Okay, been working on my engine. Aaron helped a good bit, I really needed a hand with hauling off the head. So we go it off, the cam shaft is NOT seized, it turns, the valves work, they all appear to be in good shape - no obvious scratches, bends, cracks, or malfunction. The piston looks good too. The head gasket set costs over $200 FROM THE DEALER (it's more expensive anywhere else, but they don't even stock them). I should be able to recondition my head and exhaust gaskets, and found that the intake manifold gasket is only like $16 from the lovely dealer (nobody else stocks THAT either). So tomorrow I'm getting the im gasket and going to work. At least I shouldn't need a new engine. Sigh. Oh, blast, I'll need to get a new water pump. Oh well.

You know what really pisses me off? When you talk about doing something "this weekend", you know, like preventative maintenance, like changing your timing belt, but you put it off for another day, because the belt is rated for 75k miles and only has 45k on it, so you're going to do it sunday morning, and it goes and snaps at like 0130 in the morning. Really pisses me off. Any way, that's what happened, I snapped the Big Belt. I'm going to bed.

Oops, been a while since I updated. Been kind of busy, on several jobs at once now. It seems as soon as I finish one, another pops up in its place. Not that I'm complaining.

There has been a distinct lack of remarkable events in my life recently. Work keeps me busy, good and bad. My social life is paying for it, but hey, have I ever worried about that?

Hmmm, trolling for interesting topics, it seems I might be out of town this weekend, more business in Pensacola (don't tell the clients that most of the business is lounging in the sun, hehe). My exaust is STILL too raw, I think I'm going to have to get a mute for it. More money. Yay. My CDRW is going psycho on me, filling the event log with more stops than I can count. I refuse to shut down just to coddle it though. I'll reboot for the next planned hardware upgrade, some time early next month, and I'll be saying hi to half a GB of memory too. I'm going to work on overclocking the twin sisters, but I'm wary of the linked core voltage issue. I can't up the volts on the sisters one by one, they have to be on the same voltage. Ick. But I might be able to get them close to 950 mHz. Yummy.

Geocaching is a pretty fun thing. I believe it is going to be my new hobby, with Shawn's news. I found two caches today. They weren't really that hard, with a map and description. I think using a GPS (as they recommend) would make it too easy, at least for the level one caches. Tomorrow I think I'll try a couple of level two or three, see exactly how the difficulty relates.

Oh yeah, Shawn's news. It looks like his angel is doing good things for him, and he's pretty much secured funding. He was supposed to have a talk with the people from Spoon today. Any way, he's going to see about opening up a mechanic shop in the area. I'll give out more info when I have it. I know you people are aching for it.

I must know the stupidest people on God's green earth. Justin thought he was sober (the kid gets drunk off two beers), so he wanted to go driving. I think he had something passing for an excuse. Thank God he only nearly killed himself. He nicked a couple of fenders, got a truck and something else, and destroyed a telephone pole. I think he spent the night in jail. Maybe they'll take away his license for a couple of years, let him grow up a little more. So much for racing the miata, but he deserves it.