The Manic Mechanic

Yesterday's weather was unseasonably warm, a t-shirt 'n' jeans day in the middle of winter? Sign me up. Today is supposed to get even warmer. As some of you might recall, I walked outside the house on my birthday Feb. 2, looked down, and lo and behold, there was no shadow. So, as promised, the six remaining weeks (give or take) of winter is to be mild. Remember, when it comes to groundhog weather prognostication, the "six more weeks of winter" is a given, shadow or no. It's whether the weather will be nasty, cold and snowy (shadow seen) or mild, sunny and warmer (no shadow seen). I keep my promises. However, the weather conditions only apply to the greater Eastern Seaboard/Northeast US. I can't promise much beyond that. YMMV. Or YWMV, as the case may be.

Jeff came home early from work, and we scooped up Kodi and took a nice long (and, for me, almost stumble-free) walk in the neighborhood. It does are ursine and canine bodies good. A little while ago, I picked up a new camera, a Canon SX230 HS. I took it along as its first test outside, and I am pretty pleased. I got this little compact super-zoom to have something versatile yet pocket-sized. I wanted something I could sneak into shows, or just carry with me and grab shots not possible with my other pocket camera, a Pentax W30. A 14X zoom, 12.1MP, and full 1080p HD video in such a small package is amazing, and it was less than 250 bux at Costco. I took a few snaps while we were out, and I created a set on Flickr to toss some of the random shots I am taking with it. Below is one I call "Tree Hugger."



More shots of the walk and more can be found here.

I notice it has been over a year since I did anything with my Flickr account. Maybe that will change.

Tonight after work I wanted some fresh air as well as to tinker with my rides. The weather tonight could not decide if it wanted to rain or not, so doing yard work or anything major was out. When last at Carlisle, I picked up a billet aluminum grille for my truck. Bingo. Nice, less-than-half-hour project.

Before


After


Smooooth. Hides the unpainted intercoolers, wiring and such that's way too visible under the eggcrate grille, and protects those very expensive pieces from being damaged by thrown debris. Plus it looks better IMO. And it was only a 20 minute project. Woot.

I started making more use of my Flickr page, as you probably can tell. I upgraded to a Pro account to have video and more groups. This is why you'll probably see more link-portals to my endless gawdawful photography cropping up. I try my best though.

Time has come for me to utilize my Flickr account, at least before Microsoft gets a hold of it and turns it into a ruinous mess.

So, here are a few shots I popped off from yesterday's festivities.



And, howbout them Giants, huh? w00t!

So, Comcast has done a Comcastic thing and increased my webspace from a measly 25MB to a whopping 1GB for each account I have. They also did a craptastic thing during the upgrade process that requires cookies to be placed on those PCs that retrieve data from those servers, even during remote loading. In other words, since I use that server space to host files that I use as part of my journal entries, if those reading my LJ have configured their PCs to reject 'third party' cookies, they cannot retrieve the files. This tossed a monkey wrench into my posting methods. Some have complained about my 'photo posts' being devoid of pictures. So, I am left with a dilemma as to how to go about finding reliable server space. My first choice of using my own domain is unworkable till I set up hosting. Using my home server is a possibility, but it's rickety, old and I did not want it to be subjected to constant spidering by web robots and search engines. LJ has space available, but it's soley for pictures, and the auto thumbnailing wrecks attempts at page layout. So, I dusted off my old Flickr account in the meantime and will give that a try.

To that end, here is a test. Same picture, different hosting. First is off of Flickr, the second from Comcrap. This is to check if the Comcast Cookie Conundrum is still in effect. Also, since some workplaces restrict site such as Flickr, there is a chance that hosting will be thwarted too. If I may impose a bit on my readership, can those who have gotten this far into my post tell me if they can see both photos?

One:

Flickr

Two:

Comcast

I have a big bunch of photos to include in upcoming posts, and I dont want it to be an exercise in frustration. The latter has been one of the big reasons for my apathy in posting.

Thanks in advance!