I dub thee “Bionic Caddy”
Posted by RyanG in 1967 Cadillac Sedan Deville, Worklogs on March 11, 2010
It's been a while since I've provided an update about the progress of on the Caddy. Mostly because things have been slow due to a busy work and family schedule. Here's the rundown of what I have gotten done though.
I have rebuilt the carb, and realized that a broken vacuum pot on the carb was actually only used to crack the throttle open a bit and increase the idle RPM when the A/C was running. Since the A/C system is not holding pressure, and looks like it hasn't in many many years, I went ahead and removed this "extra" part. Hopefully this'll fix the hesitation problem that I detected on the few short drives I took.
Modularizing your Grails Application – Domain Classes
Posted by RyanG in Grails/Groovy, Reviews on March 10, 2010
This is the second installment of my What Grooves You? series of posts, this time discussing how to modularize your Grails application. While Grails does an awesome job of enforcing MVC once your application reaches a certain size, or you have multiple applications which may have shared components, you’re going to have to start thinking about how your going to modularize the reusable parts of your code.
Epiphanies
Posted by MarlenaG in Parenting, Personal Expressions, Quincy on February 27, 2010
I have been having a whole lot of epiphanies of late. Be it about the new chores I have to take care of, I’m still figuring all that out but to be honest I am really getting the hang of them. I am still learning to change with Q’s wants and needs. I’m sure all these years of learning and growing with the hubs has helped me a great deal. I’m still trying to figure out life and the meaning of it for me and my role as mother, wife, friend, sister, daughter and grand daughter. I’m thinking that I may have to continue to experiment.
I’m starting to realize all over again that I know nothing at all. I keep learning more and more and feeling like maybe I have a handle on life and then again I find myself surprised and feeling clueless all over again.
What brought all this on? I’m at a new cross roads. In the not too distant future we will be welcoming a new family member to our home and I’m still trying to figure out just how we will approach this change. The first question everyone has is how am I going to go about my recover from delivery. I am sure that this time I will do all I can not to try to jump back into full swing of things until a couple weeks postpartum. I’m simply determined to focus on my new beautiful addition and my beautiful big boy and my incredible husband.
The other question that keeps coming up is will I be working after having our newest bundle of joy and I have yet to figure out the answer to that one. The hubs has made his decision and though I think it is sweet I’m not sure if that works best for our family. We shall see.
I guess it all goes back to the entire stay at home mom vs. the working mom debate. I love contributing financially to my family. I love my job. Don’t get me wrong, my job is tough, even stressful but I do get something out of my job that is really satisfying. On the other hand, the idea of staying home with my babies, keeping a home and leaving the money making to the hubs is exciting. There is so much I fee like I am missing from the day to day with my toddler. I can only imagine what I would miss from his relationship with his newest sibling. I enjoyed my 10 weeks home with Q and I am excited about having at least as much time with our newest baby. I’m already dreading leaving my boys for work. But there is still the question if I will be as good of a mom without work. I am able to drop everything quickly to play with or cuddle my son. Will I be so quick to do that without my working? Do I get some kind of down time or selfish time when at work when all I have to think about is work and the goal directly in front of me?
The epiphany here is that maybe just maybe things in this aspect of life aren’t so straight forward. If you asked me five years ago I would have told you that I had every intention of being a stay at home mom from the moment I found out that I was pregnant. That I just couldn’t ever imagine working once I had my first child. Now, shockingly, I have no idea what the plan is while I am expecting my second child. I just want what is best for my family and I am still trying to figure out just what that means to our family.
I’m still trying to figure out what is best for me. With my myriad of health problems I know that pushing too hard is a huge detriment to myself. I’m starting to really take the time to stop and rest. I’m figuring out what my body needs and how to meet those needs. I’m learning to put myself as a priority, which is incredibly hard as a mother.
The big epiphany is there is just so much to figure out and that I may NEVER figure it all out and that is ok. That is half the fun of this ride we call life. Don’t worry, in time you will hear me spout lots of stories about my boobies again. What did you think I would post without mentioning my boobs? LOL! Yeah, no, not going to happen, after all I’m a mom. 
Fitting Grails in an Active Directory and NTLM SSO Groove
Posted by RyanG in Grails/Groovy, Reviews on February 10, 2010
This is my first installment in the What Grooves You? series of posts, and it deals with the first thing you’re going to need to consider if you are deploying your Grails/Groovy applications in the average corporate IT infrastructure, Single Sign On with Active Directory and NTLM. Like it or not, because all of our existing applications are based on Microsoft technologies our users have gotten used to just going to the URL for the application they intend to use and being instantly recognized and authenticated. Forcing them to sign in again, or worse still forcing them to setup a new username and password for your system would be completely unacceptable! Below, I’ll take you through the steps I took to solve this problem, including the detours that cost me time!
What Grooves You?
Posted by RyanG in Grails/Groovy, Reviews on February 5, 2010
In my "Day Job", we design and build our applications using Microsoft technologies. In particular, we’re using C#, Silverlight, and IIS to build and deploy our web applications. This makes good sense because the vendors we use are well versed in the Microsoft technology, and like the IT infrastructure of a lot of medium and large companies Microsoft solutions are at the forefront. It’s becoming apparent though that we’re going to have to consider our options and possibly embrace a different technology stack to properly scale and support the applications we’re building.
While I knew that Java servlets and the Spring Framework were the answers, credit goes to my boss Scott Ellis for really doing a deep dive into what technologies are on offer, and coming up with using Grails and Groovy as the best solution for us. Which brings me to the reason for this blog post. I’ve been spending some time playing around with Grails and Groovy, and familiarizing myself with the technology and what is on offer. I intend to do a series of posts here about my discovery process, what problems I encounter, and how I resolve them.
From the searching I’ve had to do in order to get answers or better understanding about the challenges I’ve faced, I think I have a chance to be a real resource to others who are just starting out with Grails and Groovy. What’s more I’m writing from the perspective of a relative newbie to the Java world. Stay tuned as you follow my journey into Grails and Groovy. *Spoiler alert* – I like it, a LOT!
Mystery Solved!
Posted by RyanG in 1967 Cadillac Sedan Deville, Worklogs on February 2, 2010
Well there she is, the source of my clunk! And, the way it’s sitting in there explains why the engine wouldn’t turn past TDC as well since that thing woulda been right in the way. So far as I can tell it’s a small(ish) washer that got folded in half. You can see a few more shots of it over in my Flickr set. What remains a bit of a mystery is how it got there. I’m guessing it entered through the intake, and it’s possible it was sitting on top of the throttle blades of the carb. Tough to say if it was there when I got it, or if I managed to drop it there while I was working.
All in all, there doesn’t seem to be much (maybe any?) damage from the whole debacle. The you can see both the cylinder wall and the combustion chamber for that cylinder, and they both appear unharmed!
Remember back when I described that one of the cylinders had a spark plug that had 0 gap and appeared damaged? Yup, you guessed it, that plug came from this cylinder. Makes sense, all of the steel for the cylinder wall, piston, and head are harder than the washer would have been, and the spark plug would have been a softer metal as well. Soft enough to sustain some damage from that thing flinging around in the cylinder. This also explains why it seemed fairly inconsistent, when that cylinder was not on it’s power stroke the washer would have happily just moved up and down the cylinder wall in place. Then when there was ignition in that cylinder, the pressure probably sent it flying around!
I also made another discovery while I was working. The bolt on the front of the crank that I’d been using to turn the motor over, doesn’t actually belong there! The balancer is simply pressed onto the crank with no big bolt to hold it on like you find on many other motors. It’s becoming more and more apparent to me that one or more people who’ve worked on this thing haven’t been terribly methodical, and clearly didn’t have a service manual to reference. In spite of that, the motor appears to be fairly low mileage and it quite good condition.
The plan now is to do some more inspection and measure things to see if they match the tolerances set out in the service manual. If everything checks out, I think I may just put her all back together and run her. Going to keep my fingers crossed that everything is as tight as it appears to be so I can get some miles outta this thing!
Engine Autopsy
Posted by RyanG in 1967 Cadillac Sedan Deville, Worklogs on February 1, 2010
I got the engine out of the Caddy this weekend! The first lesson I learned is that I should have either removed all of the pulleys and water pump, or removed the front clip of the car. I had a TON of trouble getting the motor out past the radiator core support! In fact, I wound up yanking the water pump off while the motor was in limbo just to buy myself a few more inches of clearance.
Once it was finally out, and safely on an engine stand, I started my investigation and search for the source of my “clunk” sound.
First, I yanked the intake manifold and the cover for the lifter valley. I found nothing particularly interesting there, certainly no obvious foreign object which would account for the noise I’ve been hearing. So, I tipped the thing over and started pulling out oil pan bolts and upon removing the pan I was greeted with what you see on the left.
Now I expected to find chunks of oil dipstick in the engine, since I’d previously reported that the dipstick appeared broken. What I did not expect though was that the dipstick would be so completely mismatched! The photo on the right shows the engraving of “Ford” on the dipstick. Apparently the previous owner just decided to toss whatever dipstick he had handy into the tube, and call it a day.
Not knowing what the original design of the Cadillac dipstick is, I can’t be sure, but it feels like this is a bit of a poor design.
If the dipstick is straight, and goes down the dipstick tube straight, it appears as though it’ll run right smack dab into the rotating assembly as you can see on the left.
As satisfied as I was with my discovery, I realized pretty quickly that this couldn’t be the source of the “clunk” I was chasing down. The bits of dipstick were simply too small and light weight to account for the sound I was experiencing. Plus, when I pulled the oil pan off, all of the bits were sitting right inside the oil pickup which means they were likely “stuck” there by suction from the oil pump any time the engine was running. So I kept inspecting, looking for any other foreign object big enough to account for what I’d heard.
After several minutes of looking around with a flashlight, I figured I’d start turning the motor and seeing if anything seemed out of place. I pulled all the plugs so that compression wasn’t an issue, and started turning the motor over. It turned nice and easy until it neared top dead center (TDC), where it halted and I couldn’t seem to continue turning it no matter how much (reasonable) force I applied. Perplexed, I went ahead and turned the engine the opposite direction. Again it turned smoothly until I had reached a full rotation in the opposite direction and it again stopped dead in it’s tracks. Hrrmnnn..
So that’s the current mystery, the engine doesn’t seem to turn over freely any more now that I’ve pulled it out, and turned it upside down! I knew it couldn’t be piston to valve contact, since it’s a hydraulic lifter motor and almost all of the lifters had lost pressure allowing all the valves to stay closed. So, more likely it’s piston to head contact. I didn’t notice any obvious signs of bent connecting rods or loose connecting rod caps so the cause isn’t readily apparent. Next step will be to yank the heads off and see if there is any obvious damage which might indicate which cylinder is causing the problem. The title to this post may be a bit premature, but I don’t suspect I’m going to find anything minor. Stay tuned as I continue to tear it down to find the problem!
No More Guesswork
Posted by RyanG in 1967 Cadillac Sedan Deville, Worklogs on January 24, 2010
Having discovered that both of the motor mount nuts were missing the Cadillac had earned a stay of execution. Early last week I purchased a new set of fasteners for only a dollar! After installing them I had expected to just start the car up and see if the “clunk” sound had gone away. Imagine my surprise when it cranked over and over and over, and over again without starting up!
I’ll spare you all of the details of troubleshooting the no start issue, but suffice to say I replaced my ignition coil, and second guessed myself countless times on the proper firing order and timing for this engine. At the end of the day, (I think) the timing was retarded by nearly a whole cylinder and one of the terminals of the coil wire was smashed.
My victory over the timing, and getting the car running was short lived though. It ran for only a few seconds before I heard the “clunk” noise I had been diagnosing, and it occurred a couple more times before I shut it down.
A new mystery has surfaced as well. I may not have already mentioned that my oil dipstick seems to be a replacement from some other vehicle, and that it seems like it was actually broken off near the end, so it doesn’t reach the oil in the crankcase. Well, in addition to that mismatch I discovered something else quite interesting while troubleshooting my timing issue. I had the motor near TDC for cylinder 1, but had gotten a bit past it, so I started to turn the engine “backward” to get it back to TDC. As I did so, I noticed that the oil dipstick seemed to be moving! Curious, I continued to turn the motor backward, and the dipstick continued to be forced out of the dipstick tube!
I’ve put off removing the motor long enough, it’s going to come out, and I’m going to do a very thorough tear down and inspection of motor. Hopefully, I’ll find the answers to all of these mysteries, and hopefully I’ll find that the motor is in good enough condition to use for a while.
The Surprises Continue
Posted by RyanG in 1967 Cadillac Sedan Deville, Worklogs on January 11, 2010
With things starting to slow down with my work schedule, I was actually able to take this weekend off! I got to relax quite a lot, spend some time with the family, and spend a little time in the garage with the Caddy.
You may remember from my last last update about the Cadillac, that I had a few outstanding mysteries to try to resolve.
First, let’s talk about the “easy” one, the Harmonic Balancer/Dampener. You see, it seemed have been bent or damaged at some point, since one side of it was closer to the engine than the other. This created a situation where it would “wobble” on the crank as the engine was running not cool! As was preparing to remove it, I pulled some of the bolts which hold the crank pulley onto the dampener. What I noticed is that when I removed the first bolt, which happened to be in the spot on the dampener where it was “pushed out”, that the dampener seemed to start returning to it’s original shape. After completely removing the bolts, and using a pry bar the dampener was back to it’s original shape! Turns out that someone before me replaced one of the pulley bolts with a bolt that was nearly twice as long, and it was pushing on the dampener causing the problem I observed!
Now, for the more onerous “clunking” noise. When I first heard it, I thought for sure that it was an issue with the valvetrain, so sure was I in fact that I pulled the passenger side valve cover off expecting to see a bent push-rod, or a broken rocker arm, or some other catastrophic failure. Imagine my surprise when I looked under the valvecover and found no problem what-so-ever! I even pulled the drivers side, thinking I’d misjudged the origin of the noise, no luck there either. At that point I had pretty much decided that the engine was going to come out, and I needed to do a complete inspection to find the source of the issue. I put my tools away and put the project on hold for awhile.
Now, as it just so happens in the meantime I read this little gem, which described another symptom which I’d just sorta ignored. I read down to the 6th post in that thread, and I had a light bulb moment. If my valves were sticking open, it’s possible that the “clunk” I heard was the rocker arm smacking the stem of a still open valve. This would explain why it wasn’t a consistent sound which increased with RPM, since the valve(s) may not stick on ever revolution and increasing RPM probably got the valves moving enough that they did not stick. So, the valve covers came off again, and all the spark plugs came out, and I began turning the engine over by hand, fully anticipating that I’d see one or more valves on the passenger side staying open. Sadly, I was disappointed once again as everything worked exactly as it ought to.
At this point, I was again convinced that the only solution was to yank the engine entirely and do a thorough teardown and inspection. I did a quick compression test which I’d been intending to do for some time. All of the cylinders were within a few PSI of 150, except for the # 5 & 6 cylinders, which were both just north of 170PSI. That’s a fairly good sign that the shortblock is probably in decent shape, and I’ll probably be able to run this thing once I solve the mystery of the “clunk”. So I proceeded to yank the wiring, and everything else I needed to on the top of the motor, then jacked the car up and headed underneath to disconnect everything down there. Once down there, I took a quick peek to see how hard it was going to be to access the engine mount fasteners. Imagine my surprise when I realized that BOTH of the engine mount nuts were missing!
It occurred to me pretty quickly that this could just as easily be the source of my “clunk” sound, the engine slapping against the crossmember when it skips a beat. And even makes more sense that it would be the passenger side since the engine rotates in the opposite direction! At that point I put the car back on the ground, put my tools away, and called a day. Today I am going to go buy some replacement nuts for the motor mounts, and hopefully install them soon to see if that solves the “clunk” mystery. If it doesn’t this time (for sure) I’ll be pulling the motor out to tear it down and inspect it.
The next mystery for me to solve is that the spark plug in the #8 cylinder had absolutely 0 gap! I’m hoping that it was just a mistake while installing it, and not a piston which reached up and slapped it silly (that could cause a clunking noise too), we’ll see soon enough!
Navigating Domain Registration – A tale of a near miss
The story you are about to read is true, not even the names have been changed so as to fully implicate the accused.
First, a teensy bit of background. I conduct a lot of transactions online, and do most of my business electronically. I own three of my own domains, and manage a fourth for a friend, as well as hosting all of them on my own VPS. As such I feel I’ve become pretty attuned to possible scams, phishing attempts, and other ne’er-do-wells. That is, until last week.
See, when I needed to register a new domain and have it hosted, I went with the “all in one” offering with the hosting company I was using before I switched to my VPS. This was super convenient, as they handled registering the domain for me, and set me up with one year of hosting a website and email for that domain for one year. Great, one stop shopping! That was nearly one year ago, and the domain is due for renewal in December.
So, when I received an email from a domain registrar I did not recognize suggesting that I renew my domain I assumed that it was the domain registrar that my hosting company used to register the domain on my behalf. I happily followed the link and renewed my domain with that registrar for two more years. I did find it odd that I didn’t have to supply any user credentials or other identification, but I just assumed they’d use some of the personal information I provided to compare against the WHOIS or something. Besides, what do they care if someone else pays to renew a domain, even if it doesn’t belong to them, right?
Well, some days later I received another email, from what appeared to be a separate entity than the domain registrar I renewed with. This email requested that I authorize a domain name transfer to them. Hmmmn.. Wait, I thought I renewed, not transferred. Something is wrong here..
I proceeded to do a few quick Google searches on the domain registrar that I renewed with, and the name of the registrar which was apparently requesting a domain transfer. Turns out they’re all part of the same organization based out of Canada, and all I read was experiences of shady business practices and situations of domains which were either lost, or trapped in limbo! Some keywords for you to search on in order to read what I read about. No bueno!
domain registry of america scam
domain registry of america brandon gray
namejuice.com
Great, so now I realize I’ve given my personal details to some unscrupulous individuals and they’ve charged me $50 for two years of domain registration which I’ll likely never actually receive from them. Fortunately, the domain transfer request turned out to be suspicious enough to catch my attention and make me thing twice before proceeding! At least my domain name is safe (I hope).
Next steps? I call my bank, and file a chargeback for the $50 charge, and have them cancel the Visa bank card I used to place the order. Now I get to be on the look out for odd or fraudulent charges on my account, yay me! Tomorrow I’m going to try to actually renew and transfer my domain to Register.com where I manage my other domains.
So, here are the lessons I’ve learned and some sage advice you might benefit from.
- Whenever possible, register your domain name yourself with a reputable domain registrar. Something like;
- If you do happen to let some entity register a domain on your behalf, know who that registrar is. You can use the WHOIS domain services to learn what registrar “owns” your domain.
- When renewing or registering a domain, make sure not to do so by clicking on links from emails, instead go to the registered web address for the domain registrar identified in the previous bullet point
LinkedIn Profile
