Month: August 2003

Working on the 24 hour comic. (http://web.helava.com/images/page1.jpg for the first page. Subsequent pages have increasing page numbers. Until I link ’em all nicely, just go through ’em that way.) and am about 14 hours in. Got 16 pages, which means I’m ahead of schedule, but radically slowing down due to tiredness.

oog.

Thanks to the efforts of a whole fistful of great friends, the ceiling in the downstairs bedroom (and one panel of one wall) got put up yesterday, as well as one side of one of the major support beams in the basement. Unfortunately, I picked a crazy-hot day to do the work, and ran out of power for the power tools (most of which were cordless), so we ended up not being able to really maximize the manpower. Still, if I’d had to do it by myself, or with just the GF, it’d have taken an ungodly long time to do. So, it’s great that it’s coming along as quickly as it is. Unfortunately, my best guess would be that we’d need at least three more of these full-bore days to actually get done with the place. That’s a lotta drywalling. Don’t know how keen the folks who helped out would be to do it again…

Still, nice that it’s coming along. Busy the next couple weeks. Got the 24-hour comic next week, then a wedding, then a trip to Montreal. So it’ll be almost a month before I can really crank anymore on the downstairs. Gotta start putting up drywall on my own during the week, I guess. Ah, well.

Still waiting for parts for the Mini. Man. Lots of things to do. So little time.

seppo

Had a blast in Vegas – it was great to see everyone, and the friend who coordinated the whole works did a stellar job. Absolutely stellar. Got the parts for the Mini yesterday, and installed the gas cap, rocker cover, and new air filter, all of which took about 15 minutes. Getting the carb needle in, and figuring out where to attach the bonnet straps will probably take a substantially longer time, and reattaching the exhaust pipe, which has lost a collar needed to keep the pipes together, will be a challenge, given how difficult it is to get that deep into the engine. Whee. Fun stuff, though. At least nothing’s *broken*.

Weekend should be entertaining. Housemate’s birthday this weekend, then Sunday, we drywall. Whee. Gotta run the cable wires again, and punch a hole in the floor to run a bundle of cat-5 through to the upstairs, but all in all, it’s pretty nearly ready to go, which is strange. Looking forward to it, though.

Good grief. Hectic next few weeks. Basically, got a bachelor party in Vegas this weekend, then next weekend, a drywallothon for the downstairs, then a wedding (I think that’s the weekend), then a camping trip, and whatever the hell else we end up doing.

There’s something wrong with the exhaust system on the Mini. How do I know? The front end of the exhaust pipe is dragging on the ground – not usually a good sign. Not sure what came loose, but something sure did. So, up onto the ramps it’ll go maybe Wednesday of next week, so I can see what the heck has come loose. Also got to get a new part machined for that broken shift linkage, but fortunately, Boss Tool, out in Tracy, CA does excellent work, and they’ve been great for stuff I’ve needed for work, and hopefully, they’ll be able to whip me up a nice stainless part to replace the cast aluminum piece that broke. Depends how big the sucker is, I suppose – but I’ll check that out Wednesday, too. Whew.

Oh – also have a 24 hour comic event coming up, where a bunch of folks and I are gonna blast out a comic in 24 hours. Got an idea for what I want to do, but actively working to not think about it, lest I ruin the premise of the whole 24 hour comic zeitgeist, or however you’d put it.

Yeah.

Went to a Mini “rally” last weekend, and was floored by the number of the Mini’s, and the fantastic old Minis that were there. Stunning stuff, and inspirational, in terms of me getting my little car fixed up nicely. Got some parts on order (soon) from England, and still searching for a reasonable deal on tires. We’ll see how that goes, I suppose.

Flew the kites I’ picked up a couple of weeks ago, and they’re crazy fun. The “SuperChute” is a small NASAWing, and pretty darned hard to launch – it’s really jittery – but once it’s up in the air, it’s fun to rocket around. The “ParaStunter” is a quad line, and really entertaining – you can do a lot of stuff with it. I see why it might be nicer to have a framed quad-line, since the PS can collapse in weird winds – it also doesn’t have crazy pull like I’d sorta hoped it might, but for its size, I guess that can be expected. We haven’t flown in really serious winds regardless, so whatever.

The house is pretty crowded. Was going to have a drywall-o-thon this weekend, but there are still details that need to be finished by the contractors, and the new housemate has a ridiculous amount of stuff downstairs – so that’ll need to get sorted out first. Pushed back two weeks. Will hopefully be able to slam out at least one of the rooms, complete, in a single day. We’ll see.

Right. That’s what I’ve been up to.