So I've been wanting to rebuild the exhaust on my Samurai for awhile now. Yesterday I finally done it.

I went to a few stores and asked for pricing on exhaust pipe, 2 inch. Most stores were over $3 a foot. Way more than I wanted to pay.

So I found some EMT (Electrical Conduit) laying around the yard. I didn't have anything to bend it with, so I just cut it and welded it in a few places to make my "bend". I attached the muffler to the end and off I went.

It works really good. Being that it's 2", I get lots of breathing room. I still need to open up the intake, but for now it's a very sturdy and quiet exhaust.

I'm another year older. 36 today. My party was on Sunday. It was good. Cake was good.

Karl and Kelly are here with Ethan. They drove over to pick up the dog and are staying for about a week. I took karl out wheeling a few times already. Didn't do anything hard core and didn't make it to the Rubicon yet. Maybe next time.

Yesterday we had a bit of lightning and now everything is on fire. Smoke everywhere. There was like 16 fires. I think most of them are out now, but still a few burning. They will have them out soon.

The Samurai is running good. I still haven't picked up my new springs and stuff yet. I still need to fix the exhaust and stuff, but it's still wheeling. I'm going to fix up on some of the exhaust tonight probably.

The crawler project is kinda on hold until I can afford to get the four link system purchased. It's going to cost me about $2500 to get all the parts and brackets. So maybe in a few months...

I'm still working hard on ORS stuff. I have just a few leftovers to finish up on The Champions and then I need to get my PayPal stuff working for SpeediWiFi. There is so much I want to do and not a lot of time to do it. I'm working hard though to get stuff going.

I guess I should get back to it then.

I'm still alive.

I've been super busy lately. Actually working all month long on stuff. So here are my updates.

The rock crawler is on hold until I can get some extra cash for my 4-link suspension. I've done a bit to it, but really I just need to get some money to go any further with it.

I've fixed up my Samurai and I've been doing some wheeling on the weekends. I'm planning a trip to Rubicon, but schedules are hard to match up.

Karl moved back to the states and needed someone to watch his dog, Daisy. So my dad brought her home with him. I've been taking Daisy out wheeling with me all the time. She loves it. Oh, and she likes to chase the rabbits too. ;-)

Karl is going to be here next week to pick up Daisy. I'm going to take him out wheeling, but since it's going to be on a weekend I won't have much time. Good thing the sun doesn't go down until after 8pm.

Work has been busy. I've finished up one of my major projects and I've been working on my ORS stuff. I have another customer getting ready to launch today some time. This is good because I really need to get some money in this month.

My ORS modules are taking much longer than expected to get going. Mostly because of the admin interface to control it all. I had forgotten how big of a job it was to get Web*ntory going. Although my stuff is way more simplified than Web*ntory, it's still a big project.

So I guess I should get back to work so I can get some billing out the door.

So I just finished a major upgrade to all my servers. Upgraded Apache, PHP, PostgreSQL, and other server applications. Had to get all the latest security patches because I was running rather old versions. I'm hoping that there has been optimizations also to speed things up.

Now I just need to get some of my own software releases out the door. Project v4o is coming along rather well. I switched from Dojo Toolkit to Scriptaculous on the remoting side. This was done because Dojo can't load it's modules from a remote host very well. With Prototype and Scriptaculous I can load the modules using script tags. So special effects are working great.

Now I just need to figure out how to get my forms to submit over AJAX requests. Maybe I'll just lighten the code and do normal form submissions.

Anyway, I need to get cracking on a inventory management system for The Champions. They are going to be calling about it any time now...due date is today.

We are back from SC again. It was a great trip. Papa turned 80, so we had a party for him. Everyone was there, and that's like 20-25 people! Jane spent a lot of time on the beach, body boarding. I spent time at the skate park with Louie. The weather was good, and we got lots of rest from work. We at a whole bunch and almost popped.

All was good, now it's time to get back to work.

It's windy again here in Nevada. The wind has been blowing for about 8 days now. Actually, Saturday was really nice, but all the other days have been 30-40 MPH gusts.

That's why it's nice to have a garage. I've been out there working on my junk. Today I finished welding in the last floor brace. Next will be the transmission tunnel and flooring. Then seat mounts.

It's coming along, but not as fast as I've wanted. So I've been taking off work at around 6pm and working in the garage for a few hours. I really need to do something else instead of sitting in front of my computer all day and night.

Anyway, I'm pretty excited right now, and I need to keep it going. I'm hoping to get my crawler done by fall...I know...late as usual.

This weekend Randy came by and we worked a bit on the buggy. One half of the floor is done. I have the other half almost ready to weld in. Then the tunnel hoops are next along with the seat mounts.

I'm going to start working on it in the evenings. I really need to get further along. I've been lagging on it for almost a year now. It's time to move.

So Randy and I did our first successful bends with the bender this weekend. They worked out really well. The first one was bent right, but we bent it an inch too far forward so it would not work for what we wanted to do. The next two were perfect.

Anyway, that's what happened this weekend.

I'm about two and a half weeks late on my projects right now. I guess it's time to break out the RedBull and get some stuff rolling.

I was originally set back by a customer wanted their system redone. After getting it done, of course, there were many bugs and changes to make to it. So that put me way off schedule.

So now I need to just hold off on any other changes and just get my other things going.

I hate when I get behind.

Well, today it was 90° in the house, so I decided it was too hot to work. I went out, cleaned out the water cooler, scraped the crusties off, wired a plug to the cable going to it, and started it up.

Within 20 minutes it was 10° cooler in the house. When it gets to 78°, it will be so nice!

Oh, and my server room was 100° today. The server cabinet is 72°, so that's fine, but the AC is working it's butt off.

The move was a success. Everything was moved out to the new server room. AC is installed, Battery UPS was installed, Network was installed, and all the servers were rolled out, cleaned up, and booted up.

There was a few problems. My 24 port switch almost died, and is probably getting ready to die. It would not turn on when I put it in the rack. We messed with it for awhile, then it just started up and ran. It's in the rack right now, but I'm worried that it's going to die soon. It's been running for 7 years straight.

I wired my battery charger backwards and blew the reverse polarity fuses. So now I need to find two 40 amp fuses. We stuck some 30s in there for now, and I'll find some 40s later.

I still need to swap the antenna's but that can be done later.

I had a problem where the web servers didn't auto-start, and the database server had a version mismatch. Other small problems, but all's well.

Dave helped with the install and he wired up the network like a pro. Well, he is a pro, so it should be wired nicely.

Oh, and now my office is totally quiet. I've been sitting next to servers and routers for so long, its weird being in a quiet room. I can actually hear my computer running. I guess I'll get used to it, but right now it's just weird.

Anyway, I need to get back to work now.