cooper resurrection, part uno

Officially got the cooper the day after easter, and it was good…  the cooper is risen.  It is risen indeed!  Yeah, the clutch has a totally different feel now which is a bit unfortunate – the original one had a nice feeling of resistance, but the new one just feels flimsy.  Oh, well, just takes getting used to.  The tranny shifts beautiful and I’m totally stoked to have the coop back.  Not like I wouldn’t have been able to get by without that little guy or anything, but man do I like to drive it.  As dad said, money comes and money goes, cars come and cars go – either decision is the right one – no need to fret.  So I chose to put the cooper back on the road and just ride it out.  Looking forward to rejuvenation part dos, which will be the tires and brakes.  Part triple is that I ordered an extensive service manual for the c ride – need to replace a window motor on the drivers side so the luscious locks can blow free in the cool California breeze…  think I’ll do that one myself.

cooper dooper

Just gave aamco the word to *GET ON IT*

Looking forward to doing some donuts with my brand new transmission

not so cooper-ific

I guess I’m considering just ditching the mini.

 

Got the verdict from aamco:

New transmission = $4026.19

New clutch = $396.65

Trans fluid = $59.28

Labor = $1056.00

 

But there are also things that I had put off – my estimates:

New tires (4 run-flats [cooper has no spare]) = $800

Brake job = $200-400

Alignment = $50

 

Looking at a total of around $6800…  but what’ll break next on the cooper?  It almost seems like just ditching it and getting a quality used car makes more sense.  But I really do love that little cooper, though.  Makes me feel completely rotten.

double a - honk honk - mco

so aamco looked at it this morning, and their estimate is 15.8 hours of labor to get the transmission out, then find out what parts they need, then put it all back together – humpty dumpty style.  $88/hour – that’s higher than even my OT rate.  So $1390.40 for labor, then parts will be extra.  Talk about suckage.  My lil’ cooper – why?

leaves and papers

So I was sweeping the leaves from the breezeway in front of our bloc of apartments.  4 apartments in a row – 2077, 2079, 2081 and 2083.  2077 is closest to the street (Crazy Dorothy) and I’m in 2079.  Anyway, there’s a big tree right between 2077 and 2079 and it’s constantly dropping leaves.  I felt like sweeping them off the way – why not – water the flowers then sweep the leaves.  So I was sweeping the leaves and came to dorothy’s place.  I swept the breezeway, but didn’t sweep her stoop – thought she might have an aneurism and go demento on me.  So that was like a 5 minute deal, but just then my other neighbor Nicole (2081) came up the breezeway and we talked for a couple minutes about our landlord’s decision (just on Monday) to install a centralized mailbox unit with locks on each apt’s mailbox.  (we’ve all got little mailboxes next to each of our doors, but they don’t have locks, so apparently they’re not secure enough…)  anyway – talk, talk, talk, and that’s that.  Go inside and not a second after I get in do I hear “click, squeeeeak, sweep, rustle, sweep, rustle, sweep, rustle, slam!  Click!”  i come back out to put some soil/mulch around a little hibiscus plant, and what do I see?  Yeah, Dorothy pretty much hates me, so she swept the leaves that I had swept onto the dirt back onto the breezeway in front of her apt.  that’s awesome.  she didn’t sweep any in front of my apt, so that’s cool, except that the way the ocean breeze blows, the leaves in front of her door will simply end up in front of my door.  Yeah, awesome.  and you know she was counting the seconds from the time I swept near her apt to the time she could get out there and ‘set it straight’.

But then again, maybe it was just the zen in her coming out…  you see, in the monasteries they have to clean, clean, clean, right?  Always keep it tidy.  Submit to the manual task, etc.  focus on the present, find the joy in the task at hand, etc.  so I was reading that after they spend hours – maybe all day – sweeping the pathways around the monastery, they then sprinkle a little dirt and drop a couple leaves here and there…  The point of that is to illustrate that nothing is perfect, everything is transient, etc.  maybe Dorothy just wanted to demonstrate that?  Yeah, NO.

 

p.s.  while writing this, a new paperboy (actually middle-aged lady) came by asking if I wanted to subscribe to the paper, it was such a great deal, yada, yada.  She, of course, knocked on dorothy’s door first – for a minute – no answer.  Knocks on mine and I kindly say no, I read the news online, but thanks for asking.  She trails off with how she understands, but man is it a great deal…  doesn’t go to my other 2 neighbors, cause no lights on.  Walking back to the street and I guess Dorothy poked her head out to spy, cause I hear the paperlady ask – hey, are you interested in the paper?  Snarl!  Maybe just the weekend then – Saturday and Sunday?  SNARL! SNARL!  Heh, heh, oh okay, have a nice evening…

 

yep, gotta love that Dorothy.

 

p.p.s.  haven’t done anything with the mini yet – just been wishing it would go away, but of course it won’t I know.  been taking the bus to work, which is no problem – just a 20 minute ride down the street.  Guess I’ll call up the mini dealer in Escondido tomorrow to see what can be done…

mini catastrophe

So my car last night decided it was time to take a break.

Or maybe just break.

I had just picked up sean at his place in northpark to get down to the bad religion concert downtown and was not more than 2 and a half blocks down the street when the transmission completely seized up, leaving about 3 car lengths (maybe 4 car lengths in mini distance) of rubber on the road.  No anti lock brakes, cause the brakes weren’t stopping the car – it was totally the tranny refusing to turn.  Yeah, no good to say the least.  Couldn’t even roll the car in neutral – the front wheel drive was just locked – so I called triple A right away and got a tow… 2 and a half blocks back to my friend’s house to his driveway.  Didn’t have time to tow it back to OB or we’d miss the show!  Anyway, now I’ve got to get this thing fixed, and I’m pretty sure it’s not just the clutch, so $$$ here we come.  Not sure whether to take it to a mini dealer or try to find a reputable shop.  Pretty lucky though, cause we totally could have gotten rear-ended when the car screeched to a halt.  Doubly lucky that it didn’t happen on the highway that I was traveling on at 70 miles/hour just before I got to sean’s…

 

Look close and you can see the skid marks.

the aggrolites - reggae with a little bit of punk

shows and blogs

So I went to see ‘the aggrolites’ last night with my buddy sean.  Pretty sweet show – it was a small venue and we were about 20-30 feet from the stage.  The volume was a bit excessive… and that’s not just me getting old.  The show was at canes over in mission beach, and it’s a fairly notoriously loud place – my audiologist friend recommended I take the little foam ear protectors, but of course I forgot.  I don’t think I lost *too* many decibels of hearing last night…

Also going to see ‘bad religion’ on Sunday night at the house of blues downtown – definitely need to remember the foamies for that one…

One last thing – my very own mom has jumped into the blogging landscape – she’s on my list as ‘the cleaning lady’ – nice!

secrets and personalities

So I got fingerprinted yesterday at work.  Good?  Bad?  Depends on how you look at it.  I’ve currently got “secret” clearance at work – pretty much everyone does.  We deal with somewhat sensitive national security information, etc.  anyway, I asked for clearance to “top secret” stuff at work.  Figured that if I ever decided to leave the government for another job, then it would be worth some extra $$$ to have TS clearance.  Plus, there’s stuff at work that I could help out in if I had ts clearance.  So anyway, now I’ve got to go through a whole background check over again (had a basic one for my secret clearance back in 2002).  Places I’ve lived, people I’ve known, jobs I’ve worked, where I’ve gone to school, etc, for the last 10 years.  Supposed to take 6-9 months to do the background check.  Blah.  They even ask you – several times – if you’ve ever tried to overthrow the government, been a member of a group that’s plotted to overthrow the government, or ever contributed to a group that’s tried to overthrow the government.  Wow.  With TS clearance also comes the extra joy of random drug testing, so I guess no more using the drugs that I never used in the first place…

So today we had an “offsite” for work.  We get off the base for the day and talk about the organization, do team building exercises, etc.  anyway, a major component of the day was a Meyers-briggs test.  I think the last time I took this was back as an undergrad at Tech, and I’m pretty sure back then my result was ISTJ.  That’s pretty much the standard result for engineers.  Introverts who process data and come to logical conclusions and make decisions.  Not sure how strong I was in the categories – that was a while ago.  anyway, with this go around I scored kind of down the middle, but slanted to INFP.  Kinda weird, but things do change, and wow, since the last time I took the test I was 18 and a freshman at tech – well, there’s been a couple changes.  Mainly the time in Europe, philly and various ups and downs of working for the govt…  anyway, maybe I’ll take the test again soon just to see if I can validate the results.

But a snippet from infp:

“INFPs are open-minded, idealistic, insightful, and flexible individuals who want their work to contribute to something that matters.  They enjoy working by themselves or in small groups where they can be creative.”

So I was trying to find an old college transcript – a group at work needs it so they can verify some of the economics classes I took as an undergrad (and management classes as a grad student) in order to certify me as an “acquisition professional”…  whoop dee doo, right?  Well, maybe it’ll be worth extra money to be certified if I decide to find a job somewhere else, so why not.  Anyway, searching for an old transcript – I know I kept at least 1 copy of my full education.

Of course, it’s always the very last place you look.  But I must have looked through all my papers from the last 7 or 8 years getting there.  Saw an photo montage of “Georgia tech crew 2001” – I was sitting 6 seat in the boat - kind of hunched over adjusting my shoes – and you could just see the mass of muscle in my shoulders and back jumping out over me.  Pretty weird thinking of how all that muscle evaporated when I started racing bikes so much.  And of course there’s all my old course notes from grad school when I was in france.  The classes at GTL were – whatever – but then I saw my old notes from the classes I took at supelec – the French engineering university – and I just shuddered thinking about those days.  Man, I really struggled in those classes.  luckily, most of the concepts in computer engineering were founded in America, but the courses were all taught in French and that  - well, that’s what I signed up for.  I had only had 2 quarters of French before I went to france – I didn’t have to start taking courses in French right away, but I was never really good enough to speak academically.  But I got by and passed and graduated.  Then I saw some of my old dispatch logs from when I was a messenger in philly, found my orders from the govt to go from philly to san diego to start work, etc.  saw some old resumes.  Then I came across the old paperwork I was drafting up to submit a patent application with my buddy josh vose.  Sadly, I never completed and filed the patent – just got too bogged down in searching for an engineering job (when I was still a messenger) and then just dropped the ball when I made the move out west.  That’s something I need to pick back up, and vose is trying to get my ear for a new idea, too.

Anyway, the coup de gras, as they say was when I finally found my transcript in a folder labeled “job opportunities”.  The first half of the folder had bio’s for the past 3 or 4 classes of astronauts – I was trying to find patterns in hiring.  Then there was the fax paperwork for me accepting my job at spawar out here in san diego.  However, immediately before the fax paperwork was a paper that I do remember scribbling down, just not exactly when.  It was me doing a pro/con analysis of bike courier vs engineer written back in early 2002:

 

Bike Courier

 

Pros                                                              

Get in good biking shape                 

Possibly great weather                     

“Extreme”                                              

Interesting people?                           

Feeling of “independence”            

No hard interview                              

No dress code                                      

 

Cons

Fairly low pay (shabby apt, little travel, little food)

No insurance

Dangerous job

Possibly miserable weather

Overtraining?

No good for Astronaut

No internet during day

Not using brain (remember Reid)*

Not prestigious for parents

 

Engineer

 

Pros                                                                      

High pay – Good apt + food + travel       

Mentally challenging                                     

Not outside (bad weather)                         

Physical recovery time                                  

Internet usage – email on downtime     

Prestige for parents                                       

Advance to Astronaut

 

Cons

Possible dress code

Not outside (good weather)

No physical workout

Not interesting people?

Hard interview

Commute?

 

*My buddy Chris Reid was musing at the time (or just before) about how he felt like he was just “spinning his wheels” collecting a paycheck at his job.

 

So there you have it.  But there was just a bit more, written upside down (just with the page flipped around) at some later date

 

Future thoughts

HQT

Acting?

Helicopter?

Pilot?