Chubby Racer

Yesterday my son hit 4 months old, and shit is getting really interesting.  The biggest thing is he's starting to take long naps.  But developmentally he's also starting to reach for things, and make noises at himself which is great.  We as parents are starting to figure out the difference between gas pain crying and tired crying which means that there's much less of the former. As for me, my olympic lifting is going very poorly.  I don't know what's going on, but the little muscular endurance I had built is GONE.  A session used to be 21 reps of either clean or snatch with ever increasing weights.  Friday I made it to 8 before my hamstrings cratered.  Not sure if this is diet, stress, or just old manness, but it needs to be investigated. On the weapon projects front, I made a post to www.reddit.com/r/ar10 about my 4 MOA palmetto state armory AR10.  The sub was incredulous that the rifle was that bad, and suggested I try a few different loads ...

Despite what may or may not be happening elsewhere in North America, Houston is still hot.  Not just hot, but fucking hot.  Why make the distinction?  Because fucking hot requires a/c always.  Regular hot means I can drive the jeep around with the doors off, and not look like I swam to my destination.  The change from fucking hot to hot is coming, though, and I'm trying to find time to get the leaf springs on the jeep replaced in time for it.  So far, have after 6 weeks, I've found time to replace 2.  On the bright side: she no longer sits lopsided.  I'm starting to settle into the job and parenthood.  Getting out of banking was the right call both for me from a phyiscal and mental health standpoint as well as for my family.  My kid will actually know who I am.  He's growing fast, and is hilariously mega gassy. The olympic lifting is coming along.  It's such a slow process.  There's no breakthroughs, it's just tiny i...

Welp, I am no longer an employee of Wells Fargo.  On a hormonal level, I don't think that has set in yet.  It's funny to think that I might be LESS stressed at this new job WITH A NEWBORN.  Yea, Wells was bad.  There was literally no way to unplug from that place.  They expected you to be on call 24/7 except 1 weekend a month...that they would cancel at their convenience. So I guess the thing to do now is refocus on personal pursuits.  To me, this means my fitness and my guitar playing.  Fitness means signing up for crossfit again (did friday), and clearing some clutter out of the garage for more workout space.  This brings us to the title:  Last week I tried and failed to rebuild the lawn mower.  The hardest part of that rebuild was getting the self propel drive pulley off the crankshaft.  It had to move about 4" down a shaft that had swelled with rust.  It literally took every once of bicep I had and several days of pain to...

The wedding went off really well.  The worst thing about the whole thing was that the cake wasn't nearly what Kendra expected it to be.  The jeep and baby Felice survived 2 days of VERY bouncy terrain.  I'm going to have to replace all the leaf springs, but I had kind of expected that anyway.  Luckily the previous owner gave me a set, and I've spent the last few weeks pressing out the shot rubber bushings in them, and installing urethane replacements.  Let me tell you: that's a bitch without a hydraulic press.  I nigger rigged something with a 2-tooth gear puller that worked, but it was a LOT of muscle to get it done. Simultaneously, I've been attempting to rebuild the motor on my mower.  I got that back in today and...no compression.  I don't know if the head is warped or if there's just no valve seal, but it's toast.  Kind of embarassing and a giant waste of money. Now that the mower project is done, I can go get the jeep out of the loc...

Well, sort of.  Or not really at all.  Tomorrow starts the road trip to our wedding destination.  Of course, I'm going to try to do Murph first at Kendra's request.  That'll certainly make 12 hours in the car fun as everything tightens up. I hit a new PR in snatch yesterday: 110 lbs (49.9 kgs).  If "successful" snatch still feels like a complete mistake, and my coach telling me to "get back on the bar, and do it 2 more times just like that" proves it as I never can, The jeep is as done as it's going to get.  The vacuum actuated front axle disconnect is still a question mark in my mind, and I guess it always will be until it's gone.  The t-case shifter linkage is too, but that's a 30 second trail fix. I loaded up Trooper, my athlon fx machine, into the truck.  Thanks to wild software issues, it ended up being my most reliable machine after finally reading up on how to OC properly.  Who would have thought with as much trouble as I had wit...

It has been over a year since my last blogpost.  Cray.  I'll blame that, as I do everything, on my job.  the entirety of my life has taken a backseat to this gig.  So.  Many. Hours.  And it will never get better. Anyway, in the tiny fraction of my waking hours that ISN'T spend in my cubicle, life has changed a lot. I'm engaged Baby due in a few months I (or I guess really, we) bought a jeep wrangler.  In all honesty, it's kind of a turd because it had been left to rot in the PO's driveway for quite some time, but amazingly there's nothing seriously wrong.  Sure, the front driveshaft was rolling around in the bed area, the transfer case linkage wasn't connected, and the battery had no hold-down, but those were all easily addressed.  The fate's have aligned and we are having some unusually cool weather for late April in Houston so I'm currently driving her (we named her Ouray as that's where we're getting married and the reason w...

I've been ignoring this blog for a minute because of the last few week's craziness, but the upside is that there's stuff to actually say. Cobra I've redecided...again...to attempt the coyote swap on the Cobra.  The 3 issues have always been  Sound Cruise Emissions I've heard enough sound clips of coyote swapped foxes at this point that I'm kinda convinced I won't lose my 4v burble.  As to the cruise and emissions...well...I might be able to fix the cruise.  And as for the emissions: fuck it.  I'm putting a FAR more efficient engine in, it will have cats so the state of Texas can get fucked on their non-emissions emisssions test.  If they'd actually put the sniffer to it, it'd pass.  But nnnnoooooo they just want to plug into the computer. Guitar Despite the job change, I was able to keep my guitar instructor, but we've moved to a new location.  It's a little inconvenient, but it'll do.  I'll definitely not get th...