So beautiful I want to cry.

Some comic artist, that I ought to recognize right off, made an alphabet A-Z pictures of various comics.
http://www.neillcameron.com/A_to_Z.html

If I had became a comic artist, I would make stuff like that.
(Instead I am nursemaid to a trans am, which has chosen to regress back to its non-operative state. The new fuel pump did nothing.)

I miss alumni group, I wonder if they still meet? I bet they do.
I bet they didn't catch my change of email, and I should ask somebody, even though they have my phone number and address. Or maybe they realized I'm not technically an alumni?
On Monday I accidentally went to the college to use their bathroom and I saw that the Original Don is still teaching. No way! If Don is there then that means they must still be meeting!

In other news there was a DUI/DL checkpoint right across the street from the church. The police set up their headquarters in the park. Tomorrow is Cesar Chavez day, with supposedly fun stuff in the park. Coincidence? I did a lot of walking and made a lot of signs with arrows.














When things get boring, which they have NOT been lately, I will sometimes check out the Cassini Huygens website. This is the space craft that has been taking pictures of Saturn and its three dozen moons, every few months or so.
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/

Random space dust

I saw two very bright meteors tonight while cruising.
It's unusual to see any kind of stars around here, with the city lights and all. Also, it has been foggy or partly foggy, these days. I was sure it had to be a meteor shower.
At first I thought it was the Lyrid Meteor shower, but the website says that one peaks on APRIL 22 not March 22. So I am off by a month. It must just be random space dust.

Last night I saw my friend Damien at the grocery, he runs a community theater.
I think he says their next show opens next week, it's Joseph with a glam-rock flair. Knowing him, it promises to be racy and fun.
I wonder if I can take 2 Saturdays off in a row, because the big car club meeting, where everyone who insulted everyone else online will be there, is on April 3.

I am cooking chicken and watching the owl cam and reading about bizarre food.
I mistakenly bought regular sized chicken breasts, which take twice as long to cook.
Here are some inspirational websites:

Chicken in a can. Somebody brought this up last week...
http://www.avclub.com/articles/chicken-in-a-can,23883/

And I have been avoiding it but I finally saw the Hugh Jackman Lipton Iced Tea commercial.

Thursday, March 18

Nothing much going on today.
I drove the uncle around and in return he gave me an old wedding photo, and I borrowed one of Mike's CD's.
Van Halen, OU812, which completes my collection of Van Halen music. I intend to return it, because the uncle wants to give the music to either my brother or cousin, but I had to at least make a copy... Mike had a few cd's that I don't.

This is a really interesting, short You Tube video about a man who demonstrates an ancient Chinese martial art training method:
(cut and paste)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqnQj1Lx02Y&feature=featured&playnext_from=TL&videos=TfK0Es3UwtE&playnext=1
The most interesting part is where he says that these kinds of ancient learning practices are dying out, because nobody devotes their entire life to something. He says he learned it because there was nothing for young people to do in those days. Nowadays, "There are too many things to do" he says.
I totally agree, because as an artist I am always finding distractions. Like hot rods, horses and rock and roll...

The car is up and running, but it has some serious issues. It is missing all over, or backfiring at 2000 rpm. Sometimes it has days where it is perfect, like half of yesterday, then the rest of the time it's just a mess. It starts right away and then the next time it takes forever and I have to hold the throttle open. Sometimes I panic and think there is damage in the cylinder, but it's not showing any other signs. Yet. I am mostly convinced that I need new spark plug wires, because one of the boots falls off of one, but fixing it only helps for a day, or not at all.

On Monday I was convinced it was a dead cylinder. I borrowed the temperature gun, and the cylinder seems to be firing OK, it is the same temp as the others...

Ancient Chinese Curse

"May you live in interesting times."

Since I'm busy on two other message boards, I'll save it for later.

Happy place! Happy place. Happy place.

Aw, crumbs.

I got the afternoon off, so I can visit my friends at the dyno. I only hope that the club members don't kill each other before I get there.

Mom is sick with the flu, as well as another person at work, so I can't get out at noon like I hoped! The good news is that I'll be working for the sick person on Monday.

Today I went to the store and bought two seat covers for the GTA. They were cheap and black and faux leather. I bought black because I can never find the right shade of tan, and black goes with everything. Not.

Unfortunately, when I took them out of the package, they were two completely different designs, so I will have to return one. Unfortunately, they are also extremely ugly. Also, when I tried to put one on the seat, it made a hole in it. (The cover not the seat, the seat already has holes) So I'd feel guilty about returning that one.

I should have got the stretchy black kind, but those never have separate head rest covers. All because I can't afford to reupholster it right now...

When I was all done with THAT, which was midnight, I looked online on the smaller club board, and found that part of a comment I'd made earlier, was deleted. Also, two other people's comments were COMPLETELY deleted. It wasn't like we cussed, either. I was very mad. I had heard of this happening to friends of mine, but I never really noticed how bad things were, until one of my own posts was deleted.

The dyno event was supposed to be a secret, because we didn't want somebody to go, but unfortunately somebody else mentioned it was happening this weekend. The person nobody wants to see, has been trying to manage the event, even though he has nothing to do with getting the place or even bringing a car. (I think keeping it a secret was dumb, anyway. This was going to be the only non-rainy weekend all season, so of course we were going to dyno!)














I made some mad posts on both boards. I probably shouldn't have, but this has been pissing me off too long. I started to write mad posts after the last fiasco, last month, but I deleted them right away. Maybe I should have said something sooner...

The event hasn't even happened yet and I am afraid of what will go wrong this time!
I need to relax. Maybe everyone has settled all their problems.
And for all I know, my transmission will break before I even get there!
(I haven't touched the car since the mechanic found that loose cable...)

Anyway, I already decided months ago that I wasn't going to go to any more meetings, even though I'd miss seeing my friends. So if I go too far with what I say, and can't show my face among them again, I'll live. Although, the things I have to say, I'm pretty sure I can say to their faces.

I haven't gone anywhere fun these days, so I'll go through my archives and find some recent pictures that I haven't used...

Hooray! I'm still registered on the blog site.

Pic from Sunday. I found myself at my favorite hangout when I was at the university, the arboretum.

(I may sulk but I won't sit still when I can help it.)

Today was more of the same.
In other words, I stayed at home and sulked.
I watched the owl cam and I stayed far away from the barn. It should be dry, soon.
I don't like mud, but today I am angry enough to tackle some tree stumps and muddy holes.

Some creepy old dude at work hit on me. Unfortunately, I don't speak his language!
And no, I don't shop at the mall for rings, and especially not with you, sir. If I had $500 I'd get a new set of tires. I don't know how to say tires in your language, but one day. I will.

For one of the cars... Right now I'm not sure which one deserves an upgrade!

(The Toyota still shifts harder. And weighs less. There is still a tiny part of my brain that says, "put the SBC in the littler car!!!")

Today it was more Toyota, because $10 of low grade gas goes a long way. I bought more food at the store. I baked potatoes today, but I really intended to make garlic and chicken.

I get paid tomorrow, yay.

I was really angry or unhappy, though. The car club had talked about not making the dyno public. This is the first non-rainy Saturday all month, and a dyno day has been in the works forever, so the undesirables are going to be there, naturally. I wish they realize they are ruining it for everyone.

Luckily, I was able to get the morning shift, so I will get to the dyno in the afternoon, and hopefully all the fireworks will be spent. I just want a drivable car!!!

At least it's thursday

I am out of gas money. I stayed home after work, and baked chicken and watched the Owl cam.

On Tuesday, after I posted, I sneaked the car out onto the now-dirt road and went to see the mechanic. He had bad news.
First of all, the car backfiring at 2000 rpm was *not* because I loosened a spark plug wire by accident. He says I need further tuning of the chip.
(I was there on Saturday and we did a preliminary test of the chip and everything checked out *perfectly.* So why is it going bad now?)

His son can only do computer work on Saturdays. This Saturday is the first saturday without rain for AGES. So everyone is going to take their cars to the dyno, which is a big deal. His son can also tune the chip at the dyno, which is actually better because I can test it at racing speeds, but the shop with the dyno charges by the hour.

Secondly, he discovered that a wire was loose from the transmission, which made it not shift hard for the past week that I've been driving it! And I am very freaked out.
The car has been drivable, but if I had known I would NOT have driven it. And It did slip once on Friday, (which I chalked up to my overactive imagination) and also didn't go into reverse very well on Monday night... (I tried to pretend it was due to the parking brake) I even remember thinking, the Toyota shifts harder than this? But because I know I am paranoid, and haven't driven the car in 4 months, I really couldn't be sure...
I try very hard to conserve my transmission, it isn't easy not to burn it up with so much horsepower! So this was more than a little disappointing.
Needless to say I won't be driving it until the backfiring can be fixed, which is Sat, I HOPE. Any other problems will happen when they do.
Sigh.

I found another neat video from my favorite YouTube make-up artist, unfortunately I don't have $10 to see the new Tim Burton movie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOCzQ3pKGvk&feature=popw00us0d

Stuck at home

(Did I not upload this pic, already?)







The street crew is busy working on our street again today! They are finally going to re-pave it as planned. They have a machine that scrapes the top layer of asphalt and spits it out the front with a conveyor belt. A truck drives in front and collects the asphalt. Later they will mix it with new asphalt and make a new street.

Yesterday I changed the oil and must have knocked a spark plug wire loose. I can't find it, I'd like to take it to the mechanic but I got up too late, and the street crew had already started. I can get out, I guess, but I might get yelled at.

I'm out of gas money so I guess it's OK.

I've been watching the owl cam at Starr ranch. The two tiniest runt owls died in these past days, but the four remaining are large and healthy. It's funny to hear people get bent out of shape about it, wishing they could have been saved. It's nature, folks.

the cutest thing EVER

One of the nature centers has a live web cam of a nest of BABY BARN OWLS!

http://www.starrranch.org/blog/?page_id=2

They are all so adorable and very noisy and carnivorous!
The parents feed them several times a night!

I am mesmerized.
More about Barn Owls.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barn_Owl

I spot a barn owl about once or twice a year while driving at night, usually in south county.
I once saw a great horned owl while working late at night at a friend's community theater which is located in a tiny city park surrounded by huge pine trees. It swooped down to get a mouse that ran across the outdoor stage. I had no idea those even existed around here!

This is a really good year, lots of rain.

Life has returned to normal

Worked all day, drove around and raised hell all night.

(eventually I'll have to stop someplace and take pictures)

I don't even know what day it is

All I know, I get paid in 10 days and the price of gas went up 10 cents this week.
They must have heard the TA is up and running again!

The car was ready Monday evening, but when I picked it up, it still had issues starting!

It ended up being a pretty quick fix. It apparently still wasn't getting enough fuel during the starting temperatures. (But now we knew it wasn't the faulty fuel pump.)

Don is not the expert on chip burning, that would be his son Kevin. Kevin told Don where to look on the file for low fuel during start up. Don took my chip's program and compared it to one from a similar car. Sure enough, during the start, my car showed significantly lower levels of fuel.

We couldn't remember which file was on this car's chip currently, so we took a program from the most recent chip that he could find, (it was burned during a dyno session in February of last year.) Then he added fuel to the appropriate areas in the file, burned it, and installed it. Voila! The car starts smoothly now.

Now I need to wait until a weekend when there is no rain, and Kevin will hook up a laptop to the computer and the car will tell the laptop exactly what is going on. Then he can fine tune the fuel levels so that the car runs optimally at all speeds.

There are at least 50 variables with tables to adjust, some you don't want to mess with! Perhaps we never even changed the starting fuel level from a stock chip.
Also, sometimes we revert to a stock chip if there were too many changes made.
The new fuel pump changed the fuel ratios, anyway, requiring a new chip.

Maybe I should write these things down! I can't even remember all the parts that have been exchanged in these 9 years. When people ask what's been changed, I say "everything!" and that's the truth.

The sad part is when something starts to malfunction, and I know I've had it happen before, but I just can't remember what it was or how it was fixed!

Finally, after getting the computer chip to perform well on the street, there is a dyno session. On a dyno, the cars can run at full power, simulating a race condition. In a race, the car can (these kind go) 0 to 110 mph in about 11 to 13 seconds. You can't test that on the street.
The car is run on the dyno, and then changes are made to the chip until the air-fuel ratio is optimal and/or no more changes make a difference. Sometimes it takes 3 times and sometimes 5 or 6 runs. The air/fuel ratio is a guideline, but it's not exact for every car.

I've dynoed the car at least 5 times. Usually after a big, new part.

I'm just happy it starts now. That was the biggest thing that kept me from driving it.