Cornbread Stuffing

Ok, so I’m feeling a little beaten on…

The mustang is ready for inspection, hopefully. I have all the lights working again, all the safety gear, horn, emissions, blah blah blah should check out. Oh she’s running a little rough, expected with the existing plugs and wires probably being 14 years old, and I most definitely need to change the oil tomorrow as well. Alignment shop has me pencil’d in for 9AM, I still have to drive the 20mi there in the car. I figure if I leave here at 8, I can take it ultra slow and be there in plenty of time. All I have to do is tighten castle nuts and at least it will be safe if steer like hell. If it doesn’t align well enough here tomorrow morning, I may call the wrecker place and get her taken at the delightful expense of $125+.

There’s been an electrical issue nearly catching the car on fire. Way to go, me. Hopefully I have fixed that problem. New battery too, last Optima took a dive and this was an exchange under guarantee. Tomorrow I think I got it wired well enough to get to the shop and home, and can deal with the rest of the fancy schmancy options I want later. Right now, she just needs to pass…

So much has happened lately,   and almost all of it positive!  My projects move forward, my life moves forward, and all the crap I have been dealing with seems to be fading into obscurity so fast, it almost feels like some of it was never a bother.

All drama ceases!  No more pain-and-woe posts!  To focus on the positive, that’s all that matters today and tomorrow!  I should go into marketing.   On that note, however, the Mustang continues to frustrate and satisfy me all at once.  I have to finish attaching a bumper, a fender, and some headlights before too long, and the rest is history!  I’ve gotten robbed far too often on some bumper supports, and quite frankly, can’t handle buying used body parts off the Internet anymore.  Hopefully, I can make what I have work well enough, and thus can finish this without spending more dough.  Could she be done in another 10-12 hours?  Perhaps, but I have to find the time to commit first!  All the brewing is done for Alex’s wedding, so this is all that I have to focus on for a while.  Perhaps I will be completely done by the end of the weekend?  Then, saving for paint….

Well, amazingly enough, I managed to get more done last weekend than expected.  Much love to Steve, a good friend who has been through the worst and best of life, only to still stick around my sorry butt.

We hacked on the Mustang pretty much all night Friday, all day Saturday, and most of Sunday.  We sanded then painted painted my 2002 Bullitt wheels black from the stock Anthracite, which was a chore to say the least.  Steve has a talent, recognize!  Saturday was spent doing the swap from 4-lug spindles to 5-lug, using ‘95 Mustang spindles.  We managed to avoid any major calamities, excepting one tie rod boot I replaced with a NAPA part.  We also hit up Ford for some caliper bracket bolts, and still are looking to get a few more items before final assembly.  Brakes are still a concern, the 2003-2004 Cobra hardware looks to be the way to go.

Contrary to popular belief, the Internet isn’t my sole purpose in life. I’ve recently been on the receiving end of a lot of hostility, both for what I say and just for being in the position of provision that I am. Sometimes, I wonder if I have missed the point entirely, that I am pushing myself to provide all these services for free or cheap for no good reason. I used to get so much more satisfaction from it. Right now, I’m not looking forward to the expenses it will be in the coming months.

At the same time, I’ve given my word to some folks that I will keep their websites live and working for some time to come. I have to honor those commitments, and so I can’t just punch out and get some cheap hosting for my domains and walk away from it all. Alas, the crossroads all seem to lead to the same destination, and I’m just gonna have to suck it up. Pity party canceled, I’m gonna go watch some Battlestar Galactica.

Oh man oh man, I am beat.

Managed to get a lot done, a buncha rewiring, new circuits, and the associated headaches always encountered when one fabricates car parts or supplements the systems. Fortunately, I got enough done to get the car back to starting/running condition, and am able to say with confidence that I’ve done the right thing taking this long getting things done.

Still have to hang the rest of the body panels, verify/shim/fit everything up, and have her painted. The hood I have is also kinda banged up, which goes to show that buying used parts from people off the Internet can always be a bit of a gamble. I won’t go into this in more detail for now, other than to say I’m done with that person for good.

As many of you likely know, and most of you don’t, I have a 1993 Mustang GT convertible I am very very fond of. A little over a year ago, I was coming home at night when a feral hog decided to nearly end my life, and my car’s. Below is a picture of the aftermath, the sow is on the left.

It was one of the luckiest and saddest days of my driving life. After my insurance company decided they were not going to fix my car, I took her back and decided to do this myself. After all, it’s not THAT bad, and all the damage is repairable by someone with time and patience.

In a couple of weekends, my friend Steve (aka: Crash) and I will be taking a few days to do as much work as possible on her. There will still be the matter of paint, but otherwise she will be done and back on the road. Tires are also a concern, as I am sure there are flat spots from sitting as well as locking up all four wheels during the wreck. This isn’t my first time digging into a car, so I’m sure we can finish up the body work and few modifications I have started on. Most important is getting her back into form before the Texas springtime hits, so I can get paint on her and have the wind in my hair this summer.

Well, ok, so I don’t have much hair anymore. Sorry it’s been so long since my last post, certain events transpired as to put me out a little on this thing. I’ll try and not let it bug me so much and start posting more often. Details on the ‘Stang to follow soon enough, as well as some more pics.

Today, my name was brought into public view during a presentation to the commissioners of Texas Parks and Wildlife, where I work, during public hearings. I happen to be the head “everything” for wireless projects, both for public access in state parks and agency-use-only networks. I don’t normally get too worked up about who knows what I do, and how hard I work to do it, but today was a high point in my career. I don’t expect to get much mention for my efforts, but in reality, I enjoyed the snot out of it. I’ve been riding that high all day.

It’s not hard to do what I do sometimes, because I enjoy it. I’ve always had some weird draw to pushing 1’s and 0’s from A to B, and what I’ve done for TPWD just falls right into that. It’s been a great pleasure creating a solution the agency has faith in, and I can’t express how much I appreciate the buy-in from my management in the solutions I’ve provided. We’re saving a bunch of money as opposed to a commercial solution, getting kudos from the public and agency employees, and keeping me challenged and excited all at once. I didn’t do a thing to deserve this, but I’ll take my warm-fuzzies where I can find them.

I look forward to the near future.

Woke up this AM, checked the weather and my office Intranet, and I have the day off due to the freezing ice and sleet we are encountering here in Central Texas. Fortunately, my wife was able to hit up the local grocery store yesterday to get us stocked up for just such an occasion. We’ve spent the last couple of days weathered-in, playing Viva Piñata and watching movies. Well, she is playing Viva Piñata, I got bored with it too quickly.

Here’s a pic of exactly what I am looking at outside my porch now. It’s not too bad, except it’s all sleet and frozen rain. We had a little snow, but not enough vs. the other stuff.

Barely below freezing, but enough to keep this crud around the ground.

This took far too long…

Back in 1998 or so, I wrote some code to make cornbread.com a web-based diary of sorts, linking to interesting documents and such that I encountered on my daily rifling through the Internet. Some jackhamster decided to coin a hipster word, “blog”, for this sort of thing, sometime near this. A bunch more people started to make software that was far more sophisticated than mine, and gave it away to everyone who wanted it. Pretty soon, “blogging” was the way to be “cool”, the way to let everyone see how interesting or smart you are, and that’s the fastest way to put me off on anything. I shut it down and put up the lame recipe database and message board nothingness that has sucked cornbread.com into a black stinky hole since.

I decided to change something today. Well, the decision happened sometime over the last week, but there was no way to ignore it any further. As of today, January 11, 2007, I’m gonna bring this thought back and do something with it, if just for myself. I really don’t mind not having an audience, but at least I’ll spend some time contributing some content to the Internet (just like a bazillion other losers with nothing to say worth reading). Well, ok, there’ll be some neat schtuff from time to time too.

Thanks for bothering, hope the next few months are more interesting than the last.