Archive for November, 2009
From Project Car to Hobby Car
Posted by RyanG in 1967 Cadillac Sedan Deville, Personal Expressions on November 22, 2009
I’ve owned quite a number of cars in my relatively short driving history thus-far. And a lot of them have been what I consider a “Project Car”. Now to me, that always meant a car which is pretty much your daily driver, but which gets lots of attention on evenings and weekends to either upgrade or (more commonly) repair it. These wrenching sessions were ALWAYS labored and rushed because, well, I had to drive the car to work the next day, or the coming Monday morning. This made working on the cars stressful, and burdensome, like a chore rather than a past time or enjoyable hobby.
Now that I’m a little more grown up, and have a family, our primary car (2006 Honda Odyssey) is quite new and is well maintained and needs very little (if any) attention. We also have my wifes car which is the second she’s ever owned, and is a little bit older (1992 Lexus ES300) but is also in quite good condition and is reliable. So that leaves my ‘67 Caddy, which is in need of a lot of TLC so I wrench on it, but the experience is different from that of a “project car”.
I had never realized it before, but working on a car can actually be fun! Don’t get me wrong, it’s always been rewarding, to see the results of your hard work. But when you have to rush to get done so that you have the utility of the vehicle when you’re done, it detracts some from the experience. I think I’ve stepped into a zone of having a “Hobby Car”, which to me means a car that I get to wrench on, rather than have to wrench on. A subtle difference to be sure, but very significant when it comes to the experience.
Take my latest project for instance. I had to replace the water pump since it (apparently) had a leak. Normally I would have run to a parts store, perhaps Friday afternoon or evening to get all the parts that I thought I would need. Saturday morning would come, and I’d remove the necessary parts to replace it. I’d discover that I forgot a replacement part, go to pick it up from the parts store then make some progress, and realize I needed another part I hadn’t picked up. Rinse and repeat the drive to the parts store a few times. Then upon reassembly I’d hit some snag where I either broke something, or lost a part, or was otherwise discouraged. This usually happens late on Saturday night, when I was starting to think I’d wrap the project up. I’d admit defeat, frustrated, and go to bed. Wake up late Sunday since I didn’t go to sleep til late the night before. Drag myself out to finish the job, usually repeating some of the frustration and parts runs and finally wrapping everything up late Sunday. Then, drive the car to work on Monday.
Now, however I get to really take my time. Identify the issues, order all of the right parts in advance, and even pick and choose the superior brands and have them mail ordered. I have time while the parts are in transit to clean everything up that I’m working on, removing rust, dirt, and old gasket material. Maybe even do some cosmetic things like painting. No hurry, I don’t “need” the car to be running to get me to work or take care of my family. I get to work on it at my own pace. I find that it’s actually relaxing, rather than stressful. How novel!
No doubt, the fact that I’m also able to work in a garage contributes to the overall satisfaction, but I think a lot of the enjoyment comes from being able to take my time and do the job right, with no looming deadline.
So for all you guys out there with project cars, consider buying a reliable daily driver, and make your project car a hobby car. This is advice that older, wiser gearheads have given me in the past, and I never quite understood it, until now!
The Explorer
Posted by MarlenaG in Cars, Personal Expressions on November 9, 2009
When I first discovered the Explorer it was in my Spanish class during a video group project presentation we were doing. One group accidentally left in a part when they were cruising around in their Eddie Bauer Explorer singing along with the Spice Girls, What you Want. ::chills:: Ewwww. I thought it was cheesy then when the song was at it’s height and it still annoys me to this day.
It was a cute car but it just seemed too trendy for my liking. I already was starting my love affair with Honda and Toyota. About this exact time my husband, who I didn’t know, was dreaming of owning an Eddie Bauer Explorer, along with a long list of other cars that he would so love to own. My husband has been a car guy from birth, honest.
I had a good friend that I knew since I was 13 that bought an Explorer after we graduated from culinary school. She was a personal chef for a family in town and had to do a lot of driving as they had a gourmet pallet and it was her job to keep them happy. She would drive all over town to get certain items from specialty stores as it was only the best of the best for this family. One day she got on the free way and didn’t see the car in her blind spot till it was too late. While trying to avoid hitting the other car she spun out of control and rolled the Explorer. She was hurt but not terribly hurt. I then was petrified of the vehicle.
By this time I was dating my now husband. I knew he wanted to own a Explorer one day. I saw the stats on the news, heard news story after news story about the vehicle being prone to roll overs and how the pillars in the car weren’t as strong as they used to be. Every time the car came up in conversation I would get knots in my stomach and would kindly remind him that he already had two cars and I had my own car. Why on earth would we want a fourth car? The topic would be dropped.
Three years later the topic came up again, by then we were married and my husband was in the process of selling his only car. To be honest the car was too small for my husband, when he hit 45mph in that thing his head would bounce against the roof and it was driving both of us nuts. He promised that he would be safe in the Explorer, that he would lower it and brought me so many articles about how if you were to drop it by 1 and 3/8″ it would be a whole lot safer. Some of these articles were written by professional drivers and the lowered Explorer was able to compete with some coupe cars in handling. I finally gave my blessing for him to buy the Explorer.
It was a great car, I even drove it for a while as I was trying to learn how to drive my new to me car which is a stick. It had great pick up, fantastic storage space. When I was pregnant and was too big to drive my manual car I drove the Explorer as I didn’t have to be too close to the steering wheel. We brought our baby home in that car.
My husband had made many modifications that made me feel more comfortable with us driving the Explorer on the regular. The suspension was more responsive, the brakes were incredible, the audio system was AMAZING. I began to trust the car to keep us all safe when it was dry out. I noticed that it got scary squirrely in the rain and when the ground was wet. I would pray that nothing ever happen to my husband or child while in this car, it seriously scared me.
Then one day, I was rushing home as I worked really late. It had just rained for an hour or more, sudden down pour in April. I figured I would take a faster route as I was engorged (did you really think I wouldn’t mention boobs again?) and was worried about my son having a melt down with my husband. I lowered the volume of the stereo and headed out. I kept reminding myself that I needed to be careful, that it just rained for the first time in a long time. I needed to be aware.
I sat at a red light and saw that it was safe to make a right on to the free way on ramp. I slowly pressed on the accelerator topped out at 10-15mph when the turn was completed. Then I fish tailed. I suddenly started chanting to calm down. I reminded myself not to touch the brake, not to touch the accelerator and no turning the steering wheel because that is how my friend lost complete control of her Explorer years ago. To just try to let the car coast until I got traction again. I soon felt the car calm, felt like I was in control again. I slowly pressed on the accelerator again, got up to 25-30mph and then felt the car begin to spin. I immediately took my foot of the accelerator and reminded myself not to turn, touch the brakes, not to touch the accelerator again. When I saw a construction sign directly in front of me I decided it was time to close my eyes, there wasn’t much I could do, I just didn’t want the accident to be any worse than it was going to be.
I opened my eyes when the car stopped moving. It was surreal, I wished it to be a terrible dream. Then I realized that I couldn’t get up, I couldn’t get of the car on my own. I was hanging from my seat belt looking at foliage on the median and couldn’t find my cell phone. That is when I screamed, cried, begged for help praying someone saw me and would help me. I finally found my cell phone and called my husband to get help and to apologize for destroying his baby, his car. I didn’t realize that my blue tooth was still connected to my phone, which I ripped off pissed that I couldn’t find my phone. I couldn’t hear my husband answer and not knowing he could hear me I spoke to the good Samaritan that stopped and called 911 for me.
I attempted to call my husband again and all I did was cry, I apologized over and over for screwing up. I felt like the worst wife ever. My husband responded the way a husband should, “Shut up! Are you ok? Where are you? I love you. Everything is going to be ok as long as you are ok.” I told every fireman, every police man, and every EMT, every Doctor and nurse I interacted with that night about how I destroyed my husband’s dream car.
My husband took care of everything for the next week, he was my knight in shinning armor. I don’t remember him moping or ever telling me bitterly that I destroyed his car. To be honest, I will be happy if we never own another Explorer, or any other SUV for that matter. I am happy it was me in that car as I am quite a bit shorter that my husband and I am not sure if he would have been able to walk out of the ER a few hours after being checked out. I am thrilled my son wasn’t in the car with me. That was my relationship with the Explorer, our break up was dramatic but long lasting.
Catching the Wave
Posted by RyanG in Cloud computing, Reviews, Software on November 6, 2009
I am something of a Google Zealot, I was using the search engine back before many people knew what it was and haven’t strayed since. I’ve been using GMail for the better part of two years, and it handles ALL of my incoming mail, I even forward all of the emails from my self hosted domains to it. I use Google Docs for everything, including writing and storing invoices for my consulting work and any of my other “office” needs. And I use Google Voice daily for business phone calls. We used Google Maps to find and track rental homes, and it helped us find the place we’re living in now. Google Analytics keeps a finger on the pulse of the (itty bitty) traffic on this site. Google Reader is my RSS reader of choice, which I use almost strictly through a gadget on my iGoogle homepage along with tgadget for Twitter. I sync my iPhone with Google Calendar, and wouldn’t know what I’m doing any particular day without it. You get the idea. 
So you can imagine that when I heard about Google Wave, I instantly signed up to receive an early invite. And as you can probably also imagine, I was super disappointed when the first set of invites went out to the public, and I didn’t get mine! I watched as many of the people I follow on Twitter announced that they’d received their invite, and were happily getting started with Google Wave. Of course, many of them were reporting serious usability issues and disappointments but I was never-the-less anxious to get my peek at it. After a few short weeks I managed to trade a Google Voice invite for a Google Wave invite.
Now getting the wave invite was… Interesting.. Evidently when a user is granted some discretionary invitations they aren’t sent out immediately when used. Instead a user “nominates” a person to receive a Google Wave account. Apparently there is some waiting involved, and I suspect some manual human intervention on the part of Google in order to actually send the concrete invitation. After waiting four days (two of which were the weekend) I actually received the email that my invitation had arrived!
My initial interaction with Wave was reasonably short. I watched a couple of the introduction videos, make a few setting changes to my profile, added a couple of people who I knew were on Wave, and logged out. My first real Wave was from an acquaintance of mine from Twitter who had also recently gotten Wave. We both admitted that we were excited to have the new tool, but really had very little idea of what it was really intended for!
After having a couple interactions with a few others later that day, I started to get a feel for the interface and the power of the tool. See, I’m currently working on a software project which is reasonably large in scope. The nature of the company I work for means that we didn’t have the time, money, or expertise to hire a big enough development team to accomplish the software solution we’re trying to build. So, we’re managing with myself as the lead architect, a business analyst who knows what this thing is supposed to do, and a project manager on our side. Then we’re having all of the development work done by an offshore team.
Very quickly it struck me that Wave lends itself VERY well to this sort of thing, and in fact I think real-time collaboration for creative/design purposes is exactly what this tool is designed for. In many of the sessions of collaboration that we’ve had over the phone, having a parallel wave would be invaluable! Imagine an integration with Google Docs, I can create a wordpressing doc, a presentation, or a spreadsheet and simply attach it to the wave. Or I can take a screenshot and toss it in there where it is appropriate. Everyone has visibility to the results. This thing is DESIGNED for agile, if you ask me.
That said, this is still a very early version. In all of the “buzz” about Wave it was claimed that it will contact you in any way that is appropriate. If you’re at your computer, and logged into Wave, you’d get the real-time view. Not logged in? That’s okay we’ll nag you by email. Not at a computer? Easy you’ll get an SMS message. None of that functionality seems to be there yet though, as there is no place to supply my email address (you’re supplied with an @googlewave.com address which you can’t access), or my phone number (should already know my Google Voice number). And there is the matter of stability. It certainly has some kinks to be worked out.
So, now that I’ve caught the Wave, I’m looking forward to really starting to use it to my advantage and riding along to see how the tool evolves. Isn’t it fun being an early adopter?
Caveman instincts
Posted by RyanG in News, Personal Expressions on November 6, 2009
So as you may have already read, we moved from our apartment into a modest house. This was necessary for a number of reasons, not the least of which were our toddler growing up and needing more space, and the fact that I’m working 90%+ from home and needed an office. A couple of side benefits for me were getting a nice small(ish) lawn in the back yard, and a garage.
Lets talk about the lawn first. At our apartment, we had a small patch of dirt that was maybe 5′ x 8′ that we did clean up and laid sod. For a few weeks it was GREAT and looked fantastic. I’d water it regularly and mow it every week, it was great and I had a huge sense of pride and accomplishment in it. However, due to the way the sun shined (or didn’t as the case may be) the grass didn’t last long and I was immensely mournful when it met with it’s eventual demise.
With the new place, I get another chance to have a healthy lawn! It’s significantly larger, but not huge this time. I am again mowing it weekly, and watering it regularly, and I have a strange almost indescribable sense of pride and glee everytime I work on it or look out the window at it. What is it about a healthy, green, and well manicured lawn that resonates so deeply with the male psyche? I can’t explain it, I just know that it makes me smile and makes me want to GRUNT in satisfaction. UHHH UHH OHHAAHH!!
I also scored a two car garage in the move. Now, I know this is fairly mundane for most but allow me to explain. Growing up we lived in like three different places that had garages, however we never had space to work or park cars in the garage! As I type this, both my 67 Caddy and our family minivan are safely parked in the garage along with my tools and some items which we’re storing, and it’s clean and organized! On top of that, I have room to work which is a total luxury for me. I have done some pretty significant mechanics work in a carport with space for one car at our old apartment. This included completely dismantling the explorer down to just the sheet metal, frame, and suspension. In the short month that we’ve lived in this house I’ve had the opportunity to help my sister change her oil, and I’ve started to dig into the project of getting the Caddy’s cooling system up to snuff. The difference between working outdoors, or in a cramped carport vs. working in a garage is indescribable!
So a lawn, and a garage… Two things which I’ve gained from moving in here which seem to appeal to the very core of my being as a man. I don’t claim to understand it, but I can tell you that it’s extraordinarily gratifying and just seems to be part of the male DNA.
The sleeper has awakened!
Man, nearly two months without a post here. Google Analytics tells me I’m only disappointing about two dozen people, so to you my loyal readers, accept my humblest apologies. But, I do have an excuse or two!
See, I’ve been working an insane work schedule. Pretty much 16-18hours a day 6-7 days a week, mostly on phone calls with an offshore team at odd hours. When I do have a moment or two that I’m not working, you can bet the last thing I want to be doing is sitting in front of a computer typing a blog post.
To add to that, we moved out of our two bedroom townhouse at the beginning of October, and are just getting fully settled into our new place. I’m TOTALLY excited about the new house. We’ve got three bedrooms and one and a half baths, it’s single story which is great because Q can roam around as he pleases. It’s also got a great, and quite large sun room that opens into the backyard, this has become Q’s defacto playroom which is excellent. Plus, we’ve got a bigger kitchen, a proper dining area where we can sit and eat as a family, and I have my very own office and *drumroll* TWO CAR GARAGE!
Now that we’re settled in the new house, and the deadline for work is approaching things are starting to drift back toward “normal” as if there is such a thing for our family. I even managed to grab a couple hours to work on the Cadillac today, and write this blog entry! HUZZAH!
In the meantime, my wife has done an excellent job of providing content since I made her an author here to. You may have noticed her posts. I’m totally stoked to have her writing here since I strongly believe she has a future in writing short stories or novels! I still have two or three of her drafts which I need to review and publish. And no, I’m not doing a macho “you need me to post for you, you don’t have the permissions” thing, she’s just not confident enough yet to post without me reviewing/editing. We’ll change that soon enough. 
Stay tuned to this space for more, as I’ll be trying to actually keep things up to date again.
-
You are currently browsing the archives for November, 2009
LinkedIn Profile
