Tidbits.

L. asked what I want for my birthday which is within a week. Can you put fourteen hours of sleep on a gift card? It would be awesome if I could use it whenever I was short of Z's. Just whip it out and use a couple hours to refresh myself.

Christmas was fun. We pretty much followed my poem. My dad and little brother met us for dinner at a local restaurant on Christmas eve. Little bro stayed the night and worked with me in the garage all day. Patched the front hole in the roof of the bus. Came out better than the first. Also partially welded in the bulkhead (divider) before I ran out of welding gas. Looks like crap now , but with a coat of paint, it'll be almost invisible.

Before...

After...
Lost my internet connection at the house. Not sure if it's the cable or a virus or something. Which reminds me... We took the POS Ipod back and got a refund.

Went to the DMV to pay my Ad Valorem tax (aka state theft of funds) for my car. You think the inlaws would be pissed I used their $300 gift check to pay for tags on my car? I miss Florida where you paid taxes based on the weight of your vehicle. Cost of tags for a '68 VW beetle. $26.

It's going to be a redneck new year. We decided to go to a party at a friends farm to ring in the new year. They're going to have fireworks by the pond. "The good-uns ya git frum 'cross the state line." Think I'm going wear my leather jacket and welding helmet. I get mental shots of overweight guys saying "Hold ma beer -n- watch this!"

New years resolutions. More Gym. No more smoking.

I feel the need...

...the need to read.

Got Bob's book today. Excellent stuff. It reminds me that I love reading. It's been a while since I've been a bookworm and I'm overdue to start getting into it again. It's been so long since I've been an avid reader, I feel lost when I go into book stores nowadays. Some day soon, I'm going to spend a couple vacation days in a book store sucking down crizzy and freeloading as many books as I can.

Read a good one lately? Hit the comment button and give me a starting point the next time I'm in Barnes & Noble.

Happy Geekmas

Twas the day of Christmas and all through the home
Was the sound of power tools with their deafening drone.

L in the basement and I in garage
Working on projects and other hodgepodge.

She with her saw whining away
And me with compressor pumping all day.

Her sawdust is whirling and swirling around
while my bus gets more metal ground down.

She paints while I hammer she sands while I mold
It's an interesting holiday sight to behold.

The sound is quite loud and the neighbors must think
"Those crazy Geeks must need a shrink."

We work and we work 'till Christmas is through
We work because we think it's the fun thing to do.

If you listen real careful after our tools wind down
You'll hear us scream "Merry Christmas!" from our little town.



Hope you got some ear plugs in your stockings.
Mr. and Mrs. Geek

Too busy to blog.

More coming in the morning. So much for my anniversary resolution.

In the mean time. Here is a pic of my first patch on the bus. This is a roof section where Someone who owned it before cut a skylight or something weird. This represents about twelve hours of work (at lazy plaingeek pace of course).

Vagabond Bob/THGLC/Mr.Bob/Uncle Bobby/Zed

For the first installment of my salute to the bloggers on right I would like to introduce you to the dude that started me on this whole blog escapade. Bob Makela. I stumbled on his site by pure accident or perhaps coincidence. I was messing around online during one of my weekly midnight shifts and came across it. I have no idea which post I read first, but I was instantly interested in what the wordsmith had to say. So I backed up to the first post on his site and started from the beginning. With few exceptions (some of the posts about not posting enough), it was a fantastic read from the beginning to now.

Bob fascinates me in so many ways. He has a child like enthusiasm that seems to affect every one he meets. Yet his wisdom seems to be enormous. His perspective of our world is refreshing to a skeptic like me. He has an incredible ability to draw the good out of people. Hell, even I've developed more of a soft spot as a result of reading his site. Bob plays by his own rules and it's awesome. He is a guy who lives his life in a way so many of us want but would never have the balls to pull off. I get the impression that people he's close to look down on him thinking that he has more potential. After all, he is a forty-something UCLA graduate who happens to be a talented writer gallivanting across the country in a VW van like modern day homeless hippie. But, that's exactly why I have tremendous respect for him. He stands, almost solitary in the middle of our 9-5/Starbucks society with a big middle finger up to those of us (myself included) who walk around aloof and uncaring. He's the hero in his own story in a life of discovery and interaction with the core of what makes us human. And if people give him shit, I respect him even more for pulling it off and showing us assholes that it can be done. I think the longer he gets away with it, the more he pisses his skeptics off. Even though they give him shit, I'm sure (somewhere in the back of their heads) they're thinking, "I wish I could do that." And that probably makes them resent him more. But there are at least 13 of us that realize the value he brings and we, those faithful few, will not judge. We will do what little we can to help a man on his quest to wake the rest of us out of out zombie-like indifference to the world around us. Even if we run the risk of being arrested for tainted mail.

Thanks Bob. After all, I didn't even know what the hell the fascination with blogs was until I came across "TheGreatestYearOfMyLife." Now blogs are my reality TV. I can now survive a crappy meaningless job by posting things to this site and living vicariously through others. I look forward to reading your book.

Life gets in the way.

Sunday, in spite of my best intentions of bring the bus engine back to life, I got stuck on the couch watching my Jags beat the piss out of the Colts. After the game, I went to dinner with L and we finished the X-mas shopping.

Spent Monday and Tuesday working on the bus engine. Took way longer than it should have. Managed to get the engine reinstalled in the bus. Haven't had the chance to fire it up because I fried the electric ignition that is installed in the distributor while trying to static time it.

Had a couple people look at the Subaru. One guy swore up and down that, after he sells his car, he'll be back to buy mine. I'm not turning blue from holding my breath though. I had to detail the car so it took time away from my bus revival. Not to mention, playing phone tag and setting up test drives.

L's car broke Thursday night. Not good since she uses it for work. Spent eight hundred bucks on a thorough brake job only to find out the problem is in the transfer case (it's a 4x4). I don't feel bad about the money we spent. I know the thing needed a revamp pretty bad anyway. Limped the thing up to my local shop yesterday. They said they couldn't get the part until this coming Tuesday and then it would be a day before they could get it back to us. This means L wouldn't be able to work until Thursday. I had to locate the part myself. I Found it but I Still have to go and pick the thing up to deliver it to the shop today. She will be back in action Monday evening but only after another $700 in parts and labor and two additional days with no income coming from her. I'm sure I could do the work myself but time is a luxury I can't afford and there are two VWs and a bazillion parts in my garage so space is an issue as well.

I think L desperately needed some time off anyway. The car repair bills are well worth it to me so she can take a breath. Once she got over the stress of driving a broken car around and dealing with the idiots she works for, her mood has become jovial. It's like night and day. It's worth every penny as far as I'm concerned. I'm thinking I'll sabotage her car every once in a while in the future.

So lets recap shall we.

I didn't finish any of my bus tasks.
I've had two unsuccessful sales of my car.
I've spent thousands on unexpected car repairs.
We're losing income because L can't work without her car.
I'm absolutely exhausted and could use about two days worth of sleep.
And I'm in a fantastic mood despite it all.

This is the stuff that makes life fun I guess. Or I'm a masochist. Whichever it is, I'm cool with it.

And then there were lights.

While I was driving to work tonight, I did my best to appreciate the holiday lights that are being put up. Is it me or are Christmas lights and decorations getting more tacky? I like that fact that people make the effort to put them up, but must everyone buy into the latest light/decorative trend? I miss the old days where people actually had to be creative.

When I lived in L.A., the three or four streets across from the school where we lived had a competition every year to see which block had the best decorations. Every house on every block was lit up. It was beautiful. People used to come from all over town to see the displays. Cars would be lined up down our street, which wasn't even a participant, as the holiday approached. They would all turn off their headlights and drive down the streets with parking lights only. That was back in the eighties when we still had control over our own headlights. These people went all out for this deal and the stuff they came up with was quite clever. Across the school yard from us was a huge house that had Santa riding a Captain America motorcycle in the yard which was pulling a sleigh full of reindeer. On guy had a 30ft tall Santa he would erect every year. Even the Jewish people in these neighborhoods participated. One family had a red nosed reindeer with a Menorah for antlers. I never understood why Jewish people don't get more into the light displays. After all, Hanukkah is the festival of lights is it not? So why not celebrate with the crazy Christians and throw up some color?

At any rate. As I was driving to work it seemed that all the creativity has disappeared. Now everything comes prepackaged for easy installation and storage. The latest thing that bugs me is the inflatable stuff. It was cool when it first came out, but ever since then, it gets more trite.

Funny how I'm so judgmental yet I haven't put up a single light yet.

Bus on the brain.

I was going to post something cool today but I'm enthralled by my new VW workshop manual that came in the mail yesterday. So I'm now making a plan of attack for this coming weekend of hippie van resurrection.

To do list:

Today:
Purchase a couple more parts and get sheet metal from Lowes to repair roof sections.

Tomorrow:
Reinstall engine after thorough cleaning and inspection.
Hook up to gas can an see if it will fire up. (hopefully without catching on fire or anything)
Take a spin around the block and see if trany is working. (crossing fingers)

Monday-Wednesday
Weld missing body panels back in place. With any luck, I'll be finished welding.

Side note:

I'm gonna go with a lime green color like this with black accents. This is where you, my loyal readers, can help. I need a good word to put on the license plate. I'm sort of thinking of calling it the Jolly Rancher "JLYRNCR" but I'm not sold on that. So this is your opportunity to play..."Name my bus!" There will be no fabulous prizes but, if you ever see me driving down the road or my picture in "HotVWs" magazine, you can say, "Hey! I named that bus!"

Not a tech geek.

Bought an Ipod for L. Can't get my computer to download Itunes 7 from the Apple site so the Nano is currently a useless $200 paper weight.

$2500 weekend.

Whoa! That was a long 3.5 day weekend. In light of my recent car woes. I've decided to sell my '04 and go completely classic aircooled VW. I began the weekend looking for an old VW I could drive around while I restore my other two. I came this close {} to buying an old Karmann Ghia convertible on Sunday but it needed a top and brakes to make it roadworthy. So instead of buying, yet another project, I've come to the command decision of starting the restoration of my bus. I'm going to do my damnedest to get it on the road in two months or less. I'll be spending every day of every weekend in an effort to accomplish this task.

So to gear up for my escapade I needed parts. Lots and lots of parts. In case you didn't notice, it's missing a few. So away to the internet I went. I spent all day Monday on the phone digging up all the stuff I need to make it legal and safe. I made on huge order of miscellaneous stuff that cost me almost $1K. I also dug up some used stuff that can't be bought new. The problem with the used stuff was that it was all at a VW yard in Tennessee and cost me another $340. In the process of digging up all this nonsense I found a deal on an engine that I couldn't pass up.

So Tuesday I firmed up plans with the guy in TN and played phone tag with the engine dude while setting up my garage to receive the bus which was, until then, parked where you see it in the picture under a tarp. When L. got home we pushed the thing into the garage and got a phone call from engine boy who agreed to my low $200 dollar price for his engine. We drove over an slapped it in the back of the Subaru and used L's new GPS, which we bought Sunday, to find a Thai restaurant that we liked in the area. We were both pooped when we got home. We plopped into the bed and slept like bricks.

My alarm went off Wednesday morning at 4:00 AM and 4:15 and 4:30 (Damn snooze button!). I was on the road to TN by 5:00. Four and one half hours each way. The drive there was accentuated by loud rock music and 85 mph speeds. The guy who ran the yard, Joey, was a real talker and yapped my head off while we loaded my car with sheet metal cut form other old VW's. I took me an hour to get out of there. I took a different road home and the scenery was beautiful. I love SE Tennessee. It's beautiful. The end result was me being home at three in the afternoon. I had the old engine pulled from my bus by four PM and found more parts I need in the process. It was about this time that I got a call from my good friend Tom. He had broken the seat in his truck and needed me to drive over with my welder to help him fix it. After a brief dinner, I drove over to his house and we glued the thing back together. We finished up around eight thirty and I was on my way home for some much needed sleep.

Today I woke up early and headed to the tool store to get a couple things for the resto. Then I was off to work.

I thought about it a little while ago and realized that the reason this whole thing started was because I didn't want to pay $2500 to fix my car that isn't broken.

I missed my anniversary

Not my wedding. I've never missed one of those. My lame little corner of cyberspace has been floating around since Nov. 05. And it all started with this post here. Ah, the memories.

I can say three things definitively. One, my writing hasn't improved. Two, I've failed miserably at my three post per week goal. And three, Now that I've figured out how this program works (sort of) I think I'm going to have to switch over to the "beta" and start all over.

To be honest, I'm amazed I've kept it up this long. Given my famous lazy streak, it's nothing short of miraculous I managed to get through one month. But here I am, still pluggin' away after an entire year.

What do you have to look forward to from the geek in year deux? More of the same, I imagine. I plan on posting a little more consistency with fewer long gaps in between. I also plan on doing a series of posts on all my fellow bloggers in the links to the right. I'm going to try to explain exactly what it is about these blogs that keep me coming back. I also plan on firing up a project log for this and linking it here so you can be amazed at how long it takes me to put it on the road. Other than that. S.O.S.D.Y.

You won't like me when I'm angry.

I currently have a 2004 Subaru that I bought new from the dealer. I really like the car. When I bought it, it seemed like the perfect compromise vehicle.

It's fast. 0-60 in about six seconds.
It's safe. High crash test ratings, AWD, and four airbags.
It's economical. Almost 30MPG. (Not bad for a car that can run with a Mustang or a Camaro)
It's practical. I can fit quite a bit in the rear.

Last week, on the way home from work, I started to hear a "howl" coming from the rear of the car. It didn't sound like a good noise. It sounded like an expensive noise. So I took it up to my local mechanic. I needed the oil changed and the tires rotated anyway. He checked it out and couldn't figure out what the problem was. This meant a trip to the dealer. Sixty miles each way. I wasn't a happy camper. Spending one of you days off in a dealer waiting room is never fun.

I got there at about ten thirty AM. At four thirty (just in time for Atlanta rush hour) the service rep comes to me with the lowdown. "We think it's you rear differential, your rear struts and possibly a bearing." I grit my teeth as he breaks down the cost of repairs. $1700 for the diff, $800 for the struts.

What you don't know about this story is that the service department here has tried to screw me over before. The last time I was in here they told me my A/C compressor was bad when it wasn't. I fought with the techs for thirty minutes before they discovered that the issue wasn't the compressor. I saved myself about $1300 that time. So to say that I didn't exactly trust them is an understatement.

I asked the service rep if they were sure this was the problem and if I shell out two thousand plus dollars it will fix it. He tells me that they're not sure it will fix it. "So let me get this straight," I say to him, "You want me to pay twenty five hundred dollars to fix what's 'broken' but if it doesn't alleviate the issue you're not going to make it right?" His reply "You're welcome to get a second opinion." I was pissed beyond my capacity for intelligent communication.

So I'm driving back home in my broken car and steaming that I even considered going to those assholes. The traffic is murderous and guess what? The noise is magically gone. There is no more noise. I drove around for the better part of a day with this thing howling at me and now...nothing. It's perfectly normal. When I get home, I hop on the internet to see if there are any technical forums about my car. I find one and it takes me all of five minutes to find out exactly what is wrong with it. In a nut shell, nothing is wrong with the car. Evidently the sound emanating from the rear is just that. A sound. It's a harmonic noise that is so common in these cars that there is a service bulletin that Subaru has put out the specifically addresses it. It's an easy and cheap fix. Guess how pissed I am now?