yaleman.org

Wow, this is terribly funny - lanning on a 433mhz laptop with a 10mbit network card… boy this is slow. Download speeds max out at about 800k/s, and most things are too big for the hdd to download, but oh well… it’s something to do. Except for the fact that it’s nearly 2am and I need to start work in 13 hours 🙁

Well, the Mambo CMS was kinda good, but really clunky unless you’re a big-site developer with a lot of content from different writers and running a big portal (I guess). WordPress is designed for a smaller site or blog, so that’s what I’m running now. The management backend is seriously easy to use, and I worked out how to convert the database from Mambo to WP really quickly. Yay me!

When I’m walking around work, I build up a fair bit of static electricity. It’s something to do with my shoes or my hair or something to do with how amazing I am I guess - but I build up a LOT of charge just walking a few steps. It’s mainly to do with the makeup of the soles of my shoes, since they are doc martens which have a plastic/rubber sole that’s good at building up a charge. Sometimes when I discharge (generally on things like the metal frames of doors and the cubicles) it can make quite a cracking noise, and sometimes even make quite a twitch in the muscles of my hand. It’s quite dangerous at times, hurting people if I accidentally (or intentionally) discharge through some part of their body. Then there’s this guy - the king of static electricity. Wow, I bow down to him.

Finally picked up the engine from Bryant on friday, woo hoo! $984.30 later, I’ve got myself a bottom end ready for assembly. I’ll have to get pictures when I’ve got the camera with me at the workshop, exciting times!

Ok, so I got this webcam AGES ago, and I had it working for a while - because I had installed the drivers off the CD. It’s a stupid cheap little webcam, it looks like they bought the leftover casings from Intel for their original cheap-and-cheerful webcam (I’ve had an Intel cam that looked exactly the same)

The problem is, it seems to be some sort of limited-release product according to this page. If you search for PD1100 anywhere on the Creative web site, all you’ll find is the reference to it on the “list of webcams” page. Downloading the drivers for a similar model doesn’t work, and none of the drivers I could find (admittedly, I didn’t go through EVERY driver for webcams, because this is such a slow process) would work.

I’ve been wondering about share trading for a while as an investment opportunity, and I was reading up on it on a few sites, where I found this quote:

Trading is a zero-sum game. For every winner, there is a loser. What’s the difference between winners and losers? Smarts and strategy. For every loser in the NASDAQ implosion there was a winner. Does this mean that there are traders with neither strategy nor smarts actively losing, effectively shifting their funds to the winners, armed with strategy and smarts? Yes, absolutely.

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Yet another update where nothing really happens. I just got a call from Bryant Engineering updating me on where they were up to with regards to the engine rebuild. The connecting rods are fine, no cracks - though they did have to clean them up a little bit, but nothing major. The crank’s big ends needed to be ground to -0.020" because there was a small radius on one of the journals. Again, nothing major - so that’s wonderful. The block turned out beautifully according to the rep that called me, and if they are saying that, then it must be good. Now all I need to do is wait for them to source bearings and complete the balance, and then I’ll be able to pay for it and pick it up.

So, I was driving home from work with Mitchell and Lauren in tow - and lo and behold, driving out of the valley, I got pulled up! The only reason they could give me a ticket was the fact that I didn’t indicate while I was sitting in the right hand turning lane, waiting for a green arrow. So I had to blow into the little machine, and establish the fact that yes, while I was at work, and while walking from work to the car, I had not gulped down a large amount of alcohol and then decided to break the law. Not only that, but when they spent a good five minutes sitting in their car playing with each other, they couldn’t find anything in their computers about the fact that I killed all those little old ladies at the old folks’ home. Apparrently his carputer was broken, I still think it was masturbation - either way, there was some wanking going on that wasted my time. Thanks Queensland Police!

Ok, so going by the topic, you’re thinking that either I’ve gone mad, or my hoarding skills have been redirected to another goal. Well, I’m already mad, and a little bit of the second part is coming into play here, but there is method to my madness (no, really! there is!) Basically, I’m spending over two grand on a G180 engine for the gemini - and that’s just the motor, not including fuel system and other stuff.

So, there was a weird smell coming from the van when it was warm, which was nearly a clutch smell, nearly a hot brake smell, and nearly a whole lot of things. The weird thing is, it wasn’t coming from the driver for once, it was the car! Seems that the automatic transmission needed a good service, so that’s what we did last night. Full flush of the auto trans fluid and new filter/gaskets was the order of the night, including checking the settings on the bands. After all that, there’s no more smell, and it seems to run a bit better as well. The reason for the smell is the fact that the auto fluid was frothing (don’t ask me why or how, it’s probably something to do with overused/old fluid) and venting through the top - trimatics have a little vent at the top so they can do that.