6.28.09

So last weekend I completed my first triathlon. Even though I am quite happy that I actually completed the triathlon (even though it was only a sprint distance), I am not happy with my performance. I have a fair amount of work to do on my biking and running. As this was my first triathlon I took it pretty easy on the bike and run. I did this to make sure I could actually finish the triathlon. Now that I know what it takes to actually complete the distances, I can now start working on my weaknesses. Here is a pic as I came out of the swim, at this point I was in 209th position out of about 600. We won't mention where I ended up finishing : )

After the triathlon I drove up to michigan for the rest of the weekend. Saturday night on the way to Holland I stopped in St. Joseph for dinner with Nick, Stephanie, Andrew, Valerie, Steph's Parents, Steph's Grandpa, My Grandma, and My Parents. We ate at a nice little restaurant Tosi's. I made it to the restaurant a bit before everyone else so I had a couple drinks at the bar in an attempt to alleviate my now horrible headache. Dinner was quite good, and the company was fantastic as always.

Then on Sunday (Father's Day) I spent a relaxing day with my parents. Jacquie made it to Holland for the day as well. It was nice to get to spend some relaxing time with them especially since they are up in Canada so much now, but who can blame them.

This week has been one of the hottest weeks I can remember. We were in the 90s every day and humidity was always above 80%. This made it so I spent every minute I could indoors enjoying the wonderful air conditioning. But last night a storm came through and provided some rain that my lawn needed and also brought with it some much better weather. Today I spent a good amount of time tearing about the steering knuckle on my Willys. I had found the problem with my engine binding and now I was trying to find the problem with my steering binding. And I have now found the problem. It only took half an hour to get the knuckle off, but it took about 2-3 hours running to the store after each piece was taken off to get the tool needed to take the next piece off. But I am not the happy owner of all the tools needed to break down my from axle. I hope these tools won't be needed much in the future but it is good to have them. Now I can put together my parts list of all the things I need to fully put my engine and front axle back together and have no problems with either the engine or steering.

6.7.09

I have finally, after many years of having a prepaid cell phone, purchased a nice cell phone on a contract. Now which phone could possible get me to make this major change in my theory of cell phone use? Meet my new Palm Pre.

I have in the past thought about getting an iPhone but the plans were too expensive and the iPhone just didn't have all the capabilities I wanted in a cell phone. In my opinion the new Palm Pre is a game changing phone. What makes this phone so different is is mixes the benefits of a windows mobile phone and the iPhone. It can like a windows mobile phone run multiple applications at once just like any computer you can go between multiple open applications. Where the iPhone you have to close any application you are in before you go to another application. To give you an example of why this is so great: when I am driving somewhere in my car my phone can be streaming Pandora radio over the cell network in the background to my car stereo, but also have it's turn by turn gps navigation program open and in front. If a call comes in I can answer it and it will mute the Pandora radio but still allow me to have my gps program running on the front screen. This is impossible to do on an iPhone, partly because it doesn't even have a true turn by turn gps program yet. But it certainly can't multitask like that.

So now I will be available on all channels of communication at all time (e-mail, facebook, twitter, aim, etc.) I am looking into doing a revamp of my website so that I can post updates here directly from my phone. I know I am not too diligent at posting updates here. With facebook and twitter now I haven't felt the need to post too often here, but I know there are a few of you that don't do the whole social networking sites. So I will attempt to redesign my website here probably in the next month or two to allow updating directly from my phone.

In my last post I had started to tear into my truck to fix all the little things that needed work on it. I am happy to say I have identified the reason for my slight engine binding causing the engine to not crank over. The person who assembled the engine swapped the connecting rods between cylinder 3 and 4. They are offset rods so you can not just swap them. This was causing the piston to be slightly pushed into the cylinder liner. It hadn't worn completely through the honing from the recent rebuild so I swapped them to where I should have been and now I am waiting on an engine gasket set to put the engine back together. Now I need to work on the front axle which is having a hard time turning, and I need to adjust the brakes and then I should have no issues (for the moment) on the truck and I can start using it more.

That is really about all that is new around here, so even in over months time not much worth posting has come up. But with the weather getting nicer I am sure I will have more things to post, so keep checking back. And keep your eyes out for a new layout!!!!

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