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The personal blog of an old-fashioned geek

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Firefox 2.0

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I just noticed that Firefox released version 2.0.  So I decided to go against my normal habits and decided to install it and give it a whirl.

So far, it looks pretty cool, and once I finished installing it, I was browsing the addons and found this addon called Depest Sender.  It is a blogging addon that lets you blog right from within the browser.  It’s pretty cool!  I’m actually making this post with it.

We’ll see if I actually like version 2.0 enough to keep it.  As long as I don’t have a lot of bugs with the sites I usually use, I should be good.

On the Fritz

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Well I’ve been hit with the inevitable “Macbook Problem” with my laptop.  I love my Apple Macbook, it is the best laptop that I’ve ever had.  And now I’ve just had my first problem. :(

My laptop fails to charge the battery anymore.  When I plug it in, the icon in the apple bar shows a battery with an X through it, and says ‘no batteries found’.  I stopped by ITSS Computer maintenance at UMD this morning on my way to work, and they said to first try resetting the P-Ram.  (hold down command + option + p + r while booting).  So I gave that a try, but it did not work.  The next step is to contact Apple and see if they’ll send me a new replacement battery.  If that doesnt work, then I’ll most likely have to send my laptop in for a motherboard replacement :(

I love the macbook, but I hate that it’s a first gen laptop and with that comes all the problems associated with first generation technology.

House Shopping Again

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Now that I am working up in Two Harbors, and have a 20 mile commute to work every day, I’m seriously considering moving to Two Harbors. While I enjoy a rather inexpensive rent where I’m living now, having roommates does not enable me to spend more quality time with my son, as I am not able to take him overnight or for the weekend unless I go to my parents house. That and the $350-400/mo I am spending on gas for my commute does not help either.

So in my search for housing in Two Harbors, I have two options. One is to rent an apartment for anywhere from $500-700/mo (I need a 2 bedroom so I can have a place for Nathan). The other is to buy a house, which would leave me with a $500-700/mo mortgage payment. I’ve elected for the buy a house option, and will fall back on the renting option if I am unable to buy a house.

In my search for a house, I found the perfect house for me. It is a 2 bedroom, 2 story house, with large living room, formal dining room, and large kichen with in-kitchen dining area. It has an unfinished basement, but it’s a slab basement and is very large. The bedrooms are massive, and it could easily be turned into a 3 bedroom house. It also has a 2 car, oversized garage in the back, which would give me an excellent space to work on my cars.

Now the asking price for the house is $99,900, but it’s been on and off the market for a while. I also tried getting approved for a mortgage at both the local bank and the local credit union. Both said my credit was too poor. So now I am looking for other methods to finance getting this house.

Even if I can’t get this one, the search still continues!

Tuning for the SPG

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So today I contacted Jak Stoll about tuning for my SPG. He gave me some good info on what I can do with the car, along with letting me know what components he could supply himself.

Since I don’t want to go too overboard with the SPG, (I’m only shooting for 230-250HP) He told me I didn’t need to go with the larger head. That a full downpipe/exhaust + his eprom chip and an upgraded APC should easily put me at that level.

So I’m going to look around, and keep reading up, and I’ll probably order his eprom along with some larger injectors soon.

Turmoil of the changing website

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So I finally got tired (read: Lazy) of dinking with this site. I can’t just get rid of it, since it is the first domain name that I ever purchased. So I decided jut to throw up wordpress on here and use it as the CMS, as well as a place for me to blog on a more personal level… thus letting my other blog: www.aaronabramson.com to become a more professional blog about what I do for work etc.

So here is where I will post/update yadda yadda about the more personal happenings in my life. I’ll try to resurrect my old blog I had here and archive my old posts and info, but we’ll see.

[edit]

So I sucessfully ousted my old blog entries all the way back to 2003 when I was using phpWebSite as my CMS. I also imported all my posts from aaronabramson.com as I’ll most likely wipe that blog clean and start with a clean slate. Or not, I might just upgrade that to the latest wordpress, and post stuff there too. Who knows.

I’m still working on getting all the other content pages (non blog) moved over. Gotta dig through raw database tables to resurrect that data.

Smoking Rice!

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So yesterday I went down to the Rock Falls Raceway in Eau Claire WI. with some of my Saab buddies for “SportsCompact Days”. RockFalls is a 1/4 mile track, and yesterday was the last day of the season to race, so it was PACKED!!! Darren brough his 9-3 Viggen, and I brought my 900SE. Both of our cars are stock, so we didn’t expect too much. I just wanted to see what mine could do stock before I start modding it.

Anyways, since it was so packed there, we only got 3 runs in on the time-trials. They lined everyone into lanes, and ran 2 cars at a time down the track. Once you ran, you got back in line to wait for the next run. They were doing time-trials until Noon, and were then going to do bracket racing, where they match people up with others that had similar time runs, and break down for eliminations. We didn’t want to stick around that long, so we left to go over to the Technical College where another friend of ours was doing AutoCross with his Miata.

For being my first time on the track, I feel I did pretty good. I had some decent launches, and my trap times weren’t that bad either. Especially for my car to be 10 years old, bone stock. I was running consistent low 16s, and hitting 89mph in the 1/4 mile. One thing I need to remember is that Saabs are not built for the low-end. We have very little low-end torque, and our turbos are handicapped in 1st and 2nd gears. So it leaves room for improvement.

Once I finish paying for my new SPG, I’m going to start working on upgrading my 900SE. I think I’ll probably end up going with a 3″ DP and exhaust kit from GenuineSaab.com and then go with a Stage3 Nordic Tune. That will take my 185HP car to ~270HP. Then with a Cold-Air intake and cone filter, my car will breathe better, and I should be able to go from low 16s to mid 14s. Even though I’m not a fan of 1/4 sprint racing, it was definately fun. But I would definately like to try AutoCross, and some form of Rally Racing.

I have decided…

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I have decided hat I want to learn Swedish. Part of this comes from my fascination with Saabs, but another reason is because I’ve recently come across some more swedish music which is really awesome!  I found this… The group is BassHunter, he’s a Swedish musician/DJ who makes most of his music on the computer with a program called FruityLoops (a program that I’ve played with myself in the past).

I know people who really like the sound of German, and who learn it because it sounds neat when they speak it. Well I’ve come to the conclusion that swedish sounds just as good, but it’s not as harsh of a language. Plus the fact that I’m mostly Swedish in heritage gives me another reason to learn it.

So now I just need to find a place to learn swedish, and then I can use it as an excuse to travel to Sweden someday.

Saab Cookout

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So on Saturday I organized a small impromptu cookout at Fort Snelling Park in St. Paul. This was with a bunch of the people from SaabCentral.com and SaabLink.net a couple of Saab forums that I chat on.

We had a pretty nice turnout of 7 cars. One of the guys (with the red 900 vert) had to leave before we could take the picture with all of us and our cars.

It was fun though I’m jealous of Andy’s ‘86 900Turbo, man alive would I like to get a car like that. So pristine, so classic, so fast!  And with only 68k on the odometer!

Call all fixed (well halfway)

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I got my car back from the shop yesterday, and the major things are all fixed. Like my o2 sensor, brakes and new exhaust. Here is a picture of my new muffler, aint she pretty?

My car sounds a lot nicer now, doesn’t have the exhaust rattle like it used to. And i’m quite impressed by the new tailpipe, it fits the car beautifully.

I’m a converter

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A couple weeks ago, I received a MacBook (Black, 13″, 2ghz, 1gb ram) as a belated Fathers Day gift. And I must say, that using this mac for the past few weeks has really made me a converter. I had been swinging on the PC/Mac fence for a while, and I’ve had a Mac Mini for almost a year now, but I never used it as my main machine.

Now that I’ve been up in the Boundary Waters working on this forest fire incident, I’ve spent most of my computer time using my new MacBook, and I’m loving it. In what little spare time I’ve had, I’ve been finding more and more online resources for mac users, and getting little tools/programs to extend my mac with.

At this time, I am seriously considering making my MacBook my main computer, and turning my PC desktop into a much needed office server. Which is what it was made for (it is a Dell Poweredge 430SC, 2.8ghz P4 HT, 1.5gb ram), and especially considering that our current Windows Small Business Server is running on a Dual P3 550mhz.

My only complaints about this MacBook is 1) Needs More Ram. At only 1GB, I can barely multi-task. 2) It does heat up like a banshee out of hell. When left sitting on a flat surface with poor heat transfer, the bottom is almost too hot to touch. And 3) I haven’t had a chance to test this, but from what I’ve read, this model of the MacBook can only do mirror-image with an external monitor, and I really would like to make use of Dual Displays.

In any case, I am more than happy to live with this wonderful machine, until such a point comes that I can upgrade to a MacBook Pro. I have my eye on the 17″ model, perhaps I should put it on my Christmas wish list.