technical difficulty week
it seems the week was mostly up hill. ready for the downhill coasting.
changing oil is a dirty job. I'd quit doing it myself for the past few years. our 1970 porsche 911 had not enjoyed one in over a year, so we mostly just quit driving it. it costs around $85 to have the porsche wrench do it. I once tried taking it through a quick lube and supplying them with the correct mahle oil filter. the problem was that the car is too low the ground and would not clear their rail around the pit. I finally caved and bought ten quarts of oil (yes, it uses 10 qt per change) and just did it myself. I was completely satisfied with doing it myself and it took maybe fifteen minutes. now I just need to get rid of the old oil. back in santa cruz they city had curbside pick up. they even supplied the 15 gallon jug. anyhow, after a week of battling technology I was glad to be able to get greasy and twist a few nuts/tug on a few wrenches.
I had to show some land out by spicewood. it's beautiful drive with plenty of twisties and elevation changes. it was great to let the 911b stretch it's legs.
for the past few months we have had to add water to the koi pond quite regularly, despite the fact that the a/c condensate was draining into it. one morning we found the lower pond with only a few inches and the upper pond down about 6 inches. there was a bit of panic because the plumbing is through the sidewalk concrete and if the leak was in the pond itself...
we considered going to tractor supply and getting a stock tank to relocate the koi until we got it solved. I was not going to bust up any concrete.
with some trouble shooting I found that the leak must be from the section of plumbing feeding the 90 degree return in the middle of the pic above. the pipe is large enough that I don't need two so I decided to just cap the leaky section of plumbing. while I was messing with the plumbing I figured it was best to remove the redundant surface skimmer. all the surface gunk just gets flushed over the negative edge down to the lower pool and it just looked dumb.
found a greasy neighborhood hippie who was willing to get in there with the koi. he works for tecate. I just hope his stinky feet don't give the koi some slacker fungus infection.
we are into our third set of tadpoles. the second set got killed when we were adding a bunch of water to compensate for the leak. the one above is the sole survivor from that bunch. he's about ready to graduate.
the snail army is also growing in size.
besides the koi pond problem, we also had a media room failure. while playing portal the ps3 suddenly froze, then flashed bright green alternating with bright orange, then it briefly displayed the main menu behind the bright green and then just green. after several hours of shuttling it to the other TV upstairs I had deduced that we lost 1080p hdmi. the ps3 works great on the tv upstairs (1080i resolution). we found the projector downstairs will play PS3 at 1080i and is playing movies at 1080i, but we bought it for 1080p! also, it refuses to play any orange box games at any resolution downstairs, but plays them fine upstairs.
after many frustrating hours battling sony playstation support defense both online and on the phone, I got a hold an actual human. their official reply was that sony refuses to give any support at all to any person who connects their ps3 to a projector. seriously! c'mon... the ps3 is marketed as a great bluray player and many people use projectors in media rooms. that large screen is the ideal venue to get the benefits of bluray. so, we have the exchange program with theplaystation so I can just walk it into best buy and walk out with a new one. and if by some off chance it is the optoma projector that is at fault, it's also under the best buy protection plan.
#1 son started to cry when he found I am possibly going to swap the ps3 out for a new unit. "but we'll loose all our progress on lego star wars" he sobbed as tears welled up in his eyes. I got my lacie rugged external hard drive and backed that sucker up! HA!!
jason's alpina bmw 2002tii sure looks good in my driveway.
my daughter is doing SO WELL at guitar. she is now learning her third song. her teacher (tony at austin guitar school) has assured her that he's good at instructing people to sing while they play. she is shy and first declined his offers. tony and I were both a bit surprised when she started to sing. she sang as she played FOGGY EYES by BEAT HAPPENING
the third song she is learning is also from the BEAT HAPPENING; FORTUNE COOKIE PRIZE.
Tony played one guitar part as she played the other and it suddenly all fell in place. they sounded great. I sure am proud of how quickly she's able to pick this up. so now we're looking for an accoustic guitar so she can practice while somebody else plays the other guitar part. kat's dream is that we'll end up like the partridge family, happy business hippies traveling around playing happy music.
ending on a musical note,
I found a video for an song from an upcoming ministry album. all my ministry discs had been boxed up in the garage for years. I dug them out and ripped 'em (some technical difficulties there as the disc drive on my mac mini sucks!). anyhow, the new ministry song is not quite as metal as their later stuff and seems to incorprate some of their more disco-ish music from the early 80's. and the title made me laugh I'M NOT GAY, it's also being called the HOMO SONG there seems to be some confusion if it will be released by ministry or their side project REVOLTING COCKS.
all this stirred up all kinds of 80's/90's flash backs. powlcat and I recalled when ministry played industry in dallas in 89 or 90. the concert was filmed and released on vhs I think you can see powlcat climbing up on the fence durring SO WHAT anybody who was there will likely agree it was the best concert of their lives, despite the misc stuff being thown around (note that the band plays behind a fence)
and since I am still extremely excited about the upcoming silver jews show in september (I have my tix!) and I've mentioned dallas of the 80's, I found a hilarious article written by the David Berman (he pretty much IS the silver jews). if you like mishaps involving accidental laxitive ingestion, this might be a good read.
The Summer Before The Night Ecstasy Became Illegal In The State Of Texas.