I entered a month and a half’s worth of 2003 posts from the old weblog over the last couple of days, and it seems like it’s going a bit quicker than the last batch I entered a few months ago. I think my webhost must have finally listened to the survey results I sent in and got me a faster server.
Meanwhile, I’m zeroing out and reformatting the drive on my old 17″ MacBook Pro; every attempt to fix the video issue has met with failure, so I’m going to unload it on Craigslist and see if I can get some money for it.
And, no word yet from the electrician, which means I have to call and reschedule the drywall today (grr).
Today’s soundtrack is the second side of Led Zeppelin III, which is featured prominently in an iTunes playlist I have called “melancholy”.
I just found this very interesting link on the Apple discussion forums regarding my MacBook and its video card. An excerpt:
“…someone mentioned that Apple knows internally that it is an issue with the solder connection between BGA packages and the main board. These machines came out right around when manufacturers were just starting to become ROHS compliant, (the standard that forbids the use of solder containing lead in electronics,) and so it is not surprising to me, (having dealt with some similar issues from the point of view of the manufacturer at work,) that these problems are happening. The lead-free solder is much more brittle than the old kind and solder joints that crack after many thermal cycles are a common problem that everyone trying to use the lead-free solder has had to confront.”
There’s some suggestions about deleting some of the video drivers that basically disable the video card; I’m going to run and get my machine to see if the quick fix works.
When I started this weblog in March of 2001, I did it for a couple of different reasons. The first was to keep some kind of record of what I was doing from day to day. The second was to learn more about HTML and coding. The third was to create something each day, whether it was a page design, a photograph, a drawing, or writing.
As I approach the ten-year mark, I’m looking back through the archives and realizing that updates have been spotty over the last year, due to work, life, sleep, and motivation. I’m not going to blame anyone but myself for a lack of focus. That having been said, I’ve been wrestling with finding new ways to post at least something each day this year and get back into the habit of writing, as well as reawakening a routine of finding at least one thing each day to photograph.
The other thing I’m going to work on, with the anniversary as a target date, is getting the rest of the static content from the old weblog into WordPress once and for all.
In the meantime, electrical work on the side porch is stalled while I wait for our neighbor to get back to me. I was going to schedule drywall delivery and installation for this coming weekend, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen right now.
Mr. Scout stopped over to look at the beer in the basement, and we took a gravity reading to see how things are progressing. While the numbers were close to the target, we figured it would be better to let it sit for another week and finish fermenting.
In The Studio – Interviews with rock’s finest musicians about their most classic albums. I can’t wait to listen to these.
Finn has a friend over today while her mother (not Jen) is delivering a baby. As of 9:45 this morning, the living room is filled with ballerina outfits, cat ears, pop-poms, and toddler tunes.
Over the weekend, I was able to get some time in on the side porch, where I pulled the baffles down over the front porch and redid them to fit stringers reaching all the way up to the roofline. My neighbor the electrician stopped over for a few hours on Saturday to hang light cans, but we weren’t able to get much more than that done. We still need to hook it all up and replace the small panel with the larger one I bought a few weeks ago, which will carry more circuits upstairs to the bathroom. Up there, we need to level the ceiling joists so that the cans can go in and switches can be run. I had our drywall guy come out and give us a price for both floors, which came in somewhere around “how soon can you get out here”, so the electrical has bumped up in priority.
The Harbor Freight multitool came in so handy, I don’t know what I was doing without it. I trimmed a section of roofline in a back corner, put in two old-work boxes in the shared wall (through 3/4″ sheathing), cut notches in the stringers for cables to pass behind, and cut the first of many sections of flooring out to be replaced. It went through hard pine like butter and made what would have been a time-intensive, frustrating task into a minor two-minute nuisance.
Before packing up for the evening, I cleaned up the space and took a minute to imagine it with drywall. We’re getting close!
I was poking around on our backup server last night looking for some pictures and came across some old shots of Chewbacca in and around the blizzard of ’03. This was one of her shining moments and paradoxically the final nail in her coffin; After digging out there wasn’t anyplace we couldn’t go in 4-wheel drive, but I don’t think she was ever right after bathing in road salt that year.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
I’ve been thinking about replacing my gas tank ever since I got the poly tank last summer, and I’m making plans to gather the tools I’ll need to swap it out this spring:
The tank
A new sending unit
A pair of new J-hooks
A pair of new tank straps (although, for $24/ea, mine may still be usable)
Caps of some kind to cap off the evap outlets on my tank
Jackstands to hold the tank up as I’m pulling the old/installing the new
A professional siphon for emptying the remaining gas
A quick look on the Binder Planet returned a few good threads with pictures and advice:
Gas tank strap install – with a few nice pictures and advice on which side of the straps to start with (the fronts)
My quest for the correct o-ring to fix my leaking gas tank at the fuel sender – info on O-rings
Gas tank belch, possible fix!! , which talks about poly tanks and using the extra emissions fittings to avoid burps at fillup time.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.