Neighbor Day is on March 11th this year and every year. This year, it falls on a weekend, so we tend to do our Neighbor Day festivities on the closest weekday to the actual Neighbor Day, so we will do the Neighbor Day stuff this year on Friday, March 10, 2023.
Prepare for Neighbor Day about the way you would prepare for July 4, with stuff for the grill, snacks, beer and sodas. You won’t need to get fireworks, but you will need a stack of $1 or $2 bills. You will need a box of the big trash bags.
Bribe your own kids, their friends and whomever with the individual bags of chips, cans of soda and dollar bills to help you pick up all the trash in the neighborhood. My kids like Gatorade Prime. I haven’t tasted the stuff, but they have a well-designed can. They also like Flamin’ Hot and other Frito brands.
Bribe your adult friends with beer and herb to help you clear out the big stuff, like old tires, steel pipe, broken coolers and other trash out of the gullies, ditches and roadsides. My friends claim to like all the fancy microbrew stuff, but then I see them guzzle the same cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon and Tecate that I drink.
Call your local 311 country municipal help line to get rid of the giant pile of trash you’ve made. Please don’t burn it, the smoke makes the children cough. If you don’t have 311 in your area then the local dump might let you dump it there for free. In my area, the dump charges about $100 per truckload, so we squeeze the bags of trash into the curbside pickup cans.
And of course, the true spirit of Neighbor Day is to help your elderly and disabled neighbors with their home repairs and other acts of love and generosity.
Have a Happy Neighbor Day. Please don’t get too fucked up and don’t drink and drive, call a Lyft.
I guess we all stumble onto islands of expertise. Rick Yukon used to tell me that for some reason, the only islands of expertise that anyone seems to care about with him were the ones where he found ways of saving a few hundred bucks, or ways of spending a few million bucks.
I have found myself in the same position as Professor Yukon, albeit with neither his taste for alcohol nor the kind of debt where both a 300 stone enforcer and a 120 pound manager of that enforcer end up paying the debt-holder a visit.
For some odd reason, I have discovered that I have an expertise in getting vehicles back on the road after two of these conditions have been met:
The vehicle has experienced the failure or loss of its catalytic converter, resulting in an engine that sounds like it has community pneumonia acquired from an evening in the company of philanthropists at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (failure of cat), or alternatively sounds like some dude in front of a biker bar with a Fat Boy and twenty years of hard-banging with his new 32-year-old wife (loss, aka theft of cat),
Owner of vehicle has neither the inclination to involve her insurance company, nor the material wealth to buy purchase a new OEM catalytic converter and install it himself. (The linguistic genders of these two hypothetical people could be reversed, if desired.)
When I talk about this subject, people who have found themselves described as above tend to seek me out in their desperation, and hopelessness. And like a calm, furry angel, like a comforting Saint Bernhard mixed with a Bloodhound, like your own mommy and daddy who came to tuck you into your bed at night instead of beat you while under your blankies from a dead nuts money dream about a sweet-ass set of Hotwheels and tracks … like the gentle human that I am, these miserable people come to me and I give them the words that bring them peace.
What do I tell them, to earn their trust and their love?
I tell them that it’s going to be okay.
I tell them that they might not need the expensive catalytic converter that is compatible with the California Air Resources Board, maybe they live in a state where they can just buy the EPA-compliant catalytic converter for $150 or so, and put it on themselves, get their car on the road, after some fucking asshole stole the cat off of their only damned vehicle, that gossamer thread of connection that they have between a happy and reasonably comfortable life and an hella miserable life. Maybe things are that bad? Pull the front of the car up on the tallest curb you can find, get some tools, pull off the broken cat and put up a new one, probably made in China, but compliant with the EPA standards and no more difficult to replace than straight-piping it, because even if your state allows a straight pipe, it isn’t going to save you that more more money than just putting in a compatible part, and not punching a hole in your cat because then it might not pass emissions.
But no, they say? They live in one of these states?
American Samoa
California
Connecticut
Colorado
Delaware
Guam
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Nevada
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Puerto Rico
Rhode Island
Saipan and Northern Mariana Islands
U.S. Virgin Islands
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
Washington D.C.
If you live in one of these states, and you just found out that you need a new cat, due to failure or loss, you now belong to one of two catagories:
You are not worried and your life has not become appreciably worse. These people have vehicle insurance (loss or theft of their cat) or they can afford a substantial bill from their local mechanic.
You are an emotional mess, you curse the motherfucker who stole your cat, you curse the person who owned your vehicle before you for clearly damaging your cat that was supposed to last the life of the vehicle, at least that’s what the sales agent at the used car lot told you. You don’t know if it even worth replacing the cat at that cost just to pass the emissions test and keep it registered, and you have seriously considered selling your baby and buying another used car that won’t break down so often.
Still reading? You couldn’t resist some of my vehicular love, could you? You just couldn’t keep away from my mechanical loins, could ya?
Of course you couldn’t. I offer salvation.
First off, check the price of some CARB cats online. They aren’t cheap, but if you are half-decent with some metal fabrication, you can get a universal CARB-compliant cat for a couple hundred bucks or so, cut off the old cat right at the ceramic cartridges, weld in the universal cat, then do what you need to do to connect to your bolt flanges, so the next poor sap can unbolt the cursed thing and install an OEM when he or she pulls a Bedford-Stuyvesant on your junker and turns it into a valuable classic. You will pass by her, your angel, she will be on West Olympic Boulevard near Koreatown. Her new owners will love her in a way that you then wished you could have loved her.
And you can love her like that, even if your skills of being a mechanic are half-assed and your only gnat’s dick better than broke.
So, if your cat was stolen, and you can’t go with insurance, you should be able to put in a CARB-compliant catalytic converter yourself for less than $800, maybe even less than $400.
But if your cat just died, and has your engine sounding like it finally decided to quit vaping and smoking, wheezing and sputtering like an asthmatic doing the Unsanctioned 250, and if even $400 is a bit steep for you, then you have come to the right place, and I offer you salvation.
For the low price of just $25, plus a bit of elbow grease, you can possibly clean out your clogged cat and get your car back on the road. Now, if your engine still runs pretty well, and you’re just getting an exhaust error code, then might be able to clean out your cat with some of that stuff that you pour in the tank. Or maybe two or three of those. But if your cat is so clogged that it has impacted the performance of your engine, then you shouldn’t expect to be able to fix that with something that you pour into your gas tank. You will need to take the cat off of the vehicle, and clean it the industrial way, the way that air pollution engineers clean their expensive commercial cats.
Still reading?
It isn’t that tough. But it will take you a couple days, during which you won’t be able to drive your car. Don’t be temped to drive the car without the cat, regardless how desperately you need to get to the Kennedy Center and have to tip the valet $5 for having to drive your death trap to the parking spot. Just don’t drive it. The hot exhaust might choke you death, or worse, burn up some of your engine wiring, at which point, if you hadn’t been lucky enough to stumble on the likes of me, you would have no idea that this is fixable too.
Get the vehicle up on ramps or a tall curb. Block the back wheels, pull up the emergency brake, be sure the vehicle is in park. Wait for the vehicle to cool down so you can take off the cat without getting burned. Get a headlamp and take some photos with your camera of everything that you are about to remove. Spray some PB Blaster on the bolts that you need to remove. Find the connection to the downstream oxygen sensor, struggle with that for about half an hour to disconnect the oxygen sensor harness from the wiring connection. Don’t break it, use WD-40 if necessary, you can clean it later with some electronics and contact cleaner. If you can, remove the oxygen sensor. If you can’t get to it, just be careful of it when you remove the cat, and you will take the oxygen sensor out later.
Remove the bolts that hold the cat to the exhaust manifold on one end, and the resonator on the other end.
If you are lucky, the bolts came off. If you are less than lucky, you found yourself banging away on it with a hammer and a persuader pipe around the end of your breaker bar. If you are slightly more lucky, your compressor and your pneumatic impact wrench proved their value, once again. If you are ambiguously lucky, then you are now married to the redneck fellow that you recruited to do all of this and get your car back on the road. The ambiguously lucky find themselves in two categories;
In the process of getting a decent job so that she can buy a new vehicle and not have to rely on the dirty brute anymore to keep her mobile. You will deal with the emotional fallout the way you usually do; with a string of failed romances and some substances.
Married to the dirty brute, and actually kinda flippin’ happy with the filthy bastard, because while anyone can love a redneck when their car breaks down, she found out that the idiot can also rub her neck and her feet and make her a dinner and actually take car of her the way no other man has ever taken care of her.
You get off the cat, and then if it’s a warm summer day, you get the garden hose and get to work, if it’s cold and icy then you drag the filthy brute up to the bathtub or the shower and then get to work. Before we get the shopping list, find an old plastic supermarket bag, or a whole lot of used plastic food wrap and plug up the little hole on the side for the oxygen sensor. If you are lucky enough to have one of those small cats that doesn’t have the oxygen sensor hole, you can skip that step.
Before you start, get a flashlight and your phone and take a photo of the front and back surface of the ceramic honeycomb inside of the cat. You will want to compare the before and after images of the ceramic. The ceramic honeycomb should cover the whole surface of the catalytic material. If you see a whole drilled into the center, don’t waste your time with the rest of this, someone already straight-piped the cat, and you will need to replace the cat if you want to stay compliant with the air pollution laws, depending on your State.
Next, the first cleaning step is cheap, just run some water through the cat. It might be so clogged that the water takes minutes or longer to move through. Do what you can, the real cleaning happens next …
The stuff you will need to clean out that cat isn’t cheap, or at least, it isn’t cheap enough that you will want to buy ten bottles of the stuff. To keep this adventure around $25, you will need to just get enough cleaning stuff to fill up the cat, rather than fill up a bucket or trough to soak the cat. You should be able to fill up most cats with a gallon each of the cleaner. To do that, and let it soak for a few hours, you will need to cover up one of the ends and then stand the cat up in a bucket to catch the stuff that gradually leaks out. Usually, the better end to plug up is the tail of the cat that goes into the resonator, but either end will work if the flange is amenable to clamping. Get a big piece of plastic food wrap, double it over, double it again, so you have four layers. Use rubber bands or a bungee, and if necessary, keep it tight with a hose clamp. Put on some rubber gloves, and possibly even eye protection, close that gorgeous thing you call a pouty little mouth. Then put the plugged end of the cat downward in the bucket and the open end facing up, you will pour the cleaner into the open end.
Sodium Hydroxide is the alkaline cleaner of choice for air pollution engineers who have to clean their industrial cats. There is Sodium Hydroxide in oven cleaner and in drain cleaner. The drain cleaner is usually cheaper. With the bucket in the shower or tub, pour the drain cleaner into the upright end of the cat, so you fill it up like a flower vase. One big bottle might be enough, or you might need a second one. Depending on the size of your cat, it will swallow about a gallon of drain cleaner. Let that soak for about four hours at least, or overnight better.
Depending on how tight you covered the end, you drain cleaner is either still mostly in the cat, or mostly in the bucket. Take off the end, let the Hydroxide drain out into the bucket. If the drain cleaner is really filthy, you might want to dump it and put in a fresh batch. If it isn’t yet too filthy, (perhaps it drained through your leaky plug a little bit too fast) then you can put the plug back on and repeat. You should try to get the cat material to soak in the cleaner for at least four hours.
Next, be sure the plug is off, and flush out the cat with warm water. You will likely notice that the water flows through the cleaner cat a good bit better than a dirty cat. Be sure to put in the water from each end, to help dislodge more gunk. When the water flows clean and the bubbling has stopped, drain the water, put the plug back on.
Next, do the same thing, but with Acetic Acid. A cheap way to get Acetic Acid is with white vinegar. Buy a couple of the gallon jugs if they are cheap enough. Again, put the vinegar into the upright cat and let it soak for a few four hours. No matter how well you cleaned out the cat, you will undoubtedly still see some bubbles in the vinegar as you pour. That is the acid reacting with the bits of remaining sodium hydroxide from the drain cleaner. If the bubbling is too intense, get out of the room and turn on the vent fan, you don’t want to gas yourself with whatever byproducts have reacted in there. Wait a few hours, pull off the plug, drain the vinegar into a bucket. If it is clean, you can reuse for another round of cleaning, if it is slimy yellow like the ejaculate of a toad, then perhaps you should consider discarding it and use a fresh bottle for the next round of cleaning.
Flush again with water. Repeat the process of hydroxide-water-acid as many times as needed until water flows reasonably through your cat. It will never flow freely, those honeycomb channels are really narrow, and the surface tension in each little capillary is sufficiently high to slow the flow of the water.
Very important safety: Do not let the used or new drain cleaner come into contact with the used or new vinegar. They will react. If you flush them both down the same drain, first pour the dirty drain cleaner, rinse with a good bit of water, then pour the dirty vinegar down.
Give your cat a final flush from both end, stand it up so the last bits of water can drain onto the floor.
Now you will need to blow it out with air.
Be sure your oxygen sensor hole is still plugged. Put back on the end plug made of plastic food wrap and your hose clamp or rubber bands. Make a tiny hole in the center of the plastic. This time, set the cat so the plugged end faces up. Use an air compressor to blow out as much water as possible through the cat. If you don’t have access to an air compressor, you can make the hole bigger and use the cold setting on a blow dryer. Keep this going until no more water drips out of the cat.
Use your flashlight and your phone to take a photo of the surface of the catalytic honeycomb. It should look pretty damned good, and put a smile on your face.
Clean your downstream oxygen sensor with some electronics cleaner, put it back into the cat, if necessary. Reinstall the cat into your car. It is very likely you will now enter a new place of agony and anguish as you try to remount the fucker back into place. The bolt springs are there for a reason though just keep at it, and you will either get it, or as previously mentioned, you will find yourself married to that redneck fellow with those two paths in front of you.
Reconnect any brackets, clean and reconnect the oxygen sensor connection. And you should plan ahead and purchase a new packing gasket, which fits between the exhaust manifold and your cat. It is special stuff, it’s made of compressed wire and it is designed to expand and contract properly with changes in heat, to keep the exhaust gasses where they belong.
If you want numbers, you can remove the upstream oxygen sensor and measure the pressure at idle and throttle to see if your cat is mostly clear. If you cleaned it well, and if your cat hasn’t been damaged your clogged-cat conditions should disappear for at least a few months, or hopefully longer. If you get good at this process, you might prefer to do it every year or two, to keep your vehicle happy.
At this point, many expert mechanics have resisted my charms and have decided that the catalytic material has been sufficiently depleted in the cat that these cleaning methods simply polish a turd.
Maybe. You do you.
But as an air pollution physicist, with some knowledge in this area, I happen to know that catalysts do not react all that well with soot. They react with volatile gasses and unstable molecular compounds of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon. So if your cat is coated in a layer of soot and volatiles, that soot and those volatiles will also reasonably protect that catalytic surface. In other words, your oven might be truly dirty, but the enamel under it is likely in fairly good shape, if you are willing to spend some time and some elbow grease cleaning it with the sodium hydroxide in your oven cleaner.
The reality of these cats is that they have become a revenue source for the industry. And the objective of a skatepunk molecular physicist such as myself is to keep the last few remnants of wealth for my bothers and sisters, rather than the vehicle industry.
Bothers, sisters, until you can afford to buy a new a cat, listen to the calming tones of my voice and know that Uncle Ukon cares for you; you have a decent shot of keeping your ride on the road and your life together if you clean out your cat. Plus, there are a lot of really friendly rednecks of all skin tones, ethnicities and genders who would love to be married to you, and might only cheat on you with a boat, a dirtbike, an snowmobile, a skateboard or a charming performance vehicle.
Studio White isn’t really a color, it is the absence of reflective color and the fullness of light. Studio White is an exercise in smart commerce, it’s the thing that a property owner will do to minimize maintenance. Simply, it is just using plain white semi-gloss on a wall (and flat on an actual art gallery wall) with no pigmentation. The paint is pure white because pure white is easier to touch up, it is easier to find, easier to match. And the lack of pigmentation creates something kind of wonderful, it creates a canvas onto which the prospective inhabitants can see their future.
Studio White might vary between manufacturers. Glidden’s Studio White will be difference from Behr and different from PPG. They all have a slightly different luminosity to their light, and if you put down Behr Premium Semi Gloss, you can’t touch it up with Behr i-300 Semi Glass. They won’t match. But for years and years, you will be able to touch up with Behr Premium Semi Gloss. And if you are are smart and have a good memory, all of your rentals will use the same paint, so you can fix them all from the same paint.
The economics of the opportunity present themselves in such a way that the property owner releases himself or herself from the need for tinted paint not to show the coal dust, to a decent white paint, which is going to get dirty regardless.
It seems the token managers at ourglass.io have not yet actually modified the contact, I apologize for the confusion. They published some plans to modify the contact this weekend, but now I’m told that it isn’t even clear if they will actually roll the change out.
So as it stands now, the Ultra Stake still needs to be claimed our compounded once per day, at 6:00 pm Eastern Time.
I had 0.0101 BNB in my wallet and I claimed my Glass to the tune about 380 million Glass since yesterday. The gas fees for that were 0.0018 BNB, which again, is holding steady. However when I went to deposit 500,000,001 of that to play the daily lotto, the gas fees for that deposit would have been 0.008325 BNB. I had only 0.0083 BNB in my wallet though, which wasn’t quite enough to make a deposit. So I left the Glass in my wallet. C’est la vie.
If the OurGlass contract changes in the way they suggested, which would be a once-per-week draw, this would allow lower-volume players to have a chance to participate. Hopefully we will see these changes soon.
Free Small-Sized Slurpee for anyone 21 years old or younger at participating global 7-Eleven stores every Thursday. Courtesy of neighborday.us and an anonymous OurGlass donor. “Oh thank heaven for 7-Eleven.” (If this note is still up, then the offer is still in effect with your local participating 7-Eleven stores.)
Now the article …
I did a compound, rather than a claim, first time in a few weeks. I think the gas price was fair. Yesterday though, the 0.0025 BNB would have been too high for my BNB wallet, I was down to my last 0.0013 BNB. But I was able to pull about $2 in Fire transferred to USDC from my Fire trading tool, through xPollinate, into Pancake Swap, then into BNB. It was enough to bring my BNB up to 0.0126, which was then enough to do a full “compile” today without having to worry about having enough coin. To me, that seems okay, that BNB would pay for 5 compiles, and maybe a claim or two here or there on the Glass if I want to move a few bucks in gas to one of my matic accounts. And yes, I do agree with those who say Matic is buggy, it is. But the value is outstanding. It is a really typical product from India in my opinion. The Matic engineers found a way to make the process really, really cheap. And like an Indian-made car, when you get really cheap, you get a sometimes buggy automobile! And sometimes you are stuck in your Uncle Chaim Gadgil’s place for a few hours while your cousin Eddy finds a belt that is close enough to the one that broke to at least get you on the road until you can get it to a shop or do the work yourself. That’s Matic. It works, and it does the job in a way that is ocassionally unreliable, but it does the job most of the time in a pretty dang good reliable way. My point is that BSC is what it is … it’s a premium-quality chain that has premium quality coin. Glass is one of those coins. So I’m coming into this on a pauper’s investment, just an average Joe Shmoogieball, as a birthday gift for my daughter. I figured, someday, when she needs it, I’ll hand over a fully mature Glass account to her and it will be a godsend to get her through the rough times that we all get, and that make up some of the best parts of life. And for the son, the Fire, and for the other daughter, the seeds of her own business. Life is a short walk to the grave for every one of us, the pleasure of passing our lives to the people we love, that can be like a Free Small-Sized Slurpee for anyone 21 years old or younger at participating global 7-11 stores. courtesy of neighborday.us and an anonymous OurGlass donor. My point here is that Glass and Fire have given me a way to plan for my children’s future in a very affordable way, thanks to the “Fire & Ice Community.” Yes, it is a good bit of work sometimes. But when you put the time in, when you take notes, when you plot your strategy to your specific goals and abilities, then you learn about “The Game” as Treyvon always reminds us all. It’s a game because the rules are different for every one of us. Some of us manage other’s wallets, some of us allow our wallets to be managed by others. But for most of us it seems, we manage our own wallets, we learn the game, we grow our knowledge, and we invest in something long-term in the friends we make here, the fun we have, the things we learn, and sometimes even the money we make. Via con Dios, Glassterians.
The point of this repost, is this …
If you are 21 years old or less, please go to your friendly INDEPENDENTLY FRANCHISED neighborhood participating 7-Eleven store, on any Thursday, and get an absolutely-free small sized Slurpee of your choice. (I am a fan of my Pina-Colada and Cola mix, there is something about the taste of coconut and ice that reminds me of my duty-station in Martinique when I was guarding this real smart ass who they pulled off the ship for the United Crushing incident.) And remember, your neighborhood 7-Eleven is often owned and franchised by someone who probably lives in your neighborhood and works at the store, it might even be that person behind the cash register! So unlike those other National Chain convenience stores, if you and enough of your friends ask your friendly 7-Eleven worker for one of your favorite items, they can sometimes add it to the store’s standard lineup!
Imagine if we could customize our lineups in the fantasy draft, eh, sport fans?
Before I go full Anchower and get into the mess I’ve made out of what is probably a simple problem with my 2007 Mitsubishi Raider, I do want to announce my new clarity in the field of fly-by-wire automobiles engines.
I have a vehicle from every era of global auto manufacturing except for the 2020s, because I have not found anything too exciting in the field of automobile manufacturing since about 2007 or so. But I’m sure that I’ll eventually inherit some clunker of a 2026 Speedy Pistachio, nearly junk, and I’ll find a way to make her whole again, as yet another human woman sends me back to the embracing and loving arms of a motorized vehicle.
The 1970s vehicles were utter shite, for the most part, they had no direction other than an occasional Grand Slam Homerun vehicle that was designed and implemented in that era. I guess the AMC Pacer and Gremlin come to mind, as well as the AMC Javelin, of course the second-generation Camaro/Firebird line. The Cadillacs did really well because the power limitations of the 1970s didn’t really cut into the sheer enjoyment of driving a small living room down the road.
But in general, 1970s vehicles were responses to the changing global economy, where for the first time, the USA wasn’t necessarily at the center of every act of globally-scaled social justice. AMC and those others seemed to have some perhaps more creative engineers who were able to use the restrictions of the era to make some truly disruptive vehicles. I’ve owned about eight of these vehicles, at least three of which were Chevy Vegas. In a very good business deal, my old man bought about five beat up Chevy Vegas with blown engines, two of which he deposited on our front lawn. I believe his intention was something to the effect of “if he has one ounce of mechanics ability in him like my brother, he’ll get both of those Chevys running in a week.” And then he told me, “Ricky, do you know where the battery charger is?” “Yeah, Dad, it’s in the garage next to the table saw.” Back then, having a table saw in one’s garage was a big deal. They were expensive, heavy and without many of the safety features of modern table saws. Having a battery charger was less of a big deal, but they were sufficiently expensive in the 1970s that a suburban gentleman tended only to have one. Nowadays, many of us have two or three of them. I believe I have five of them, the oldest of which was the one next to his table saw. “Ricky, do you know where the cylinder reamers is?” His intention apparently was make sure I knew the location of all the major tools necessary to rebuild the blown aluminum-sleeved engines of a couple of Chevy Vegas. He had seen his older and deceased brother do the same thing when he was my age, only to a couple of General Motors jalopies. I presume that nowhere in his drunken plan was the simple math that his brother was in fact eighteen years old at the time of those vehicle rebuilds, and it was back in the era of no pollution controls, virtually no electronics and rather simple engine construction. So perhaps he found it unsurprising when he in fact found that his twelve year old son was not capable to rebuilding the engines on a couple of Chevy Vegas.
Yeah, I had a couple of that lot, but the only 1970s vehicle that I have right now is Paloma, my 1975 Fiat Spider, the one with the dual overhead cam rally engine. She was one of the other 1970s era vehicles that made my list. And while I couldn’t manage to keep the Camaro, the Vegas, some old police car that my mom gave me, it had the 454 in in, ran like a raped ape. Damn, I should have kept that car. I don’t even remember the make, but lawd almighty I can never forget that 454. Sweet Smoking May, when I goosed her into the pocket — she had a fairly wide powerband, but I found it — when I got her running right, that whole giant vehicle suddenly felt like a big ol’ street bike. Even the steering suddenly went from loose to responsive. But I also kept the 124, because Paloma was built from the breath of an angel. She still is today, the most beautiful vehicle I have ever driven. Fiat got a way with a lot of with that vehicle because of that rally engine and that visually intoxicating body. They used all kinds of cheap components because it didn’t really matter, the enthusiasts would find a way to keep them vital. But for a relative song, Fiat built and delivered a world-class rally vehicle for about what it cost G.M., Ford and Chrysler to deliver flocks of also-rans. Until the Italians showed themselves as Automotive Design and Engineering Heavyweights, Japan didn’t really have much direction with their industry, (with notable exception of globe-changing trucks built on the Fuji 488 2-stroke, 2-cylinder, 2-carb engines.)
But when Japan found that they could out-Italian the Italians, they then used that superpower to compete with the U.S. brands. People wonder today why Fiat has such a hard time competing in the U.S. Market unless it’s with their Chrysler brand. It’s not because the Italians don’t know how to design and engineer cars, but rather that every time they come up with a hit, the folks at Honda, Toyota and Nissan find a way to make an album out of that hit. (The Koreans seem to be influenced somewhat from Italy too, but they also seem to have a level of pride that won’t let them make outright copies. So the Korean designs are actually more like the Italian designs; they are filled with pride, bravado and confidence. I have rarely said “That is a beautiful car” to anyone in the last decade or two, but I saw a Kia sedan of some kind, that struck me as truly beautiful, and it spurred me to mention this to the driver, stopped in the middle of the street, while we waited for a drunk dude to wander around. The timing of such an event huh? We both stopped simultaneously to wait for the drunk guy, after me admiring the kinetic flow of his Kia both moving and stationary. I think it was a 2021, I’ll look up a photo of it for the head photo at some point.
I still have the Fiat. It’s not an easy vehicle on which to work, because they jammed a lot of engineering into a small engine bay. But it’s manageable. And my ’90s era truck, it does have the diagnostic engine code computer, but the throttle is controlled by a cable, and the engine can mostly operate independently from the suite of sensors. Not completely, but close. It actually has a level of technology similar to the 1970s era Fiat Spider, they were about twenty years ahead of the U.S. industry with that design. But, once I get to my 2007, it then has the “fly by wire” design, as does the 2012 Nissan and the 2013 Mazda. On all of those vehicles, the throttle and most every other unit of engine operation is controlled by the engine’s computer. The throttle body has a small electric motor that opens the throttle by an amount governed by the computer, which measures my pressure on the throttle pedal. In the older vehicles, a wire opens that throttle. So what I will find with that 2007, after having spent weeks troubleshooting the computers, the robot throttle body, the gas-exchange and pressue sensors on that engine, it may simply be that my battery shit the bed, and I didn’t realize it because it had enough power to run the starter motor, but not enough power to not spike below 11.75 volts for a moment, at which time the computer’s 5.5 volt power-servo control circuit says “what the fuck is happening here?”
Yeah, it might be something that simple. Or it might be a single engine control wire that has grounded out against the frame somewhere. The point of all this is that if we expect to keep these older vehicles on the road, we will need to understand the underlying design. And as half-decent, non-professional mechanics (with notable exceptions among us), we can’t expect to find some holy grail of automotive repair hidden in the Scotty Kilmers of the world. There is profoundly little difference between any of these vehicles. If someone pimps Ford over G.M., or Nissan over Chrysler, or Simca over Renault, it’s most likely because someone has paid them to do that, or they see viewership benefits in doing that.
So yeah, it’s been a long time since I wrapped at ya …
The point of this post is to spread the word about Cure Ease, they make beef liver powders from Argentine cattle, or at least they used to, they don’t seem to have it on their site anymore. They may have been outbid by one of the one of the bigger companies, I had to get my last order from Now. But here is a link for the Cure Ease company, https://www.curease.com/shop
I just put that there because I like the product, I haven’t been paid to promote it, it’s just a customer testimonial.
For all I know, the other organ meat products may have similar nutritional benefits as the liver, or perhaps even greater, they also sell Thymus, Adrenal, Heart and Kidney powders. I think they are all dehydrated below 120 degrees.
These are human supplements, and I was told by my dad that they helped him feel better in his last years, but I use them for my elderly dog. I have mixed about a teaspoon of the raw liver powder in my dog’s dry dog food and added water, an average of three times a week for the last couple of years. To my knowledge of my dog, it has greatly added to her health, and she is about 18 years old, a heeler-bluetick mix. When she gets sick, which has only happened twice so far, I give her no food for 24 hours other than some of this beef liver broth, several times per day to both help her manager her hunger and also medicate her.
The idea behind Argentine beef organs is the concern that cattle livers from the USA may not be super-healthy for elderly dogs and sick humans because of possible soil contamination from pesticides, herbicides, GMOs and prions. Argentina has held a highly protective position of their natural resources, so it seems that Argentine raw beef organs measure noteably “cleaner” for contaminants that the animal may have acquired from the soil like pesticides, herbicides, GMOs and prions. I fully encourage the purchase and consumption of these Argentine products. However, I believe there is one Mexican State, I believe it’s Guadalahara, which is allowed to import beef into the United States with some caveats, because like Argentina, the use of pesticides, herbicides and GMOs is not common in this area, unlike many prime grazing areas in the USA. So if Guadalahara begins to offer raw deydrated cow organs, those would likely also be good for humans an animals, to receive the benefits of organ meat but with less concern of bio-accumulation of toxins present in pesticides, herbicides and GMOs.
This entire ridiculous post was simply to suggest you give your elderly dog some raw deydrated organ meat powder from a a place that isn’t contaminated with chemicals or biological residue from the GMO War. This is just a public service, the company has given me no money or samples. But if anyone wants to send any samples to me, please send them here:
Ricky Ukon c/o Eternal Digital Gym 1019 8th Street, Ste. 106 Golden, CO 80401.
One tradition on Neighbor Day is to dial your local 311 public servant and give them a “Happy Neighbor Day” to thank them for all their hard work through the year as public servants, as they deliver their help to the people who need it most.
But good luck getting 311 service on your cell phone, it often isn’t programmed into the interface, and you’ll hear a connection error. Hopefully, the cell phone providers will add this capability, as they added 911 (and as they grabbed 611 for themselves). But in the meantime, you can still reach your local 311 service through a regular phone number. For instance, I typed “Denver 311 service” into my DuckDuckGo search box and it took me to to the 311 website for Denver, where I found the alternate phone number, 720-913-1311, and where they also have a chat box.
Please spend a moment to thank your local 311 public servant employees and Happy Neighbor Day!
Neighbor Day endorses your local movie theater. Please spend some money there as soon as your local regulations will allow. We need movie theaters, it’s not the same to watch them on your television. The movie theater is a community event, and a neighborhood resource.
Jackets and Shirts is a new clothing company that reinvents the way men and boys purchase clothing. Founder Gorden Maclais, has agreed to supply over 400 teams nationwide with Neighbor Day shirts and jackets for our Great Cleanup Event on 3/11/2021.
“Our motto at Jackets and Shirts is that we won’t sell any article of clothing that doesn’t have at least one pocket. And our Jackets and Shirts customers can get in, find practical clothing for work and school, pay, and then be out the door in minutes. We make clothes shopping easy because we only carry brands that fit consistent sizing and we check sizing with our patented pressure-form air bags. So if a pair of 32 x 32 pants fits you in Levis, it will fit you with all the other brands we carry.”
Thank you Jackets and Shirts for your support of Neighbor Day, 3/11.
The U.S. Prison industry can’t continue to profit off of nonviolent criminals for their crimes of being poor. This can only be corrected by Constitutional Amendment to remove the “duly convicted” clause from the Thirteenth Amendment. (Symbolized by the blue horizontal stripes in the flag, like prison bars)
Three new states need to be added to our Fifty States, Puerto Rico, Washington D.C., and the U.S. Island State, which includes Guam, Saipan, American Samoa, Tinnian, Northern Mariana. USVI can either come in with the Island State or P.R.. The residents of these places need votes, representation, and full citizenship, hot that bullshit “U.S. National” nonsense. We have screwed over the Americans in U.S. Territories long enough, we can’t allow this level of racism and hatred to propagate or continue. (Symbolized by the 53 stars in the field that used to hold only 50.)
A separation of politics from daily life. Two halves of the country no longer trust each other, and can barely communicate with each other. (Symbolized by the reversal of the blue and red fields.)
This is now the flag that represents the United States of America for which I am most proud, the USA. built on justice, and the blessings of liberty. I’m done with the old flag, it just represents an era that needed to end back in the Eisenhower era. When we fix these three problems, Neighbor Day USA will revert back to the standard U.S. Flag, with 53 stars, horizontal red stripes and a blue field of stars.
