The Wayback Machine

I've kinda been on a roll of late with me blogging. I'm going to try and keep it going!!! I've got a lot of things I could go on about, but for now I'm taking this fork. Something I've wanted to do for a while. All the cars I've owned!!!

I did one post, back in 2009, about the first car I ever purchased, and just today I went back and added web-sourced pictures and another paragraph. Way previous to that, I'd done a tiny little post of my first actual car. Much more could be said there.

Anyway, fast forward a few years from the Dinosaur, and here's the first car I ever owned that would have had two names on the title!!! Would have, mind you, as we were never actually able to get it titled in our name. We bought it for $750 without first having the owner smog check it. I have been wary of doing so ever since, but still haven't let that stop me!!! I'm usually too antsy to jump on a "deal". Took it to a smog check center, and it had three places in the exhaust system that had leaks. Can't smog it if you can't detect anything at the end of the pipe!!! 1975, if I remember the year correctly. Seems to me it had the rear edge of one of the fenders crinkled, as though the door had met it at some point.

Anyway, this was back when we were poor. Probably 1989 or 1990 is when this all went down, and we'd saved up to buy something. I don't remember ever having to use one car between us, so I'm thinking this was while we were using the Gremlin. If you're poor, my advice to you is to stop being poor, it sucks. My wife had ridden in someone's Celica once, and liked it, so the hunt was on to see if we could find one in the price range we could afford. One of my friends growing up had a later fastback, and spun it on the freeway into the guard rail, totaling it. He'd sold the engine from it to someone he knew that had a coupe of the same color as his, swap included, and I helped him swap it. Actually, we both swung the engines (and transmissions) from the one to the other, and he flaked, so I ended up finishing everything off. I believe the girl we were doing it for ended up paying me some amount more than I was expecting, likely stiffing him for the rest of the cost. His was manual and the recipient was automatic. If you've driven an econobox of this vintage with an automatic, you'll likely agree that manual transmissions are the best option. ANyway, I was impressed with some of the innovation of those clever Japanese.

Ours was similar to these web sourced pictures I found, in that it was a red coupe. I preferred the fastback style, in most generations of the Celica, but apparently there were none to be had in our price range. Also, ours had a strange vinyl top, not the decent looking full top black pictured in the first shot, but tan, and only covering the rear half, landau style, and it looked like the color had been refreshed by spray painting. I seem to recall it wasn't fastened to the roof especially well, and would billow up at highway speed. My plan, if I'd ever gotten to it, was to strip off the vinyl, sand down the rust that was likely hiding under it (primary reason I don't like vinyl tops) and getting some black wrinkle finish paint to spray on the area.

Inside, the fun continued with a headliner hanging down. Not long after we got it, I made up an aluminum plate about 2 inches larger than the dome light all the way around, and used that to hold it up a little better. Seems to me it had some strangeness with the electrical system, and I'm pretty sure the air conditioning didn't work.

Mechanically, it had the manual transmission, and if I recall, a leaky clutch master cylinder. I seem to recall at some point filling the reservoir and opening the slave cylinder to do a "gravity bleed". Another time I was heading to my parent's house, and it stalled on the off ramp. I don't think I even opened up the cool forward-flip hood, just took off the mile or so to my parent's house. No one was home there, so I went to Sean's and we took his '68 Mustang with similar red paint and vinyl top, as well as his toolbox, to see if we can figure out what was up. Upon opening the hood, I quickly discovered the hot wire to the coil had broken off, so it was a fairly easy fix. Sean, meanwhile, found the sprinklers along the off ramp had a little plastic sign that said, "WARNING: These premises irrigated with reclaimed waste water", so he removed one and hung it by the sink in his bathroom!!! I remember some wonkiness with the windows, them not quite rolling up all the way. Pretty sure at one point one of the regulators gave out and I opened up the door panel and fashioned a 1x2" piece of wood to hold it in the closed position. I remember in the short time we had it, it rained quite a bit. It had 5-slot mag wheels, the same as my first car had, so we had two cars with the same style rims at the time. I think it had some kind of aftermarket stereo, but don't remember for sure.

It was a fun car, front engine rear drive with a fairly tight suspension, and of course that stick shift!!! Go-kart handling, and while it probably wasn't especially quick, it sure felt like it was.

I can't remember how long we had it, long enough that I remember it pretty well and fondly, but in my head I can't imagine it was more than six months. Certainly a car I kinda wished I still had. If you are able to find any of them anymore, they are either complete junk or are ridiculously priced, or both. So, here's how it ended...

We were living in North Long Beach at the time. As is the case, you end up finding short cuts to get home. Ours was to cut through the residential area before where we lived, avoiding a left turn light, then an uncontrolled left across a busy street. There were a couple of cross streets with a stop sign going crosswise to the one we'd be on, but they had deep rain gutters on either side going our way. Hence, a lot of people going our way would come to practically a stop, but we had no such respect for our suspensions, just slow enough to not bottom out. Since most people going our way would be going very slow, a lot of people rolled the stop signs. You can probably see where this is going. One afternoon I come home to my wife talking on the phone to the insurance company. Hmmm, that doesn't sound good... I look out the window into the parking lot, and see the front end basically flat. She gets off the phone and breaks down crying, and for a while I can't understand what she's saying. Come to find out, pretty much exactly what you'd guess from the intro to this paragraph!!! Some guy in a full size van rolled through the stop sign, never suspecting my wife, and she cleanly T-bones him!!! His insurance ends up paying us off to the tune of $1400 or so, if I recall, and we get to retain the hulk of the poor Celica. The cool looking front end was closed up in the middle of the grille, with the hood bent down and the bumper bent up. Since we were having trouble getting it smogged, we were more than happy with the payoff!!! I remember getting a replacement fender from half price day at the pick your part, but don't remember if that was before or after the wreck. Know I never put it on. I also remember pulling the bumper mounts and straightening 'em, but not ever getting it back together. Couldn't find a replacement hood. I'm pretty sure the radiator was leaking afterwards, but somehow I got it to my parent's house and had it in their side yard for a while. Don't remember for how long, but after the wreck I was finally able to get a salvage slip in our name, after clearing up some strangeness with the previous owner's actual name. Ended up selling it off, maybe for $100, maybe for $200, but not before I took the rims off for our next car (bought, of course, with the insurance payoff money!!!) That is, possibly, a story for another day. I've already got the images for it from the 'web!!!

The Yule Blog

Merry Yule to all!!! It's been a while since I've posted. This may get a tad random.



Here's some cup artwork I did some weeks ago. I was trying to get in the spirit.

I do believe that this month has been busier than the October I had!!!



Don't you love the word, "Yule"???

A couple of weekends ago was the Moon Eyes Christmas Party car show. My dad had entered, as it's cheaper to enter a car than to buy admission passes and parking!!! It rained quite a bit that weekend, but the show was "rain or shine", so we headed up anyway. It didn't rain much at all while we were actually there. The cars that showed up were cool.

That same evening was the company Christmas party. Same place as the last two years. They had been going to cancel, but since everyone else was doing the same, they made us a deal. The amazing desert bar wasn't there this year, and the decorations were a bit scaled back, too, but it was still good. We stayed at the same place we'd stayed two years ago, which I contend is as good a place, at half the price!!!



Goodie day at work was last Wednesday. I made my mom's easy to make and delicious corn bread concoction. There was none left, so it was well received. I ate too much!!! Had to start before work, because some of the choice items are usually gone by the time the first shift goes to their morning break. One of the more interesting things were bacon wrapped peaches. I saw the bacon, and knew it would be good. Ate too much that day, wasn't hungry until the next evening!!!

We did a T-shirt exchange that day, too. Whomever had my name hooked me up!!! Two shirts, and both of them are agreed to be some of the funniest seen. The new supervisor, a big ole guy, got a shirt that says, "USC mom".

Happy belated Festivus to all!!!

The cool TV set I'd set up for the boys' room, a vintage wooden case with a modern Toshiba inside,
went on the fritz. Lost it's vertical deflection (probably just the control circuit for it, and probably just a cold solder joint at that) and shoots it's electron beam in a straight line across the middle. Fail. Double fail, because much of the costly Christmas presents are Xbox games, and with no TV to play them on... I ended up buying them a nice 32" LCD HDTV for them. The prices are fairly reasonable anymore. Happy early Christmas!!!



Oh yea, they did the profit sharing checks on Monday. I say "only" in the most perceptible way when I say that this year was only 100%. A lot of the people weren't very pleased with it, but I'll certainly take it quite gladly!!! How many are without jobs, and how many more have taken pay cuts or are working more hours for the same pay??? I actually got a bit of a raise this year, and a 100% profit sharing!!! Sure helps out with having to buy a TV!!!

Oh yeah, the man, once again, do take his chunk. I did a cup to that effect that I'll post at some later date.

Sitting around, drinking the Yule Nog... Life is good!!!

I had asked my wife if she wanted a new flat panel TV for in the front room. She's perfectly happy with the one we've got out here already. I agree. One of my biggest issues with the new TV's is that the aspect ratio is off, and much of what gets transmitted ends up looking distorted wide. Why can't they make them with the 4:3 ratio the way God intended???



I had one personal day left. I took it Tuesday, and took the family to Magic Mountain for what will probably be the last time this year. I was right about it being a good day to go, it was fairly empty. A surprise was the line for Colossus was the longest I've seen it. The Superman ride was about as short a line as I've ever seen, too!!! They have an illuminated "2009" hanging from the sky tower. I assume they'll have a "2010" coming on in a week or so. I told everyone to layer up when we were getting ready. Got there and wished I'd put on one more layer!!! It was chilly. Right before we left, we bought some Cold Stone ice cream. I have no idea why that seemed like it would be a good idea.

The last picture I took at my youngest nephew's birthday celebration. He's now 2. I found a Sesame Street remote control for him that makes all kinda noises and voices. I knew he'd like it. I did when I saw it. If it can captivate me for a while, it'll do for a 2-year old. From their apartment I saw these two kids climbing onto the roof of a business to play and took this shot. Totally ghetto!!!

Momentous Occasion!!!

Here it is, the 500th blog post!!! It might have come sooner, but you know how I get distracted. I had been hoping to have something moderately cool for this post, and here it is!!! The younger boy lost his front tooth, and looks pretty adorable without it!!! Not his first lost tooth, but it does seem like it's been a while. He quite literally lost it, it fell out in his sleep and he couldn't find it. He was worried that he'd get no tooth fairy money because of that, but this morning he found a piece of paper with his name on it folded up around cash money. Inside was the message, "You owe me a tooth. Signed, the tooth fairy". He told me, "I know it was you!!!"

You Want Gravy With That???

It's that time of year again. Yesterday they announced the cash profit sharing percentage for this year. Last year was 350%, a stunning amount to me. This year its 400%!!! Of course, I'm still under two years of service there, so I don't get all of that, just 4% per month, but still!!! For the people who've been there past two years, that's the equivalent of getting 16 months of pay crammed into 12 months. Of course, some days you go home feeling like you've done just that.

On the same day, I went to the deferred profit sharing meeting. Things just keep getting better, I tell you!!! This money gets put into a trust. It takes six years before you are fully vested, but check out what you get. 25% of your earnings for the year go into this trust. 25% of your base hourly pay. 25% of your overtime pay. 25% of that 400% cash profit sharing I just spoke of. Here's one I was not aware of. The company has a college assistance program for employees children attending full time. They pay up to $13,000 per year per child in school. Get this, on top of all the other 25% earnings you get deposited in this trust, you get 25% of the money they're paying towards your children's college!!! I'm considering adopting a few college bound teenagers!!! All the deposits into the trust, of course, are compounding interest.

It's all gravy to me, but one can never have too much gravy!!! And speaking of gravy, they're rolling out new paperwork tomorrow, so they had everyone do a half hour of overtime today, and an hour tomorrow and Monday. They were asking for volunteers for Saturday, but I've already got plans.

I know it's been a while, but have I mentioned that I really like this job???

A Noob's Ransom

Runescape has added a new feature, the Grand Exchange. Non members can put up to two different types of items up for sale, or offer to buy up to two types of items, or one buy and one sell. Basically, it's Ebay for Runescape!!! Of course, there are a few parameters. Somehow, they set what the "market price" is, and you can only go 5% over or under. The downside to all this is that the regular store prices are now tied to prevailing market rates, so the days of being able to find coal or nature runes in a store for a bargain price are now over.

But, hey, makes for trading your wares for gold much easier and more profitable. Provided, of course, you have something that anyone would want to buy. My first thing I put up was the Runeite ore I've been holding in my bank for the proper offer. $12,000, just like that!!! While working on getting my smithing levels up, I've made a lot of items. I put the 372 adamantite maces I've made up for sale, and the next time I logged in I'd sold 73, making almost $100,000!!! This was the first days that they had rolled out the exchange, and sales on that particular item have fallen off drastically. I had a buy offer for a pickax handle for quite a while to go with the rune pickax head I found, but no one is bothering to sell those off. I changed that to an offer to buy 100 dwarvian stouts at $2 gold each, and the next time I logged in I had them all. They are easily gotten for only $1 each, but it takes a LONG time to do that, and I've got the gold to not have to deal with all that. After that purchase, I put up the 1100 adamantite medium helmets I've made. These seem to be a hot item, I'm up to almost $1,000,000 gold for what I've sold of those so far. Several adamantite swords are in my bank still, the results of my quest to up my smithing level. Tonight I finally made it to level 74, with the help of all those dwarvian stouts I bought. Whoo hooo, I can now make adamantite scimitars!!! Only 1,128 bars to make and smith until level 75... Those scimitars should be a hot item at the grand exchange. However, I think I will make several other players very happy for my annual Christmas eve give away!!!

San Pedro Revisited

Yea, Blogger now automatically saves your drafts my ass!!! Just a second of the power flickering off and and half an hour of composition is gone. Know what, don't even put that up if it doesn't really work. And don't get me started on this bill of goods APC UPS backup that I bought. Would have done better wiping my ass with a $50 bill.

Well, my third time going to court didn't work out as I would have liked, but it could be worse. I'm fairly confident that I'll still get paid. The driver of the other vehicle actually had the decency to show up, and the judge granted the motion to vacate judgement. However, the actual owner wasn't there, and the judge continued the case until yet another later date so they could also appear. Sheesh, enough is enough, already!!!

However, it was a gorgeous day out today, and I took my camera with me. It was supposed to be storming today, but as usual the weathermen don't know.



It was the first time in quite a while that I've actually gotten out with my camera, and it was a lot of fun!!!



I wandered around Port of Call for about an hour. It was near deserted at that hour of the morning, with most all of the businesses closed still.

After that I headed down to the end of the land to Angel's Gate Park, where the Point Fermin lighthouse is located.



As I wandered through there, I met a couple of interesting people. One lady had retired from the movie business, where she was the on-site account person. Fascinating tales.



After that, I walked down a ways, and met a couple who told me that there was a large bird perched at the top of a tree. I took several shots, I think it was an osprey. Heading back from that I met another lady who told me that there were blue whales between where we were and Catalina island. She pointed them out to me, and let me use her high powered binoculars. I stayed there for probably more than an hour, watching them surface, breach, and dive. Amazing. She told me that she is a whale census taker for the state. Fascinating. She had great long range vision.


I got a couple of shots of the whales spouting, but none that are that great. We both agreed, we will be getting ourselves digital SLR cameras with big lenses for Christmas!!!

Drift Away

A little something to try, now that Blogger has an add video function!!! We'll just see how this goes...

As promised, here is the video I shot of security guard Dave at EPCOT singing "Drift Away"

Just a side note, today is my one year anniversary of being at my job. I still like it quite a bit, and just yesterday my supervisor informed me that I'm getting a 5.9% raise in effect on the check I'll be getting this week. Strange, they give you a six month review, then every year from that date you get another review. Your raises, however, come annually from your hire date, so in effect your raises are six months from your review. My supervisor found it strange, too.

Could It Get Better???

The other day was my birthday. It worked out really nicely. This is the first job I've ever had where I've gotten a day off for my birthday (it doesn't need to be on the very day, but they ask that you make it somewhere near it) so I asked for today off to make it a three day weekend.

On my actual birthday, when I got to work I was scheduled on printer #5, with a half hour float to my normal printer #73. I'm used to #73, but if I had my choice of any printer, it would have to be #5. And how's this to top that off, two of my normal #73 crew members were also assigned to #5 with me!!! Nice. One of 'em wrote the birthday wishes on my water cup, as well as writing me up a pass to skip a cycle. I told her that was a very cool present, as it had no expiration date, nor restrictions on cash value or transferability.

I bought myself the pliers in the picture. I don't really need them, but I've had my eye on them for a while. They're slick, they have a button that must be pushed before they'll adjust, so they won't be trying to slip around without my consent. I also bought myself a pizza from Papa John's for dinner. With the exception of a Chicago style pizza I once had, Papa John's is the best pizza I've ever had. There is no Papa John's near my home, but there is one less than a mile from my work that I've been thinking of patronizing for a while.

My parents had taken the oldest for a little trip with his cousin. He called me with birthday greetings, and then we were able to get the younger to bed easily to clear the way for some good 'ol birthday nookie from the wifey.

Could things get any better??? Well, yeah, they actually did!!! Remember the court case I had pending??? It had made for a few stressful days leading up to and including the first couple of days of the vacation, but finally the postponement came through. The court clerk was a real hardass about it, but due to my high functioning dyslexic tendencies I was finally able to get the hearing moved from the Friday I would have been on vacation. Turns out I had a couple of the digits in the defendants' addresses transposed, so the court mailings were coming back undeliverable. Got that squared away and the case was moved. Moved to the very day that I had requested off for my birthday, weeks prior to having any idea!!!

Had to wake up early today to get to court, and things went well. There was a different commissioner from the one I'd presented my case to last time, but other than that it played out quite similarly to last time. The defendants didn't show, the judge asked a few questions, then awarded me every dime of the amount I had prayed for, as well as court costs. Happy birthday to me!!! Now, on to collecting...

I guess 17 is pretty lucky, too!!!

15 Days

Fifteen days before the hearing is when I needed to have the defendants in my case served by. They were served on the 29th. Let's count together:

29-30-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13.

Yep. That's fifteen days to me. Apparently, the legal system has a different way of counting it, though. I received a notice from the court saying that service was not completed at least 15 days before the hearing date.

The good news is that, on the court's own motion, he trial has been continued to a later date. Bad news is it has been continued to a date where I will be on vacation out of state. I'll have to get a request to postpone form, get it to the court (all the fuckway to San Pedro again!!!) along with a $10 filing fee, mail copies to the defendants, and take yet another day off work. Sheesh, what a pain in the ass. Focus on the good part, it could easily have been dismissed. Hopefully the results are the same the second time, with the defendants not bothering to show up.

One of these days, I'll have to post about the vacation plans...

Lucky 13

Friday the 13th. What a day to have a court date!!! This stems back to the wreck of the Scirocco. I just re-read the post from that day, and boy was I wrong about their being no troubles being as they were insured. I have yet to see dime one from the insurance company (trust me, if you have Infinity Insurance, be prepared to be served, they SUCK ASS!!!).

Anyway, being as the statute of limitations for bodily injury runs out two years after the incident, I ended up having to take the driver at fault and the owner to court. Neither of them could be bothered to appear, but apparently the commissioner hearing the case will listen to the one side, and based on the merit of the case, make a judgement. The commissioner was quite liberal in her allowances, so I'll be getting a favorable judgement I'm sure. The only part I'm not sure how it will play out is how much she will actually allow for pain and suffering. She said she will consider that portion and I will be mailed the judgement, so I will find out.

Bad part was I had to file in the San Pedro court, because of where the accident occurred. As I drove down there this morning and back this afternoon, I was thankful that I don't work down there anymore. Good part is that it's a really nice courthouse compared to the downtown L.A. one. Small, and there is plenty of on-street parking. They were doing demolition on the lot diagonal from the courthouse, and it felt like 5-point earthquakes occasionally. I enjoy observing the legal process, and got to see a few cases before mine was up. Afterwards, I stayed and watched the remaining three.

Since I was in the area, I took a camera. Not my good camera, this week the rest of the family is at camp, and my camera is there, too. I would have gone, but last year it was in August, and I asked for the two most likely weeks off, and got one. As you can see, it's not in August this year. Anyway, I still had my previous camera, a Vivitar 3500 1.3 mega pixel. I dusted it off, and took a few shots of San Pedro.

Then, after all that, I drove from one end to the other of the 110 freeway,

took care of getting Janice transferred, went to a doctor's appointment,

picked up my prescriptions, and came home and took a nap.

And THAT'S why I'm up at 3:30 putting together a post!!!