I'm a big barbecue fan... That is, I love to grill... You name it, I'll grill it... Usually I can do a pretty good job of almost anything...
My grill of choice has been a Weber LP gas grill... I'm not big on screwing around with charcoal... When I want to cook, I want to cook then, not after playing with the bloody grill until the coals are just right, and when I'm done, I want to shut it off, and forget it, not wait for the coals to die...
Well, the cast iron burner on my Weber is pretty well shot now... I bought a Weber after having a number of different brands over time, simply because they support their grills... In other words, here it is almost 7 years after I bought mine, and I can still order parts for it... Now, I can't get a cast iron burner for it, which ticks me off... Now I would end up with stainless, and historically, I've found that option to be sub standard... Odds are I'll get them and live with it, because I just spent some time looking at different grill options (it'd be nice to have a little bigger grill, and this is a good excuse) and all I see is exactly what I don't want...
I don't want stainless steel... Unless we're talking about the bolts that hold the grill together, I don't want it... My grill should be black, preferably glossy black backed on porcelain, but I'd take a powder cote...
I don't want an enclosed bottom... Just a frame please with a decent place to hang the gas bottle... I don't want to have to wrestle a tank in to a confined space, where spiders and bugs are sure to hang out...
Hold the pointless options please... I don't need molded in toll holders that never get used... Dual thermometers are pretty friggin pointless on a grill... Mesh like grilling surfaces are out too, give me heavy cast iron or porcelainized cast iron grates... I like the grill lines on the steak to run one direction only... Get rid of the bloody flip up food prep wings... Who the hell actually does their food prep outside with the bugs?... You need someplace to put the spices, and perhaps the barbecue sauce... That area will hold the platter for the food too... You do not need a gourmet cooks cutting board built in to the grill... You do not need enough area to dress an entire cow... There isn't that much room on the grill, so why so much prep area.... Spare me with the fuel gauge folks... I've seen lots of options, and they all suck... Unless you put a glass dial gauge on the tank, forget the other kinds... They rust up in a year or two, and don't help any more... Get an extra tank, keep it full, and when you run out of gas, just swap the tank.... (which is easy when it just hangs on an exposed frame)
Grills were built the same for what seemed like forever... Why doesn't even Weber still make a nice simple grill... Sure, make the insane gourmet grills for people who want that look, but damnit, will someone please make a simple, high quality grill that doesn't assault the viewer with pomposity...
I wrapped up about 20-30 hours of bid and engineering work for a show that we won the bid on last Friday. I was thinking it was going to be a nice holiday weekend to relax, before we started a small build leading in to the larger project. I was doing the small project simply as sort of a warm up since we haven't done a show since November, and everyone gets a little rusty, plus I had replaced the shop table saw with a different unit which is a story of it's own...
So after having that nice holiday, we descended on the shop, and dove right in to the opera... In about 3 hours most of the flats were framed, and the rough plank faces were going on... Its good to have a good crew... My partner came over at that point (his office is in our second warehouse unit two doors down) and told me the large build project had just been cancelled. Lovely...
Now really, I don't mind losing a bid so much. That's just part of the game, and I'm not willing to undercut the world to get a show and not make money on it... I do however get somewhat upset when we are awarded a show, and I have spent a considerable amount of time doing drawings, and then they pull the plug... Currently we have no system in place to extract any payment for that... I don't know anyone in the industry that does, but I'd suspect someone must... Granted its not like I was doing anything else, so it gave me something to keep me occupied, but it still bothers me... My assumption is, and I think fairly, that if you tell me that we're doing the show, that we're doing the show. I expect changes, and headaches, but with that there is financial benefit... When we get cut out after the bid award point, it really does cost some quantity of money... I guess this year that's just the way the Christmas cookie crumbles...
This is directed at the Middllesex Ledger Extra...
You miserable rat bastards!
First, and worst, is that you keep directing someone to dump your useless rag in my yard... I don't want your free gift to me, even at this time of year... I don't clip the coupons, and I don't read the articles... All you do is provide something I now have to clean up from my yard...
Second, lets discuss your lovely plastic bags... You're so proud of your free rag, that you have your name printed on every bag... Ya know, that's just great, so now I know who to direct my rage at... You may want to consider however that the bag which you are providing to keep your rag dry in the elements was printed with a water soluble ink... I've been throwing your waste of resources out since I bought my house a couple years ago, and I only discovered this today... Unfortunately, my girlfriend chooses to read your rag unless I get to it first... Yesterday she brought one in from the rain and dropped it on my floor. This morning I discovered a negative of your logo inked on my solid cherry floor that I installed... You rat fucks... Thank god I didn't go for carpet in the living room... I can't get mad at my girlfriend, I mean who would expect that the ink would run off a bag designed to keep a paper dry...
There's another issue with your bags incidentally... They tend to have holes in them... Now I don't read your paper, so how could I know right?.. Well I do use plastic bags to pick up dog shit... I've become something of an expert on the qualities of the various plastic bags that come in to a person's life for nothing... I mean why spend money on something to pick up after a dog right?... Your bags have holes in them... That means not only do they not protect your useless paper from the elements, but I am forced to stockpile them so I can double them up just to clean up dog crap... Can you imagine... Your bags aren't even good enough to hold shit...
So for the first time I have a bunch of stuff for sale on Ebay... No big deal really... I have however discovered one of the reasons that so many of the pictures suck... I'm not talking about the people that take a bad picture to hide defects... Just the ones that look like someone never before used a camera...
The ebay helpful guide to selling crap tells people to avoid the flash... They also like to recommend a black background... So you put the two together, and you end up with pictures so dark, you can barely see what is in them...
Hell people, even if you're using a film camera, you can still take a good picture... Be safe, take one with, and one without the flash... Pick the one that actually comes out... People have been using cameras a long time, and there seem to be good photos from throughout history, as a culture, we should be able to handle taking a picture of something to get it on ebay for cripes sake...
Yea! You! You miserable bastard with the phone glued to your hand making it impossible to actually control your vehicle... Yea, pry open your goddamn fingers and put that thing down... You in fact do not need to speak to whoever you are currently jabbering at while navigating the parking lot at a particularly busy time of year there, at an alarming rate of speed... You might take in to consideration as well, that if you had in fact run in to me, you would have been suffering from two problems... 1) The pintle hitch on my 7000# truck would have taken a massive bite out of the front of you little import's grill, radiator, and possibly engine... 2) I most likely would have gotten out of my truck, and beaten you close to death, leaving you alive only so you could be ticketed, and then perhaps dragged in to court...
What the fuck people?... Get off the bloody phones in your cars!!! You might actually find that you appreciate a little bit of time where you are out of contact...
Ok, so nothing has been happening here for ages... There are some good reasons, and some lame reasons... What they are does not matter in the least... I've had any number of things in my head for a while that I thought about posting, but I just didn't... There are going to be some changes here... First, I've ditched my blogroll, with the exception of the Mu Nu list... Odds are you aren't going to see any cross links posted here again... I'm doing that to get myself away from what started to become a burden. I obsessed over hit counts, trackbacks, and my TTLB ranking in the past, and that was a problem for me... I worried about making sure there was "quality" content, and seemed to stop worrying about just blogging for the sake of blogging... It's not about quality, its supposed to be about what is in my head, and folks, at most times, that doesn't fall in to the quality category... With few exceptions, I've stopped reading other blogs, and haven't posted a comment in ages... I had to just get away from the culture for a while so I could get my head back to where it was when I started out over at Blog-City ages ago... I wanted so much to get my anonymity back, that I was toying with the idea of going back over there and starting out fresh with a new name, and no traffic... I came to the conclusion that, 1) I get no traffic here now, and that's just fine, and 2) at some point I'd be pretty easily identifiable again if anyone that came here stopped over there... and 3) I suspect that the people that I know around here, have stopped looking at this page, as they figure it's now abandoned... That was one of my major issues really... It's hard to vent about your surroundings and circle of people, when they are reading what you're posting... Some times, its just easier to scream at the wind than talk to your friends, and that's what I started blogging for... If that made interesting reads, that's fine, but if it doesn't now, that's just fine too...
And now for the disclaimer... If you know me from reality, rather than just a name on a blog, move along please, this isn't really intended for you... It really isn't personal against anyone, I just need someplace that I can work out the crap in my head, effectively out loud, but with nobody listening...
Thanks...
My truck is a half breed as most American vehicles seem to be now... Some metric, and some SAE... Its irritating... It gave me an excuse to buy some more tools, so I live with it... Dodge has however taken it one step further in the arms race of annoying me...
I have to replace the multi-function switch that controls wipers, directionals, headlights, and wiper washer... It has been twitchy for years, and I'm finally going to do it myself since nobody seems to want to be paid to do it... (that should have been a big goddamn clue right there honestly...) Now, this should be a fairly straight forward operation. Pull the shrouds from around the steering column, unscrew the switch, disconnect the wiring harness, and reverse the process with the new switch...
So the first irritation is that they have buried the Torx drive screws that hold the shrouds on column so far in there that you can't get at them with a folding Torx set... Now that's just irritating, but I have a set at my shop, so I can wait until tomorrow to do the whole job right?... Yea... Ok, so I read further in the Haynes manual about this, and find that once you have managed to get a long enough Torx to pull the shroud off, they have decided that vandals will be stealing your pricey multi-function switch, so they attach it with Security Torx screws... Those bloody things with the pin in the center... Those fucking things they can charge an arm and a leg for because they're "secure"... Sadly, Haynes doesn't say what size security Torx I need, so I have to pull the thing apart (tomorrow) and then figure out what size security Torx I need, put it back together, and then go find the correct driver for that...
Did they honestly thing they were going to dissuade any but the most clueless vehicle stripper with this game?... Fuckers must have stock in the company that gets the licence royalties from the security Torx patent...