Bugs Palace!

April 23/2005

Dropped the GTI off on Monday. I was supposed to have the car back yesterday (Friday), but they aren’t done. Apparently they had a hard time getting me a door. I guess 3 weeks notice wasn’t enough to get the door in. That, and they didn’t bother ordering it until after they had my car in their possession. Oh well. I have a snazy little Pontiac Sunflower, errr. Sunfire as a rental. 4 doors, automagic tranny and a 4 cylinder engine without turbo.  I wonder how much more it would cost to have the brick taken out from under the pedal. My old beetle would kill this thing in a race. And it doesn’t have an engine in it! Hopefully by next week I will be back in the driver seat of my baby.

Good news on the tax front. Got a report back on my income tax. The accountant has/is closing my business for me, and by writing off the remainder of my computers and hardware, I no longer have to pay. I don’t get much of a return (40$ or so), but that’s a hell of a lot better the 500$ I was gonna have to pay. That and the money Shannon is getting back makes tax time not horrible this year. Too bad there isn’t enough to get me a suspension. Oh well. Maybe I will blow the 40$ on booze and strippers. Well.. Booze at least.

Just an update on the web server. Hopefully in the next few weeks, I will be taking some time to rebuild my server. Since loosing my uptime, and my recent lack of hard drive space, I need to rebuild and repartition. I’ve got plenty of space, its just poorly allocated. So when I rebuild I will correct it.

Recently I have became hooked on a new Tv show. Desperate Housewives. I don’t watch much tv anymore, but I caught an episode last week on TV and since then, I have downloaded all 19 episodes and watched them. During my marathon to get caught up on the show, I think I also got Shannon slightly addicted. At least its not a reality TV show. Its funny and worth the watch.

More news when I think of it.

Ugg. Crazy couple of weeks. Start off with some Bug news. Couple weeks ago Kevin came over and helped me continue the re-wiring of me beetle. (read help = he did the wiring, I did the helping). After much fiddling around with the 30 year old light switch, we finally got it mostly figured out. Nothings hardwired in yet, but we after a couple hours, we had the headlights working. Both normal lights, and the high-beams. Was great feeling seeing the beetle with some sort of life going through its new blue veins. Though the wiring is a long way from done, it gave me hope that this project may eventually get finished. Hopefully it won’t take too much bribery to get Kevin back over during the next few weeks to hopefully get this wiring faze completed. Kevin: name your poison, and I will have the cook prepare it :). Seriously dude, thanks again for all the help. 

Speaking of the beetle, I Have finally, really, actually decided on a colour for the bug. 100% decided. I’m not gonna say too much about it. Some people already know, but all I am gonna say here is : CHB529P. For those of you who can decrypt paint codes, that be it 🙂

And speaking of Kevin, happy birthday bro. Looks like the weather tomorrow should be good to you. 

Monday April 18th, the GTI goes into the body shop for its first visit, of what will likely be several. (future visits will be for stuff I want to do, not fixing shit that morons do to the car. Ie: shaving hatch, and misc other stuffs.

Some more good news: My VISA is paid OFF! That’s right. ZERO Balance. That may sound like a big deal to most, but well, I’ve been carrying quite a balance for the past couple years. Between getting married, buying a house, and my impatience when modding vehicles, I had quite the pile of interest to pay down. So last October I put my head down, the modding aside for the most part, and sold everything which wasn’t nailed down. 5 months and 7000$ later, Visa now owes me 46 cents. Next up, Shannons credit cards. Argh.

Now onto the less then fun news. Both Shannons work and my work are both talking about striking. My work isn’t just talking, they are getting serious. We did a strike vote, and 84% of people in attendance said YES. Idiots. I understand why they voted yes. To prove we are serious. That said, if we take one day off of work, then I will not be happy. For the minimal amount of money we would be seeing if the union gets what we want, we would have to work several months to make up the money lost per day. I don’t agree with strikes at all. Especially when you as an individual don’t feel that you will benefit enough to justify it; yet you have no choice but to go out and follow the crowd.

One last thing I can think of would be to thanks my Dad for helping me finish the deck and delivering driveway gravel.

Couple thanks yous to my Parents and Shannons Mom and Step Dad for the thoughtful (albeit unnecessary) birthday gifts.

14 years ago today I lost my eye, so April 3rd is never a great day for me. Woke up with a damned headache due to the lovely weather which we are having.

Speaking of weather:

Need I say more?