maxcelcat | Entries tagged with cars

You may recall I was threatening to foricably induct my dad into the Amish - keep him away from buttons, it's not safe!

I had another experience of why today.

My Dad: So, I've got these Norwegian Language CD's, and it says on them you can convert them into MP3s and listen to them anywhere.
Me: Yes, you can do that with any CD.
My Dad: Really?
Me: Yeah, I can show you how to do it on your Mac. You can do it with iTunes.
My Dad: OK then, so, my next question - do you have an MP3 player I could borrow so I can listen to them?
Me: Dad, give me your iPhone. You know you can play MP3's on this?
My Dad: You can?
Me: Yes, didn't you notice that they came with a set of headphones?
My Dad: They did? I suppose they did...

Eventually I got my hands on his iPhone and showed him iPod, which already had some songs in it - I must have popped them on there when I was first setting it up.

Me: See? And you can just listen to them.
My Dad: Really, and they're just there on my phone?

*slaps head*

The other exciting thing that happened to him was when I showed him Maps on his iPhone, and how it can show you where you are with a blue dot. He decided this could be quite helpful - he's only had the phone for about 12 months.

Oh, and he's also managed to take some pictures with his new camera, since he bought some storage for it. So his next question was how to get them onto his Mac. I pointed out that it had come with a USB cable that he just needs to pop one end in the mac and the other end in his camera and it should all just happen....

I should get paid for this...

He also bought a car today. Thankfully he called me a couple of times, and sent me a web link so I could make sure he was doing the right thing. And he did - a 2010 plated ex-demo diesel Volkswagen Golf. Yay!

Current Mood: chipper

Man, my dad is such a Luddite... Well, no, Luddite implies a certain level of decision... Perhaps technological incompetent would be a better description!

I usually have to help him through anything even remotely complicated related to his Mac or his iPhone (boy was I annoyed when his Uni bought him that). The low point was probably when he asked me to come over to resize his netscape window a few years ago. Then there are the times when some really obscure setting has changed on his computer, and he swears blind that he never touched it. Or his wireless network is not connecting because he's turned off his wireless - again, swearing he didn't touch anything. I suspect he just clicks "OK" on any dialog box that pops up, without reading them. Or just as likely he reads them, then has no idea what it's talking about and clicks OK anyway.

I was over there tonight diagnosing what turned out to be a genuine problem - looks like their wireless phone is interfering with their wireless internet router, which is definitely not supposed to happen. Not sure which of the bits of hardware is to blame.

While I was there, I had a conversation which went like this:

My dad: Do you want to see my new camera?
Me: Sure.
[He pulls out a rather nice new Nikon Digital SLR]
Me: Nice! How many megapixels is it?
My dad: I don't know.
Me: Well what did they tell you when you bought it?
My dad: Nothing about megapixels. What are megapixels?
[We eventually find something in the manual that tells us it's 16.9 or so megapixels]
Me: Wow, that's good!
My dad: What does it mean?
Me: Well, basically it's how many pixels there are in each picture.
My dad: Wow that is good!
Me: What kind of storage card did you get with it?
My dad: What's a storage card?
[I slap my head. Popping open the camera I discover that not only are both the SD slots empty, but so is the battery compartment.]
Me: You're supposed to have a storage card to save your pictures on. It's basically useless without one. Did they give you one at the shop?
My dad: Let me have a look. Is this it?
Me: No, that's a dust cover for the view finder.
My dad: Well, that's all they gave me.
Me: Where did you get this?
My dad: At the shop.
Me: And they didn't mention that you'd need a storage card?
My dad: No.
Me: It's basically useless without one! Where's your compact camera, I'll show you want I mean.
[He finds his other digital camera. It's an eight year old Canon with a tiny weeny little screen. It also has huge storage brick in it, all of 256 Mb. My dad had never seen it before, he just gets the pictures off the camera by plugging it straight into his computer.]
Me: OK, what you need is something like this, only smaller, to fit into this slot here.

I ended up giving him the address of Computer Parts Land in North Melbourne, and writing a detailed note for him to take in - Sandisk SD HC 16Gb, and looked up roughly what the price would be. No doubt I'll get a call later which will be "I've got the card, now what do I do with it? *slaps head*

It's a wonder how he gets by in the world. He just retired as an assistant dean from Monash!

Anyway, I've made him promise to take me with him when he goes car shopping soon, so he doesn't
repeat his mistakes. In about 1982, he bought a lemon yellow Holden Commodore station wagon, in the brief period when they fitted them with a shitty shitty 4 cylinder, which was barely able to drag the damn whale around!

Current Music: "Big Muff Dive" -- John Zorn

Relax, it wasn't me who had the crash. It were my brother and his girlfriend...

I was driving home from Warburton where we had a bit of a family do this arvo, and I spotted, in quick succession, an ambulance, my brother's Girlfriend's car pulled over to the side of the road, and about eight members of my family standing by the side of the road.

So, as you can imagine I pulled over my car! Turned out that one car load of Johanson's had come upon Tim (my brother) and Cate and had also pulled over.

Everyone was fine, although Tim and Cate were shaken. Apparently there'd been a fairly simple four-car bumper-to-bumper type collision. Which then got more complicated when a motorcyclist came belting around the corner and ran into the back of Cate's car! He was the one in the ambulance.

By the time I got there, the other three cars had left, the ambulance was leaving, and all that remained was a largish dent in the back of Cate's car, and a somewhat bent, but upright, motorcycle. Which a couple of locals pushed off the road.

Sounded like someone had been turning into a road on the right of the main road, and someone had tried to go around them. Which confused someone behind them and they went into the back of the turning car... I think!

Cate's car was entirely drivable, so one of my other relos drove them home in it.

Current Music: "She's Lost Control" - Joy Division

My mother recently got a new car, after twenty years of driving her old one. I remember when she bought it new... It was (is) a 1988 Subaru DL Station Wagon, which I learnt to drive in. And is about a year older than my otherwise identical vehicle, color and stickers aside!

She got herself a Toyota Yaris(whatever that is) and tried to trade in her Subaru.

Guess how much she was offered as a trade in on her car?
$100! Which means my car, being a little younger, is, in the eyes of car dealers, probably worth $110! That's less than I spent on it's last service! Gah! Ok, so, trade ins tend to be less than the market value of a car, but still, what an insult to Fuji the Wonder car. Why, the stickers alone would be worth more than that... Time I bought a bike... And/or a new car...

My mother's car is currently sitting in her back garden, while she works out what to do with it. Damn, it'd be worth more than that as scrap!

Current Location: Mai Flat
Current Music: "Pole Grinder" - Revolting Cocks

Damn, still catching up with about three weekends ago!

I finally got around to cleaning Fuji the wonder car. It's only taken me seven years to get around to doing it properly... I took us both to one of those hand car wash places, the one's with the high pressure hoses, industrial vacuum cleaners etc. Damn, that place was weird - as well as the hose, there was a broom that produced suds.

I soaped Fuji all over then hose 'im down, only to discover there was more crud to be had from various corners of the car - you'd be amazed how many crannies there are on a car which can collect leaves, dirt, dead insects, etc. etc. etc. I'd been hosing for so long someone else was waiting to use the bay, so I thought this a good time to go do some more detailed scrubbin'. Scratched some of the weird black crud off the roof, and a few stickers which were worse for wear.

I went around the block and pulled back in, vacuumed every surface I could find, then went through another round of hosin'. There was crap in the panels next to the doors, crap under the bonnet, crap under the petrol flap thing! I hosed it all, and eventually grime stopped coming off Fuji, no more twigs where appearing from the groove along the edge of the roof. By this stage I was soaked myself - no greater love has a man for his car!

Anyway, from certain angles, if you ignore the odd dent and the stickers, Fuji looks almost new, it's freaky. Sure doesn't look 18 years old.

Because about four stickers had washed off, I thought I'd better replace them - with another twelve or so. I started running out of space on the back and the left rear, so I had to add about five of them to the right rear, where they get seen slightly less :-)

Probably time I posted some photos...

Here endith the uncharacteristic Car ramblin'.

Current Mood: blank
Current Location: Norfcote

Another in a long series of "Things I did a few weekends ago which I forgot to blog about". I'm now up to Saturday, three weekends ago!

I dragged

evildoom_bunny along to the most excitingest place on the whole wide earth - Pick-A-Part in Cambelfield! I challenge you to find a more fun place. Ok, so, maybe Disneyland...

The place is surreal, like the set for some kind of post-apocalypse film, or a sequel to Mad Max. Hundreds of dead cars in various states of dismemberment (is that a word?) slowly dripping oil on to the ground. They're arranged into types - Toyota's over here, Ford's and Holden's over here...

I was looking for two things - hubcaps for Fuji the Wonder Car, and a very specific dongle for the back of a car radio I picked up on ebay months ago. The damn things all seem to have differing plugs on them, and if you don't have the right one, you're screwed.

I spent ages scrambling about Mitsubishi's (that being the brand of the radio) trying to find the right kind of dongle. Whilst

evildoom_bunny took pictures of my butt sticking out the door of a car - thanks baby :-P I wasn't actually allowed to bring the radio in to try 'em out, so I had to more or less guess which one looked right. After a while I found one, cut it off with my pliers "because you bring your own tools and do it all yourself."

The search for Subaru hubcaps proved fruitless because there was only one Subaru in the whole place. Which kinda filled me with confidence in my own car - the less of them in that graveyard, the better! Which lead me to an interesting idea - this would be a good place to check out before buying a car - there more of a give model there is sitting around Pick-A-Part, the less reason you should have to buy it! This doesn't quite work for common-as-muck commodores and falcon, which together were about half the cars there. But it was very interesting to see the number of Mitsubishi Magna's, not unlike the one I half owned in 2004. Given the amount of oil that thing drank, I wasn't surprised to see a lot of dead ones. But that there weren't any Subaru's like mine was a good sign...

I tried to take photo's of this one amazing patch of ground. Oil soaked, with rocks and car parts ground in. It looked like a piece of modern art (at least to this ex-Painter). I couldn't quite capture it with my phone camera however.

Needless to say, we left with one tiny car radio dongle. The guy in the booth just waved me away, didn't even bother to charge me for it. Which made it all the better when I discovered the stupid thing didn't fit anyway. Bugger. Maybe I'll just splash out on one of those MP3 car radio's I've seen about the place.

Go check it out, though, a mighty weird place indeed.

evildoom_bunny took some usable pictures which I'll post when I get around to it.