Back to work in 2010

Ah, the routine is starting up.  All it needs is my kids to go back to school (Wednesday) and it’ll all be back to normal.  At least traffic was still light this morning.

• Got the kids up, dressed, fed, and dropped off at daycare
• Filled the car up with gas – 16.3 gallons in an 18.8 gallon tank…and the sucker was telling me Low Range.  I still had 2.5 gallons left! :-)
• Drove the car to work because I didn’t have time to go back to the house, get my gear on, and ride the bike in.  Grrrr
• Harvested Farmville
• Drove to Melanie’s office to sign some finance papers but the lady there didn’t have the stuff ready.  Too bad she didn’t tell us that BEFORE I came over for a SCHEDULED appointment.
• Played Super Mario Bros on the Wii with the kids
• Wii Fit Plus.

Update of updates – Tying up loose ends from 2009

I noticed after reviewing my archived blog entries, there’s loose ends, minimal details, and just a lack of info.  We’ll see if my little experiment of tracking the last 24 hours each day will continue or not as well.  Anyway, here’s some updates.

Social networking - I’m not on Myspace much at all any more.  I’m pretty much only on Facebook now.  About the only thing I use the Myspace account for any longer is to read blog posts from various members of the cast of The Office, mainly Jenna Fischer. 

 

Cars - We traded in the 2007 Malibu on a new 2010 Camaro.  It doesn’t get quite the gas mileage that the Malibu did, but it has the V6 engine and 6-speed manual transmission and gets 30 mpg out on the open road and about 20 in town if you don’t abuse the gas pedal too much.  Even after having it for about 6 months, we still hear “Bumblebee” all the time when we’re out and about in the car.  I think you can see why:

With the 6-speed transmission and 304 horsepower from the V6, it’s fun to drive.  The suspension provides a good mix of performance over ride comfort and the seats are maybe some of the most comfortable buckets I’ve sat in including luxury cars and the form-fitting Corvette seats.  It’ll take a corner nice and flat and it’s easy to steer with the throttle.  Since it’s not a V8 it doesn’t have huge torque off the line though. I tell people it’s like riding a 600cc sportbike…it won’t power wheelie off the line as easy as a liter bike, but it’s no slouch either.  The engine is pretty much a pig until you cross 2000 rpm where you can feel a distinct surge of power, followed by another increase just above 5000rpm (redline is just under 7000)  To get a good launch from the line without abusing or dumping the clutch, you have to rev it up to about 5500 and give it a good, smooth engagement and it’ll leave the line with just about perfect wheelspin.  The 1-2 shift comes between 50-60 mph.  Everybody wants to know how fast it is and I don’t know.  Magazines say the V6 Camaro will top 150mph, so you’ll just have to go with that.  All in all it’s a cool car but sometimes I miss my plain, cheap, roomy Malibu.  Sniff, sniff, it was a good car.

Deals gap – I rode the Interceptor the almost 1000 miles to Robbinsville, NC at the end of May to ride the tail of the dragon at Deals Gap with some of my riding buddies.  We had a blast up there for a week and even though I had to ride in the rain on the trip up there and back, it was a great experience.  It’s about time to start making plans for the trip this year.

Interceptor crash and rebuild – Back in June I took the Interceptor to a trackday.  Unfortunately I touched some gravel at the edge of the track in a long sweeping curve and had a massive lowside.  I tumbled and slid to a stop with no personal damage (full leather suit) except tore up gear and a bruise or 2 but the bike wasn’t as lucky.  It bounced on the nose and tail and slid down the track on both side.  All of the body, nose, and tail had some damage, but the main frame, forks, engine, and swingarm were all ok.  Since it took place on a track, Progressive wouldn’t cover it so I did the math and looked at my options (rebuild it, part it out, replace it, etc) and decided to rebuild it.  To shorten that story, I got it back on the road in November and have put almost 1000 miles on it mainly commuting to work and a couple of short rides.  The tail and side panels are still the cracked/rashed parts but the rest has all been repaired.  I think I may buy new fairings and tail in a couple of months and it’ll look new again.  Still, it’s 100% functional and I guess I did a decent job rebuilding it as it hasn’t give me a single bit of trouble (knocking on wood)

Flying – Well, with all the motorcycle excitement (including the broken bone incidents), raising 2 boys, and just life in general, I still haven’t flown an airplane in over 2 years now.  BUT I just recently started studying for a flight review to get back into the air.  So, if everything will work out, I should be back into the air in a couple of months.  I’ll keep my fingers crossed!

 

Oh, and here’s the last 24 hours:

• Made an omelet with onion and jalapeno peppers, American, and pepper jack cheese.
• Played/exercised on Wii Fit Plus.
• Took the kids to the Museum of Natural Science in Sugarland to see the Narnia exhibit.
• Mowed/mulched the fallen leaves in the front yard.
• Broke down a bunch of cardboard boxes in the garage to fit into the recycle bin
• Added some  stickers to the VFR:
  
• Made the kids a knockoff of the IHOP pancake with the brown sugar and chocolate chips in it.  I was just winging it but apparently I got it close because they loved them.
• Ran the dishwasher
• Harvested and replanted Farmville.
• Let Melanie harvest and plow Farmtown.
• Read some more of the Prehistoric Life book from the library.

That’s all folks.

2010 – Day 2

Well, it’s not New Years any more.  Now it’s just another day of 2010.

• Fed the kids breakfast and had coffee
• Harvested my Farmville Crops
• Met with the guy who’s putting in a pool for us.
• Paid bills
• Went on a short motorcycle ride (70 miles) to try out a new helmet…
  
• Played Wii Fit Plus solo and with the kids.
• Reheated some chicken fajita meat for dinner.
• Had some decaf
• Put the cover on the grill
• Emptied the dishwasher
• Returned some books to the library.
• Watched some SNL – Best of Chris Farely
• Caught up on watching about 3 episodes of Scrubs on the DVR.
• Read through my archived blog entries on this site.  It was an interesting read for me.
• Started an entry to tie up some loose ends from previous entries over the last year (or so)
  

The First 24 Hours of 2010

Happy New Year!  Ok, the first 24 hours aren’t quite up, but I’m posting this now anyway.

• Went to bed at 12:40am. The fireworks have died down enough to actually go to sleep.
• Built a small model airplane (of a jap zero from WWII)
• Grilled baby back ribs and fillet mignon for dinner
• Exercised
• Played Farmville
• Watched some of my Babylon 5 DVD’s
• Played MS Flight Sim X with Cale
• Played Mario on the Wii
• Read a little including a book on basic electricity and another on prehistoric earth. 
• Created an avatar for Dupree (our cat) on Wii Fit Plus
  

2009 – The last 24 hours of the year (decade?)

Here it is…my list of activities of the last 24 hours of 2009.

• Passed up a motorcycle ride (horror!) to New Braunfels for Cooper’s BBQ because I had to work AND the weather was nasty with fog and wet roads.
• Drove the car to work again (see weather description above).  On a normal day I would have ridden anyway to beat traffic by riding in the HOV lane since I have the right riding gear, but there was like NO traffic on the main lanes today.
• Went to bed last night at about 1am because I was up late installing equipment on my motorcycle in case I went on the ride today (see bullet #1 above and yesterday’s list)
• Went to Ranch Market on I10 at Blalock and bought 3 Fillet Mignon for $3.79/lb
• Printed a copy of the last paycheck of the year.
• Studying for flight review
• Left work early to pick up the kids from daycare
• Drove the car through the car wash
• Went to a friends house for a little new years get together.
• Home just before midnight.
• Got kids in bed, now doing the same myself.

Cya next year!!!!!

2009-12-30 – The next to last 24 hours of 2009

Like yesterday, this is not necessarily in chronological order and even though I may have done things several times, it’s only listed once.

• Almost slept too late.
• Drove the car to work since none of my motorcycle gear was prepped for cold AND wet weather.  It could have been, but then I would have been really late for work.
• Ate lunch at Chicken Pirata (aka, "Pirate Chicken”)
• Started studying unit 2 of the Gleim Pilot Refresher Course
• Played Mario Bros on the Wii with the kids
• Installed new GPS mount and GPS power cable on the Inteceptor
• Worked to earn dockets for spending (and from now on, if it's a weekday, just assume I went to work.)

The Previous 24 Hours

Things that I did in the last 24 hours, not necessarily in order and say if I did something at 9am and again later at 1pm, it’ll only be listed once.

• Took the kids to Daycare.
• Played Mario Bros on the Wii
• Organized most of my digital photos on my home PC (need to archive some to CD/DVD storage later)
• Quicken
• Went to the grocery store (on the way back from taking the kids to daycare)
• Watched some WWII in HD while doing other stuff.
• Oh, and it was a work-from-home day so I did some work stuff.
• Played Farmville

And don’t worry… “Pick the kids up from Daycare” isn’t listed, but they WERE picked up!  

Trying Windows Live Writer

I thought I’d test some software on an old system before I wipe it clean and start fresh.  This is from Microsoft Windows Live Writer updating my seldom-used blogspot page.  I think it’s owned by Google now.  Let’s try a picture upload.  This is the flying club’s Cessna 182 parked on the ramp in Denton one evening a few years ago.

 

Nov 18 update

Interceptor back on the road.

updates

crashed Interceptor, rebuilding, 2010 camaro, yellow

Lighting update and weekend plans

I finally tried out the new Sylvania SilverStar Ultra lights on the VFR. Here in town I can't tell that they're a lot brighter than the old bulbs, but they're surely whiter than standard bulbs. Headlights on other vehicles now look very yellow. I think I may raise the beams just a little. They have a sharper cutoff and less scatter around the edges than the old bulbs so I'm actually not getting quite as much light farther down the road.

It seems everything recreational these days is related to motorcycles. I took all the fairings off of Melanie's motorcycle this week to troubleshoot a problem with her driving lights. It turned out to be a pretty simple fix with some wires plugged into the wrong spots that were blowing the horn/accessory fuse. The Honda dealer plugged them in wrong the last time the bike was there, but shame on me for not labeling them properly. I'll fix that ASAP. Now with that fixed I just need to put the body back on tomorrow so she'll be ready to go.

If it's not raining in the morning I'll be hopping on the VFR to ride over to the monthly flying club meeting to take minutes for the meeting as the Secretary is out of town. Then jet over to Foundry church to catch Cale's basketball game. After that I THINK the day is free. I need to take pictures of our old jet-ski/motorcycle trailer so we can sell it and get a newer folding trailer that holds 2 bikes and folds up against the wall when not in use.

Finally, on Sunday it's a late lunch motorcycle ride with some friends up to Snook just outside of College Station. We're headed to Sodolak's restaurant for some good steaks and maybe a few slices of chicken fried bacon. Ummmm cholesterol!

Car update

It's been just over a year since we bought the Malibu on Memorial Day 2007. I looked on Memorial day this year and it had just under 15,500 miles on it one year later. So, lot's of miles, but we bought it as a commuter and of those miles, probably 13,000 or more were back and forth to work and general running around on errands. A report shows we spent about $1600 on gas in that 12 months. I ran another report, and even with the increase in gas prices over the last year, we STILL spent about 20% less on gas this last 12 months, than with did the previous 12 month period driving the Envoy and avalanche. Score! And I'm still glad with didn't spring more money for a hybrid vehicle as at this rate we're still ahead on overall spending for the next 5+ years, even at the current rate of gas price increases. Yeah, we likely would burn less gas overall but this balances out well for us. Melanie is waiting for a hybrid avalanche to come out!

We're so lucky we can carpool together. We saved money, but if we have to each drive to work, that would be another $1500 or so out of our pockets.

 

Does this still work

Does this page still work? :-) It's been a long time since I've been here. I usually just put blog stuff on my myspace page (see earlier link). Let's see, what's been going on...

Still driving the Malibu, broke my right ankle in November (completely healed now), sold the Honda 599, bought a new Honda VFR800a Interceptor ABS, been at my current employer for 10 years, haven't flown since June 2007. That's about it.

This is just a test

I don't think is is going to work correctly but I'm seeing if Google Picasa can upload a photo to blogger.
 

Holly crap! It worked!

MPG

Just a short post to sing praises of my car purchase. We've filled it up with gas 4 or 5 times now and our lowest MPG has been 25.6 for a tankful. As it works out, we're still filling up the Malibu once a week, just like we did the Avalanche, but now a tankful costs 35 bucks instead of 60. We're on track to save 50-100 dollars each month on gas burned just commuting between home and work. BTW, me and my wife carpool, so that save us gas, and overall environmental impact too.

Still, $35 for a tankful. This car has a 16 gallon tank and uses regular unleaded. We've been putting about 12-13 gallons in it every Thursday. I remember the good old days with my '97 Grand Prix GTP that used premium unleaded and was just appalled at having to spend 20 bucks to fill its 18 gallon tank! I think premium gas was about $1.30 a gallon at the time. BTW, that car got about 16mpg in town and about 30 on the open road (it was a 3.8 liter supercharged motor).

Bought a car to save gas

"They" (probably Edmunds.com) say that it's good to go car shopping on a rainy day, so we did. We ended up buying a 2007 Chevy Malibu to replace our 2002 GMC Envoy. We figured that since the Envoy was coming up on 6 years old, and we didn't need it AND the huge Chevy Avalanche which is newer, we would get something smaller.

We originally went to look at Cobalts (think "updated Chevy cavalier") to add a more fuel efficient multi-passenger vehicle to the garage/driveway. Well, the ones in stock at Lonestar Chevy on 290 either didn't have the options we wanted or had too many and cost more than we wanted to spend. We decided to look at the Malibu just to see how their prices where. They had a nice "golden pewter metallic" sedan that had what we needed on it and the price wasn't TOO much more than what we had figured we wanted to pay on a Cobalt. Anyway, to shorten the story, because it was Memorial Day, they had extra rebates going on, we had an extra rebate waiting in the wings from the GM card we use. The guy brought out the list price of the car, which matched what I had looked on line before and said, "Well, there's list and I want to make a little commission so let's see what we can work out whether it's 1%, 2% etc". We told him truthfully that we could drive to our old dealer in Navasota and order anything we wanted for exactly $100 over invoice, so how about 100 bucks. He said "ok" and that was that. So, about 50 signatures later, we had a Malibu for about $3000 under the msrp/sticker price, THEN subtracted $5800 in rebates and they matched want we wanted for our trade in. We took enough to pay off what was left on our Avalanche, and left with a TINY remaining loan on the Malibu.

So, that's the first time that either me or Melanie have EVER bought a car off of a lot. We have always before ordered our cars with EXACTLY what we wanted on them, so it was quite an experience for us. All in all, we're pleased with the results, and while the Malibu is a bigger car than the Cobalt, the rated gas mileage is the same. Oh, and although the color is "golden pewter metallic", it's prettier than it sounds. It's actually a silver-grey that looks like it has a hint of blue added in and it looks different depending on the ambient lighting.

I've also decided not to go to Oshkosh this year. I want to use those vacation days for something else this year. Also, we voted to increase the flying club deposit this year for just about the same amount that it costs to attend Oshkosh for a week, so skipping the cost of Oshkosh will leave more money for flying and hopefully performing an Angel Flight this fall.

Check out my MySpace page too.

????? Oshkosh 2007 ?????

Time to start thinking about Oshkosh this year. My buddy says that he's going again but doesn't know if he'll be camping or not. If his wife goes they'll either have a hotel room or a camper. Plus she doesn't fly AT ALL so they'd either drive or fly commercial. I was thinking of bowing out this year just to save the vacation time and money (although it's not a very expensive vacation) so I'll have to wait and see. Another friend on the wait list for the flying club (note the new URL) is talking about riding his motorcycle up there which sounds like fun, but a Honda 599 really isn't much of a touring machine for a 1000 mile trip! Hmmm. I wonder if you can rent a 'wing somewhere.... Bill would probably know. Hmmm.

Oh! And I met my goal to average one angel flight per quarter in 2006 by flying my 4th mission this past December. Money is tighter than it was when I first started doing this but hopefully I can keep it up and do 4 more this year. Wish me luck!

Myspace

I can't believe I'm doing this!



Check me out!

The Instrument Pilot's Prayer

Oh controller, who sits in tower
Hallowed be thy sector.
Thy traffic come, thy instructions be done
On the ground as they are in the air.
Give us this day our radar vectors,
And forgive us our bad radio technique,
As we forgive being vectored thru final.
Lead us not into a thunderstorm,
But deliver us from adverse weather.
For thine is the approach to minimums,
The missed approach procedure,
And the published holding pattern
Until our Expect Further Clearance time.

Roger. - Anonymous