Drew Burden

So, a couple of entries back I talked about this thing that’s going wrong with my car. I was bored today so I figured I’d jack it up and see what was going on, and I think I’ve traced the problem to its source. The only thing is I have absolutely no clue what to do about it. Anyway, there is indeed some massive play in the front passenger side wheel. I jiggled it a few times and found that whatever’s loose is back there by the thing that pushes the wheels left and right. The other thing that holds the rods connected to the wheels to that is loose. Since I like cats, and have a certain affinity for a tall one who wears a hat, I will call these things Thing 1 and Thing 2, respectively. If anyone cares to tell me what these things are really called I would appreciate it. I’m a nerd, not a mechanic. Anyway, pictures do ensue.

This is what I’ve been doing the past few hours. I know I’ll pay for it dearly in the essence of that I’ll not get any sleep, but it’s pretty cool. I’ve been poring through FCC records all night looking at the owners and locations of all communications towers in the area. It started when I was researching license ownership of the cell phone frequency bands around here (mainly out of disbelief that Boonville, Indiana, population 3, has 3G in the middle of a cornfield and we don’t). AT&T owns the license to the 850MHz band, Alltel in fact has the 1900MHz band. AT&T apparently needs both to deploy 3G, as I noticed while researching locations that actually had 3G. Anyway, back to the story at hand, this ASR database has the location, owner, and height of every tower in the nation. As I was looking at the list of towers licensed to Owensboro, I decided to plug the values into Google Earth and see what I got. Most impressive and lifelike was the array of towers behind Time Warner Cable, shown in the image above. (Click it for something bigger.) That’s cool and all, but you learn a few things, like the fact that AT&T actually owns that tower right behind Ohio Valley 2-Way Radio out on 54, while Ohio Valley 2-Way Radio’s tower is actually about a mile down the road behind Highland Elementary. Speaking of AT&T owning towers, they own all their own towers (as “NEW CINGULAR WIRELESS PCS LLC”), while carriers like Verizon rent them from a company called Crown Castle International. Kenergy also has towers sprinkled throughout the county, and there are apparently two towers with two different owners on Fulton Drive spaced 1/10 of one second of longitude from each other. Drive by on the 60 bypass, and you see only one. The city of Owensboro owns the tower on Police Hill and even though Regent Broadcasting does own that behemoth tower on Frederica behind their studio, it’s actually the backup transmitter according to their FCC license. The primary transmitter is near Utica and is much taller at 320 meters compared to the one we see, which stands at 130.8 meters.

Anyway, that’s enough of me boring the crap out of you with this meaningless drivel. At least I thought it was cool.

…and that’s even more so when you’re pretty much broke. I think the bottom half of my car is about to fall apart. I’m fairly sure that the alignment is WAY out of whack and I desperately need a brake job. I’m surprised I can still stop the car. On top of all that, my vehicle registration expires this week. I’ve noticed that when I make a left turn you can feel the car shift as if the entire front passenger wheel assembly is loose. And it is. The guy at the tire joint told me so when I got three tires replaced a couple of months ago. I may as well make a list of the things I need to fix:

• It burns oil.
• BRAKES, BRAKES, BRAKES.
• Aforementioned alignment issue.
• The A/C does not work. It never has. The first summer I had my car, the compressor would activate but this past summer it did not.
• Either the blower fan is on full blast or it’s not on at all.
• A few paint chips with underlying rust here and there. (I fixed a rusted dent near the rear of my car with some 650 grit and a can of Krylon, you can barely notice now. Methinks it’s time to do it here as well)
• Engine knock upon acceleration. (I’m starting to think this is a summertime problem, I haven’t noticed my car doing it lately. Maybe I should start using octane 89 or 92 in the summer?)
• This is more of a cosmetic thing and relatively unimportant but the headlights are getting cloudy and I hate that.

There you have it. Don’t get me wrong, I love my car… but it’s giving me a few problems and problems are frustrating when resources are tight. Anyone who is well versed in vehicles is welcome to offer suggestions on pinpointing some of these problems and/or what I should do until I can sink some money into the car.

edit: I also just noticed I should give my car a good scrub so it looks like it did when that picture was taken.

I just told Nick this, but there’s a hell of a line of storms on the way.

This is how I look at what’s coming. I have KML files of the NWS warning polygons and several assorted radar images loaded into Google Earth, including storm relative motion and wind velocity data. (Download here.) This is cool because if you’re into that thing you can be just like the people on TV that zoom in on towns and show the little polygons and whatever. 

I just remembered that I posted almost the exact same thing almost two years ago but the images that went with it have been lost somewhere.

I just visited the Owensboro High School web page. It has really gone downhill since we all graduated. Here’s a list of things it used to do but does no longer:

• You could login with your domain user name and know how many new emails you had.
• It would tell you the weather.
• It would tell you what color day it was for the next week.
• It actually had an RSS feed.

I applied for a job at OHS to become a computer lab technician and hopefully reverse all these shortcomings. Apparently it was one of those jobs that was already filled but they had to post it because of the law or something. Some coach who was already working there got the job, from what I can gather. That kinda gets to me, it’s like they’re not hiring qualified people. Not even an interview for me? 

All this is fine with me; I mean if they don’t want to advance themselves it’s their loss.

Unsurprisingly, I have a beef with Google. I am no stranger to beefs with Google. However, this one is a bit more vain than previously.

Owensboro recently was blessed by the Google-gods with Street View. Exciting, exciting, exciting. What does one do upon their first visit to Street View? They look for their house. However, I was unable to do this because my neighborhood is apparently not covered.

Of course, the streets outlined in blue are the ones that have Street View. It appears that there is an L-shaped black hole of GSV coverage here in town. I could understand if I lived on the edge of town, but as this larger image shows, I do not. 

What gives, Google?

Since that winter storm never really panned out like I thought it would, here’s what I’m working on for an upcoming blog entry.

I have two apps on my iPod touch that track your car’s fuel economy. One is free; the other is not. Is the paid one worth the money? Find out as I put them head-to-head and tell you the results right here.

In anticipation of this BMFWS coming this week, Nathan and I plan on riding it out in the Loch Raven Building and broadcasting live on the internet. 

Check it out here.

Due to a seriously baffling chain of events this morning, my web site is now back on my very trusty server at the Loch Raven Building.

Shortest. Blog post. EVAR.

No wonder John McCain, Sarah Palin and the Republicans made such a big deal out of the Weather Underground when the campaign was still ongoing. They’re selling this Wunder Radio thing on the App Store for $6! This is an outrage and I completely regret my vote for B. Hussein OBAMA.

Anyway, in all seriousness that was a total joke. I don’t know how it will post but there should be a screenshot attached. There really is a Wunder Radio app for six bucks in the App Store which probably isn’t worth the money. I also have no regrets for my vote.