I waved goodbye to the Jeep this evening, sold to a nice man from Conowingo who drove down with his wife and daughter (who were terrified of being in “the city” and insisted on continually locking the doors of their rented Explorer, even they were standing no more than ten feet away from it at all times) to replace one of their fleet of six (!?!) Cherokees, two of which another daughter had wrecked in a three-week period. Good luck, old friend. You will be missed.

Rear-ended

Date posted: September 13, 2010 | Filed under cars | Leave a Comment »

I’m exhausted for reasons I won’t get into here, but hopefully it will have been worth the loss of sleep. Between company on Saturday and Sunday, Finn’s nightmare early Saturday morning (“I scared of frogs under the bed, daddy”) and a large, time-critical project, I got a total of about 8 hours’ sleep this weekend. But it was all good; the house is clean, we have a new (used) snowblower sitting in the garage waiting for reassembly, and we hosted my brother in law and his beau for lunch on Saturday and our neighbors and their daughter for dinner on Sunday.

Somebody in Baltimore thought it would be a good idea to host a Grand Prix race downtown in 2011, which means they’ve been blocking off and ripping up giant swaths of concrete and pavement throughout the neighborhood where my office is located. All of this means A. I won’t be in the city on the one day they run the race, and B. my commute has gotten interminable because every available artery coming north from I-95 is down to two usable lanes or clogged with people like me trying to find alternate routes.

Date posted: September 13, 2010 | Filed under finn, life | Leave a Comment »

File this under “It’s about fucking time”: AT&T spends $70M to upgrade Maryland network. $70M gets 17 new cell sites and “upgrades” to 17 more. It would be swell if they could fix the TREMENDOUS DEAD SPOT on I-95 between the city and the 695 onramp.

Date posted: September 9, 2010 | Filed under general, shortlinks | Leave a Comment »

I don’t remember seeing this back in 2004, but I love it: Fuck the South. (Disclosure: I live below the Mason-Dixon line in a traditionally blue coastal state).

Date posted: September 7, 2010 | Filed under humor, politics | Leave a Comment »

Supervising

Finn likes old trucks.

Always on the lookout for adventure, I packed Finn in the CR-V on saturday morning and followed Bennett up to a farm in White Marsh for a parts expedition. His friend has a collection of desirable old vehicles stashed in a back field as well as piles of parts tucked under tarps and outbuildings. The object of our visit was a 345 pulled from a junker, stored under a collapsed shed and sheltered by the branches of a huge, rambling tree, and he was hoping to get it loaded into his pickup to take home. Given the fact that he’s stopped by to help me about fifty times, I felt it was time I started returning the favor.

Getting quickly to work, we wrapped a chain around the dolly under the engine and pulled it out into the sunlight using sheets of plywood and a board to turn the casters. Then we wrestled a hoist off the truck to a position behind the engine, got it lifted, and tucked the tailgate of Bennett’s pickup underneath. Right about the time we were about to drop it into the dolly, the hoist bit into the soft dirt, listed to port, and 750 lbs. of pig iron came to rest against the tailcap of the truck and a branch of the tree.

With some backwoods engineering, two ratchet straps, a couple of 2x4s and some luck, we coaxed it over to the center of the bed between two 4x4s, got it tied down, stood back and breathed a sigh of relief. (I can now say I’ve climbed a tree in order to lift an engine).

Finn, the picture of patience, chose to supervise from the tailgate of the truck, and later from the cab, where she happily snacked on raisins and stayed clear of dangling engine blocks.

After we’d finished packing up, Bennett took Finn and I on a tour of the back field, where his friend is storing several 50′s Travelalls, a gorgeous porthole Buick, several Nashes, several more 50′s pickups, and other assorted vehicles. I could have spent all day with my good camera snapping photos, but I had to settle for the point-and-shoot while carrying Finn on my shoulders. My heart wept at the sight of the Buick slowly oxidizing in the sun, but that’s someone else’s issue to deal with.

Buick Grille

Nearing lunchtime, I packed Finn back up in the Honda and we followed Bennett back to the 695 split, listening to the sound of his exhaust echo through the tunnel. He’s got plans to get it cleaned up and dropped into Mr. Hanky, and hopefully it will run better than the motor he just pulled.

Date posted: September 5, 2010 | Filed under friends, Inspiration | Comments Off on Heavy Lifting.

Date posted: September 5, 2010 | Filed under cars, flickr | Leave a Comment »

WTF truck?

C’mon everybody! Let’s all get in the bunker and pray!

I saw this thing this afternoon and wanted to steal a bus just so I could run it over. Unfortunately, I was on my way to a client meeting.

Date posted: September 2, 2010 | Filed under Baltimore, cars, humor | Leave a Comment »

The new AppleTV looks very tempting. We are currently paying for the FIOS triple-play as part of their 1-year promotion, so once our contract on that expires I’ll be looking for ways to ditch cable altogether and move to a more internet-oriented TV delivery system. AppleTV is now based on streaming vs. buying, which means there’s only 24 hours to watch a show or movie multiple times. I’m thinking this isn’t a huge deal for Jen or I (especially since we already have a Netflix account, which is supported in the new AppleTV) but for Finn, who will most likely want to see shows or movies multiple times, this could be a challenge. It would also mean giving up a few channels I’d like to have for her, including the kids’ music channel and Disney-free cartoon channels (in the rare event we let her watch TV).

I think the other thing I’d do with it is drop another terrabyte drive into our media server and load our DVD collection on there, along with as much kids’ programming as I could get my hands on in order to stream it to the TV. It would be so nice to retire the DVD player completely and subtract a big box from the TV stand; apparently there is a way to use the XBOX as a DVD player but I need an “XBOX DVD Movie Playback Kit” to do it.

Speaking of Apple, Jen’s new iPhone should be arriving on Friday, which is excellent news. Her old Motorola will be relegated to duty as Finn’s new toy, which is, sadly, about all it’s good for.

Date posted: September 1, 2010 | Filed under apple, entertainment, family | 2 Comments »