Since October I have been job hunting without much luck. The last company I was with figured (correctly) that they could pay some schlubs 10 bucks an hour to do what I was getting closer to 22 for. So two for the price of one and our department was disbanded. It was unfortunate, but it’s business and when someone has to get rich it is understood that someone has to get poor. That’s capitalism at work for you.
But now it looks like things are looking up finally for us. I got a new job with a company in the SLC area, the better half also picked up a job out here. And yesterday it seems that we may have been accepted for a house in the general area.
Pictures? Mebbe. Just not yet.
Grateful for the interviews, but I am so very sick of driving from the very southern end of the state to the north end of the state every two weeks. Or less.
Gimme a job already!
Today is January 18, and many important sites on the web are currently in some form of blackout as a protest against two bills coming up in the US that could affect the way we all handle our business on the Internet. However I am lazy, and not actually popular by anyone, so nothing fancy going on here. However Google does have a good take action page I would like to link up to. https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/
It’s unfortunate, but our government is using that classic post 9/11 tactic of fear over the unknown to deny rights, and make a hefty profit, that we are even dealing with this. I would say that I am surprised by this, but truthfully I’m not. So flease click the link above, sign the petition, write your “representatives” in D.C. living off our misfortune, and pass the news along to anyone you can.
Just not a lot to say recently. However since it is the holiday I wanted to put up something for the season.
That can put you on the side of the freeway staring into the distance. Which is exactly what happened to us the other day.
A couple of weeks ago, the family packed up in a car we were borrowing from the future in-laws. Our car has been in serious need of some work so we didn’t feel comfortable taking it on a four hour trip to the Salt Lake area. But about a hundred miles from home the car sputtered out and left us with this beautiful view of the highway ahead.
This is outside of a town called Beaver, Utah. It was a nice town, and the home of Butch Cassidy. look it up I swear it’s true.
But the fact of the matter is that we were stuck on the side of the road, a hundred miles from home with only a few hundred dollars in our bank account to get home. Which,if you have ever been stuck like this, you know won’t get you very far.
All in all we came out on the lucky side of the deal. We found a tow truck operator that got us in town for right about a hundred dollars, a motel room for the night easily twenty+ less than anyone in town. And we were able to call on some friends of ours to help us out.
Here we are sitting at one of the many ultra-clean rest stops in the state of Utah. And when I say clean, I really mean clean. Like I would be willing to sit on a toilet without the paper ass-gasket. That clean. Of course I didn’t, you think I would really be that stupid?
We drug the car home and I placed it in a special position out in the front; curbside, where we could just the roll the fucker off. Then I did a Ronco Rotisserie, rolled it off, set it and forget it.
I was not feeling great about the whole thing. The car quits at 70, restart and sounds like every valve in it is rattling apart. My fear is that some very extensive and very mechanical had gone wrong at this point. My fussing with the car after it quit meant that I was able to get it to throw a CEL code out. But not a tool I keep in my arsenal, and the local parts houses wanted about a $200.00 rental fee.
So I started doing some research and found a very inexpensive OBDII to USB cable. Now this means it was most likely a knock-off of another style, but if it worked and gave me the basics of codes and simple diagnostics, I could live with that. And at fourteen dollars, it was a pretty small gamble. When the cable came in I tried it first in Linux, didn’t work – fuck. And then Wind0ws 7, worked – Fuck yeah.
So I checked codes on the Buick. P0300. A misfire on multiple cylinders. Well that’s fucking… helpful?
Actually it is a helpful message. My fear initially is that something went wrong with injectors, MAF sensor, etc. All of those test correct. So this means mechanical, which is easier to check, but can become much more catastrophic. So first thing is first, if it is showing a misfire check the ignition. Coil is testing goo, let’s yank the plugs…..
I haven’t picked up new plugs and wires yet, but after checking prices I will be in for less than fifty bucks. Not bad overall. Let’s hope that it is really the source of the issue. And while I feel a bit stupid for not noticing a car that was in such poor tune, I am both surprised and a bit scared at this possible revelation. Way back when, if your car was getting too far out of tune, it would miss and sputter and all sorts of other things as a warning sign. It may be that ignition system have reached a point where they are so powerful that might actually be able to keep going until they shit the bed….
Follow up will be coming soon.
Once in a while I go and dig around all the stuff that is available to me on YouTube. Sometimes I will dig around and just watch things I have seen before. A trip down memory lane if you will. But once in a while I find something brand new and interesting.
Today’s interesting find, for me anyway, is an old BBC show call the The Old Gray Whistle Test. From 1971 to 1987 this show played music from bands and musicians that may not have been complete household names. Or at least that seems to be story that I glean from Wikipedia article.. Of course most of what I found is on my nostalgia radar, some of it at the fringe of what would could be considered famous, others smack dab in the middle of huge careers.
So I figured I would share some gems I founds from this hunt.
So lets start with a man that, love or hate, you have to admit he has had a seriously good career. Billy Joel.
And what is a music post from me without Tom Waits?
How about a very early video of Bob Marley and the Wailers?
Alice Cooper too?
And it keeps going.
The Pogues were on too.
As were the Police.
And The Specials
There is a ton more out there to post. I just ran into information overload. However, if you have the chance go look this program up. Depending on where you are from, it will be something new and fun, or it could just be a nice walk down memory lane.
Yesterday I had to transfer some files from my network to give to a friend. Unfortunately my NB-205 refused to automount the disk. Every time I would insert the drive I would get a busy error and another GUI error about not being able to tell what the file system was.
Here is the error I was getting in dmesg…
UDF-fs: No VRS found
UDF-fs: Rescanning with blocksize 2048
UDF-fs: No VRS found
UDF-fs: No partition found (1)
ISOFS: Unable to identify CD-ROM format.
A bit of googling helped me find this error. I had an entry in fstab that listed my sdb1 as a CDROM.
/dev/sdb1 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
What I believe happened is that when I installed Debian, I used my thumb drive to load up the image. The NB250 is a Netbook so no provisions for a disk drive. So once the install finished, fstab thought the thumb drive was in fact a CD-ROM.
All I had to do to fix this was simply comment the line out with a simple #. So now I have
#/dev/sdb1 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
And everything is hunky-dory again.
Speaking of Hunky Dory…
I found this story today while prowling around online from visordown.com.
Currently riding a Honda CBR250R Reg Scott has 74 years riding experience
AT 94 years of age Reg Scott has been given the title of Britain’s Oldest Biker.
With 74 years on the road, Reg started riding in 1937 when he paid £73 for a 490cc Norton 16H, a man who has only seven bikes to his biking CV, he now rides a new Honda CBR250R – purchased after taking £10,500 from the banker on Deal or no Deal.
With his award in hand, Reg commented: “I’m delighted to have been crowned Britain’s Oldest Biker. Riding gives me a sense of freedom; it allows me to get around more easily while enjoying the open road. Age has nothing to do with it for me; I’ll be on my bike for as long as I can.”
From Norfolk, Reg was given the accolade from Bennetts after being recognised on their books as the oldest biker.
I hope that if I ever do live to be that old, I can be that badass.
It has been a while since I posted anything on this subject. Mainly for one reason, it’s been working flawlessly for months now.
I have done some updates to Lubuntu and kept things fresh. So no recent re-installs or breaks. Following this post I have simply made sure that these entries remained in the remote mappings. I actually keep a secondary copy so if there is any trouble after an upgrade I can just replace it and get things back up again.
Sadly enough, the system I keep XBMC has been growing weary. After my most recent move the video card gave up. And I have since tried three more, each of them acting up within the system. So I have a feeling that I am looking at a board issue. Right now I just hope it will last out the year until I can replace it come tax return time. Until then I have moved it into the office and use tools such as my laptops or our XBox and UPnP to connect and watch media.
Not perfect by a long shot, the XBox is pretty crappy as far the media grabs go, sometimes giving terrible results over our WiFi network. I am planning on cutting some new cable to get a dedicated switch by my television to help with that.
It rocks. We will be going back. That’s all.
Hillbilly Heretic 