Published on February 15, 2008 in rant and Travel by risu. Closed
Got in last night a little late. The flight was delayed due to non-arrival of aircraft. Maybe 30-40 minutes behind schedule. There was a light snow falling ant the temp was around -6C. I was just happy the flight wasn’t cancelled.
I can’t get the IE Outlook interface to work here for some reason – I can check my mail, but I get some “file…text…unsupported…something” error if I try to send something. That makes me cranky. Some issue with the language version or something. It used to work fine. Had the same issue at 2 different locations.
Published on February 14, 2008 in rant and Travel by risu. Closed
Feet dry at KIX. Flight was OK, but uncomfortably hot. Probably the dummy-plug drives under the seats for the in-flight entertainment systems were cooking me. My watch said the temp was as high as 31C in the cabin! There were some non-Japanese people in back of me… semi-English speakers who insisted on using my seatback as a handle, especially when I had a drink in my hand. Darn those overweight foreigners! Fat dude was pushing his back against mine when we were waiting to deplane, expecting me to move – which I didn’t. Pilot was really good. Nice soft landing on the new runway. Landing approach was over Awaji-shima, then turning in a big right arc to land going out to sea.Â
It’s about 6-9C here. My KIX-CTS flight is on schedule, so everything looks good.
Published on February 14, 2008 in Travel by risu. Closed
All ready to head out. Heading to HNL to catch JO 077 to KIX. There is supposed to be some bad weather warning going on for today – tens of centimeters of snowfall expected nationwide. Hope none of my flight legs get cancelled…
Published on February 13, 2008 in car by taro. Closed
Go home early to work some more on car. I take apart the donor FX dash, and take apart the ventilation system to find where the heck the remote for the stereo dissapeared to. Finally find it after taking everything apart! Sheesh. By the time I’m done, I decide not to try and swap the dash into the new FX as I prob won’t finish in a sane amount of time. I intead decide to swap in the short shifter since that’s simple and already out of the donor. Continue reading ‘Shifty’
Published on February 13, 2008 in car by taro. Closed
Sunday, finally decided to do something about my funky parking brake, esp since I signed up for the SCCA Test and Tune event this Saturday. I looked in the manual and took apart a spare caliper. To get to the parking brake mechanism, I needed some tools I didn’t have. So I decided to try and find a reman caliper. Looked online at Checkers, didn’t have it in stock. Called Napa, no deal. I swear finding parts for the FX is harder than finding parts for Scat’s ’51 Chevy. Finally tried Redline and they had it at the Kalihi store, so I booked it over and picked it up. Continue reading ‘That’s the Brakes’
Published on February 11, 2008 in Culture by risu. Closed
If you’ve been listening to 101.1 Japanese FM, you might have noticed that they have been off-air since last week. The station blog entry for Friday the 8th. indicates that an equipment failure has renderd the station dead for the time being. Hopefully they’ll be up and running again soon.
Okay, as of Thursday 14 February morning, they are back on line. I was wondering if they were going to pull a 99.7 and just up and close without warning…
Published on February 9, 2008 in car by taro. Closed
So after the auction and getting home, I decide I should look at the Corollas after having pretty much ignoring them for a while. I realized the AE86 has had radiator flush in it all this time. I need to drain that, and take apart the idle valve anyway. It was doing the bouncy idle, and when I flexed the hoses going to the idle valve they were quite crunchy. I’m sure the valve is full of crud. The throttle body comes off without much drama. It is pretty crusty with gunk. Inside the intake manifold is pretty grimy too. Dang egr. Extra Gunky Recirculation is what that is! So I set about cleaning the throttle. I can’t do much with the intake. Debating to take it off and take it somewhere to have them hot tank it. That would be ideal.
And just as I suspected, the idle valve is crusted with rust. Taking the valve apart reveals that it seems the blockage is just at the hose end. The valve body itself look pretty clean. So just cleaning out the plugged end and changing out the hoses will hopefully solve the idle issue. Hopefully the rest of the cooling system is ok….
Published on February 9, 2008 in car by taro. Closed
So woke up at 7AM on a Saturday to get to Ckucky’s by 8:30. Dang, it was like going to work! Anyway, Ckucky and I joined Scat in his rowdy sled to go down to the Hawaii Convention Center and check out the classic car auction that was being held. It was an interesting experience. Not exactly sure if worth the ten bucks, but then again you can barely see a movie at a theater for ten bucks anymore, and we spent over two hours there. Ckucky was interested to see how much this Camaro would fetch, he saw it listed earlier in Craigslist. Don’t worry, yours is going to be nicer, because it’s yours!
This Swedish Volvo command car thing was pretty trippy, much larger when you see it in person! Had some cobbed in parts and what looked like some Chevy V8 conversion. Too bad.
And then there was the “Yamazaki” T-Bird. Gotta love it! There was also some pedestrian vehicles that made you wonder what they were doing here, but someone wanted them. Like the Dodge Ram disco van. All it needed was a disco ball.
 Scat was agonizing over this Oldsmobile 88. He had seen someone just buy it. Looks like they turned right around & sold it. It seems to have been sold the first day so we never found out for how much.
Ckucky was practically springing one for this Studebaker pickup. It was very nicely done. Very clean, quality. Nothing outrageous.
We only stuck around for the early part of bidding so didn’t really see how much a lot of these vehicles went for. Still it was intersting to see. And look at a couple of the wierd oddball vehicles that were there too.
Published on February 7, 2008 in Food and Review by risu. Closed
Had dinner at “Joyful Garden” Chinese restaurant near Kozo Sushi in Kaneohe this weekend. Supposedly they also have a downtown location. The atmosphere is more upscale here than the more familiar “take-out”/family dinner Chinese restaurants here. It was very clean and bright inside, and they had a big Philips LCD TV to watch the end of the “Big Game” on. Cloth napkins – I think that sums it up well. The waiters had black slacks, white shirts and black vests! Continue reading ‘Yummy Nuggets’
Published on February 7, 2008 in car and rant by risu. Closed
So did they let all the wacky/crazy/stoopid people out from wherever it is they are suppoese to be locked away and give them all cars to drive for the day?
This morning, I had this “unlicensed Polynesian contractor” make a left turn into the oncoming traffic in the contra-flow lane on Nimitz from the right traffic lane right in front of me in the left lane! He did a good job testing the ABS on the new work van, and made everything in back that was on a pallet become not on a pallet anymore.
Thank you!
After returning to the warehouse to use the forklift to put everything back onto pallets, I left Kakaako and experienced something poetic. The syllable count is all wrong, and there is no reference to the season, but here is my haiku:
Four white vans at a four-way-stop
Three do not know what to do
Welcome to Cooke StreetÂ
it seems like chainring spacers are some kind of mystical vintage part. I've asked at almost every shop in whistler with a service department. Quite a few didn't even know what it was and couldn't comprehend what I wanted to do. Finally found some at Fanatyk Co but only ancient crusty mechanics know about these and they have poor eyesight or something. I asked for 3mm and he even used a ruler, he scrounged up 4mms.
 Scat was agonizing over this Oldsmobile 88. He had seen someone just buy it. Looks like they turned right around & sold it. It seems to have been sold the first day so we never found out for how much.
