SOLID-orange

My day:
11:55 - pull into the service department at Irwin Toyota in Laconia there is a parking lot with about 80 or 90 Tacomas similar to mine… that must be “death row”
12:01 - after finding a parking spot and walking to the service counter I hand them my keys and registration
12:18 - I see the mechanic pulling my truck into the garage
12:26 - a Sales rep calls my name and says he has “bad news”

–My tuck has irreparable damage to the frame and could snap at any moment
–It’s unsafe to drive and they want to get me into a rental car right away
–They estimate that Toyota will be buying my truck back for about $12K

12:42 - I’m driving away from the dealership in a Chevy Malibu

… I miss my truck already, but that check will do much to help me forget about it.

The sales rep tells me that the woman he saw before me was balling, apparently he was the same salesmen who sold her the truck new in 1996… she didn’t even want to know how much the check was going to be for.

… I guess I have to start looking for a new car. I told the sales rep to keep his eye out for a Legacy GT, older Impreza 2.5RS, or a Cherokee Sport… I’ll hunt myself for an old Chevy Stepside.

I drove up to Maine yesterday to meet Brandon, another 240sx enthusiast, he needed a catback exhaust to get his car up and running, and I needed help getting my new BRM exhaust installed. He’s a great guy and really knew what he was doing, even fixed up the broken stud on the factory cat and hooked me up with some metal gaskets, normally reserved for a 350Z.

The Exhaust Sounds Awesome, and it looks awesome too. I’m also glad I was able to help Brandon get his car back on the road by giving him my old exhaust.

I also helped him out with some stereo wiring in his car, though there were other issues with the power and we weren’t able to get it going, in trade he gave me an extra 240sx amplifier so I can build a custom amp harness for my car.

Late last week I also got in some equipment so I can setup Sirius Satellite Radio in my car, as well as a JDM Digital Climate Control system, which I’ll retro fit as well. It was a factory option in Japan but never available in the US, installing it will not only make a unique addition to my car but also provide some more modern functionality.

So I was in Chatsworth California all this week on business. LA is a weird place, it’s surreal. One of the most entertaining aspects for me is the weather, it’s nice all the time, but that has nothing to do with my entertainment. A side effect of the weather is the fact that all the cars there pretty much last until their engine gives out or they get in a major accident. Unlike the North East where everything rusts into oblivion after about a decade of winters, you’ll see cars in LA that are 10, 20, 30 years old and look like they just rolled off the show room floor. I do believe that as long as you wash and maintain your car out there it will pretty much last forever. It’s weird seeing cars from the 70s and 80s rolling down the street like they’re nothing special. Of course this is also contrasted with the fact that Porsches are pretty much the Honda Civic of that area too, and you can drive by the parking lot of a high class restaurant and see a few dozen Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Salines, among other even more rare marks.

Despite that I think I’d have a hard time living there. The sky, while perpetually blue, is several shades lighter in color, likely due to smog. Also the whole area just feels really scummy, if the expensive cars were odd enough they’re often rolling through run-down, graffiti ridden suburban areas. I mean every house has a tall chain link fence around the yard and some of them even have razor wire; even the company parking lot has a gate and 24 hour security personnel. In NH we don’t even have a single security guard, and most people leave their cars unlocked… it’s a long way from LA.

I went to a Dodgers game while I was out there and that was pretty cool, there was a drunk guy in the seat in front of us that proved to be more entertaining than the game. How entertaining? Lets just say he was literally carried out by security by the 6th inning. We also ate at the Player Club before the game which had a great view of the stadium, our seats were great too.

I set out to clean my office this morning and I got it half done… literally you could draw a line down the center where one half is clean and the other half isn’t. I stopped because my brother stopped by and we went to dinner and then filmed a video which was pretty fun. We’re going to film a couple more tomorrow, I’ll be sure to post here once they’re edited and online.

I was going to play some games since I haven’t played in over a week at this point but I ended up starting on one of my new electronics projects. The first part was assembling this Velleman USB kit… it took me about 2 and a half hours but it was quite fun. As much as I like designing my own circuits, it’s always fun to just build something from instructions every once in a while.

I’ll post more about what’s going on with that, once I have more to post about… now I sleep.

After suffering with a distinct lack of space to put new games and Anime I finally got around to picking up a new DVD shelf. Target, the bastards, discontinued the style shelf Jamie and i had been using in the Theater room so we picked out something different. It ended up working out well despite the color difference.

The new shelf is dedicated to nothing but games with lots of room to grow. With all the Collector’s Edition games that had come out recently I had got to a point where I littereally couldn’t fit any more on the old shelf and was just stacking them on a near by table.Now my 360 Collection has some room to breath and shelf space to expand into

At the other end of the DVD rack was our Anime collection which was in even worse shape because Geneon is getting out of the Anime business so I started buying up all of their titles  that I was interested in before they went out of print and disappeared forever. Now Anime has it’s own shelf too, which is good because there are three more Geneon box sets on the way beyond what you see here.

Since I bought a light tent I decided to put it to good use and start selling off some of the items I’ve been stock piling for eBay. I basically have a whole huge shelf in my office where I put stuff that I want to sell on eBay and it’s grown pretty large.

I don’t like to list too many items at a time because then I end up having to ship everything all at once and managed dozens of emails and addresses, so consider this round 1.

Up for sale this week is a Limited Edition Initial D DVD box set, my old Boxlight Raven Projector, and what is probably one of the most infamous and classic Lego Technic Models ever the Lego Technic Test Car 8865.

So BUY MY STUFF.