October 26, 2005 - Shake's head in dismay

Oh what fun I have been having lately.

Not only has the weather decided it didn't like being sunny, it has not only brought back the rain, but snow and sleet as well. If only that was worst that has happened since the last upate I would be fairly happy.

This past Friday (10/21) my brother and I went to a friends house after I got out of work. This friend Terry was the one who helped us convert the '69 into a General Lee, so Jim and I decided it would be nice to bring the General to Terry's place and give him an RC car of a General Lee, as sort of a thank you! Jim and I spent hours at Terry's place, all the while Jim and Terry are getting drunk. I don't/can't indulge in spirits as I have an allergy, and besides I was the designated driver.

At around 1:30 in the morning, Terry had had enough and called it a night and Jim and I headed home. On the way home, I managed to blow the transmission. As of now, the car has not the ability to go into drive, but can do reverse fine. I have been told it's probably the front clutch pack which was probably not rebuilt right when those dickheads who rebuilt her last year screwed Jim and I out of about $1500. On the bright side, Terry said he know a guy who will rebuild it for around $250, so that's not to bad, but because of this I will be missing about 2-3 weeks of potential driving weather.

On a positive side, Terry said he found Jim and I a 383 ci engine with a 727 transmission (very nice upgrade) to put into the General Lee.

Something else good that happened is that I bought a computer from my Uncle Barry this past Sunday for $500. It's a HP Pavilion running Windows XP Pro, 512 RAM, 1.99 GHZ Intel Processor, a DVD-RW drive and a regular DVD drive (which I will most likely replace with another DVD-RW drive). It has a new ATI graphics card and it has 2 hard drives totaling over 300 gigs. I will be upgrading the RAM and processor at some point, but compared to the last one, this is 10x better.

I'll try to update this a bit more frequently, but bye for now.

October 19, 2005

God I'm a slacker, an unrepentant one at that. I found out that I didn't get that job a few days ago, but oh well. I have a co-worker friend who is applying at a job that does payroll and he promised me he get me an application, so I may try that avenue. What's sad is that I am probably in a very small and lucky minority of people who actually have some degree of job security, and yet I choose to forsake that for something that can be outsourced tomorrow.

At the collection agency I work for, I am one of only 6 people who do not have a threshold or have the responsibility that regular collectors have. Management is different, but that goes without saying. I suppose my biggest problem with this company is that the pay is real crap ($8.75 and hour), the benefits are good but you pay through the ass for them, and the job is very stressful. In an average day, I can take 200-300 calls over the course of seven and a half hours (half an hour unpaid for lunch and two paid fifteen minute breaks) and at this company they expect, nay DEMAND, that you not take time after one call is complete to catch your breath and get to the next call. When you have over 100 people a day yelling at you and telling you how to do your job, it gets hard.

In other news, my area of the US has been pelted by rain; consistent, boring, screws your entire weekend up, rain! I love rain don't get me wrong, but winter is fast approaching and my General hasn't moved an inch in two weeks. The time of putting her away is soon arriving and this damned rain is taking away precious driving time.

Other than that, my life has gotten fairly barren. I have been spending an almost unforgivable amount of time on my computer playing "The Sims 2". I suppose it's just another version of escapism, but whatever floats your boat.

I've been thinking of adding a "Hot Woman of the Month" to this blog! My life is pretty mundane, and this might be a way to pay tribute to those women I think are downright gorgeous but are ignored by most other websites. If anyone actually reads this, please post your feelings so I can know if this idea rocks, or sucks!

October 11, 2005

Not much going on here in my corner of the world. I am still waiting for news on that job I have applied for, but that can normally take a few weeks.

This past weekend I bought a new album by one of my hero's Roger Waters called Ca Ira. It's an opera based on the French Revolution and while I have apprechiated opera as a valid expression of music, I never personally like it much until this work. Waters was the bass player and principal writer for the British group Pink Floyd from 1969 until 1983, and for any of those who like Pink Floyd knows, they had a sort of operatic/classical style to them and Ca Ira is a great vehicle for Waters to show that flushed out more.

My brother Jim and I spent a few hours on Sunday working on the '68 Charger. We had been looking for the broadcast sheet in the seats and headliner (haven't found one yet). The guy we bought the car from had worked in a MOPAR dealership back during the late 60's and early 70's and he would regale up with stories of seeing those cars rolling off of the transport trucks from the factories.

Jim and I also harbored a sensation that perhaps this guy knew how to fix up these kinds of cars, having been there since they were new auto's. Boy were we wrong! In the few weeks the '68 has been in our garage bay we have stripped off probably 10 gallons of bondo and maybe only a few ounces was necessary. The entire passenger front fender was encased in a 3/4 inch thick shell of mud that made the fender look wavey (kind of like adobe hut walls), by the time Jim had wire-wheeled it down to bare metal we found that fender is almost mint! I had hypothesized that perhaps the guy we got it from did this to protect the metal, but that theory was shot to hell when we found he had covered rust up without grinding it down. Had that mud not come off, that rust would have spread to more and more metal.

Oct 7, 2005

Well,

The oil pump is fixed thank god. Jim and I also replaced the air cleaner, which has been warped for a few months now and not really doing it's job. The car is running so much better now, the only thing that we really need is to have the carb replaced.

One piece of bad news I got while the pump was being installed is that it looks like the engine is NOT original to the car (one of the reason I bought this particular vehicle). It turns out that the engine is actually a 1978 318. That is both good news and bad news actually. It is bad news because one of the claims to fame with that car was that is was numbers matching and I had the ability to say that the same engine that pulls the car now pulled it back when she rolled off the factory lot. However, it is good because I have been tempted to install a much superior engine but didn't want to mess with the 'originality' of the car before, but that's not a obsticle anymore.

Not much going on it the day to day minutia of life. I have decided to go up for a new job. The world of debt collecting just doesn't appeal to me any longer. Sure there's the fame, the myth, the legend, but I prefer a job with a little less stress and a good accountant position may just give me that (not to mention a bigger paycheck, mind you).