Mechanic’s Tale: Junkyard Dogs - The Car Connection

Harold Combs

Mechanic’s Tale: Junkyard Dogs - The Car Connection: “In the crazy Jac Nasser years at Ford I kept hearing rumors of Ford attempting to buy up large numbers of junkyards. He chased every unprofitable business strategy that came down the pike, so I guess he could have taken the profit out of junkyards too.”

(to the tune of “Oh, how I love Jesus”)
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Oh, how I hate Fo-ords,
Oh, how I hate Fo-ords,
Yes, Oh, how I hate Fo-ords,
Because they first hated me.
_

700 posts + the weekend

Harold Combs

:-) Can’t believe I have 700 posts on here…wow.

* * *

Ah, the weekend: Joey, Whitney, and I went up to da Ville to attend a wedding. Small, neat affair off Peterson St in the Highlands. For a simple wedding-on-the-porch, it had lots of mishaps–Firetruck went by during the special music, flower-girl pancaked on the dancefloor (with exciting bleeding!), and the photographer’s assistant passed-out.

Whitney felt faint and my persistent hamstring injury kept us off the dancefloor :-(

Quote from Sue

Harold Combs

Republicans: People who will stay out of your business, but dictate your personal life
Democrats: People who will dictate your business, but stay out of your personal life.

Woohoo!

Gag from last night's parenting class...

Harold Combs

Whitney: [describing the our if-then chart from Doorposts]

Pastor: That sounds great could you bring those in?

W: Sure.

Pastor (joking): Bring in the one for Harold as well.

Me: That one takes up the whole outside wall of the house.

Happy Father's Day!

Harold Combs

I am SOOOOO happy today: Whitney is 7 weeks along with our first child!!!

She gave me the news only a few weeks ago, and I couldn’t be happier. Her first OB appointment was today, and they did bloodwork and gave her brand-name neo-natal vitamins to take.

I thank God for blessing us with a new soul to bring into this world, and pray that he give us the guidance in raising him or her. (Whitney think’s it’s a girl, BTW…terrible morning sickness!)

Happy Father's Day! (Comments)

Harold Combs

Awesome! Congratulations! Let the name games begi…

Jeff Roberts - Jun 4, 2006

Awesome! Congratulations! Let the name games begin…

Cat A. Combs
Fine Toothed Combs
Honey Combs

Hmm, not quite as fun as when my friend, Mr. Bean, had his first kid.

Congrats :-)

Announcement: Ppl @ LXK do stuff besides code

Harold Combs

Neat “Battle of the Bands” type thing tomorrow night, courtesy of Sam Rhodus, my former team lead and all-around cool guy:

This Wednesday night (6/21/06) my band D-Sul will be competing in WKQQ’s Decent Exposure at the Blue Moon. This contest is based entirely on fan votes so I’d love for you guys to get out and vote for D-Sul. The prize money would be enough to get our EP out the door. We’re on late (Midnight), but you don’t have to stick around late to vote for us. You can come, hangout with us, vote (as often as you’d like for $5 each) and leave. I would encourage you all to watch the show as it’s pretty good, but your vote really counts here and it IS a school night : )
Show starts at 9pm, we’re on at 12.

Quickie: Israeli history explained.

Harold Combs

Just read Nehemiah this morning, the account of the Persian governor of Judah, rebuilder of Jerusalem’s walls after the Chaldeans destroyed them under Nebuchadnezzar.

Alright, from Joshua through Nehemiah, I can pretty much boil it down to this:



Nation israel = new Nation();  
for ( ;; )  
{  
  israel.forgetAbout( GOD );  
  israel.getPunishedBy( GOD );  
  israel = new Nation( israel.getRemnant() )  
}  

GOD, of course, is a global constant, visible to everyone.

A nice walk from the mechanic's

Harold Combs

Dropped the beamer at Paul’s foreign auto (2nd street & MLK ) and then walked the 2.5 miles back to Lexmark in about 30 minutes. Good exercise for my pulled hamstring and just good “me” time.

Read John Eldridge’s Wild At Heart over the weekend

I must say, REALLY challenging book, written like a bad Freshman Composition paper. How shall we convince our audience to get off the couch and be real men? Let’s quote a bazillion “Real men” and make constant appeals to emotion. Let’s move from that to some Dave Ramsey-esque personal anecdotes that (obviously) apply to everyone out there. Let’s speak of broad vistas, of mountain climbing, kayaking, and other rather extreme sports. Did some of John’s buddies die doing those sports? Yep…but hey, that’s the point right? Life’s an adventure, not a burden.

VBS -- a retrospective

Harold Combs

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Yooooooooooooooooooooo…tengo un amigo que me ama
me ama
me ama
Yo tengo un amigo que me ama
su nombre es Jesus! :clap: :clap: :clap:
_

Welcome to VBS at Northside Christian church. We’ll happily take your kids off your hands, 2 hrs/day for 5 nights (6-8 pm).

We had a class of up to to 7: Drew, Jamie, Faith, Brooklyn, Shelby, Sierra, and that gal I can’t remember. From the 2nd night on, we were lucky to have 5. Pretty awesome week, but it wasn’t too spiritual, just rather practical. Really liked all the yummy snacks we had had from the Church women, and interacting with the kids was neat.

"Cars" review

Harold Combs

Cars

Cars is, possibly, the best pure movie about cars ever made: It celebrates all that is wonderful about automobiles–freedom, exploration, and competition, all the while ignoring environmentalism, urban sprawl, and the disconnectedness that the automobile has imbued.

Cars is the latest effort from John Lassiter, renegade 3D animation pioneer and partner of Steve Jobs in Pixar. It follows 3D monuments like Toy Story, a Bugs Life, Monsters Inc., Nemo, and the Incredibles, and like them it’s a character-driven story. This time the protagonist is Lightning McQueen, a “Piston Cup” (wink, NASCAR!) rookie car who ditches his team in his quest to win the title himself. Surprise, he blows a tire on the last lap, forcing him into a 3-way runoff with King, played by Richard Petty, and Chick Hicks, the antagonist.

Amazon Groceries!? WTF?

Harold Combs

Article

Overall it looks like Amazon Groceries may earn a few pennies of some family dollars, and it does make a never-outdoors life slightly easier to achieve. If the feature finds some traction in the market, it’s not hard to imagine a nationwide Webvan 2.0 operation in the future, riding on Amazon’s infrastructure and pushing the old-fashioned country store concept further into Hades.

Greaaaaaaaaat.

On random things

Harold Combs

On Father’s Day. This is a new “day” for me, and I must say, I like it. I got some cools gifts and Joey, Whitney, and I really liked it.

Whitney got me some neat cologne + aftershave (“Truth” from Calvin Klein), which I’ve been wearing for the past week, and Joey got me a baseball glove.

Joe-man and I played catch for the first time, and it was AWESOME! :-)

On random things (Comments)

Harold Combs

Bob Roberts is a favorite of mine. It ranks right …

Bryan - Jun 5, 2006

Bob Roberts is a favorite of mine. It ranks right up there with Bulworth and Wag the Dog, as far as political satires go.

Dr. Bud's latest column

Harold Combs

Bud

The third stage is when things get a little difficult. There are too many new cars out, too many magazine covers taunting you with “NEW!” and “BEST EVER!” and “THE NEW BENCHMARK!” Too many cool cars coming out and showing up in your town, on your streets, and all of a sudden, you’re drivin’ yesterday’s news. At this point, you either stay the course and don’t waver from your original plan, or you start to get edgy and you start distancing yourself from your choice. You like it okay and all, but you’re looking around and starting to spend far too much time reading car reviews again. You don’t quite have The Fever, but you can feel it coming in about six months or so.

A blog for my car

Harold Combs

My old “private” blog is no more. It went to the scary delete button purgatory of Blogger, complete with its so-not-me-anymore sentiments.

In its place, I have a new public blog: Bimmer Whoa’s, to document my time with my 1990 325iS.

Should be interesting.

"Modern cars" or "Why I'm glad I have an E30"

Harold Combs

TCL thread

Okay, I take several things from this thread:

  1. Just as cars used to be designed to rust/break, they’re now designed to run forever, but require dealer visits for all maintenance.

  2. Old cars rock. Engineered by rules-of-thumb and experience, not by CAD tolerances down to 1 mm / part. Understressed, overbuilt engines that were evolutionary.

  3. Wow, I don’t want to own a new VW. Oh yeah, I knew that already.

"Bugs" in the auto world

Harold Combs

Car lounge link

Coupla thoughts here:

  1. Since cars have more computers, does this imply they’ll have bugs, by definition?

  2. Will any inside engineer even admit to “defective” products, especially given the legal ramifications?

Interested to see where my CL thread goes, if it goes anywhere.