597 days, 9 hours, 16 minutes since Bush is out of office!.
President Obama on Leno
For those of you who did not get a chance to watch President Obama Thursday night....I offer, for your perusal, this link to "The Tonight Show".
And by the way...for the record, FOX, LA Times, et al. The AIG mess, and the bailouts, and the lack of rules on oversight of the administration of those bailouts AND THE CONTRACTS that were written pertaining to those bailouts...all happened prior to President Obama taking office....
...and yet, he takes responsiblity because he's got cajones, something the previous administration did not have.
-The Dickens
AMD vs INTEL
Let me preface this post with two things:
- When building a box for myself...I don't like to go cheap.
- I have a Dual P3 1Ghz box with 1GB of RAM that I originally built in 1998 that is still outperforming a lot of off-th-shelf new P4 computers being sold by many manufacturers.
- It has an Adaptec 39160 Ultra 160 card and Drives
- It started out as a P2 400Mhz machine and 256Mb
- In 1998 I built this "scream machine" for about $800. Had I ordered it from HP, Gateway or Dell, it would've been a server...and it would have retailed for somewhere around $2,000 or more.
So now, 11 years later and after a similar computer with an MSI piece of junk M-Board (that is supposed to run at 133Mhz FSB) I am realizing that a man can not live on Laptop alone...and that it is time to build a new box.
...and I know something else: AMD has lost it's edge in the "speed wars". Intel has AMD's asses in a sling.
Except for one thing, and I'm not sure why this is so.
The Motherboards and Features found on the AMD supported side, blow the Intel Hardware out of the water. Period.
It's not just a battle of the CPU's, but the stuff that the CPU's sit on, and need to work that makes the AMD platform so attractive.
...more on this later, there is a soap-box around here I really want to hoist myself on.
-The Dickens
Why They Charge $700 For Ball Joints on an Aerostar
OK. So a while back I took my 1993 Ford Aerostar to be inspected and it got dinged because she needed to have her Upper Ball Joints Replaced. So I got a great big REJECTED sticker for my troubles.
Truth be told...I had a feeling this might be the case, because I'd replaced the lower ball-joints back in 2007, and WANTED to change the uppers then...
...it just looked like a bit more work than I was ready for at the time.
So, since I was not working today, I jumped up this morning, cleaned a little, straigthened a little, and got started on this mechanics job at about noon...
...and the next thing I knew? It was dark...
The reason it took me so long, is because I pulled her around to the back yard, where our ground is eternally smooshy (for lack of a better word).
Smooshy ground is not a good thing for jacking up cars, or for supporting them for them matter.
Keep in mind that 2 tons of Aerostar crashing to the ground would make minced-meat of my tiny human form...and I kind of like my noggin' in it's current un-squished state.
So to keep her from sinking, falling over, and decapitating me or crushing me to death, I had to cut dunnage (wooden blocks) to put underneath my jackstands and my floor jack. (if you look in the picture above, you'll see the chop-saw I used to cut my 2x4's)
WHAT A PAIN!!!
Each time I moved my floor jack, I had to take up,
and then restack, my two layers of dunnage.
and then restack, my two layers of dunnage.
Once she was all jacked-up, I started working on changing the ball-joints.
When I started out, I figured I'd be at it for 2 maybe 3 hours TOPS. That was before I discovered that I'd have to pull the whole assembly out and DRILL the old rivets out!!!
Thank God I have Grandaddy's old vice mounted on my bench!!
Thank God I have Grandaddy's old vice mounted on my bench!!
Here is what the old ball-joints looked like
after I pulled them out and drilled out the rivets.
after I pulled them out and drilled out the rivets.
Here is a close-up of my very neat and tidy drill-motor work.
It was a little difficult, cause I had to use my 3/8" DeWalt
instead of my 1/2" Stainless Steel Milwaukee.
(couldn't find the damned thing)
I got it all figured out on the 2nd one I removed, when I realized that I did not have to drill all the way through the rivets.
On the 2nd one, I only drilled about 1/4 of the way into the rivet, past the top layer of steel. Then I cut off what was left of the rivet-head with a trusty 1920's cold chisel (cut through it like butter), and this allowed me to just pop the arm right off the ball-joint with my hands. WAY EASIER.
The replacement bolts came with pinched-head nuts which made for a nice tight fit. I applied some high grade red Loc-tite on all the threads to make doubly sure those suckers don't go anywhere.
Here's a shot of the shiny new upper ball-joint in place,
waiting for me to put the wheel back on.
waiting for me to put the wheel back on.
I'm patting myself on the back...even if it took me all day to do this thing.
I just saved myself at least $700 BUCKS!!
-The Dickens
What the F^cK is a T&P Valve?
So I went out to the garage to complete work on the engine from my beloved 95 4-Runner
after a 4 month hiatus(Head Gasket issues with complications)...
....when I discovered water all over the garage floor in various stages of pooling and puddling.
Ummm...what's going on here?
So I went over to the water heater for a closer look...and discovered water coming out of a long tube running down the side of the thing.
Above the tube is a valve coming out of the water heater...
...and above that valve was a sticker with a whole bunch of scary legal-ease that basically read..."blah blah blah, under penalty of law, blah blah pressure blah blah valve blah blah" and was of no use whatsoever.
So being the perfect geek, I went back to Google and typed the words "water heater pressure valve" and figured out what the problem was right away.
THIS THING right here is the culprit, and it would appear as though it's worn out and leaking.
The Home Depot website was of new use (as if it ever is) but Lowes.com has them all ready to go and in stock.
So I now know what I'll be doing tomorrow. It'll take longer moving all the crap away from that corner of the garage in the freezin-assed cold, than it will to actually drain the heater, spin the leaking valve off, and screw a new one back on. .
I wonder if I'll be able to get my thoroughly too-hip son or my soon-to-be-Ex-Wife to aid me in any way whatsoever with clearing away all the crap around the heater...HA HA HA, I crack myself up with all of the wishful thinking I find myself doing in my old age.
-The Dickens
