Back from a trip and more work on the Volvo

I went to Idaho from Tuesday till Friday. See this video to get a synopsis of the trip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1VXtdAyDdk

My car has been over-heating a bit, so with the help of my brother, I changed the water pump. Then I decided to go with the retro-fit of the heat controls and replace the antenna line. I haven't taken the car out for a test drive yet (I'm a little nervous) but at least the lights in my dashboard are working again and I have the knobs I wanted for the heater and fan controls.

Somehow I got an A in both of my classes. Not that I expected to fail or something, but I felt my paper (that was like 40% of the grade) was not well written. Maybe the teacher was generous.

Work starts up tomorrow, and I'm happy about it. Being off since the 20th is a bit much. But if I'm to be a teacher, I'll have to get used to having stretches where I'm off (Winter break, Spring break, and Summer vacation). Of course, there's a strong possibility I would be doing some other job during the Summers (or teaching more, who knows).

Not a whole lot to write about now.

V2

I've decided to blog about the proto-type gear shift I'm working on. I don't know why I was afraid of posting pictures of it, it's not like I'm the only one to ever think of it.

I have two versions of it, but the first one was just done to see if I could even do it (I could). So I don't have any pictures of it, although I have kept it.

What is so special about it? Nothing much. I want to make a wooden gear-shift for my Volvo. Hopefully I can figure out how to do it easily and make it look nice. There might be companies that already offer this, but that doesn't matter to me. I'm currently using Ash and Oak as my prototypes, and I want to end it with Cherry. I don't have a big enough piece of Cherry to do it (at least, if I want to keep the size of the knob itself accurate to how big the gearshift is currently). So once I get it down to a science, I'll purchase some bigger chunks of Cherry and make my attempt.

Anyway, here is V2.






What do you think?

A travel blog

I think I might make some trips this summer. And while I know I said that last year, this year I might actually meant it. But instead this time I think it'll be local stuff.

Silver Creek falls, Multnomah Falls and a few places on the coast. And hopefully I can document them on this blog with pictures (and the occasional long winded pointless rant which I am famous for).

But that depends on if my car has to be fixed. I'm hearing a clunk every so often, so I might be forced to (once again) post-pone things.

I have a real short blog today. I might edit it later