Having discovered that both of the motor mount nuts were missing the Cadillac had earned a stay of execution. Early last week I purchased a new set of fasteners for only a dollar! After installing them I had expected to just start the car up and see if the “clunk” sound had gone away. Imagine my surprise when it cranked over and over and over, and over again without starting up!

I’ll spare you all of the details of troubleshooting the no start issue, but suffice to say I replaced my ignition coil, and second guessed myself countless times on the proper firing order and timing for this engine. At the end of the day, (I think) the timing was retarded by nearly a whole cylinder and one of the terminals of the coil wire was smashed.

My victory over the timing, and getting the car running was short lived though. It ran for only a few seconds before I heard the “clunk” noise I had been diagnosing, and it occurred a couple more times before I shut it down.

A new mystery has surfaced as well. I may not have already mentioned that my oil dipstick seems to be a replacement from some other vehicle, and that it seems like it was actually broken off near the end, so it doesn’t reach the oil in the crankcase. Well, in addition to that mismatch I discovered something else quite interesting while troubleshooting my timing issue. I had the motor near TDC for cylinder 1, but had gotten a bit past it, so I started to turn the engine “backward” to get it back to TDC. As I did so, I noticed that the oil dipstick seemed to be moving! Curious, I continued to turn the motor backward, and the dipstick continued to be forced out of the dipstick tube!

I’ve put off removing the motor long enough, it’s going to come out, and I’m going to do a very thorough tear down and inspection of motor. Hopefully, I’ll find the answers to all of these mysteries, and hopefully I’ll find that the motor is in good enough condition to use for a while.

With things starting to slow down with my work schedule, I was actually able to take this weekend off! I got to relax quite a lot, spend some time with the family, and spend a little time in the garage with the Caddy.

You may remember from my last last update about the Cadillac, that I had a few outstanding mysteries to try to resolve.

First, let’s talk about the “easy” one, the Harmonic Balancer/Dampener. You see, it seemed have been bent or damaged at some point, since one side of it was closer to the engine than the other. This created a situation where it would “wobble” on the crank as the engine was running not cool! As was preparing to remove it, I pulled some of the bolts which hold the crank pulley onto the dampener. What I noticed is that when I removed the first bolt, which happened to be in the spot on the dampener where it was “pushed out”, that the dampener seemed to start returning to it’s original shape. After completely removing the bolts, and using a pry bar the dampener was back to it’s original shape! Turns out that someone before me replaced one of the pulley bolts with a bolt that was nearly twice as long, and it was pushing on the dampener causing the problem I observed!

Now, for the more onerous “clunking” noise. When I first heard it, I thought for sure that it was an issue with the valvetrain, so sure was I in fact that I pulled the passenger side valve cover off expecting to see a bent push-rod, or a broken rocker arm, or some other catastrophic failure. Imagine my surprise when I looked under the valvecover and found no problem what-so-ever! I even pulled the drivers side, thinking I’d misjudged the origin of the noise, no luck there either. At that point I had pretty much decided that the engine was going to come out, and I needed to do a complete inspection to find the source of the issue. I put my tools away and put the project on hold for awhile.

Now, as it just so happens in the meantime I read this little gem, which described another symptom which I’d just sorta ignored. I read down to the 6th post in that thread, and I had a light bulb moment. If my valves were sticking open, it’s possible that the “clunk” I heard was the rocker arm smacking the stem of a still open valve. This would explain why it wasn’t a consistent sound which increased with RPM, since the valve(s) may not stick on ever revolution and increasing RPM probably got the valves moving enough that they did not stick. So, the valve covers came off again, and all the spark plugs came out, and I began turning the engine over by hand, fully anticipating that I’d see one or more valves on the passenger side staying open. Sadly, I was disappointed once again as everything worked exactly as it ought to.

At this point, I was again convinced that the only solution was to yank the engine entirely and do a thorough teardown and inspection. I did a quick compression test which I’d been intending to do for some time. All of the cylinders were within a few PSI of 150, except for the # 5 & 6 cylinders, which were both just north of 170PSI. That’s a fairly good sign that the shortblock is probably in decent shape, and I’ll probably be able to run this thing once I solve the mystery of the “clunk”. So I proceeded to yank the wiring, and everything else I needed to on the top of the motor, then jacked the car up and headed underneath to disconnect everything down there. Once down there, I took a quick peek to see how hard it was going to be to access the engine mount fasteners. Imagine my surprise when I realized that BOTH of the engine mount nuts were missing!

It occurred to me pretty quickly that this could just as easily be the source of my “clunk” sound, the engine slapping against the crossmember when it skips a beat. And even makes more sense that it would be the passenger side since the engine rotates in the opposite direction! At that point I put the car back on the ground, put my tools away, and called a day. Today I am going to go buy some replacement nuts for the motor mounts, and hopefully install them soon to see if that solves the “clunk” mystery. If it doesn’t this time (for sure) I’ll be pulling the motor out to tear it down and inspect it.

The next mystery for me to solve is that the spark plug in the #8 cylinder had absolutely 0 gap! I’m hoping that it was just a mistake while installing it, and not a piston which reached up and slapped it silly (that could cause a clunking noise too), we’ll see soon enough!

The story you are about to read is true, not even the names have been changed so as to fully implicate the accused.

First, a teensy bit of background. I conduct a lot of transactions online, and do most of my business electronically. I own three of my own domains, and manage a fourth for a friend, as well as hosting all of them on my own VPS. As such I feel I’ve become pretty attuned to possible scams, phishing attempts, and other ne’er-do-wells. That is, until last week.

See, when I needed to register a new domain and have it hosted, I went with the “all in one” offering with the hosting company I was using before I switched to my VPS. This was super convenient, as they handled registering the domain for me, and set me up with one year of hosting a website and email for that domain for one year. Great, one stop shopping! That was nearly one year ago, and the domain is due for renewal in December.

So, when I received an email from a domain registrar I did not recognize suggesting that I renew my domain I assumed that it was the domain registrar that my hosting company used to register the domain on my behalf. I happily followed the link and renewed my domain with that registrar for two more years. I did find it odd that I didn’t have to supply any user credentials or other identification, but I just assumed they’d use some of the personal information I provided to compare against the WHOIS or something. Besides, what do they care if someone else pays to renew a domain, even if it doesn’t belong to them, right?

Well, some days later I received another email, from what appeared to be a separate entity than the domain registrar I renewed with. This email requested that I authorize a domain name transfer to them. Hmmmn.. Wait, I thought I renewed, not transferred. Something is wrong here..

I proceeded to do a few quick Google searches on the domain registrar that I renewed with, and the name of the registrar which was apparently requesting a domain transfer. Turns out they’re all part of the same organization based out of Canada, and all I read was experiences of shady business practices and situations of domains which were either lost, or trapped in limbo! Some keywords for you to search on in order to read what I read about. No bueno!

domain registry of america scam domain registry of america brandon gray namejuice.com

Great, so now I realize I’ve given my personal details to some unscrupulous individuals and they’ve charged me $50 for two years of domain registration which I’ll likely never actually receive from them. Fortunately, the domain transfer request turned out to be suspicious enough to catch my attention and make me thing twice before proceeding! At least my domain name is safe (I hope).

Next steps? I call my bank, and file a chargeback for the $50 charge, and have them cancel the Visa bank card I used to place the order. Now I get to be on the look out for odd or fraudulent charges on my account, yay me! Tomorrow I’m going to try to actually renew and transfer my domain to Register.com where I manage my other domains.

So, here are the lessons I’ve learned and some sage advice you might benefit from.

• Whenever possible, register your domain name yourself with a reputable domain registrar. Something like;
  • Register.com
  • Network Solutions
  • Go Daddy
• If you do happen to let some entity register a domain on your behalf, know who that registrar is. You can use the WHOIS domain services to learn what registrar “owns” your domain.
• When renewing or registering a domain, make sure not to do so by clicking on links from emails, instead go to the registered web address for the domain registrar identified in the previous bullet point

So when I bought the Caddy, I knew it had a cooling system issue. The previous owner had diagnosed it as a leaking water pump, so that’s where I started. Little did I know what lay in store for me!

First, the 429 Cadillac motor which is in the 67’ Deville was only made for about two years, and in very low volume. As such, there is hardly any aftermarket parts available for it. I spent about two weeks trying to track down a water pump before finally finding one on eBay. One of the biggest issues was that I could not tell if the pump was a one, or two inlet pump. None of the illustrations showed any difference between the two. I finally was able to track down a Cardone part number, and find actual photographs of the parts. Turns out I had a one inlet pump.

So secure in knowing that I’d ordered the right water pump, and a number of other supporting parts (thermostat, hoses, belts, gaskets, etc), I started tearing things down. The first thing I noticed is that the apparent leak in the cooling system probably wasn’t originating from the water pump, but looked like it was likely coming from the lower radiator hose which was bulged and clearly distressed. This is interesting, since the pump that was installed was aluminum just like the original, and could possibly be the stock water pump!

I also took this opportunity to remove some other ancillary bits which weren’t needed or functional. Someone before me had already disabled the “smog pump” system by removing the hoses from the air pump to the inlets on the exhaust manifold, but they had left the smog pump and brackets in place, so I finished the job of removing those. I also removed the A/C compressor since that system had long since lost pressure and was not operational. Interestingly, the compressor was only held on by a single bolt!!

I noticed also that the mechanical fan attached to the water pump did not have a clutch, which is normally installed on the A/C equipped cars. I decided that rather than trying to reuse that fan, I’d go ahead and install an electric fan, we’ll elaborate more on that in a later post though. The radiator also seemed fairly new. Nicely painted, no bent fins and no obvious rust inside like there obviously was in the block.

One other thing I noted was that the harmonic balancer on the crank appears damaged. It kinda looks like someone took a big hammer and hit it, causing it to bend into a sort of taco shape. Going to need to probably pull that off and see what’s what.

So, having completed the water pump R&R and getting it all back together, I started the car up to pull it into the driveway and let it warm up before topping off the cooling system. I cleaned up a bit as it idled in the driveway, then went to “tap” the throttle to bring it off of high idle. Of course, the throttle stuck! After getting the pedal to come back up, the engine was still running, and all seemed well aside from a little smoke. Then, I started to notice a “clunking” sound that was coming from the passenger side of the engine compartment. Not really consistent, and didn’t increase or decrease with engine speed. Not knowing what it was, I quickly pulled the car back into the garage, and called it quits.

And that is how it has sat for several days since then. I haven’t had a chance to look into the mystery clunking noise, and the balancer is still misshapen. I had hoped to get some miles out of the stock 429 before doing an engine swap (which was always my plan), but it’s starting to look less promising that I’ll be able to do that. A shame too since I wanted to try to get a chassis dyno run or two in order to see the “actual” stock horsepower/torque numbers of the 429.

I’ll do a bit more diagnosis of the “clunking” noise, and see if I can repair the balancer without too much cost. Stay tuned here for more!

I’ve owned quite a number of cars in my relatively short driving history thus-far. And a lot of them have been what I consider a “Project Car”. Now to me, that always meant a car which is pretty much your daily driver, but which gets lots of attention on evenings and weekends to either upgrade or (more commonly) repair it. These wrenching sessions were ALWAYS labored and rushed because, well, I had to drive the car to work the next day, or the coming Monday morning. This made working on the cars stressful, and burdensome, like a chore rather than a past time or enjoyable hobby.

Now that I’m a little more grown up, and have a family, our primary car (2006 Honda Odyssey) is quite new and is well maintained and needs very little (if any) attention. We also have my wifes car which is the second she’s ever owned, and is a little bit older (1992 Lexus ES300) but is also in quite good condition and is reliable. So that leaves my ‘67 Caddy, which is in need of a lot of TLC so I wrench on it, but the experience is different from that of a “project car”.

I had never realized it before, but working on a car can actually be fun! Don’t get me wrong, it’s always been rewarding, to see the results of your hard work. But when you have to rush to get done so that you have the utility of the vehicle when you’re done, it detracts some from the experience. I think I’ve stepped into a zone of having a “Hobby Car”, which to me means a car that I get to wrench on, rather than have to wrench on. A subtle difference to be sure, but very significant when it comes to the experience.

Take my latest project for instance. I had to replace the water pump since it (apparently) had a leak. Normally I would have run to a parts store, perhaps Friday afternoon or evening to get all the parts that I thought I would need. Saturday morning would come, and I’d remove the necessary parts to replace it. I’d discover that I forgot a replacement part, go to pick it up from the parts store then make some progress, and realize I needed another part I hadn’t picked up. Rinse and repeat the drive to the parts store a few times. Then upon reassembly I’d hit some snag where I either broke something, or lost a part, or was otherwise discouraged. This usually happens late on Saturday night, when I was starting to think I’d wrap the project up. I’d admit defeat, frustrated, and go to bed. Wake up late Sunday since I didn’t go to sleep til late the night before. Drag myself out to finish the job, usually repeating some of the frustration and parts runs and finally wrapping everything up late Sunday. Then, drive the car to work on Monday.

Now, however I get to really take my time. Identify the issues, order all of the right parts in advance, and even pick and choose the superior brands and have them mail ordered. I have time while the parts are in transit to clean everything up that I’m working on, removing rust, dirt, and old gasket material. Maybe even do some cosmetic things like painting. No hurry, I don’t “need” the car to be running to get me to work or take care of my family. I get to work on it at my own pace. I find that it’s actually relaxing, rather than stressful. How novel!

No doubt, the fact that I’m also able to work in a garage contributes to the overall satisfaction, but I think a lot of the enjoyment comes from being able to take my time and do the job right, with no looming deadline.

So for all you guys out there with project cars, consider buying a reliable daily driver, and make your project car a hobby car. This is advice that older, wiser gearheads have given me in the past, and I never quite understood it, until now!

When I first discovered the Explorer it was in my Spanish class during a video group project presentation we were doing. One group accidentally left in a part when they were cruising around in their Eddie Bauer Explorer singing along with the Spice Girls, What you Want. ::chills:: Ewwww. I thought it was cheesy then when the song was at it’s height and it still annoys me to this day.

It was a cute car but it just seemed too trendy for my liking. I already was starting my love affair with Honda and Toyota. About this exact time my husband, who I didn’t know, was dreaming of owning an Eddie Bauer Explorer, along with a long list of other cars that he would so love to own. My husband has been a car guy from birth, honest.

I had a good friend that I knew since I was 13 that bought an Explorer after we graduated from culinary school. She was a personal chef for a family in town and had to do a lot of driving as they had a gourmet pallet and it was her job to keep them happy. She would drive all over town to get certain items from specialty stores as it was only the best of the best for this family. One day she got on the free way and didn’t see the car in her blind spot till it was too late. While trying to avoid hitting the other car she spun out of control and rolled the Explorer. She was hurt but not terribly hurt. I then was petrified of the vehicle.

By this time I was dating my now husband. I knew he wanted to own a Explorer one day. I saw the stats on the news, heard news story after news story about the vehicle being prone to roll overs and how the pillars in the car weren’t as strong as they used to be. Every time the car came up in conversation I would get knots in my stomach and would kindly remind him that he already had two cars and I had my own car. Why on earth would we want a fourth car? The topic would be dropped.

Three years later the topic came up again, by then we were married and my husband was in the process of selling his only car. To be honest the car was too small for my husband, when he hit 45mph in that thing his head would bounce against the roof and it was driving both of us nuts. He promised that he would be safe in the Explorer, that he would lower it and brought me so many articles about how if you were to drop it by 1 and 3/8” it would be a whole lot safer. Some of these articles were written by professional drivers and the lowered Explorer was able to compete with some coupe cars in handling. I finally gave my blessing for him to buy the Explorer.

It was a great car, I even drove it for a while as I was trying to learn how to drive my new to me car which is a stick. It had great pick up, fantastic storage space. When I was pregnant and was too big to drive my manual car I drove the Explorer as I didn’t have to be too close to the steering wheel. We brought our baby home in that car.

My husband had made many modifications that made me feel more comfortable with us driving the Explorer on the regular. The suspension was more responsive, the brakes were incredible, the audio system was AMAZING. I began to trust the car to keep us all safe when it was dry out. I noticed that it got scary squirrely in the rain and when the ground was wet. I would pray that nothing ever happen to my husband or child while in this car, it seriously scared me.

Then one day, I was rushing home as I worked really late. It had just rained for an hour or more, sudden down pour in April. I figured I would take a faster route as I was engorged (did you really think I wouldn’t mention boobs again?) and was worried about my son having a melt down with my husband. I lowered the volume of the stereo and headed out. I kept reminding myself that I needed to be careful, that it just rained for the first time in a long time. I needed to be aware.

I sat at a red light and saw that it was safe to make a right on to the free way on ramp. I slowly pressed on the accelerator topped out at 10-15mph when the turn was completed. Then I fish tailed. I suddenly started chanting to calm down. I reminded myself not to touch the brake, not to touch the accelerator and no turning the steering wheel because that is how my friend lost complete control of her Explorer years ago. To just try to let the car coast until I got traction again. I soon felt the car calm, felt like I was in control again. I slowly pressed on the accelerator again, got up to 25-30mph and then felt the car begin to spin. I immediately took my foot of the accelerator and reminded myself not to turn, touch the brakes, not to touch the accelerator again. When I saw a construction sign directly in front of me I decided it was time to close my eyes, there wasn’t much I could do, I just didn’t want the accident to be any worse than it was going to be.

I opened my eyes when the car stopped moving. It was surreal, I wished it to be a terrible dream. Then I realized that I couldn’t get up, I couldn’t get of the car on my own. I was hanging from my seat belt looking at foliage on the median and couldn’t find my cell phone. That is when I screamed, cried, begged for help praying someone saw me and would help me. I finally found my cell phone and called my husband to get help and to apologize for destroying his baby, his car. I didn’t realize that my blue tooth was still connected to my phone, which I ripped off pissed that I couldn’t find my phone. I couldn’t hear my husband answer and not knowing he could hear me I spoke to the good Samaritan that stopped and called 911 for me.

I attempted to call my husband again and all I did was cry, I apologized over and over for screwing up. I felt like the worst wife ever. My husband responded the way a husband should, “Shut up! Are you ok? Where are you? I love you. Everything is going to be ok as long as you are ok.” I told every fireman, every police man, and every EMT, every Doctor and nurse I interacted with that night about how I destroyed my husband’s dream car.

My husband took care of everything for the next week, he was my knight in shinning armor. I don’t remember him moping or ever telling me bitterly that I destroyed his car. To be honest, I will be happy if we never own another Explorer, or any other SUV for that matter. I am happy it was me in that car as I am quite a bit shorter that my husband and I am not sure if he would have been able to walk out of the ER a few hours after being checked out. I am thrilled my son wasn’t in the car with me. That was my relationship with the Explorer, our break up was dramatic but long lasting.

So as you may have already read, we moved from our apartment into a modest house. This was necessary for a number of reasons, not the least of which were our toddler growing up and needing more space, and the fact that I’m working 90%+ from home and needed an office. A couple of side benefits for me were getting a nice small(ish) lawn in the back yard, and a garage.

Lets talk about the lawn first. At our apartment, we had a small patch of dirt that was maybe 5’ x 8’ that we did clean up and laid sod. For a few weeks it was GREAT and looked fantastic. I’d water it regularly and mow it every week, it was great and I had a huge sense of pride and accomplishment in it. However, due to the way the sun shined (or didn’t as the case may be) the grass didn’t last long and I was immensely mournful when it met with it’s eventual demise.

With the new place, I get another chance to have a healthy lawn! It’s significantly larger, but not huge this time. I am again mowing it weekly, and watering it regularly, and I have a strange almost indescribable sense of pride and glee everytime I work on it or look out the window at it. What is it about a healthy, green, and well manicured lawn that resonates so deeply with the male psyche? I can’t explain it, I just know that it makes me smile and makes me want to GRUNT in satisfaction. UHHH UHH OHHAAHH!!

I also scored a two car garage in the move. Now, I know this is fairly mundane for most but allow me to explain. Growing up we lived in like three different places that had garages, however we never had space to work or park cars in the garage! As I type this, both my 67 Caddy and our family minivan are safely parked in the garage along with my tools and some items which we’re storing, and it’s clean and organized! On top of that, I have room to work which is a total luxury for me. I have done some pretty significant mechanics work in a carport with space for one car at our old apartment. This included completely dismantling the explorer down to just the sheet metal, frame, and suspension. In the short month that we’ve lived in this house I’ve had the opportunity to help my sister change her oil, and I’ve started to dig into the project of getting the Caddy’s cooling system up to snuff. The difference between working outdoors, or in a cramped carport vs. working in a garage is indescribable!

So a lawn, and a garage… Two things which I’ve gained from moving in here which seem to appeal to the very core of my being as a man. I don’t claim to understand it, but I can tell you that it’s extraordinarily gratifying and just seems to be part of the male DNA.

I am something of a Google Zealot, I was using the search engine back before many people knew what it was and haven’t strayed since. I’ve been using GMail for the better part of two years, and it handles ALL of my incoming mail, I even forward all of the emails from my self hosted domains to it. I use Google Docs for everything, including writing and storing invoices for my consulting work and any of my other “office” needs. And I use Google Voice daily for business phone calls. We used Google Maps to find and track rental homes, and it helped us find the place we’re living in now. Google Analytics keeps a finger on the pulse of the (itty bitty) traffic on this site. Google Reader is my RSS reader of choice, which I use almost strictly through a gadget on my iGoogle homepage along with tgadget for Twitter. I sync my iPhone with Google Calendar, and wouldn’t know what I’m doing any particular day without it. You get the idea. :–)

So you can imagine that when I heard about Google Wave, I instantly signed up to receive an early invite. And as you can probably also imagine, I was super disappointed when the first set of invites went out to the public, and I didn’t get mine! I watched as many of the people I follow on Twitter announced that they’d received their invite, and were happily getting started with Google Wave. Of course, many of them were reporting serious usability issues and disappointments but I was never-the-less anxious to get my peek at it. After a few short weeks I managed to trade a Google Voice invite for a Google Wave invite.

Now getting the wave invite was… Interesting.. Evidently when a user is granted some discretionary invitations they aren’t sent out immediately when used. Instead a user “nominates” a person to receive a Google Wave account. Apparently there is some waiting involved, and I suspect some manual human intervention on the part of Google in order to actually send the concrete invitation. After waiting four days (two of which were the weekend) I actually received the email that my invitation had arrived!

My initial interaction with Wave was reasonably short. I watched a couple of the introduction videos, make a few setting changes to my profile, added a couple of people who I knew were on Wave, and logged out. My first real Wave was from an acquaintance of mine from Twitter who had also recently gotten Wave. We both admitted that we were excited to have the new tool, but really had very little idea of what it was really intended for!

After having a couple interactions with a few others later that day, I started to get a feel for the interface and the power of the tool. See, I’m currently working on a software project which is reasonably large in scope. The nature of the company I work for means that we didn’t have the time, money, or expertise to hire a big enough development team to accomplish the software solution we’re trying to build. So, we’re managing with myself as the lead architect, a business analyst who knows what this thing is supposed to do, and a project manager on our side. Then we’re having all of the development work done by an offshore team.

Very quickly it struck me that Wave lends itself VERY well to this sort of thing, and in fact I think real-time collaboration for creative/design purposes is exactly what this tool is designed for. In many of the sessions of collaboration that we’ve had over the phone, having a parallel wave would be invaluable! Imagine an integration with Google Docs, I can create a wordpressing doc, a presentation, or a spreadsheet and simply attach it to the wave. Or I can take a screenshot and toss it in there where it is appropriate. Everyone has visibility to the results. This thing is DESIGNED for agile, if you ask me.

That said, this is still a very early version. In all of the “buzz” about Wave it was claimed that it will contact you in any way that is appropriate. If you’re at your computer, and logged into Wave, you’d get the real-time view. Not logged in? That’s okay we’ll nag you by email. Not at a computer? Easy you’ll get an SMS message. None of that functionality seems to be there yet though, as there is no place to supply my email address (you’re supplied with an @googlewave.com address which you can’t access), or my phone number (should already know my Google Voice number). And there is the matter of stability. It certainly has some kinks to be worked out.

So, now that I’ve caught the Wave, I’m looking forward to really starting to use it to my advantage and riding along to see how the tool evolves. Isn’t it fun being an early adopter?

Man, nearly two months without a post here. Google Analytics tells me I’m only disappointing about two dozen people, so to you my loyal readers, accept my humblest apologies. But, I do have an excuse or two!

See, I’ve been working an insane work schedule. Pretty much 16-18hours a day 6-7 days a week, mostly on phone calls with an offshore team at odd hours. When I do have a moment or two that I’m not working, you can bet the last thing I want to be doing is sitting in front of a computer typing a blog post.

To add to that, we moved out of our two bedroom townhouse at the beginning of October, and are just getting fully settled into our new place. I’m TOTALLY excited about the new house. We’ve got three bedrooms and one and a half baths, it’s single story which is great because Q can roam around as he pleases. It’s also got a great, and quite large sun room that opens into the backyard, this has become Q’s defacto playroom which is excellent. Plus, we’ve got a bigger kitchen, a proper dining area where we can sit and eat as a family, and I have my very own office and *drumroll* TWO CAR GARAGE!

Now that we’re settled in the new house, and the deadline for work is approaching things are starting to drift back toward “normal” as if there is such a thing for our family. I even managed to grab a couple hours to work on the Cadillac today, and write this blog entry! HUZZAH!

In the meantime, my wife has done an excellent job of providing content since I made her an author here to. You may have noticed