Staging Lanes

For those that don’t know, the staging lanes are the section of a drag strip where all the cars that will be racing line up and wait their turn to race. So the title of the post implicitly states that this is the first in a series of posts revolving around the same general idea. So what is this idea you may ask? Graduation and future plans of working on Valarie.

I am 26 days away from graduating. Well. Kind of. In 26 days I *will* graduate, but I am contemplating going right back into the fire – to get my master’s degree in one of my minors. While I desperately want a reprieve, the drive to push myself further and further all the time and the desire to financially secure myself and future family are making me heavily consider going right back to school.

What this whole thing means for Valarie is that in 28 days, I have the first jobs for working on Valarie on my calender. Then, for almost every weekend and some weekdays, I have other jobs. I have a personal goal to be able to safely and confidently drive Valarie to Shelley’s house (and back) before the end of the summer. This means I will have to get myself in gear in order to accomplish this. Unfortunately Shelley won’t be around much this summer, so while I won’t have much else to do besides work and work on Valarie, I also won’t have her help and insight on what to do if I get stuck. Next post will be when I am closer to graduation and a little insight into my game-plan and the like.

Last time I was in a staging lane I caught an alcohol dragster’s exhaust to the eyes
– Sooner Dead

Spring Break

Sorry it has taken me so long to post, but there is a good reason for it: I have been busy getting a job. Yeah, I know I already have two, but those are just college jobs and this one is the start of a career. This has been a very hectic few weeks as I interviewed, waiting for callbacks and doing even more interviewing. I even had a business ethics choice to make already and while I had a difficult choice, I had a lot of great people behind me, most of all my fiance. Speaking of my fiance, it has also been a rough week with her; she lost both dogs that she grew up with in less than a week.

So what this career thing means is that I will have much more time to spend working on Valarie because I no longer need to go to class all day, only to come home and have to worry about homework or tests. I work from 8am until 5pm and when I come home, all the rest of the time can be spent doing whatever I wish. The only downside is, because I will no longer be receiving student loans, I will be technically be getting less money, so I won’t have as much to go around to work on Valarie, especially since I need to be saving for the wedding and a home. As always, family come first over possessions, I would sell Valarie and everything else I owned before I put my family in any financial struggle.

I start my new career on Monday, so I will be busy learning the ins and outs of the job for a little bit and once school is out I may be able to really get a lot of work done. I hope to drive Valarie around a little bit this summer at least – and if I can’t do that maybe it is time to admit defeat.

Apparently I am about to join the rat race
–Sooner Dead

Hold On

Hello from New Orleans, or as the locals say “N’awlins.” The food down here is, in a word, amazing – assuming you like seafood. I haven’t stepped outside the seafood / Cajun / creole genre since I never get to eat this food at home. If it wasn’t for the fact I don’t much care for anything else in the city, I would live here just for the food.

Of course N’awlins isn’t all fun and clogging one’s arteries! I am very very busy while I am down here. I am always very busy. Why is that, you may ask? It’s actually very simple. Meteorology graduates out-pace demand for meteorologist on the order of 4 to 1. Well, jeez, that kind of sucks, that means for every job for a meteorologist, there are 4 meteorologists to fill it. That means to be competitive, I have to be one of the top 25% of meteorologists, in my national graduating class of ~600, that means I have to be one of the top 150 students. But wait, there’s more! Private companies (the ones I am interested in) only employ 30% of the total jobs. So, 30% of 150 is 45. So now, statistically, there is only 45 jobs available per year for me. Let’s have some fun and say about 50% of those jobs are purely forecasting, which is not what I do, 50% of 45 is 23 (rounding up). 23 jobs left. I think I would take those odds, be one of the 23 best meteorologists in a group of 92. Here is the big rub: I have to stay in Oklahoma, eliminating 90% of my potential job base, 10% of 23 is 2.3, and since there is no such thing as a 0.3 job, we are down to *TWO* jobs. Now I have to be one of the best *TWO* meteorologists in a group of 92, that is much harder, and the reason as to why I have to work so hard. But all this work will be paid off in the end you may say, right? WRONG. A BS in Meteorology pays, on average, slightly *LESS* than a secondary school teacher, and is one of the only sciences where the pay difference from a BS to MS isn’t enough to justify the extra time spent. It’s fun finding out how choices made so long ago can so greatly impact the rest of your life – and for the negative. The previous post said it best: “House of Cards.”

Sorry I went all emo, but these blog things are sometimes the best way to complain out loud and pretend someone actually cares, when, from what I have seen, not even the people closest to you do. I will try not to take it as personally that perfect strangers don’t care than I do when people close to me don’t care.

My survival, still so uncertain.
–Sooner Dead

Michigan Adventure

I have been on a well deserved ‘vacation’ and visiting my family back home. As always, Shelley came with me and – as always – the snow melted just before we came up. Featuring I have been wanting to show Shelley a true ‘Michigan winter’ for some time, this was very disappointing. Luckily for both of us, however, unlike the previous years, this year had snow in our future. And not just a little snow – a lot – of snow. A front came through and dropped about 4-6″ on top of the ~2″ base of snow we already had. This isn’t anything to write home about, at least until the lake effect snow machine started up in high gear. Once the lake effect snow machine got going it started snowing heavy and it didn’t stop for anything. When it was all said and done we were sitting around 2.5 feet of snow.

We now had plenty of snow to go snowmobiling and plenty of ice to go ice fishing – and did we ever take advantage of this opportunity. In fact, Shelley found her new favorite hobby: snowmobiling. We really had a blast, but like all good things, it had to come to an end and now I am back home and it is time to start working again.

There is so much to do between now and the next month it is almost sad, but there is great opportunity to be had as well. I also really want to change Shelley’s favorite hobby from snowmobiling to drag racing, as she has never drag raced before. I want to get the car running soon, I need to get the car running soon – but this is all reliant on that little thing I previously mentioned called ‘will power’.

I slam the gas down and hear just stuttering
–Sooner Dead

Atrophy

I was driving home yesterday, tired from yet another day going to school and working for over 12 hours again. It was around 11 o’clock at night and a fresh mist was falling on the ground, leaving a glisten on the roads indicative of traction begging to be broken. While Katrina may not be a muscle car, lots of low end torque and very little weight on the rear allows for some fun. It was at this moment I was about to put my right foot to the floor when my calf started to hurt. It was then I realized just how much I missed driving a muscle car around. Many fun times were had with Shelley and I in a muscle car, and I feel many more will be had. So now, as I work and go to school, it is as though every time I see or think about a muscle car it is just a dream I cannot reach.

Though with this school semester coming to a close, I hay have some good news soon.

I think I need to exercise my accelerator foot some more
– Sooner Dead

PS: I’m Still Alive

Typical… silence on the wire… I apologize… Like what happens every time in school, I overload myself with promises and guarantees that I just can’t backup if I give myself any time to just relax. This is the same problem that has reoccurred each semester. I think it is because by the time I enroll into classes and pick my work hours each semester, I forget what a nightmare the last semester was and in a moment of weakness or stupidity (or both) I try to do too much. Oh well, such is the life of me.

There are benefits to me probably cutting a couple years off my life from a bleeding ulcer or something – I have one really, really nice resume; and as such, I should get a really good stable job. So I guess losing those years aren’t so bad, they crappy ones in the later years anyway where I would probably spend all day drooling on myself anyway because the government would have already of permanently banned me from driving (and probably deservedly so if all goes as planned). Either way, this good stable job that exists in theory, will allow me both time and money to work on the car, save for a house, and buy things for Shelley (I trust she will read this, so I must put this in here). Give it time, the holidays are coming, and I will soon have a little bit to work on Valarie. Until then:

I’m doing science and I’m still alive
–Sooner Dead

No Brakes!

As was the focus of the last post, life has been busy, hence the lack of recent posts. Shelley and I got to go out to the car on Saturday, she secured the ram air vents and we worked at troubleshooting the parking brakes. While we didn’t actually fix them (hence the title of this post), and now are searching for how to fix. I am hopeful that the car will be running soon and be able to drive around the parking lot or something.

On to other news; I am building a new computer here in the next month. My old computer is now two years old and there are some awesome games coming up like BioShock, Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Portal, Team Fortress 2, and Spore. Needless to say, my old computer won’t run 4/5ths of those games at least, an depending on the system requirements of the one I think it could run, it may be all 5 not being able to play. So I am building a 2 core system built primarily for gaming for approximately $1000. Not too bad if I do say so myself.

Why am I fixing brakes on a non running car? It isn’t like it is going to go anywhere!
–Sooner Dead

Life Over-Torqued

Something I have always been guilty of is not following the sage advice ‘all things in moderation;’ whether it be big things like overloading schoolwork, the buffet-line plate, or simple things such as over-tightening screws until I strip out the grooves. With school starting up and now trying to balance it with work, Shelley, Valarie, and sleep – there is hardly time to actually dedicate to all of them. It is all coming back to me now of just how hard it is to actually work on my car while keeping up with everything else.

So please allow me to apologize about the lack of posts recently as well as the lateness of the two guides I have been talking about for a couple of weeks now, it isn’t that the guides are hard, just that I haven’t had any time in which to write them up. Now for a little update on the car: Shelley and I went out to work on the car, a rebonding that needed to take place between Shelley, Valarie, and I. We pulled out the drivers seat to better work on the car, checked out the front suspension over good, and looked at the problems with the parking break. We found out that the front suspension is good, except it needs springs an shocks replaced – something I already knew – but everything else is in order, which is great and will save some money.

I have plans to go out with Shelley this weekend if I can find the time and we plan on working on fixing the parking brake, resecuring the ram air scoops, and a few other things. As I have said before, I am dedicated to making everything work this time.

I’m only stopping to regain feeling
–Sooner Dead

A Side Of Life

I have kind of neglected posting anything remotely related to my personal life in the past couple posts, and it is something I will try to avoid posting about because most people could care less; though every now and then I do actually have something worth posting about. I am currently going on a diet, I have been on it for a little less than a weak. For the most part I have ignored my poor physical condition because I enjoy food and it really hasn’t affected me. Being short-sighted common problem with people, myself included, and I am finally realizing the consequences my life will have if I don’t start changing my habits. An added perk of the this weight loss is that after I am able to lose all the weight I need to to be at a healthy weight and Valarie is running, I will of dropped a tenth of a second of the quarter mile time just by my own weight losses.

Both of my AMS abstracts are now done and submitted, and I should hear if they are approved in a month or so. School is starting on Monday and I expect the free time I have enjoyed with working full time over the summer will disappear as I still work part time and have a full load of coursework. If history is any indicator, this will hurt my work on Valarie, but like my previous attempts at auto restoration and dieting, this time I am really really serious. I have thing set up pretty good in my life so now I am going to focus on the things I have let slip to the side in order to better round my life. A good career and a wonderful woman is great and can really make life worth living, but there is health and that little place you need to go to relieve some stress and clear the mind that is also important to have

One final note of temptation: Valve (makers of the Half-Life series) have announced they will be selling BioShock, an absolutely amazing looking first person shooter hybrid through Steam, Valve’s internet distributed gaming software. I was going to avoid going to the stores and picking it up, but now I don’t know how I can resist.

Oh yeah, and I am marrying a model – booyah
–Sooner Dead

Tick-Tock

So here is the deal: I made a promise to my fiancé that I would do my best to have my car presentable before our wedding so we could drive off in that. We have 676 days and a couple until we get married. I have about 50 major jobs to get done on the car before it is “presentable” by both her and my definition Of course each of these major jobs have sub-jobs and there is always unexpected things cropping up to complicate matters, but let’s ignore those right now and say it will all boil down to 50 major jobs. A little quick math (676/50) says I can average about 13 days between accomplishing a single job. Sounds easy then, right? WRONG!

While some jobs will be quick and easy, such as resecuring the ram air vents, others will be much more time-consuming and complicated, such as bodywork. The jobs will run the spectrum in difficulty, cost, and time-consumption. So this is how I figure it: do any job you can currently do asap and after that, start working to being able to do the others. Job by job is the only way to restore a car, it doesn’t all just fall into place by itself.

I visited Valarie Sunday night, with the help from the guys over at TransAmCountry I was able to remove the key that has been stuck in the ignition for sometime. Sure it took some swallowing of pride, but at least it was stuck in the ignition due to something I doubt most people would have ever though of: a pseudo-column shift key lock when the base of the steering column is twisted to the right. Twisted it back to the left (putting it where the ‘park’ position would be if you had a column shift), turned the key back and it fell right out!

I also worked on getting the fan shroud out and replacing it with one that didn’t have a huge chunk out of the top. Come to find out (again from the guys at TransAmCountry) that due to the steering box, I have to remove the whole radiator. Oh well, in order to learn how to work on cars I am supposed to play with everything, and a radiator falls into that category. I plan on going back tonight and doing some more stuff, including replacing the fan shroud. I will keep y’all updated.

I lost my pride asking how to pull the key out of the ignition
–Sooner Dead