car geek returns

moving out of the makati condo which my just-erstwhile employer has been helpfully providing means that i'll have more space to do my grease-monkey DIY stuff. no more dark and dank basement parking, yay!



i picked up a three-volume mazda 626 shop service manual last week from the post office. it took like a month and a half to get here from the US via surface mail. i had all but written the darn thing off. but couldn't complain, i paid $0.99 for the books on e-bay. and of course a sizable $15 or so on shipping. but it turns out the shipping cost about $28, so "genuinetoyota" actually lost money on that transaction..

i also have another card from the post office. apparently my other ebay purchase (a $9-ish mazda 626 1993-1998 haynes manual) is sitting there. also surface mail. i actually had that haynes manual already, but i think it got thrown out along with a huge pile of old newspapers when the apartment was cleaned.

there are quite a few things i have to fix on the car. now that lalai and i will be using the darn thing for around 25km of driving every day, we're going to be really dependent on it.

• the air conditioner is on the fritz. i suspect the compressor clutch is marginal (sometimes it engages, sometimes it doesn't, so sometimes the A/C is cold, sometimes it's not). i'm hoping it's just the wiring harness going to the compressor clutch, but the clutch might be on the way out because power-steering fluid keeps dripping on the compressor. thankfully Mang Mario behind SM North in Quezon City does a good job cheap. i already had him fix the compressor clutch once, only cost 1200 pesos inclusive of R-134A coolant
• the suspension has gotten quite noisy! i should take it back for a look-see by Toti Cruz and his boys at Zee Autoplus along Aurora Blvd. in San Juan, after all the suspension is still under warranty
• the idle gets low and the engine vibration is unpleasant; i think the Idle Air Control valve is dirty but i don't have a #25 tamper-proof bit to remove the valve for cleaning
• the front speakers don't work too well, i will have to re-solder them like i did the rear speakers
• those idiot lights in the dashboard that are busted annoy the heck out of me
• the gimmick key light on the door (so you can see the key hole when it's dark), and the key light on the steering column (ditto), are both busted, need to replace those bulbs..
• i need to remove the mudguard and fix the window washer; the tank leaks so the washer doesn't work
• the hand brake lever on the right-rear brake caliper is broken, so the handbrake sticks. known problem in 1993-95 626's, subject to recall in the US. too bad there's no such thing in the Philippines, and a new brake caliper is 8000 pesos!

i was reading this post in Daihatsu Club of the Philippines forum. apparently you can buy a relatively good condition 1994 Daihatsu Charade for 78000 pesos. which is not bad, Daihatsu is a Toyota subsidiary. and that teeny tiny 1.2L 3-cylinder engine really sips fuel. the engine in the 626 is a real gas-guzzler by my standards..

but then again it's a 12-year old car. i should feel fortunate that everything works except the hand brake and the window washer. the power mirrors still amuse me.. that's the penalty of buying a pre-owned "executive" car. but then back in college the 626 was the stuff of my dreams and was so unreachable back then. i couldn't help but buy it.

some bad news i read today is, the newly-introduced Hyundai Tucson 2.0L CVVT, which is the cheapest new soft-roader SUV available in the Philippines, at 888000 pesos, has the absolute worst reliability record in its class. not that i could afford it even if i wanted to..

confessions of a former geek

this blog should've been named "confessions of a former geek."

in a previous life, i was big on diaries. back then there were no blogs. and i had a tendency to circumspection. i was also quite the geek. happily enough, today i no longer feel that irresistible urge (although i suspect, i still am.. though not a UNIX geek, which is what i was before).

i guess when you get older, when you have more things to worry about than Linux having no kernel-asynchronous I/O, then the zeal stops.

being a geek has given me employment for almost ten years. and my new job requires those same Linux skills. but i'm the "enthusiast" no longer. give me a dark sky, or a warm hug. those are infinitely more appealing than another midnight hackfest.

i really have turned thirty.

the inaugural post

it's 9:30 p.m. of the day i just turned thirty.

i have:

• eaten a meal of corned beef and cold rice;
• snuck out to the local 7-Eleven for some soda, bottled water, and a handy-dandy tube of epoxy steel putty;
• on the much-abused coffee table my new diagonal holder slowly takes shape as the epoxy putty hardens around the threaded rod;
• sorted and hung out to dry a boatload of laundry;
• rattled the windows cutting aluminum with my jigsaw;
• driven back and forth to the new apartment

lalai, the woman whom i love dearly and who will soon be my wife, is asleep on the sofa. i assume she will not be pleased at the prospect of eating corned beef and cold rice. well, there's no more cold rice because i ate it all, but i did cook some more.. (oops, forgot to turn on the rice cooker..)

it hasn't been a very eventful day. most birthdays ought to be "better" than this. but even as uneventful as this day has been, amazingly, i am content.

it's also my last day at Mosaic Communications, Inc. i'm no longer an "assistant vice president for software development." which may sound minorly impressive but actually is rather meaningless in an organization where there are like five people doing software development.

still, i shall miss the office. it's been almost ten years since i first set foot in The Peak Tower as an on-the-job trainee. life at mozcom has been almost entirely good, with almost no bad.

tomorrow lalai and i shall go to our new apartment. the apartment that has just about beggared us. still, i should feel extremely lucky. my parents didn't get to have a house of their own till they were past forty. i've got a ten-year lead. of course, lalai and i are up to our noses in the mortgage. but i have a good feeling things will work out.

i'm rushing finishing my telescope. because we're on the fourth (and top) floor of the apartment building, and the rooftop is a clothes drying area. it also has an unobstructed view of the sky. in a few days Mars will be at opposition. i won't miss it this time. in 2003, during the great opposition, all i had was a 60mm (2.4-inch) short refractor. mars was nothing more than a formless blob.

i'm now rebuilding my 250mm (10-inch) reflector, with which lalai and i have seen various amazing wonders like Omega Centauri, the Humpback Whale Galaxy, the Southern Pleiades.. i'm gonna get mars this time!