Squeak Removal

I made an attempt to eliminate a couple of unwanted sounds that the Emperor has been making tonight.

First up was a high pitched ringing or whine that it seems that only I and possibly certain breeds of dogs can hear. I’m hoping that this is what it was in the past, a singing clutch actuation fork. A bit of grease needs to be applied on the fork where the slave cylinder rod touches it. It seems like there was still some grease on there, but I applied some more and worked it around a bit.

Second was the annoying belt squeal, mostly brief when the AC kicks in and occasionally long, loud and embarrassing on damp morning start ups. I’ve been treating this issue with belt dressing with limited success and decided it was time to attempt to tighten the offending belt. I have been avoiding this because I didn’t think that I could manage it without making it worse. Turns out in the intervening 25 years since I last tried tightening an automotive belt they have made it easy. Once you’ve loosened the mounting bolt, there is now a fancy screw that you can tighten with a wrench which increases the tension. Heck, if I’d known that, I wouldn’t have had to listen to that squeal for the past year.

When I finished the maintenance I pulled out Meguiar’s Quik Detailer and gave the car a sponge bath.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
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Donnie Darko

List your top five favorite Cult Classic movies. We had this discussion a few weeks ago over the course of several afternoon breaks in my cubical. Of the four folks involved we had very few overlaps. A little of this difference can be attributed to our age disparity, but when asked for the criteria used to define cult classic there were lots of variation, from a movie that people dress in character to go see to not having a firm definition, but knowing one when when you saw one.

My Five:
1) Rocky Horror Picture Show
2) Donnie Darko
3) A Clockwork Orange
4) The Harder They Come
5) The Goonies

 

The Simpsonized Frank & Donnie Darko comes from Springfield Punx.

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Happy Bird-day

Yesterday was Donna’s birthday, but today was our bird day.

While I snapped a photo of the Pineville, SC Post Office I noticed a large flock (a colony) of egrets in the background. I couldn’t help myself, so I walked around back hoping to snag a photo of the lot of them taking off as they saw me. And I got kind of lucky, but I don’t think National Geographic magazine will be knocking on my door with a job offer.

Earlier I didn’t have the camera at the ready because I was driving and missed a similar fly off. This one wasn’t a flock of egrets though. We could see a set of large flapping wings a little ways down the road off in the grass and knew exactly what it was, a turkey vulture. Not much is scarier when you are driving a bitty convertible with the top down than a bird with a 6 foot wing span that has trouble getting to altitude. So I slowed down to let the bird get airborne, and when he did, he took his friends with him. There must have been 2 dozen of them hidden it the tall grass. I had to slow to nearly a stop to let them clear out of my way and we still chased two of them down the road for about a eighth of a mile before they found a spot to veer off.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
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Poster Boy For Wearing Pants

Looks like measles, but it’s not. Memo to self — always wear long pants, not shorts, when using a string trimmer to edge your lawn. The other leg doesn’t look quite as bad because it was a little farther away from the action…

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Pot Calling the Kettle Black

I don’t read People magazine or watch Entertainment Tonight, so I don’t know what the root of all this is. Neither am I sure if this particular story from this morning’s newspaper is being reported with breathless excitement or stunned amusement because I didn’t read it.

Headline:
Lindsay Lohan lashes out at father on blog.

Pull quote:
“If you have something to say to me, say it to my face — that’s what I have believed my whole life — don’t be a coward and say it to others first, let alone all the media in the world.”

WTF? Do you think Lindsay told that to dear ol’ dad before posting it on her blog?

1,000,000 Microseconds

I use AutoCAD at work and ever since they upgraded me to version 2007 a couple of months ago I routinely have to attempt starting it a half dozen times before it will load. I will invariably report that it can’t find a license sever. I hit ‘Cancel’ and instead of just shutting off it will pop up a ‘Warning’ box that informs me I’m not authorized to use that application. I have to hit an ‘OK’ button to clear the screen allowing me another attempt. I am not the only one either, every AutoCAD user has the same issue.

Turns out our licensing server resides not on a box in our computer room, but in one at our company HQ, 700 miles away in New Jersey, so AutoCAD wasn’t getting a response in a timely manner. To fix the problem and environment variable had to be added to everyone’s PC — FLEXLM_TIMEOUT=1000000.

I know the speed of light is fast, but apparently on our network it can’t routinely make a 1400 mile round trip in under a second.

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Watch Me If You Want To Live

T3: Rise of the Machines is on FX and I’m watching it. Even though #3 was the weakest of the series so far, I can’t help myself it is just one of those movies that no matter where I come into it I have to stay and finish it. (I think somewhere here on the blog I came up with a name for these kind of movies, but seem to find it right now.)

I’m stoked because they are making #4 right now for release in May of 2009. I hope it turns out good in spite of all the naysayers who think it will suck just based of casting and leaked plot lines. I’m sure I will like it no matter what, after all, I even enjoyed Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles TV show last season on FOX. Which by the way, the second season of starts on Monday, September 8th.

Started up, went down, went up, still up.
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