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Update 2 Cars October 20, 2009

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Anybody that knows me knows that my luck with cars isn’t great. On December 26, 2008, I was on my way home from Wal-Mart just after dark while it was raining when someone blinded me in a curve on Bells Mill Rd. He had his bright lights as well as fog lights on (He had those fluorescent bulbs) and it made my windshield look like someone put a sheet over it. Tried to slow down and locked up the brakes (This I don’t get because I didn’t press the brakes hard. Wasn’t speeding just wanted to slow down a little) and ended up driving right off the road and landing on a ditch on a pile of large rock. Pretty much gutted the bottom of the car as well as shoving the front in. Think I ran over a stump as I went off the road. Deployed the airbags and cracked the windshield. I was fine just mad as hell that the guy didn’t stop. I know he had to see me go off the road. I’m just glad I didn’t go the other way and slid into his lane. Ended up junking my car for $150. Was going to cost more to fix it than it was worth. Started shopping for cars while I was driving my dad’s truck. Finally in Feb. thought I found something. I saw a 97 Chevy Blazer in my price range. The owner assured us that the problems were fixable.  The transmission was waiting until a high RPM to shift. He said it was a 50 dollar sensor, he just didn’t change it because he already had another car and needed this one gone. Everything thing I fixed brought up another problem. Finally sold it about 3 weeks later just to get my money back. Went back to driving my dad’s truck until a few weeks later someone I worked with at the board offered me her husbands old 98 blazer for want I had just sold the other one for. Went to look for it and bought it. They had just gotten married about 6 months before and both bought new cars. The blazer had been sitting since. It needed some work but was drivable. He had just changed the fuel pump before we came to look at it. It still needed new differential bearings. We took it to the shop to have that fixed and were told it also needed new gears because the bearing being out caused the driveshaft to move around and eat into the gears. $700 later, was told it also needed a new left front wheel bearing, and with it being a four wheel drive requires you to change the entire front hub. He offered to change it for an addition $300. No thanks. I’ll wait on that one. This blazer was also shifting weird. It would always shift at the same RPM not matter what throttle position. Later found out it was the throttle position sensor. Put a new one in and it fixed the problem. Still the engine was not making much power. After it blew a large piece of the converter out of the exhaust, we realized it needed a new one. Got a new muffler and converter installed for less than $300. That was all of the major problems except for the bearing. Finally I have a car that gets me where I’m going without have a serious issue. Then gas starts going back up. Here I am with a 15 MPG truck and gas back up close to $3.00 a gallon for a while. Cost $35.00 to fill it up. Having to get gas twice a week when driving to work and U of L. Finally decided to put it up for sell and couldn’t believe how fast it sold. It sold the day I put it up for sell. Before I sold it I found that one of my sisters friends was selling her 2005 Ford Focus. Went and test drive it and liked it. Decided to buy it and sell my Blazer. So that brings me to what I have now. This car has no known problems as of now and gets around 30 MPG. So now I have a car that I can drive and gets good mileage, just had to pay more for it.

Update 1 October 20, 2009

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So I realized the other day that its been forever since I posted on here. I have been reading some other blogs and it has gotten me motivated to start using this again. After realizing what their purpose for blogging was, I have decided to model off of some of my favorites and use it to document my college experience. Hopefully in a couple of years I can look back at this and see all that happened at college. So, to catch up since my last post, a lot has changed. Where to start? Well, I graduated from high school back in June. My last post said that i had just gotten the call that I got hired at the Board of Ed. Time has flown by and that job is now over. I didn’t quit or anything, the job was a co-op that lasted through my senior year. Senior year is over and so is the job. Some people don’t get that. I couldn’t stay because the new students were coming in. Anyway, Graduated on June 6, 2009 and stopped working for the board on the 12. I miss that job so much. Needed a job for money so I got hired to work in the warehouse at RBI corp. We deal with small engine parts and such. Mainly anything needed to build or rebuild an engine. We sell a lot of lawnmower blades as well as chain and bars for chain saws. We sell chain by the 100 ft roll! My job mainly is shipping/receiving. I pull orders, park other orders, load/unload trucks, and put away new parts.

 Enough about work. This fall I started as a freshman at the University of Louisville. As of right now I plan to major is CIS(Computer Information Systems) with a possible concentration in infosec (Information Security). We just passed the mid-term point of the semester. I can’t believe its went so fast. My classes for this semester are Camp 100. Camp is a basic welcome to campus class that introduces you to campus life. Was meeting once a week but that ended on Oct. 2. English 101. English 101 is a basic writing class. Not much more to say about that. CIS 100. Cis 100 is a basic computer apps class. Pretty much the same as what I did in high school. Easily the easiest class I have right now. Deals mostly with excel functions. Right now working with nested if functions and date functions. CIS 150. CIS 150 is the intro class for the CIS major. Discuss information systems and how they work. Reading a lot of case studys and writing case reports. my last class for this semester is Math 190. Math 190 is precal. It is without a doubt the hardest class I am taking right now. Grade is a solid C for now but trying to get it up. Well thats all for this update. Time to go to class.

A Working Life July 9, 2008

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I got a job!!! I got the call today, I will start my job tomorrow. I have to be at the central office at 12:00. I will be a student technician for the Bullitt County Board of Education. I will go to school as normal for 1st and 2nd blocks, then go to work for the rest of the day. I will be making minimum wage, but also $.45 p/mile for gas for travelling to all the schools. I’ll have about 4 weeks to work before school starts back. I hope this job works out well.

Widget July 6, 2008

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Hell yes I’m a Jr. fan.

Gas Prices July 3, 2008

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I don’t know how some people do it. Gas prices are killing my wallet. I mean, my car does reasonably well on gas, about 23 MPG, but $40.00 to fill up from 1/2 tank? Ridiculous. I look forward to the day when we can tell the Middle East what they can do with their stockpiles of oil when the US finally figures out some alternative energy solution. I still live at home so I just have to pay for my gas, some for my phone bill and car insurance. I don’t see how some of the starting out couples do it. Paying a Mortgage, car payments, insurance, all the bills, food and all the other expenses of life and all. My sister gets married in January, and their barely making ends meet now, renting a small apartment, and with no car payments. Oil per barrel prices hit another new record high while several stocks hit record lows. If people get to panicking and start selling stocks, it could be like the great depression all over again. First the company’s fail and close up, then the banks start to fail because they can’t get their money out of the company because they have none, and nobody can afford to buy it, so the banks are out that money. I’m just saying, it could happen again. Or there will be WW3.

Gas is currently $4.09 a gallon here, right about the state average. It should go up any day because of some stupid new state tax on gas. They keep talking about reducing or suspending the tax, and what do they do? They increase it. WTF. Tell me what you think about the gas prices.

Start Your Engines June 26, 2008

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For fathers day, me and dad got tickets to Kentucky Speedway for the Meijer 300 presented by Oreo. They say a picture speaks 1,000 words, so I’ll let the pictures do the talking here. Get ready for this if your on a slow connection.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gone Fishing June 26, 2008

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You know what they say, I bad day fishing beats a good day working. Well, thats just what we did. My parents took off for vacation and I’m out of school for the summer, so we packed up the car and headed out to Nolin Lake. We mainly fished off the pier and shore line (we were at wax dock) with little luck. There were lots of little bluegills along the pier but nothing to try and catch. Mom eventually caught one trying to get the worm off.

Very small fish

All in all, it was a good day, just hot. Here are some pics of around the lake.

Nolin LakeNolin Lake

DucksNolin Lake

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Serious fisherman at work here. At work

If you’ve been to Nolin, leave a commit, especially if you caught anything.

Car Wreck April 20, 2008

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Last night I found out the hard way that wet concrete is like ice. While driving down Bardstown road in Louisville, I looked away for about 1 second and turned back to find a car stopped about 30 feet in front of me. I was only going about 30 because I was looking for a gas station to buy a Coke from. Naturally, I slammed on the brakes, locked up, and slid into his bumper (So much for ABS). Luckily, he heard me trying to stop and tried to take off, creating a sort of cusion between the cars. It’s funny that we had just studied the transfer of energy between objects in physics just the other day. I drive a ‘99 Ford Taurus, it didn’t really do much damage to either car. I just had some paint scrached off and he had a slight dent. Here is a picture of my car before the accident, (I haven’t got a damage picture yet).

 

My car

EARTHQUAKE April 19, 2008

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At about 5:36 (EST) this morning, we had a 5.2 earthquake rumble through town. I thought it was just the wind blowing hard until I got out of bed and the air was still. The Epicenter was in eastern Illinois, and took about 30 seconds for the shock waves to reach here. It scared the hell out of me once I had figured out what it was. This is the first earthquake I ever remember feeling. There was no real damage around here, just pictures off the wall and stuff of that nature. The weird part was that is was not the fault you would expect it to be from here, but from another one farther away. Leave a commit if you’ve been through an earthquake before.

Read about it at http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1919&from=rss_home

Thunder April 15, 2008

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Last weekend, I got to go to Thunder over Louisville (KY) for my first time. (For those of you unfortunate not to know what this is, it is a huge firework show, supposedly the largest in North America, that kicks off the Derby Festivities leading up to the Kentucky Derby). Unfortunately for me and the other 350,000 + crowd, it was COLD, just about 40 by the time the fireworks started. Figures that it was 80’s last week and 70’s this week, just a cold front for the weekend. Because of the cold the crowds were way down. If you’ve never seen thunder before, you should make a trip to town to see it one year. The fireworks are shot off the Second Street Bridge, crossing the Ohio River, and off of barges on either side of the bridge. After you see it once, you won’t want to miss it again. Wish i had pictures to post but I forget my camera. I watch it on TV every year but this was my first time watching it live. I Heard an interesting commit from one spectator, he said the difference between watching it on TV and watching it live is like the difference between looking at pictures and making love.

There is a huge air show during the afternoon. Planes and stunt pilots come from all over the country to perform. All this happens over the river, so there is a good view from both the Kentucky and Indiana sides. If you would like to know any more ask me in comments or go to http://www.thunderoverlouisville.org for more info.