Day After Yesterday

so I haven’t posted in a while, primarily because I have been busy, and I rebuilt my laptop and didn’t put the software back on it…

So what has happened since thanksgiving? Hmmmm… work is going ok, selling lots of stuff on ebay. The ebay thing is getting old, but we do need to move the stuff, and it is my job, so that is that. The boss is out of town tomorrow through end of the year, so hopefully I will catch up on all the little things that haven’t been getting done. Not that it is huge, but I have little things I would like to implement that I haven’t had time to work on…

I have a website project that I need to get working on… It is a site for a company that does something (I honestly am not sure what) but I am hoping to have the skeleton of the site done soon. There are some admin pages to control the content, so that will be kinda cool to work on.

Car related… the Jetta hasn’t been touched, but the Suzuki Throttle Bodies came. Those are cool. I need to order the standalone engine management too. Oh and start building the engine. I have been thinking about painting the car myself, although we need a bigger compressor for that. The Audi is doing fine. Al got me a great deal on the AC compressor that I need, so that will be fixed by summer. I also put snow tires on the Camry, although I didn’t replace the valve stems, so they leak air. awesome. Now I have to pay to get them fixed since we are driving to detroit this weekend and I am not risking that…

Mason related… I will post more on his blog, but he is doing good, although nothing super notable. He is smiling more, which is cool, but it is usually when we engage him. Soon it will be in general, which will be neat. He had some shots the other day, but he did quite well, barely cried and was fine since then. I am still waiting for him to be more exciting. It will come quickly.

Christmas is NEARLY here, which is kinda freaking me out cause I am not ready. We put the tree up, and there are pics posted of course… I also built shelves into the wall, which I still need to sand and touch up, but they came out pretty nice. I like them. Pretty modern looking.

I haven’t got my shopping done, which sucks cause I haven’t had time to think about what to get people. Time is slim now. And I am getting late in the season to shop online as I usually do. Grrrrr.

The xbox is cool. NES and SNES and Genesis games are cool. Old. But cool.

So there are more pics of Mason that everyone should check out. We are ending month 2. Word. He rules.

So the audi was supposed to be emission tested in april… but at the time, I didn’t have a working transmission, so I filled out the form and said the car wasn’t operational, etc. They rescheduled me to august… And I was still putting it off. In IL, if you have a 1996 or newer and have a check engine light, you automatically fail. Since the 2001 Audi A4 is a ULEV vehicle, the cat and it’s efficiency are checked pretty hard. I have a high flow cat in there that throws off that reading. I am sure that the car is still well below the state limits, I usually have a CEL all the time for the cat.

About 6 weeks ago, I reset the CEL with the stalk and it hadn’t come back on yet. I hadn’t been driving it much, but still, it was off. Saturday morning I was supposed to pick up Dylan and some concrete to work on the house… on the way out I decided I would drive past the emissions place, fingers crossed the CEL came off. Since Russ had said that the cat is not checked at WOT (and that had been proven at track events), and the car wasn’t all warm, I drove it hard to the emissions place. Pulled in, line was really short, and I was out in 10 min. with a nice sheet saying I passed. Score. Avoided for another 2 years.

The jetta is up for testing this month. And I am pretty sure it won’t pass, since it has a freaking beer can on the exhaust and they actually CHECK the exhaust. Gotta fill that form out and tell them it will be ready in the spring. The new motor should pass fine.

So I was driving out to the burbs on saturday afternoon to go visit Rebecca’s family… rebecca was already out there… and the motor mount on the jetta broke. I think it broke a bit before that, but it was just sagging (it kept pulling the wires tight) and it finally gave out… I got the her towed to our garage, and I will need to start working on it sooner rather than later. I am excited. I have big plans…. I would eventually like individual throttle bodies….

and robs pointed out it has been a while since I updated… so word up…

got the website up, although not without much hassle from the hosting firm… but it is up… finally. I reiterate, they suck.

On to better things… I got the jetta running on saturday. Well, it wasn’t NOT running, but it was leaking coolant. Dylan and I replaced a hard pipe on the coolant system and she is running fine now. Oddly enough, Cali sat on the street for nearly 2 months (end of may to last saturday) and still started right up. That was cool. Remember that key item, it will come back in a minute. We replaced the line because on Sunday, I entered Cali into the CVO’s annual car show, Treffen.

Since Cali is hardly a PRETTY car much less a show car, I had to have some fun with it… Here are the pics… I won ‘Jetta Least Likely To Make It Home’. It was a good time. There were some nice cars there. I got a fair amount of amusement out of watching the other people laugh at my car. I was having a good time.

It did however remind me that I want to get this engine built and into the jetta so I can actually have a better running, non-leaking jetta. It would rule.

So that was the weekend for the most part. I have been working lots, due to things at work not working correctly. Stupid computers. But they seem to be coming together nicely. Monday night we went out to my parent’s house to go couch shopping and so that I could fix my mom’s computer. Her iMac died when the power went out… so I had low hopes and I think I am correct, I can’t get the machine to boot AT ALL. I will try tonight to see if I can recover the files on the hard drive. Fingers crossed.

We did find a couch and my parents threw in some money and it will be delivered tomorrow. I am excited because we NEED a couch in that room. Or something to sit on. I am of course grateful that my parents helped out, although I feel a bit… not sure of the word… extremely grateful… not uncomfortable per se… but anyway. It rules though!

But between early saturday morning, early sunday morning, being in the sun all sunday, early monday morning, shopping and computer stuff monday night, I crashed come tuesday after work.

We ordered pizza hut. Pizza hut is one of those things that I THINK I want… and I think, man, I haven’t had pizza hut in a while. So we get it. and I eat it. And I remember that I don’t like it that much. But oh well. We ordered online and ordered the new twisty bread bread stick crust thing that they have been advertising the hell out of… only to have them call me after the order and tell me they don’t have it, since it was promotional. I am not sure if it is too early, or too late, but it seemed odd. Whatever I guess. The guy that delivered it was in a Lincoln Towncar. It was kinda odd. He also spoke in a such a way that you would think a MadTV or SNL sketch comedy person would talk in. It was odd. His name badge said “team manager”. weirdo.

So the couch is coming tomorrow… and I am getting mom a new computer tonight (eMac)…

is that a good enough post robs?