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03 maggio Now that was fun So i recently had the pleasure of installing a new starter on my car. its a 1991 Pontiact Bonneville for those who didn't know. the issue was that when starting the car it was a poor crap shoot on whether the starter would actually engage the motor and start the car. sometimes it might turn the engine once and then disenage. so most likely the bendix was worn or failed in some manner. anyway, while i didn't expect it to be a walk in the park, i guess i was not prepared for how much greater of a challenge it would be over changing out the blower motor.
here it is good to mention that unlike the blower motor, the starter needs to be spaced correctly off of the engine block so that the gear on the starter will nicely mesh with the teeth on the flywheel, thus starting the car. if its too close the gear hits the flywheel, grinding the metal and not starting the car. if its too wide then the gear misses and does not start the car. apparently the rule to follow is to space the teeth one paper clips width apart. of course, how you're supposed measure that when under then engine and there is all sorts of things in your line of sight is anyone's guess.
so anyway, first you have to locate the starter. meaning, jack up the car, disconnect the battery and crawl under it. it took me a couple minutes to get over the fear of crawling under something that, if the worst should happen, would easily cruch you under its weight. once i overcame that i came to discover that mine was luckily close to the front and mostly accessible; only one structural support passed beneath it and both the bolts were reachable. so, the first night i found the starter, disconnected the leads and removed a little plastic guard meant to keep "oil cake" and other dirt off of the flywheel. unfortuantely i didn't have tools suited to the task of breaking free 18 year old bolts; thus ended day one.
the second day a kind co-worker lent me a longer wrench with two extensions and an elbow joint. with the extra leverage and a fresh supply of elbow grease the bolts came free and the starter was removed. now just to get in the new one. installing the new one was easier than i expected. i got it into place and used the same three shims (0.015") from the old one to space the new start on the engine block. good, now start it up and...the wonderful sound of metal babies crying and finally the car starting. as i only had three shims at this point i decided to try out removing them all together. so crawl back under, take out the shims and retighten the bolts. turn the key and nothing but the wonderful sound of metal on metal. like a bunch of loose nuts and bolts in a coffee can. ok, so nothing else i can try tonight then. end day two.
day three...lucky for me there is an auto parts store about a 7 minute walk from where i work. on my lunch i walk over and buy a set of shims. as it was friday night and my neck and shoulders were still hurting from the last two nights lying on my back under the car, i decided to take it easy.
day four. going for an jump in the opposite direction i use double the amount of shim space (1x0.060" and 1x0.30"). it works beatuifully. finally, it is all together and running grand.
i was actually quite fortunate. the repair manual i have for my car mentions that for some models of car the manual covers it may be neccessary to lift the engine in order to reach the bolts. had this been the case for me i think my project probably would have turned into me getting the car to a repair shop.
anyway, this was my fun project this past week. 17 febbraio Factory PolitikOk, so I know I don't usually worry about politics (who needs that headache?) but here is my take on the political system in the USoA, and probably stands true for any country that has had free elections for any length of time. The biggest problem is that politics has become a career, rather than a service. It has become an industry that produces no products, creates few useful services, consumes the most of materials of any other industry and has a consumer base that even Bill Gates must be envious of. What ever happened to political figures serving their time and then moving off into an actual productive position of society? Now they come for the power and stay for the power (and kick back money).
What should be done is that people involved in the political machine should be paid minimum wage, locked at what the wage was when they started their career path, and live in communal government house (or chose to purchase their own domicile). Bribes under any name should be illegal with a punishment of a number of public lashes equal to the value of the bribe in whole dollars. All of this would hopefully have the effect of weeding out the bozos and bringing in the people that actually want to offer a service to the country.
Track switch, i posted some pictures of my recent attempt to create a custome Lego model. Using two separate StarWars Lego kits i put together a model of the Black Bird from Battle Star Galactica (the stealth viper for those that don't remember). If the pictures, located in the Legos folder within the Blog Photos folder, are not accessible please let me know so that i may mess with the permissions some. 29 gennaio Too Bad, So SadWhy is it that it is customary good practice for an employee to give a two week notice to their current job when they quit, but it is general common practice in companies to give no notice when demoting or laying someone off? This seems like a rather messed up double standard.
Unless unemployment is less than 1% most companies would have no problem re-filling a vacant position, so for an employee to come in one day and say they quit and walk back out it shouldn't be any big deal. But for a company to one day out of the blue tell an employee that they are fired, demoted, down sized etc and that they either take a different postion (if that is even an option) or not come back is an act that carries considerably more impact.
Track switch/
So I made good additional progress on my project, however, I am going to have to re-think a major part of it in order to make the program able to re-schedule breaks and lunches. It shouldn't be a huge deal but it is an unfortuante minor setback.
The snow so far in Mansfield OH has not dissappointed. Yesterday we got a second good snow of the winter, giving a very good covering on the ground of a foot or so. However, they must have hired snow-aphobes to plow the roads b/c most of the roads don't seem to get plowed to any degree until the day after it stops snowing. This is especially bad in the more rural towns. For example, yesterday we had nearly 50% of scheduled exployees call off because they couldn't get to work; or so they claimed. You would think that after 200 years of being where it is Mansfield and the surrounding cities would have learned how to deal with 4-6 inches of snow in real time. 28 gennaio Whats playing?So I recently (re)discovered DosBox and DBGL thanks to a game I brought back from NY at Thanksgiving; an entertaining oldie called Millennia Altered Destinies. To summarize you play a deep space trucker that is picked up by some alien race to ensure the survival of some galaxy by traveling through time and space to bring four alien species to the point where they can all defend themselves against each other and a fifth alien race. Funny thing about this game on DosBox; when I originally played this game on whatever computer we had way back then the sound never worked. It would set up and test correct in the setup program, but the game itself had no love. Now in DosBox it works perfect. It is funny and amazing that it runs better emulated than on original hardware; but I really should not be overly surprised. Other games currently existing in the rotation: Sacred 2, NFS Most Wanted, Sims 2, Pax Imperia (another oldie) Top five favourites: A hard one for sure, but for now lets throw out: Descent (1&2), Freespace (1&2), Mass Effect (where are the sequels?), Chrono Trigger (still waiting for a console RPG to touch this) and Supreme Commander. These games are not chosen for any particular reason for I have played many great games in my time, but they all have sufficiently WOW'd me at one time or another and I have actually beat all of them at least twice. Second!Ha! Ok, so there was no second post before Christmas, but this is close enough.
I did apply for and successfully receive the promotion that moved me to Mansfield OH. I must say i like the atmosphere of Mansfield more than Decatur, but that could just be the hill and trees of Ohio talking. My good friend Keri Billick recently moved/transfered from Decatur to Mansfield as well and in an effort for the both of us to save some money we went in on renting a duplex together.
Work is moving well. My personal project, making an application to significantly ease the burden of scheduling Up Training, is making excellent progress. This something I've been stirring on the back burner of my brain for a couple of months and only in the last month have I really begun hammering it out. While I am sure my brother would be able to point out all sorts of ways to make the code cleaner, I think it is turning out respectfully well. Afterall, its not like I code for a living and can dedicate all my time to it.
I recently had to replace the blower motor in my car. As those of you who have had to experience it can attest, driving in near 0 degree temperature without any heat is no fun; not to mention the fact that the moisture in your breath tends to freeze on the windows nearly as fast as you can scrape it off. So I got my hands dirty and took out the old one and put in a new one and yay! it worked. Of course once I had everything back together again I realized it would have been neat if I had taken pictures of the process. All well.
So this about wraps up Second Post. As things of interest happen I'll try to update here. |
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