My car is back!!

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2000 Honda Civic SI - shiney in the sun
Picture of my car where I got the new tires and alloy wheels
the always busy Radial Tire Company – Brookville Road in Silver Spring, MD . Great folks!

My car was stolen off the parking lot at work Nov 29th and stripped. The Allstate Adjuster I was just working with decided to fix the car, even tho Sandy at the dealership told them (and me) that these kinds of extensive rebuilds can take a long to locate all the parts. The 2000 Honda SI is apparently still worth a huge part of what it sold for – I paid $16k for it new in May 2000, and now, 5 years & 75k miles later its bluebook value is still around $12,000! Its a great car – averages 30 miles-per-gallon and has the vTec engine – stomp the gas pedal and when you hit 4,500 rpm (to around 7000rpm) it sounds and feels like a big 4 barrel carb or supercharger has kicked in. A very quick little car.

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Happy Birthday to meee!

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JBL monitors as imagined in the upper corners of our media room

I bid on these old (mid-70’s) JBL 2-way Studio Monitors on ebay a few weeks ago. The problem was, due to the size (2′ x 3′ x 2′ and roughly 100lbs each) they were listed as “Pickup only” – and they were just outside Philadelphia, PA. Well, turns out I had the best bid and won them for a very reasonable fee.
Due to last weekend’s snow we weren’t going to do any roadtrips- so we made plans to do a 1-day roundtrip on Sat 18th.

We left Fairfax around 9:15am – got to Top 10 Music outsde Philly at 11:45 – had the speakers loaded and covered by 12:30.

And what would a trip to Philly be without Cheese-steak subs. Chris gave us directions to Leo’s Steaks – and he was right – they were to die for … I’ve never had anything like that in DC – Philly Cheese-steaks are like crack – Emma even bought another sub to bring back with us!
Anyway – we were home before 7PM, hauled the speakers inside, and I wiped them down with Tung oil to freshen the walnut veneer a bit.

I bought them knowing I’d need to add a set of high-tweeters and redo the crossover network for long-term use, but the woofers alone were worth more than I paid or the complete speakers. So fair I’ve listened to some old Who, Jaco Pastorius, Weather Report, The Concert for George (Harrison) and a few other things – the bass is tight and amazing! Once I get them finish freshened up a bit more and get the high-tweeters installed I can put them up in the corners where my old JBl L36 speakers (bought new in 1976) sit now. I’ll put the L36s in the back of the room for surround sound use.

And the birthday thingee? Why, its today, Feb 19th! The speakers are like a fine gift to me!

JBL Cats and Kitties

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Loud Button for JBLs


Just an old button I got years ago on a trip to NYC –

and the speaker cloth I used to redo my 30 yo speakers with …

Loud Boxes

Just some old JBL speakers I won on eBay Thurs night –
They’ll require a trip north to pick them up, then wood restoration
and adding a high tweeter to make them like the 3 ways on the right
but from what I’ve heard, it will be quite a sweet investment!

Bush and Iran – old friends against Gays …

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‘Bigotry Conquers All,’ Gay Rights Groups Say of U.S. Vote at UN
by Abid Aslam

from
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0130-07.htm
Published on Monday, January 30, 2006

WASHINGTON – The governments of the United States and Iran–part of President George W. Bush’s ”axis of evil” and his current nuclear bete noire–demonstrated rare unity of cause this past week when Washington backed a Tehran initiative to deny UN access to advocates of sexual minorities’ rights.

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Doctor Who is coming to US TV

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No more sneaky downloads via bit-Torrent … soon you’ll be able to get your weekly fix of the (new version of the classic) British Science Fiction show on the SciFi Channel. Of course, they’ll start with the shows from last year (so called “season One”, but considering the original show ran from the 60s through the late 80’s with a TV movie in the mid 90’s, its really season 27 (See
http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Contrib/SciFi/DrWho/episodes.html).
Be sure to check the BBC announcement at

http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/

Slumbering GM to wake?? naaah….

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The headline on the WashingtonPost website today says

“ GM Plans to Lower Prices on Most Vehicles“
“General Motors Corp., the world’s biggest automaker, said Tuesday that it will lower the prices on 57 of its 76 models in North America in an effort to boost its sliding market share and wean buyers off expensive incentives.”
(quote from AP News on the WaPo site).

Of course – that didn’t help me. I WANTED to buy GM. After my car was stolen in November I was in the market for a new small wagon. I’d seen pictures of the Chevy HHR and I’d heard that GM had really improved since the bad cars they churned out in the 70s (Vega, Monza, etc) .. I wanted to give them a fair chance – so I went to Jim McKay Chevrolet to test drive a new HHR with the bigger 2.4l 4 cyl.

It had good pickup – but it felt claustrophobic – visibility seemed poor and it felt very plasticky.
The A pillars were too thick and hard to see around, the rearview mirror was in the way – the windshield seemed too low – it just didn’t seem like a comfortable car to me. It didn’t feel like a car I would still enjoy driving in 10 years – or even in 2 years. The “red Tag sale” promotional discount of $1500 or whatever it was didn’t matter if I didn’t like the car.

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Year End Wrap Up …

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Latest updates –

  1. We bought a nice used (2004) CRV from CarMax in early December. On a pre-Christmas trip to visit the inlaws it got 22 mpg – not too shabby for a sportUte – but not the 34mpg we got on our trip to Roanoke in the 200 Civic SI
  2. Allstate has plans to rebuild the 2000 Civic SI – the Honda dealer says this may take quite a while .
  3. Christmas was great – many days off with my honey, Emma! Movies were watched, cookies were baked and eaten! Steaks! 15 year old Scotch …
  4. After Christmas special – I bought a nice set of JBL 4312A Studio Monitors off Craigs list – these are a great replacement for the JBL L36 Decade speakers I’ve had since I bought them back in ’76 …

Bathroom Debacle has ended!

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badly hacked up vanity
(Click to enlarge)
(Notice how the manufacturer’s square hole for the pipes DOES line up once the legs
are properly installed – and how high and useless the hacked-up holes now are)

We were scheduled to meet “the owner” on Tuesday 12/20 at 3PM, but he’d emailed us late Monday – due to An Emergency he needed to reschedule from Tues Weds 3PM. He arrived at 3:40 …

He was eager to sort out the bathroom problems, to have his guys come in and make it right, but after the last two fiascos, Emma and I had vowed to his laborers wouldn’t work in our house ever again. We walked upstairs and looked at the bathroom, and pointed out some of our problems, all of which he tried to minimize or dismiss.

He said his main guy never did work like that, even as we sat in the living room with the the butchered vanity on display (see cat picture in previous post). He said that wasn’t a problem, because the back wouldn’t been seen once it was installed. We mentioned how his man even took a chop out of the back of the drawer, but he just wasn’t dealing with the shoddy worksmanship.

We had sent him email explaining that we wanted half of our money back ($3k of the over $6 we have paid so far) to resolve the contract, he offered to give us $1500 of our money back, and we settled on a refund ($2500) …

We agreed that the contract has ended and we want nothing more from him – and he left. Then I rushed off to cash the check immediately, just in case …

I guess I’m going to have to learn how to do all this work myself now … sigh …

Its Showtime!

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image of my Dolly Lama Diva in the new Vanity
Click to enlarge the image

We are having our bathroom remodeled, so, I opened the carton for the recently delivered but not-yet-installed vanity in the living room, and our cat, Dolly Lama Diva, decided it was just perfect for her to explore.
I think she wants to be a show cat!

(Apologies for the title – we watched the Bob Fosse biopic “All That Jazz” again last weekend)

The bathroom remodeling debacle continues

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badly hacked up vanity
(Click to enlarge)

While installing a vanity yesterday, our man forgot to put the feet on it (even after Emma mentioned he’d need to screw on the legs before installing it). It was too low to lineup with the pipes – so he hacked it the back of the unit to MAKE IT work …
…what craftsmanship!! What a tool!