1987 Mercury Grand Marquis Colony Park

I really like station wagon's, I'm not sure why, but I just like them. Perhaps it's partly from hearing the "war stories" of my dad driving the 1969 Ford LTD Country Squire with the 390C.I. engine Taxi around New York. Perhaps also it's becuase they are different in today's time of ugly SUV's and tiny sport's cars.

The day the car really stuck out to me was about last week. I had to deliver some printer ink to Greer Storage, I had it in my head that it was supposed to go to Deal Depot (a car dealership about a mile or two past greer storage) Most of the stretch of that road is car dealerships, major and used both, and between the Toyota of Greer and Deal Depot I spotted a maroon station wagon, huge too. So I go on to Deal Depot. The woman there says she doesn't even have a printer for that ink and I see "Greer Storage" written on the top of the invoice, so I say bye and I'm off to Greer Storage. I did stop by the wagon and walk around it and check out it, it looked like it was in really good condition. It said "$500 cash,tag,sales tax runs good" on the window. So that evening I told my parent's about it and we went to check it out the next day. Dad said it looked like it was in really good condition and my neighbor that went with us agreed (mom stayed in the car mostly. So we walked up to the little office and got keys and a magnetic license plate and took for a test drive and it did rather well. Back in the office we talked him down to $420 with sales tax, but didn't actually buy it then (I was broke til next paycheck) So today after cashing my check this morning, we went down to the place and bought it. It's a lot to get used to after driving the beetle for so many years, but it turns really nice! By the way, the beetle is still staying with me, just don't want to hurt it as I restore it (damaged/old parts breaking new parts)

So the wagon does need the fuel guage fixed (sender or whatever, the turn signal switch is broken, the tailgate window switch doesn't always work (works from the key on the tailgate though) The power window on the passenger side rear window doesn't work, there are bunch of vacuum tubes (common with ford's around this bunch of years :-/) new tires, an antenna, and the radio seems to have a short in the speakers. Apparently it also doesn't shift properly. Mostly minor problems it seems for such a cheap price. Oh the air conditioner compressor doesn't have the belt going around it(bad compressor?)

It has gas and toll reciepts in the glove box from Pennsylvania, all over new york, and virginia, so it's been around :) Probably has about 150,000 miles on it (maybe 250,000?)

Love Thy Neighbor

Behind my house there is an alleyway, so that you have rear access to your house. When I moved in, it became apparent that people visiting my neighbors were using my grass (and destroying the land there) to exit the alley instead of backing up or turning around in my neighbors driveway. So my mom put bricks horizontally so that my lawn would be blocked but the alley was still open (this point plays a big part later on) So that's the way things were most of the winter. Just recently, maybe a a month or two ago, i moved the bricks some and started using the alleyway as well (it's there for everyone right!?) So tonight I come home, go down the alley to pull in my driveway and there is a row of bricks blocking the alley right before you get to my land.

EDIT: I just realized that indeed I come out ahead in this. They did my work for me. They can't use the alley, I don't have to have all those ugly bricks and shit on the lawn (their blocks look *much* nicer, like brand new or something) and my only loss is I can't use the alley. I'm glad they finally see it my way.

Shabbat

A few weeks ago my mom met a Rabbi in Wal-mart (of all places :)) and they started talking. He invited us to the shabbas dinner (tonight). So that was where I spent my Friday. The food was excellent! Jewish food is *so* good! It's amazing how much ritual is followed during meals and such. I mean, your average Christian, we'll say Baptist. They go to church on Sunday, kick the kids out on Wednesday to church, a quick prayer before meals, and they are off to Heaven. Tonight, we spent 20 minutes in the synogoge/kid's playroom (:)) praying and singing hymms before going to the table. Then said more prayers and sang more hymms. (well i didn't sing, i just tried to keep up with the fast spoken hebrew and remember how to turn the pages the right way :)
(and from the previous point (the christian thing) that's just Friday evening, Saturday you can't even cook (cook your food friday), walk to the synogogue (no horse/buggy, train, plane, car). (but this isn't the context of the post so enough of that, Google is your friend, you iniquisitive reader! :))

I don't think I've done anything along the lines of my Jewish background since New York. So this was really neat. One of the woman there lives in Isreal and was visiting her son (on a track scholarship at Clemson), there was a man from Russian there with his wife (from Chicago) and everyone (except us :-/) was speaking hebrew a lot. Back when i was a youngin' i remember being in a jewish private school for a small amount of time, I still have the primer (right to left pages :)) from it, but I didn't go long enough to learn the language.

Friday 3/31/2005

I'd like to reccomend a friend of mine's blog, Incoherent Babble, he's the "company computer guy" at a local medical insurrance claim company and even though he uses Red Hat, he's still cool. So read the blog :)

We'll start with geek news, the 512mb of ram came in Thursday, so at 3:00 when fedex finally decided to let go of it, i ran it over to my house and shoved it into the 400mhz iMac. I have to say, the OS X install was one of the nicest and easiest installs I've *ever* done and setting it up (without never having really touched OS X) wasn't half bad at all. It's for my mom and so far she hasn't had any major complaints...and printing works...so like i told her, any other functionality and use is purely a bonus.

In social news, I was invited to join my boss, his son, and his brother-in-law to a Greenville Growwl game. (Yeah, our local hockey team is a sound) We had box seats which was cool, Greenvile lost, but the game was really good.

It was 1:00 in the morning, I'd gotten home from the game at 12:00, computer took up the hour and I was bored and had this urge to get out. So i hopped into the Beetle and with no real destination in mind (which is good becuase you can't get lost if you don't know where you are going to start off with) I ended up driving eight miles out to a town called Traveler's Rest and went past the town until I saw a sign that said "Ashville 23miles". So I turned around and headed back to Greenville a different way, passing Furman University, and finally saw a sign saying "greenville 7miles". Came back through the City of Greenville. It is now 3:00 in the morning, and i must be getting off to bed.

Free Mac Mini

Okay, so i was just recently re-introduced to this interesting offer. I'm told from trusted friends, :), that this is completely legitiamate and that he knows people that have already recieved ipods and mac mini's from this. The catch is you have to sign up for an offer (one is buy ink, one is apply for a credit card) I went with the eFax 30 day trial (I have to remember to cancel before the end of the month). The other big thing is that you need 10 friends to click on your referrel link and sign up and complete an offer (Efax for 30 days anyone!!! :) )

So here it is, my request to all my loyal readers!! Try it out :
http://www.FreeMiniMacs.com/?r=16932804

Hockey

I'd like the millions of loyal fadumpt.net fans to check out Incoherent Babble....the blog of a Medical Insurrance Claim Company "company computer guy" right here in sunny (/me looks out at the rain) Greenville South Carolina, and a friend of yours truly (even though the little whore didn't tell me about it until recently!!) (to get the actual number of "loyal fans", take "millions" and subtract....a lot....:)

My boss recieved four really nice tickets (well, tickets looked okay, could use a little gloss maybe, spiffy them up some) to the Greenville Growwl (yeah...our hockey team is a sound, :-/) So I was offered to come along with them (him, his son, and his brother(-in-law?) The seats turned out to be box seats, nice :). One question about hockey, what's up with the fights? Sure they are cool and all but is that like staged? or do these guys really get that pissed at eachother? What other sport is such fighting allowed (allowed i mean, penalized as opposed to "your career ends here")

Also Goodwill ordered 10 Athlon 64 2800+ computers from us, due Monday. I'm up to seven :) They don't even need a Windows install, just build and burn in, coolness.

I GOT THE SERVER UP AND RUNNING WITH DNS!!! W00T

:( :( nope, april fool's DNS kicked my butt, gonna have to spend some time on that