Archive for the 'money' Category
Tuesday, June 17th, 2008
Introducing: the FairMaster®
“Hi folks! Ever get tired from constantly having to sand your hull fair? Tired of those aching arms and blistered hands? What about that annoyingly constant ’swish-swish’ sound of that long board? Well not to worry, its days are numbered! Introducing the FairMaster®! Don’t be fooled by its ghetto construction and obvious use of second hand parts and recycled materials, the FairMaster® is a precision piece of fairing technology home-grown right here in the USA.”
“The FairMaster® is like someone else making 10 passes with a longboard for your every one! It’s orbital action also makes sure that you never sand out a gouge and feathering is a snap! With its small, old, rebuilt 1/3 sheet sander power source the only thing to tire out are the old-school felt and brass bushings! Read the rest of this entry »
Friday, June 6th, 2008
TIG time
Ok now I have an even better reason to get my TIG setup. My parents have a pop-up camper that they use pretty regularly to go camping. This thing and I have never ever, ever gotten along (the design is kind of on the chinzy side which matches the finishing) but my parents love it. Sadly (for them) the beast has a pretty nasty case of rot in the undercarriage and hitch set up. The bright minds at StarCraft decided that they would put the battery in a frame that is directly welded to the chassis and then have the ground lead to another part of the chassis. Naturally where the ground was located is pretty much just rusty pieces of paper and the battery box is in slightly better shape.
The “professional” estimate for the whole repair is something like $1,500 and that doesn’t include repainting or repairing the other rusted out areas like the leveling legs, lie downs, bumper supports… oh did I mention that the entire frame is just painted steel, no hot dip galvanizing here.
Monday, November 19th, 2007
M4-30 Road trip! (Part 2)
Remember that trip I took to get the boat stands? Well the trip to Virgina was the direct opposite; no moments of severe indecision, no lonely grueling hours through rainy weather, no busted transmissions… you know, the little things.
The trip started off at 10 am with Yinna and I traveling from NY to NJ to pick up my car, pack some snacks and haul butt down the highway. Sadly due to over confidence in both of our abilities to actually get to places on time, the departure time was eventually moved to 11 am. We then spent almost another hour fiddling with the GPS. Final departure time: 12 noon. I really didn’t mind except that we would be traveling over the amazing Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel at night instead of the day. Bummer.
The ride down was entirely uneventful except for watching of increasing fuel prices through the states. It became a fascination of mine to keep track of the prices and compare them to the prices of the next state and ponder as to why the prices differed. The only one that really stumps me is the lack of a price gap between full and self service stations. Not only do self service stations not exist in NJ (*turns off car and sits wondering why no one is coming around to ask what kind and of how much gass I wanted*) but it seems that they make a ton more sense! Pump your own gas and leave, no waiting for the attendant to service the other 5 cars before coming back to you. NJ is weird sometimes.
Sunday, November 11th, 2007
Diesel? Diesel!
The hunt for an engine is a thankless, arduous task. Not only is your quarry hard to find, but the methods of tracking it are full of pit falls. These include dishonest sellers, “trade only” sources, and my personal favorite “these things are for yachts and that’s what kind of price we’re going to charge for it”. A used car in decent condition costs 3-5 grand, so why does a used 20 hp diesel engine cost the the same? It really doesn’t make any sense except for supply and demand.
Since I’ve been sick for these past two weeks (yes I know, amazing health luck) I’ve been putting all of my energies toward locating parts that have been eluding me. The engine is at the top of the list (kerosene stove being a close second) so I combed the web, newspapers, and diesel rebuilders for some likely sources. Since my requirement of the entire package (engine, transmission, electrical controls and gauges) was for it to come out to no more than $1000 I had my work cut out for me. After a weeks of trying to go through common sources the best I could come up with was a well used 1972 2qm15 delivered halfway to NJ for $1000. Not exactly something to jump for joy about.
Monday, October 15th, 2007
lemons —> lemonade
What do you do when you can’t work on your boat? Simple, go make money (after all, boats need to eat…). For the next two weeks I’ll be working in the web division of Men’s Vogue Magazine. Walking casts are soooooo in right now. The office is accessible to people with a broken foot and even better, it’ll bring me a bunch closer to that diesel engine. Hopefully I’ll be back this week end to work on the boat, we’ll see how the foot feels.
Tuesday, September 11th, 2007
The LAST “stand”
After combing the net, calling numbers, and sending emails, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is only one way out of this mess before Thursday.
ROAD TRIP.
I’m cutting out the middle men and going right to the Brownell factory in Mattapoisett Massachusetts. Yes it’s 300 miles each way, yes that is a lot of driving, and yes it’s going to cost me almost $60 in gas. Why am I doing it? The stands are only $99 each for the SB-2! The savings in 1 stand pays for my gas and lunch. I save more than $200 bucks and get to go to the land of chowder and lobsters. The only catch is that I need to make it there by 4:30 so I better get a move on.
Sunday, September 9th, 2007
The things that move you
“You win some, you lose some”, that’s been the name of the game with this new move.
I won with the boatyard bill, a few hundred less than I thought which means that they pro-rated my time there. Yay! The only time I’ve had to deal with the term “pro-rate” was with my old scum-lord landlord. In his case, he wanted to pro-rate my rent when I needed a few extra days to move out. That was also a win, but off track of the topic at hand.
I won with the mover, Jim was really flexible about pick up and delivery times and I managed to book him for this thursday at 1pm. When I asked Jim about boat stands I got the answer I was kind of hoping to avoid, “ask the marina”. This is Fall, the main haul out time of the year. There a snow ball’s chance in hell that they are going to sell me used stands.
I was right, I couldn’t get used stands but they’ll order them for me at $128 a piece and get there the next day. Bummer, I was really hoping to keep the stands to under $450. I think I’ll shop around and see what I can dig up and call back on Monday if the price is right.
Sunday, August 26th, 2007
Computer Woes
Today was the culmination of a 4 year ritual. Every year for the past 4, between the months of August and October my Apple iMac G5 (rev. a) has conked out.
Sometimes this is with much fanfare (repair #1 : logic board and graphics board replaced due to exploding capacitors), fear (repair #2 : dead hard drive), or just aggravation (repair #3 : power supply). I’ve been a mac user since I was 8, my first machine was a PowerMac 7100/66 with a mind blowing 32 MBs of ram and 66mhz of number crunching goodness. Since then I’ve owned 4 other macs (G4 cube, iMac 400DV, and my much loved Powerbook G3 400 rev. b) and NONE OF THESE MACHINES HAVE EVER SEEN THE INSIDE OF A REPAIR SHOP. Ever.After the third repair (all under warranty, if I didn’t spend the $160 on applecare I would have been screwed big time) I talked to an apple rep about my situation.
me: “Hi, I think I have a lemon machine, I want another one.”
her: “Sorry sir, but your computer needs to break one more time before I can do that”
me: “hold on a sec isn’t it usually 3 strikes and you’re out? What’s up with the 4th one??”
her: “thats uh, just the way it uh works…. I’ll give you my personal email address and if it happens again, we’ll deal with it”
me: “Thanks I guess. I hope I don’t need it”
What I should have said was “see you next year”. I called apple yesterday and was being lead down the road of “repairville” again when I said “Well [un named female apple rep] said that if this happened one more time I’d be getting a new machine! Replace my lemon! It’s a lemon!” The line was kind of silent and then I hear “she really told you that? You actually spoke to her? Are you sure it was this person?” Apparently my rep last year was more than she seemed to be.
From here I was transfered to a “problem solver” where he gave me 3 choices.
- do a full and complete gut replacement on my current machine. I would basically have a new machine in old clothing. Same model though. Turn around time 4-5 days. No warranty extension, nada, zilch. This was essentially the end of the warranty gravy train. Bummer
- Replacement of my machine with a brand new Intel iMac. I’d get the 20″ bottom of the line model. Turn around time is about 2 weeks because of back ordered status of the machines. Full year warranty and the option of apple care. Sweet!
- Replacement of my machine with a brand new Intel iMac that I can have upgraded for only the cost of the upgrades. If I want the top of the line model all I pay is the difference between the prices. Super sweet!
I asked for a day to mull it over and tomorrow I’ll be backing up 200 gigs of files to dvd while shipping the lemon back to the orchard. It’s good to know that even though apple is selling cheaper fruit these days, they’ll still stand behind it. Thanks guys.