is happily being the wheel rather than a rusty old spoke
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We got between 6 and 12 inches of snow. Toward the lower end of that range, I think.
Still, more snow in this one storm than we typically get in an entire winter anymore.
I was actually planning to stash the 2nd car (1970 Datsun 2000 Roadster aka "FairLady") in the workshop and bring it out later telling her "I finally got done restoring the Healey" and she'd likely have not realized it was a Datsun instead of an Austin Healey, but decided (correctly) that she'd be so enamored of the little roadster that she'd forgive me the purchases.
What she doesn't know is that I've bought a bulldozer from a neighbor and told them to go ahead and keep it in their workshop for now but when they get a chance or need to move it for any other reason, go ahead and bring it down and park it to the side of the workshop, where she wouldn't see it.
That'll eventually be addressed, but because of the magnitude of the project, it's down the list a ways.
We're going to strip out all of the message-imbedded signatures, but while doing so, we're going to replace them with a signature ID and add the signature to a signatures history table that each user can use to select which signature they want to use at the time they write a particular post. And embed that signature number when we strip the signatures.
So it'll be a kind of dynamic/static thing. But not for a while.
According to ONEBGG, the possible source:
"I want to die like my father, peacefully in his sleep, not screaming and terrified, like his passengers." ~ Bob Monkhouse
I don't think that fits into the tagline rules we had in the BBS days, though. I first saw it as a BBS tagline. We were limited to, I think, 76 characters.
I didn't find any help at that page, but I know someone researched it not too long ago and told me where they found the full version. I'll have to look through my PM archives.
That shouldn't be the case. It should be elegantly skipping deleted and ignored posts. I tested it yesterday with ignored, but not with deleted. Guess I'd better have another look.
Still a Jetta, which is a good car, but it's the TDI I'd jump all over with both feet. Especially if it were a manual tranny.
Keep in mind, though, that my opinion should be taken with a huge grain of salt, as I'm a different kind of car buyer than most people.
Actually, I'm a non-car-buyer until I sell one or a few. My wife nearly came unglued when I went to look at a 530i she wasn't too keen on my getting, and I came back with two cars.
I need to either cut back on the cars or become a dealership and get the D-tags so we don't have to go through the hassle and expense of registering and insuring so many of them. 17 now if I count the dumptruck.
Bet my cylinder count is approaching 200 by now too.
"Dieseling" is a bit of a misnomer, but not too far off the mark. The engine is running without an electronic spark, like a diesel.
What's happening is things are so hot that as the intake (carburetor -- this rarely if ever happens with fuel injection since it's computer-controlled and fuel stops flowing when you turn off the key) charge continues flowing into the cylinders, it lights up immediately. WAY before it would if it were happening when the spark plug fires. And it's more of an explosion than a controlled burn, causing the pistons to rattle and wobble, resulting in the noise you're hearing. It can break pistons. Or start an under-hood fire as the fuel-air mixture ignites while an intake valve is still open, sending fire up the intake port and through the carburetor, which has a reservoir containing about half a cup of gasoline. BTW, it's exactly this that's a true "backfire". Backfiring doesn't happen through the exhaust.
The correct term is "pre-detonation" because the fuel-air charge is detonating before it's supposed to. And in a carbureted engine, fuel-air is delivered as long as the engine continues to turn and the pistons make the required suction on their way down the cylinders.
Pinging or knock is a "lite" version of pre-detonation. For any of a number of reasons (octane too low, compression too high, ignition timing too advanced, cylinder temperature too high) the fuel burn is happening too soon and causes the noise.
I could imagine that if pre-detonation were extreme enough, it'd be possible for the engine to start running backwards. It has a lot in common with a diesel at that point. But the engine wouldn't necessarily start running backwards and it'd actually be pretty unlikely since it'd have to do so against the rather massive momentum of the flywheel and other heavy moving parts like the crankshaft.
The pre-detonation would have to happen with sufficient force to STOP the flywheel and start it back up the other direction.
Actually, the backhoe was starting to look something like that (with water and muck pouring in the windows) when I decided it might be a good idea to get myself outside the machine. Fortunately the windows were open (I wouldn't have been able to open them after the fact) and it didn't end up sinking any further.
I rented (and ended up buying) a very large excavator and took about half a day to get the backhoe out and it's now sitting by the workshop getting worked on whenever I feel like it. I've replaced all of the major wires and still have a lot of work to do with the rest of the wiring, some cleanup, then it should be good as new.
Amazing what charged batteries do to wires and especially their terminal ends when immersed. On one side of the fuse block (the side that was under water longest), I've pulled all the fuses out and can see connections on the left side and nothing but air on the right.
Major project!
A couple of days after freeing the backhoe, I got the excavator stuck even worse. The excavation company I called in to free it took lots of pictures and I hope to have copies soon.
The excavator was very expensive to rent, and could be bought for about 9 1/2 months rent, so I went for it. Figure I've got about 2 years of work I can have it do, then sell it and take a far smaller beating than I would've keeping it rented. Will get a picture of it someday. Very large machine. JCB 260.
The backhoe is big and tough. The excavator could turn it into scrap metal in a minute or two.
A former bookkeeper had a Jetta TDI (early 2000's) and said mid 40's to low 50's was the norm for her. With the quality of build and engineering that's typical for any German car.
A good rule of thumb is that a diesel will get around 50% better fuel economy than the same car with a gas engine.
Diesel packs a lot more BTU's per gallon, the much higher compression helps even more, and the low-down grunt of a diesel engine (they don't turn very high revs or make much power when doing so) fits real-world driving conditions better than a gas engine does.
Tom has a Passat W8 and can speak to the quality of VW's.
Edit: Speaking of German engineering and build quality, my 94 BMW 530i has 172k miles on it and the only squeaking/rattling is the throttle linkage in need of lubrication. The car is so darned quiet, I can hear THAT. And the doors still shut with a gratifying "Thunk".
Run backwards? Never heard that and can think of no mechanical reason for them to do so.
The noise is largely unavoidable. Lacking spark plugs and having far higher compression, their fuel/air charge doesn't ignite shortly before the top of the piston stroke as happens in a gas engine. They squeeze the heck out of the charge and it ignites when it ignites. With the piston still pretty far down the cylinder and forcing its way up against the "explosion".
A lot of engines can be made to run backwards, btw. 2-stroke engines, with their much simpler equivalent of a "valve train" and ignition closer to TDC than a 4-stroke run backwards nearly as well as they run forward. An old favorite practical joke of mine was to bump-start a motorcycle backwards, put it in neutral, and hand it to a friend to take a spin on.
A 4-cycle engine, with its ignition controlled by the camshaft or crankshaft, isn't so easy to get running backwards. 13 degrees BTDC becomes 13 degrees ATDC if you try to run it backwards, and if it'll run at all like that, it'll do it poorly.
It seems to me a diesel wouldn't much care which direction it's running in, though. Aside from valve timing, the fuel ignites when the piston squeezes it enough and wouldn't care which direction the crank is spinning, as long as the piston is on its way up and squeezing the fuel/air charge.
Barring anything major like collision or other major damage/repair, it's awfully hard to go wrong with a Jetta TDI. Yes, that's a turbo-diesel. A manual transmission is much better in those for fuel economy, but it won't do poorly on the slushbox either. Economy rivaling the Prius, with much better performance.
I'm a huge fan of diesels and think that the lack of a diesel engine option is where the hybrids are very seriously missing the mark. A hybridized diesel would easily get around 50% greater fuel economy than the current gas ones being offered.
There's a reason all modern locomotives are simply huge electric motors "fueled" by huge diesel generators. The engine you hear on the train isn't moving the train. It's powering the generators that power the electric motors to move the train.
If the car is in good condition and its background checks out, you should snap it up.
Keep in mind, though, that a downside of diesel is that it doesn't evaporate like gasoline, so adding fuel isn't exactly something you want the better half doing while wearing white gloves. My wife is averse to having a diesel car for this very reason. She doesn't want to deal with the mess that's always present at diesel pumps.
Also, diesel (at least in this part of the country) is currently costing a LOT more than gasoline. It used to be and should be the other way around. Diesel gets very little refinement compared to gasoline. It's only a few steps removed from what comes out of the ground.
It's always been that way.
The only ways to change which post is marked as last read are:
1. Hit the new post count from the Favorites page. The last read post is set to the newest post at that time.
2. Read the last post in a thread.
3. Hit either of the Reset links (all boards or single board) from the Favorites page.
4. Use the "Mark Last Read" link while reading the message you want to save as your placeholder. I think this one's a subscribers-only one.
A new and hopefully final version of read_msg.asp is now in production.
Let me know if any bugs are encountered with it.
read_msg_ig.asp is no longer used. The new read_msg (hopefully) handles all of the ignored and deleted message scenarios on its own.
I'm working on it right now and *might* be done. Testing it. The new version uses ONLY read_msg and has an sproc from Hell that deals with the 3 different states of ignore (off, authors only, authors and recipients), and so far seems to be working correctly.
What he's referring to is the jumping between read_msg.asp and read_msg_ig.asp and the different ways each handles the Previous and Next links causes messages to not show up in board lists as having been read. Mostly likely because of the querystring differences between Previous/Next links and the URL's actually used in the Board list. I imagine we'll have to ditch the querystrings (past messageid) and go with hidden form fields.
The Ignore function works just fine, to my knowledge, and doesn't need any attention.
The message-fetching proc simply (what an abuse of the word!) needs to be modified to take ignore status, ignore types and message authors and recipients into account when determining the previous and next message id's to send back with the existing message.
Darnit!
We'll probably be doing the switch soon enough that it's not worth bothering with correcting the typo.
The two latest additions to the stables.
What's now my daily driver, a 94 BMW 530i:
And very possibly the coolest car I've ever owned, a 1970 Datsun 2000 Roadster:
At least my diatribes are articulate. :P
Hey Susie!
Not posting much lately but when I encounter an inarticulate diatribe regurgitating an oft-repeated refrain like that, I can't help myself. I did end up doing a lot of back-spacing before hitting Submit, though.
Today is the 3rd time in only 2 weeks that I've uttered the incredible statement "I'm heading to the office to get some programming done before I start dealing with my job."
Is it pretty cool on that end of the screen our having a fulltime programmer now?
Even cooler that despite a lot of worries I saw stated here and on SI that everything would get changed just for change's sake, to see that Clem and company roll just like us and the few changes have been behind-the-scenes improvements?
For my part, I'm even busier and more over-worked now than I was previously, but very little of what I do each day is the same stuff I was doing a couple of months ago. Now I'm furiously conducting several bands rather than playing a bunch of instruments at the same time in one band. And conducting a score I'm instrumental (pun intended) in composing rather than ad-libbing my playing.
I'm working many more hours than I used to and it's even cutting into the hobby I love more than anything else. Funny thing is it doesn't have to. I let it. Because I've got the kind of job satisfaction I haven't experienced here since the early days when I came aboard and my mandate was simply "Make this a viable business using a paper clip and two clothespins." Now it's "Grow, and you can have anything you need to make it happen."
Hence, Meatloaf, as part of what's needed. As programmers go, Grubmaster and I are definitely upper echelon, but we're also kids in a sandbox compared to Meatloaf.
And the verbage added to the public posting page and PM's to Matt and Dave? The beginning of a three-pronged approach to getting Matt and Dave in control of their jobs rather than vice-versa. Lighten the load, segregate parts of the workload, and hire a person or people to help with some of the segregated parts.
On the technical front, Meatloaf is still wrestling with the new web-server trying to get it to play nice, and it's actually gratifying to see he's having the same problems with it that I was. Though I'm sure he'll find a solution. Just hope it's before the current webserver starts slowing down. And the programming I'm doing is a complete rewrite of our busiest routine, read_msg. I expect to put it into production Wednesday evening, and can't wait to see what it does to CPU utilization. I wouldn't be surprised to see the webserver's workload drop from its current 55-60% to something like 45%, which would be about a 30% workload on the new server, buying us enough time to get this all rewritten in .NET and easily deployed on multiple webservers. Keeping fingers crossed.
Speaking of multiple webservers, another project in the works (early stages right now) is getting us moved to a new ISP and with a far better, nearly bullet-proof infrastructure. High-quality equipment and lots of it. We use excellent equipment now as far as servers go, but we'll be using lots more of it to give us incredible redundancy and room to grow.
And along with the new ISP comes a second office literally feet away from the computers that run the sites, giving us room for more employees, such as the customer support person we're going to look for soon to provide extra coverage for the London side of things and help with Matt and Dave's workload (easy stuff like password and alias changes, changing moderators, etc).
So, things have changed very dramatically for me, they're in the process of changing for the site itself (though mostly transparently until we start adding ADVFN's incredible tools), and I'm working on getting them changed for Dave and Matt so we can become supersites without burning the poor guys out.
Well, got some programming to do. The new read_msg is very nearly done. All I've got left to do on it is making it correctly (and efficiently) handle ignored and deleted messages. I've gotten into the habit of using the new one myself because it's actually noticeably faster than the current one. With any luck, I can put it into production this evening and use tomorrow to fix the inevitable problems that will crop up before heading out of town Thursday for my last track weekend of the season.
Matt, everyone knows Keynesian is a basher
I didn't know it. My dogs didn't know it. Well, okay, one of them tells me he has suspicions.
"Never use absolutes." -- Anon
PS. If you want Matt (or any intended recipient) to see your posts, you might try making them replies to the desired recipient rather than almost always responding to "None".
My car has NO paint on the body.
DeLorean?
I bought a couple of cars last week (94 BMW 530i and 70 Datsun 2000 Roadster) from a guy who's got a DeLorean, but it doesn't look like he drives it. Tires nearly flat. Probably a project car.
Have they rolled out the new version yet?
I've read your posts about this board's placement in the "Most read" list, and still can't quite figure out what you're talking about. Are you saying that it shows up in the list, then later *the same day* doesn't appear? And are you definitely looking at the same list in each instance? If memory serves, there's one list for all boards, and another that includes only ticker-specific boards. Or maybe I'm thinking about SI.
Read counts (and other counts) reset at midnight.
Only reads by people who are logged in are counted.
That's gorgeous!
Sheridan just emailed me this:
One must be very careful when putting a very light, rear-engine or mid-engine car on a lift.
Interesting how it looks like the FF Corvette's little brother, too.
Tom,
What an excellent sequence!
Hmmmm.... 38 degrees, wet, open car without even so much as a windshield, snow/ice all over a Mustang in the paddock...
The only word that readily comes to mind is "certifiable".
If I remember right, aren't you running the Firehawks for rain/street tires? If so, I'd be reluctant to even call them "good" rain tires. I found them to be fair dry tires and that was about the extent of it. And I'm sure yours have been heat-cycled more than a couple times...
After having tried many different tires on the WRX and a couple on the STi, I'm quite fond of the Bridgestone Potenza RE070's. They're great in both rain and dry. Though as soon as my suspension's up to snuff, or at least I have caster plates, I'm moving to Hoosiers, which should yield sick lap times in the STi. Would expect that combo to make the STi a 1:45 car at MAM.
It's a great track. And you're always welcome to fly down and use either or both of my cars at that track (HPT) or MAM.
Both tracks favor turning/braking ability and driving skill over horsepower. Wayne has me, but not by a huge margin, in braking and turning, and on MAM, the stretches from T3 to T5 and T14 to T1 are where I mug him because of my horsepower. The rest of the track, he takes back most of what I take away from him in those two sections.
The C6 we passed I'm sure was showing excellent track etiquette rather than really being that slow. He saw that there was a race behind him in which he wasn't involved and gave us plenty of opportunity to get ahead of him before the kink. I do the same thing when I see a gang of Porsches approaching and I don't want to separate the back of the pack further from the leaders when there isn't another passing zone coming up soon.
Although that's no longer the case with the STi. In the WRX, I was one of the sheep. In the STi, I'm definitely one of the wolves. I could just go on and on about how great that car is. I used to think the WRX was the most bang for the buck, and the cost of upgrading to the STi was a lot of bang, but a much higher proportion of bucks, but I no longer think that. This thing is stone-stock save for the brake pads (which gain me nothing but longevity) and it's always one of the fastest cars at any outing. In the WRX, I used to grid near the back so I wouldn't hold anyone up. In the STi, I grid near the front so I don't get held up. To quantify it, the WRX turned 1:56's at MAM. The STi is mid 1:48's.
You simply MUST drive it, and though I'm sure I'll make RA and BIR next year, I really do want you to come down and drive it on my home tracks. I'll let you know when I know about 2007 track dates.
You're right. The first session, he was trying. He had me on torque and is one heckuva driver, but I was a bit better and had him in braking and turning.
The second session, we came rushing up on him like he was standing still and I thought maybe he was broken. Turned out he saw us coming and wanted to get video of the knife-fight that was closing in on him.
Gary (the other STi) and I are very equal drivers. I'm usually a tiny bit faster, but very little. One screwup that throws away a turn and/or heatsoaks my tires too much, and I spend the rest of the session trying to catch back up with him.
The other guy in our little group, Sheridan (Tom knows both of them) is really going to have his work cut out for him when he gets his 318ti back on the track. I hope he does some improvements to it, as I'd like to put camber plates and Hoosiers on my car, but don't want to have him massively outgunned on hardware, which that would do.
A good friend of ours who drives a race-prepped Scirocco used to be just a tad slower than Sheridan. This past weekend, I was a full second faster than him, so I'm likely a little faster than Sheridan. We'll see.
In-car video shot by a friend a week ago at HPT. Look for the ones that mention Subaru STi's. The first is just me, started just as I passed him. The second is me and Gary dicing it out, with Gary starting out in the lead then me passing him. Along the way, the 3 of us (two Scoobs and the Mustang taking the video) peeling the paint off a C6.
http://www.kcrpca.org/forum_topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=7&FORUM_ID=1&CAT_ID=1
I stand corrected. Not sure how I missed that part.
If the standard is applied uniformly, that's certainly a standard I like.
We must've been talking about different posts. I'm quite certain the deleted one I looked at (the most recent) contained no personal attacks, but I could be wrong.
Your post contained no facts and will be used as further evidence against you.
Many posts on the site contain no facts. Opinions are fine.
Your post made a claim that is so blatantly false
A moderator believing a post to be false is NOT valid grounds for removing it.
Well, at long last, the backhoe starts under its own power. Sometimes. I replaced the starter, all the battery cables, and yesterday repaired the broken-off (corroded away) cables feeding the cab, which was an adventure itself. Took about an hour to get controls and covers out of the way to really get access to the electrical, then ended up having to remove the seat, which is quite heavy.
The fuse block is an absolute mess and I have no choice but to replace it. Major corrosion.
Got a couple of good-enough front tires on it so now it can be driven. Barely. At least I can drive it into the garage where the first order of business will be to use the shop vac to get rid of the rest of the dried muck that's very much like pottery shards.
While I've got the interior torn down this far, the controls will get a lot of attention. Things like, for example, the shifter which was getting increasingly difficult to move and would sometimes get locked up and immovable. Looks like a lot of stuff there that should've been getting occasional lubrication but access to do so is nonexistent.
By the time I'm done repairing/refurbishing/cleaning this thing, it should be in better shape than it was when I bought it.
Wish my parents would've gotten me Tonka Toys when I was a kid. It's very likely I wouldn't be spending a small fortune on them now and could've retired by now. Don't know if I mentioned that I ended up buying the JCB 260 excavator I used to retrieve the backhoe. Figure I can put it to good use for a couple of years then sell it for a loss that'd be far smaller than rent would've been. Especially since I bought it for what would've been less than 10 months of rent.
Planning to buy a neighbor's bulldozer (a cheap, crappy, but usable Allis Chalmers) today, and another friend who works for the Caterpillar dealer is trying to find me a used 963 loader which will be VERY handy for the lake.
As an aside to this essay, replaced all the tires on the car-hauler yesterday. The sidewalls are so soft compared to the low-profile racing tires I'm used to, they were proving quite a challenge to seat. Until I remembered hearing what a lot of folks do for truck tires. A few seconds' spray of ether into the tire (while firmly mounted in the tire-changer), wave the torch near it, a gratifying explosion, and voila! Seated beads! And surprisingly, only about 10 PSI in the tires. So it seems relatively safe except for the few times the ether ignited but didn't seat the beads and instead left me with a fire inside the tire to put out.
Oh, and bummer for you. My voice is mostly back this morning. <g>
Dangit! I keep forgetting to turn off the webcam!
I shouldn't be surprised you're up so early.
Gary (one of my best racing buds) called last night and left a message sounding pretty frantic that I might not be going to St. Louis to play on the track with him this weekend, so I'm going to go ahead and do it.
I'm off to fill up another cup of coffee then down to the workshop to replace 6 trailer tires. This will NOT be fun. Always a pain just attaching the trailer to the truck, but before I do it this time, I'm removing 8 marine batteries and the spaghetti wiring from the trailer (at least one is bad, making the whole bank useless), then have to hook up the truck to it and use it to jockey the trailer back and forth onto boards to lift tires one at a time for replacement.
And these are some seriously big and heavy tires. So expect me to be pretty worn out when I arrive at the office.
Was also a top 5 day for ad inventory delivered.
Now that we have you as a fulltime programmer, I suggest that you start a new board where people can post bug reports and feature requests directly to you. Agree, Matt and Grubmaster? Should make it easier to keep track of them, and get them off this board where they're bound to be a frequent topic now that the company has so much more programmer horsepower. 3 1/2 geeks on the job.
Easy.
Meatloaf, you watching? He's talking about board.asp. Where it shows the author's name for each post, you can wrap it in an href of profile.asp?user=xxxxx
Nice little quickie side project if there's nothing else big being done in board.asp right now.
Everyone, meet our new programmer, to whom I'm responding.
Welcome aboard, John. Now quit reading messages here and get the new webserver into production! <g>
This one's going to be easy to nail down. Problem is, I haven't had a moment to go at it yet. I've got the new programmer working on a higher priority item (getting our new webserver ready to go into production) and it'd be more efficient to sit down with him and walk through how our setup works than have him figure it out on his own, so I can't hand this off to him just yet.
And my dance card is really full for a while with important meetings with my London team-mates from yesterday until a week from this Thursday, and I'll literally be seeing the last visitor off to the airport before driving out to St. Louis myself for a track event, and getting back either Monday or Tuesday after that.
Seriously, my best earliest opportunity to work on it could very well be in the evening in St. Louis.
Actually, while I'm sitting here sipping my first cup of coffee at home, I'll dash off a PM to the new programmer steering him here and telling him what and where the problem is. I know it's simply something I'm not stripping out when parsing a post to get the subject line.