Home for Sale!

More good news. As of today, our house is officially for sale! I met with our realtor today and signed some papers and got the ball rolling. Hopefully it won’t take long to sell so we can move soon. I like the potential homes in our price range and the areas are so much better! Maybe we can even get a home with a pool! This is a very exciting time for us right now, even with the bad stuff thats happened lately, things are definately looking bright for the not so distant future!

Truck is SOLD!

Woo Hoo! My truck sold today! I am going to lose some money on it, but at least its out of the yard and I can drop the insurance now. This is definately a good thing!

Home break-in

Sadly, on Sunday morning (Aug 27th) our home was broken into while we were not home. The thieves got away with my work laptop (which is a major inconvenience). They also got Liz’s digital camera, our Mini-DV Camcorder, some jewelry and some other small items. All in all about $3,500 worth of stuff was taken. I am going to talk to my homeowners insurance company and see if there is any way it would be worth it to file a claim and try to get some of that stuff replaced. However, I think the deductible is going to be too high, but we’ll see. I’ve added some new security measures to at the very least assist in catching the people involved if this ever happens again. At least they didn’t get my Miata!!!

Who wants to be a superhero

I know this is a bit silly, but I really like this new show from Stan Lee called “Who wants to be a superhero”. I didn’t care for it too much on the first episode, but after sticking with it, I’m really enjoying it. Its so crazy, and the characters are so wacky, and the stuff going on is just funny! While I think I would make a better superhero than most of these characters, it very entertaining. They have a tough time getting the superhero mentality that is needed to really get to the heart of what the show is all about. To them they are there for the prize, to win a game, they just don’t get it. Maybe if they were graced with my superhero alterego, (debit man), things would be even more interesting!

New Tires

I finally made up my mind about getting tires for the Miata. I had been wanting to do this for a week or so, and all the rain lately motivated me out of concern for Liz. I didn’t want her out driving around with a bald back tire in the rain. I really wanted to get some Goodyear Eagle F1 GS-D3 tires, but they were almost or over $100 each. So to save a little money, and since I don’t race my Miata (yet), I choose a good compromise tire, I got Kumho ECSTA SPT tires instead. They get almost as good ratings in nearly every category, but they have longer tread life and a more comfortable ride. They were surprisingly cheaper given the ratings and reviews of the tire, I got all 4 for just over $200. I used tirerack.com to get the tires, which will be shipped from a warehouse in Georgia early this week. They are going straight to a tirerack approved installer which isn’t far from my office at work. This will allow me to get a ride over there in the morning and let them do the work, then get dropped off later that day to pick it up. It should be very convenient. I am also going to get an allignment done while I’m there.

O2 Sensor change successful

After several days of thinking and internal debate, I finally bit the bullet and tried to replace my O2 sensor. I went to Advance auto the other day and had my computer code read, confirming it was the O2 sensor that was causing my check engine light to come on in the Miata. The OEM replacement was almost $150 but was plug and go easy. The universal sensors were much cheaper at anywhere from $30 to $80+ dollars. I ended up getting a kit from Advanced Auto that had the O2 sensor, the splice kit and connectors I needed. I also had to buy a 7/8ths wrench but that was it. I was easily able to extract the bad sensor, but wiring up the new sensor is a whole different story. The color patterns on the universal sensor were not the same as the OEM wires. This caused a great deal of confusion on my part and it took Liz and myself and a check on the miata.net forums to confirm the correct pattern to use. We finally deciphered the wiring pattern code and got everything in the right sequence. It took a while to get it all wired up, but once the splicing was done, it was a snap to install the new sensor. I then disconnected the negative battery terminal on the car, to reset the computer, then re-connected. A quick test drive confirmed that I had done the work correctly and the check engine light was gone! Now if I could just get up the nerve to attempt the valve cover gasket change!

Picture gallery is now CURRENT!!

You will notice the albums are sorted by year, then by month or date. Some special events are individually labeled. This should make things slightly easier than before. There are now over 3,218 pictures in our gallery, dating all the way back to 2002 when Liz got her first digital camera. Soon I will also be scanning in some of Sarah’s art work for your viewing pleasure.]]>

Sarah's Artwork

Soon everyone will be able to see Sarah’s artwork online. This weekend or next week, I plan to take the best of the best of Sarah’s immaginative artwork and scan them in to the computer, so that I can upload them to our picture gallery. Sarah has done some great stuff and does a really good “Peep and the Big Wide World” drawling. (I love that show, quack). 🙂 So keep an eye out here for an update, or check our picture gallery for the new albums containing the artwork.

Mail forwarding service – misconfiguration on my part

Ok, a big sheepish grin here. Last night I added mail reflector services to both primary domains (as stated in a previous post). Well unfortunately, I forgot to add Liz’s account to the valid user table at no-ip.com. This caused any mail received by no-ip’s servers destined for Liz to bounce back to the sender. After I was informed of this happening this morning, I quickly figured out what was happening and was able to correct it. It was totally my fault and if anyone tried to send anything to Liz between 9pm last night and 10:30am today, please re-send. 🙂

Top Latches

I finally got my replacement top latches last night me to soft-top on the Miata. I, like many others, had a problem with my top latches on my 99′ Miata. There is a tab on the latch release that holds the latch in place when closed. This tab wore and would no longer latch properly. Mainly this was a problem on the passenger side, but I replaced both latches anyway. I got a great deal from a guy on the miata.net forums, who offered me a set of latches from a 97′ Miata (since they are interchangable), and are a better latch. I paid $40 for the set, which saved me a ton of $$ since they are $130 each at a dealer or many places online. I installed them last night, which was a snap and only took about 2 minutes. Now my top latches perfectly and they are in better shape than my original latches. I’m very pleased with the way it works now!