bleah, watching/reading the election numbers. I think I need a drink.

blah blah blah I voted blah blah blah.

You know what I really want (and should of made myself…)?

Little oval patriotic stickers that say things like
“I farted” or “I smited”

Ah, time for the annual amazone wish list censoring. The joy!

2004’s Scariest Halloween Costumes

I feel like finding a cave somewhere away from all media and
hiding there until after the election. I’m just a bit burned
out on the constant onslaught of coverage.

And I also feel like smacking the next person who tells
me to vote. I’ve got it. Thanks.

Speaking of which, can anyone point me to good info
on early voting in raleigh? Not having much luck
finding info myself.

List of recordings of songs with lyrics by Peter Sinfield

Aka, a list of songs including some odd covers of early
King Crimson songs. Including versions of “In the
Court of the Crimson King” by Doc Severinsen, and
another featuring Ted Nugent. More than a few weird
covers of “21st Century Schizoid Man”. Or how
about a Camper Van Chadborne version of “I Talk
to The Wind”?

Very strange if your a Crimson fan.

Decided to drive the mustang home to Statesville to my parents house
and do some work on it. Got a bit of a late start friday, then when
I got home, got the car loaded up, got in it, and it wouldn’t start.
Eventually figured the points had closed up, and once they were set
correctly it started up nicely.

Headed home, car did okay, though it ran a bit warm like its been
tending to do. On a 45 degree night, on the interstate, the
temperature gauge indicated about 65% of the way to hot. In
a few other highway spurts in warm weather, it had ran hotter
than that (though never over heating).

Got to Statesville a bit past midnight, so didn’t get any work
done.

Saturday started by trying to replace the turn signal lights
(the entire housing). Didn’t quite go to plan as they require
a retainer that was missing on the car and not part of the
light kit. Eventually ended up kind of gluing the left one
back (the one I removed and notice the lack of retainer).

Next up was to try to get a feel for just how badly rusted
the drivers cowl vent was. On early model mustangs, this is
a very common problem, that is also a pain to fix. Basically,
it’s a very poor design that drains poorly, gathers trash,
and isnt painted correctly, and eventually rusts out.

So, on mine, it was pretty bad. The drivers side vent is
bolted to that, and I basically pulled the bolts though
by hand. Not a great start.

But then things started going better. Checked the timing
and it was way off (about 20 degrees off). Since
that tends to make engines one hot, thats a good thing
to get fixed.

Changed plugs, new rotor and distributor cap. Changed the
oil, new fuel filter, new air filter, new radiator cap.
Didn’t get around to flushing out the cooling system.

Took the wheels off, checked the brakes. The drums all
looked good, and the pads look to be pretty new.

Greased up all the grease fittings I could find. Repacked
the wheel bearings.

The original gas tank has a hole in the top of it. The
top of the tap is also the bottom of the trunk on these,
so that tended to result in gasoline spilling into the
trunk if you feel the tank up.

So out with the old tank, in with a new one. Along with
a new sending unit, fuel line, and filler tube. Also sprayed a couple
of coats of undercoating on it while I was at it.

Found a couple rusted out spots in the trunk, stripped
them down, applied some rust transmogrofying stuff, and
applied some make shift patches for the time being.

“fixed” the dashboard lights that weren’t working. Looks
like the switch/dimmer for the dash lights thats built into
the light switch is bad. Since I didn’t have a replacement,
just wired them to be on whenever the ignition switch is on.

The last thing to get “fixed” was the cowl vent hole. Cleaned
it the best I could with a wire brush and some tin snips. Then
applied a stop gap kluge involving some sheet metal and some
expanding foam. Needless to say, the purists would not be
pleased. But the correct fix is complicated, time consuming,
and expensive, so that will have to do for the time being.
It seems to have stopped the relentless wind that was previously
blowing in while at speed. Much improved.

Car seemed to run cooler on the drive back, which is good.
And a quick calculation shows that it got ~20mpg on the
highway which isnt too bad.

Name a CD you own that no-one else on your friends list does:
Clockhammer – klinefelter

Name a book you own that no-one else on your friends list does:
away from my books atm, but I have a book title “Weather Modification”
that is indeed, about weather modification.

Name a movie you own on DVD/VHS/whatever that no-one else on your friends list does:
I’ve managed to amass a dvd/vhs collection of almost 20 items at this
point, so… Edgerton
and His Incredible Seeing Machine. Maybe
The Music Animation Machine? The
Way Things Go?

Name a place that you have visited that no-one else on your friends list has:
Grand Rapids, Minnesota?

Name a piece of clothing that no-one else on your friends list has:
a Kurt Rambis t-shirt… if only I could figure out where I put it.

Name an occupation that you’ve had that no-one else on your friends list has:
I spent a summer throwing misformed plastic car batteries into a giant grinder so
they could be recycled. That was a long summer.

Never got around to posting about the Phasmatodea
show at the Atari Convention.

We played two short sets, one first, and one
last. Both in the basement at Farther and Sons
Antiques.

Started off the first set sticking to the theme of atari.
I had the laptop setup so I could trigger a bunch of
samples of atari 2600 games I had made. Samples from
Combat, River Raid, Comsic Ark, Demon Attack, Space
Invaders, etc. I used the Stick->Guitar Synth->Midi
to trigger the samples.

Fun, but kind of hard to play, since the samples weren’t
pitched in any order, and were arranged somewhat randomly.
Tried to use them in a percussive fashion. Not sure how
well it worked in the first set.

Played another piece in the first set, but I don’t really remember what
at the moment.

Second set there were still some folks stuck around (jason0x21, etc).

Was in the mood for “gnarly” so used the korg mono synth
and various fuzz and effects to try to get there.

Second piece was more of a interlocking piece. We do that
kind of thing alot in practice, but hadnt tried it live
yet. Once we had a couple of loops going and a nice pulse
setup, I switched back to the Atari samples, this time more
heavily processed and manipulated. Since this time we were playing a
bit more rhythmically, it seemed to work a bit better.