greatbear: (forearms)
People driving past La Casa must wonder if we either have 1) lots of people living in the house, or 2) are constantly throwing parties. Sadly, the seven vehicles (three trucks and four cars) belong to just the two of us. Add in the 30 foot trailer and parking at Mayhem Acres sometimes takes some planning. I also have to remember lots of license plate numbers. This is not so bad, but for some odd reason I always seem to have a mental block remembering the plate number of my Dodge Stratus. The rest? No problem. The Strat, as I call it, is my usual daily driver. Though it's 14 years old, it's never had any serious problems, is pretty economical if I keep my foot out of it, and the parts for it are cheaper than average. Jeff and I used it as our ride of choice when we would travel, since it's something he can easily drive (no stick shift like the MINI Cooper,, or as long as a bus like the Silverado, for example). Since Jeff recently bought a new car (a 2015 Subaru Forester 2.5i Premium), some of the wear and tear on the Stratus has been relieved. It's a nice, roomy and economical ride with some cool gadgetry like the Eyesight collision avoidance system that also acts as an adaptive cruise control and will even give you a gentle reminder if you are sitting at a light, it turns green and you don't immediately start moving. It senses the road around it with a pair of cameras on either side of the rear view mirror, can alert you if you veer from between the lines, there's an animal or object in the road ahead and even stop the car at speeds below 20mph and you might be distracted and a car stops ahead of you. There's also the (required for 2015 models) rear-view camera and lots of other cool tech to get the geek on. This is Jeff's first brand-new car after all these years, and, so far, he's loving it. The subject came up a while back about what to call the car, if anything. I keep calling mine The Strat, Jeff started calling it the Subie, then I started calling it the Cubaru. For kicks, I went to see if CUBARU was taken as a vanity plate, and it wasn't. And surprising, given how many people around play guitar, neither was STRAT. My original plates were fading and the rear plate had a hole in it and was buckled from being rear-ended many years ago. So...



I am far too lapsed to be considered a guitarist these days, maybe I should bone up on my playing to do my two-meaning plate justice. My finger joints and my damaged shoulder make that difficult. Practice might not make perfect, but at least I could fake it. Jeff, however, needs no practice in being a cub. :)
greatbear: (forearms)
Jeff came home early Thursday for a doctor's visit, the last few days he's been having mild flu-like symptoms. We made a trip together to the doc and tests seem to indicate it is viral in nature, so it is mostly a rest and wait it out situation. I went with him to see if there was anything I could help with at home, and to get an idea what it was, since chances are good I would get it too. I've been battling a form of exhaustion for a few days too, I can only do so much before I need to take a nap. Problem is, I sleep and nap during the day and by night time my body clock on its graveyard shift time zone keeps me awake. So, when Jeff along with By-Tor and the Snow Dog head to bed, I head into my little lab and fix stuff. This time I tackled my failing Dell 30" display. After a half hour of thermal testing the display lamp driver board I narrowed the trouble to what seemed like bad soldering in a 1 square inch section of the board. There is about three dozen components about the size of sesame seeds in that space, and out came the tiny iron and other tools I have for such work, including the 3.5-90x stereoscopic microscope I got for such things. After more thermal stress testing after the repair with good luck, I threw it back together and am now using it while creating this entry. I hope it holds out, I absolutely love this display, but I relegated it to lab bench PC duties. The irony here is the particular computer and display is connected to the aforementioned microscope. I could've had a nice panoramic view of the board on the display it it weren't the one in pieces under the scope!

Our latest pup, Snickles, aka By-Tor mentioned above, had his first day of doggie school this evening. He had fun, and seemed to react well. He's finally growing out of his puppy-ish stages and has become a very loyal companion for the two of us. He needs to learn some discipline for his (and our) sake, and I think with some "official" training he will be a model pooch. Kodi did well in his schooling about 7 years ago, and I am hoping for the same results with Da Snick.

Jeff is very close to buying a new vehicle. His '00 Chevy S-10 has been decent for these fourteen years, but it's getting long in the tooth at over 185,000 miles, and given the fact that I have two trucks as it is, he's in the market for a wagon/small SUV sort of ride that gets decent mileage, can haul stuff as well as people and will be reliable. So far he's narrowed it down to the new Jeep Cherokee, the Subaru Outback, and the Subie Forester. Friday we are going to kick tires and take test drives. Hopefully this will be with as few hassles as possible. I had a decent time with my last vehicle purchase once the dealer was finally able to get the model I had settled on to the lot.

I'm happy to see some more old, familiar faces showing back up here in LJ-Land. The more I sit here and take the time for a "real" entry as opposed to a handful of words scooped up and thrown at Facebook, the better I feel about "socializing" online. I see usernames in my friends list of people who have cast off this mortal coil and are no longer with us. Those names seem like pictures hanging on a wall, and their journals acting as memorials as well as places to visit and remember the days gone by. None of the other popular "social media" behemoths have this. Nor do they have the control or accessibility of everyone's posts like LJ does. I think people are feeling this too, and while making entries here is a bit more work, it definitely pays us back in the depth of contact and interaction. Let's keep up the good work.

Well, the display has been performing like new as I've been writing this between other tasks and not flashing and shutting down like it had begun to do several months back. I wasn't about the scrap a thousand dollar display. These things are supposed to come with 3 year warranties, but I bought this from Newegg, and, disappointingly, it showed no warranty from Dell when I started the process. I've since reconsidered a lot of purchases from there, a shame, since I've generally had good luck over these many years. I hope my repair lasts until it somehow becomes obsolete, which I don't see happening for at least another ten years or more.

Cheers, everyone!

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Phil

December 2016

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