Life Kills: November 2006 Archives
No, it's not a new dance... apparently it's what happens to a jeep with large wheels that are out of balance. Or a vibration starts after hitting a bump. Or something. Research into the matter uncovered about 40 different reasons for it. Anyway, wanna see it in action?
How freakin' scary does that look? I was cruising the forums when I ran into that little bit of lovin'... good thing I keep my wheels in line!
The transporters are coming for the Audi tomorrow morning - today's my last day with my baby. So, so sad...
The TT is officially paid off and gets picked up tomorrow to go to her new home in Napa, California.
I'm really, really sad to see her go - she was always really good to me and always pulled hard when I needed it. She ran, she raced, she shimmied, she dodged. She took care of me in situations where any other car would have meant an accident, injury, and possibly even death. She always looked good, even when I neglected to wash her for a few weeks, and she looks spectacular now with a good scrubbing. She is, in my opinion, a bright and shining example of the finest in German engineering. Her shoes are shined up, her skin is gleaming, and her fluids are topped off. She's ready to make somebody new very, very happy.
She'll always be my baby, though. My first dream-car, and (hopefully) not my last, she defined two years of driving for me. She has style and grace and tempered my driving skills. I'm unbelievably fortunate to have owned her, and I'm sure the new owner will recognize the unbelievable deal he got the moment he lays hands on her steering wheel.
Man, it's hard to let this one go. But it's all for the best - life takes twists and turns, and sometimes you decide to move forward in unexpected ways. Hey, that's how I prefer to roll. Besides, material goods are enjoyed for so long, and then perhaps it's time for new experiences. I'm not one to have stuff "just to have it", and having more than one car at a time seems kinda wasteful. I just don't see a point in collecting cars (unless they're irreplaceable, of course - but late-model cars? Nah.) So the TT was experienced and loved, and I know now that in the future, I can always come back and do it again without wondering if I'm gonna enjoy it. My next experience: getting the most out of my Jeep.
Speaking of the Jeepster, it took nearly three hours of wrangling (no pun intended) to extract the broken bolt from the block. We were going slow and careful so as not to damage anything, and it wasn't offering excessive resistance, but it took for-freakin'-ever. Once it was out, we polished the exhaust/intake area up, slapped some new gaskets on it, sealed it all up, put it back together, and started her up.
So nice. So nice. It's an amazing feeling of accomplishment to take something apart thats broken, put it all back together, and have it actually work. It's even more dramatic when it's something big and scary and tangible, like an engine. Too sweet. I actually see why people spend countless hours messing with their engines. Then again, ask me again when I have a nice set of bloody knuckles.
How can you not like DJ Shadow? Easy. You don't like awesome turntablism.
Thing is, people like DJ Spooky and the really hard-core turntablists like the Scratch Pickles and the Xecutioners really make it hard to listen to the stuff - there's so much staccato scritching and scratching breaking up the rythms and the mix just sounds mish-mashed. Sometimes that's really cool, and technically super impressive. Sometimes it just gives you a headache.
Then there's DJ Shadow. His screamingly smooth turntable work is so incredible you can't help but groove to it, and it's technically... so perfect. The man just mixes it all up in all the right ways. Don't believe me? Listen for yourself. Grab up any of his albums and you'll get his production work (great stuff in itself), but if you can find any of his work with Cut Chemist, or anything live, his work is out of control. Just got my hands on "Product Placement", a collaboration between Shadow and Cut Chemist, and I can't say enough good things about it. Granted - you do have to have something of a taste for breakbeats, and you really have to like a pretty wide variety of music (they mix all kinds of music from every genre), but if you can keep a slightly open mind, it's gotta be the most gangsta tunes I've listened to in a while. And I listen to a lot of music.
Aside from gushing over a badassed DJ that we've all known about and heard about and listened to since the 90's, I've added a special new section to the site. It'll house writings. All kinds of writings, of course: shorts, micros, whatever else I write. I'm also going to put out a couple of additional sections, including a photo gallery for my vast repository of photographic evidence of miscreant activity, and a section just for professional stuff. That'll leave this (main) blog for all the juicy entries that constitute my exciting existence.
Oh man, so it's been almost a week... no, wait, it's been a week since my last confessio... I mean, article. I've just been so busy, and I know my loyal fans (who leave so many comments) are missing my soapbox ways.
So here's a synopsis of what I've meant to write about all week, but simply haven't had the time (or I was busy writing in other people's blogs, my newest hobby.) It's a pretty wide range, I know... and I think I'll work my way backwards. Like a crab. Fiddler.
The ABS competition at Melbourne went... badly. I was excited and the routes seemed so cool that I totally burned myself up a tad on the quick side. Pacing is everything, I discovered (the hard way.) Combine this with less than a week to grow back the skin on my fingers and that's just a recipe for disaster. It's just a little frustrating to get on a route, know that you have the physical power left to push through the moves, but even the slightest pressure burns the fingers like hot pokers. I tried to work through it anyway, overgripped everything, and now my forearms are shot too. The end result? A terrible score, messed up hands, shot forearms, and a terrible, terrible negative feeling. Everyone else had a good round, though - William H. Dodge placed, Shaunna the Climbing Kitten placed, Suzecataz The Jalapeno Popper placed, D$-Divine placed, Dan-1 placed... heck, I think everyone placed except me. It was nice though - the South Florida crew took more places than any other crew (go figure)! Mad kudos! I still think I should've won a prize for most creative climbing hat...
Wolfcars is finally through phase 1 of its redesign. The new look is hot as hell, it's working up to spec, and will improve dramatically as I finish screwing in the last few features. There's much more to come in the next phases, including integrating their POS system with the site, enabling ecommerce and allowing customers to interact directly with the Wolfcars staff. All very exciting. The DNS may or may not have successfully flipped yet - so you might still get the old site, but I promise the new one is much cooler.
I found a great piece of writing software the other day, and started using it once in a while, mostly for creative writing (which I'm trying to get my feet back into with some microshorts.) It's called Writeroom, and it's promoted as "distraction-free writing". It totally is. When put into fullscreen mode, it's much like your old-school word processors (anybody remember WordPro?) There's not a million features, so don't go in expecting much more than a basic processor, but man, it's a great feeling to crank out page after page with no external visual distractions to drag you way. Two microshorts out already (see Mikey's blog) and the beginnings of a short story. I was considering posting the short story on this blog as I write it, maybe. Any opinions?
I finally found a soft top for the jeep! After stressing out about having to shell out a grand or so for all the crap I was going to need to assemble a soft-top, I ran into a guy who was just going to throw out his top. Now, it's a little damaged, but you can't beat free. Later on, I'll shell out some duckets for a new one thats undamaged. Right now, it'll work and keep me nice and dry (a big deal in South Florida.) I have to score the hardware, but that shouldn't be too terrible (about $150USD on jcwhitney.) Slowly, but surely, the Jeep is coming together.
The TT is finally going up for sale on eBay. I'm using iSale for the listing, and I gotta say, it's pretty swanky software. The utilities are nicely put together, the presentation and interface are slick and well thought-out, and the overall experience is pretty (surprisingly) painless. I'm impressed. It is, in my opinion, worth the price of admission (about $60USD), especially if you sell stuff on eBay regularly. In fact, I like it so much I've even linked back to it. Anyway, the TT is going for a little under $18,000USD, which is a great deal considering the condition it's in and the performance modifications of the S-Line.
Got a line on a CJ-7 that might be sweet to get my hands on. It's a 1979, it's on a lift kit, the whole nine. It has lots of custom options, which is both cool and a little awkward, it has an inline 6, which is definitely cool, and it's ready for offroad, which is awesome. The guy's not asking a lot for it, which is nice, and it's not super rusted out, just a few spots here and there. I'm excited to look at it. Thing is, I really like my TJ, even though it's a 4 cylinder. It has modern suspension, modern steering, modern technology, and while I dig the old-school, I like the sustainability of newer parts. In other words, I don't want to spend 10k getting an older car into daily-driver order. I don't know, I don't know. The old school is just so cool, but I really wish it were less customized, amazingly enough. I kind of want to 'do it myself', so to speak. Especially with an older car. That'd be The Way To Go, I imagine. But I'll look at it and see. It'll have to be pretty compelling to get me to give up the TJ, though.
Okay, I didn't do exactly in order. In fact, I'm all out of whack. But for those that care about what's happening these days, it'll make sense on some level. For the others, I promise I'll post up more relevant, interesting articles soon as I have a little time to put together a cohesive article.
