turboDan - blog

High on life (and paint)

Posted by Dan on Saturday, February 25, 2006 at 4:14 PM

There's nothing to make one feel like progress is being made when doing body work like priming a car. I think (rather, I know) I might have rushed a few things to get to this point, but I've really been wanting to see if the past 15 months of work I've put in have turned out. All in all, I'm fairly pleased so far. Things are smooth for the most part, and there are only a few sanding scratches here and there that I missed. Those will hopefully be taken care of in the next step, which is block sanding/wet sanding with 400-600 grit paper. The goal is to have a smooth and flat surface for the color and clear coat to adhere to.

It seems I may actually meet my goal this time around of having the Z on the road for the summer, or even a little before. There are, however, a fair number of other things that need to be done before it's drivable again. I started putting together a list of parts that I either need to finish reassembling the car (clips, screws, brackets, seals), will be needed to make it legal on the roads out here (catylatic converter), or just plain need replaced (steering rack, rear subframe bushings). So far I've got about $1000 worth of parts on the list, and I know I'm still forgetting things.

Watch for more updates on the status of the Z soon. If all goes well with the wet sanding, I hope to get it painted (if I can find a shop locally to do it) in the next few weeks.

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Blah

Posted by Dan on Tuesday, February 21, 2006 at 11:21 PM

Sorry for the lack of activity lately, yes I am still alive, although I'm in a pseudo-crappy mood again. I'm beginning to think it's the weather. Our unseasonable sunshine has gone away, replaced by the normal Seattle clouds and drizzle. And a cold front. I've never been so appreciative of the heated seats in my car as I have over the past week. In case I neglected to mention it, the Audi has taken up residence outside, as my Z is now occupying my entire garage as it nears completion. I'm not sure why I put up with the weather here. I think it has something to do with the weather when it's not raining. Although rare, it's worth enduring this. Now if there were just a way to improve my disposition in the meantime. The picture to the left of this post was taken on my way home from work a couple of weeks ago, just about a mile from the end of WA-520 east.

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I hate technology

Posted by Dan on Sunday, February 12, 2006 at 10:45 PM

I'm in the processess, once again, of upgrading the software that runs my blog. I thought I could do this piece by piece, with the admin pages remaining from the old application. It appears this is not the case, as now everything is broken, and getting more and more broken by the day. I'm tired of dealing with it for tonight, I'm tired, and starting to feel sick. I'm writing this post from SQL Enterprise Manger because the damn admin page refuses to load or even give me any error I can start debugging from (even after wrapping all of the code in Page_Load in a try/catch block). What you need to know: commenting is broken, the page looks like crap in IE6 (there are big gaps between posts), I've been using IE7 so I haven't noticed this... I'm working to fix it. I'm heading off to bed now, hopefully I'll be in a better mood tomorrow.

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Topless

Posted by Dan on Thursday, February 09, 2006 at 11:04 AM

Today is one of those rare sunny February days here in western Washington. As I sit at my desk gazing out the window (well, the through a couple of windows and across the hall, no window office for me... yet) 'Limelight' by Rush is playing on the radio. This combined with the recent motivation to get my Z back on the road remind me of the summer of my junior year of college when I was an intern at Microsoft Business Solutions in Findlay, Ohio.

Findlay is only about 90 miles from Fredericktown, my home at the time, and I could make the drive in exactly an hour and a half, traffic permitting. Some of my fondest memories of that summer were getting out of work on a Friday afternoon in anticipation of seeing friends and family that weekend, taking the tops off the Z, turning up the radio, and opening the throttle on the on ramp to I-75 south. I'm not exactly sure why today's set of circumstances happend to bring this memory back to me. Maybe it's the weather and my lust for having the Z back on the road. Maybe it's the music. Either way it's a time in my life I hope to remember for years to come, and maybe it's some of what I'm hoping to recapture by getting my Z back on the road. Having moved 2500 miles from home, there aren't too many things that I have to hold on to any more. I feel my Z is still a connection to those times.

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The erosion of my car and your rights

Posted by Dan on Wednesday, February 08, 2006 at 9:45 PM

As anybody who knows me is most likely aware, I don't have very much (read: any) faith in King George or his associates. What is visible of their wrong-doing scares me, and what we're not allowed to see scares me even more. So with more and more news about wire-tapping of American citizens being done while ignoring FISA law, some of the defenses from the administration show just how desperate they are to attempt to justify a practice that they know is illegal. There's a good summary article here where Attorney General Alberto Gonzales attempts to justify skirting FISA law by claiming presidents from George Washington to Woodrow Wilson and others have used "electronic surveillence" during times of war. The problems with his argument are many, and I'll leave it to you to read the article.

Lastly, a quick update on the Z. Work is progressing well, although it seems with every new piece of metal I look at there is more rust to be uncovered. The picture today is the floor of the spare tire compartment. That's what happens when water collects and sits on a piece of metal for months/years due to leaky window seals, tail light seals, and god knows what else. I happened to be poking around underneath the car for rust when I noticed it didn't take much force to bend the floor of said compartment, which prompted the investigation from the top. I ground off what rust I could, applied a Permatex product that converts the rust into a non-reactive compound, and plan on covering the area in Bondo to reinforce it (once again, I would weld in metal, but it's 6" or so from the gas tank, which I am too lazy to remove). I'm making the claim right now, the car will be on the road by summer, hopefully late spring. I plan on finishing the rust repair during my remaining two evenings this week, and beginning the priming and block sanding process over the weekend.

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Wait a minute... I'll go check....

Posted by Dan on Saturday, February 04, 2006 at 10:36 PM

NO, WE'RE OUT OF BEAR CLAWS! I'm listening to Weird Al currently (in case happen to not recognize the, semi-obscure, lyrics). Out of the blue I started singing Albuquerque (well, inside my head), which I figue is as good a reason as any to break out some Weird Al.

I know the updates have been brief and far-between lately... I keep getting distracted by shiny objects. I'm still in the process of re-writing the code behind my blog, and stubbornly trying to make things work the way I think they should. I'm about ready to give up, but I really wanted to make use of as many ASP.net 2.0 controls as possible. If anybody reading this knows how to represent foreign key relationships using an ASP.net 2.0 SqlDataSource so that I can data-bind a nested Repeater control to the child rows of a relationship, please e-mail me :-) From what I've been able to figure out so far, it looks like you only end up with one table from a SqlDataSource, not a DataSet, and this means the relations don't seem to be represented.

And now for something completely different. After quite a few months of just not feeling like myself, feeling depressed most of the time, feeling like nothing was going my way, it seems like things are finally turning around. I know once I say that something will come around and make my life suck again, but for now I'm rather pleased with how things are going. I e-filed my federal income tax return today (no state taxes in Washington), and should be getting around $1500 back in a couple of weeks. The damage claim for the computer I built for Chris finally got approved, you can read more about what I've been going through to get my insurance claim paid here. Let's just say that it's been over a month of me doing all the legwork and receiving very little service from "customer service" reps.

Lastly, I'm very happy with the pace at which my Z is progressing. I'm almost done patching rust holes, and am very close to being ready to prime the entire body and block-sand it before sending it off to the paint shop. I'm beginning to think it might really make it back on the road by this spring. No pictures from today's work as I was lazy and forgot to bring my camera out with me. Here's a picture of my A4 (taken last spring) parked in between a couple of huge trucks instead. I'm off to watch some TV and sleep. Hopefully I'll find the time and subject matter for another post before the weekend is out.

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