miss miata's all back together and running quite nicely. Still in need of a wheel allignment, so I haven't gone for an extensive drive yet, but all seems well.

I got it all together at about 1pm yesterday. Smiled, sighed, and turned the key. It turned over and over. No fire. Damn.

Then I saw that I'd failed to plug the wiring harness back up to the crank angle sensor, so the computer never got the signal to fire the plugs... Riiiight. Pluged it in, turned the key and it started right up.

And ran like shit. With an awful clicking noise. I rotated the CAS back and forth and it steadied out a bit, but still wasn't running very smooth. And when I disabled the timing advance to check the baseline timing & idle, it nearly died.

I couldn't figure it out, so without any other choices, I decided to take the timing belt off and redo it. When I got all the covers off, I carefully examined the timing belt, and it looked to be lined up perfectly. Regardless, I pulled it off, spun the cams & crank, and lined it back up while fitting the belt back on. Spun the crank with the belt on, everything seemed to still be lined up. Put it all back together and turned the key.

It ran just fine, only smoked all over the place because of all the gear oil I spilled on the exhaust.

As Kevin of the miata list said, "Sometimes the autommotive gods just want you to do it twice."

Today I successfully installed an S2000 starter button. So I guess my car has some Honda blood now. Man is it a sweet switch. I had to refrain from sitting in the garage and repeatedly starting my car, it's so much fun now.

More progress on miss miata today... I would have finished tonight, but it's a real pain to work in that garage once the sun goes down. The lighting is less than helpful. I can see the car. I can't see much else.

I've gotten to the point where I have a small handfull of bolts and quite a few more parts waiting to be installed than I have bolts to install them with. I'm not sure why this happened, as I usually have bolts left over. I tried buying some replacement bolts at home depot, but was less than successful. Metric bolts aren't easy to come buy. (And then there's the issue of my understanding bolt size and thread guage, and so on... which we won't get into)

All that's left is a few more bits of the cooling system as well as the intake system... and we'll be in business. We can hope. Course, after that I've got to get a wheel allignment because I not only disturbed the front suspension by replacing the tie rod ends, but also the rear suspension got mucked with in the differential remove/install.

I'm hungry.

I've also discovered that I will never be able to do crossword puzzles. Dad gives me clues from them occaisionally if I'm nearby, and he thinks I might know the answer... This one he asks just to piss me off because he knows I hate it, and I forget the answer everytime. "Neighbors with a radius". "A chord?" I ask, trying to go through all the parts of a circle I can think of that might qualify. The previous clue, for which "A chord?" was the best answer I could come up with was "parallel to a radius". Now, in the strictest sense, the answer wouldn't be chord because there's no reason a chord would HAVE to be parallel to a radius, but the sense of crossword puzzles is never strict. so they drive me nuts. I'm not sure why dad likes them. They're full of trickery, and it's not about what you know, it's about knowing how to play their stupid little game. The answer is "ulna", which I hope I won't forget next time he asks me.

Slashdot amuses me greatly sometimes. This pictures, linked to from the front page, is great: http://www.dreamhack.org/dh01/photos/PB300345.JPG. Not sure I'd want to be there, no. Well, yeah. I mean, it can't be as bad as a concert, and you've probably got somethign in common with the guy next to you, which is hardly the case with concerts.

It seems U2 has sold out in Atlanta yet again tonight. I think they're playing tomorrow night to? I'd like to see them sometime, but I'm not about to pay the ticket price a band like U2 fetches. And most of their concerts tend to sell out within a few hours of tickets going on sale. I'll go see them when I'm an old fogey, and only old fogeys are going to their concerst. Easier to get into. I mean, a Moody Blues concert isn't ever much of a problem...

Then there's the think geek ads. They always catch my attention. Course, this is the firsttime I've seen the ads in a long time since I'm typically running with some sort of ad blocker program. "Your video card sucks. / Unless it's this one--->. / Suckage is bad. / We can help." I almost got offended.. My video card is only a Geforce2, but still... I mean... but.. I don't even GAME!

I wonder if there's a way to archive all this journal stuff, or if it'll stay on slashdot forever. I wonder if I really care.

Well, that's about all I've got to type about for the moment...

Berck

Miata's differential has been installed! It wasn't easy, but it was easier than I thought it would be. Manuevering 80lbs of bulky metal to a position 2 feet above the ground while on one's back under one's car is difficult. Even when using a cheap hydraulic jack.

In the meantime it seems I've got something in my eye, which is driving me nuts.

In addition to reinstalling the differential, I've resintalled everything I had to take apart to initially remove it. I was qutie impressed that I spent a minimal amount of time crawling around the garage floor looking parts. As to what goes where, I was a bit worried about finding all the right bolts for the right parts, but that seems to work itself out... When actually putting it back together, it becomes fairly obvious what bolt goes with what. I was just beginning to wonder since I had no idea what went with what by looking at the enormous tupperware container full of them.

I'm not homefree yet, I still must reinstall the timing belt and all associated covers. Completetion of this task depends on waiting for (yet another) shipment from Mazda South containing the tensioner and idler pulleys... which I didn't realize needed replacing until a few days ago. Which is better than a few days after I put it all back together, I suppose.

Argh.. me eye is troubling me. That's all for now, then.

That's really frustrating. I just wrote a journal entry, but seemed to have managed to not actually post it. Now it's gone for good.

Ah well.

So now you get it nice and short. My differential should be ready TOMORROW. Uh huh.

And the thing about a motorcycle. A 1972 Honda CB350 Motorcycle to be precise. In pieces with lots of rust. But I'm excited about it.

And since I already did this once, this is all you get today.

Got somewhat bad about this writing thing when people were here. Must be that Red Alert 2 syndrome, or something.

Anyway, it's back to the normal life of Berck today. Nothing exciting in the mail... My car is still in pieces, and my computer is in shambles.

On Sunday, Dad just thought he'd let me know that there wasn't a chance that I'd get my differential on Monday. His reasoning? "It's an automotive repair. This means it will be late and overbudget."

"But it's ALREADY late and overbudget!" (i.e., I was supposed to get it back by Wednesday (before thanksgiving)for $100. On wednesday we were up to $450 and Monday.)

"You won't get it back Monday."

Sure enough, on Monday, I found a message on my answering machine from Russ at Roswell Mazda. "Berck, this is Russ.. It seems we've come up short a few bearings... you should have it by Wednesday, though."

So, we'll see what happens on Wednesday.

I seem to have lost my Linux installation. My SCSI harddrive was giving me errors last time I tried to boot from it. I figured it was a result of my Win2k install, but I couldn't seem to fix it. So I told the BIOS to do a low level format. Which it did. This didn't make the partition table readable, though. Just non-existent.

Finally tracked the problem to a SCSI cable...

The differential for my car came in the mail today. Interestingly enough, I got home and discovered that I had left my keys at the mailbox. This time I really had, and they were hanging out of the mailbox.

So I took the differential up to Roswell Mazda, a nice 40 mile drive from my house. He said he should be done with it by Wednesday. And then I can start putting things back together, I hope...

I'm really missing being able to drive.

Not a whole lot else happened today. Dad and I went shopping. Bought a turkey.

There's an audiogalaxy client for linux. It actually works.

It was quite a nice fall day. Even smells like fall. The sky was fairly gray today, I'm not sure why. Now that it's twilight, it's very grey. The treeline is grey and brown, the grass is brown. Winter will is near. I like the smell of fall. It smells quite different from spring.

I've felt somewhat gloomy today, and didn't feel like doing much of anything. I've never quite figured out why I don't like Sundays. It's just an icky day. Everyday has a feeling about it, and I've never liked the feeling of Sunday. The Italians are the only ones who seem to make sundays worthwhile. And, darn near the whole time I was in Rome, the weather was beautiful every sunday. And most every other day, as well. I'd never seen a real spring before then.

I really wanted to go for a drive. (which would have been a rather Italian thing to do..) A nice long drive, maybe drive north to the mountains. But with my car on jackstands, this is hardly something I can do. Driving the exploder isn't any fun. In fact, it's a real headache.

Going for a walk might be nice, but I'm not really much of one for strolling about suburbia.

I'd like to get my car back together very much, but who knows when I'll get all the parts to do it. I hate waiting for parts in the mail. And I'm not even sure my latest order has been shipped.

I probably won't get it back together until it'll probably be too bloody cold for a top down ride... But then, it doesn't get all THAT cold in Atlanta, so you never know.

Today was a day of victory. Or at least, the beginnigs of victory.

I woke up at 8am. I'm not sure why, but it rather surprised Dad. I haven't been sleeping so well lately, maybe it's because of the ear infection, which is qutie better now. Purple pills....

By 9:30 I was under my car, trying to install new tie rod boots. After removing the tie rod from the tie rod end, I hear and nice "gluck, squish" from the tie rod end. The rubber bit holding the grease around the ball joint had given out, which means I need new tie rod ends. Might as well replace both of them. I'm growing weary of finding parts that need replacing....

After noticing this, I started thinking about my differential... I called one of the guru's and he said he'd set up the new differential for a $100, if I removed it from the car and brought it to him, which seemed to be a very fair price to me. I didn't ask what it would be if he removed it, because I somewhow decided that I was going to do it myself.

Sure enough, a few moments later I was unbolting the power plant frame... 5 hours later and lots of cuts, bruises and scrapes, I had the differential sitting in front of the car. Now, we can just hope that I can get it back in the car.

Dad's so encouraging. He came home and said, "This doesn't look like an improvement..." He keeps harassing me that I'm never going to be able to get it all back together. And that was before I attempted this feat.

In addition, I made Linux print! To a network printer! This is a damn near unbelievable feat for me. Sure, it SHOULD be simple, but I've never managed it before. Took about 2 hours, and there seems to be something not quite right with its queuing... Next linux project: WordPerfect 8 install. I'd also like to convert to Reiser FS, which will involve dumping my system to another hard drive temporarily.. With Linux, this should be nearly trivial..

Anyway, I was planning to do the timing belt install on my car as soon as I got the parts, but I don't think that'll happen until I get the differential back in... Without a drivetrain ending in a parking brake, I don't think I can torque the crank bolt. Unless I come up with some clever way to block the driveshaft from turning.

Quite a nice day out today, as well... Good day for car working. Not hot, but not so cold that I was terribly uncomfortable in a t-shirt.

(See Mom, aren't you glad you read all that?)
Wonder if I can see any meteors before I go to bed...

I ordered a differential for my car. The guy at Mazda Competition told me I needed the stub axels from the open diff to install the diff he was sending me. I knew this already.

It took me awhile to get to MazMart to buy the stub axels. When I got there, I waited for what seemed like forever for Paul to come out and help me.

I like Paul. I'm not sure where he's from, but I'd classify him as genuine rasta-man. He's got a carrabian accent. Dreds. And a nice sense of humor... It's nice to talk to him.

Then they tried very hard to talk me out of the Mazda Competition differential, which was kind of silly since I'd already done it. Mazmart wanted to sell me a torsen differential and all the parts needed to install it in my car, to a tune of $1500. The mazda competition differential was $500, brand new, and seems to be every bit as good. Hey, if it's good enough for a race car, it should be good enough for my car, right?

Anyway, they reminded me how hard it was going to be to get this differential installed, and told me that I basically need someone with the training of a jedi master, or a real guru. I mentioned that I'd hoped R-speed would be able to do it, and Paul said "They might..." just as Joe from R-speed walked in.

No, Joe said, they couldn't do it.

Oh.

Did he know who could?

There was some guy in Roswell who did one once upon a time... The solo miata guy, Randy, should know...

So I bought my parts, thanked them, and drove home.

That took nearly 3 hours thanks to Atlanta traffic. I left 2pm and got back at 5pm. It turns out some guy ran through a security checkpoint Hartsfield, so they closed the whole airport. One guy runs through a checkpoint, and they turn all incoming planes away, ground the ones preparing to take off, and evacuate the airport of the 10,000 people who thought they were going to go somewhere.

Well, I e-mailed Randy who gave me the names (first names, but I assume this will be sufficient) of people at two different places who are the gurus I need.

Now the only question is what sort of small fortune are they going to want to do this...

I've not been feeling very well today, something of an inner ear infection, I think. Dad gave me Zithromax, so we'll see how I feel tomorrow.

I've got linux working... more or less. It's still not as clean as it really ought to be. But, it's come a LONG way. Finally got a scroll wheel as well as dual display working.. And, I know how to make the RAID array work once I get hard drives again.

XMMS is somewhat unimpressive, in that it doesn't seem very stable. WinAMP is even less stable under Linux, but it is still "alpha". Funny when a lot of what you're running is alpha.

I would say that the scroll wheel works BETTER with KDE than it does with windows. Windows has a habit of scrolling the wrong window. KDE is good about knowing waht you want it to do. That's class.

And man, real configurability is sooo nice. Course, it comes at the price of being forced to configure everything.

I'd like to get the web server back up, but that's not going to happen until the DSL modem is back under my control.. And it seems that it has to go in a windoze box. So I need something I can install 2k on.

Maybe I should get a job, build a new system, and put 2k on this one. Yeah. That's it. Or find something really cheap on which to install a 2k server. I could probably do it for not too expensive.

It's amazing how much you get addicted to dual display. I'm glad to have it back.

I wonder how fast thing will be once I get the RAID array back. I wonder if I'll bother install 2k on it. Well, that may depend upon whether or not I can get the printer working. And wordperfect. These are difficult tasks.

That's about all I've been up to today..

I just noticed that there's money in my account. Which means I can order a differential. It was probably there this morning, and I didn't notice. Yay, signs are good that my car will become unified again soon.. Though, not without much work. And it's been so long since I removed the timing belt, I'm beginning to wonder if I'll remember how to put it all back together. And that's the hard part.

Berck

I'm really not much of one for thinking up subjects.

The box in which one types this says "Entry (This will go down on your permanent record)" Ooooh.. My permanent record. When I was much younger, I was lead to believe there was this "permanent record" on which all ones transgressions were reported. It never bothered me that there didn't seem to be any such authority to keep track of such a record. The concept was frightening enough.

This was, of course, before I got old enough to care about things like civil liberties, and that such a permanent record would surely be in violation of them.

Much like Lowe's tried to violate them today. I needed some CAT-V cable, and I wandered around Lowe's not remembering quite where such things were stored. A very old man came up to me and asked if he could help me find something. I told him what I was looking for, and it turns out I had walked right past it. I was in the electrical section, and I was admiring the cable which was large enough it looked like it could carry all of the current to power a neighborhood. Or three. It probably was, but then I got carried away realizing how small it actually was in comparison to large transmission lines.

They sold CAT-V by the foot, and it appeared they had two different sorts. They were listed as "plenum" and "non-plenum". One, of course, was substantially more expensive than the other. 19 cents a foot instead of 9 cents a foot or some such. The only thing that plenum conjured up in my brain is an evaluation of different sorts of intake manifolds.. The sort of intake manifold one finds in the good old cars from the good old days. A very large one which sits on top of 8 cylinders and supports a carburetor in a fasion not unlike a pedastel. Anyway, a plenum type manifold has a thin peice of metal which separates the manifold into different sections not far from where the carburetor joins. I've never really understood the point in a plenum even though I read a bit on the subject back when I drove a good old car. Some people seemed to think they were good things. Other people suggested filing them down. Others suggested removing them entirely. The intake on my car had one, and I figured that if Eidelbroch though it was a good idea, that he knew more about it than I, and I'd leave it alone.

Anyway, I imagined a thin sheet of metal dividing the twisted pairs in my cat-v briefly, then examined the two cables. One seemed to be a slightly different shade of blue than the other.

So I asked the rather old guy what the difference was, though not expecting much of an answer. He answered "Well, this one's yur plenum. If yur gunna put it in yur livin room, you don't need a conduit with the plenum. IF there's a fire, and you got yur non-plenum, you'll die from the vapors if you don't have a conduit..." he went on for awhile, and nothing he said made any sense. In my mind, there's cat-v. If it's rated as such, it'll do the job. There exterior and interior grade, and I can understand that okay. I picked the cheaper one, wondering what Eidelbroch would have picked.

He took the box of cable up to a little table with contraptions on it. He fed the cable through a tube and started winding a crank. A neat looking cable odometer starting counting. He wound until it read the request 100 feet I'd asked for. He cut the cable and wrapped it in electrical tape, then scribbled on a label and stuck it on the cable.

When I got to the check-out counter, the guy there seemed utterly unsure of what to do with either the cable or the sheets of metal I'd selected (in hopes to fix the armrest on the Exploder). After getting a manager who tried to explain it to him, he took me credit card and asked for my ID.

Which isn't all that bad, but I found it rather frustrating as it was yet another step for them to go through, and was taking much longer for me to get my things.

And then Lowes, in typical capitalistic fashion, violated my rights. My god-given (well.. maybe not god-given) right to be free of unreasonable searches. I mean, there's not a lot that I feel like I've got to be proud of in this country. And the bill of rights was a really bad idea, but I figured that I should at LEAST be granted the rights that someone decided specify a couple hundred years ago, even if that specification ran the risk of depriving me of other rights... The very polite woman a the door insisted upon searching me. And then comparing the results of her search with my receipt.

I never used to understand why this drove my father nuts, but I can understand now, the fuss he always made about it. If we don't stand up for our rights at the beginnings of infringement, what will happen when it gets really important?

Our country is full of contradictions, and of late, I've been rather disgusted by them. This is a country where we seem to take so much pride in our "rights", but here the very "right" to capitalism which we as Americans think is so important, leads directly to infringement of a much more important right, I think, our right to be free of unreasonable searches. It wasn't my government searching me, it was LOWES... I got infuriated thinking about it as I was driving the exploder home. I essentially PAID them to search me.

Anyway, I'll be shopping at Home Depot next time...

(editors note: I could have edited this, and made it more coherent and so on, but I don't feel like it now that I'm done writing it. So deal with it.)

So I woke up rather late today, not feeling so great. A bit light in the head. I feel like I'm getting an inner ear infection... We'll see what I feel like tomorrow.

I took a shower quite quickly and managed to get myself in the exploder fast enough to get to the mailbox by 1330. Since there was, in all likelihood a check in the mail for Dad that needed to be deposited, I needed to get that done by 1400. Not much of a problem, really. Sure enough, there were several envelopes that appeared to contain checks. I'm not sure why these envelopes are plainly different from the ones that contain bills, but I've yet to get it wrong. I tossed them on the floor of the exploder, and started driving to the bank, when I realized I didn't have a deposit slip. Not much of a problem, I could always ask them for one... Except that I had NO IDEA what dad's account number was. And, I didn't know for sure if they'd give it to me. So rather than chancing it, I decided to go get the deposit slip, because I knew I'd still have enough time to get to the bank before 1400.

Fine, until I climbed out of the explorer and walked to the front door, and reached my hand in my pocket, and then the other. And then sighed and walked back to the exploder. Not finding my keys there either, I cursed. Then I thought about possible methods of entry to my house. Only possibly non-destructive one I could come up with was climbing a wall to the window I might have left open. Climbing at least 10 feet seemed unlikely and even more unlikely that I could accomplish such a task in time to get to the bank by 1400. So, back to the mailbox where I must have left my keys. Probably hanging out of the mailbox--I'd done that before. Never got farther than the door of my car before because the keys are all on one ring. But since I was driving the Exploder (because the front side of the engine of Cordelia is in pieces) my keys were not tied to my current method of transportation.

I walked in, and my box was closed and locked. "Marrion, have you seen my keys?" She looked at me strangely, and said "Uhh.. no... you drove away, so didn't you have them?"

"No, this isn't my car..."

"I've noticed you've been in the big red thing instead of the small red thing."

"yeah, rub it in, why don't you."

"Don't like it?"

"No."

"Guess it doesn't go zoom-zoom," she empathized. I sighed, thanked her, and left wondering if she knew my car was a mazda and associated it with the current mazda "zoom-zoom" ad campaign (which, by the way, I don't much like), and decided that she had not, and it was a fitting coincidence. If you look for something, you'll find it. Whether it's there or not.

I subjected the passenger side floorboar in detail, and finally found my keys under the passenger seat. I growled, and by now it was nearly 1400. I sighed, and realized there was no chance I was going to make the deposit on time.

I got home and desired to check my email. Since my bad IBM drive had finally munched through enough data that windows wouldn't stay booted (immediate blue screen in kernel32.dll, never a good sign), that I would need to coerce linux into doing my bidding. A working (more or less) linux installation was sitting on a SCSI drive which was unaffected by the recent demise of my RAID array. After watching reassuring boot-up, I tried to configure my system to talk to Dad's. Dad's now possessed the DSL modem, as I hadn't another win2k box to put it on. Dad's system seemed quite unwilling to be a server, though it did relay a few pings, which was thoughtful of it.

Surprisngly enough, my wanna be router (linux box with lots of NICs) was graced by Dad's computer forwarding just about anythign it wanted. So I climbed the many steps and cursed at Dad's computer. (It helps... Me, not it)

After several trips up and down the stairs I finally realized that Dad's computer was actually operating the firewall software I'd installed on it, even though the GUI for the service wasn't active. So, after firing it up, and adding my system's new IP to it's list of acceptable associations, everything worked just fine.

I then convinced K-mail that talking to bellsouth was okay, and it provided me with 120 or so messages. The joys of mailing lists.

At least on my outlook express set up, the mailing list mail gets nicely sorted into appropriate folders so I need not manually sort through it in order to get to the important stuff. And, it's much easier to read miata mailing list messages separate from Linux-ATM-development mailing list messages. It's very frustrating for my brain when I read "Lately, I've noticed this smell of antifreeze after a hard run..." followed by, "I too have had problems with pppd, but under linux-2.4.15-pre2 with the following error codes, thanks to my serial console..." followed by, "I think my crank angle sensor is leaking oil..."

Among all this email, I found one from Dan Pedroza at Mazda South, with a subject of "Eeek!" I know what it was about, and was hopping it wouldn't be there. Mazda South is a friendly Mazda dealter in Austin, TX from whom I order parts. They've been good to me, and I feel better about giving them my money than the local grubby dealers. (a visit to a local dealer involves a long, messy drive, followed by messy parking, and endless waiting in line to be told they don't have the part, but can order it sometime next month if i'm nice and pay them $860.43 for the heck of it) Dan at Mazda South is typically there when I call, and gets my parts out to me soon, and usually the amount I save from buying from him makes up for shipping cost, and I don't have to pay tax.

Anyway, I knew what it was about because my bank account currently has $6.21 in it, and I was hoping that ammount included my order from Dan, which I'd placed on Friday. (It seems the parts took awhile to get to dan, and since he hadn't shipped them, he hadn't billed my account yet.) So I tried to call him, but he wasn't at his desk, and so I left a message with someone. Figures. And, since I was late with the deposit, who knows when Dad will be able to give me a little more money...

A few moments later the phone rang. I picked it up, expecting Dan. But it was Dad instead. "Was there any money in the mail?"

"Umm.. Yeah.. but.. the deposit didn't go in for today."

"Shit."

"Sorry."

"Okay..." (followed by a sigh).

I called Dan back a half hour later, and he'd already left for the day.

I've spent most of the day fighting with linux. KDE takes forever to compile, and it's quite frustrating to be waiting for a compile only to have it terminate because it's misisng a library, and then you download the library, and then it won't compile.... Remind me again why I want to be a geek?

Thought I'd play with this. Maybe if I like it, I'll even type at it with some dilligence. Unlikely.

Keeping a journal would tend to indicate that I do something worth journaling. In fact, in this case, it's probably just the opposite. I've got lots of free time. Well, all my time is free. In the since that it's mine. Not in the since that I'm bored, and desperately looking for things to do. But I, and my time, are, for the most part, free. I wonder if all those commas are legal.

Dad's started a list of things for me to do when I get a chance, which is, I suppose, quite fair considering I don't pay rent. On the list so far is:

• Rug Spots
• Deck
• Detail Explorer
• Put Tires on Toyota
• Fix Armrest

Hmmm.. It seems that I did something I never said I do, write another line of HTML. I suppose for formatting a list, that's reasonably harmless. Since this is being saved as "plain old text", not actual HTML, I suppose I'm safe.

So, I did the first two things on the list. At least, I assume I did. "Rug Spots" probably indicated he wanted me to remove spots from the carpet, which I did. At least, if he wanted me to spot a rug, or carpet the cat, I misinterpreted. In addition, I cleaned off the deck, threw away all the dead annuals and gave the frog a bath.

I got invited to go on a Deal's Gap run this coming weekend. Don't think I'll be able to attend, as my car won't be fixed until then. This is a shame, I think a run at the gap might make me feel good.

A few more pictures online on my new attempt at awebserver. Not sure why I'm feeling this urge to start keeping something of a presence on the web, but why not...

I made dinner tonight... Meatloaf and mashed potatoes. It was okay, especially considering Dad was late, and I had to keep it warm in the over for about an hour.