So what is everyone doing this weekend?

Hilton Head Concours thanks to Classic Motorsports. I'm in Bluffton tonite.

I opened a show this weekend.  Massive success.  No one died and my set didn't fall apart.  Tomorrow I'm road-tripping with Hot For Teacher to a random cooking class 2 hours away because that's how we roll.  We love road trips and random things.  Evidently it's a cooking class for a vegan thanksgiving menu and it's BYOB, so I'm down like tofu.  Last week we took a road trip to see a tree.  Not kidding.  Super fun.  Found a great brunch spot.

Sunday I'm going to poke around my first potential challenge car.  Might buy it if it isn't rusted away.

I also got to play with the Back To The Future Delorean as part of a museum exhibit.  I'm also in the middle of a build... a bluetooth portable speaker kit that I'm assembling.

I also found time to apply for a new job.  Basically what I'm doing now as a Tech Director but adds teaching a couple classes at a private school.... and literally 2.5x more pay.  Cross fingers.

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

Good luck with the potential job. I'm glad for the update, I like keeping track of what you're doing. BTW, my wife is working in theater again, Stetson University just hired her to run the costume shop in the theater department. 
 

As for the weekend, autocross in Lakeland tomorrow. 

Going to a brew day at my friends house to “help”.  I think it’s a winter warmer for the holidays.  Forecast for 76 today and tomorrow so fun car time as well. 

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

Good luck on the application!

Going to go take the BRZ for a quick drive and spray it off from driving it in the rain the other day. Pickup some stuff for cocktails, then hope Oklahoma State actually shows up for the game unlike the horrific beat down we received last week. 

Then we have a ton of boxes to break down and some stuff to take out to the curb for "big trash day."

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

Good luck with getting that job Curtis. 

Wifey has been coughing up a lung all week. I feel a little crappy too. Yeah! I ran to the store and bought everything I need to make chicken noodle soup. I got everything prepped so I just have to cook it. 

My daughter is going on her Senior Dinner Cruise in SF Bay tonight. I'm going to take some portraits of her and the boy. Hopefully Mr. Sunny will make an appearance.  :^)

Other than that I *need* to take a drive. That seems to be the only thing that helps clear my head lately.

Working. 8-3 at the day job then costume change and 4:30-2 for a wedding.

Put most of my 70's Schwinn Speedster back together.

Fixed two leaking tires on my riding lawnmower future go kart.  

Put air in my Silverado tires then relearned the TPMS sensors.  Wife came out asking what I'm beeping for.  

Wife finally came to the realization that actually finishing out the basement to build a couple offices is going to be difficult and expensive and take some time.   We made two of the kids bunk together because she needed an office post-covid where she was WFH full time. A couple months back she started a new job that is 100% in-office.  Despite the fact that my job has always been at least mostly WFH, I'm just stuffed in a corner of the unfinished basement humping the water heater so that our eldest could have her own room, but she's been hanging on to this bedroom-cum-office for her gaming because she "doesn't like people looking at me" or some crap.  Anyway, now I'm clearing out more space in the basement to fit her computer and whatnot and running some more power.

Today Sunday is the yearly French Italian car show at Woodley park in the Van nuys area of Los Angeles , 

Free to walk in and I think about $20 to drive in and show your car.

100s of interesting cars.

Gary said:

this color and wheel combo is one of my favorites.  I painted my Datsun Roadster wheels to get this look.  The red Triumph is a shot from Road America - late '80's to early 90's?

Well, since I was getting bored with recuperating from leukemia and learning to walk again I "decided " it was a good weekend to try Covid. I don't recommend it. Better days ahead 

DeadSkunk (Warren) said:

Well, since I was getting bored with recuperating from leukemia and learning to walk again I "decided " it was a good weekend to try Covid. I don't recommend it. Better days ahead 

Warren, I hope it goes ok. I'm wandering through my second bout with it now without any other complications at it's no picnic.

Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

Good luck with the potential job. I'm glad for the update, I like keeping track of what you're doing. BTW, my wife is working in theater again, Stetson University just hired her to run the costume shop in the theater department. 
 

As for the weekend, autocross in Lakeland tomorrow. 

Congrats to Mrs. Floating Doc!

This weekend's fun: Adventures in TV Repair!

Earlier this year, the day job sold our old office building. As part of the Tech department, I was part of the group in charge of the clean-out. Since we were doing all the grunt work, as a perk, management said to take whatever we wanted from the place, as it was all getting tossed. One of those things was a Samsung 50" Smart TV that I put up not long before the pandemic closed the place. I tested it and it still worked, so I packed it up and put it in my garage. 

A few months later, I hung it on the garage wall, but something was wrong. It would turn on, but there was no picture. After doing some research, this model was notorious for having problems with the LED light array. They are back lit by strips of LED lights, and if just one goes out for whatever reason, they ALL go out. While it's possible to isolate and wire around the bad LEDs, I just ordered a new set of LED bars, because they are pretty cheap. They showed up on Friday, so I spent my Saturday night attempting a fix. 



Getting the back of it off was the hardest part, honestly. It all just snaps together, so I had to use an array of panel separators to get it off. 



After removing the IR sensor (lower left) and the speakers (bottom), I slowly removed the bezel, the glass screen itself, and the reflectors. I was "in the zone" and forgot to take more pics, but the LED strips came right out no problem and were easily replaced. 

After getting it back together and hung on the wall...


YAY BACKLIT TV!!! But I made one dumb mistake: I tried connecting it to the internet. This almost bricked the thing, because it had not seen internet for about 2.5 YEARS, so every app and the firmware were fighting each other to update, which froze the TV repeatedly. After figuring that out, I disconnected it from the network, and all regular TV functions returned to normal. 

So, now my Smart TV is a Dumb TV. So what can I use to make it Smart again that I have kicking around? This thing: 



This is an Intel Compute Stick. It's a tiny form factor Windows PC on a stick! Runs off of Micro USB, has two regular USB ports, and even a Micro SD slot. 



I control it with this wireless rechargeable keyboard controller thingy. It works really well for what it is. 


After ALL of the updates...



I was doing Garage TV things. GREAT SUCCESS!!! This will make spending time out in the garage more pleasant, and it's extremely useful for when I'm watching a tutorial while wrenching on something instead of trying to use my phone. Admittedly, the Compute Stick has its limits (it doesn't enjoy streaming in HD very much), so I may be switching that out to another small form factor PC that I have kicking around. But still, this was quite the adventure getting this all working! 
 

I replaced the rear hatch weatherstrip on my Corvette and spent some time treating all of the rest of the weatherstrip on the car with Shin Etsu.

I found out that my  13 year old kid needed "a way to hold up my model" for the class project tomorrow. Thats 75% of her grade. 

Oh, and it had to have a minimum 36 in span, 14 inch height, and be completely open (her part was the hovercraft over the arena model for the hunger games)

So, at 6pm on a sunday, after being up since 3, i fired up the pantera station on pandora, dusted off my flaky harbor freight flux core, straightened some mangled 3/8 fuel line, chopped up a piece of 1x2, and banged that E36 M3 out.

she will live to be an adult. I want grandkids. 

Some range time with a bunch of other club members. Shot a real mp5.  That was neat. Split a cord of wood today and then took the family to the local Italian place.  
 

 I had a productive and largely domestic weekend. Cleaned and tidied the place, hit up Farmers Market and did a bunch of food prep for the week ahead. Took a reasonably long walk between rain showers, called my best friend on his birthday, voted, paid my property taxes, and got ready for the work week.

Went for a bike ride down Duffins Creek trail and did some work on the Toyobaru.

Also watched a couple movies, Bullet Train and Smile. Bullet Train was a fun action flick and Smile is the best horror movie I've seen in a long time. The basic concept of what's happening is pretty frightening plus it's loaded with jump scares which may seem cheap at first, but they're jump scares which the main character also experiences, so the monster is terrorizing the viewers and the protagonist in the same way. It's also sort of a sci-fi-horror movie on what would happen if one person were being haunted by something nobody else could see. The characters all react in pretty realistic ways with very little use of "horror movie logic." If you sit down and tell someone close to you that something invisible is terrorizing you, their reaction is much more likely to be "you need professional help with your mental health" than "I believe you, let me connect you with someone I happen to know who's an expert on this and has a string-board chart about it in the shack where he keeps his monster-hunting gear." There are two characters in the movie are closest to the wizened monster-hunter role, but they have very different beliefs about what they experienced and react in realistic ways as well...

Hurricane Ian cleanup AND tropical storm Nicole prep. 
I need a nap.

Doing ex Challenge car things in the rain.

Like replacing plastic fuel lids that some Mofo broke with aluminum spinny thingies.

Resolving the bad pre pump filter and pump issue, running a new -10 feed as well as some -8 to the regulator. The post pump filter was ordered as a -6 but a new correct one is en route.

I thought I was going to get a night off and started doing this:

But then I answered a phone call.

I ended up burning jet fuel dusk to dawn, dusk to dawn, and sleeping all day Saturday and Sunday.

The completed bluetooth speaker from this past weekend: