ClubJuggler

I finally got my car back yesterday morning and it’s running very well.  Thanks much to Wasp Automotive for the good work, even if it did take a bit longer than expected.  Unfortunately, because I had to return the rental car Wednesday morning, I was left Wednesday night with no car and no cable or Internet.  The cable technicians finally came out on Wednesday.  They were supposed to be there between 3 and 5pm.  They arrived at 6:15pm and promptly found that the line had problems and that I needed line maintenance to come out.  They said they’d try to be out that evening, but of course that didn’t happen.  Then, to top things off, just after the cable techs left, a storm blew through and my power went out.  So, there I was with no car, no cable, no internet, and no power.  I’m very thankful that we have a gas stove so I could cook my supper.

Anyway, I got the car back the next morning and then when I came home Thursday evening the cable and Internet were working.  My DVR box, though, seems to still have a few problems.  There are several channels that won’t tune at all, or tune but with a messed up picture.  I need to get through all the stuff saved on the box, though, before taking it in to get a new one.

This weekend, I’m going to be at the RTP Startup Weekend.  The goal there is to basically get a bunch of people together for one weekend and start a company together.  I went to the previous one about 8 months ago and had a good time, even though our company didn’t get past the weekend.  This weekend, I think, that we’ll actually be starting multiple companies, so we’ll see how that goes.  If you’re at all morbidly curious, they will apparently be streaming live video all weekend and you can see it here:http://www.ustream.tv/channel/rtp-startup-weekend

Originally published at Southern Kind of Life. You can comment here or there.

jklgoduke took my car into the shop this morning to get a front light that had burned out replaced and they noticed that apparently we forgot to get the car inspected when it was due at the end of September! Doh! To top it off, apparently I have an emissions leak near the catalytic converter and without that being fixed it doesn't pass the emissions inspection. :-( They've ordered parts from somewhere out in CA (that was the cheapest they could find) and we'll see how things go when they get here.

I'm currently at the auto repair shop waiting for my clutch to be replaced. I started noticing it squealing last Monday (the 16th). Wednesday I went to Chamber Music Weekend (more on that in a different post) in Collegedale, TN (near Chattanooga) and halfway through that the clutch pedal started not engaging until it was halfway down. Made it back safely Sunday night, although I drove 371 miles from Ooltewah (pronounced OOO-te-wah), TN to Greensboro without shifting! It started getting worse on Monday and much worse yesterday. Yesterday, I called our auto repair shop, Wasp Automotive, and scheduled to have it looked at this morning. On the way home from work, though, the clutch pedal stopped coming up! I drove by the shop on the way home and they took a quick look at it and checked the hydraulics. (After hours even! Those guys are awesome!) That helped it for a bit, but by the time I'd driven to the grocery store the pedal was back to having problems. When I drove it in this morning, the pedal was almost entirely on the floor and several times it wouldn't let me engage the gear. I'm only about 3 miles from the shop but I felt lucky to make it. The Wasp guys drove me into work (did I mention they were awesome? That's a 20 minute drive one way!) and got to work on my clutch. A coworker of mine lives in Durham so I caught a ride back with him, but he leaves around 4pm. So, I'm here waiting on them to finish the clutch.

Apparently, my release bearing is supposed to have two clips on it that let it be moved away from the pressure plate (note: I may not have all my terms correct). On mine, one of the clips was completely gone! As a result, some ring that goes in the middle of it got hot and almost disintegrated! Also, another bearing was apparently messed up and not spinning freely. Finally, the pressure plate was scarred (probably from the release bearing scraping against it) and the springs on it were gouged. So, it's a good thing I'm getting it replaced. That's the good news. The bad news is that this is an expensive repair. :-( Between the clutch, another plate that was replaced (originally plastic, they replaced it with an aluminum one that should weather better), a broken fog light and something wrong with either the spark plugs, spark plug wires or the coil, I'm looking at probably over $1000 and possibly close to what I just paid for my new MacBook. Oh well, hopefully I won't have to have this done again for another 160,000 miles.

Oh, so in case you missed it in the last paragraph, my new MacBook came on Monday! I woke up, checked the FedEx tracking and discovered that instead of it being delivered today as it was scheduled to, it was already on the truck for delivery! Yay! So, I spent about 10-15 minutes rearranging my morning work schedule so I could be there to pick it up and then went to take a shower. Yep, the driver came while I was in the shower! Arghhhh!!! So, I didn't pick it up until Monday evening. But, since then I've been very happy with it. Monday I got basic stuff set up on it. Yesterday I installed Parallels Desktop on it and installed my copy of Windows 2000. I was trying to get Garmin Mapsource running on it so I could download maps to my GPSr. Mapsource installed ok, but I haven't been able to get it to install over the USB cable yet. :-( I'm going to try using serial tonight. If that doesn't work, I'll probably install and try out Boot Camp on it, but I'd rather avoid that since it makes you reboot between the different OSes.

Anyway, I see my car isn't up really high on the lift anymore, so I think I'll go see how things are going.