Still alive...

*Delurks for a moment*

I know I haven't been around much lately; I'm stuck in moving hell. Middle of August my wife went on a job interview in Victoria TX, about 2 hours away. They offered her the job on the spot, and a small bonus for her existing experience. We talked for about 10 minutes, and took the job.

The 30th the movers took a whole truckload of the big stuff; I had to watch the kids for a week until they were enrolled in the new school, now I'm back in San Antonio getting all the crap that remains sorted and packed up. Figure the easy half is gone already; the PITA stuff is what I'm working on now.

I'll see wife & maybe kids next weekend, and again weekend after that, then hopefully the yardsale and then the last truckload.

I feel like I've had the sh!t kicked out of me, and it's just my first day at it.


mnem
foo.

 

One box at a time.

 

All the best, man! No worry, not only you that come here not very open. Even myself, I am stock with my daily job. The best thing is that all of you are doing fine hope everybody on the forum do the same as well, old timers or newbies.


ohlip

 

I just moved and would rather have a root canal. You have my condolences...

 

I feel your pain. Look at the bright side, you're close to the gulf. Take the kids to the beach!
CAP

 

My wife is trying to talk me into moving. It's these thoughts exactly as too why I don't want to.

 

Great to hear from you. I was wondering lately why I had not seen any posts. How's that MK5 CF-29 working out? Take care and keep touch. P.S., this past weekend my wife told me she wants to move from Rhode Island and come work in NJ (yikes, I liked going home on weekends!!) Best regards, Cleve

 

The last time I move it required moving several project cars also, I hope I don't have to do it again any time soon.

 

ThAt reminds me.... anybelly here can use a ugly 1990 F-150 that runs/drives, or a 1984 E350 Extended Econoline van with 46k original miles? Free to good home; just gotta get them with trailer from San Antonio.

Both have "No Title" issues, and I don't have time to sort them. I own both vehicles, no liens, just need them gone by the end of the month.

The F150 was my daily driver when I moved to SA but title got lost due to stupid legal BS between states of TX & NY; the van was for my mom to make a camper van, but it never happened due to money, etc issues and we can't find the title to it in her stuff.


PM me for more details; but please, this offer is only extended to members I know. Thank you for understanding.


mnem
Yes, I AM that desperate.

 

Okay... I've done a VERY foolish thing in my Vicodin-induced haze... I've put all my ToughBooks together in a box with some GoBooks, and the rest of my GoBooks in a box with a DELL.

I fully expect to wake up in the middle of the night hearing banjo music; and when that happens, I WILL run screaming from the house like a little girl.

Just warnin' y'alls in case I stop runnin' on YOUR doorstep.


mnem
*Passes out*

 

At least the Toughbooks are not able to crossbreed with the DELL............That would be grounds for banishment.......

 

I've gone trough the process of moving in may and it wasn't funny. Everything needed to be moved quickly because I had a big job coming up, so there was a lot of stress and a lot of heavy things to be moved in just two weeks. Luckily it was just for 5 miles, but it certainly wasn't funny. And funniest thing is that I just hardly have any stuff, but with a kid and a wife it still can get really out of hand. I've thrown away so much stuff, and she still hasn't missed most of it.

 

It's not the letting go of crap that's hard; it's the sorting out the one thing you do want from the 20 things that are on top of it. Right now I'm trying to sort 4 lifetimes' worth; mom's lifetime (there's the hard part), my lifetime, wife's lifetime, and our lifetime together.

It ain't pretty.

And my back is KILLING me.


mnem
*Another week in hell*

 

Oh sonuvacrap...

I wrote this out last night, but went to the bathroom while the video uploaded and forgot to come back and click send. Just imagine I posted this at elevernish-o'clock last night...

Welp...

It's over. The yard sale is done. I sold about half of the shBLEEEP! I put out, and made a deal with the lady who's been helping us pack the house and the guy who bought my blue van to carry everything else away. I've been pushing a hand truck pretty much nonstop since 0700; just finished putting the tent & tables away at 2200 & I feel like hammered shBLEEEP!



Everything in that video is GONE. Every last freaking bit of it. Even the gawddamn blue van.

Imo go take some Vicodin & wash it down with the last finger of my bottle of bourbon; if I'm at all lucky I won't wake up until it's dark again.


Peace out,

mnem
Screw PS-ing. I'm vapor.


PPS: I just woke up a couple hours ago; the need to eat and medicate myself forced me to drag myself out of bed. Go, me.

PPPS: Vertical-ness is highly overrated.

PPPPS: I'm working on the "and fully clothed" thing. Bite me.

 

Amen.....I agree completely. With my heart issue, I have quite a few entire weekends like that....

Take care of yourself...

 

Mnem... Get that stuff off the lawn, will ya?

 

I have an actual PT Cruiser now... not just a butt-ugly lump that's ALMOST a car. Well; it IS still butt-ugly... but now it has windows, so I can officially call it a car; because, as you know... rule # 7 of driver etiquette states that "You should replace missing doors and windows as a courtesy to your passengers."

And... while I was working on that, I discovered that the only thing standing in the way of the AC working was a bleeping 69c O-ring. I replaced that & drew a vacuum on the system; it held overnight! w00t!!!

Most of the time on AC work is spent running a vacuum compressor waiting for the system to boil out all possible moisture & air; while it did that, I finished the rear windows & patched up the interior as best as possible. Cost me about $60 in materials in all and a day of work; very precious time right now. But After the last week of rain, I realized I needed to be able to park and drive the damned thing outside, even when it was raining. I don't have a porch to park it under at the new house, and the garage is gonna be full of all our crap.

Behold... FRANKEN-CRUISER!!!











I know it's still a POS... but it'll be a good work truck. And at $1500 for a 70 K vehicle, I'm pretty sure I'll get my money's worth of use out of it.

Alright... I've finished my lunch, so time to quit slacking and get back in the hole.



mnem
Give my creation LI-I-I-I-FE!!!

 

hmmm...calling it butt ugly maybe stretching it. I think it needs work before its good enough to be butt ugly.


good deal for a 70k ride.........

 

Who got hammered first, you or the PT? Did I hear correctly Texas? Have they formed their own nation yet? Best of luck on the moooooooove. Someone said they'd rather have a root canal? have had them and done them... not as bad as one might think. It remains to be seen if implants are fun as I'm looking at a couple of them. Moving might be a better option. You're in my prayers man. Driller

 

Mnem.... You really need to make friends with someone in the car business!

 

He has friends, they just aren't close enough, lol.

 

A quick update from MOVING HELL...

We're officially residents of Victoria TX; I finished final cleaning the old house & surrendered the keys last Monday AM. We have STILL hauled 3 truckloads here; the garage is stuffed as is half the house. We look like something out of that "Hoarders" reality TV show.

As a result of paying for 3 trucks, we're now so broke we can't pay attention; ISP will come next time one of us has a paycheck so I'm stuck visiting McD's as I am able, and most of that time has been spent doing survival-necessary research.

I've made a decision; I believe I'm going to start doing the Flea market for a while, try and reduce my storage footprint. Truth is I already hate this town, and my recent discoveries about the "new work" available here have cemented that assessment. For more info, Google "F RACKING TEXAS"... (Lose the unnecessary space; Notebook Review's retarded cuss filter doesn't know that F RACKING is an actual word related to the oil industry) ... yeah. We're right in the middle of THAT, and I have no doubt it's the reason all the water here tastes like mud.

I have no interest in my kids becoming a statistic in the next "Erin Brockovich" incident; all my efforts now are going into getting OUT of this place.

OK, my battery's dying... gotta jet.


mnem
I have been down so long...

 

I'm very familiar with F racking. Up here in Pennsylvania, it's been going strong for a few years. Those boys do have lots of money to spend. They run equipment 24/7 never stopping until the machine implodes. I'm in the pressure washer business and they must wash everything, all the time. We don't even bother to rebuild pumps from rigs, we replace....They use sledge hammers and pipe wrenches to attempt to repair everything.....

I don't know about water issues though. My hometown water tasted bad way before gas drilling. I use a 20 micron solid carbon block filter....It works fantastic..One of our customers has been F racking for decades. Smart and hard working guy. He says the drill at 5000 feet and begin f racking then. Most water wells are 100 ft or less. He insists that it doesn't/can't affect the water table.

 

Sounds like a bunch of roughnecks have been working on that equipment, I try to keep them back from the good stuff on the rig. They can break a anvil. F racking can mess stuff up if you don't know what you are doing. It all depends on who is doing it. A lot of rigs have burned down because they half @**ed the cement job. You mess that up and your well can't hold anything. So when you f rack one that has a bad cement job, your problems start.

 

break an anvil......yep you know them well......

 

14 years in the oilfield so far so, yep.

 

Yeah, well... we're right in the middle of the "Biggest Oil Boom in Texas History"; and this is the heart of Big Oil/Big Payoffs to buy the laws you want to keep from getting shut down. You have to drill through the water table and pressurize your well casing to get to your target; it's not rocket surgery to understand it is VERY dangerous. 60 years ago we didn't trust the oil companies to do it responsibly and outlawed it; 40 years of deregulation have NOT made them any more trustworthy. All I have to do is look at my menu at Bayseas where we STILL can't get a fried scallop (scallops come from the Gulf Coast here) dinner to remember WHY.

Independent studies have been conducted in the area; they raise noise then very expeditiously evacuate. It's not hard to put Oil and $$$ together to see what's happening. I don't want my kids growing up in that.

I'm still fast on the road to madness with the little ones. We had to take Halloween away from the boy; he got 3 frowny faces in a row at school. Little grrl was too cute on her first actual "Trick-Or-Treat"; she filled up her bucket twice on one loop around the block. w00t!

Halloween Greetings from Darth Paul, Sith Lord [RETIRED]



and the little Sithlings


I'm still on the diet, still losing, though I have had a couple relapses (ok, legitimate days off that turned into more); those are worse - they make me sick as my body switches out of and back into ketosis.

Uggh.

Anyhoo, tomorrow or Sunday is my next day off; I plan to get well and properly sick on leftover Halloween candy. We're at the end of the street at our new place; got ONE customer all night.

K, time for me to turn into a pumpkin;


mnem

 

*Delurking*

So... been up to my patookie in a mazillion little fix-me-up projects; almost got the PT Cruiser resolved into a semi-reliable vehicle. We may or may not be soon retiring my old totaled Saturn; it's given yeoman service for over 7 years, so it doesn't owe us a penny. But... Beth's car is getting long in the tooth, and the motor swap I did over a year ago was only intended to keep it going for a couple years so we could save up enough to get into a decent Camry or Accord. I'm afraid to let ol' Blue go; we may need it as a spare.

Getting the baby grrl into pre-school might offer us some respite; I may be able to take a part-time job and start saving up again.

I've been working online a little, selling off some old stuff... things are slowly disappearing from the garage. I figure I'll have it sorted in 3-5 years... ;P



That's the short version; time to go bug the kids to sleep.


mnem
*Plugging along*

 

I've been working on my car again lately; I put in a decent stereo that I've had lying around since before the move. While I had the dashboard apart I went through and replaced all the burned-out bulbs... sometimes you never realize how much you miss silly things like being able to see your speedometer at night until you fix it and bring it back. I even fixed the bulbs in the power window switch... of course, now the switch doesn't work right.

The Auto-Open on the driver's side only gets the window half-down; I've taken it apart and put it back together 3 times and couldn't find anything wrong. I finally decided better to put it back together and forget it rather than to lose one of the little spring-loaded sliders inside that try and fly away at every opportunity and not be able to open & close the windows at all. But hey - now I can SEE the buttons at night.

I've been feeling a bit down lately cuz of bad luck with the job search and bad luck with my fixing and the usual kids terrorizing the homestead and getting behind in the housechores, etc... but I'm still plugging; feel good and exhausted after staying up til 4 AM with my sick son. Ahhh, parenthood.

Ah well... back to the grind. Mom-in-law is coming Sunday so I need to do a little picking up...


mnem
moos for sale.

 

Thanks for sharing. Good to hear from you. As always.
Did you convert the bulbs to LED?
Might be the relay for the auto down.

 

x2 lol! Good luck there!

 

Last auto-open/close I worked on was a BMW E36, maybe 15 years ago. Pretty sure I remember a magnet on the motor shaft and a Hall-effect sensor to count motor revs. When anything slowed the motor the circuit cut the power. Presumably built that way so that it would stop if, say, a child's arm was trapped - but a system like that does mean that the glass has to slide freely in the rubber seals/channels.

I was lucky that the magnet had just shifted on the shaft. If I'd found that before stripping the door/seals/winder/everything else it would have been a nice easy fix.

Maybe a similar speed- or current-sensing circuit on yours? Sticking, torn or distorted seals/channels? If the switch "gets the window half-down" then it must be making the momentary contact which is all that a latching circuit requires.

 

Naah... The thing worked before I replaced the bulbs, and it uses the same relay for both sides, and the passenger side works normally. There's something wrong with the current sense on the driver side; I figure it's probably a messed up thermistor.

I'll probably just ignore until my next trip to Pick & Pull; the car is just... Grrr. I guess I've gotten spoiled with you know my Saturns and Japanese cars where 70,000 miles is really a low mileage vehicle and I'm not getting that out of this Chrysler and I'm not pleased; my last two Saturns I bought with 100,000 miles plus and plugged in a low mileage boneyard motor and just drove them for the next 5-7 years.

This PT Cruiser is a great vehicle to drive, and it is just incredibly versatile. I use it like I would a pickup most of the time... One that gets 28 mpg in the city. But at 70,000 miles the damn thing is nickel n diming me when I don't have it to spare, and I just plain expected better of a modern vehicle.

I may go back to my Saturns; get a Vue or summat. We'll see. I had a similar experience with my Dakota; after a year or so I got it fixed up and it became one of my favorite vehicles of all time.


mnem
Fuel.

 

mnem...I bought my 1998 Dakota 4X4 new ($34,700.00 Can) and drove it till last year. Best truck I have ever owned and the motor still runs strong with over 200,000 miles on it but the body is showing its age so its parked now and I upgraded to a newer Dakota.

 

I had a Dodge breakdown truck once. 1966 3/4 ton pickup, straight 6, big jib & hook on the back, no power steering but still easier to turn than an aircraft carrier. Previous owner had sprayed a sickly yellow on top of the original USAF blue - step side, crew cab body. Somebody christened it Big Septic.
Sometimes it would run, more often not, sold it for peanuts when I left the motor trade.
Probably could buy it back today for £10K or so.

edit: Wonder what I'd have to pay to get back my old NSU RO80?