Today was a day of victory. Or at least, the beginnigs of victory.

I woke up at 8am. I’m not sure why, but it rather surprised Dad. I haven’t been sleeping so well lately, maybe it’s because of the ear infection, which is qutie better now. Purple pills….

By 9:30 I was under my car, trying to install new tie rod boots. After removing the tie rod from the tie rod end, I hear and nice “gluck, squish” from the tie rod end. The rubber bit holding the grease around the ball joint had given out, which means I need new tie rod ends. Might as well replace both of them. I’m growing weary of finding parts that need replacing….

After noticing this, I started thinking about my differential… I called one of the guru’s and he said he’d set up the new differential for a $100, if I removed it from the car and brought it to him, which seemed to be a very fair price to me. I didn’t ask what it would be if he removed it, because I somewhow decided that I was going to do it myself.

Sure enough, a few moments later I was unbolting the power plant frame… 5 hours later and lots of cuts, bruises and scrapes, I had the differential sitting in front of the car. Now, we can just hope that I can get it back in the car.

Dad’s so encouraging. He came home and said, “This doesn’t look like an improvement…” He keeps harassing me that I’m never going to be able to get it all back together. And that was before I attempted this feat.

In addition, I made Linux print! To a network printer! This is a damn near unbelievable feat for me. Sure, it SHOULD be simple, but I’ve never managed it before. Took about 2 hours, and there seems to be something not quite right with its queuing… Next linux project: WordPerfect 8 install. I’d also like to convert to Reiser FS, which will involve dumping my system to another hard drive temporarily.. With Linux, this should be nearly trivial..

Anyway, I was planning to do the timing belt install on my car as soon as I got the parts, but I don’t think that’ll happen until I get the differential back in… Without a drivetrain ending in a parking brake, I don’t think I can torque the crank bolt. Unless I come up with some clever way to block the driveshaft from turning.

Quite a nice day out today, as well… Good day for car working. Not hot, but not so cold that I was terribly uncomfortable in a t-shirt.

(See Mom, aren’t you glad you read all that?)
Wonder if I can see any meteors before I go to bed…