Entry for February 14, 2008 – Special Video for Glenda

Here is some footage of Bryson and Comet playing.

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Entry for February 14, 2008 – Open and Close

One of Bryson’s favorite things is to open and close things… like the dishwasher!

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Entry for February 14, 2008 – Bryson Playing in the Grass

Bryson played in the front yard and Amber snapped some great photos of him:

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Entry for February 13, 2008 – The Shingle Plant

The picture above is of my footprint. The black stuff is asphalt, the thick, nasty, sticky, stuff left behind from crude oil after gasoline and all the other good stuff is distilled. A little different than tar, evidently. (I’ve been reading up on it, since I have to remove it from my boots and floor mats)

Just to give you an idea what the stillyard of a shingle plant looks like, here are a few pictures.


Here is what a similar pump looks like without the fancy black gooey coating:

Click here to see the aerial view in google maps.

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Entry for February 08, 2008 – Quadzillia goes to 11psi

I’m sure everyone has been waiting in suspense to find out what ever happened to my daily driver, right?

I made a mistake in thinking it would be easier to just get new bearings for my busted idler pulley. The bearings alone cost $40. I called around and found that the Goodyear Gemini store on east Main would press them in for me. Those morons screwed up and did it wrong, and lost the spacer that fit between the bearings. I wound up ordering a complete idler assembly from Procharger. It was $50… I should have went this route all along.

So it’s all back together now. I made a quick edit of the VCM by fattening up the fuel and backing off the timing so I’d be safe to drive it until I get more time to dial it in correctly. It seems to top out at 11psi at redline, so I might be going a little smaller to get me up to around 14 psi, but this will do for now.

If you are interested in more details, go to:
http://www.performancetrucks.net/forums/showthread.php?t=411218
and
http://www.performancetrucks.net/forums/showthread.php?t=405690

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Entry for February 03, 2008 – Pics of the Bryson

Here are a few pictures of my favorite boy from the past week or so:


Shaun helped get the old pumpkins ready for the compost bin.

I didn’t get the picture at just the right time, but Bryson’s reaction to the lemon he thought we had to taste was pretty funny!


Bryson and Comet were playing with a dog toy in the floor. I’ve got to get the video edited and uploaded to torture my mother-in-law.

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Entry for February 03, 2008 – Quadzillia out of service

I had some time to finally get something done that I’ve been wanting to do for a while now: Change out the pulley on Quadzillia’s supercharger to a smaller size, which makes it spin faster and pump more air into the engine. I’ve been doing things all along in preparation for this step: Ordered the larger blower, larger intercooler, switched to larger fuel injectors, upgraded my fuel pump, separated/relocated the air temperature sensor, and added the boost-referenced water/methanol injection system. This will be the last power upgrade for a while, as 13-14 psi is about the limit of the stock engine internals and the 6-rib belt used to drive the blower.

The actual pulley swap went easier than planned. I was worried that I would have to heat the pulley to get it off the shaft because of a tight fit, but it fit perfectly without a fight. I went ahead and took the whole bracket and blower off so I could get it all cleaned up. (it was pretty nasty) I found one of the idler pulleys was noisy and had play in it. Once I got a look at it, I found the dust cap was off and the balls were rusty and a few were missing. I also went ahead and finally lengthened the alternator cable and relocated the “jumper cable attach point” out of the way.

So the project turned out to take much more effort than planned for. Quadzillia is currently out of service, waiting on a couple of bearings that I couldn’t get on a Sunday. Hopefully I’ll be able to get it back together tomorrow and start the process of re-tuning the engine to work with all that extra air!

I’m hoping this will take me to over 500HP at the rear wheels now. If everything works good, I’ll pay for some dyno pulls to find out.

A video of me spinning the blower by hand is here. The noise and gear backlash are properties of the 1:4 step-up gear box, which helps make that wonderful whine I love so much.

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Entry for January 29, 2008 – The Breast Cancer 3-day

I encourage everyone to donate to the Breast Cancer 3-Day. I received the following email from the wife of a friend:

Hello friends and family,

Below is a message from my friend, Molly. I hope that you will support me(and her) in walking these 60-miles over 3 days to help fight for others like Molly. Blessings, Nancy

My name is Molly Chapman and I am so proud of Nancy for joining this walk. I wish I could be walking with her, but I will be there in spirit every step of the way. When she told me that she was planning on walking, I was speechless. Sixty miles is a huge commitment, but that’s the way Nancy does things. I have gotten to know Nancy through her older son Scott who has been in my preschool class for 2 years. She is dedicated to helping the children of the school, but others as well. She’s doing this to help me as well as all other women with cancer, families touched by this horrific disease and friends of victims and survivors.

I have lived with breast cancer for 8 ? years now. I was diagnosed 6 months after undergoing my first hip replacement surgery. I had not been able to pay attention to anything but that pain for so long and had ignored my annual mammograms. After my hip replacement, I decided I was long past due to check out the pain I was feeling in my breast. I was not prepared to hear that I had cancer, much less that it had already spread to my spine, ribs and pelvic area. I underwent chemotherapy, had a mastectomy, another round of chemo, and finally radiation that first year. In the years since, I have had to undergo 3 more rounds of chemo and several rounds of radiation. I also lost my husband 5 years ago and for a while wasn’t sure I wanted to go on living. His place will never be filled, but it is bearable because friends like Nancy who are there for whatever I need.

I had to start chemo again right after school was out last May. Nancy was concerned about what Scott would say about my bald head. I tried to reassure her that he wouldn’t care and he never even noticed except to say that I had on my pink hat. Bless the little children, they do not notice little things like hair loss, just that I was still wearing my smile.

I thank God each day that researchers are finding new treatments all the time for this disease. My latest chemo was not available 5 years ago. It takes millions of dollars to fund this research. Each step that Nancy takes helps bring new drugs and treatments to this fight. I am humbled that Nancy is doing this for me, but I am also so very proud to call her my friend. Thank you, dear Nancy.

PS- Want to help with something more than a monetary donation? Forward this email and/or link to my site on to all of your friends and family. We are all in this together to wipe breast cancer off of the face of the earth!!!!! Nancy

Click here to visit my personal page.
If the text above does not appear as a clickable link, you can visit the web address:
http://08.the3day.org/site/TR/Walk/DallasFtWorthEvent?px=1574143&pg=personal&…

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Entry for January 29, 2008 – The Saga of the HOA Pavilion

My day turned stressful when I received a phone call from our HOA lawn guy saying he happened to drive by our park, and noticed that the pavilion was leaning over in the wind. Next update, the police were there, concerned that the structure posed a danger to people, were calling out the building code enforcement. Then I start getting emails and calls from other people. What a mess!

The story from the beginning:
I attended our yearly HOA meeting like a good homeowner and was asked if I would be a board member. I had recently changed jobs and would no longer be traveling for long periods of time so I thought it would be a good time to be more involved. One of the other people said we should build a pavilion in the park because there was no place to sit or get out of the sun. We got bids, and selected a contractor to do the work.

Near the completion, the contractor fell off the roof and broke his leg. He paid other people to finish up the work though. Turns out he thought the HOA should help pay his medical bills… so I got to deal with the phone calls from him and the insurance company. Not much fun.

So with today’s high winds, the whole thing fell down. I figured the connection points of the columns were insufficient, and the roof section hinged down… but when I saw the pile on the ground, my thoughts are now that we have an expensive wood pile.

So, thus far, being this involved in the HOA has been a mixed affair. It doesn’t stay dull very long.

Here is what it looked like this summer:

Here’s what it looked like around noon today:

And here’s what it looks like now:

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Entry for January 27, 2008 – A Geek's Obsessions

The picture is of my desk at home.

I’ve recently been struggling to defend why I am the way I am about certain things. I found myself getting offended at being called a geek! Well, after browsing over to the greatest website of all time, I now see that the term “geek” is changing meaning.

  • A person who has chosen concentration rather than conformity; one who pursues skill (especially technical skill) and imagination, not mainstream social acceptance.
  • A person with a devotion to something in a way that places him or her outside the mainstream. This could be due to the intensity, depth, or subject of their interest.

I realize that these definitions could be describing those people I’ve seen playing some sort of dungeons and dragons game at a lunch table by themselves, but I also know I am way more cooler than that.

I move from one obsession to another. Right now, I am transitioning away from my “buy a diesel commuter car and convert it to run on waste vegetable oil” kick and in the peak of my “run a full-featured VoIP PBX at home” kick. The computer running the PBX software (open source of course) is the one on the far right of the picture. I’ll move it into the communications/linen closet soon. Aside from a hardware limitation, I have it functional. So don’t be surprised if you call my home and you have to go through some menu options to reach me. My goal is to make it so that my phone only rings when people I know call me. I already have enough configured so that I can answer or make home phone calls through my office phone or from my cell phone through wi-fi (not using the cell network). Pretty geeky huh? (and I mean geeky as a badge of honor in this case)

Although being described as a geek tends to be an insult, the term has recently become more complimentary, or even a badge of honor, within particular fields.

Thanks for sticking with me this far, this was more words than I like to read in a blog. Hopefully, this will serve to get out some of my excitement so my wife doesn’t have to hear me talk about this stuff again today!

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