back and forth, back and forth.

January 11, 2004

Back to my Dad’s house. I haven’t been over here since the trip after Christmas, but it feels like much longer since before that it seemed like I was over here a lot what with car troubles and holidays. Well now I’m back over here, though very little of it has to do with car troubles. When I got my car back on Christmas Eve, I noticed a few little quirks with it–mainly that it didn’t have nearly as much pickup as it did before. That’s not a big deal, but that I have to press harder on the gas to attain the same speeds as before or even to accelerate any. The biggest problem is that I drove out to Oregon City one day and I went through about 1/3 of my tank of gas. Now that may sound OK, except that it’s 35 miles door to door where I was going, and that means I used about 5 gallons of gas. Even if I make it a little more conservative, say, maybe a quarter of a tank, that’s still under 10 miles per gallon. That doesn’t sound right to me. So while I’m on my trip, the car’s going to be looked at to make sure that everything was put back properly. My Dad suspects that maybe the engine is using too much fuel, which would account for both the bad gas mileage (but let’s face it…I didn’t get great mileage to begin with) and the lack of pickup. See, that goes against my own mechanical logic, though. He said that if the engine is using too much gas, it doesn’t have as much pickup.. To me, more gas = more combustion = faster pistons = more power. I don’t know the inner workings of combustion engines all that well besides the basic mechanics that I probably mutilated above, so hey, it’s all Greek to me.

But proving that not all machines are foreign and unknown, I finally got to get my sister’s computer up and running after about five months of waiting for her to purchase the last of the parts. It was a great feeling. Not only did I get to set up a new machine which I always enjoy doing, but I crossed something off my mental “to do” list. The main reason why the push finally came at the end, as I mentioned before, is that she wants to play the same game she gave me for Christmas. So it took for a few hours to get everything moved into her new chassis, installed, etc, and so right now she’s off playing the game and getting her character going. Eventually, we plan on actually playing together, but right now my character is slightly more powerful than her brand spankin’ new character. But since I’ll be travelling for some of this week, I won’t get a chance to play and work on the character I’ve created.

Yes, I’ll be travelling this week for a bit. not the whole week, but just for a few days. The plan is that I’m headed over to Bend tomorrow, then some stuff in Madras the day after, then back to Portland. Then later this week down to Albany. I’m not exactly sure what to expect and what I’ll be doing, but fear not! I have procured myself dial-up Internet access and I will relate my experiences as I go! So tomorrow around 2 PM Martin is coming to pick me up and we’re going to head over to Bend with my iPod blaring all the way over. Should be fun, and we’ll get a chance to talk a little more about what I may have to do should I get the job. That’s the main problem I have with this, is that I don’t know *exactly* what’s expected of me, both since the job interview I initially had was about three months ago (or thereabouts) and he was a little vague about the details of a position in the first place. We’ll just have to see.

So for now, I’m just getting ready to head out tomorrow. Charging my cell phone, charging my iPod, taking out things I brought I won’t need (my running shoes, etc). As for the snow and ice, the main roads are all tip top, but the side streets are still a little snowy and slushy. My Mom’s street is OK, but some of the other side streets are still covered with snow. The temperature is up around 40 in the Portland metro area, so things shouldn’t last too much longer.

I guess I’ll update again when I’m in Bend. Catch you all tomorrow.

Posted in Geekery, General