Farm jacks are cool! ...Getting stuck isn't

June 29, 2006 11:45AM

I went to my parent's house to grab some of the home-made pizza that was left from last night, just a quick stop, heat it up, eat it and I'm ready to move on. Here's where the interesting part comes in...you know, the whole reason this is blog-worthy. I get in the microbus, back up, and see that dreaded tree in my rear-view mirror (we won’t get into *that* story) So I stop and go forward and realize that it would be easier to just go over the hill instead of backing up again and going out of the driveway. So I go up the hill and drop down over the curb and immediately realize that I might be hurting something and put on the brakes. I’m sure any off-roader could tell you that 4x4 is only half the battle in a car. The rest is to keep moving at a steady pace through terrain that has little traction. So I’m stuck, the front wheels are over the curb (it’s a high one too) and the rear wheels are on the hill, and uneven. I tried just driving out but with only one wheel catching dirt and it being mostly mud underneath from the rainstorms, I had nothing. Even with wood in front, and then in back to try to help it catch. Finally I give up and call my dad, the first call he was kind of vague and said bye after I told me story. I waited a bit and called again and he said that he was in the supervisor office thing and couldn’t talk. He also said to try that farm jack that was in the shed. Jack up the front of the bus and put blocks under the wheels and roll down over the curb. So I get the farm jack out and the blocks and bring it all up to the top of the hill. Only the jack doesn’t work as easily as a normal car jack. You have to drop the half moon pin and then pull out the bottom springy pin and then you can adjust the jack to the height you need. Then you have to pop the half moon back into place and do a full stroke on the handle to get it to jack, half a stroke won’t get you anywhere :-/. After I figured out the jack and had the bus in the air it was no problem. Only one wheel had lifted up so I put the block under that, dropped the jack and moved it over to the other side. Here proved a little more diffucult as the bus decided to start sliding over. I was able to make use of this and just keep sliding the block over for support until it was high enough to slide right on to the curb. Drop the jack, hop in the bus, take off the emergency brake and let it roll down the hill a little bit. Hop out of the bus, run the jack down to the shed, run the chains that I ended up not needing down to the comatose F-150, run the blocks down, run back up and grab the keys, fumble with my greasy hands to get into the house and to the bathroom and wash up. All and all it proved to be a cool afternoon that was supposed only be: get the hard drive, get lunch, get lunch for Daniel, mail the stuff and go back to work.” Now I need to carry a farm jack with me ☺ that thing is awesome!

In other news:

Check out eon8, it’s worth about 3 minutes of looking around and wondering what the heck is going on. If you are up for some theories on it all, go here:
http://www.nanowrimo.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic
_id=29745&viewmode=flat&order=ASC&start=0

Also I’m getting West Coast mirrors on the bus :-D I’ll post a picture when they are installed but for now, think tractor trailor rear-view mirrors….

The one with moving, a microbus, and an old friend

I was writing this post the other day but blogger screwed up and lost it on me :(
So now I'm writing it again, only with added detail cuz more happened, and it's in TextEdit cuz blogger sux0rs now :) (I think this version sounds better)

Okay, so a lot has happened since my last post. I have officially vacated the battlegrounds where the ant battles took place. High Command put through a transfer notice and a lot of base transfers went through over the past month.

So basically, in english. My parent's bought a house across town, found like their "dream home" for a great price (for the neighborhood and all that) and moved in. So I moved into their old house, and my mom's friend moved into my old house. So in the past month I've helped two people move, and moved my self. Moving officially SUCKS. :)

This next topic requires a bit of history.

I think it was about five years ago, my mom bought a 1979 Volkswagen Transporter from the automotive department of the local career center...paid like $100 for it because it was more or less just a shell. Not more then a few weeks later, someone wrecked their 1973 Volkswagen Transporter (which will be called a bus or microbus or kombi from now on cuz those words be shorter) Basically, some idiot in a Mercedes ran a light or something and hit his bus, denting up the front corner (I'd like to see what was left of the mercedes, takes a lot to dent up German steel) He'd just spent a lot of money on the bus, which included a rebuilt transmission and a really nice engine. My parent's bought it off of him as a "donor" car and transferred all the parts to the '79. We used it a good bit and it was used on several halloweens. After a while though, it just started to sit and was used to hold tools for working on other cars. I think it needed some things replaced and no one had the time or money to do it, so it was grounded.

So now we jump to last year around July. I'm seriously begging them to give me this bus! They don't want though, don't trust me driving it, etc. Last month I was asking them again ("them" is my parent's if you haven't caught on, sorry) and finally my dad said yes, and in a seperate conversation my mom said yes as well. So $200 in parts later and it's rolling, and that bus is really awesome. I don't think I'll ever have a need for that new crap that car companies put out.

It came in really handy during the move, I was able to do two loads of stuff a night, through the night. I took the middle seat out, and the rear seat folds down, so you can hold a *lot* of stuff in there.

----------------------------------------------------

Yesterday was my birthday, it was cool, we had a sorta joint "kill 2 birds with 1 stone" thing and celebrated my brother's graduation as well.

Today though had to have been the most awesome post-birthday I've ever had though. I got to hang out with Milagro most of the day. It was great! I haven't seen her in a long time, and have just recently been talking on the phone/text messaging. So it was awesome to see her again. It just sucks that her dad is so controlling and all that :-/ Makes it really hard.

and that's the upddate....I don't even think i have readers anymore...so I guess these posts are more for my sake nowadays :)

OS X Software: HoudahSpot

My review of HoudahSpot as seen on MacZOT.com

Here's for all you Mac OS X users out there that read this blog.
I didn't expect this program to actually find anything I didn't know about already on my hard drive, I just wanted to try it out. So I did a quick and simple search of my Home folder for files over 10MB...not only did it find 521 files, but some of them are actually deep within old data folders and I didn't realize I still had them. Things like big windows applications from back in the dark ages, and large movies and ISO's that I have backed up elsewhere.

I reccomend trying it out, might come in handy for you :)
Especially if it's still June 16.

NOTE: If you're seeing this on June 16, 2006 head over to MacZOT, you might be able to get a Free or discounted copy of HoudahSpot

Search easily in Tiger, Mac OS X, with HoudahSpot