DRIVE

new plan: forget about buying any new vehicle, stop throwing money into the atlima, which develops a new problem every day and is on track for total transmission & or frame failure within the year, put the diesel dream on hold, and build the hell out of the f-150 until it’s a kickass daily driver.

game plan:
msd dist/6al/blaster
edelbrock pn2172
maybe the 400 upgrade, once i finish reading the engine rebuilding book and understand what all those parts are
new truck-specific carb, probly edelbrock 1826 (though everyone recommends the holley truck avenger, but i can always rebuild the current holley carb and go back to it)
all the repairs below plus fixing the snapped valve cover bolt
new valve covers
handmake my own wiring harness using a boat fusebox- i’m really stoked about this
crapload of LED/HID upgrades
some light bodywork

i should be repenting my sins right now, but this is my first internet access in like a week. not updating bloggings regularly- now that’s a modern day sin.

in other news, plan to install tomato firmware on my router this week. this will allow me to take advantage of some more heavyduty QoS options- which sounds really cryptic and geeky, but what it means is that i can control prioritization of internet use over my wifi access point- so my IP phone will take the bandwidth it needs to make a clear call, my laptop will always have the bandwidth it needs after that (except bittorrent, which will give way to anything else in my apartment); and then after all of my gadgetry has what it needs, the other users on my wifi network get the leftovers. so, e.g., when i’m not home they get full strength download speeds, but when i’m pulling an allnighter to finish a big coding project and watching hulu and backing up the server while making IP phone calls, their download speeds will be substantially crappier (which is only fair, since i pay the bill).

today i went to a junkyard for the first time. it was super-fun. i didn’t get the part i needed because i showed up 15 min before they closed, not realizing that “u-pull-it” also means “u-climb into the car you want which is stacked on top of another car and then enter through the busted windshield,” and they closed before i could get the blower motor out. that said, i’m stoked to go back wednesday. definitely bringing the camera, too.

the junkyard’s also fecund territory for the imagination. all of these pieces lumped on top of each other in ways that are at once random yet suggest patterns. the practical part of me spies a 60′s Oldsmobile body in awesome shape across the lane from a pristine 12 cylinder jaguar engine and imagines the beast that would result; while the other, more nebulous corners of the brain start whirling around the objects and the negative space themselves; sees these semiorganic ivy-robed dinosaur bones and experiencing a little frisson wondering what they get up to at night.

mostly what i’ve been working on of late is the coordinating & administrative side of building shit- i have a motorized projector screen waiting for me in California; and a lead on 42 seats from a Boeing airplane. if anyone has any experience navigating theatre insurance &/or the relative merits of forming a nonprofit to deal with film distributors, please please please let me know.

…and when you combine everything in this post; you get the trailer for “9″ (below), which I’m looking forward to seeing this week despite the mixed reviews. i also like the director’s term, “stitchpunk,” and what it might lead to in etsyville.

now that i’m done w/ school & bar and live in a big workshop; i’m finding myself fixing things in increasingly Rube Goldberg-ian manners.

exhibit A: in which he can’t find his flipflops; but does locate a previously broken pair for some reason not discarded. cut open w/ a hunting knife; riveted on the other side & then glued with “gas & oil seal-all.”

exhibit B: in which the courtyard roof leaks enough to flood the apartment and he can’t find the ladder to put up a tarp; so builds a rain collector/ aqueduct.

in other, unrelated news, i have rediscovered my deep appreciation for the artwork of Alexander Calder.