Ness' Outpost

Lauren’s 2006 Pontiac Vibe (aka Matrix in sheeps clothing) has a pretty standard breaking system. The front are discs and the rears are drums.

Today Kevin and I did a front break job. New pads, rotors and fluids. It was a pretty standard job and is really well explained over at Generation Vibe in this post. They don’t talk about bleeding the brakes — and you probably don’t have to do this if your fluid is regularly changed anyway. We did bleed the brakes when we were done, but that isn’t included in the post above.

The only thing to add is that I used a 19mm socket to push the slide pin rubber boots back into place after removing them to clean and grease them.

Parts came from Napa and cost about $175 for rotors, ceramic pads and some brake grease. Be sure to have lots of brake cleaner on hand since the rotors were oiled and bagged. They need to be cleaned off before they can be installed – I do this anyway even for dry rotors. I tend to get greasy fingers all over them.

We did a walkabout cleanup on Tuesday at work that picked up about 8 large bags of trash from around the grounds.

This weekend Lo and I are going out to Halton Hills to do some tree planting on the Bruce Trail on Saturday. A fun little hike with a work party attached to it.

Bought a 8.7 cubic feet Danby Chest Freezer for the house today. Finally the DQ Dilly Bars will be frozen and we can buy BBQ meat on sale and consume it later!

More importantly we can now defrost our fridge freezer to try and stop the unit from peeing all over the floor.

Catfish are pretty ugly looking, but man do they bulldog down and pull hard. Photos from our outing at the Fishmaster tackle shop on the Grand river are here.

This fish weighed in at just a hair under 16lbs.

My uncle donated his old 2 stroke gas string trimmer to me when he found out I was looking for one. I finally got sick of dragging out two extension cords to try and reach the front and the back of the lot.

He had a Weed Eater GTI-16 sitting in his shed for the past 2 or 3 years. It looked like it was in pretty good shape, the starter rope extended and the trimming line turned as the starter rope was pulled out. I didn’t try to start it since I wanted to check and lube the shaft first before it got up to speed. The engine probably would have fired up without any work though.

This time my adopted small engine came with an owners manual that covered the GTI-15T and the GTI-16. I had some basic instructions to work off of – how to tune the carb, replace the starter cord, etc.

The basic plan was to:

• Lube the drive shaft
• Rebuild the carburetor since I was going in to see how the diaphragm and pumper valves were anyway
• Replace the fuel lines and filter
• Clean everything up and lube the air filter
• Check the spark plug

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Went to the sportsman show tonight – picked up an after 5pm ticket for $5. For those going this year the layout breaks down like this:

• South Building = Hunting Show
• Walkway between North and South buildings = Fly Fishing area
• North Building = Fishing Show

Park accordingly as there are lots in both the N & S buildings. We paid $17 for the ~4 hours we were in the lot.

There is a lot more walking than in the Direct Energy building and the locations draw distinct lines between the two disciplines.

We took a trip down to New York City as tourists visiting a friend in the city. It seems like we went everywhere!

Visited the Chelsea Brewery and went on their free tour on Saturday after our flight in. Then went to a market to pick up a few things for dinner. Lots of trips through the subway, but we only saw one rat. We checked out the Brooklyn bridge just as the sun was starting to set and things were cooling off.

Sunday we were off to Liberty and Ellis Island. Lo did very good on the ferry over – not a tinge of green. Then we went to Stout NYC to watch the hockey game. We all had Team Canada gear on but it was a little nerve racking wearing a Team Canada hockey jersey in the heart of the beast. There was quite the cheer with 28 seconds to go in the 3rd – but the small group of Canadians were even louder in OT. To top the night off we we went to Babbo — which is Mario Batali’s restaurant for an over indulging meal of the pasta tasting menu. There were some substitutions for Lo’s allergies though – mmm lobster.

Monday the city came back to life as everyone returned after the snowy weekend. Lo and I wandered through central park and then did some shopping at some huge discount store called Century 21 — all I could think about was real estate and obviously we couldn’t afford any of that in NYC. The store was down near where the twin towers used to be so we had a quick tour of the area – they are building a monument there now. Then we took the subway back up to Grand Central station and wandered down to the piers. Then a quick walk up through China town and little Italy before packing up for the airport that night.

Photos are here.

Sunday we went down to a little restaurant called the stockyards and had brunch, apparently they haven’t done brunch very often but are starting it up on the weekends.

I had a smoked green chili burger with cheese. It was really good.
I need to try smoking some chilies this year in my smoker for use on my own burgers and in my chili recipe. I recently watched a Bobby Flay green chili cheeseburger throwdown which gave me some ideas. Apparently refrying the green chili mixture on a griddle is a must.

Then we were off to the Wychwood seed exchange to try and find some heirloom tomatoes to sprout into seedlings and then transplant into the garden in late May. The place was packed! Probably because they made the Posted Toronto’s things to do this weekend list. There were all kinds of “crunchy” and “granola” types and then us. Grant and Chantelle would be proud! ;)
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This long weekend between a Birthday, family visits, Valentines day and Chinese New Year we were able to do some work updating the guest bedroom.

First I ripped off all the old trim and mouldings in the guest room. Ended up having to chisel off the old door mouldings as they were stapled onto the finished frame pretty tightly (with glue).
Then we did a lot of sanding of the ceiling and walls.
A fresh new coat of ceiling paint went up.
Then a coat of prime went on the walls followed by two coats of paint.
A new dome light was installed to replace the 1970′s style builders light.
Lastly I got to test out the new 18 guage brad nailer and drag out the old mitre saw by installing the new mouldings – which we painted on saw horses in the basement.

Still need to caulk the space between my poorly mitred joints – it probably doesn’t help that the walls aren’t square. Next time I’m going to try to “cope” the inside corners of the baseboards. Then install some doorstop to connect the baseboards to the floor. Fill all the nail holes and call it done.

Then I can set my sights on the master bedroom for more of the same.
I’ll see about getting some before and after pictures up. I think we have some old ones from when we ripped out the carpet.

My back definitely hurts but it is amazing the difference some paint and sweat can make.

Dang. Time to cut another one. That one lasted over a year though – not bad.