Quest....

Well, we went camping at Quest this weekend. It was a good weekend and
only rained Sunday night. I managed to get some great lightning shots
during the storm, which I posted the link to earlier. Katie won a prize
at the event during the quest, which was cool. She got called into court
to get her prize. Linda came out with 2 kids for the weekend so it was
cool to see her again. Fred came along as well. This was his first SCA
event in nearly 10 years. I got him out on the archery range shooting in
the tournament too. He did pretty good and I came in somewhere near the
top of the pack in the tourney.

Light show of the gods...

I just thought I would share some photos I took last night during a
thunderstorm that blew through while we were camping at Quest. It took
over 175 photos and better than 2 hours, but I managed to capture 5
lightning bolts with my camera. Here's a link to the photos if you are
interested. The first one is kind of faint but if you look you can pick
it out.

http://irvinefamily.org/photos/thumbnails.php?album=73

Ugh! what a day!

Well, today I decided to replace the fuel injectors in my wife's car.
Replacing the injectors was the easy part. The hard part was getting to
the darned things! This car is a marvel of American engineering. It
makes me wish it was a Japanese car. Most of the bolts were almost
impossible to get out without disassembling the entire car starting at
the rear bumper, but I managed to do it. Upon reassembling the car, I
lost a socket and a bolt somewhere down in the murky depths of the
engine (the outside of it). Oh, well.. The bolt was not a critical one,
so I was not too concerned. Upon re-starting the car it seemed to be
running better so I took it for a spin down the road. At the end of the
block I swung a U-turn and headed back. As soon as I turned around I
heard this awful grinding/scraping/clunking sound that seemed to be
wheel rotation related. I stopped and checked things out, but could see
nothing wrong. All the way back there was the sound. I pulled it in and
took another look around but could find nothing.

I decided to let it sit and grabbed my dad's ladder and proceeded to
climb on the roof of their house to clean out the gutters for them while
I was there. As I got to the driveway, my wife pulled the car back so I
wouldn't get the crap from the gutters on the car. As she did so, the
front wheels of the car locked up hard and the car refused to move.
Uh-oh, not good. She pulled forward and it moved, then backed up and at
the exact same spot the wheels locked up again. I told her to put it in
park and leave it till I climbed back down.

When I got down I pulled the car into the garage and felt a weird
clunking from the front end. When I backed up, the wheels locked. My
parents watched the front wheels and it was the passenger wheel that
locked. As I proceeded to begin jacking the car up I decided to call to
check on my motorcycle which was in the shop for a new front tire since
Wed. Now I really needed it back since we were down a vehicle. They had
not even looked at it yet. Needless to say I was pissed. I told them I
was coming to get the bike.

When I got back, my mom took Rain & the kids home while I proceeded to
put the front of the car on stands and remove the wheels to look for the
problem. With it on stands, I could put it in drive or reverse and the
wheels moved just fine. I thought this was odd, so put a jack under the
passenger wheel arm to put pressure on it thinking that the lack of
weight might have changed the angles and the issue was not apparent that
way. No luck there, but we noticed the half shaft was moving around an
awful lot. I suspected a bad CV joint at first, then I noticed the whole
engine moving around a bit and thought I had a bad motor mount that was
allowing the shaft to contact the frame. Nope, not that either. The
motor mounts were solid.

As I was putting the wheels back on to try again on all 4 wheels my dad
noticed a bolt in front of the garage sheared in 2 pieces. I went to
look and it was the bolt I had dropped earlier. I had earlier mentioned
that I thought maybe it was the bolt, but I dropped the bolt on the
drivers side of the engine and the passenger wheel was the one with the
problem so I had discounted that as the cause. Well, it seems that when
I made the left hand U-turn the bolt which I dropped on the left side of
the engine slid across the engine and fell on the right side into the CV
joint on the half shaft. This was the grinding I felt & heard and the
source of the wheel locking up. It seems as if when I pulled into the
garage the last time to check it out I finally sheared the darned thing
off, which is why I couldn't locate the problem with the car on the
stands. Ugh! What a nightmare to diagnose.

So, the car sits in front of my parents house waiting on us to retrieve
it tomorrow (I took the bike home). I think its time to put the gremlins
to bed. We're gonna look for something else. I'm tired of dumping money
into it. On the bright side, the car does seem to be running a bit
better though it still shakes a tiny bit, but I suspect that is the
computer compensating for the old bad injector which is no longer
installed. Hopefully it will start to run better with a few miles on it.

The novelty of a new brother is starting to wear off... Katie is starting to get jealous because she has to share the attention now.

Adrien is adjusting quite well

Well, he's going to sleep within 15 minutes of being put to bed and more
or less sleeps through the night. He's managed to wake up each night,
but he goes right back to sleep with a little back rubbing or such.
Katie is enjoying being the big sister to him as well. We're just
waiting on the judge to sign off on the custody paperwork and we'll be
able to take him to Pennsic as well. The DYFS workers were here
yesterday to check out the house and all is fine there as well.

My laptop is so much happier now

Well, my new screen arrived on Tuesday and it went in with no hassles.
It is working beautifully. Now, if only I can keep from dropping it
again I'll be doing good.

(almost) parents again!

Well, today we're (almost) parents again! We went to a meeting with DYFS
regarding Fred's grandson today and it went well. We went to the
courthouse with his daughter and filed for custody of him and are just
waiting on the judge to sign off on the paperwork. This evening we got
his bed and some essentials form the house and got him set up. Putting
him to bed was a little rough, but after about an hour he seems to be
asleep now. I figure the first week or 2 are gonna be rough until he
gets used to us as caregivers, but after that I'm sure it will work
smoothly.

It's amazing how things can come back from memory. Katya was 2 when we
adopted her. Fred's grandson is also about 2. It just seems natural to
have him here. Everything I learned with Katya is starting to come into
play now. I know its only temporary, and that is a good thing too.

my re-done fish tank

my re-done fish tank, originally uploaded by graewulf.

today, we moved the contents of my tank to fred's old one and took advantage of the move to redesign.

$130 down the drain....

Well, I'm $130 poorer today because of my own carelessness. I was going
outside to work since its such a nice day and was carrying the laptop
(open, on my arm), my cell phone, the power cord, etc. all at once. As
soon as I got outside, the laptop took a tumble. My display is now a big
white blob and it is actually physically twisted and cracked in multiple
places. I know better, but I carried it that way anyway. At least I
managed to find a reputable supplier on-line (I checked them out on Ebay
and other sites and they get good reviews). $130 incl. shipping is alot
cheaper than the nearly $300 that other suppliers wanted for the same
screen. So, now I'm working off a flat panel monitor for the next few
days until my new screen gets here. At least I know how to replace these
things... This isn't the first screen I have had to replace, but it is
the first one I have had to pay for.

Music..

Well, as of the other day our music collection consists of about 21,000
tracks and about 49 days of music. I put up a Linux server to handle the
library and found a web-based music player to serve up the songs. Now I
can listen to our music from anywhere on the Internet. Pretty cool...