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Showing posts from February 10, 2008

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...
Some cool stuff at the conference. NLP or Natural Language Processing is a way of the future. Computers are fast enough. It is time to have the tools to copy edit english. The payoffs are huge in translation and quality management.
Pilots Arms Next time you have the opportunity look at your pilot's arms. The arms are not strong in an obvious sense. You would think that the particular part of the hero-body that with literal single-handedness guides hundreds of tons of metal and humanity would be well-formed, masculine and muscular. In fact, these very arms countering fears of passengers actually appear weak, almost stick-like. The elbow seems to drop from the shoulder unsupported, without the expected thigh-sized bicep. The short sleeve appears large and underfilled. There are tendons strongly connected from the core without strenght, but filled with confidence and grace. In place of muscle there are highly developed nerves in the elbow and shoulder that firmly connect with the brain and the art of flight.
I am on my way to North Carolina for the FrameMaker Chautaqua conference. This is a meeting of XML, DITA, FrameMaker nerds from around the world. I am waiting for my flight out of the Binghamton airport. There has been quite a weather delay. The driving was terrible. I almost went off the road this morning. The 4WD helps me get up the hills, but it doesn't do much otherwise. It actually creates a fair amount of oversteer. I am refinancing the farm. I am surprised how and fast and efficient the process has been so far. The property appreciated quite a bit in the 6 years we've owned it.
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The roads continue to be slick and unpredictable. It would be one thing if the roads were plain slippery, but they are clear and then occasionally have patches of ice or are otherwise changeable. It was 7 below zero F this morning. This guy's company car got stuck just south of here on RT 15 in PA.
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I ended up in Watkings Glen Saturday. I went to the Rochester Public Market went and saw some friends and generally had a very full day. This is the falls at Watkins Glen. Some weird and unlikely coincidences came up again with some friends who knew each other and didn't know me.