travis' brain dump

11:15 and I’ve already had a pretty busy day, whew.

Got a little scare this morning when I was driving in. I saw a puff of smoke come out of my tailpipe when I took off from a stop sign. Of course, being gunshy from the turbo blowout last week I’m wiggin out. I call up Ken over at Phoenix Turbo (Peakboost) and I’m doin the slight panic and he asked if it was steady smokin` and I said no. He laughed and in summary said, it’s probably oil floating around your IC piping since you were stupid and didn’t clean all of it out. I was trippin because I’m running without water coolant lines on the turbo (which isn’t a bad thing as long as I’m not killin the thing) because they didn’t come in until… TODAY! 🙂

So I’ll be putting my water cooling system in this afternoon. Freakin A. Until the water lines are hooked up and the car is cranked back up and I know there is no oil burning up…. I will be on pins and needles. Just glad I’ve got that hood scoop keepin the unit cool for now. If this were a ball bearing turbo I wouldn’t have even run without the water system, but journal bearings, it’s more of a courtesy to run it. lol I also need to clean out the IC system completely today as well. My intercooler is probably hating me right now.

On other notes… I’ve changed a couple things on the blogsite to help with the YouTube video displays. As most of you noticed before that annoying offset to the videos when playing them from my site. Yeah, annoying. I got the actual YouTube code embedded into this thing now, so all the videos coming from there should be good and aligned now. Enjoy proper viewing as though it were on YouTube directly. 🙂

Got some of the room finished up last night. I’m goaling to finish sanding and throw up some primer tonight on the walls. Hopefully that means I’m within a day of finishing that room. I need to get it done so I can move on to the guest room. Only one wall and a doorway to finish in there. So close… but yet so far.

Well, better get back to work.

hmmm… one must ponder. But hey, it’s only five days right? and Monday for all intent and purpose is over with… sort of.

I didn’t feel much like going near a computer yesterday, so a belated Happy Mother’s Day and such to you mothers out there, especially a few of ya. 😉

The rest of the weekend wrapped up pretty well. I got my hands on that other turbo (thanks Jessica!) Saturday night and got it fitted to my car. Luckily it was a direct match and all I needed to do was switch out my exhaust housing to the main unit so it would match up perfect on my car. It’s been working great and that aweful oil burning smell is gone! YAY! I scored a bonus with this thing though that makes me really happy. This one has openings for water cooling lines on it, so that means my turbo will be water cooled once I get some new fittings for it and tie it into my system. For right now it’s running fine though, the oil is running fine through it and in combination with the massive amount of airflow going over the back of the engine from the newly installed hood scoop, the turbo is running cool enough for the moment. I will be hooking up the water lines shortly though, that’s just awesome. It will make it much better for driving longer distances – not that I’m planning on doing that again anytime soon, lol. I’ll be doing some flying from here on out unless absolutely necessary.

Got in some good game time with Andy, Ashleigh and Mike this weekend. It was fun to have us all together again in-game and playing together. Now I’m hooked on getting some quests finished up. I think Andy has succeeded in getting me back into the game, LOL.

I do have to switch some focus though and get some stuff done around the house. I was unable to finished up that downstairs room this weekend due to the turbo situation, however I’m going to try to finish that here in the next day or two hopefully. I really need to just get it done and out of the way. I’m not sure if I’ll end up painting the walls or not other than priming them, but I’ll decide that based on if i can get some paint that will match the other walls. Not sure. A lot of work to get done and very little time. I seem to have a lot piling up but I’ve got to stay on top of it. I’m just glad things have calmed down around the house and it doesn’t seem like Grand Central Station since I got back from Mexico.

Well, I’ve got some things to get done, so I need to get to them.

well at least the positive for today is that I got to sleep until 11:30 … that was most definitely much needed.

Last night was horrible. Starting off with a migraine I knew I was in trouble. To top it all off… the turbo in my car is most definitely toast. I’m about to go out to the garage and put all the pieces in a box and toss it in the trash, because that’s honestly what it’s worth. 🙁 The positive side to it is I might have found another turbo – I just hope it’s in good shape. I’m supposed to meet this person tonight up the street (thankfully I can walk there if necessary because my car isn’t moving) and see about it. From what she describes, it’s what I need so I’ll just cross my fingers for now and hope. Thanks for keeping me sane last night Amanda. No doubt your words of encouragement kept me sane and focused and kept a compressor housing from going through a windshield… lol (ok, maybe not that last part but still – thanks for keeping me focused and grounded) 

So I need to get motivated today, but it’s just hard knowing my car is out of commission but oh well. soon enough. I need to get this room knocked out down here and hopefully I can finish it today. Well, with the exception of the wiring for phone, network and power seeing as how I can’t go hit up lowe’s or home depot for what i need, lol. but none the less I should be able to finish it up aside from those things. then there is the lawn… i was supposed to finish it last night, but that didn’t work out too well. today though… at least if i bust my butt today I can enjoy the fact I’ll get to rest tomorrow. 🙂

Anyway… better get started on this stuff…

So I’ve got a few minutes to indulge in a little bloggin… despite there not being much to blog about at the moment. I think in part that my mind is numb from reviewing all these documents all morning and having a stress session about my car. Not fun. This time last week… I was in Mexico, not stressed. Hmmm… hehe

<sarcasm> So the weekend looks great for me…  yay… </sarcasm>

With my arrival back in Colorado I also seemed to have incurred some damage to my turbo during the drive. Considering it’s got 90,000 miles on it – I’d say it took long enough for the oil seals to go. The frustrating part has been the intermittent smoking coming from my car, very frustrating. I got lined up with someone who has an almost new turbo for sale, so I’m going to go snag that tonight and hopefully put it on this weekend. Link that to finishing the downstairs family room, remaining yard work, cleaning and you’ve got a pretty busy weekend ahead. I’m not looking forward to it, but hey – I knock out two of these and I can take a break. 🙂 For the record, I’m sleeping in tomorrow …

So I finished up all the documentation for this meeting… I’m staring at a stack of 19 documents and thinking that I’m so not looking forward to it. I can see this one eating up all the time from 2pm until I leave work easily. My documents alone should cover that and we’ve got two of us to review … LOL *shrug* oh well. I think I’ll shut my eyes for a few then go for a walk before this meeting. so much fun.

later