Happy Thanksgiving!!!

I have many things to be thankful for in my life, and my family and friends top that list.  Even if you're not in the US I hope you and yours are having a wonderful day.

Uplifting

I recently got around to replacing the worn hatch supports in the CRX, finally.  The supports Amazon said fit weren't an exact replacement so there was a little bit of modification to be done.  The OEM supports had a 90 degree eyelet on the tube side to mount it to the car.  That eyelet had to cut off and a hole drilled through it before I could mount them on the new supports.  All in all it took about 30 minutes per side because the saw didn't have a proper metal cutting blade.

My CRX upgrade path

I'm trying to put an upgrade path down for my little 89 CRX DX as far as the engine bay goes.  This is what I've got so far, I'm not going to be racing the thing but I would like a bit more power and having an automatic doesn't help things either.

#1 make it a manual
I'm going to grab the shifter, tranny, and ecu for a manual DX and stuff them in.  The first thing most people do is go from dpfi (2 fuel injectors that act more like a carburetor) to mpfi(4 injectors, 1 for each cylinder) so the ecu should be easy to find at a very cheap price.  This will let me do things slower and at my own pace while making troubleshooting any problems a ton easier because I'm pretty much working on one system at a time.

#2 dpfi to mpfi
Depending on which engine I finally decide to swap in I'm either going to use the intake manifold from a CRX si or a del Sol.

#3 swap time
While i'd like to put a k series in there I've never fabricated anything so I'll likely go with a gsr swap at most.  Sticking to a b series engine will let me keep the ac (with a Hasport bracket) so that's my current plan.

Outside of the engine bay there's not a lot that needs done.  I want the rear window spray nozzle, antenna hole, and rear wiper arm shaved for a cleaner look and a fresh paint job.

Braking Down

Ah it feels good to have been working on the car lately.  This time around I did a full front brake job on the CRX.  It was pretty easy, no major hassles once I got the penetrating oil out.  Soon I plan to tackle the rear brakes, it'll be more fun though.  I've never really dealt with drum brakes, always took them somewhere to have the work done.  That'll all have to wait though because for now I'm just doing an oil change.

Just like at work, the key is to do proper maintenance and things will, for the most part, go smooth.  Before I got my trusty CRX the car had seen some rough days for sure.  I know a previous owner had damaged the front end and did a piss poor job of fixing it.  It has also been repainted at one time but it was an extremely cheap job because it's starting to fail.  I have a friend at work telling me to buff it out and wax it but I don't really see the point.  To the trained eye it's still going to be a crappy paint job and I'd rather not look at a polished turd as the saying goes.

There are also a bit of engine issues that scream out that she's been abused at one point or another.  The timing is off a bit so the car has to have premium or I get detonation.  On a car with high compression I can understand it, but this engine shouldn't require more than the cheapest fuel.  As I get in deeper and deeper I'm replacing gaskets as I do repairs to stop slow leaks.  You know, if I'd have had time to properly search for a car I would have gotten one in better shape to start with but I didn't have the time and the price was right for what I was getting.

Losing my ass

I am proud to say I've finally found a weight-loss routine that works for me.  I wake up and have breakfast, I try to keep it to 600 calories or less.  Then I go to work, normal stuff until my break when I do my exercises, same for my afternoon break but I'm skipping ahead a bit there.  Lunch is my big meal, I have what I want but I make sure I don't eat enough that I feel stuffed.  As long as I eat just enough to feel satisfied I'm good, then it's back to work and the exercise break I mentioned earlier.  When I get home I just have a bowl of soup.  That's really the only massive change I've made, well that and moving my big meal to the middle of the day.  It's just me here so I usually make and eat a whole can, a can is usually 2 servings per the can but I'm still coming out way light on dinner calories.  There are even some light soups, the one I had tonight was 160 calories for the can, so keep an eye on that.  The only downside is I start to get hungry again if I stay up later than 11pm.  Once I'm asleep though I stay asleep but if this bothers you have a handful of plain mixed nuts, just avoid honey roasted or extra salty if you're trying to get healthy.

TV conflicts

It's not very often I get excited about TV because most of the crap out there isn't worth watching.  Now out of the blue there's 2 shows I want to watch and they're on at the exact same time.  Come on, there's a whole week to fill out.  Starting next Sunday the History Channel is going to be playing the US version of Top Gear while AMC is showing The Walking Dead.

I can't help but think of all the good shows that have been cancelled because of being put in the wrong time slot and wonder if either of these 2 will get killed off.  I hope there's enough of an audience for both shows to keep them alive, that only makes it a bit inconvenient for the folks like me that want to watch.  I guess all of the complaining about there being nothing good on the tele has come around to bite me square on the ass.

Holy crap The Walking Dead is good!

I guess after a title like that there's not much need to read any more right?  I was blown away by Sheriff Rick's journey through episode one, this is my favorite series of 2010 without a doubt.  I had read a lot of hype online leading up to the premiere and the show delivered on all counts.  AMC, as long as this show is on and the quality is there I'll be watching.  I can't wait to see how Sheriff Rick gets out of the mess he's in!
Of course the usual disclaimer is in effect, it's my site and my opinion, you're free to have a different one and even voice it as long as you're civil.  Read more about The Walking Dead at http://www.amctv.com/originals/The-Walking-Dead.

E-reader madness

I spent a good part of today's lunch thinking about e-readers, specifically the Kindle and Nook.  I want to like the Nook more because it's the underdog to the almighty Kindle but the little color screen thing on the bottom turns me off.  I thought for sure the Nook would be something amazing once they released details of the next version but I was sadly mistaken.  The Nook color (NOOKcolor?) just isn't the e-reader for me right now.  I need a device with a long battery life and that pretty much means E-ink.

There is one thing about the Nook color that I do like, it's running Android.  It's a shame they gave it a locked down, neutered version of Android though.  An e-reader with full access to the Android Marketplace would be one hell of a contender for my money even with a lower battery life than I'd like.  I'm sorry Barnes & Noble but in my eyes all of the potential this product had was sucked right out of it when it was locked down.

My media jukebox

Because of my schedule away from home it's a lot easier to haul around my laptop with Windows Media Center (WMC) and use it as a media device than it would be to carry my cds, DVDs, and Bluray discs everywhere.  Here's what I use and the reasons for it.

Windows Media Center

The first step is to get the media on the computer.  For music I use Apple's iTunes to rip my music.  I don't like iTunes generally but this is the one thing it does well enough for me to recommend it.  I'm not saying it's bad but I have different tastes.  For ripping DVDs and Bluray to the hard drive I use SlySoft's AnyDVD HD.  I know there may be other programs out there that are free or cheaper than this one but I've used SlySoft's products for a long time and I really like how well it works.  AnyDVD also lets me keep a Bluray's copy protection there so nothing ends up broken when I try to watch it.  Again, this is a personal preference, feel free to use what you like.  

iTunes

AnyDVD

Before I go further I think I should talk a little about hard disk space.  DVDs and music don't tend to take up a lot of space by today's standards but Bluray does.  Fully ripped there are movies that come close to 50GB, for that reason alone I only carry a few Blurays around on my laptop and swap them out when I'm home.  Also, if you plan to use the tools I use you're going to want to rip Blurays as .iso files to make things work the best possible.  

Alright, now we've got the files on the hard drive let's get to the business of playing them.  Music will play nativly in the media center s othere's nothing to worry about there if you have your libraries set up.  For DVD and Bluray I use My Movies for Windows Media Center to organize things nicely.  To make WMC play nicely with Bluray you'll need a third party program since playback isn't built into Windows, I use Cyberlink's PowerDVD and mount the images with SlySoft's Virtual CloneDrive.  You shouldn't need either of those for just DVD playback though, but I haven't tested it since I use Bluray as well.

Virtual CloneDrive

There you have it, easy as pie.  Remember kids, piracy and stealing cars is bad so please only rip what you legally can.  Links to what I mentioned above are just below this bit.

Itunes

http://www.apple.com/itunes/

AnyDVD (HD)

Virtual CloneDrive

http://www.slysoft.com/en/

My Movies for Windows Media Center

http://www.mymovies.dk/

PowerDVD

http://www.CyberLink.com/PowerDVD

Steam game deals

Right now there's a decent sale going on for Halloween over at Steam.  I picked up the Plants vs. Zombies game of the year edition for $4.99.  I'd have picked up a few more things but I just paid the bills around here.  Anyhoo, check it out over at Store.SteamPowered.com.