I picked the Jeep up this evening, having gotten all of the regular maintenance work and the fan switch repairs completed. They’re still stumped by the oil leak and the engine noise so they’ve put some dye in the oil and have asked me to drive it around and bring it back on Monday to see if they can tell a little better where it’s coming from.
Author Archives: Pat
Picked Up A Tiller
Thank you craigslist. I managed to find a Yard Machines 2-stroke tiller for a reasonable price. It’s definitely going to see some use on the flower beds this year and will be used on the raised bed garden I’m building after that.
The Jeep’s In The Shop
I’ve been having some bad clatter, sounding like the top-end, but since I’m only marginally qualified to diagnose my Sportster, and then only once I’ve taken it apart, I decided to bring it to the dealer today since it’s still under the 7 years/70,000 miles warranty.
As I was talking to the service writer about it I remembered that I’d seen some oil leaking around the transmission and oil pan and mentioned it to him. He seemed to think that it might be the main seal going, which is a bummer, but hopefully if it’s that it’s covered under the warranty. They’re also going to try to track down that clatter and are going to fix the broken fan switch as well, which was just an annoyance but since it’s in the shop already I might as well get it done.
Updates to follow…
The Reality Disfunction Part I: Emergence
| I’ve read another of Peter F. Hamilton’s series and based on that and a co-worker’s recommendation, I picked up the first two books in this series and finished off the first one on the way back from San Francisco.
This series is set in a different universe than the previous series, and like that one it is consistent and believable. There are multiple story lines with many characters, and based on my previous experience with his books, it pays to pay attention to what’s going on in all of the story lines. They intersect and diverge seemingly at random, but at least so far with a greater purpose. The story is set approximately 600 years from now with humanity having spread out through the stars. Since this book really is a lead-in to a 6 book series, and really should be considered the first half of a larger book, it really is just setting the foundation for what’s to come. Among the various subplots are a prospector searching for riches in an orbiting alien graveyard, pirate hunters, colonists struggling to make a home on a new, primitive world, and independent starship pilots trying to make a living. As of now, the colonists have unleashed a seemingly unstoppable power and it’s spreading thanks to those starship pilots. |
Macworld Day 2
Due to some unfortunate engineering I’ve been in a quandary with regards to getting my DV videos off of the camcorder. It turns out that the camcorder does something to lock the FireWire bus and the only way it’ll work is to make sure that it’s the only device on the bus. Unfortunately, that means that the external storage for all of those bulky video files isn’t available and I don’t have the drive space to move the videos off onto the main drive.
Macworld to the rescue! I found an ExpressCard 34 eSATA adapter which supports port multiplication (for later expansion) and a cable so that I could connect the external drive to the eSATA bus and the camcorder to the FireWire bus. Imports now work smoothly and the drive seems a bit faster than when it was on the FireWire bus.
I also picked up a pair of Etymotic‘s ER-20 Ety-Plugs earplugs. They were also kind enough to give me a few more tips and filters, plus a shirt. Yay swag!
The Holy Virgin Cathedral and St. John’s Relics
I got a chance to go over to the Holy Virgin Cathedral for vespers this evening. It was a beautiful service, which I could follow along with but not understand since it was in Russian and I, sadly, do not speak it.
During the service I was able to take time to venerate the relics of St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco, which was, for me a very special experience. You can read more about him here.
Macworld
I found a little free time in the schedule to get over to Macworld today and check things out. It’s just as crazy and crowded as it was last year. Most of the usual suspects are back and there were a few new ones as well.
The MacBook Air is impressively small, but there are far better articles out there on it and the rest of the keynote hype so I’m not going to waste my time.
I didn’t do that much shopping this year, though I am trying to put together a disk array to move some of my larger chunks of data, such as my Aperture library and my iMovie projects, to. Lots of vendors there with eSATA hardware RAID boxes, just a little out of my budget right now.
I did pick up a Aperture specific keyboard overlay from KB Covers. It fits right over my external keyboard and has all of the Aperture specific keyboard shortcuts printed on it. There’s stuff on there that I didn’t know I could do without digging through menus!
I also found a great deal on a new laptop bag. I’ve got a laptop backpack that I’ve been using for a while now, but I wanted something a little different, like a messenger bag. STM had a booth and had a few samples of a bag that they’re introducing later this year for sale. It’s a messenger bag which can be converted to a backpack. It fits my 17″ MacBook Pro perfectly and has an additional compartment behind the main one for accessories. It’s as close to exactly what I am looking for as I’m likely to find and it’s coming home with me.
New Beer Tap
I’ve been having trouble with one of the taps in my kegerator. It gets stuck, won’t open, won’t close, and the only time it works reliably is when I’ve loosened the collar enough so that it leaks out the handle shaft.
I ordered a new tap, a Ventmatic (formerly Shirron) Forward Seal Faucet from Northern Brewer and got it installed a little while ago. It’s working well so far and I’ve got access to my stout again. We’ll see how it does over time, and if it works out I’ll replace the other one as well.
Happy Birthday To Me
Today’s my birthday, and while it’s been a bit slow and quiet because I’ve got a really early flight to Illinois tomorrow morning, I did do some present opening. The most interesting one was Liquid Bread’s Oxynator. I’m going to try it out on my next batch of beer!
For A Few Demons More
| I got a Barnes and Noble gift certificate for Christmas and used it to pick up a few books, including Kim Harrison’s latest Rachel Morgan book. It picks up not long after the previous one left off and continues the major plot lines of the ongoing demon problems, the werewolf issues, and the vampire clans’ dominance battles. The last book and now this one have gotten more episodic. Not saying that they don’t stand alone, but you couldn’t start in the middle and enjoy the read because there’s very little recapping and history discussed. Definitely one of the better books of the series and it’s set the stage for the sequel. I’m hoping some of the longer unresolved threads to start at least working towards a resolution… |