What to do with my time (or lack thereof)?
Alternatively titled: Reasons I don’t need a Wii (right now).
It’s ~9:00pm and I just got in from working on my car. Did quite a bit really. Installed a new air cleaner gasket, new hood lifts (goodbye prop bar!), and adjusted the shift points a bit. The thing shifts so much smoother now. Don’t let anyone tell you 1/16th of an inch won’t do anything! …Anyway it was a very therapeutic session (despite the frustration) after a long day of remotes and work that started at about 6:30 this morning. My shade tree mechanic work didn’t take long, maybe an hour or so, but it’s something that’ I’ve been trying to find time for for the last two weeks at least. Just haven’t been able to squeeze it in.
There’s just so many things that I’m really interested in right now, and it’s hard to balance it all out to the point where you can look back on any one thing and see significant progress. I’ve been really enjoying Guild Wars as of late. Our guild just finished up a weekend long festival of games and competition. It was a blast, but it soaked up just about any free time I had due to the time that was required to get all the prizes together and organize the event. Not that it’s a bad thing, like I said I really have been having fun with it. But it’s a big reason why I didn’t get around to working on my car until tonight. Lame or not, judge me if you must. I’ve also borrowed a copy of the new Zelda game which I’ve only put about two or three hours into and is also a BLAST! But between everything else it kinda falls through the cracks. Not to mention trying to find time to just sit down and spend some time with Andrea (though she’s been playing alot of Guild Wars lately too hehe)! Sadly the blog has been suffering as of late too.
I know, I know. It’s life and everyone that is reading this can tell the same sad story. I guess I just wanted to express my frustrations and get it out of my system. Not really looking for answers because there aren’t any realistic ones. Just hunker down and do what feels right at the moment. Oh and about the Wii. It just doesn’t seem like it’d be a good investment, as in money in exchange for entertainment value. I have so much backlogged that I really enjoy the crap out of that I’m afraid the Wii wouldn’t justify the cost unless I completely abandoned everything else. I’ll get a Wii. But not until I 1) Beat Final Fantasy XII, 2) Beat Zelda Twilight Princess, 3) Beat all the missions in Guild Wars. That should take care of most of my backlogged video games. And then I can handle keeping an old car running and kicking ass in Wii Tennis at the same time!
The last straw.
As you may or may not know. Our cat has had issues remembering where her litterbox is. Now…I don’t completely fault her. Sometimes my lazy ass puts off cleaning the box out for too long, and I can’t blame her for pissing somewhere else. Imagine if you didn’t flush your toilet for a week. Yeah, I’d whizz on the bed too!
Well I awoke at 6:30 this morning to a cat pawing at my leg. At first I thought that she was being a little brat and though that she needed fed a couple hours earlier than usual. But no! Apparently she had just finished crawling up between Andrea and I to take a piss! That was pretty much it. It’s one thing to do it while I’m gone and come home and find it, but it’s quite another when you crawl ON ME to do your business. I was seriously ready to haul her off back to the animal shelter where we got her.
But after I cooled down abit, Andrea and I decided that we’re just going to have to keep her out of the bedroom. She’s got her scent on the bed (from several occasions) so it’s hard to keep her from doing it. And we’re going to start scooping out the litter box daily. All the things we do for a freakin’ cat! But if she finds a new place to call a toilet, I’m afraid poor Nala is going to have to find another home.
Stupid cute cat.
04.18.07Stupid Keys. Wal-Mart suprises.
I locked my keys in my car for the second time in the last couple months. The first time it WASN’T my fault! I have a long lanyard on my key chain and it got caught on the door as I was closing it and sucked the keys right out of my hand into the car as the locked door slammed shut. And I didn’t have any spare keys. Ugh!
This time it’s my own dumb ass fault. I just got out, locked the door and left the keys in the ignition. GRR! I’m always so paranoid about locking my keys in my car too. That I usually check twice to make sure I have my keys when I get out of the car. And I STILL didn’t have any spare keys for this car! Dumb ass moment again, I know.
So the guy pop the lock with relative ease. And I paid him and I head to Wal-Mart to finally go get a spare set of keys made. As I walk up to the automotive counter, they are JUST shutting off all the lights. But the girl closing counter is nice enough that she said she’d make a set for me real quick. I was shocked to find someone that nice and willing to take extra time to help somebody out when they could just punch out and get the hell out of there. But as she’s looking, they’re out of the keys I need! GRR! But I still thanked her for being willing to help me even after they shut down. So I didn’t walk away feeling completely disgusted.
But I STILL don’t have spare keys for this car. I’m going to have to go by True Value tonight or something. I gotta get some damned keys…or a slim jim. I can’t afford to keep paying locksmiths every couple months!
04.16.07What does that even mean?
I’m just too damned white.
I’ll be the first to admit I don’t run around in the “urban” circles. But people surely don’t talk like this casually do they? I mean, I see this ad, and I think that even the wanna be thugs have to laugh.
Obviously this is targeted towards the black audience. Because I don’t know a single white person that can pull off the phrase “Big things poppin’.” But then again, I don’t know any black people that would seriously use the phrase either! This almost strikes me as a white guy sitting at a photoshop screen saying to himself, “How would I make an ad that speaks to ‘the blacks’?”
At anyrate don’t be suprised if you never get to hear the ‘hot new track’ from T.I. vs TIP because this ad already scared everyone away who would actually listen to it.
I’m sorry. I just thought this was funny.
Injustices
I’m not one to think I oogle and oogle over celebrites. My long time infatuation with Helen Hunt is well established and documented. However I’d like to think that given the opportunity to sit down and have a drink with Mrs. Hunt she’d still appear to be flesh and bone, and that I wouldn’t stare at her in wonderment the entire time. I’d much rather have a human like conversation with someone who leads a very different life than my own. So if I had the chance to meet a “celebrity” I hardly think I’d embarrass myself or those around me.
Hopefully you’re familiar with a show on the Discovery Channel called Mythbusters. Where they take old myths and put them to the test to determine how much truth they really have. Well they’re going to be doing a presentation at K-State McCain auditorium on Friday. They’re not filming an episode or anything, I believe they’re just going to be talking about the show. To be honest, I have no idea what they will be talking about. I am going to try my best to make it to the show, which hopefully isn’t sold out yet.
No injustices so far.
AFTER the show, a co-worker of mine who apparently knows some people who know some people, is going out for drinks with one of the cast members from the show, Kari. Who just so happens to be the coolest one out of them all! And I’ll just say I’m a little miffed that I wasn’t invited! I don’t want an autograph, or a picture sitting next to her. I just think it’d be cool to sit and chill with a cool person who does cool stuff for a living.
So even though I wasn’t invited, I do happen to know particulars. And I just might coincidentally be in the same place at the same time, enjoying a drink of my own. That’s not too stalkerish is it?
04.11.07Overclockin’ like a mofo.
I got my new dual core processor a while ago and never got around to posting my sweet overclock! It came clocked at 2.0 Ghz, but I got it running at 2.4 Ghz solid as a rock. So now this baby is just as fast as a processor that costs almost $100 more!
It’s pretty sweet how much smoother and faster everything is with the dual core. And Guild Wars doesn’t get bogged down anymore when my virus scan kicks in!
I’m putting diesel in my car from now on.
Diesel oil anyway. The fact that my car has 209,000 miles on it now says something about how well the previous owners have taken care of it. To this day the car doesn’t leak a drop of fluid anywhere. But with as many miles as it has, it’s pretty important to make sure I’m not pushing the envelope. On the oldspower.com forum a bunch of car guys were discussing the best oil to use for our cars. Surprisingly most people said oil for diesel engines was best. They reason why is kinda complicated, so if you don’t really care, please skip ahead to the picture of the ostrich head.
Back in the day cars were far less complicated than they are today. You had all those moving parts grinding against each other, so yesterday’s oil was packed with all sorts of great lubricating agents that worked pretty well. Infact lead was put in gasoline as a lubricant! In a car as the valve closes, it slams against the valve seat like a little jack hammer. And it will do this millions of times over the life of your engine. So they put lead in the gasoline and it would cushion the impact. Then the government decided it was bad to be burning up all this lead and spewing it into the atmosphere. They said, “Hey you can’t make cars that require leaded fuel anymore.” So the manufactures had to start manufacturing hardened valve seats which didn’t require the lead lubricant, but of course were more expensive. So if you’re driving an old car circa early 70’s on back. You’d better have stock piles of leaded gas, or use a lead additive to every tank!
This is much the same story for motor oil. More than dead dinosaurs go into the oil you put in your car, there’s detergents that break down the dirt and crud that can get caked on inside, there’s additional lubricants like ZDDP (zinc dialkyl dithio phosphate). Both are good things for any fuel burning, friction producing motor, and diesel oil has more of both! Unfortunatly the government decided burning and leaking this ZDDP all over the place was bad for the environment too! So they told the car makers and the oil manufacturers that they were starting to limit the p.p.m. of ZDDP allowed in conventional motor oils. This caused manufactures to rethink how they designed the components of your engine, to tolerate the less effective oils now mandated.
This is most important for cars with flat tappet camshafts instead of roller camshafts (the difference). The more ZDDP the less wear on the lobes of the camshaft, and all the other parts of your engine for that matter. So even if you don’t have a flat tappet cam (which I don’t), the benifits of ZDDP are still realized through better overall lubrication of your engine!
So that’s why I’m using diesel oil. You could use it if you wanted. But unless you have a car made before circa 1985 it’s probably not completely necessary, but it’s certainly not doing any damage either. Quite the opposite in fact. And when the price of cars keeps going up and up. Don’t blame GM, blame our good friends in California and the EPA. I am fielding bets though on whether I make it through this oil change though. 2:1 odds says I do. So you give me a million dollars, and if my car blows up before 212,000 miles, I give you TWO MILLION! I take cash or paypal. No personal checks please.