So, I moved into my apartment at the beginning of October.
The first weekend I was there, I thought to myself, “self, your car is a piece of shit. I think you need to buy a new one.”
So I did so – a 1992 Mazda Miata.
Rather… different from the Golf, but DAMN fun.
The Golf, FWIW, is awaiting a friend to be ready for it, to part it out.
Anyway, yesterday, I finally got a real camera, and today, I decided to find a nice big parking lot and have fun in the ice and snow.
So I did so. See below. 😀
I got rid of my Civic today… I think the pictures will say it all. 😀 (They had a bit of a problem getting it on the trailer without ramps… so they took a running start. 😆
And then they strapped it on their trailer and left! 😀 I’m all of… um… $215 richer. Yay. At least I don’t have that pile rotting up the driveway any more… :p
Now, when they saw my Golf, they tried to get me to sell it, but… I just got that thing running. Glow plugs help a LOT with starting a diesel in this damn cold weather. 😉
So, anyway, the other thing. I’ve decided to start running Linux on this ThinkPad. So, I decided to go with the flavor of the month, to try to make my life as easy as possible. That means Ubuntu.
I burned the CDs of my recovery partition, and saved ISOs of them onto my server. That way, I could restore the system in the future despite proceeding to nuke that partition. After that, I realized that I needed a hell of a lot more HDD space than that… so I started deleting crap, and got myself TONS of room. After some SNAFUs with defragging, then shrinking the partition, Ubuntu installed just fine.
Now, here’s something that is awesome. In my previous attempts to use Linux, I found that I had to install a whole bunch of BS to get the tiniest thing to work.
On Ubuntu… it just… works. Sure, I’ve had to install the occasional package now and then, but Ubuntu’s howtos actually… make sense! And are… helpful! And I’ve not noticed the dependency hell that I found on the RPM-based distros I’ve used. Then again, I am trying to stay within the distro’s packages when possible…
Anyway, I’ve only booted into Windows a couple times. Funny part is, Windows has slowed down a LOT since this… 😆
So, since the last Civic post, I’ve gotten a 1986 Golf diesel from oilhammer on TDIClub. The car needed a brake booster, master cylinder, steering rack, driveshafts, and an engine and transmission. Luckily, despite the frontal impact on the Jetta, only one driveshaft was damaged, and that was in moving the car, not in the wreck!
GMARK, Growler, and compu_85 helped out a lot… heck, GMARK even provided the site for the engine swap.
The engine swap went fairly well… just one note for future reference. Make sure you plug in the fuel cutoff solenoid wire before trying to start the thing. 😆
Then, a brake line failed, so had to limp it to a brake shop.
Now, an engine mount’s failed, but that, minor shifter issues, and getting the title transferred (waiting on the title to be notarized) are all that are in the way of getting this car on the road (and the failed engine mount and shifter issues won’t prevent me from driving it for a short term until they’re fixed). Which is good, seeing as the Civic’s driveshafts are shot, and I don’t have the experience to install new ones. And I don’t have any other vehicles to drive.
Oh, and I’m going to see if I can institute Google AdSense on this blog. We’ll see when Google approves the application… 😆