The Sunday Swap Meet Is A Battle Ground

For as long as I can remember, I've always been really good at "the swap". Ever since elementary school when I got Eric Frantz to give up a Sims skateboard (Jeff Phillips model), a skate key, an AM/FM walkman and a tabletop Frogger video game in exchange for a cheapie toy-store paintball gun, I usually come out with the better end of the deal whenever a trade is involved. My girlfriend recently mentioned my VW Bus to her father, and he told her that he had an old friend who was a VW nut that might be interested in buying it. I've been halfheartedly considering it for a while, since I haven't been able to find the time or space to work on it - diehard VW aficionados would rather see the vehicles go to use rather than rot in a yard. Seeing anyone put a VW to use is better than seeing it go to the crusher. (Except for dune buggy freaks, who only want to steal transmissions from buses. Screw those guys).

I wrote up a brief description of the Bus and sent it with some pictures to her Dad to forward to his friend. Since I already had the description and pictures ready to go, I decided to post an ad on The Samba. I included the words that always make the classifieds game much more entertaining - "Will consider trades". So far I have been offered:

-A set of 20" rims & tires (those would look great on my Honda)
-A 75 gallon fishtank (no, but I'm sure the cats would love it)
-A M1911 Colt .45 pistol (hmmm... neat, but I don't really need more guns)
-A 1978 MG Midget rally car (which I wouldn't even fit in)
-A custom-built guitar w/ Gibson body & Fender Jaguar neck (huh?)
-A 1985 Honda CR125 (too small)
-A 1960 VW Bus (cool, but an even bigger project than I have now)
-A Mexican Fender Jazz bass (might knock a couple hundred off for this)
...and a Bultaco Metralla 250 (very cool, but the last thing I need is another bike. Especially a dirt bike. Especially a dirt bike that hasn't been made for 20+ years from a long-defunct company).

Several people have looked so far, with the ever popular "I gotta ask my wife" and "I'll have the money next week" already making appearances. Several more are scheduled for the weekend, I'll let you know how it goes...

Father Christmas, Give Us Some Money

Have yourself a merry merry Christmas
Have yourself a good time
But remember the kids who got nothin'
While you're drinkin' down your wine

-D_G

You Can't Tuna Fish

I drove 3 hours round trip today, and have at least that much per day over the next four days in order to visit everyone on the Xmas list this year. On top of that, I (stupidly) decided to pick up the girlfriend's Xmas gift myself:



Trust me, whatever the piano movers quote you, it's worth it.

Smell The Glove

A few weeks ago, I went to a charity auction put on by my girlfriend's employer. I actually won lots 'o stuff, but the one I was really gunning for was a new pair of Rocky Boots. I did win them, but they were four sizes too small - no matter, they came with a certificate stating they could be exchanged, and their factory outlet store was on the way home, so we swung by.

The store turned out to be incredibly cool - a huge, three story warehouse filled with all manner of outdoor clothing, camping gear, tools, etc. I actually drove by the store every few months while I was in college - I always meant to stop, but never did. Probably for the best, since I was perpetually broke back then (as opposed to "occasionally not broke" now). One of the items I picked up while I was there was a pair of fingerless gloves - I learned the value of these while I was working in an ice house in high school & college. I spent all day in a giant freezer with augers, conveyor belts, trap doors and automatic cutting machines. 80% of the time you want your hand to be completely covered to stay as warm as possible, but if you had to twiddle with the machinery, you would lose a finger if you try to do it while wearing winter gloves (I saw several people mangled in my tenure). I solved this problem by going across the street to the surplus store and buying cheap USAF glove liners, cutting the fingers off, and putting a pair of heavy canvas gardening gloves over them. The heavy canvas gloves held up better & dried out faster than winter gloves, and with a snap of your wrists your could shuck them off (think of a hockey player in a melee) and quickly manipulate whatever piece of equipment that was about to give out and back up the whole line. The fingerless gloves would then keep you warm enough until you got a second to retrieve your other gloves.

The thing that made the ones I bought different was that they had a flip-down mitten, that was secured by velcro when not being used:




















I thought this was pretty slick - I am still likely to need to twiddle with something, although nowadays it is usually my camera, MP3 player, or cell phone. Anyways, last week I headed out to class to take the last of my finals, and I got to try my new gloves out for the first time, as the temperature was rapidly approaching single digits. After class I decided to walk over to the campus bookstore to sell my textbooks, and get some extra cash to finish my Xmas shopping. Apparently the college was letting a local youth organization use the gymnasium that evening for some sort of awards ceremony, and I encountered lots of cold, confused people asking me for directions. That's when I learned an important lesson:

Nothing looks dumber than a guy trying to point while wearing mittens.

Thinking 'bout The People Upside-Down In Japan

I subscribe to lots of mailing lists - Volkswagen lists, guitar lists, computers lists, etc. Problem is I really don't have much time to read the (sometimes hundreds of) emails that come through every day, so I usually just get them in a daily digest form and give them a cursory glance to see if there's anything useful to me in that particular one. I glanced through one of the Volkswagen lists the other day and was surprised to see a reference to "Bob Hoover's blog". Bob Hoover is as close to a guru as you can get in the Volkswagen community. He made a great number of posts to the Volkswagen lists & groups in the burgeoning days of the Internet that were full of practical advice, useful tips & tricks, and were a great read to boot. These became known as "The Sermons of Bob Hoover" and were greatly prized by many Volkswagen enthusiasts and were collected on web sites, hard drives, passed around on bulletin boards and newsgroups - at one point, an aftermarket supply house was even selling a CD-ROM with all them in text file format. The Internet being what it is, for every 100 people who enjoyed and were helped by these essays, there would be one wiseacre who had to chime in and tell Bob that he was wrong, or that wasn't how Dieter (the $100-per-hour mechanic at the local Haus of Imports) did it. One thing made abundantly clear in Mr. Hoover's writing is that he doesn't suffer fools gladly in real life, so you can be damn sure he wasn't going to put with the electronic version of a jackass - he quietly asked people to take down his postings from web sites, stop selling the CD-ROMS, and greatly reduced his on-line presence in general. It is my understanding that he was perfectly willing to help you if you asked, but he was (understandably) miffed at people slinging unsolicited criticism at him for what was clearly a labor of love. The sermons still popped up occasionally on a bulletin board or a hastily-authored web page, but they never lasted very long. I was glad to see that Mr. Hoover has created his own blog and has posted the original sermons, which range from eminently practical to entertaining to philosophical. Check 'em out.