Ding's new boyfriend.

I'm having a problem with this one. I suppose it's because I'm protective of Ding given I've known her since she was a toddler. I know that this day would eventually come but it's still a quite a shock. Thank goodness my nieces aren't in high school yet.

What it comes down to is that I really want the best for her...some kid destined for medical school, or an Heir of some kind....in other words, this guy better live up to some incredible standards. At the least, this chump better be kind, smart, ambitious, hard-working, respectful, loyal, and most of all, treat Ding like a fricken Princess. If not,...well, that's the problem I suppose. If it doesn't work out, or ends terribly with alot of emotional pain involved, she'll have to work through it and learn from it...that's life. We can't protect her from that.

Not all relationships work out...and by God, definitely not most firsts. If I can give her one bit of advice, here it is: your first relationship can be the most brutal. It seems as if you live and die with the ups and downs of your first romance. But DON'T be fooled,...youth has a way of MAGNIFYING everything. And Life is way too short to live in misery...so if it's not working out (ie. you feel unhappy, pressured, overwhelmed, smothered)...GET OUT. If it's impacting your relationship with your family and friends, the quality of your school work, or even your health (emotional and physical) then you got a problem. TALK TO SOMEONE...fer crist sake, we've all been through it!...allow your loved ones to support you.

Well, that's all I have to say. I truly wish her well.

Too many clients,...not enough beds.

Same old story I suppose. The City's' public health institutions are cursed by it's reputation as a compassionate and progressive system. We take in and provide care and ongoing treatment of every category along the entire spectrum of mental health and substance abuse services to people from ALL over the country, and at times from other countries...and we do it for free. Very few cities in the nation provide the intensity and depth of treatment and the specialized services that we provide. But the problem is; How do we pay for it all? and will the conga line of patients ever end?

I suppose it may end when public health number crunchers at the federal level come to the common sense conclusion that it is cheaper to provide preventive/primary/tertiary care than emergency services to those who are already "ill". Is social darwinism at work here?...with it's underpinnings set in the Protestant Work Ethic? Is it fair to accept that the rich (or at least those who can afford it) DESERVE better health care because they've EARNED it? And is the opposite then true that those who are poor have not busted their asses, worked as hard, and in turn should NOT receive the same care? I truly believe that this sentiment is working subconciously here. It's an easy way to dispel our outrage and concern...also a mantra of sorts,...say it enough times, and you actually start believing it. And when you throw in the notion of "Finite resources", then you get even the middle class fearing that providing universal health care will negatively impact their families health care.

My goodness, I can really go on and on on this topic, but I don't want to rant. What I can say is that our system is not simply BROKEN...it is at it's core IMMORAL. The moment we introduce "profit" in the situation, we've lost credibility. It's fine to suggest that due to limited resources we may need to triage certain clients based on acuity or need, but to deny treatment due to fiscal reasons is just plain immoral. And I don't need to come up with some apocraphal story for this one....this actually happens every day. It has, and it will happen to each of us in our lives.

Talk to you tomorrow.

Empty house.

Lonely at home. The cats feel it as well. I believe they're a bit upset. Found a huge turd sitting in the middle of the kitchen rug this morning...a sure sign indeed.

Got the car aligned by Motorsport Techniques, and I'm VERY pleased. I am very specific about my alignment settings but almost never get the results I ask for. I've been lucky to get results within 3 tenths on the camber. These guys are very precise...and without the exorbitant prices to boot. They got numbers within 5 hundredths!

Left camber 1.75 degrees neg
Right camber 1.8 degrees neg
My weight offsetting the .05 degrees of discrepancy due to suspension compression.
And near zero toe at all corners....very nice.

Add that to the new GSD3's, uprated tie rods, uprated front control arms, and the car STICKS man....and MUCH better at modulating steering during suspension compression. I'm going for a Togue run this evening....hehe.

Earthquake rattles the homestead.

4:42 AM I am awakened by a small jolt...."Hmm, small earthquake...go back to sleep". After 5 seconds of slight trembling, the house is hit by 3 good seconds of shaking..."Woo, this is a big one..."...and I hear several pictures fall from the wall. Right afterwards, silence, then dogs barking, then the relegate car alarms.

I immediately switched on KCBS, which coincidentally was running a 3 minute report on earthquake insurance at the time, and they reported that the epicenter was 2 miles from our home, with the slip occurring a mere 3.6 miles from the surface....a 4.2. I said to myself that that was the strongest 4 pointer I've ever felt. It turns out that this quake was a "shallow" quake. Deeper slips have wide spread effects but tend to have less dramatic shaking in and around the epicenter. With this one so near the surface and the surface epicenter a mere 2 miles away, on the Hayward fault BTW, it really rocked the house, so to speak.

So, I got up and checked on the cats who had leaped off their pillows...I can tell, the pillows were strewn onto the floor, meaning they must have bolted as the earthquake hit. 3 pictures fell, none were broken, and everything else was intact.

Back to sleep.

Dammit, I'm finished.

Final checklist for Monday:

Driver's side rotor mounted...check
Driver's side caliper remounted...check
Pads mounted, anti-brake squeal on back surface...check
Both sides, caliper bolts anti-seized and torqued to spec...check
Checked all the work: Pinch bolts, jam-nuts, lock nuts, bolts and more bolts...check
Take picture...check


Greased every bushing...check
Bled brakes...check (what a mess)
Mounted new rear tires to the front and vice versa, both sides...check
Torqued wheel bolts to spec...check
Put away the 45 tools laying on the ground...check
Clean garage...check
Take shower, very dirty water in tub...check
Eat dinner...check

and Finally, the fun part....BED BRAKES!! WOOHOO!!

Crossing my fingers that nothing jettisons off the car in the process.

Kill me now...

What supposed to have been a leisurely 3-4 hours of removing the drivers side Tie Rod, remounting the calipers, mounting new ceramic pads, and slotted rotors turned into a 9 hour ordeal. Super Tricked-out WRX Man came by to help out. The problem was the driver-side Tie Rod....the lock nut, which was supposed to have been torqued to 30NM was seized to the Jam nut. After hammering the nut for an hour, penetroling the bolt half a dozen times, situating our wrenches in every conceivable way to get better leverage, and tag teaming the sum bitch, we still could not break it.

After lengthy deliberation, we decided that the best way to get maximum leverage on the bolt was to remove everything around it...ie. the coil-over, upper control arms, and coil-over hat....the shit that took Rave-Boy and I all day Saturday to get on the car!!

So out it want...back to square one.

After removing it, we clearly got a much better angle on the bolt and started beating the shit out of it...yes I'm swearing a bit more than usual. After an hour of palm blistering, muscle quivering effort, we gave up. We had to get a professional to break it.

At that point, WRX dude left and I took a break to eat a late lunch and have a beer. My wife got home and the neighbors come by to check on my progress. After an hour break, I got to finishing the other side, which finished smoothly. I felt a bit rejuvenated by my progress on the passenger side and decided to try freeing the bolt one more time. After several minutes of careful planning, I contorted my body within the wheel-well, pinched on both adjustable wrenches on to both bolts in such a way that I can get a good 5 inches of hammer travel to smack the end of the wrench in an effort to break the nut loose. I busted out my dad's 22 oz. Black Rhino hammer, wrapped the wrench handle to reduce the sting on my hands, and hammered away until I ran out of END and delved into STUN. After giving it a good 50 whacks, it started to break!! Then voila, it just spun off the thread like a top! Give Praise and Thanks...I got emotional and religious for a bit afterwards.

So with that out of the way, I had to put everything back....with anti-seize and synthetic grease on EVERYTHING this time. After 9 hours, I had to stop. I'm not quite finished yet; still got to do the calipers, rotors, pads, bleed, and bed, but I'll bust that out tonight without problems...I hope.

3 days of suspension mods.

I never want to work as a car mechanic...I'd want to commit suicide after the first day. So I'm finally diving into the car project; upgrading the front suspension. I've cleared my entire weekend schedule to do the work. Firstly, here's my garage and all the parts laid out:


After preparing the garage space, getting my tools ready, and getting the car on jackstands, I finally got to diagnosing and examining the entire front suspension.

The good news: thank GOD there's no damage to the lower control arms; no bushing damage, rubber looks great, boots are in good shape, nice and tight fit, arms straight, and no play at all. This is especially good given a lower control arm replacement would require that I remove the hub and the spindle...a good 4 hours of extra work just to do that! Also good are the front sway bar end-links; looks brand new! no play, no visible signs of wear, rubber looks firm and robust.

The bad news: both upper control arms on both sides are busted, boots exploded and metal to metal. Also, both tie rods are shot. The Left side is bent! I remember the exact moment it happened too....TURN 8 and 8a at Infineon with NTT's Brain in the passenger seat. Ever since, it's been getting worse. On fast right-handers which load and compress the drivers side suspension, I get a thumping and a hopping in the left front tire. Positively scary on TURN 3 at Thunderhill...hippity hopping all the way through! It's just been getting worse since.

Anywayz, here's the damage to the control arms and a comparison with a brand new one:



Here's my old blown out tie rod. I'm replacing them with uprated Bilstien tie rods...nice:


So I got to work on Friday night and it took me 2 hours to get the damn calipers off. Even after liberally Penetroling the bolts, removing the Two 21 MM holding the caliper to the spindle required the following: Get on the floor on my back and under the front bumper in order to access the breaker bar, brace my legs under the wheel-well to get maximum leverage, shimy the breaker in such a way that I had access to the handle, and then use all my levels to PUSH to get an additional 10 strength to break the nut off...AND I had only 1 inch of space for the breaker bar to swing. The caliper came off nicely afterwards...note to self: a floating rotor floats...as soon as I disconected the caliper, the 30lb rotor fell off narrowly missing my foot which would have surely severed my toes.

Here are my old rotors next to my new ones...mmmm, nice Zimmerman slotted.


The next day, I started work on removing the old upper control arms. Thanks to NTT's Brain and Rave-Boy for all their help...and of course to ThePerfectLine for all his tools. Rave-Boy particularly kicked ass, hung in there for 6 hours of busting knuckles. The down side to removing the front control arms was the necessity to remove the coil-overs and the accompanying mounting brackets...there was simply no other way, as NTT's Brain put it. So off they went.

Rave-Boy and I managed to get all the control arms off, pulled from it's pinch bolt, bushings compressed, and coil-overs back on. Had a minor complication with one of the new control arms but after 2 hours of literally banging on it with several types of hammers, it fit...hehe.

Taking a break to bathe and sleep. Will get back at it tomorrow to finish the job. Still got ta do the tie rods, replace the calipers, and put on new pads and rotors, which will be a breeze....I hope. I have a feeling I'll run into some problems,...it allwayz happens. Rave-Boy said he may return tomorrow and Tricked-Out WRX Man will swing by to drop off tools.

Will fill you in on the finish tomorrow.

Return of the Duck.

Something of a tangent first: it was my 3rd wedding anniversary yesterday and my wife and I went out to dinner to a restaurant of my choice. We went to Pasta Pelican in Alameda...my wife hates the place due to the food being a bit pedestrian...your typical Italian neighborhood shtuff...too salty and lacking in creativity and imagination. But I love the place for it's awesome views and good sized portions. Anywayz, before we had dinner, we recon'd restaurants at Jack London Sq. Now THOSE places I'm not keen on....generally overpriced, and the Square is a little long on the tooth now-a-days.

When we returned to my car, I was shocked to see it covered in some white substance. Upon further examination, we discovered it was Bird Shit...and alot of it. A Pelican must of had diarrhea. I swear, it looked like someone threw a large Oreo's and Ice Cream milk shake all over the drivers side door, roof, and window. As I drove off, some guy literally pointed and laughed at me.

Anywayz, about the duck. This morning, endeavoring to get rid of the crap on my window, given I could hardly see out of it, I uncoiled my lawn hose and started washing it off. A couple minutes into the process, I heard a fluttering behind me. I turned around and there the Duck was....standing there looking up at me. I was in a rush to get to work and so despite my desire to hang out a bit, I decided to ignore her. I wound up the garden hose and walked into the garage to get my car keys and there the Duck was again...inside my garage waiting. Now I really wanted to spend some time with it but I needed to get out of there so I walked her out....shut the garage, and started the motor. I think she got the message, so she started waddling across the street to hit up our neighbor who was watering some potted plants. As I drove off, I saw her looking down at her.

The neighborhood Duck.

Bizarrely cute thing happened the other day. I was washing my car when a duck flew down to check on my progress. She waddled across the street and visited a neighbor, walked right up to her and then walked back to my driveway. She stopped a couple feet from me and looked up.



I had a notion about what the duck was silently requesting so I went ahead and slowly turned the nozzle to my garden hose and began spraying her with a cool mist of water. She walked underneath the shower and began to bathe. After several minutes, she seemed finished and walked onto our grass lawn. I went inside to fetch my wife. She had to see what was going on.

When I returned to my garage, I realized she had walked into it and was waiting for me. I slowly went into a closet and pulled out our bag of bird feed and grabbed a handful. I then sat on the floor of our garage and stuck my hand out. She didn't miss a beat and simply walked over and without hesitation ate from my open palm. The duck's beak makes a near vibrating movement as it pecks...funny.



My wife took some pictures and sat down next to me. The duck walked over to her and proceeded to practically sit on her lap to get to some seeds my wife had placed on her pants...totally cute. I'm completely amazed at this duck's total lack of fear. Anywayz, after the duck had finished it's snack, it walked down our driveway and into the neighbors yard...they were washing their car as well. My neighbor looked down at her and smiled.

That night my wife and I were sitting down to have dinner with some friends at a crazy good Burmese place on Park. We scanned down their menu and saw "Passion Duck in Mango Sauce"......and decided to order the chicken instead.

24 Hours of LeMons cont....

The Race was named "The Inexplicably Named Tournament of Champions". Over 90 cars entered the field, and after 12 hours of racing in 100 degree heat, less than 40 cars survived to cross the finish...which is actually quite a staggering accomplishment.

Some of these racers were complete novices, while others had full-on race car drivers at the helm. Here are some of my favorites.

WORKS Mitsubishi, one of the pre-immenent EVO tuners on the west coast, fielded an early 90's Mitsu Mirage. Their only modification, outside of safetly equipment and a tune-up, was a complete spray glueing of FUR on the exterior of their car. They fielded some 7 honest to goodness drivers.



My favorite Car by far was Team Vatican Motorpool's "Pope Mobile". This team came in 3rd completing some 600 laps...and the Pope hung in there for the entire race. BTW, they were closely followed by the eventual 4th place winner, Team Carnage's Car 666.



We sat next to these guys...Team Top Secret...with a huge cow head on thier trunk and a surf board on the roof. This Pinto had absolutely NO mods, save a re-tuned carb. It actually survived the entire race on the same tires they bought the car with. That car was slow as Pahoehoe.



And Team Fabulous Frogs reliable BMW 5 series.



And finally, the winner, Team Lemon Lappers Dodge NEON!.....surviving the entire race and completing 652 laps...WOOHOO! Note the 4 foot straw on the roof.



Needless to say, we're fielding a team for next year. The PerfectLine likes the idea of driving a chopped minivan with the A-Team's Van colors. I, however, would love to find an old crappy Javelin and transform it into the "Last of the V8 Interceptors". How cool would that be, Huh?

24 Hours of Le Mons

The Pinnacle of Motorsports. The Ultimate in automotive technology. Wheel to wheel racing at it's finest...the 24 Hours of Le Mons. The only catch is your team CANNOT spend more than a total of 500 dollars on your vehicle, including performance mods...and excluding safety equipment, thank heaven.

This Sunday, the PerfectLine and I travelled to the historic Altamont Raceway in the middle of Bum#uck Egypt to witness the Race of All Races. Within the first five minutes, we were greeted to 3 spinouts, about a half dozen 2 wheel drops, an overheat, and an imploded right front axle...BTW, that old Porsche continued valiantly for half a lap dragging it's wheel and spindle behind him. Here, literally was my first pic...as you can see, in the background is a spin, and all that dust was from cars forced off the track and into the sandy infield.



This maniac got his front bumper nearly ripped off and simply continued to race with the bumper dragging ahead of him.



Speaking of technology unparallelled, this guy relocated his radiator and used it as a rear spoiler.



This was a great car, the "Camarovertible" fielded by "Team Sum Bitch". You have to understand, it wasn't a convertible at the start of the race. The top was in such bad shape that even the judges said that it was only a matter of time when the roof would fly off, and perhaps into the stands. Sooo they simply cut it out and with it, the windshield. This guy drove the piss out of this car. He was a master of oversteer...but then again, he must have spun at least 8 times in one hour.



And of course, Team DO or DIE's Hearse. Their drivers were insane. By the last hour of the race, they had lost several gears on the tranny and continued to race, embodying their DO or DIE team concept. Along the straights, however, they were just one huge moving chicane.



So, I'll stop here for now and pick it up tomorrow.

Happy 4th!

No work today. Sealing the slate walkway, 2 coats, my wife did the first. Her attention to detail was driving me batty so I went inside and made lunch.
Here's before:



Here's after:



Took a look at thediscourser's new blog....WOW, totally awesome work Bro. BTW, I simply have no desire to even drive through a Red State now.

Also, finished Pic'ing my Spain blogs....and check out the Chinatown picture in my previous blog....READ the sign...it's totally hilarious.

And to finish, I fell down the other day. The entire weight of my body fell onto my lower right shin. The pain was Glorious! No lightheadedness like when I cheese grated my thumb tip off. Here's the damage.



Later...

Out of town guests.

So, I'm slowly uploading our Spain pics and will soon have some pics for all those blogs...I have half of them "pic'd" so feel free to puruse and return when I've finished.

Anywayz, my wife's best friend and her 9 year old son has been staying with us this past week. We've been showing them around and been having a fun time. Went to the wine country Friday to hit some wine and champagne tasting...picked up some Muscat (hyper sweet desert wine) from V Satui. Like I've said, wine tasting in Napa is an alchololic's dream come true. BTW, years of filipino food has clearly erradicated my palate...I have absolutely no capacity to appreciate the "subtle undertones of cherry and pear" or the "lingering hints of oak and spice". In other words, all Cabernet Sauvignon tastes the same to me...in fact, I couldn't tell you if I was drinking Syrah, Zin, or a Cab....or if one was a 200 dollar glass of wine or your corner liquor store 2.99 twist-off special. Call me a neanderthal.

Spent Saturday in Chinatown and North Beach.


You know, I've lived in the Bay Area for nearly my entire life and discovered that most out-of-towners have seen more of our tourist destinations than I have...wierd.



And went to a Giants game on Sunday. We completely DEMOLISHED Arizona BTW...13 ZIP!


And If you've seen my pics from Spain, you'll notice I've broken my personal confidentiality bit and posted pics of myself. I wanted to black out my face but realized "who am I kidding?", does anyone really care?, and I have no idea how to do that sort of thing on my computer anywayz. My wife insisted not to post any of her and THAT I'm agreeing to.