to tighten everything up even more!!! I'd already planned on going with rebuilds on all the brake cylinders while I'm in the course of refitting and new hoses, as well as probably new rotors and pads up front, since I'll have to give everything that will show through the new rims a coat of paint. Oh yeah, also I ordered the necessary lug nuts to fit on such a rim.

This morning I took the original picture from when we'd first got her where I'd tinted the rear windows and put it back in Paint Shop Pro. First I removed the rear doors, then made the panels continuous from front to back. Came out better than the first attempt!!!

Hmmm, while I have Paint Shop Pro going, how about seeing how she'd look with a bit of a drop??? With them old hub caps, no less!!! Got that done, and did the scroll back and forth between the files, and was amused by the jumping effect of the drop I'd performed... a GIF is in order!!!

After that, I messed with the shadow to make it look proper, then black and whited it to simulate primer, as well as mirroring it to make it look different than the other shots.

Hey, you may ask, what about your idea to gull wing her??? Still knocking around in me melon, it is, but thought I'd share the sketch lady friend did before I did mine, back on the reunion lunch day. There you have it, folks, the first rendering of a Saturn Gull Wing Wagon!!! Upon completion, it was noted that it looked a bit like a space alien!!!

I Like Turtles

As mentioned back in the elephant post, another supervisor had made a request for a label creation. She's from Hawaii, and turtles are quite prominent there. That's what she wanted, if I could, a turtle.

For an interesting construction, I started out by making the shell and belly plate, then I made a separate body.

The whole time I was doing the body, I was picturing the cartoons where a turtle is stripped of it's shell, and covers up it's nether regions.

Of course, once I finished it off, I had to make a GIF of it swimming!!!

God Bless America

What it said:

What I pictured:

Happy 4th of July!!!

You Can't Take The Sky From Me

Another "Looking Back" post I could do at any time would be from Christmas last year. This won't be that, but in passing I'll mention that I did get a new Ipod touch 5th generation, case for the same, and the DVD set of Firefly. If you're not familiar with Firefly... I dare say you haven't spent near enough time on the interwebs. I've heard of it for years, but other than knowing that it was a short lived sci-fi series that was supposedly THE BEST SHOW EVAR and having seen some pictures of Serenity, (and knowing that it spawned the big screen release "Serenity") knew not much about it. Had my wife wrap it up, and write the tag "To: Daddy & the rest of the House Nerds". Going in cold, I have to say, it truly lives up to the hype!!! I've been taking my time, and am only up to the 6th episode because I'm trying to make it last. I have since picked up "Serenity", too, so I've got that to look forward to. Don't get me wrong, I really like my new Ipod, but I LOVE Firefly!!!

So, if you follow this blog, you know I often put something on my water cup, then use the same cup for a week or so. The last one I did, I put the second part of the line from the episode "Safe" that goes, "Today we were kidnapped by hill folk, never to be seen again. It was the best day ever!!!" Most everyone who saw it was greatly amused.

At the end of last week, I put this design on my cup, from the pilot episode. This has also gotten positive reviews. A few weeks back I came across the pair of toy dinosaurs pictured that have built in voice boxes that recite this dialogue. "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!!!"

In other amusements, I took the most famous Sweet Bro & Hella Jeff comic and modified it a bit & put in on a T-shirt. I took the last two frames off, took a square from the left bottom and repeated it in a stripe on the bottom, and put the last line of text under it, as well as modifying the text in the first two panels to be more work friendly (AND work related!!!) It's a pretty lame comic, but most everyone who reads it laughs like crazy!!! My older boy got a white shirt with red sleeves that he plans to add Dave Strider's broken record logo to. If you're keeping count, that will make six Homestuck themed shirts in our house!!!

Home Improvement

Arroyo Seco

Today, on our Labor Day day off, we went for a picnic at one of the parks along the Arroyo Seco.

Arroyo Seco translates to "dry stream", which it almost never is, but usually there's not much along this portion. Whenever we're by there, the younger boy wants to go for a hike along the stream.

A couple of posts back, I'd made mention of my latest technology purchase, but never said what it actually was!!! Ipod Touch 4th generation, same as my older picked up, but I got mine as a refurb rather than used with a corner of the screen cracked already. I've been kind of keeping an eye out for a decent but tiny camera at a reasonable price. Most weren't much cheaper than this, and only would take pictures!!! Found out afterwards that the generation 5 has a WAY better camera, and experience a tad of buyers' remorse. My younger boy has been saving for one of his own, and I've agreed to sell him mine at a nice discount when I get myself a gen 5, probably around gravy time. Did I mention that my wife got me a nice case for it for my birthday???

All the pictures here are from my Ipod. The only edit I preformed on them was to use the clarify function in Paint Shop Pro. First shot is by where we entered, he declared it to be dead hobo swag.

Second shot is looking upstream. If I'd had my Pentax with me, you would probably be able to make out the antennas of Mount Wilson!!! That was the shot I was going for. Picture #3 is straddling the stream, and #4 is one of the inlet pipes, probably from the local street drains. I know I've got a shot from a while ago of the stencil they have near storm drains that have the "empties to the ocean" legend on them!!!

The last shot, I'm guessing, was one of the unfortunate victims of the freeway running alongside the Arroyo.