pass no pass

Been calling, emailing, and test driving. Here's a couple interesting ones that I drove but ended up being to rough for a daily driver.

1971 Mercedes 280SE

Gorgeous classy car. Stately is a good word for it. Great body, almost no rust, but too many broken interior bits, no maintenance history, no paperwork. Alleged mechanic's car. Drove a lot better than I was expecting it to. Didn't really trust the seller though. Was a lot dirtier than in the picture. Having been burned by old cars with unknown histories, I know that a good deal can quickly turn into a huge headache. Can't afford that right now.

1983 Delorean DMC-12

Deloreans are epic. What an attention getter. I wasn't expecting this one to be practical as an only car, but I had to check it out. Who knows? Sitting in it feels like sitting in a space ship. They were after all designed to compete with the Ferrari's and Porsche's of its day. Poor visibility, heavy clutch, very little trunk space. I could live with that, except this one hasn't been registered since 1994 and would probably need a few thousand dollars' work put into it. There was literally a puddle in the passenger foot well. Surprisingly, it started right up and seemed to run really well. If I only had a garage to work on it in, it would be an awesome second car. Oh well.

2004 Volkswagen Golf TDI

I actually just settled on a price for this VW Golf TDI in Phoenix. Did my homework on it and everything seems to check out. Gonna drive out there on Saturday, and hopefully it looks as good in person. Never bought a car sight unseen before but the seller seems trustworthy. Look out for another wanderings post early next week...

i ask myself

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eye strain

Between work, looking through car listings, looking through job listings and editing music, my eyes have been pretty tired this last week. Half seriously applying to jobs overseas and on the other side of the Mississippi. Oh! You know what's weird? You know how on craigslist, they list 100 ads at a time in a given category? Well for the cars section, by the time you finish browsing one set and hit the "See next 100," you see half the set from before on the next page. That's how many ads are posted every few minutes. I guess there's a lot of cars in LA.

progress is exciting

Woo! Making progress. Halfway done with the last track. The light at the end of the tunnel is poking through.

Got first draft of the artwork and it is looking mighty fine. Also getting some mixing help this week from that friend I mentioned. Hope you guys enjoy this stuff when it's finished. Exciting stuff friends...

car is dead

It finally kicked the bucket.

I have been dealing with cooling issues for quite a while, without finding a real solution to the issue. BMWs are notorious for their weak cooling systems. I forgot to replace the radiator cap after adding coolant yesterday and by the time I figured it out, a whole bunch of air had been sucked into the radiator. I didn't realize this until I left work to meet a friend for dinner when the temperature gauge nosed into the danger zone.

Pulling into a Taco Bell parking lot off of a busy section of Sepulveda in Manhattan Beach, I pulled the hood off and leaned it against the chain link fence. In order to purge the air out of the radiator, you have to apply pressure to the system and force it all out of a bleed valve. The normal way to do this is by running the engine after letting it cool. The fast way is to pressurize the radiator manually. With your mouth. I was definitely not in the mood for the normal way. It must have been an odd sight to see an Asian man bent over the front of a BMW with the hood off, blowing into the radiator. It worked though.

Made it to dinner late but happy the car was running well. Headed off to small group after that, but noticed white smoke billowing from the tailpipe. Crap. The heat probably killed the headgasket. That's a pretty major repair for a car worth less than the tires it's riding on. Oh well, at least it was running.

Later that night, around 11, I tried to leave but it wasn't happening. No crank, no jumpstart, no nothing. Engine seemed like it was seized. Crap crap. Got a ride home and biked to work in the morning. Gave in and asked my mom for a ride after work to see if a push start would work. That's where you get a stalled car with a manual transmission moving and pop the clutch to start it, when the starter or battery is dead. No luck. Give up. One last try with the key and....a sputter! Okayyy, try jumping it again. LIFE! And more smoke. Lots of it. But life nonetheless.

Limped it to my parents house. 20 miles. Through Friday afternoon traffic. In LA. Every time we slowed down, the temp needle would shoot toward the red. Plus my mom, following behind, doesn't look before she changes lanes. Not the most carefree afternoon. Made it after an hour on pins and needles. Whew. Pretty sure that car is never gonna move under its own power again. Borrowing my dad's car for now. What should I get? This is a stressful decision for me. So many choices...

A- Same car (swap nice parts)
B- Older, cooler BMW
C- Pickup truck (utility?)
D- Motorcycle (coooool, but danger)
E- Volkswagen TDI (50 mpg woot!)
F- Classic American something or other
G- Bike it all day every day
H- Porsche 914
I- Ratty old Beetle
J- Don't say Honda Accord


(I realize you don't care about geeky car stuff. Even though it might get you out of a tough situation some day. Or save your life. And lots of money. You'll just keep a friend around who knows that stuff. And call him when you have car problems. He's okay with that.)

(I also realize that I spend more energy than I would like to on this stuff. Every time I swear it off, it comes creeping back eventually. I can't help it. It's just cool stuff. Gotta get to work somehow. Might as well do it with some style.)

forest home

Pretty awesome setting for a retreat. Dare I say nicer than Pine Valley?







Full set on Flickr

santa monica place

If you've been in West LA in the last few years, you've probably been to 3rd Street in Santa Monica and seen the ugly construction adjacent to it. There were redoing the old mall there, and apparently it just reopened. They're calling it Santa Monica Place. It's...beautiful. Tons of metal and glass. All open construction with top tier stores. Which means no stores that I would actually shop at. But I've always found malls to be good places to study or read or just people watch. Check it out if you're ever in the area.

between 7:30 and 4:00...

...I am usually quite bored. That is all.

excitable

Making a lot of progress on the new music lately. Did a couple recording sessions with a drummer friend (real drums!) and in the middle of editing those tracks. Was able to partially convert my acoustic drums into an electronic drums to make the recording simpler (and quieter for the neighbors). Maybe will post something on that later.

Got an artist friend to do some album artwork. Once I'm satisfied with the arrangements and timings, gonna take it to a friend for some final mixing. It will be nice to get a fresh set of ears, mine are kinda tired from listening to the same tracks over and over. Thankful for friends. Hard to stay motivated working on a longish term project alone.

So I guess I have begun to like these 6 tracks enough to put some effort into distribution, if you can call it that. Just planning to give it all out for free once it's done. Let me know if you want a CD. Gonna mail it out to people who are far away. I'll probably have it up for streaming and download somewhere also.

almost lost it

Barely avoided disaster yesterday.

I've been spending a good amount of hours lately working on the new recordings and it's been pretty productive the last few weeks. After a few hours editing last night, I went to delete some folders off a USB drive but hasty fingers deleted my main recording folder, skipping the Recycle Bin because of the size of it (almost 20 GB). When I realized what I did, I kinda freaked out for like 10 minutes because I knew my backups were more than a month old. That was like 30 hours of hard work . I called a friend to pray for me and got my head back on straight. Figured there might be a way to recover the files and some searching uncovered a handful of free programs. Turns out that when you delete files, they don't disappear off the drive, they just become invisible to Windows (or OSX). As long as you don't overwrite the data, it's pretty simple to recover it. I was able to save all of my deleted files. Soooo thankful. Gotta remember my priorities though, it's not the end of the world even if I did lose it all. Will remember to backup more frequently now.

If you are ever stuck in a similar situation, don't panic. Check backups and recycle bin. If it's still not there, download Recuva right away and scan for your deleted files. It's completely free and easy to use. I'm gonna send them a few dollars, cuz they deserve it.

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