Burnerblog

I’ve been busy. So busy, in fact, that I’ve neglected ol’ Burnerblog once again.

Here is the kind of post I hate to read on other people’s’s’s’s’s blogs.

I’ve been playing bass in two bands, playing Age of Conan online with friends, racing in NCNASCAR (and winning some races!), having friends over from out of town, reading neat websites with cool ideas, and many other things.

Next up for me is making a compost pile, organizing one corner of the garage, and waxing my car.

And maybe keeping this place a little more up-to-date than I have been.

It’s been busy around here. On Saturday night, I took the family out to a “cuise,” where a bunch of us in the car club I belong to drove down the majority of Westheimer and ended with a dinner at Taco Cabana. It was pretty fun. Gelli rode with her friend-boy Zach while Brendon rode with a friend in the club named Vlad. Sherry rode with me, and the weather was so pleasant, we drove with the windows down and the sunroof open. I got to race twice (and *cough* won both times), hehe, and Sherry joked that it was the “oldest kid” in the club who did the stuff we’re not supposed to do.

I’ve also been playing the bass nearly every day, and for the first time in over 20 years, I actually feel improvement in my playing. It’s a lot of fun playing weekly with the band, but it’s an even better feeling being able to walk into a practice knowing all my songs cold. It also helps on the songs I have to both sing and play. Yes, you read that right: I sing and play a few songs.

On Saturday, Sherry and I shot a wedding in the Heights, and as a function check of my camera, I shot a quick photo of my car.

Nothing spectacular… not even the greatest photo of the Passat, but well, it’s the latest photo I have of my car, so I thought I’d post it. She’s so preeety!

I spent last Saturday taking photos of a group of VW’s around Houston for the European Auto Gruppe’s Spring BBQ and Get Together. It was a lot of fun, and I got some neat photos.

Here are a group of cars on Sabine St. bridge just outside of downtown Houston:

Here is a picture of a row of VW’s on the same bridge:

Finally, here’s a neat photograph of all the VW owners in an homage to Captain Planet:

Though it’s hard to see in the smaller pic on top, my car is the only white one in the lineup.

It was a great time, and I look forward to the opportunity to take more photos with this group. We had a blast!

Two of my favorite things: my car, and photography. Throw in a dash of Photoshop goodness, and VOILA!

Of course, I check the forecast from all the weather guessers this weekend and they all say no rain for the foreseeable future. I guess the foreseeable future didn’t extend to Monday evening. I spent the time yesterday washing my car and making it look nice, and now look what’s coming behind my car!!!

Grrr… but at least the car looks nice. For now.

My car is dirty. Real dirty. I knew when I got a white car that it would look dirty faster, but oddly, even as dirty as it is, it doesn’t look as dirty as my wife’s dark blue car. Regardless, my car is filthy. Since it’s brand new, I’m still in the “baby it” mode, and I really want to wash it, but knowing that it’s only going to continue to get rained on and dirtier makes me unmotivated to go out to wash it only to have it get just as dirty within moments of driving it again. I guess I just have to deal with it.

It has been really fun driving it, though. I went over 1000 miles last week, so the engine and drive-train are now considered “broken in,” although I hate to use the word “broken” with anything relating the the drive-train of my car. I got the iPod connector for the aux-in in the glove box, and it works great. Next up: bluetooth or chip mod (not sure yet, but either are at least two months away).

That’s right; some people mod computers or other household equipment, but I’ve begun modding my Passat. Lots of people mod cars, too; they put on new wheels, tires, window tint, or maybe even pin-stripes. I’ve decided to go a little more cautious for now.

So far, it’s been pretty fun making plans. Of course, this also means budgeting, and that’s where this plan of mine has taken on a life of it’s own. You see, I can’t really just go and do all the things I want to do to my car in one day or weekend; it’s cost prohibitive. So, here’s what I’ve done so far.

Window tint. In Texas, this is something you just have to do. If you have black leather seats like I do, it’s even more important or you can melt into your seat in the summertime. I have these things called retractable sun screens or curtains on the rear window and the two rear passenger windows which help, but not enough. In the summer, I’ll likely leave them all deployed; that with the tint should go a long way towards making the car less like a sauna if left in the sun for short periods of time unattended.

Extra cargo hook. VW puts this really neat and handy set of cargo hooks on the top of the inside of the trunk where you can hang plastic grocery bags. This is neat, because it keeps them from rolling around the inside of your trunk. There is the ability to add a second one, but it doesn’t come with the second pair of hooks. I purchased the parts required and mounted it today. I did damage myself by cutting my right index finger, but that was due to stupidity on my part. The end result is that I now have four cargo hooks for use the next time (and every time thereafter, of course) we go shopping. The wife was happy with this one (as was I).

Next up: New after market performance air filter which will help with hp (5-10) and fuel economy. Then, I will go for the iPod adapter in the car. Right now I have an aux connector in the glove box which allows me to connect any mp3 device to the car, but I’m going to go ahead and get the iPod connector which will allow me to control the iPod through the radio and/or MFD. The buttons on the steering wheel will then control the iPod. The beauty is that the aux connector will remain (and still work), as will the 6-CD in-dash player. SWEETNESS!

Following the iPod connector will come the bluetooth module. There’s a little phone button on the steering wheel that doesn’t work. I found the kit online that will allow me to turn my car’s stereo into a bluetooth phone! I will be able to hear the person talking over the car’s speakers, and a small microphone will be placed in the a-frame near the driver’s head. This will be pretty sweet. VW doesn’t offer these in the US due to some legal issues in certain states where mobile phone usage in automobiles is limited, but it’s easy enough to get either the OEM (expensive) or after market (less expensive and easier to install) modules to make it work as intended.

Then, the daddy of the mods will come: the chip mod. This will add 70hp at the engine and around 42-50 hp at the wheels. It’s a little on the pricey side, but the performance increase is amazing. It’s the most cost effective method of gaining extra hp. It’s also considered one of the safest, since the ECM programming for the engine is very conservative. The extra horses will help with acceleration and even fuel economy, gaining an average of 2-5 mpg.

In today’s driving around town, I averaged 27.4 mpg. That’s with stop and go traffic and some mixed freeway driving. Of course, I was easy on the gas and didn’t “race” it at all. Therein lies the key. I don’t think I have driven this “nice” in probably 15 years or more. I like playing the mpg game on the MFD. I try to get it as high as I can. I guess I’m getting old when trying to get the most mpg out of my sporty car is more fun than beating a Camry or an Altima from a stop.

I got a Zune for Christmas, and from the day I got it, I was most excited about wireless sync. Sure, the larger screen (than an iPod) is really nice, and the GUI is pretty sweet too (with customizable background), but wireless is what it’s all about. Well, I had problems getting it to work, so I put it down for a few weeks to allow my brain to get around the problem. It’s been connected to the XBox where it served as the music for me while I played games with my son.

Today, I picked up the Zune, tried to wirelessly sync, and again, it didn’t work. I kept getting a “connecting to pc” message, but then it would say that I wasn’t logged in and couldn’t complete the connection. So I thought about it, and I remembered that I had installed Zune software on my eeePC. I wondered if perhaps it kept trying to connect to it instead of my desktop PC (where my medial lives) and sure enough, that was the problem. Once I shut down the Zune Wireless Enumerator service on the eeePC, the Zune synced up on it’s very first attempt!

This is a big deal because I plan on using the Zune mainly in my car as the car’s media server. The Passat has an aux-in for mp3 players. This is super-handy since if I had the iPod kit, I wouldn’t be able to use the Zune in there. The big benefit is that I can leave the Zune in the car and select which files I want to go into the Zune from my desktop and have it sync out to the car. The caveat is that the Zune has to be on and has to be charging, but I’m working on that part of the equation. The solution may lie in a car charger and a longer aux cable than I have right now. That way, it’ll charge every time I drive, and when I get home, I can tell it to sync as I exit the car. Once it’s done syncing, it’ll shut itself down and be ready for the next time I drive.

This is all kinds of cool in my world. YAY ZUNE!!!

It’s nice outside, and the people who are trying to sell the house next door left me a nice present; water spots all over my car. They did some watering or something of what remains of the yard there, and sprayed down my car. The bad part is that our water here is hard, and when it dries, leaves terrible calcium marks on the car. They are very hard to get off. Now, I get to try to wash that off my car.

Bastards.

What was going to be a quick 20 minute job will now be an hour job. I wish I could kick them in the nuts, but that’d not be very neighborly. Maybe I could sit outside in a pair of overalls with no shirt on wearing a cowboy hat with a bottle of Southern Comfort in my hand and wave and scream obscenities at everyone who looks at the house. Then, when the company that owns the house comes to investigate, I can tell them the next time they spray my car down I’ll make sure they never sell the house.

Yeah, I have a headache today which makes me especially evil.