An update on the car...

I've been doing quite a lot of work on my car of late. Just last week, things came to a point where the LA authorised the purchase of new parts, and so I ordered (from a well-recommended parts supplier in Connecticut) a pair of struts for the boot lid, a door switch, and several bulbs. The bulbs are a special type, used only by Volvo, and cost $9 apiece from the dealership... from this place, $7, which (with the failure rate) was about what I'd been paying from the junkyard.

And now, my car is in better shape than when I bought it. The messed-up starboard bow is no longer so; I've replaced pretty much everything that was on that corner now, and I know my work is good. The tired trunk lid is no more; it positively leaps open now. All the switches light up (the gear shift quadrant still doesn't, but I've come to the conclusion that they built the entire car around that bulb, much like 240s were infamously built around the blower motor) and all the interior trim is solidly attached. All the doors now trigger the interior lights and their marker lights correctly.

I'm proud of just how much of the improvement is stuff I have done myself. There's a little of my soul in that car now. I'm also amused by the fact that my car now has a front that is roughly 50% from the previous model - and yet it looks as it should!

Free is always good, right?

Certainly in this case. Sometimes, other offices in the same building as the LA's office will be throwing out furniture. Usually, it's desks and suchlike, and not that great, but yesterday, while I was sitting quietly in the corner of her office (upside of a family firm) because my car was in the shop, we realised that the table which was being thrown out was actually a good size for gaming upon - and 6' x 3' is a better form factor than 42" x 42" for gaming, so... we realised that even after my car was out of the shop, we couldn't get it home. Too large for either car. Had we been lucky enough to have a Volvo wagon, it wouldn't have been an issue, but when buying used, one's options are restricted.

Fortunately, one of our regular Wednesday night knitting group drives a compact pickup (for Europeans: a pickup truck. Full-sized trucks are never seen in Europe) and was willing to help us get it home. It was once we'd done that that we discovered it was too large to fit through the door of the gaming room, a trait shared with its predecessor... so, today, out came the tools and it was knocked down to size. Now, my game room contains a table which can seat six comfortably, eight if they're friendly.

It'll be fun to move, though. In the sense of "not fun at all".

US Census 2010

The LA and I received the form today. For all the usual ballyhoo about how invasive it is, it doesn't want anything like as much as the UK government wanted in 2001. Heck, the LA informs me that it's less invasive than the 2000 census was over here. What it wants is: how many people live at the address the form was sent to, whether they own, rent, or squat, and for each person it wants name, relationship to person #1, age, Hispanic origin if applicable (which, incidentally, is officially Not A Race Thing; I don't quite understand), race, and whether that person occasionally lives elsewhere (to avoid double-counting).

The LA and I were unsatisfied with the options presented for the race question.

We both checked "other" and wrote in: HUMAN.

Please, do likewise. Let's get enough people writing in HUMAN to make them give it its own statistical bucket!

Growing up

Not something I ever intended to do, but lately I've had great fun playing a board game in which one manipulates the stock market, and today the LA and I were spring-cleaning. Yes, really.

We've decided our 5-foot dresser (for UK family: low chest of drawers, not what you'd call a dresser) really, honestly, had to go. It's been broken since LA, it's been a pig to move the last two times we've moved, and it's far too heavy for what it does. It's likely to meet the business end of a sledgehammer, once we can procure an assisstant to move the blasted thing out of the house. I've also been reorganising my game room, which now has much more space (despite almost no changes; not sure what happened there) and we're going to be reorganising the garage as well.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about all of this maturity, but I think I can live with having a house in which we can find things. We've already found some things which have been lost since... well, since before I arrived in one case, and that's been a while now!

Home is the gamer, and he's pitching...

So, this weekend was DunDraCon, an annual event. Last year was my first year, and thanks to some annoying factors (not having a driver's license, my own car, or a hotel room), I didn't get a really wonderful experience. I also didn't really meet people much. This year, things were different; I'd persuaded friends to attend (by taking care of the upfront cost of the hotel room, and having them pay me back at the con), and I managed to actually talk to people and get into pickup games. The net result is a new enthusiasm for con attendance, and a determination that this year is the last year of not running a game. Next year, look out for a game entitled Strike the Earth.

I'll be using my favourite fantasy system, Burning Wheel, and the setting will be lifted wholesale from the excellent (in many ways...) Dwarf Fortress. That should make for a very comic game, and the frankly obscene starting power level (it's a con game; there won't be any character advancement, so I can safely do crazy things in creation) will help that along. It may help to read the Let's Plays to gain a feeling for the setting.

Towards the summer, I'm going to need playtesters. It'll be a six-person game, and I'm shooting for hopefully around six hours of content.

The Big Game

So apparently there was some kind of sporting event yesterday. There were also a number of exceptionally expensive adverts.

Frankly, I'd rather the Six Nations. Pretty much the same game, but there's far more action in Union.

I would like there to be a new car available.

It would look something like a Volvo 240 - utilitarian, maybe even boxy. It would have a basic, powerful-enough 4-cylinder engine, installed longitudinally, mated to either a five-ratio manual gearbox or a mechanically-controlled automatic gearbox with a locking torque converter, driving the rear wheels (with all-wheel-drive as an option). It would have a slew of airbags, crumple zones, and all the necessary safety features. Four-wheel disc brakes, ABS, all that good stuff that helps you avoid crashing in the first place. It would have all the usual OBD-II diagnostics, as necessary these days for legal reasons. The throttle would be controlled by a cable pulling on a spring-loaded butterfly valve.

It would not be the average car, though. It would, as standard, not have power accessories. No power windows, no power locks, no power seats... optionally, yes, but not on the base model. Power steering and power brakes, yes. It would also have a feature not commonly found on OBD-II cars: no reader would be required to get codes. There would be a readout under the bonnet to get the codes, and an explanation of the codes in the owner's manual. This would be a utilitarian car, designed to get the user from one place to another with a reasonable amount of stuff, and to be easy to fix. Tool-less replacement of bulbs, a basic toolkit included, and the aforementioned code readout would make it more appealing to the hobbyist.

Of course, it would never sell. People, in general, don't want a car that assumes they're competent at wrench-turning. Those who do are an exception, and not a unified market; while there are plenty of Volvo-enthusiast hobbyists, there are just as many people who tune hot rods, classic American iron, and so on, and there's less crossover than I would like. Just try to sell a reborn Volvo 240 to a Corvette fanatic!

But if I ever win the lottery, inherit Bill Gates's millions, or somehow come into possession of that sort of money, I'm definitely going to attempt to license the designs for the Volvo 240 and its red block engine, and bankroll this.