I actually got us up early today so now I have nothing to do. A few quick things.
Firstly, Christmas was last week and that was pretty awesome . I managed to get a Kindle Fire. That poor thing is so under appreciated it's not even worth laughing about. As most of you know, the big craze these days is Android and tablets. Everybody needs to have a tablet like the iPad but not the iPad. So they want you to buy an android tablet instead because its better apparently. Everybody makes tablets now to stay hip and new. Even Polaroid made 2 tablets that ended up sucking really bad.
Enter Amazon. The people who make that website that's like eBay but better than eBay because most of the crap you can get there is brand new and you have warranties. Amazon used to be a place to buy books and crap. It was a really small startup company and it didn't seem like they would last as long as they did. But then they exploded and people started buying from them like crazy. Now they're the biggest online retailer and nobody can stop them muahah.
Amazon decided a few years ago to turn books completely digital. So they came up with the E-Reader. They called it the Kindle. So now it's 2012 and they have these things called Kindle Fires. It's a stretch to call them a Kindle because these do so much more than read books. Actually its an android tablet that has been locked down to allow only Amazon approved apps from their app store. So you don't get the full Android experience with the Google Play app store that has millions more apps than Amazon does. Amazon does have its perks though if you have their special membership that's like $80 a month or whatever it is, all you can eat movies and music. Convenient. But only if you have that subscription, which I don't. SO. I did what any sensible tech junkie would do and I rooted it. Now it's the best friend I ever had because the screen is so much bigger than my iPod touch and I can plug a USB flash drive or a keyboard and mouse and use it like a normal computer. This is why I like Android so much. It's like a computer.
For Christmas I also got a lot of candy and it was like Halloween with a different color scheme.
I also bought a windshield.
Oh wait, I didn't tell you. Back in October I got into a car crash. I rear-ended a truck. Yes it's all my fault and I still want to hang myself for causing that much damage to my poor car. The truck was fine by the way but I needed a new front end. The hood was crumpled, smashed my headlight on the driver's side and crushed my fender on the driver side as well. Both my radiator and A/C condenser coil were punctured and sprayed scalding hot coolant all over the bottom of my car. The frame was bent and my shifter got misaligned. Ah what the hell have some pictures.
So what you see is my car with a really bad nose job. That deep dent is where the truck hit. It was right on the tow hitch and that's welded to the frame so it's basically an immovable object. And my car hit it and took that right in the face. The hood was all pushed up so that was totally destroyed. There's no way that would have been straightened out Goddamn shame too. I'm going to miss all those key marks on the paint. The headlight on the driver's side was completely shattered and the metal bits that hold it to the car was pushed in too. Took a lot of banging. So there's glass all over the front bumper and those dark spots all over it are splotches of coolant and R-22 A/C refrigerant oil. Which is highly illegal to make now. So my air conditioner is royally fucked for life now. The radiator you see in the front that took the most damage is the A/C condenser coil. I thought that was the actual radiator but it's actually not. There's a small crack in the windshield that you can't see, but about 3 days later that developed into a crack that went all the way to the top and it spread across my view. Eventually if I didn't do anything with it, it would shatter and I would have a lap full of glass.
I didn't sleep a wink that night. All I was doing was laying in bed thinking about what I did to my car and if I should kill myself. So I went outside around 6:30 AM to start taking bits off of it. First thing to go was the hood which you can see in the middle left of the photo. I spray painted R.B. on it because that is going to be the car's tombstone. It stands for Red Baron. Which is what the car used to be named before I killed it. The engine was not harmed, as you can see in the previous photo, the car was up against that back wall you can see in the upper right of the photo about 30 feet away. After I got the hood off I could see. So I tried to start the engine. It took me 20 minutes to realize the ignition coil had gotten unplugged, so the spark plugs weren't getting any spark. Couldn't get the gas in the cylinders to fire. So the car just chugged along on its starter motor not firing and I couldn't figure out what happened. There was automatic transmission fluid all over the top of the engine and I thought my tranny had exploded. Turns out the power steering pump uses A.T.F. as a hydraulic fluid (A.T.F. smells like NOS energy drinks I come to discover). Once I plugged the coil back in the car started right up...and tried to go backwards. Then I realized that even though the shifter said the car was in Park, the lever connecting it to the transmission had become bent, so P was now Reverse. With that in mind I put the car in Neutral and it started driving forward. It sounded very. very. Angry. and there was smoke flying everywhere because the belts up front got pinched on something. The car did drive and I was so happy, I pulled it into its spot in the driveway so I could work on it and so my parents could get in and out of the driveway with their cars. So that bit of metal that holds the hood down and the headlights in place was pushed back a bit. That was a bitch.
This was about a day or 2 days later. I got what menial tools I had and took off the busted headlight, the radiator and soon that little fan you see inside the car. That's the clutch fan. It's attached to the coolant pump (some call it a water pump but there's no water in there, its coolant). That fan is actually pretty cool. It has a semi-viscous non-Newtonian fluid inside that solidifies when the temperature goes up. This locks the fan up and makes it spin faster allowing it to push more air to the radiator and cool the car. But this one is fucked and all the fluid leaked out. because I hit a truck.
So now I manage to get my brand new radiator in ($150) and I bought a hood from the junk yard that has a whole Subaru Loyale just for me. I plan to steal the transmission out of that one at a later date. Maybe the doors too because they have electric windows. Now the car is drive-able again so I limp it up to my uncle's house where he has a fully equipped garage with wrenches of every size and shape and actual tools. Not some pink pliers and a couple of forks like at our house. So now I pull even more bits out and uncle helps me out with a bodywork kit he had. We pounded out the dents in that metal bit to make the new headlights fit. Look you can even see the new clutch fan through the radiator because its brand fucking new. Then automatic transmission has lines that lead to the radiator too, which is why I couldn't take the one out of the junker car at the junk yard. That one has a manual transmission, and thus no automatic transmission line hookups on the radiator. Bummer. Also the engine on my car is so small you can fit the spare tired under the hood. Fuck it was cold out there that day too...
Here's a light test with my new headlight in and a new plastic grille for the one i smashed up. The grille and the light are from the donor car. That car was Subaru's "Misty Dawn" color that my dad's old Subaru had. He went and blew that car up on accident because the timing belt snapped. His car was a turbo with a manual transmission and actual 4 wheel drive. Fuck I'm so pissed I didn't get that car.
I also took a fender off the donor car and replaced it. So the driver's side fender is a different color and also not dented. On the ground beneath the car there's splotches of coolant from when I had to take the new radiator out again to prevent it from getting damaged with the work our uncle and I was doing. There's a bucket I put under the car at home so the coolant would leak more into the bucket than onto the driveway and kill our cats. I also put every bolt and nut in there so I wouldn't lose it. Kind of a bad idea. On the left there's a bottle of automatic transmission fluid and a can of grease. On the right is the bucket, a can of WD-40 and a worker's glove because I was using a grinding wheel and that's dangerous.
To the right on the photo is a tarp that's covering the bottom half of my uncle's newest toy, a 1967 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia. That's a wicked cool car.
Here's the finished product. The all new 1990/1992/1993 Subaru Loyale wagon. It's essentially a clown car now. I have sky-blue hood, a purple/misty dawn fender and a red body. The hood doesn't sit perfect anymore, its actually a lot better now than it was in the photo because I adjusted it as much as I could. Almost can't tell it's off now. On the ground is that same coolant splotch, a gatorade bottle of coolant (that's not gatorade) a funnel for putting the coolant into the car and a socket wrench. I still drive my car to this day, it's got a new windshield too.
I've renamed it. Its no longer The Red Baron. I killed it. And then brought it back to life, so now it's named The Zombie Baron.
So that was in October. I have one last interesting thing to show you. Her name is Zelda.
She is a few months old American Eskimo dog. Or a small white German Spitz. Whichever you want to call her. But I prefer you call her Zelda. She weighed something like...8 or 9 pounds or something, She's still a puppy. But unlike a puppy she is quiet as a mouse. My own little Souris (which means Mouse in French). But unfortunately she isn't my dog. She is still at the pet store and needs my love. But she's $500. I wanted to buy her right then but I knew I couldn't. If you want to make a donation to my dog fund send me a donation in paypal at miles_prower48@yahoo.com. I'd love her, but yeah I'm not expecting anything in the form of donations XD
She never barked at all and she stayed where you put her down...god she was so cute. It's the only time I've been attracted to a girl. =P
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