I hate that presstopia logs me out and I lose my post... ugh.  I may have to look at the settings.. it ate yet another post because I took a long time writing it and didn't think to copy to the clipboard before clicking post.

Anyways.. my post content was about that I may not get my new german wagon yet.. we'll see.  Maybe I'll wait till the end of summer to search again.

Also, at lunch today a semi hauling a construction vehicle littered the highway with rocks, dried mud, and nails... I got a nail in the sidewall, ruining one of my older front tires.. I was planning to replace them because they were nearing the end of their life.. but I was hoping to nurse it for awhile.  Oh well, I just hope that I didn't get more rock chips on the hood and I'm glad that neither I, nor the car was damaged in the incident.  Stupid construction vehicles!

I've been searching for my new daily driver for awhile now.. probably been thinking about it for more than a year or two.  My corrado is my first baby, for sure but if I want it to stay as nice as it is, it has to take a step back and can't be driven everyday.  I know that I already don't drive it in winter, but even the spring and fall can be rough on it, so what do I want?

I'm trying to find the happy medium of practicality, excitement, and long term stability.... what have I found?  Well... I scratched off things like the Audi TT and a new VW GTi from the list because they just aren't very practical.  They would be fun to drive, but I already have a small hatchback.  Since I still want something fun to drive, it needs to have a manual transmission and a decent engine and with long term usage, I want something well made.  So what is it?  We're getting there, hold on to your horses!  Practicality says I should get a sedan or a wagon so that I can haul people and stuff.  So what are my options for practical, fun to drive, and long lasting?  I was thinking german sport wagon, either Audi A4 avant or BMW 3 Series touring.  I set my mind on those 2 cars awhile back and have been periodically looking for a good shaped one, with low mileage and manual transmission.  I found two this winter but both sold before I could make an offer... but I found one last week.  2004 BMW 325xit... it's a wagon, it's all wheel drive, it's got a 5 speed and it's low mileage.  Some bonuses there being awd, that will help in the winter, I won't have to drive the jeep all winter long, maybe just when the big storms come in.  It's red too and insurance is fairly cheap, I'm assuming because it's a wagon. ;)  Suckers!  They don't know how awesome the straight 6 is going to be!  Now lets just see if I can hash out some numbers with the bank and seller.

Congratulations to Lisa and Trish on purchasing two sexy red cars!  First up is Trish and her new 07 Audi A4 Quattro... 2.0T with 6 speed manual and it's red, woot!

Then comes Lisa and her 01 Volvo S60, also sexy red and stick shift.. I don't actually know the engine specs on this.. but it sure does have a turbocharger!

I'm jealous, both girls have pretty new turbocharged toys!  Hope my German sport wagon shows up soon, I want a new toy too!

What is going on here in WI????  In the last week there have been some very disturbing things going on that have me baffled.  Are times really that bad that we need to resort to this type of stuff??  Prostitution ring exposed in Oshkosh using Craigslist, then a murder in town this morning and a bunch of idiot kids killing animals in Beaver Dam.  That follows the idiots killing ducks and super idiots running over deer with their snowmobiles.  What the heck is going on?  Why have people become so stupid? 

I'd like to think that we are better than that... or at least I'd like to think that most of us are better than that.

Heard about an accident on 441 this morning... co-worker saw a truck rear end a school bus.  I hope the kids are all okay.

So... my list of corrado things is fairly long.. things to do to the car, things to buy for the car, and things I've done to the car... Many of said things were all about looks, style, and speed.. a few have been handling, mainly suspension and strut bars to stiffen the car and reduce body roll, etc.. but nothing has been done to/for my stopping abilities until now!  My box of new Brembo rotors, hawk pads, braided steel lines and a couple other pieces arrived yesterday.  The install should happen in a week.. I'm jazzed.  The brakes have long been on the list of things to do but are always passed up for some other more flashy mod/repair. 

Here is a picture of the parts:

So along with the brake job, I will also be re-wiring the entire carputer.. that thing is wacked right now.  I had it working yesterday, long enough to load the new version of centrafuse, listened to a few songs on my drive home.. then it wack into wacko hibernate/resume mode where I do nothing but watch it boot and hibernate constantly.  In doing that crazy stuff, the touchscreen gets out of sync too, so I can't even click on things to try to help it.  So yeah.. time to rewire that thing.  Speaking of which, the new version of centrafuse is pretty cool looking.  I snapped a pic but it sucked, so I won't even both to post it.

Getting back to my corrado list... the list is getting relatively short.  I am finally happy with a set of wheels, no need to divert from that.  I've done enough wheel swapping over the years with it.  I really should buy a solid state hard drive for the carputer, that would eliminate some of my problems.  I need to troubleshoot some soundcard or subwoofer issues still, but all in all.. just need need to tweak to get the system stable.  Might either replace the euro lip or put the NA one back on.. not sure yet.. the euro one gets trashed with how low my car is and it's very pricey for a piece of plastic.

I don't know about Twitter... I was a nay sayer from the beginning, I didn't really see a point to it.  I have a blog.. people can subscribe to it via RSS if they want.  I have facebook, people can get email notifications, etc from that if they want, I just don't understand the want/need to get a billion txt messages from people telling you about random events throughout their daily lives.  I get enough calls and txts about things, if I wanted to follow my friends and random other peoples' lives this closely, I'd have to up my txt plan on my phone.  Also, who has the time to read all that stuff?  Or better yet, a lot of those posts contain links, isn't the point of twitter to just sent plain txt?  I don't have a data plan on my phone, I can't surf those links you sent me unless I pull up my twitter page and check it online.

I don't know.. just me thinking out loud.. I was a nay sayer and it was kind of rude cause I never tried it out.  Now I've been on it for a week and I still don't really see the point.  It's like, how many places can I post a small snippet of my thoughts for the day?? And is it okay if my fb and twitter messages are the same?  Do I have to come up with different things to talk about on each?  Am I boring if I don't update multiple times a day?

I only have a few followers and I only follow a handful of people, two of which I had on sms updates.. from 7-9 last night.. I had 11 txt messages.. eff that.  I'm sorry but thats just too much to deal with.  Now I'm set to no sms updates and I'll likely lose interest.  If there is something I'm missing, somebody enlighten me.  Sure, if I had a data device, blackberry, windows mobile devices, etc.. I'd be more hip to it, I'd be crackberrying all over the place, but I don't, so I'm not that into it.

I had a very interesting discussion yesterday about cable television.. so here is my rant.

-When is the monopoly going to be over where I can choose my cable provider by something other than geographic location?  Ma Bell got split up and had to provide access to her copper... why can't time warner and charter give way to competitors?

-Why do I have to pay for 500 channels when I only want 50-100?

-Why cant I either have every channel and just pay for programs that I actually watch or just select a small bundle of channels that I want?

-Why does it cost more to have internet from my cable company without having their digital tv service?

-Why can't I have on-demand for every channel?  Like peer to peer dvr sharing... "oh I forgot to record Lost, lets look at the local dvr'd shows"... or even the local cable place could have a massive dvr that records everything and lets me just stream what I want.

-Why can't we get a ban on commercials having louder than normal volumes?  It's bad enough when I watch live tv that I have to watch the damned commercials in the first place, but I surely shouldn't have to grab the remote to turn the thing down... seriously.. fix the audio levels.

-Lastly, why doesn't time warner have web access to my dvr?  Charter has it and isn't even advertising it... don't know why.. but you can not only control your dvr from the web, but you can stream from it too!!  Catch up TW!

And I'm not referring to single channel audio, although that can't be good...  I'm talking about the infectious virus known as mono.  Eff that stupid thing!  There should be a vaccine or something that all kids should get to be immune to that as an adult cause it's rough!  Random fever, horribly sore throat and swollen lymph nodes.  Constant aching and fatigue... and to top it off, it lasts for weeks and weeks.  As a child, you may get it and not ever know... as an adult, you get lovely things like "enlarged spleen and liver" warnings that prevent you from playing any contact sports cause you could rupture your spleen and bleed out.  Good freaking times!  So yeah, to sum it up, I have mono, the "kissing" virus and it blows!  Hopefully, I'm round the bend.  I stopped taking the a-rod pills cause I don't want to gain a bunch of weight... and I'm just dealing with minor fevers here and there a little fatigue still but mostly, I'm better.  Not 100% yet... but I think I'm officially "on the mend".  I'm not sure which part was my favorite, waking up literally in a pool of sweat or not being able to eat for a couple days although, I can definitely afford to miss a meal or two! 

That said... where is spring?  I wants my spring!  I want to drive the corrado and smell fresh warm air!

I meant to update on how my weekend went way back when... but I got busy and didn't.  Trish, GeeBee and I went to Kettle Moraine "north" and did some snowshoeing... we had a blast!  There was a "race" going on, on the Ice Age trail that weekend, consisting of a "there and back" type of thing, totalling 62 miles.  No snowshoes allowed, but they could use poles and track things for their boots if they wanted.  Some of the people were pretty hardcore, others were just chugging along having a good time.  I've been in those woods in the dark on my mt. bike and it was sort of ... um.. scary.  I'm not sure I'd want to be on foot in there, especially in multiple feet of snow in the dark.  Regardless, we had a good time and even got to borrow some of the heat at the "warming" rest stops for the racers.  They had fires and warm beverages for all the racers.  From what I could tell, only a few racers went missing, aka, eaten by werewolves!

Okay, that brings you up to speed from a week ago, this past weekend it was FREAKING insanely cold, so we stayed in mostly.. Saturday we attended EAA's Ski-plane fly-in/Audrey's birthday party.  It was a hoot and thankfully not insanely cold in the hangar... the soup and chili was nice and hot!  Then we stripped wallpaper from Trish's kitchen and on Sunday we painted the whole room, it looks really good!  Sorry don't have pics today, check her facebook site tomorrow maybe.  I'm sort of in a DIY home improvement mood now... wish I had some ching saved up to remodel my kitchen and bathroom!  Who knows.. maybe I'll penny pinch a bit and at least paint the dining room and put carpet in there.

Munising ice climbing festival this weekend.. stay tuned, maybe I'll even add a new flash gallery so my tat pic isn't the first thing you see on my site.

Layed down for bed on Wednesday night after working out and eating gyros... a few minutes later, I was puking my guts out into the garbage can... then awhile later was praying to the porcelain god... it was so bad that I had splashback!  I had top and bottom problems all night... it was terrible!  My temp was 101... I layed on the couch all day yesterday managed not to puke, but I was on the can every 20 minutes, save when I was asleep.  Some chicken soup and 3 movies later, I was able to keep some food and liquids down.  My fever broke about 10pm last night... quickly dropping to 98.something.  Woke up early today, hopefully to get to work and catch up on things but sure as shit, my jeep wouldn't start in the -30 temps outside.  I finally got in around 11.. had to borrow my moms car.  All in all, a couple of crappy days.  Hopefully the weekend is better!

My deepest sympathies for several of my friends and friends' of friends, as early 2009 has taken some of their loved ones.  It's always difficult to find the right things to say in such an occasion... I hope that you remember the good times that you had and in doing so, I hope it brings a smile to your face.  Keep your loved ones in your thoughts and cherish the time you have together.

This year brought many changes to my life... some of them didn't feel right at first, but in the end, they were without a shred of doubt!  Sometimes charging into the darkness is exactly what you need.  The great unknown, that is the American job market.  That worked out very well for me, I'm very happy with my new job.  I'm busy, I work with great people, I'm challenged everyday, and I really get to flex my troubleshooting muscles regularly.  It won't take long for me to really get involved in larger projects as well.  And I got to log 3000 miles on Andy's Harley while I was between jobs.

Then there is the lovely girl that I've managed to capture in my web. (I know she'll love the spider reference!) Where would I be without you?  Would I have handled my unemployment situation with as much grace or patience without you by my side?  Would I... hmm.. there are a lot of "would I's" that I could talk about but many would sound very cliché.  Simply put, I've been very independent for a long time, yet somehow the transformation was natural and smooth with you.  I'm so happy right now that I find it hard to believe I had joy in my life without you.  I find myself thinking about the Smashmouth song - "whole lotta love", a lot.  Like I had been saving it up... perhaps I was. ;)

Wow... that took a long time to write... hehe...  back to my 2008 recap.  Lets see... what else.  I'm still sailing, didn't get on my catamaran nearly enough this year, but I plan to change that for 2009!  I vow to get out on the trapeze wires this summer!  Sailed a couple times with Pete this year out in Annapolis, that was a hoot!  Had a wonderful ski trip in Montana, we are planning to go again Q1 2009.  I got a tattoo, dork ink, but still ink.  I might get another tat in 09.  I didn't wear my kilt nearly enough this year, so I'm busting it out tonight, I did however, wear it on the harley one day, so thats pretty BA, if I say so myself and I just did.  I need to get back on a regular gym schedule, Trish and I tried in December, but the holidays really mess up the regiment, not to forget all the holiday treats that you just can't turn down, mmmm fudge!  Although, the gym becomes a crazy busy place in January with all the New Year's resolutions to lose weight... that usually lasts till feb, then returns to normal.

I need to pay off all my cc debt so that I can buy new toys!  I want a harley, I want a german sport wagon too (bmw 3 series or audi a4 avant)... and my Corrado needs some lovin' too!  She did get a pretty custom made cover for xmas, but she needs new brakes in the spring and the carputer needs some attention too, somebody submit me to overhaul'in! 

Alrighty, everybody have a safe New Year's celebration!  Stay off the roadways!  I'm packing my sleeping bag for the party tonight.

Okay.. my last post was not a taunt to mother nature... I swear! 

I had a paragraph typed of all sorts of well wishes for the holidays and what not.. but presstopia ate it cause I was doing other things while I typed it and my session timed out... and I didn't think to copy it to the clipboard before clicking post.. so it's gone and I don't feel like typing it all up.  Happy Chanuka, Merry Christmas, and have a safe New Year's celebration!

Santa, I want an e46 BMW wagon in manual transmission.. or an audi A4 avant also in manual trans. :)