mjeff87

FEMA has been put in charge now. Be afraid. Very afraid.

We, the people, will solve this. We always do.

What really struck me as freakishly weird, I was up and about Thursday (I took off work). There were hundreds of birds out in flocks. Combination of spring here, plus a limited amount of vehicles on the road, and they were everywhere. Kind of a Tippy Hedron situation, actually

There's a local distillery here, the owners are in my wife's jujitsu club. They are very small batch, just started up last year. They just landed a contract to switch all their distilling equipment over to ethanol production to support the hand sanitizer industry. I hope they make millions off of this thing. Couldn't happen to any better people And I fixed my garage freezer today and sewed my tomato seeds for this year in individual starter pots (inside). Yay.

I don't say this to virtue signal, but right now I can (and will) lock my place down with my wife and the cats. We can be good for 2 months of regular living, and could stretch that double with some Spartan-like lifestyle changes. Thats the way I was raised, and how I live. Right now, if you aren't prepared to do similar (excepting those in extenuating circumstances, i.e. elderly, invalid, handicapped, etc.) you are an idiot and I wish you well. To those that truly need help, or are willing to reciprocate in kind, what's mine is yours.

It all boils down to personal responsibility. I've got a firm commitment to my wife, her family and what's left of my small family. That's IT. Meanwhile, the stock market has completely crashed (and will eventually recover, but not in time for me). All my life I played by the rules, scrimped, saved, invested so I wouldn't have to work until I died at my job. Gone. And for what? Ill get by, no doubt. But my entire outlook on things has made a very sudden swerve in a different direction. Ive been watching CNN for the last couple days (on purpose). They have a corona-counter ticker thing on the side of the screen. If you go by their numbers, the mortality rate of the virus worldwide is .03%. The US mortality rate is .01%. Neither of those are a typo. Considering the global population in 2020 is reported at 7.8 billion (with a B), that works out to .00003%. Why?

2.25M new unemployment claims are expected to be filed on Monday. My God, what have they done. Meanwhile, I can't find a friggin bag of white rice to save my life. At the Walmart today, there was near mass pandemonium. People had carts piled up so high they had to stand on the sides of them to keep all the crap from falling out. Then you see an old guy with a 'Nam or Korea ball cap on that can't even walk, trying to buy some freakin dinty Moore beef stew getting pushed out of the way so folks can buy their great value Mac and cheeses for the 17 kids they never should have spawned in the first place. I'm gonna shut up now, because I can't say any more without really getting political. Jeep Driver, we may not always see eye-to-eye on some stuff, but you, and Manchenopolis are spot on. I'll meet up with y'all on the other side some day. Lol.

Hmmmm.....new guidance out is now telling everyone to NOT get tested. Putting too much of a strain on the supply chain for PPE for the testers. I'm gonna have to throw the bull$#!& flag on that one. Interesting. I might have a different perspective on this than some, I'm directly involved in the supply chain for this. There is no shortage of assets, it's just utter lack of coordination on many different levels.

It is a rubber gasket, that fits into a grooved channel molded into the VC. Lots of twists/turns/things it goes around (the plugs are in the center of the cover, for example). I was thinking head gasket myself, but I won't know until tomorrow when I can get the car back home and pop the cover off. It's an '01.....not a new engine LOL.

I changed the cam sensor, still getting an oil drip off the back side of the engine. I finally threw in the towel and dropped it off at a local indy shop yesterday and asked them to charge me an hour of diagnostic, stick the thing up on a lift and figure out what keeps still leaking. They just called me.....it's the back rear corner of the valve cover. I honestly never even bothered to check the VC gasket, because I put a brand new one on it a couple months ago when I put the new timing belt in it. Sucker wasn't cheap either, like $40 worth of gasket. So now I get to take the VC back off and see if the gasket is pinched or broken, or if it slipped out of the slot it rides in. Hopefully I can reuse it, I really don't want to shell out another $40 for a new one. Grrrrr......

Well, when it rains it pours I guess. My wife went for her usual mamogram on Monday, like usual. Doc called her yesterday and said there was an "area" of concern, so she went back in today (I took off work, screw the world, my wife is #1 priority over anything including my own self). MRI shows 5 spots, and she scheduled a biopsy in 3 weeks. Doc said they are all small enough that they can probably suck all of them out with the biopsy needle. Let's hope so....

The last time I heard from Bob was about 10 years ago....he was driving south thru my area and we met up at a truckstop to exchange some parts. If anyone hears anything from or about him, let us know....

That's a new one to me, I've never traveled anywhere but Costa Rica in C/A. Looks yummy. I watched 2 grown @$$ women darn near throw down on each other this morning at the grocery store. I stopped in on my way to work around 7:30AM to grab a newspaper and some saltines and did a quick float past the meat aisle. Stripped bare, as suspected, except for 5 packs of frozen smoked turkey wings. Woman #1 grabbed ALL 5 of them and threw them in her cart, while the other one was looking at them. Loud exchange of words that brought out the meat manager from the back. He ended up splitting them 2 each to each of them and took the last pack with him back into the cutting room. Bravo for him. I was headed to the popcorn aisle to grab a bag and settle in to watch the WWF match about to ensue

Ten Cane, from Trinidad Havana Club (anejo) for traditional Parrot Bay for a coconut version (my personal favorite) Yours?

Shipping to 23831? I like my mojitos with ALOT of fresh lime, and mint. I grow mint, but not limes....

On some commodities, yes, but others are drying up fast. Mostly due to panic buying, but we're starting to get contract defaults from some of our vendors due raw material shortages and worse let, labor shortages. I'm curious to see how deep it goes so we can get all of our (unknkown) shortfalls exposed for future planning purposes. Once this whole thing is over and things get back to as normal as they can. It's been interesting watching some folks in my organization (upper management types above me) who have been coasting right along for years now having to deal with crises, and they are folding like a wet paper towel.

Perfect example of how rumors can spread like wildfire: I was standing in line at my local grocery store yesterday (I needed limes for my mojitos, lol.....there were plenty of them there. A guy in front of me getting checked out told the cashier that he just heard that all the Walmarts in the country were closing starting this Friday. Not closing early, like they did the other day, for cleaning and restocking, but CLOSING. He tells cashier, cashier yells to her buddy cashier in the next lane that WM was closing, she shouts it to the store manager half way across the store. Meanwhile, the 7000 other customers in line with me all hear this and start yelling to each other, and a semi-panic ensues. I just smiled, paid for my limes and left.

I also picked up another Jethro sized bag of dry cat food for our (inside) cats, and 2 extra 12-packs of wet food cans for the outside/stray tabby that has adopted us. Can't let the kitties starve ya know. They need to live long enough to be able to eat us when we both get the virus and turn into zombies. We've also got a National Guard unit being deployed here to my work starting tomorrow, to both provide security and also to augment our operations team. Same thing that happened back with Isabel....it's gonna be a total charlie foxtrot.

I'm not saying any of those things will be enacted...and I really hope they won't. It's just the fact that those things exist to begin with, and somebody on a trip was just able to declare them valid via executive fiat. Very disconcerting. And it's not all about the guns, either.

I'm not trying to inject any politics into this, but........I'm not down with any of this. At all. https://summit.news/2020/03/16/illinois-mayor-grants-herself-power-to-ban-guns-during-coronavirus-pandemic/?fbclid=IwAR3FYqx_-4m9GcaKzrYC0sZSdn28PJ9APb_qgHNM03vezcOD8aHXB_ZI9oU Illinois mayor signed an executive order giving herself the power to order the seizure of firearms, ammunition, alcohol and gasoline during the coronavirus pandemic. The executive order also enables the government to “take possession of private property” and cut off an individual’s access to gas, water or electricity. The city promised to “keep the public’s best interest in mind” while also handing itself the power to shut down all liquor stores and bars, although Gov. J.B. Pritzker has already ordered the shut down of all bars and schools across Illinois until March 30.

I can't say exactly what it is I do for work, but I am intimately involved in PPE distribution (state and Fed) right now, and it's downright bananas. I've got many, many sleepless days and nights (like yesterday) ahead of me here. Last time like this was for hurricane Isabel in 2002 (ice and water distribution across the state), and I slept in my office for 2 weeks. Yay me. Picked up an extra 500 rounds of 9mm yesterday, for the handgun I no longer own Wife and I are good on .22lr, 5.56, .40 and 12 gauge, but none of those are concealable and work well with my CCW. I've got 30 gallons of fuel for the backup-backup generator (main one is natural gas fed, but you never know what might happen). 3 tanks of LP for the (gas) grill, and 120 lbs of lump charcoal. I prep water and TP on the regular, so I'm good there. 5 dozen of farm eggs in the fridge, a chest freezer and 2 conventional freezers full of meat and assorted goodies, 3 rolls of Copenhagen, and Lidl has Bud Light cases on sale right now for $14, so I bought 4 of them (warm). We're pretty much GTG here, lol.

D44 has a carrier break @ 3.55 or 3.73. To regear it higher, you'll need a new carrier, or "thick" cut gears.

I know from experience that AX5 trannies 2WD/4WD output shafts are different splines....23 (?) and 27 spline if I remember correctly. I'd imagine the AX15 would be the same too.

I ran an HO pump on my Renix. I had to fiddle around a bit with some different bolts and holes in the block, and got really creative with one through-bolt and a nut, but it worked just fine.

Ooops. My bad, sorry. My MJ used to have a 2.5 in it, but it was the stock cover.