GTA IV
Hello world. Bought Grand Theft Auto IV. It’s cool. Still miss San Andreas, though.
Slow Train
{ poco a poco }Winter Sucks
We wrecked Veronica’s car on the way back from Sioux Falls. We were stranded in Minnesota for a night. Now she has a shiny new Corolla to replace it. It’s exactly like her old one, except for all the dents. I swore I’d never buy a damn Toyota; but here I am buying her a brand new one. I think marriage has softened me.
I got another ticket for window tint. It’s nuts that you can buy a car that is perfectly legal in one state and be penalized for it in another. I’m going to write my congressman this time.
My dad got me a Snap-On torque wrench for Christmas. I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited to get new tools.
Blue LED Delco Radio Mod
A few of the lights went out on my Delco radio in my ‘98 Silverado, so after seeing this page I decided to give it a shot. While I was at it, I put red LEDs behind my gauges.
The other guy’s method was to glue the LEDs in to the faceplate. I tried this at first, but soon realized that it makes much more sense to just solder the LEDs onto the board, cut a few traces, etc. It worked great. The radio looks really cool. I’m still debating the gauges, though. I think having orange needles with red gauges is the problem. Stay tuned.
As an added bonus, since the LEDs in the dash and the radio draw only a fraction of power that the hot 12V bulbs did, the headlight switch stays a lot cooler. The only drawback of all this is the inability to dim the lights (but I don’t see that as a drawback anyways). I highly recommend this to anyone looking for something different.
(special thanks to superbrightleds.com)
Updates
A few updates:
Wedding went great. Two years worth of planning and it all goes by in a flash. Veronica looked amazing. I was sweaty. Good times
Honeymoon was fun. Disneyland was cool, Knott’s Berry Farm was excellent (except for the food). Seaworld was Shamu-tastic.
The resort we stayed at, though, turned out to be a beautiful piece of shit. Short story, several things were stolen from our room, including a diamond necklace I bought for the wife as a wedding present. The hotel, however, couldn’t care less. I’ve felt safer at a Motel 6.
FUCK THE ST. REGIS AT MONARCH BEACH
Otherwise, it was a lovely time. I’ll miss the OC.
We’ve still got to finish those thank you notes, but we’re getting there…
Victory
I am proud to say that I finally met my goal of riding my 1974 Honda CB550 around before the end of the summer (labor day is the end of summer, right?). It took quite a bit of work (and a carb kit), but it’s finally running and (mostly) road-worthy. You can see a pic of it here.
It’s nothing to look at, but for a total ~$300 outlay, I think it’s a winner.
It has a few issues. It leaks gas right now. The carbs stopped leaking, I’m assuming this is because their seals sucked up enough gas while leaking to seal themselves again. However, I got lazy (and anxious) with the fuel lines and they have some not so little cracks in them. This is a problem. (life lesson 1: gasoline eats duct tape). This problem was most evident today when I was left stranded about 0.5 miles from home. (life lesson 2: pushing a bike uphill sucks).
The biggest problem right now is still the fact that it won’t idle unless I keep in the throttle. This makes it hard to drive, obviously. Stopping is hard, but I seem to have mastered the art. However, it still scares me. It likes to shutter down low and then surge, which is most unfortunate when you are a) in a turn or b) stopped and trying to make a turn. I’m still trying to get the feel for it. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel quite comfortable riding, but then again I should probably try not to buying broken motorcycles and see if that helps 
On the Road to Rhode Island (redux)
This comes a bit late, as I was in RI a week.5 ago, but it’s the only thing interesting that’s happened to me lately. It was a great time. I think we had a great party. However, I couldn’t help being a retard (or aqua-tard as Miss Lefler calls it) and getting a nasty sunburn on my shoulders and back. I was pretty gross for the shower. I can’t seem but have to ruin nice things like that. Hopefully I’ll shape up (behaviorally; I’ll still be fat) for the wedding.
We had another wedding last weekend, this time in South Bend. It was really hot, but it was very cool to hang out on the Notre Dame campus. That was a dream of mine ever since I was little guy.
I still haven’t finished my stupid motorcycle. After some great progress, I seem to have just been too busy to work on it. However, I’ve decided that saying ‘I’m too busy’ is complete bullshit and that I have never in my life been:
a) too busy
b) too tired
c) doing anything that could be considered ‘hard’
I want to push myself to really ‘work’ at something. I feel that I’ve never really done anything I was proud of or that I thought was worthy of attention. After all, if you have to go looking for complements, you’ve obviously missed the point. To that end, I am trying to root out all of those things in my life right now that I hate about myself. We’ll see how long this lasts…
Welcome to Tardville
Quite an event-filled weekend around the Sands ranch. By event filled, of course, I mean: I am a tarded.
First: I’m down in the basement bathroom and hear someone ringing the doorbell. I had taken off my shirt because I had intended on taking a shower, so I proceeded to put said shirt back on….and quickly punched through the light fixture on the ceiling. Oops. Good thing we’re getting a new one of those. Eventually.
The other tard event involves my beloved broken motorcycles. My first is a 1974 Honda CB750 (of dubious origins) that I purchased over two years ago. I spent a month getting it running only to promptly hit a car with it. Trust me, it’s even lamer than you can imagine. Thus, I was suddenly in the market for a parts bike. I waited until about 6 months ago when I found yet another ‘74 Honda; this time a CB550. I was giddy as a schoolgirl; I’d take the frontend off the donor 550, slap it onto the 750, and head down the road. Flash forward to today when I spent 2 hours cleaning 30+ years worth of grime off the 750 (minus front end) and attempted to mate the 550 forks: only to realize they’re an inch too short in every respect.
WHAT AN IDIOT!!!
I never really measured the two bikes that much, as everything looked so similar. Yeah. So I’m now stuck with two old bikes, both in pieces. And that is why I’m a tard.
Hopefully I can still get the 550 back into running condition before the end of the summer. Maybe I’ll follow Veronica’s advice from now on and quit buying broken motorcycles that are older than me.
links2 part 2
I’m writing this post again from Hardy’s linux box. Thanks RonTLV
In other news, I finally seem to have my house projects done (mostly), so I might finally get a chance to work on my motorcycles. This of course just means I’ve just run out of excuses not to fix them, not that I’ll actually get to them anytime soon.
Volleyball 2
It seems like it’s been ages since I wrote here, but it’s only been about a month. Volleys is almost over, but we’re doing another session. I’m playing softball with Veronica’s team, too, so Tuesdays have become very busy. I need to find more sports to play towards the end of the week. I don’t like getting this worn out so early.
The lady and I have been going to church in Davenport for over a month now in hopes that we can get married there. This never makes sense to people if I explain it to them, but none of those people ever had to get married in a place where neither you nor anyone you know lives. It SUCKS. Hard. But, I think we will make it through all of this with flying colors. If not, I hear flights to Vegas are cheap from here…