Oddball Update

Lots of stuff happening for me today. First, my new computer is coming via FedEx (it’s already out on the truck for delivery). This will spark a day-long setup and configuration fest, naturally. I ordered one of Intel’s new Core 2 Duo (Conroe) processors for this box, and am anxious to see how it stacks up against my old single-core AMD Athlon 64 3700+. Benchmarking results for both CPUs suggest a possible 90% performance increase.

The new system also stands to be much quieter than my current one (which is already pretty quiet) because the video card I picked is passively cooled with a huge radiator rather than a fan. Additionally, all the fans that do exist in the system are 120mm fluidic bearing Scythes that are naturally quiet. And the case itself is a triple-ply, solid steel monstrosity that helps deaden sound as it is.

In other news, I’ve sold my 1989 Firebird Formula 350, a car I picked up in Ohio almost exactly three years ago, and which sparked the much-vaunted “Knight Project” that failed to really go anywhere. (I was planning to convert the car into a KITT replica.) A lot of stuff went wrong, shit happened, and a few months ago the last nail in the coffin was driven home as the car decided that it no longer wanted to start.

I’d been giving some serious thought to the future of my project car as it was. The reason being that one day in the near future I want to bring my dad’s ‘79 Trans Am down here to Florida so it can be driven year-round, whereas right now it’s just sitting in a garage in Michigan collecting dust. We’re moving into a house with a three-car garage soon, but with the Formula here, bringing down the ‘79 would make a total of four cars. My wife has indulged my car-collecting genes as much as she can, but four cars is just ridiculous, so one of them had to go. Obviously I’ll never sell the ‘79 T/A as long as I’m alive and functioning, so the broken-down Formula got the boot.

At first, I actually tried to donate it to charity and take a tax write-off. But the charities didn’t want it either. It was too old and decrepit — if it’s not running, no car older than 15 years is typically accepted. I needed rid of the car quickly and was honestly about to call a salvage yard, when I gave it one last chance at survival and offered it for sale at a drastically reduced price on the LSxGTO message board. It sold within 24 hours, to a nice guy here in Florida who owns a performance shop. Get this — he’s going to take the Formula and turn it into an autocrossing machine, the official “race car” of his company! He and his employees are apparently very excited about it.

I’m confident that whatever’s wrong with the car is relatively minor and can be fixed by someone who knows what he’s doing, and if a performance shop owner doesn’t know what he’s doing, then I don’t know who does. It sounds like a perfect exercise for the old ‘bird, and certainly deserving treatment. Knowing it’s going to a great cause, I can let it go with pride.

In loosely related news, I recently exacerbated a lower back injury that I first suffered a couple of years ago. It probably started while I was schlepping stuff around the house (packing up for our move), but was made significantly worse on Saturday when I was pushing the dead Firebird around, testing to make sure it would roll and that the brakes would work despite the battery being dead. So I’m trying to take it easy here for a couple of days, because what I went through two years ago is the kind of pain I never want to experience again. You probably think “Back pain, WTF? What a wuss” but seriously, it is some damn agonizing stuff. Think about this — if the only muscles that hold your torso upright fail, what’s gonna happen to you? Yep — you’re gonna fold in half and stay there.

In an attempt to help heal this problem, I acquired a new desk chair yesterday — an ergonomic mesh model with really good lumbar support. Actually getting the chair was nearly an all-day exercise, but I was determined to take one home. I tried this one out at OfficeMax and knew I had to have it, except that the store was all out of them. (So why are there still tickets available to take to the register, huh?) I ended up looking online and calling all the other stores in the area before I learned that this particular chair was discontinued and out of stock everywhere. RRRRGHH!

I couldn’t find another chair even remotely similar, so I called the original store back and asked if they’d sell me the display model. They agreed, after verifying that it was indeed discontinued, so I went and picked it up. Bonus — free assembly. The display model was built only a couple of days ago by the same employee who helped us schlep it out to the car (it fit in the back of the Mazda6 5-door, incidentally), so it was still in perfect shape. And boy, is it sweet — seems like the longer I sit in it, the better my back feels. But in all seriousness, I’m gonna have to add some back-strengthening exercises to my workout routine so this doesn’t happen again.

Well, it’s just about time for our Monday morning ops meeting at work. During this time we basically hear from management about what happened during the past week, listen to each of the employees talk about what they’re going to do this week (we can do that, since there’s only like 8 employees) and discuss any other company news. Woooooo.

Okay, that’s all for now.

Categorized as Life