Idiocracy to the Max

This is an actual post on a forum for helping people with fixing up their cars. I'm not sure that it is real, but if it is this guy should win some sort of an award and they should revoke his rights to procreate. 

Hey guys, please help with my mods gone wrong..... - 11/1/2007

Hey guys, I've got a 98 1.8T. I've had a k04 and chip for a while and wanted to get more performance. I was recommended to port and polish the intake and exhaust. We found out they used abrasive material to do it like gritty sand. So I got with my friend that tunes Hondas and we decided to try it ourselves. We got a bag of sandblasting sand and hooked up into the intake and started the car. We had to hold the gas so it would run. He wanted to let the engine suck in the sand through the intake so it would port it out and then push it out the ehxaust so it would port the exhaust manifold. 

I was worried that it might cause problems but he figured it'd be OK as long as we didn't make boost and it get sucked in the turbo. After running the car and letting it suck in sand we got about half way through a 25 lb bag. The check engine light was on and the engine was bucking and kicking and sounding really weird. We stopped and hooked the car back up normal and took off the sand supply. We tried to start it again and it was really hard. Once started it couldn't idle and kept making weird noises. We took it out and drove it and it started to make scraping and knocking noises. 
Help! Can anyone tell me what to do! My buddy only does Hondas so he doesn't know much about Audis.

Traded the Van for It Straight Up

Well here is a picture of  my daily transportation. Seven loves to talk about the "motorcycle", but has been deathly afraid of even sitting on it since I got it. I slowly got him used to sitting on it while it was turned off and showed him all the buttons. This weekend it was pretty warm out and we live near Matt and Jules' house so I had him try a short 3 block ride out. Needless to say he now thinks that he should always get to ride on the motorcycle and runs for his helmet every time he thinks that we should go somewhere. Every day when I get home he runs smiling into the garage to meet me with his arms thrown into the air and yells "you go to work on the motorcycle today?" Its a pleasant welcome home and I look forward to it every evening.

If a Picture is Worth a Thousand Words... I Wasted a Ton of Time in College

I'm famous! Well sort of if you count getting a picture you took onto a blog somewhere. I have been playing around with HDR photos the last week or so after seeing some pictures that people had created using the technique and staring in amazement at what they looked like. I borrowed my dads camera so that I could get some higher quality shots and began learning how to create them for myself.

The picture to the left I took thursday night on our street after I got home from work. I spent some time getting the coloring changed (I know... funny for a colorblind person to be doing this). I really liked how it turned out so I submitted it to a blog that does a daily photo in Stayton Oregon (the town we live in). Images like this seem to be hit and miss with the Photo community, but I wanted to share what I created anyway. Long story short the lady that has the blog loved the picture and used as the daily photo on the blog. Click here to view the blog

I have some other pictures that I have taken and edited in the same way as well so if you would like to see some more of my HDR photos click the link below.

HDR Pictures and Originals

On the Road Again

So it has been awhile again I know. I wish I could say it won't keep happening but I would probably be lying. I have "some" pictures of the boys to update as well, but we have been really bad lately about taking pictures. Tomorrow is Easter and I'm sure we will have some from that as well as today. The weather has been getting better too so we have began venturing outside as well. 

Also, I have given up on the idea of getting a car for awhile and bought 2 motorcycles. I have gotten one running that I will be commuting with this summer to save on gas and have also fixed up the other one to sell. I didn't plan on buying multiple bikes but a deal came up where I could get both of them for $700 and I decided to do so with plans to sell one and keep one for myself. I love being back on 2 wheels again and will post some pictures of the bikes soon for all to see.

It'sa Me Mario!

I never gave this much thought, but this answers the question "where does mario go when he falls off the screen?" I guess the movie Tron wasn't too far off in its suggestion that the characters that we play lead real lives and when we kill them it has some adverse effect on the characters "lives". Interesting I think. Well, I gotta go play some Call of Duty 4... No harm in that right?

Norm!

So the dust has begun to settle some after this long past few weeks and I thought I should post something up more cheery. 

#1 I mentioned I got a new computer (I think). Its a MacBook Pro and I love it

#2 Did I mention the new computer?

I have had more time to get some of the updates up on my blog and the boys blogs, but still plan to do some more. It is much easier now that my screen has a bit more "real-estate" and I have more room to work on things. Also we have an internet Cafe' at the state building that I work in and on my lunch break I can go downstairs, sit on a couch and get my "tech" on in silence. I'm still in the process of getting our pictures sorted, but got most of them back up and running online for all to see. I should be getting some more recent ones added and posted up pretty soon. I have a 3 day weekend so on top of getting the taxes done I should be getting some of that stuff up soon.

Excuses are like... You get the point

So I haven't been very active on the blogs lately. Which means most, if not no one, will read this. It is late and I'm tired. A lot has been going on but as the title says we all have excuses. I guess since this is technically my bathroom wall on the internet I can list some of mine.

- We have now moved into our own place... this takes time and energy away from blogs

- Our internet took awhile to get hooked up... Though this hasn't stopped me before

- Our kids have been sick... Who hasn't had sick kids

- I thought it would be fun to install vista on my new computer and wiped out every piece of data I had collected for the past decade... just another speed bump.

I truly did have big plans to get my blog and the boys updated and I still plan to do that (hopefully tomorrow) but our world took another spin. Some of you know the Newell family. A link to Logan Newell's blog is on the right if you haven't. Their family has been going through some tough times again.

Ben Logan's dad is in the hospital awaiting a heart transplant that is his only hope for survival. Logan had an MRI and the tumor is still growing and they plan to start Kemo in 3 weeks. This alone would cripple most families, but while all of this was going on John Newell who is Ben's dad suffered a heart attack and now rests across the hall from Ben at OHSU in a coma. 

Needless to say updating my blog has been on the bottom of my list. Life takes on a new meaning when death seems to be all around. "But they aren't your family" you may ask. Oh, they are family. We may not have the same blood in us, but we are as family as you can get. All this to say I would ask anyone reading this to lift up this family in prayer. Its one thing when we are asked to cast our cares on God with something we think we could handle on our own. But that verse takes on a whole new meaning when there is absolutely nowhere else to turn.