Ah, the first day of classes

Here we are, back at that time of year when the students all flock back to school and classes start. Parents ruin the pleasant flow of traffic of Statesboro, the Wal*Mart becomes even more unbearable, and every one’s hopes are high that this semester will not be like every other and they will in fact do their homework, go to class and not hook up with that girl that has hooked up with every other bar dweller in Statesboro.

We all know this won’t happen, but how bad can hope hurt. Personally I looked forward to seeing the freshman. Yes, we all were ones at some times, but I still can’t help but laugh. There are the ever present ones that are completely lost, wandering around with their nose so deep in a map they practically run into the sign for what they are looking for. Even better are the ones that can’t seem to figure out that rooms that start with 1 are on the 1st floor, 2 on the second, and so on. Those are good for the chuckle.

The better ones are the completely lost. Like the guy carrying a bike on his back down the pedestrian. I am hoping that one of his classes covers simple machines such as the wheel. Or the guy with an umbrella open over his head, despite the fact it has not rained all day and is sunny out. Or the guy that wears his sunglasses through class. And their is always suit guy. Yeah, the guy that thinks wearing a full suit and tie on the first day of class will make their teacher think more of them. Yeah, most of my teachers wear at best a collard shirt, you in a tie makes them wonder if you have to suck up to make a good grade.

But nothing beats the preparation the college and the town does. First they decided to make the entrance to my parking lot a traffic circle. I can see such a gigantic accident happening, I am not sure your average college student knows what yield means. I also like the campus version of old faithful. It never fails that one of the sprinklers on campus will turn into a geyser, usually due to the school waiting till the last minute to finish the work. This year set a new low with migrant workers frantically spreading pine straw in front of the newly finished library. Oh, I do give the school props on the library. It looks great, minus the supermarket   (take a look at the doors, you’ll see it). But the bigger thing is not the library, its the return of that side of the pedestrian. No more cramming everyone down one side having to fight with the bikes and people who failed the ability to walk in a straight line, even when sober.

The winner for the year is the DOT. They had the brilliant idea to shut down part of the 301 bypass at 2 PM on the first day of school. Brilliant!

Well, I wish everyone a happy return to school, and if you are hoping that you will go to class and do your homework I wish you the best, maybe you can beat your 7 year streak.

Been busy

Hey y’all, Long time no write.

Ok, well I did write one, but it was late at night and rambled on and on, so I deemed it unfit for posting and deleted. Win some lose some.

Life has been strange for me recently. I finished up A term for my one class and no others that I needed were offered B term, so I was stuck with a month and a half of no classes. The obvious thing would be to get a job, however my schedule in the fall is so messed up I was unable to work after school started. Given that I could only work for a month and a half, and with the current job market it became quickly obvious that I was not going to find a job.

Luck was with me however and another possibility opened. Some of you may remember last November I tore apart my Wrangler to do a full frame restoration and drive train swap. Money and lack of hardware sent the project to lie around the yard and garage in pieces. Well, right when I came upon this mass of free time I also came across a great deal on a transmission, transfer case, and axles out of a 1978 Chevy K10 truck. Add to this an engine my roommate didn’t need, a different transfer case and some other parts and I now have the drive train for the jeep.

So I have spent the last few weeks working everyday on getting the parts ready to go in the jeep. Some people are content to just throw parts under their rig, I prefer the approach of rebuilding everything now, while I can move around easily and not crawl under the jeep. The plan for the drivetrain is a mild Chevy 350 engine, a Turbo 350 transmission with a shift kit, NP203/Dana 300 doubler, Dana 44 front and 12 bolt chevy rear end. The suspension will still be leaf sprung with the back end stretched out. The axles will have 4.10 or 4.56 gears and somewhere between 35-37 inch tires. Really depends on how much space I have after I am done with the suspension and body work.

Now for those not as familiar with jeeps and more importantly me need to understand something. This is not a normal jeep you will see on the road, or that your neighbor bought and threw a lift on with his buddies in the driveway one weekend. Nothing about this is “bolt-on”, nothing is designed to be used in this way. I am taking parts from about a dozen different vehicles when I am done and put them together in a way that will be the best for what I want.

An example of this is the parts I have ordered so far. Only 1 of them has had anything that might be construed as a manual. The manual consisted of 3 pages. The first was a list of parts, that took up the page, the second a list of modifications that must be made or taken into consideration, and the last page was a rough mechanical drawing of how it bolted to the other parts. Oh, and the modifications page was not how to do any of the modifications, just that they needed to be done. The rest is for you to figure out.

The total work of this jeep will include, and I know I am missing some things: welding, gear setup, engine rebuilding, suspensions, steering design, brake design, roll cage, custom mounts for the motor, transmission, transfer case, electronics and more. All of this I am going to do, none will be farmed out to do by a shop. This will be a testament to me of what I can do. Plus, as an upside I think I will be able to bitch about any car and not feel bad for the designers, after all I will have done their work, in my garage.

Now, I want to go ahead and extend an invitation to anyone who wants to learn about cars. If you want to learn how to work on cars, how they work, how to weld, metal work, rebuild and more you are more than welcome to come and help out. Just wear old clothes, sturdy shoes (never mind that I run around in flip flops, I’ve hurt myself enough to know better) and if you have a favorite pair of safety glasses or gloves bring them along. If you want to learn a specific thing, let me know and I try and figure out when that will be getting done. Oh, and I work late most nights due to the heat, just give me a call.

Is this what college is really about?

At this point I have 2 semesters left of college. I am broke due to either not having any time for a job, and it may be the same way with my terrible schedule next semester, or there not being jobs available since it is the summer, and most students have gone home. Between the mess that the school has put me through, between their asinine policies, records problems, poor quality teachers and faculity that does not care, and my own personal issues I have turned into a sarcastic asshole and a borderline pessimist. I still can pass it off as being a realist, though at this rate I will probably be a full blown glass is half empty type.

So I have to wonder, is this what college is really about? Is this how it is supposed to happen, are you supposed to spend money you don’t have to pay people, most of whom are there because they either can’t make it in the real world, or got a degree in Music Theory’s Role in Psychology and then realized that despite what their adviser told them, there are no real jobs for that degree, so they start teaching. You have bunch of staff who have no link between their salary and job performance, so most of them don’t really care to do more than is required for them not to get fired (sounds a lot like Office Space).

I look at it this way, I will be 23 years old when I graduate. Average life expectancy for a male in the US is anywhere between 75-85 and given my hobbies I don’t expect to be on the top end of that. It will take me at least 2 years to get settled back, and start making enough money to pay off everything that got neglected during college. So thats 25 years old. THATS A THIRD OF MY LIFE! For what, a piece of paper, and 4 years of my life spend getting dumber. I know less than when I started, it is now harder to find a job, especially with half a college degree. Is this really what it is about, setting a low point in your life to have to build back from, so that you can look back and think, hey I’m not as poor as I was in college?

Well, to end on a more positive note, there are a few professors at GSU that actually are really good, if you are attending GSU or planning to, make sure you get at least a couple of these.

Physics: Tony Deal

Business: Dr. Barilla

IT/IS/CS: Dr. Case, Kevin Elder

Manufacturing: Waldo Meeks

There are others, if you have found any, post them up. Maybe by the end there will be a good enough list to make it though school with only three or four bad professors, instead of three or four good ones.

A long needed update

Sorry about not having an update for a while, its been busy or distracting the last few weeks. So here are a few updates about me, the site, and of course the usual rant or two.

First off I have added photo albums to my site, they are available at http://kf4zht.com/pictures/main.php right now it is still in setup, but once I get it ready I will be adding many of my pictures I have rotting on my hard drive.

Second I have a new piece of technology, a DV cam. Specifically a Canon ZR850, courtesy of a Woot! This should be fun, and I managed to score a bunch of miniDV tapes at the local dying Kmart for $.75/ea. Add in a 4gb SD card for avi’s and pictures and it looks to be a new way to record evidence against us.

Also in the new crap category we have the evloution of redneck:

1. Buy a inflatable pool at walmart (Southern)

2. Set up pool not paying any attention to directions and completely screw it up (Deeper South)

3. Try and find the best pool chairs (for in the pool) from the following list: Plastic lawn chairs, keg bucket, milk crate, cooler. (Pinkish neck)

4. Making a floating table with a trailer tire and a piece of wood from the burn pile (DingDingDing! Full blown redneck!!)

On a more sober note, my dog Guinness was bit by what seems to be a rattlesnake on Monday night. Her face swelled up so severely that I took her to the vet the next morning with concerns that she may have trouble breathing. At that point her cheeks looked larger than tennis balls and one eye was swollen shut. The vet kept her until Friday when the swelling finally began to go down. So far we have been lucky that there is no sign of infection, but there is still some swelling. I am glad she is doing ok, and we are planning to go out snake hunting before another dog gets bit.

And other random tidbits:

I am now a General Class ham radio operator, only took 10 years of procrastination to get around to it.

We are looking for another roomate, so if you don’t mind dealing with 2 rednecks who take everything apart and have a hobby of running into burning buildings feel free to give me an email or call.

Finally a rant about my favorite topic, GSU

My roommate who works for the school informed me that the road I take to school would be closed. This is a big deal as I have to go completely around the block to get to my parking lot. Actually this will affect most of the people who park where I do. Now why did’t I get this email, yet I get emails when the art department is having a job fair? Why can’t a university that claims to have a great IT program figure out how to use groups to make sure the correct people get the info they need. Examples, have groups for the departments, the parking areas, on vs off campus students, etc. Even better yet have an online utility to chose what groups you want to be in.

Thats all for now, hopefully a new post will be up here sooner than the last.

Welcome to my blog… you may want to stand back

Hey y’all how’s it going. I recently decided to start this blog as a place to put my random ramblings, rants about Georgia Southern, stories, jokes and other random crap.

A little about me: I am a 22 year old student at Georgia Southern University, a volunteer firefighter with Bulloch County, an Eagle scout, and more. I spend most of my time in school and for fun I tinker with jeeps and other cars, weld, build things, go camping, backpacking, play with computers, and so on. Other side hobbies including R/C cars, ham radio (hence the site address), rock climbing, whitewater rafting/kayaking, and I am getting into scuba. As you can notice almost all of these are expensive, so I spend most of my time broke.

I don’t currently have a job, probably will be getting one over the summer. In the past I have done everything from run a whitewater location manager to server technician. I am studying IT and Manufacturing and hope to find a small manufacturing company around the Tennessee or Kentucky area to work as a network administrator and do work on manufacturing automation.

Well welcome and I hope you enjoy it, I will try to have updates weekly or better.