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Showing posts from December 15, 2002

The Nissan Leaf Gets a New Rear Axle

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Well, I finally have a salvage title for the 2013 Nissan LEAF (Actually I dont have the title yet, but I think they mail it to me. We are far from settled with the insurance company for sure. It has been six months since Angie was rear ended. The following chart shows a very sad and disturbing trend. Insurance companies aren't paying out. It should be criminal. I went shopping for a new rear axle so I can get the car driving again. The rear ended axle was so bent, the car couldn't move. The new one with no connecting bits was over a thousand dollars. The cheapest used ones I could find on ebay were over 500 dollars. I finally scored at a local used parts place for 95 dollars (removed) and with associated bits such as bearings, bushings, parts of the brakes. It took me a concentrated day with cancelled and moved meetings to get the axle replaced and the car running again. The accomplishment felt good. I am now configuring the car with tractor tires and other modifications t...
The New York Times on the Web I noticed a situation about perceptions and values between cultures. "A city person calls it Shit or Crap. A suburbanite calls it Manure. A farmer understands it as valuable organic matter." John is coming over this AM to bottle beer. I should be downstairs racking the fermenter into the keg as to make bottling easier. I am also planning on hanging my new barn door today. It will look great. I spent a lot more effort and thought on that door than most would appreciate.
Kelley Blue Book - Used Car Bluebook Values and New Car Pricing There is a pickup truck being auctioned off by the town of Berkshire. I like these sealed bid things. You can actually get a decent deal through these sometimes. I am going to ask my friend Jeff if he is interested. I think he is looking for a new truck. We had an organizational restructure announced yesterday at work. It certainly appears that this will not open any doors for me personally or my career. I look at my career in a two-fold light; those items in my control (personal development and investments of time) and those items that are not in my control. The items I consider out of my control are fixed attitudes and values of senior management, history and what I call "winds aloft". I was looking through my bookshelves of manuals the other night looking for the one a guy in Oregon wants to buy. While searching I ran into a manual that had "send off comments" in it from a place I resigned fr...
http://www.woodmaster.com/ I am looking at better ways to heat our house. I have some initial ideas of building a large chimney that will have a fireplace and a flue for the coal stove. The coal stove will be in the basement and the fireplace will be in the living room. Bonnie brought me some excellent information on designing and building a chimnney and fireplace from the architect library where she works. So far that information is great. Unlike many contemporaries, we will be putting the chimney structure inside the heated space of the home. Although you lose usable square footage, you gain a great deal of thermal mass. That means the house will be secondarily heated by the heat slowly given off from the masonry after the fire cools in the early morning hours. A lot of chimney and fireplace design information is reverse-engineered information. Successful fireplace systems are measured and then those dimensions are recommended. I am looking forward to this project. I like maso...