January 26th

Vic took the Jeep in for the new radiator, and after playing 20 questions (the furry crap on the radiator shows me that it's leaking), they replaced it :o)

In the evening, we went to Chipotle, as they were doing a deal on their vegan sofritas burritos, where you bought one, and then you get a free burrito of your choice at a later date.  I've never had the sofritas, but Vic likes it, so I was looking forward to trying it, but they were out of stock.  They're allowing us to get the free burrito later regardless, so I'll try the sofritas stuff then, I guess.

January 25th

We drove to bURNINGvAN, at Ocean Beach, and walked Tilly on the beach, chatted about vans and so on.

January 24th

After playing Warcraft for a while, I went out into the garage and finished building the shelf unit for the workbench, and got that all squared away.  Yay.

January 23rd

Vic took the Vanagon in for an oil change, and as usual it came back with a short list of squawks that I'll have to look at when it warms up.

January 22nd

After half a day at the Tech Summit, I managed to slope out early and headed home.  Without too much traffic (once I was on the freeway, anyway), I got home early enough to log back in and do a little more work.

January 21st

I got up silly early and drove to San Francisco for the Tech Summit at work.

Vic took the Jeep to the dealer we bought it from to get the radiator replaced, and they hadn't ordered the new radiator.  Call me stupid, but I don't understand how they were able to forget to do that.

After the day listening to people, we went to an electric go-karting place.  I managed to get into the final, and came third :o)

January 19th

Today is Martin Luther King day, when Americans remember the civil rights pioneer by going shopping.

After playing Warcraft for a while, we started work.  Vic was working in the guinea pigs' room, and I took the shelves off the wall in the garage, so the shelving unit has somewhere to go when I've built it up.

We got the new base into the guinea pigs' room, but I need to charge the battery on my little chop saw to finish cutting holes in the middle shelf before I'll be able to put that all together.

January 18th

We spent the day doing useful stuff - Vic's stripped out the guinea pigs' room, and we built a base for their cages.  I also built up a new workbench to replace the shelf I've been using, and put that in place.  I need less stuff, or a bigger garage, as everything's a bit tight in there at the moment, but once I get everything tidied away (and hopefully divest myself of some junk) it'll be good.

In the evening, we went to a barbecue place with Vince.

January 17th

After the usual Warcraft daily stuff, we went over to drop off some money with Vince (for the Flightstar's annual inspection), then drove to Vic's mother's house.  After a few hours' visit, we went and got our photos taken - Vic won a photo session at a guinea pig event we went to.

Tilly was at home, waiting for us / sleeping, when we got there.

January 16th

The new fan for Vic's laptop finally came in (I've had to cancel one after waiting for a month...), so I sat down and took all the screws out to take the bottom off the case.  It's then a clip together design, which isn't really supposed to be taken apart.  I managed to get a corner open, and was working my way down the side when my screwdriver dropped in to the case :o(  I popped a few more of the clips, and then managed to crack the case at the corner, which was the point where I said "f*ck this" and stripped the memory and WiFi card (already had the hard drive and DVD-RW drive out) before throwing it in the bin.  FML.

Gwen came over and picked Tilly up, so they can throw the ball for her, for a change of pace.

January 15th

I took the afternoon off and went to the local FAA FSDO (almost running out of gas on the DRZ on the way there) to sort out my airman certificate, only to be told that I didn't need to do anything.  At all.  Oklahoma should have just sent me a new plastic license, having billed me the princely sum of $2.  I've decided to not work out how much time and money I've spent on this - I'll just have them send me a replacement license.  I'm thinking I'll press on with the "get a local license" plan though, as I was under the impression that this would get me a local license, rather than a local license based on my UK license (which is what I'd told Oklahoma I wanted).

When I got home, my new KVM switch had arrived, so I spent a little time setting it up and testing it, then tearing out the 2 old switches (the one that didn't see my keyboard looked after the audio, and the one that didn't have audio looked after the keyboard and mouse, and neither switched video as I don't use VGA any more).  I now have one monitor that uses the switch, and is fed by DVI, and the other is fed by DVI from my work laptop, and HDMI from my desktop, and both switch at the touch of the magic button.  The mouse didn't work at first, but putting the mouse in the keyboard USB, and the keyboard in the mouse USB has fixed that.  It means I can't use the keyboard shortcuts, but why would I bother when I have a (lit) button?

I investigated a puddle of red liquid under the Jeep, only to find that it looks like it needs a new radiator - it's been leaking for a while, from what I can tell.  Still, the heater has been working, so there's some liquid in it, at least.  FML.

January 14th

We went to Lowe's and spent a while finding wood straight enough and not too split to work with.  I can't imagine who's buying the split, twisted or knotty junk we leave behind.  We also bought, and got cut up, some 4x8 sheets of MDF.  We have plans to make things and stuff at the weekend.

January 12th

Chevrolet showed their new Bolt concept car at the NAIAS - they've talked about a 200 mile midrange car, and everybody's been assuming that'd be based on the Sonic.  This looks really good, so obviously everybody assumes that they won't build anything like it.  There are rumours that they'll build something very like it, as it looks very finished.  The new Volt was shown too, and that looks like an interesting vehicle, too.  It'll be interesting to see how it's priced.  I'm still on the fence about a daily driver :o)

January 11th

I wasn't well after last night's drinking, so I had a gentle day watching TV (with the occasional hork break) before flying back from LAX.  I had an early night :o)

January 10th

I got up early, and headed to SMF and flew to LAX.  Russ picked me up (in the rain), and we went to look at a pile of parts in his warehouse.  After that, we wandered around Redondo Beach (in the rain) for a while, then went to a dinner party.  We were dropped at a bar on the way home, and we drank too much, then walked home (in the rain).

January 7th

Today was the first EAA board meeting of the year.  There are things afoot :o)

January 4th

I wasted the (cold) day playing Warcraft, but we did go shopping and watch "The Guilt Trip".

January 3rd

Vic was teaching a class at the SPCA this morning, so after a little time playing Warcraft, I got down to some soldering on the time lapse controller.

We watched "Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit", a reimagining of the To, Clancy character - I'm guessing this is the "gritty reboot" everything seems to get these days.

In the evening we went to Sacramento to see "Walking With Dinosaurs".

January 2nd

It was bloody cold today, so I did a little bit of tinkering in the garage and called it a day out there.

In the evening, we went out to dinner, but stopped at Frys so I could pick up some stuff that I needed.  I also looked at some KVM switches, as I'm tired of running the 2 VGA switches that I have, one for the audio (that doesn't work with the wireless keyboard and mouse), one for the keyboard and mouse (that doesn't have audio), and neither of them switching a monitor.  Time to update to a DVI switch, methinks.  I tried buying one on eBay, but it didn't come with the switch, and doesn't recognise my keyboard and mouse, so it doesn't switch either.  So that's going back.

January 1st

Merry New Year!

Wasted the day playing Warcraft, as it's cold, and the Flightstar is awaiting its annual inspection.

Here's the solar stuff:

Power billed

Power generated

It's interesting - I'm always looking at electric cars, as I find the technology interesting.  I've recently been looking at used cars, as the autopilot and AWD on the latest 85KWh Tesla Model S has resulted in a bunch of people looking to upgrade their Model S, driving down the used prices somewhat.  I'm finding it funny looking at the used prices of other electric vehicles... there are a bunch of idiots who obviously have no idea how the free market works.  There are people selling the remaining lease on their Ford Focus electrics, at $400 a month, plus a lump sum payment to them - this is missing the fact that you can get your own brand new lease for ~$200 a month, with a lump sum payment.  There are also people trying to sell 3 year old Chevy Volts with a salvage title (so it's been in an expensive accident) for ~$20,000, which is OK until you remember that they're ~$30,000 new, with a $9,000 rebate ($7,500 from the Federal government, $1,500 from California).  I find it funny when people think "I paid $35,000 plus tax and registration for this, drove it for 36,000 miles and got $9,000 back, it must be worth close to what I paid for it".  For the longest time I've been seeing nearly new cars advertised for almost what a new car goes for, as if they're forgetting that only the first purchaser can get the rebates, even if the original purchaser didn't apply for them.  And there seem to be laws about keeping a car for a certain time for people who've taken the California credit (at least, a 2 year lease doesn't qualify for it, but a 3 year lease does).  It's almost like these sellers are forgetting that electric car shoppers tend to be better informed about what they're buying than the average car shopper, who often seems to just want a silver car :o)

In the evening, we watched "Jack Reacher", which was actually pretty good.