Hello Toyota Tacoma

OK, I haven't gotten the Tacoma yet so I hope I'm not jumping the gun just yet, but I'm excited. I grabbed some pics off of the dealer's site so everyone can see what it looks like. Pretty sweet, eh? It has BF Goodridge All Terrain TA/KO's on it and everything. Those are just the tires that I'd put on if I were't so cheap. My best friend Jon and I went many places we never thought possible atop four BFG's, ignoring the fact that those were considerably bigger and being powered by a Chevy V-8, and I can't wait to see where these can take me. Most likely just to work and back several hundred times, but nonetheless, they look pretty badass don't they? Yeah, I thought so too.

Bye Bye Golf Diesel

I've finally given up on the Golf. Putting aside the fact that there are good sized rust holes in the body and that the driver's door handle is a speaker cable, the fact that parts mounted to the engine are beginning to shake themselves loose is enough for me to call it quits. I've decided that since I no longer live in a bad neighborhood, like Wooster St. in New Haven, I can have a decent vehicle again and not worry too much about it being broken into every other month or so. My friend/coworker Lee is now the proud owner of the '86 VW Golf Diesel. He'll be posting any changes to the Golf here: http://nodeep6-86.blogspot.com/. I will be replacing the Golf with a 2000 Toyota Tacoma 4WD pickup(The sale willl be final on 2/23/06), which I put a deposit on last night. Hopefully the Tacoma will be a tool in my DIY projects rather than becoming another project itself. I'll post some pics of it as soon as I can.

DIY - Practically free fix for broken car door handle

Do you own an older car on which the outer door handles are difficult to use or don't work at all? If so, I have the fix for you. My '86 VW Golf's driver’s door handle broke one morning as I was attempting to go to work. It has the old VW trigger style door handles that have a reputation for failing over time. Call me cheap or whatever you'd like, but since I paid $800 for this car I'm certainly not going to pay the ridiculous prices charged for a replacement door handle. Instead I chose to put my inventive mind to work and created a fix that cost me nothing but a bit of embarrassment when people see it. Knowing that I had some speaker cable that once went to the stereo on the CJ (the stereo had been stolen a year or so before I bought the Jeep) in the garage, I figured that I could finally find a good use for it. I tied one end to the grab handle on the inside of the driver’s door, and the other to the interior and still operational door handle. Now when I get out of the car I simply hold on to the wire loop and shut it in the door. To get in I jut pull on the loop. Problem solved and it didn’t cost me a penny.

Two year anniversary

YAY!!! I've officially made it a whole two years at my current employer. As I mentioned in my first post, I work for a major American firearms manufacturer. So far it's been a prett cool job and I've learned a great deal about surface modelling in Solidworks(for an example of what I do, see the picture of the stock model that I've made. This one will probably never be made so I guess it's OK to post it), as well as some of the ins and outs of plastic molding. I've become pretty decent at solid modeling. I'm definitely the best here(the truth is that surface modeling in Solidworks is a terribly tedious thing to do and I am the only one at here that has been subjected to this torture). Hopefully this will pay off in the future if this company suffers a similar fate to Winchester, which is closing its doors very soon. I can apply what I've learned here to product design elsewhere as well, so I should be all set. One more year and this will be the longest I've ever worked for a company. I've only been out a college for five years though, so its not like I'm a job-hopper or anything. Just three more years and my 401k is vested. I guess that's something to shoot for.