It looks like Scouts are popular on Instagram; my feed was topped with Peer Pressure this year.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
The site appears to have been hacked a wee bit; the old Archives link was hijacked to send users to a Canadian pill site. Please hold while I work under the hood.
According to this article, the U.S. has been at war for 46.9% of my entire lifespan, and a quarter of Americans have never experienced a time of peace (ahem, Afghanistan).
On a related note, from the always excellent McSweeneys, The Case for War, by Someone Whose Kids Won’t Die Fighting in It:
I, and I can’t stress this enough, don’t have any skin in the game. Your kids quite literally have skin in the game, some of it no doubt to be melted off by napalm.
David Tracy of Jalopnik undertakes and writes about hare-brained wrenching trips on a regular basis, and his latest one is a hoot to read: he flew 1,500 miles to buy a manual Jeep Cherokee (a rare option), fix it in a donated garage, and drive it all the way home.
Brian texted me last week to see if I was available for some junkyard picking, and we set up a time on Sunday afternoon to meet. He picked me up in the white Scout and we headed over to Jessup to see what we could find. He was looking to supplement the electric steering parts we pulled from a Versa back in October. Apparently we didn’t get everything we needed; we’d just grabbed the motor and called it done, when we also needed the bracketry, shaft, and other assorted wiring.
After a few minutes to get our bearings, we found a Versa with some serious front-end damage and found that someone had already pulled the driver’s door, steering wheel, and most of the dashboard apart. All the bracketry we needed was intact, and without the door it was even easier to get what we needed from under the dashboard. After about 20 minutes of futzing we pulled the entire assembly out and continued on our way.
I was there for three things, one of which was Scout related: the horn in Peer Pressure is the wimpiest, most pathetic little toot of any vehicle I’ve ever owned. It sounds like an Italian scooter. I wanted to find something that had some more chutzpah. I did some Internet searching and found that higher-end 80’s Cadillacs came with 4-note horns (an individual horn for each note) that are loud enough to wake the dead. The W126 Mercedes was second on the list followed by 90’s GM minivans, so I was able to narrow the search down on the yard’s handy inventory tool. As luck had it, there was a 300SE in the yard with my name on it. We found it pretty quickly, and someone had already removed the entire hood assembly, exposing the horns mounted to the radiator. All I had to do was put a 13mm socket on one bolt and disconnect the wiring, and they were in my hands.
We then looked for an eighth gen Honda Accord so that I could pull the passenger’s rear door lock assembly (mine has never locked or unlocked remotely since the day we got the car) and after ten careful minutes we pulled it from a wrecked black model with leather seats and four blown airbags.
Wandering around the junkyard, we happened upon a Sprinter van that had given up its engine, and I pulled another horn from behind the front bumper. It was getting late, and Brian’s motor assembly was getting heavy, so we called it a day and paid for our prizes.
Looking over these three horns on the bench, they’re identical—Mercedes apparently hasn’t updated their design in decades—apart from the note. The 300SE came with a 335hz and a 400hz horn wired in pair, and the Sprinter came with a 335hz. I’m going to start with the single from the Sprinter and see how it sounds in relation to the wuss stock horn, and if I need Get The Fuck Out Of My Way Loud I’ll put the dual set on and see how that does.
As for now, it’s cold and rainy (actually, snowing today) so Peer Pressure sits quietly in the garage, waiting for warmer weather.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
Infinity Train is a Cartoon Network series about a young girl who finds a mysterious train where each car is its own universe. She has to unlock each car, which presents its own logic and mystery, to continue to the next car. They’re short, only about 12 minutes each, but the writing is excellent and the story picks up steam—and weight—as it goes. (via)
Looking back on last year, a lot of things happened, and I still feel numb about some of them. My father died in the middle of January, right before his 81st birthday. I made it to one year free of cancer, although we had a leukemia scare in the summer that wound up being more cautionary than fatal. And I had my port removed. I celebrated five years’ employment at my current job, which has flown by. Finley started and shuttered several successful businesses over the summer (we’re still scratching our heads over this). We took some trips, and vacationed with friends. I grew more tomatoes in the greenhouse Mark 2, and ventured into some flowers and lettuce. I took out a home equity loan and promptly spent it on long-required projects like tree removal and bathroom cabinets and modern windows and a new driveway. The bathroom itself has inched forward to the point where we’re ready for countertops a full two years after the drywall went in. Our beautiful daughter turned 11 and has grown to where her head is just below my chin. We added a beautiful, anxious, whip-smart neurotic dog to our household.
I’m happy with the progress our family made in 2019, but I’m looking forward to a better year in 2020 for all of us. I think we could all use some luck and good vibes, especially my girls. I want only good things to happen for both of them this year, and I hope somebody upstairs is listening.
There are certain times I miss my Dad a lot. He and I had drifted apart over the last few years, but I miss hearing his voice and asking him questions and having him be there, even if I was too stupid to pick up the phone and call him. I’m still not OK with how poorly I left things with him, and I don’t think I ever will be.
As of the 29th of December and not including this one, I wrote 305 posts here in 2019, an average of slightly more than 25 per month. According to WordPress.org, my average word count per post is 210, which seems awfully small, but I guess the short sidebar posts lower the mean dramatically. That’s also an incomplete survey size, as I only just got that service hooked back up in July.
My site stats are all over the place, but Hazel’s introduction seems to be the most popular post from 2019. Meanwhile, an article I wrote about my Subaru back in 2013 seems to still be one of the most popular posts of all time. Go figure that one out.
Looking at the graph of my posts over time, the trend line still descends slightly in terms of posting frequency due to that crazy spike in 2005. Still, I’ve been on an upward trend since the beginning of 2017. Here’s to another year of bigger and better things.