Junking a Junker

One of the cars my mom and I have is an old Geo Spectrum hatchback. Well last month my mom gets in the mail a notice about renewing the tags for another 2 years..here in Maryland that's $128.

On top of that..seems like lately the car is about on it's last wheels. The thing could probably crap out at any time. Besides that transmission leak..the body is rusting out along the bottom, the exhaust needs a replacement, and heck even the electrical stuff..the gauges and whatnot..likes to go haywire now from time to time >_>

So after thinking about it for awhile..we decided that rather than put out the $128 and having the car crap out probably not long after and then be out of that $128, we're gonna take it to the salvage place near town and just junk it. Probably will get like $200 or so at the very most. But that will help..seeing that the Honda of ours is due up for tag renewal next month at the same cost. So tomorrow while I'm at class my mom and her brother are gonna take it to the salvage yard and be rid of it. We've had the car for 11 years now so it's had its usefulness that's for sure. Selling it is not really an option since it would not even pass inspection.

It won't be too bad to adapt to being down to just one car..just would have to schedule things around my course schedule so nothing interferes. If anything it'll help a little since no money for gas or anything else will need to be set aside for the Spectrum anymore.

Spring Break!

Yesterday afternoon marked the start of my spring break!

I tell you what though..I'm glad it's finally here. It's just so nice to have a week to myself to do whatever I want.

I'll just end up doing what I already do..stick around here and do some gaming. I'll just have more time to do that. Oh and catch up on sleep too..which I already did a little of today since I didn't get up till like about 1 today.

Mid-Term Time

This past week marked mid-terms for me at college. That first half sure went fast! Anyway grades got posted up the other day and the mailer came today, which reminded me to actually make this entry. So these are what my grades are so far:

Internet Essentials 1: A
Micro Applications 2: Excel: A
Operating Systems Concepts: A
Visual Basic Programming 1: C

The mid-term exam for Visual Basic helped to bring that grade down..turned out I bombed it more than I thought I had done >_<>_> Also, my Excel grade is actually my final grade since it's only a half-semester class. When I go back Monday it'll be Access now for the rest of the semester. So one A is already in the books for this semester.

Well that's all from me here with that. Hope everyone has a nice weekend!

Car is All Fixed Up

Well after a week of running the Honda nearly dry my mom and I took it over yesterday to get the gas tank all patched up, and today we got it back.

 

Turns it out it was a quick, easy, and cheap fix. Only cost $30 to do it. Now hopefully it stays fixed and no more rocks get underneath and make more holes.

 

As for the other car, the Geo Spectrum..haven't noticed much tranny fluid leaking from it lately since we had it check out too. Plus since then some stop-leak stuff was thrown in there, and it's been warmer lately...so the seals can expand again some and it won't leak as much as it did on 2 occasions >__>

 

Hope everyone has a nice weekend!

Car Issues

Seems everything wants to go wrong with the cars all at once >___>

 

The other day the Honda Accord we have started to have a little smell of gasoline when standing outside right by it. Then just yesterday morning…my mom noticed when I pulled out there was a little spot on the ground under where the car was, which turned out to be gas. So we took the car over to this garage run by a person we know well and he put it on the lift to check under to see what’s up. Turns out there’s a little hole in the gas tank about at the halfway point >__< Apparently at some point recently a rock or something got up underneath the car and impacted on the gas tank making the hole. All that can be done at the moment is just drive the car till it’s nearly out of gas, which that’ll be about midweek next week and then take it back over and then he can try to fix it.

 

Also the other car we have, a Geo Spectrum likes to leak a bit of tranny fluid as of late. I pulled out with that car this morning, and left a little bit in the driveway. It did the same thing about a couple weeks ago as well. So after the Honda got checked out, we got the Spectrum put up on the lift. One of the seals on the transmission casing is what’s causing that problem, but he just said to add tranny fluid when needed and some stop-leak stuff, since it’s only needed some more tranny fluid like once in like months and months. But still it’s just enough to bother you and make you worry about it some.

 

I know the issue with the Honda will be fine after it’s fixed next week, and the Spectrum will keep putting along for quite some time still, but it really just gets to me whenever shit goes wrong like this. It always has to be at once and at the worst times. Thankfully it won’t cost much at all to take care of the problems this time around. It just hurts because you’re going month to month and just scraping by with just a little to spare. I know I can help out in the aspect once I get a job, which I’ll start looking for once spring is here and it’s close to end of the semester before I’m out for the summer, but with the way the economy is that might be a bit easier said than done. But enough about that..I just wanted to vent a little on the whole car situation. Heck just writing this made me feel a little better.

The Windows 7 Experiment

A few weeks ago I installed the Windows 7 public beta on one my desktops to get it a whirl and see what it’s like. I was pretty impressed with it..so much that I even went and installed it on my laptop a week ago. Windows 7 is what will replace Windows Vista, which has been beaten and battered upon by critics and the like ever since it’s came out. That mainly happens just because it’s slower than Windows XP and when it first came out there was just a heck of a lot of incompatibilities with programs and devices. Windows 7 is meant to get rid of the negative image that Vista had cast and be a leaner than what Vista is.

At its core Windows 7 is essentially Vista. Anyone that’s used Vista will see the many similarities between the two. However it is indeed leaner than Vista is, at least that what it seems to me. I only have 1 GB on my laptop, and to me it doesn’t seem too terribly slow either. People usually say that if you want to run Vista decently you need 2 GB. Although if I were to swap out 1 of my 512 MB RAM sticks with a 1 GB to give me 1.5 GB I’d noticed a speed improvement with Win7 as well, but 1 GB is manageable for my use.

Anyway enough talking…time for the eye candy :P

That is my Windows 7 desktop on my laptop. Click on it for the full size image, the same goes for all pics that’ll end up in here. One noticeable change is the taskbar, which Microsoft has been calling the “Superbar.” All of the taskbar items are icons and you can move the icons about into whatever order you please unlike past Windows versions. Multiple windows of a program get lumped together into the one icon. If you still like the thinner taskbar with items like in the past you can change that in the Taskbar properties. One neat thing is that you can pin items to the taskbar like you could to the start menu, that way just click on the icon on the taskbar and go.

The gadgets can also be placed wherever you may please on the desktop, instead of being confined to the sidebar like in Vista. So Windows 7 does not actually have the sidebar

Another new feature is the jump lists. If you computer supports Aero, hovering your mouse on an icon reveals a jump list with thumbnail previews of the windows. If Aero isn’t enabled then you will just have a list with the names of the windows shown. Right clicking on the icon also provides a different style of menu compared to the old right click menu of just close, maximize, etc.

One more new taskbar feature is over on the very right. That is the show desktop button, clicking that minimizes windows and shows the desktop, obviously. Click it again restore everything that wasn’t minimized before the button was clicked the first time. For those with Aero enable, the button does another trick. Simply hovering over the button shows the desktop but with the outlines of open windows. That little feature is being called Aero Peek.

The start menu even has went through a small change, because now some programs that appear on the recent programs list can also show a list of recently opened or saved items.

One other changes include WordPad and Paint bring overhauled with the ribbon-style interface similar to Office 2007.

So that’s Windows 7 in a nutshell. No one knows exactly when it’s coming out yet. Microsoft says early next year, but others are saying before the end of the year so it can be preloaded onto new computers in time for the holiday rush. We’ll just have to find out.

Snow Day!

Classes at the college were cancelled today thanks to the snow we had here overnight..and the snow that’s yet to come. Although overnight today it’ll change over to that freezing rain mess >__> Actually it’s not that big of a deal to me that classes got cancelled since I only have 1 today :P I’m better though that tomorrow will be cancelled as well and that I’ll be happy about.

 

Maybe tomorrow I’ll finally get around to a blog entry I’ve been meaning to do for almost a week now…you’ll all just have to wait to find out what it is though :P

 

Also I have a new theme now which I like :) The only thing I have against it is the 3 columns thing since I really only have use for 2 right now, but I can live with it. I put the blog archive to the left so there’s something there at least so it doesn’t look as weird.

Heat Wave...

...well for today only >__>

It got as high as 59 here today :S Just the other day it was only in the 20s and I was freezing my butt off outside. I'm not complaining about today though I'll take all the warm days I can get right now. Although tomorrow it's right back down in the 20s again for like the next 5 days >_< Seriously, I cannot wait for spring to get here.

A Fresh Start

After my friend Andi mentioned about making a new blog here, I thought, "Ah what the heck..maybe I'll make one too and get back into blogging." The only place I had blogged was on GameSpot, also on Myspace as well but never much there, and my last blog on GS was about getting back 360 back from being repaired..back in like September >__> Just never really had much to say and as a result didn't have much motivation to make a new one.

So with my new blog here I should try to at least get to some normalcy with posting blogs..maybe every few days. Heck even if I don't have anything really to blog about I'll come up with some crap to stick here :P