The Manic Mechanic

Busy past few days for me, but was all good. Since Friday was an off day for me, I switched hats and headed downtown to help out at the garage and do some work on Jeff's truck. New brakes front and back for the truck, with new rotors up front (the originals, along with the original front pads went over 110,000 miles), plus turning the rotors out back that I replaced ages ago and life was good again. Some other maintenance bits, checkups and minor adjustments and all is well. Dropped a new engine in a late 90s Caddy El Dorado. Actually it was more like dropping the car onto the new engine, since it all has to come out of the bottom. Once back home I cleaned my smelly, greasy self up and once Jeff got home from work, the three of us headed once again up to his parent's place. We were being followed rather closely by tropical storm Hanna on the way up as well.

By the time we got settled the rains started in earnest.. That made for better sleeping weather, but also seemed to bother my creaky joints and bones. Saturday we hung out for a while then headed all the way up to State College, PA for the Penn State football game against the Oregon State Beavers. I am sure that school gets enough ribbing about their choice of mascot name. Ironically, Penn State's place for all things football is known as Beaver Stadium, named after the school's founder. Not sure how much of a hard time he had to deal with because of his name though.

We drove up in the rain just about the entire way. Once at the stadium and parked way in a field, the rain subsided, never to return. Hanna could not keep up with us I guess. We had decent seats, 30 rows back (at least 100 feet) from the opponent's goal post. It was a good view. We proceeded to watch Penn State go real hard on the Beavs, 45-14, in some very well-played football.

Those reading this who are more sports-oriented might know that college football is more interesting overall to watch that pro. The players play for the love of the game and for the occasional prospect of a pro career and it shows. The crowd enthusiasm is contagious. And some things that take place are just, well, different. Of course, there was the crowd singing along with that excruciatingly tired song "Rock and Roll Part 2", which is to be expected at every major sporting event (I guess the child molestation thing is no longer a bother). But this is the first time I saw a stadium full of people singing along with Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline". O_o Yeah, football fans are strange. It was fun though.

Penn State boasts the biggest stadium in college sports. This game, while not a sellout, rang up 115,110 108,111 (thanks Jeff) people. Yes, over one hundred thousand screaming fans. With tailgate parties and everything else you'd find at a major game. There is no real form of public transportation, so everyone drives to the game. First thought would be: Traffic Nightmare. Especially when there is limited access to the parking areas from major highways, with everyone needing to take little surface roads right up to the vicinity of the stadium and park in lots and huge fields, along with motorhomes and tailgaters and the milling crowds. They have traffic patterns worked down to an exacting science. Instead of gridlock, there is nearly nonstop flow of traffic from the highway to your final parking spot. And leaving? With nary a cop to be found directing traffic, it was a bit over 5 minutes till we were out on the open highway. This boggles my mind. If major cities could control such large amounts of traffic like this, there'd be no traffic jams and normal blood pressure for everyone.

We found cheap but good eats on the way home in Mifflinvilleburg (same thing!), after driving a while, then we got back home and got needed rest. Poor Kodi was Separation Anxiety Dog for a bit while we were gone, but was over it in no time. Sunday we muddled about the house, I measured the shower in the one bathroom for a replacement insert (another upcoming project) before heading out for a nice lunch at a tiny restaurant near where Jeff was born 'n' raised. As you'd expect, just about everyone eating there knew one another. Afterwards was out 2.5 hour drive back here. We grocery shopped, ate dinner while Jeff watched the Cowboy's game (I am an occasional football widow this time of year), I pulled the ECM outta the Stratus to take with me to drop off at the rebuilder tomorrow, and Jeff and I gave each other haircuts. I also reined in my summer beard, which was getting out of hand again. I feel much better.

I took quite a few pics at the game with my Canon S3-IS. It's a perfect camera for the venue. I will round up pictures from my last several trips and shoots and get them onto Flickr this week, with luck.

Hope y'all have a decent week, and that no one had to contend with storm damage.

SPent the weekend in PA with my 'extended family' once again. Saturday at the PA state fair was fun (I always have a good time at these things). I saw people from my neck of the woods there, and also spotted a coupla musclebears from a while ago from the weekend at The Woods. Eyeballed a truck that had my lustometer pegged ('06 Dodge Cummins 4wd 4-door) but came away pouting with a bad case of sticker shock ($42.8k! WTF?!?!!). At too much greasy fair food and had my heart stolen by a few puppies at the dog exhibit there. I so miss having a dog calling this it's home. In the meantime I am making do with 4 orange stray cats that called an old wrecked Dodge Shadow their home. The cats are too timid to make contact, yet they hang around the deck and yard all day and night (getting fed table scraps doesnt help matters much) Said Shadow is now downtown waiting for me to tear out everything useable and junk the rest. The thing sat around to over 5 years and all I needed to do to get rid of it was pull the mangled bodywork from around the one tire, add a battery and drive it off as if nothing was wrong. It did get some stares though, as this wreck was quietly tottering down the road with the left read side and back demolished.

Sunday me, Jeff and the entire PA family unit went towatch Jeff's nephew Cole play football. Even though this is elementary school, these kids are serious about their game. This was a critical game, as these were two undefeated teams playing together. It was rough. So rough that one kid had his arm broken, and Cole had to be sent to the hospital by ambulance after taking a huge hit to the head. Jeff rode with him in the ambo along with his mom, and I chased the ambulance to the hospital. This may not be my 'legal' extended family, but I still care about them as if they were (and they for me as well). Seeing Cole out cold on that field made my heart sink, and honestly, made me feel a bit helpless. Luckily, Cole is a tough kid, he's back home now, going to have some time off from playing until he sees his own pediatrician, and by the looks of things, will be back in the saddle in a week. Yep, only a week. That's cool.

Came home to more minor PC issues, so it's settled; construction of the next ridiculous monster PC starts this week. Specs so far:

Athlon64 Dual Core >3800
ABIT Fatal1ty AN8-SLI mobo
2 GeForce 7800-series vid cards in SLI
Koolance water cooling
Bigass HDs in RAID0, plus two bigass solo drives for 'data'
Creative X-Fi Platinum sound, plus something else for the studio stuff
other stuff for sure.

Since I cant afford the truck, of course.