car

A Test of Progress « A Town Square

~ randyaa ~ Leave a comment

Sad that we can’t even come close today with modern Combustion engines.

A Test of Progress

November 14, 2011 by aandh

Almost every day as I wander around this place in images of times gone by, I find signs of who we once were. Perhaps these signs also point to what we may hope to become.

Witness this:

July 13th, 1913. The automobile is a Franklin. That’s Jimmy Feeney at the wheel – service manager for Franklin. City Sealer John Stephenson is about to pour a measured gallon into a glass container. Officials look on – after all, it’s a National Efficiency Demonstration.

And the answer: 57.2 miles on one gallon of gasoline.

Franklin Automobiles went out of business in 1934.

via A Test of Progress « A Town Square.

0 going on 16

~ randyaa ~ 4 Comments

IMG_7883We went to the Sandbox yesterday for a friends birthday. Lilah got to play with a lot of new toys and her favorites were the ride-on types. Besides a dragon and a goose, the laundry basket and an empty box or two it was the first time she’s played with one.

Last night we were tooling around in Wal-Mart and, while I’m generally opposed to buying stuff like this in a brick and mortar store (without a coupon), we happened upon one of the carts that Lilah really liked at the Sandbox. The price was (semi) reasonable so we once again bought something for Delilah on OUR date night. She had so much fun it was hard to resist. The picture above might be solely responsible for the purchase. Just sayin…

This morning she had a blast after we gave it to her. I had just about as much fun making this video.

The Malibu Saga – Part Deuce

~ randyaa ~ 3 Comments

Zemanta Related Posts ThumbnailSo the Malibu is back. After only 5 months of ‘away time’. She’s a little worse for the wear but we’ll get to that in a minute.

The deal was $600 for a Head Gasket but it would take some time. Not bad considering we were almost ready to go to one car anyway and everyone else wanted $1,200 for the repairs. Who cared if it took a while. After 5 months and what turned out to be 3 major redos (and no phone calls) they wanted $900. A few calls later and we settled on $700. That was the condensed non-emotional version.

So now she’s back, for better or worse, and we have 2 cars again. Kind of.

Problems the Malibu now has that it didn’t before:

  • It needs a new front left shock
  • When turning right it makes a horrible metal on metal scraping sound. Seems linked to the shock issue.
  • While moving it smells like it’s leaking gas.
  • It hesitates at first, likely due to the gas leak.
  • It’s burning through fuel like it’s going out of style. Likely related.
  • Rust has started to rear it’s ugly head.
  • Still slightly blowing smoke/steam when accelerating.

Only really 2 main issues (shock and gas leak) that are probably causing all the issues, still frustrating.

IMG_4050

At least it’s not blowing smoke anymore.

Anyone want to buy a Malibu?

A Wedding Toast

~ randyaa ~ 6 Comments

Congrats Brian and Kelley! What a great wedding/party. EVERYONE had tons of fun, from the golf carts to watching you striptease for Kelley on the dance floor… Love it!

The Best man speech I gave at my buddy Brian’s wedding yesterday:

Ladies and gentlemen. It takes a strong and intelligent man to realize his dreams and achieve his goals in life and love. A man not afraid to live life to its fullest and embrace what is truly important. But enough about me… I’m here to talk about Brian and Kelley.

I’ve known Brian most of my life. We lived just a few miles apart. That might sound like a lot, but in Marion it’s really only like 3 houses. Later we were college roommates so naturally I know a lot about Brian, most of which is not appropriate for this type of setting so I’ll try to keep it clean.

Once Brian had a car Jeff and I never left his side. Mostly because we needed a ride. The first time we went out, we made it maybe a mile down the street, when the hood flys up like that scene in Tommy Boy and all I can hear is Brian yelling “That’s not good! That’s not good!” No Brian, it wasn’t. I could go on and on about Brian’s automobile misshaps and hijinks:

Like the multiple times he left his beat up Chevy S10 in the CarShow parking lot with the hood popped like some show car while he put in an 8hr shift at Burger King.

Or the time he was driving down a country road in that same S10 and a deer hit HIM.

Or the time he decided it was a good idea to drive THROUGH a construction zone with potholes FEET deep & his headlights off so as not to arouse suspicion. Probably one of the scariest moments in my life..

Or the time I had to take over driving on my first day with a drivers-license because Brian had been pulled over for speeding (again) and was too nervous to drive any further.

Or the time he told me he didn’t want to buy a sporty car like the Subaru STI because he didn’t need to go fast, he wanted luxury, so he went out and bought BMW’s ROADSTER.

But I’m not going to talk about any of that, because I’m supposed to tell you about what a great guy Brian is and tell you about all his magnificent qualities. Brian is Dedicated, Kind, Funny and… what’s this one? … Sorry man, I never could read your writing.

Brian is one of the funniest guys you’ll ever meet, and he has no shame, literally… I don’t know any other guy that is excited to get cat calls while dressed up as Britney spears, wearing his sister’s skirt and a wig walking down Monroe ave.

He’s up for anything, which is exactly how he got so lucky with Kelley. Kelley, I don’t think forcing him to ride the bull for 8 seconds before he’s allowed to talk to you was ever going to stop him. One time he took his pants off in the middle of a bar and traded them with a girl wearing a skirt just so she’d ride the bull.

Brian, Some of us still don’t know how you did it, but you’re a lucky guy and somehow you tricked Kelley into marrying you. She’s beautiful, smart, funny, warm, loving and caring, and she deserves a good husband. Thank God you married her before she found one.

Kelley, it’s funny how history repeats itself isn’t it? 20 some years ago your Mother and Father were putting you to bed with a dummy…and now it’s happening all over again

All kidding aside though, I’m Ecstatic for you guys. I want to thank you both for having me be part of your special day. I know Brian couldn’t be happier, I see it in his face every time he looks at Kelley.

So if everyone could raise their glasses in a toast… To Brian and Kelley,

May you have love, health & wealth; but most importantly, may you have the time together to enjoy them all.

What Happens, Happens. Breath

~ randyaa ~ 6 Comments

We’ve had a lot going on lately.

  • In February we refinanced our duplex.
  • A the end of February we bought a new car.
  • In March our offer on a new house was accepted.
  • We close on the new house May 10th.
  • We’re in the process of finishing work on our apartment.
  • We’re in the process of renting out our apartment (we’re keeping our duplex).
  • My Photography business is just getting started.
  • I started a new Outdoors Blog.
  • Our first baby is due June 4th.
  • Rachel has been put on bed-rest until the due date.
  • Stressful things are afoot at work (some that I like, some that I don’t).

With all that’s going on I constantly need to remind myself to just slow down & breathe.  It’s hard sometimes.  There’s a lot to get done and it often feels like I’m not getting anywhere.  I get tired of people telling me about it though, I’m fine.  I take it all in stride, and whatever happens happens and we’ll deal with it as it comes.

Ze posted a song a while back that I had totally forgotten about until today, when he posted the story of how he made it.  It resonates with me perfectly.  I get it.

http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer.swf/track=397380065/size=venti/bgcol=FFFFFF/linkcol=4285BB/

Hey, I’m Ok.

I’ll be fine.

Just Breathe.

I Drove a Dodge Stratus

~ randyaa ~ 2 Comments

You can talk to me that way now… I drove a dodge stratus.

I’ve never named any of my cars.  I know some people name every one, and really if I were to ever name a car, I should have named my Stratus.

Giving it up is like giving up the last piece of my youth.  That said: On to the next exciting chapter in my life: Minivans (no not really), mortgages and daycare.

We’re picking up our new ride as this post goes up.  A new-to-us 2007 Honda CRV EX-L.  It’ll be the first foreign car either of us have ever owned (not counting the Stratus which for all intents and purposes was a Mitsubishi).  It’ll also be the first SUV.

I expect nothing but good things from the Honda.  It might even get a name.

A Vehicular Crossroad

~ randyaa ~ 5 Comments

Rachel’s car has finally hit that point.

The point at which we need to choose to keep it till it falls apart or get rid of it now.  For the second time in the roughly 60,000 miles that we’ve owned it, it needs a head gasket.  The car is a 2000 Chevrolet Malibu with a 3.1L v6.  From what I’ve heard this is an extremely common problem with this engine.  Awesome.

So, our dilemma…

The car is paid off.  Irregular maintenance has not yet turned into regular maintenance, so monthly costs have been negligible for the better part of a year.  It’s in good mechanical condition (besides the recent development), although it’s in extremely poor cosmetic condition.

The cost of repair is approximately $1200.  We can safely assume if we were to buy a new (to us) car to replace the Malibu we’d be looking at payments somewhere between $200 and $400 a month and a minute trade in value.

At those costs it would only need to last us another 3-6 months before the benefit of repairing it outweighs the cost of a new car payment.  Of course, this assumes that we don’t have any other major issues with the car in that 3-6 month time period which is big possibility.  On the other hand, we haven’t had to do anything to the car (and it’s been paid off) for almost a year, so really it’s already earned the new head gasket.

It’s a gamble, we either bet on our car to last another 6 months or we bet against it, and move on with our lives without the complication, but with a little added cost.

One last thing to consider: We only drive 1 car on a regular basis as I ride the bus to and from work.  Therefor; having one unreliable car has been something we’ve been prepared to live with for a while.

What would you do?

We haven’t decided but if someone decides they want to give us an offer… let us know in the comments.

House Insurance Sucks

~ randyaa ~ 2 Comments

InsuranceOur experience with insurance companies of all kinds is horrible.  We’ve had the absolute worst luck although We’ve never really written about it here in detail before.  Our car insurance has been canceled several times (for reasons beyond our control) and our house insurance is expensive because of a few punk kids in Fairport and a stupid AllState policy.

We’ve dealt with our high cost house insurance for 2 years because it was the best we could get at the time (thanks to AllState, jerks).   We figured after living with it for 2 years things would have settled by now and we’d be able to get a better rate.  Through phone calls to at least 15 different companies, we’re not gonna have any luck and it looks like we’ll be stuck with what we’re paying now: about DOUBLE what seems to be the local average.

Three reasons we’re having trouble:

  1. Our house is a Multi-Family Duplex.  Many insurance companies simply don’t offer insurance for these types of houses.  Although it reduces the number of quotes we can get, and therefor the possibility of getting a lower rate, I don’t fault them for this.  It’s their company and they can choose to cover whatever types of houses they want.
  2. Our house was built before the turn of the 20th century (approximately 1890).  It’s Old.  Many companies seem to think this is just too old so they won’t cover it.  I don’t get this one.  Yes older houses were built using different standards and fit to different codes, but that’s the point of risk pools.  Just put the old house into an appropriate risk pool.  This was totally shocking to me since there’s TONS of people with houses older than ours.  I hope the houses we’re building today last more than 100 years…  Will they stop covering houses built in 1990 in 2109?  Seems dumb.
  3. We have 2 Siberian Huskies.  They’re awesome family dogs and very friendly.  We didn’t really think anything of this, but every company we talked to categorized Huskies as an aggressive breed.  What a bunch of bull.  I’ve never seen a non friendly Husky and I’ve never heard of one.  Their rationale seemed to be that they’re related to Wolfs.  Well, hate to break it to ya guys but your Lab & Retriever dogs share the same ancestors as our Huskies… they’re all related and share some Wolf DNA.  Huskies just happen to have maintained their appearance more than others due to their natural work environment.

The first 2 issues I can gloss over because not every company had those restrictions and they almost seem reasonable since a company can choose what to cover and what not to cover.  The 3rd however; is inexcusable.  I simply do not understand where the idea that Huskies are an aggressive breed it’s coming from.

We were just trying to get a big win by getting our yearly insurance cost lowered.  It looks like this won’t be happening anytime soon thanks to yet more retarded insurance policies.  The whole industry is a giant scam in my opinion.  As soon as you want to USE your insurance, they drop you or raise your rates.  Why can’t we lower our rates every year (or month) we DON’T use the policy?

Don't Replace It

~ randyaa ~ 12 Comments

sigg-adI’ve been seeing these ads a lot lately.  They sort of drive me nuts.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for helping the environment, But ads like these make people think they should replace their old plastic water bottles with new environmental friendly water bottles.

You know what helps the environment?  NOT buying products you don’t need.  NOT throwing away your perfectly good non-environmental-friendly water bottle.

This works a lot like cars.  If you’re attempting to help the environment you should be driving a 1974 Chevy until it blows a piston rod, then you should buy another 1974 Chevy and drive it until it dies and then buy another… get the point?  That brand new Hybrid just means that another car will rot in a junkyard instead of on the road where it belongs.

Municipal Failure

~ randyaa ~ Leave a comment

A few weeks ago I took my Father to lunch at Donnelly’s. We had some great food and beer and shared a few laughs. When we got back out to the parking lot we discovered that someone had hit Rachel’s car and had done a decent amount of damage. Nothing left for us to identify the perpetrator but the scrapes and dents.

06-14-08_1710

A phone call to the police later and we had information on a good lead. Apparently the parking lot for Donnelly’s is monitored by a fancy new $25k security system at Fairport Electric. Sweet. Only problem is nobody working that day had access to the system (or more likely knew how to work it). Good thing is it’s all digital and its kept for an undetermined amount of time. The police officer takes our information and tells us he’ll call when he gets a copy of the video.

A few days ago we got the phone call. Wouldn’t you know it, that fancy new $25k security system? Well the one video camera trained on the parking lot was broken that day. Fantastic. (Edit: more than likely, the perp? a cop or other municipal worker and the camera was fine)

I just wish people took some responsibility for their actions.