Back to the Jaguar

My car has been at the shop the past month, slowly getting some things fixed:

1) The alternator/charging system. Got a rebuilt alternator, and some wiring fixes. This is now working properly (exc see below). Have a new regulator coming, from ebay.

2) Cooling system. Got the hoses, thermostat replace, radiator core rebuild. This is working nicely. Engine block freeze plugs replaced.

on Oct 21, I got to have the car back for the weekend. The following notes are from the return email I send sunday night.

I was able to drive home ok (Chantilly), albeit slowly because of traffic...Then I drove north up Rt 28 to Sterling, south back to I-66, then to the Fair Oaks Whole Foods grocery, by which point I had a flat tire on the left rear. Because it was dark, we left it there overnight, and I put the spare on Saturday morning after bringing the proper tools. That all went fine, but it was a regrettable surprise. Therefore, I need the wheel that is in the boot repaired--not sure what is wrong with it, but that is the better rim (at least in terms of minimal rust and better appearance). I also put my last inner tube in the back, if it is needed. While going north on Rt 28, there was a thump underneath my feet while driving, like something hit the underside; my guess is that whatever that was caused the flat--it was dark, and I didn't see anything. I hope it was not something falling off the car and bouncing up off the road. I do not have an additional spare. When I got these tires put on the rims, it was at Radial Tire in Silver Spring MD, that could handle the wire rims. I'm ok with you all doing this if you can, else I need to see about it myself, don't really want to drive without a spare (although that is how I got it home in the first place). If it's just needing a new tire, I will get a matching tire (came from a Firestone place in Sterling).


They were very right about the throttle linkage being sticky--it cold-starts very high rpms. Saturday it was near 2500 rpm when I started it after changing the tire. Sunday it was nearly 4000 rpm at lunch time start-up. I had seen Dave poke on the linkage to fix that, so I did the same thing, and it was better, but this is something that needs attention before something goes worse wrong.

The voltage meter often shows something near 16 volts from the alternator, which is definitely too high. Saturday afternoon it was down at 13 for a while, which was fine. the 16 is alarming, not good for the battery. I will have the new voltage regulator in my hands in a few more days, probably time to replace that.

The speedometer is only partially functional--it doesn't rise above 40 mph, and doesn't always drop below 20 when stopped. I have bought a sender off ebay, perhaps we can try that out as a replacement. Or perhaps something is sticking there...

Oil pressure was somewhat variable, but was never down to zero--it ranged from 20-50 (what that really means) over the weekend. This seems ok for now, unless it's supposed to be a very steady pressure.

Headlights worked ok in the dark. I didn't look at the brake/turn-signal lights. They were ok 2 yrs ago.

Coolant/water temperature gauge looked great the whole time, on the low side of normal range, so great job on that. Keeps my feets toasty warm while driving.

There seems to be a low speed at which there is a motion resonance bounce...not sure if this means a tire is out of balance, or what. Noticeable on a really smooth road, elsewhere not so much.

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Comments on the above: the oil system had been a little off, in particular the oil pressure gauge usually read zero or nearly so. I got a new sensor off ebay, it got installed. The speedometer used to work ok, I thought. I think the replacement sensor I am getting is used, so it may not matter. The throttle linkage fix is probably part of a larger system fix that includes better carb tuning.

I could not tell whether the front suspension was showing any effect from the ball joints needing work...related: probably ALL the rubber anywhere needs replacing.

Anyway...it was great fun getting to drive the car...once more things are fixed, it will be even better.

Best part at this point is that we have not yet even hit the halfway point on my budget, although we are close. Still...remaining budget should cover good territory.

I had replaced the stereo soon after getting the car. New unit takes a USB drive to play from, which works pretty well. I made an 8GB drive, which results in a really good lot of stuff. Only flaw: it plays in alphabetic order, A-Z. Would prefer random.

Another new compy...

Gad. My Shuttle died today. Sort of--it's not completely dead, but it ain't working worth a damn.

First thing I tried to do was wake it up, the wake-up screen was a BSOD, and reboot said there was no disk. I thought I had another disk that had Win7 on it, but apparently that disk, although labeled Win 7, just has files.

Now I'm already feeling panicky. I *think* I have a full backup, on my backup server, but I've never had to go look, or try to recover from it.

Tried re-installing Win 7 on another disk (1.5TB; this *was* in my Win Home Server box, but may have been flaking out, I replaced it already, so I had this just sitting around). This isn't working...got a fair amount through, it did some CHKDSK repairs, etc, was beginning to do updates, and that failed to reboot the first time it needed to, and worse still, trying again I can't even see the disk any more. Went by MicroCenter after visiting a friend, got a new 1TB disk, and that too fails to go through the install process, ALSO not showing the disk the 2nd try.

I tried formatting the 1.5TB on my Mac Pro. That went fine, it seemed to be ok; not sure what the deal is, but I didn't try it back in the PC.

This is all very alarming, and after what is now at least 4 tries to install O/S on more than one disk, and trying to view disks on my Mac (mostly failing), I'm feeling a bit alarmed. Looks like tomorrow is another visit to Micro Center for a whole new set of parts...

At least this time I think I won't get the Shuttle-size box, that, although cutely small, hasn't really worked as well as I wanted. I tried to get a new video card for the Shuttle as week ago, saw a good price, only to discover after I got home that the box said it needed two slots, which the Shuttle cannot provide for a video card.

But I will be able to get something faster: 6 core, more/faster RAM (8GB, DDR3-1333). And a better video card before Skyrim shows up.

I don't mind the upgrade aspect, it's the panic over maybe losing my files. That is really worrying me--I'm thinking about how to be even more certain I have backups.

new compy

Well, it looked like time to replace the old G5 Mac...because it was shortly going to no longer be possible to get an Intel Mac Pro with Snow Leopard on it out of the box.

And Snow Lep is important for me, as I need Rosetta in order to be able to continue to run old stuff I can't afford to replace. Lion is not going to come with Rosetta; it doesn't come with Samba either, and I still need access to the Win systems here.

So I got a quad-core Mac Pro with Snow Lep. Upgraded RAM to 16gb, for $160, great price. Upgraded disks to total of 5TB (2TB is Time Machine).

The G5 had Leopard on it, and that was as far as it could go. Q now is whether or not it can be sold for anything reasonable...or should I see about a school donation?

The Rosetta stuff works reasonably well so far...I have not tried a serious 3D game yet. Turns out that EV Nova runs ok, but that's low-res graphics behavior. Most other things have been fine. Only untested thing I think remains is the M-Audio PCI card in the G5. I'd like that to continue to work, too, but I'll have to go hunt for a driver, or give up.

Having a new compy is kinda fun, like a new girlfriend, all the discovery phase.

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And just yesterday the new iPhone was announced. Sprint will finally have one, so we'll be switching phones finally, to a phone I actually will like (have not been impressed with the Android phone).

Steve Jobs died today. Man, that is sad. Quite possibly no one other single person had as broad a positive impact on the world in the past several decades (bin Laden clearly had a huge negative impact, but no one will miss him except psychos).

Fallout New Vegas

Been playing this for a couple weeks...it does of course have the same flaw I didn't like about F3, the bland color scheme. Given the length of time that has past since the "war", you'd think people would again have paint to color things with, and that there would have been some foliage recovery, at the least along the CO river valley.

One very good feature in this is that you can have a companion, who can't be killed. So you can let the companion do the dirty work a bunch of the time, or at least be a distraction...which is good, because the companion is probably going to stand between you and the target, so that you can't shoot it.

You have to spend overmuch time on repairing your weapons and armor. Granted, in Oblivion, you did need to do that a good bit, but it wasn't so hard--this is of course the same as F3, which means that while you can repair everything yourself, you have to do it by collecting additional items to do it with--either the same item (repair a 44-cal pistol with another 44-cal pistol), or pay someone else rather a lot to do it for you.

I made a tactical error early on, in a little town called Tipton, in which I was grossed out by the Legion jerks slaughtering everyone, and then acting proud of it and daring me to attack. So I did--and killed them all. Of course, that meant that Legion assassin squads were after me regularly after that, which made for some awkward episodes later, and needing to watch out for them quite a bit, and make sure I didn't let them get into a town or NCR area--because those squads seem to be quite a bit stronger than most NPCs. Mostly the squads came after me, but they appear randomly, sometimes right when you land someplace via fast travel or entering a door, in which case there's going to be some serious carnage you maybe didn't want...if I could do that over, I'd follow the original group and lay waste to their entire location. I want to go to the Hoover Dam and wipe them out now, instead of waiting for whatever it is I'm waiting for.

The map is plenty big, so you get your $ worth, esp if you only spend $15 for it on Steam.

The Congressional Budget Battle

and the debt ceiling...man what a psycho episode.

Made worse by the spineless president. That was not what I voted for. I would agree with a post I saw online today, where someone wrote that Obama should have acted more like LBJ would have, by saying something more like: "You want cost of gov reduced? I'll halt all the projects in your district tomorrow--that'll reduce the cost of government." Which can be done...USG can issue a stop-work order at any time, on any contract, and you as contractor cannot bill any further. The executive branch makes those kind of decisions regularly.

Which means that of course the executive branch can always turn off expenditures anywhere, at any time--so even if the President can't make the budget law, he can simply not spend all of what's allocated.

What continues to amaze me is that so many folks are complaining about how we can't raise the retirement age on Social Security--it has been clear for years that the eligible retirement age needed to go up. It really ought to be 70 *now*, rather than sometime next decade. *I* expect to have to work until I'm 70 (or die at my desk, whichever comes first). The economic downturn over the past several years I think pushed back my retirement opportunity a few years.

Recall when SS started? 1935? The retirement age was set at 65 because that was the actuarial expected lifetime for someone in America at the time. So you could retire at that point, and start getting $, until you died, which probably wasn't all that far off (not to suggest that folks couldn't live longer, IIRC both John Adams and Ben Franklin lived to be 90, more than 100 years earlier). Now, thanks to all the medical improvements, we can now expect to live well past that, the actuarial average death age is about 80 (from USG website). Which means that you are likely to be able to collect 15 years worth of payments. Or more. That really isn't sustainable.

While it sounds good to say "well, let's index the retirement age to follow the actuarial numbers", it's a near certainty that your work years past 70 aren't going to be as productive as those just before. We all are starting to slow down at that point, so 80 isn't really a feasible date. I think 70 is good, now, however, because we can all do better at living healthy lives to that point. That said, I know folks age 80 who are pretty active, but not like they were at 60.

If retirement age rises, that should let SS be stable for any foreseeable future.

Means testing is critical on this, too. If you believe what you hear, most folks will face retirement with only around $50K in savings--which means that SS is critical for them, the only thing separating them from poverty.

Of course the Republicans, for all their scare talk of Death Panels, would prefer that anyone who can't take care of themselves just die, that no "social safety net" even exist in such a way that they are taxed for any of it.

Two Worlds 2

Yeah, another game entry. Steam had a two-fer deal recently, where you could get Two Worlds 2, and Fallout New Vegas both under $20. Hard to skip that one.

I've played Two Worlds 1 already, and while the 3D there wasn't as good, I think it worked better overall. TW2 I got tired of it about halfway through; I found the UI awkward, parts were essentially pointless (crafting: unless you specifically like that, it isn't really going to do much for you--you'll be able to find/buy better loot plenty soon enough.

TW1 was originally billed as an "Oblivion-killer" but of course it was no such thing.

TW2 was ok as filler until Skyrim comes out later this year, but not really interesting enough to finish. Nowhere near enough caves/ruins/dungeons to investigate. It's a real button-masher, and my hands aren't really up to that any more...

The one thing I did like was the personal teleport stones. They were much like the teleport rings in Morrowind, something I wish had been in Oblivion (at least for loot-selling, especially if you included the patch that put new merchants/buyers within touch distance at the various teleport targets).

Dungeon Siege 3

So Dungeon Siege 3 came out a couple of months ago. I was excited about this in advance, and when Steam offered the early-bird deal that would get you Both DS 1 and DS 2 AND DS 3 when released, that was too good to pass up.

So during the spring I re-played DS 1 and DS 2. Still worth the original cost, for sure. It took me nearly 100 hours to replay DS 1. Probably my 2nd fave game (after Oblivion, of course). DS 2 took a comparable amount of time.

Dungeon Siege 3, however, commits the cardinal sin of being short. WAY short for the price. It was pretty, no doubt, but short. Opponents respawn pretty quick, so you can run over various areas a bunch of times for XP/leveling/loot/cash, but that's artificial. The game itself is just short.

I recall DS1 being originally billed as a 40-hour game. I don't think I've ever played it less than 80. DS3 seemed more like a 20-hour game, even for me. So it really needed to have cost 20 dollars.

If you look at the Wikipedia story on DS3, I'd say that's right on the money. In comparison with DS1/2, DS 3 hasn't much territory.