I can never resist taking a jab at the local newspaper, but they're always offering opportunities to do so, so why not? Their latest and greatest article, Family Dollar store opens in West Price, has one very bad flaw--the new store is actually in EAST Price. How it managed to escape their attention that the store is near 7th East, and only a few blocks further east is the outskirts of town, is beyond me. Oh, I just thought of something else--the Scum Advocate office is right across the street (and just a little bit further east) from the aforementioned store--maybe they consider themselves to be the center of Price?

I've almost got all the hard stuff done on the Subaru--all that's really left is to put the new timing belts on. Everything else is just the mundane connecting of wires and hoses, but there's so much of that stuff to do that it'll take me a few more days to finish up. By this weekend, I should be able to fire up the engine and hope to hell that all this hasn't been in vain. The left-side camshaft case went on without a hitch, but I wasn't looking forward to it one bit. I left the distributor attached (wires and all) to the camshaft case so I didn't have to worry about messing my timing up (any more than it already is), and I'd been told that I'd have a hard time putting it back on the engine that way, but it went on easier than the right-side case did. I picked up the rest of my parts from Checker today (where, btw, I got a great deal on everything thanks to a very old friend), and they managed to get all the right parts for me.

I dunno know how many people who read this site remember Sloppy Rage, a site ran by the Brothers Bollard--well, they, along with B33bs, have a new site going. It's called Hooray for Humans. The site's just barely up-and-running, but I'm sure it'll be well worth checking out.

I bought about $100 worth of stuff for the Subaru today, and hopefully it'll be finished by next weekend. I got some silicone sealant for the camshaft cases, which I started putting back on today--I've still got to clean one and reinstall it. I was stupid and forgot to install the valve lash adjusters and rocker arms before I started applying silicone to the camshaft case, so I had to rush to get it done before the silicone started setting up. I sure won't make that mistake again. Tomorrow, the water pump gasket, timing belts, and valve cover seals should be in, and I can finish installing that stuff throughout the week.

Michael hasn't been feeling well the past two days, and he's had a fever the entire weekend, so if he still has it tomorrow, I'm going to call his doctor. We were up most of the night trying to get his fever down and trying to make him comfortable, so nobody got much sleep. And just think, we have to go through this all over again with the next baby. Oh joy.

When I went into work on Friday, they sent me home with a computer to use for work at home. It's a Dell OptiPlex GX1, PIII-500, w/256 megs of RAM. It's running XP, so it's a lot slower than it needs to be, but it's got a VPN connection set up so I can connect to the network in the office. I've got PPTP pass-through enabled on my router, and I still couldn't connect to the VPN on Friday, but I couldn't ping the VPN server on any of my computers either, so I think the server was just down. It appears to be down now too, though I could ping it earlier today. If it's not working by tomorrow morning, I'll have to wait until our network admin gets back from vacation (probably on Friday) to get it up and running.

There is some justice in this world--a judge has thrown out the lawsuit in the Fat Piece of Shit vs. McDonalds case.

I bought another Subaru yesterday. My sister called to let me know that her hubby had heard about it being for sale, so after work I went out to take a look at it. It has a bad transmission (automatic), so I'm going to swap it out for a manual transmission, and either sell it for a profit or just keep it to beat on.

I had to rent a flatbed trailer from U-Haul to get it from Spring Glen to Price, and that cost me $50, so I'm into this car $200 already. I figure if I can find a similar car with a bad engine and a good manual trans for around $100 or so, I could get this one fixed up and sell it for about $1,000. Of course, I won't have the time to do anything like that for several months at least, so I'll just park this Subaru in my back yard until I get around to it--hopefully it won't rust away into nothing before then.

Yesterday, I saw what are probably the two most stupid (or just plain funny) things I've seen in a long time. The first was a tv show that I saw while flipping through the channels, and Billy Ray Cyrus was playing a doctor. What is this world coming to when Billy Ray Cyrus can get an acting job, and as a physician no less?!

The second thing was a Chevy truck (don't start laughing yet) that two hood ornaments--both were rams, each facing the other, poised to butt heads. If it had been a Dodge, it wouldn't even have been worth mentioning--but on a Chevy? I laughed for a good minute or two after I had passed the guy. Only a Chevy driver...

In this thread, several people have said that cracks between the valve seats on a Subaru EA82 cylinder head won't affect performance, so I've decided to go ahead and use the heads I already have and hope for the best. I've already bolted one head back onto the block, and I quit working on it today before I could tear the other one off completely--prolly have it off and back on tomorrow. Then I gotta order some new gaskets and other parts from Checker, and get a few more from the junkyard, and hopefully it'll be done in a week or two.

The relatives of two DC sniper victims are playing the lottery--er, I mean, suing Bushmaster, the two sniper suspects, and the gun dealer who apparently lost track of the rifle used in the shootings. I can, of course, see the logic in suing the sniper suspects, and the gun dealer probably has some culpability as well, but how in the hell can Bushmaster be even remotely responsible? They sold the rifle to a federally-licensed firearms dealer, and that should be the end of their involvement. By the plaintiffs' logic, anybody who has even the remotest connection to the situation should be held liable--including the ammunition manufacturer, the maker of the getaway car, the oil company who supplied the gasoline used to power the car, etc.--the list could go on and on.

As far as Bushmaster's involvement, the gun apparently performed flawlessly, and they broke no laws in the sale and distribution of the rifle. They also have no control over what happens after the gun is sold, nor should they have any responsibility to do so. The lawsuit states that the defendants "have intentionally and willfully chosen to sell and distribute firearms in a grossly negligent manner that circumvents established laws and policies of the United States..." Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the ATF responsible for enforcing firearms laws? They issued the license to the gun dealer, and the manufacturer followed the ATF's own rules by selling the gun to a licensed dealer. It seems as though the dealer's actions may have been questionable, but it's the ATF's responsibility to look into that, not Bushmaster's.

In a perfect world, the plaintiffs (and their attorneys) should be punished as harshly as the punishment they are seeking if the lawsuit is found to be frivolous (which it obviously is), but with the lack of personal responsibility in today's fucked up world, there's no guarantee that a judge or jury would laugh their asses out of court. I hate to say it, but it appears that the people pursuing this case deserve exactly what the sniper victims got.

Also, note the bias in the CNN article. The title--"Sniper victim families sue gun maker, retailer"--makes no reference to the people who are actually responsible for the shootings, and the two sniper suspects aren't even mentioned as defendants until the fourth paragraph. Also included in the article is a link to another article that describes how "cheap" the Bushmaster XM-15 is, and how easily an 8-year old child can operate it. Fucking liberal news media. (Did I just say that?)

If you think there's no legitimate use for handguns or other firearms, here are 1,080 stories of self-defense.

If ever there was a reason to not watch NASCAR, this is it.

I've got shitty luck when it comes to cars. I got the right head gaskets for the Subaru today, and tonight, as I was cleaning the old cylinder head in preparation for installing it with a new gasket, I noticed that the head was cracked in two places. I checked it out pretty closely right after I pulled the head off the engine, but I was only looking at the walls between the combustion chambers and the water holes around the outside. It turns out that the head is cracked between the valves on each side. I suspect that the cylinder head on the other side of the engine has the same problem, but I haven't pulled it off yet to find out--I really don't care at this point.

I only have two choices right now--I can either buy new or rebuilt heads, either of which will be pretty expensive, or I can just buy a new car and leave the Subaru alone for now and fix it as I can afford it. I still really like that car, but I need something to drive right now, and my truck isn't much of a grocery-getter. I need a 4-door, and one that gets good gas mileage, since I'll be taking it to work every so often. I think we're going to talk to Traci's uncle Bob tomorrow about buying something from his used-car dealership, though I really don't want to go into even more credit card debt. I guess that's the real dilemma I face anyway, because I'd have to buy new heads with my credit card as well. The only issue I really care about is time.

Son of a bitch. I pulled the right-side cylinder head off last night, and quickly realized that Checker Auto gave me the wrong damned head gaskets. Now I have to wait until at least Thursday before I can get the right gaskets from the Subaru dealer in Orem. So, I guess it'll be nice having clean hands for the next few days, but I'd much rather have my car on the road instead of a few days off.

Update: I went to Checker to return the gaskets, and they said they could get the correct ones within the next two days. The new ones cost about $80 total, but they said they'd give them to me for the original price I paid, which was only $46. As long as they can get the right gaskets for me, I guess having to return the wrong ones was well worth it.

Jeebus, it's been a week since I updated. That hasn't happened in awhile. Between all the stuff going on around New Year's with Mike and Allison staying here, and working on my car, I haven't used the computer much at all, except for work on Thursday and Friday.

I've got almost everything taken apart on my car that I have to remove to get access to the cylinder heads. Tomorrow I'll actually take the heads off, clean them, and put them back on with new gaskets. Subaru's engine design is really cool, except that having two separate heads on a 4-cylinder car really sucks, because I have to do twice the work to remove them.

I've already broken two (out of three) timing belt covers, but I can get replacements at a junkyard pretty cheaply. Both PCV pipes broke when I tried removing them from the valve covers, and those are probably dealer-only items, so I'll pay through the nose. The nuts that hold the engine fan and fan clutch to the water pump pulley had been tightened so tightly that I couldn't get any of them off, and I rounded a couple of them off completely while trying, so I'll have to cut them off and replace the entire water pump pulley and fan assembly, which I can also get at a junkyard. I didn't have a socket big enough to get the crankshaft pulley off, so I had to buy a Stanley 1/2" drive ratchet and socket set at Wal-Mart. I would rather have gotten a Craftsman set, but Sears was already closed and I didn't want to wait until Monday to get them.

I should be able to start putting everything back together tomorrow, but I have to order all new gaskets and a few other parts along the way, so it may take me a couple weeks to finish up. I swear, if I have any other major problems with the car after this, I'll retire the damned thing to the back yard and get another one.