Road Kill

I reported a while ago about strange happenings at The Underground Lab & (much to the displeasure of it's founder) sent my trusty scout badger to investigate. When he was able he reported very interesting findings, especially concerning Tai Cooking and Miss Laura. I was expecting him to return in a few days with a full report but unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your view point) badger has met a rather untimely end. Badger staggered to the rendezvous point to meet the V8 mini with a bleeding noise and generally looking worse for wear. He also appeared to have been cracked over the head. The only sense I was able to attain from him was a vague description of his assailant and something about a snake. Obviously he saw something he was not meant too. Either that or he fell from the top of the security fence after getting a whiff of some toxic waste.

Contextual Ads

Well well, another week goes by. Not much has happened.

The blue commodore broke down again (surprise, surprise).
The blue commodore is fixed again (no surprises there).

The Silly Little Japanese Car is still annoying me but it's proving VERY useful in the frost and ice at the moment so I suppose it has SOME redeeming qualities.

I'm still waiting on parts to arrive for the bronze commodore.
I'm still waiting on the person who supposedly wants to buy the bronze commodore to ring me.

I'm still waiting to hear from the person who wants to buy my spare 202 motor, no wait I did hear from them but had to put them on hold until I worked out what was wrong with the blue commodore.

I went to the gym with Eueyboy, I think I'm starting to enjoy it. Actually, I think more to the point is I'm starting to miss it when I don't go, we didn't go on Monday and by Wednesday when we did go again my knee was hurting like crazy.

So as you can see, not a lot has changed. Now what's all this got to do with contextual ads I hear you ask? Well, nothing at all. The contextual ads are simply that I just made a comment on Ariskah's blog saying that I'd fixed the commodore and if she wanted a hand shift I'd be happy to help. When I hit preview, the contextual ad engine obviously picked up on the word car and the word shift and pointed me at btexpressauto.com and caronatruck.com who both specialise in, you guessed it, shifting cars!

How's that for a random post? Maybe instead of Bandit's Space, I should call this Ramblings 3. (Since 1 & 2 are already taken)

Back where we started

After using nearly half a tank of gas in the Silly Little Japanese Car yesterday, I gave it to Ariskah to take to Cadets tonight and to Palmerston tomorrow. After she dropped me home I had dinner, backed the commodore off the drive and went to Eueyboy's place for Life Group. When I got there, there were almost no parks on the street so I parked in the driveway. However, Mrs Eueyboy was on her way out so I went to back the car out of the driveway and found I couldn't. After selecting what should've been reverse gear, I let the clutch out, all the way out, and nothing happened. My first thought was that the new clutch had given up and was slipping, this was not the case as when I selected first gear, I immediately stalled because I let the clutch out too fast. I started the engine and tried again, reverse gear was nowhere to be found. I drove forward as far as I could behind Eueyboy's car and then, pushing the clutch in and letting the brake off was able to roll back out on to the road. I managed to find a section of street that was wide enough to turn around in without requiring a 3-point turn and parked so that I wouldn't have to reverse to get out of the park.

After I got home, Dad & I spent about three quarters of an hour finding out that the gear-shift leaver had become detached from the shift rod for reverse (but not any of the others, hence I could still go forward) and reattaching it. We took it for a test drive and found that reverse gear does in fact work, (So too do the reverse lights now that the wires are connected) and I was still able to do the "reverse around the corner" that they get you to do for your license test. I was impressed! (And relieved that reverse works)

Why, oh why?

I'm sure after I did an oil change on Delta's car that I decided it would be a good idea not to try it again without use of a vehicle pit. I obviously didn't listen to myself. The Silly Little Japanese Car has the same engine in it as Delta's, except it's a manual and four-wheel-drive. So all the fun I had doing Delta's was increased about 10 fold because there were more bits to get in the way (it's also a heck of a lot colder at this time of the year.) But at least it's done now, and all ready for Ariskah to take away at the weekend (I've even managed to clean all of the junk out of the backseat!)

I also managed to get the commodore painted after getting more rust cut out at the weekend. I ran out of time (actually, the Mazda took more time than I anticipated) so I didn't get to put the back bumper back on but at least it's all painted now so I can. That'll be one more thing out of the boot of the commodore so I can maybe put the seat up again (of course I still need to put the dash out of the boot and back where it belongs but I think that'll be a Saturday job, plus it's still leaking)

Fishy Goings On

You never can trust the postal service. Back in March, our favourite researcher reported his dismay at a missing set of cushions from one of his experiments. Later, our Blogfrastructure Captain described how a mysterious parcel had arrived at Stylin HQ, containing said cushions. I thought nothing of it at the time. However, an interesting turn of events has prompted me to re-think the whole thing and investigate further. What happened is as follows. Eueyboy expressed his frustration at finding an unlabeled specimen in his lab. Normally the sort of thing I'd overlook but, this is where it gets interesting, P-Style has reported Stylin HQ are missing an entire shipment of Aero Bars. So what? I hear you ask. So, Eueyboy's conclusion as to the mysterious unlabeled specimen is that it is, in fact an Aero Bar. And now, to top it all off, Eueyboy's foreign correspondent is to appear as this weeks guest on our favourite TV show, Stylin.

I might have to enlist the skills of my trusted scout, badger.

NotArt - The Final Word

The NotArt movement has been attracting a lot of attention recently. Started by our Entrepreneurial P-Style, who keeps all of us in the "Blogfrastructure" [ (c) P-Style] informed with the worlds goings on, it's chief critics have been Eueyboy and myself. Eueyboy thinks that I'm a little confused by it all, and he could be right. However I think after a little Register reading this morning that I understand it a little further. A Microsoft sponsored initiative is attempting to find out who makes the most creative flowcharts. If this isn't NotArt I don't know what is.

New Kid on the Block

Despite thinking it is "Geeky", ChemGirl has caved and started her own blog. Very Pink! but hey, it is her style. She is amused by "the boys" taking over her comment section and having our own conversation and confused by the "secret code" I did attempt to explain it but HaloScan decided that I'd put too many links in my comment and put it in the bin :-( I never did manage to get the HaloScan comments working on my own blog, maybe I should have another go. Although if ChemGirl can manage to loose all her previous comments, I'm not so sure I want to bother.

Anyway, onto the secret codes and over to Mr P-Style for the explanation.

Clutching at Straws

Eueyboy commented to me the other day that I haven't been posting anything meaningful to my blog for a while, and he's right. The last 6 or so posts all consist of about 2 lines each and the most recent one was around 3 weeks ago. So here goes an attempt at a decent post, how it will turn out I don't know, I must warn you that I've had a couple of rather strong drinks and ever since I've been home Delta has been playing the Llama song almost incessantly, so if it all turns to custard, don't say I didn't warn you. If it gets too bad I might just leave it and finish it tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after, or whenever I get around to it.

Hmm... 7 lines so far and nothing but ramble, you were expecting maybe a decent post?

Anyway, on with the posting. Today, after many long hours work, I finally managed to roll the blue commodore out of the Railway Engineer's garage with the new clutch in it. Well it's not really new, it's out of the red commodore but it's WAY better than the clutch that was in there. It's actually quite nice to drive now that it's not slip sliding away. I drove around a bit on the hills on the way home to make sure it was all good. As I headed up the hill toward home I had to slow down to let a car pull off by the Indian Takeaway. I was in second gear so I nailed it as I took off, and the car took off, whereas previously the revs would've gone sky-high and nothing else would've happened. I was suitably impressed. I think I'll drive it around for a while and see how much I like it and then maybe, just maybe get rid of the Silly Little Japanese Car. I'm also going to get rid of the gold wagon. I took it for it's warrant recheck and it still missed on a couple of things so I might just sell it as, as is where is and let somebody else worry about it.

What else has been happening? Well, really, not all that much. I took Ariskah to the testing station for her restricted re-sit on Tuesday and she aced it so that was good. Congratulations! Roadrunner has signed off from work with his last day being yesterday. He's off to London on Friday. Patagonian Toothfish has also signed off, he's going... somewhere, read about it here.

I went to The Warehouse with Dad today and we bought a combo unit to plug into the big TV that I bought off Road Runner 2 or 3 weeks ago. This has been rather interesting, the TV remote has far too many buttons for Dad and now that he's got the combo unit I think he's even more confused than before, poor Dad.

I went with Eueyboy, M&C and M to watch X3 a couple of weeks ago. It was pretty good, even though I'd never seen any of the others. (much to Eueyboy's amazement) I have since purchased and watched both X-men & X2. Speaking of purchasing stuff, I was in town with Delta last night and Whitcouls had 20% off all DVD's so I bought Gladiator, season 1 of The Six Million Dollar Man & another DVD, which I'm going to give Dad for his birthday. I also bought Walk the Line and American Recordings IV: The Man Comes Around from The Warehouse. I got Johnny Cash in Concert free with Walk the Line. Last weekend I bought the box set of At Folsom Prison/At San Quentin.

Well, that's about it. I'm getting more & more tired by the minute so I think I'll save this and add the links later.

Goodnight.