It's all about low gears. I could never get up this before. You can't really tell just how crazy this is in the photo. This is a pile of rocks about six foot high. My sammy just crawled up them like there was nothing there. All I need now is a locker and I'll be set.

Today I took my Zuk to the ZigZag. I drove right up it like it was just a regular trail. I don't even have my gears in yet. Gesh, what a difference it makes having an engine that runs on all four cylinders.

I'm very pleased with my engine swap. This is going to put me into a whole new category of wheeling.

Yesterday I went over the mountain behind our house. I've been up there before, but I could not get over one steep hill. Yesterday I made it over and to my surprise there is miles and miles of trails to explore. I can't wait to drive up there again.

Anyway, I'm going to have my new gears in this weekend. It's going to be great!

So my database server's hard drive is going out. I have the worse luck with hard drives. Luckily I though ahead and bought a few IDE drives to replace the old drive in it. Well, last week I tried to swap them in.

I put the drives in and tried to install FreeBSD on them. I would not format the drives. So I try another one. Same thing. So I think, "it must be the IDE controller." So I try a different controller card. Still won't format. So I'm thinking, maybe this system won't do IDE. Maybe there is a BIOS problem. It was using a SCSI drive all this time.

So I purchase two new SCSI drives. They get here the next day and I open them up to find they are 80 pin SCSI and I need 68 pin. Arg... So thinking I'll be sly I purchase a removable drive bay that works with the drive's connector.

Today the drive bay got here. I open it up and see that it has a 80 pin for the removable part and a 68 pin for the internal connector. Great. So I pop the drive into it and start to put the lid on.... ARG! the drive is too tall to fit in the cart! It's a 1" cart and I have a 1.5" drive.

Is there something trying to tell me something here?

Why, why, why, why, why...

Engine swapped.

When I got my 86 Samurai the engine wasn't running too good. I tweaked it here and there and finally got it running well enough to drive it. But it still wasn't right. A few months ago I received another 1.3L engine for it to swap in.

Well, I finally got around to it last weekend.

The swap went really smooth. I disconnected everything and pulled the engine out. Then I dropped the new engine in and reconnected everything. I was taking my time so it took about six hours. I made sure of all the connections and then started it up.

After the 10th try while priming it with gas it started up. I gassed it to keep it running and then check it all out for leaks. The engine ran great! No leaks anywhere except one on the rear of the valve cover. Easy fix.

I made sure everything was tightened down and took it for a short test drive. I didn't want to get too far away in case something happened. Can you say thirty foot burnout's! It was awesome! Major power upgrade. Now it's running as it should. I'm going to test drive it a few more times this week and then this weekend I'm going to try it on the hill climb. I can't wait to see how much better it drives.

The latest version of Omniweb, 5.0, has been released. It's not production quality. That doesn't say much for the Omnigroup. 4.5 was awful. I'm definitely waiting until at least version 5.1 to purchase my copy. I don't want to get burned again.

I got my transfer case gear! Woo hooo!

Last weekend I spent time getting my 1.3L engine cleaned up for my Samurai. I'm going to swap it next weekend. I'm hoping this will solve my power issues.

I'm also putting in a new transfer case gear kit. It will reduce my gears 127% on the low end and 23% on the high end. They say it will correct the speed up to 32" tires.

Next weekend will be fun...

Then in Sept, probably the 18th-19th, we all are going on a camping/wheeling trip. So I want to get all setup for that. It will be much fun! If all goes as planned, my rig will be rolling really good.

I got a call from Randy the other day. He has his Toyota running now. He said that he will probably be able to take it up and wheel it on the trip. That's really awesome. He has been working on it for a few years now.

Anyway, I need to get back to work.

I've been thinking a lot about my Samurai lately. I want to upgrade something on it because I'm going on a wheeling vacation soon... maybe.

I know for sure that I want to get my other engine cleaned up and put in. But I also want to get a bit more torque to the wheels. I'm trying to decide between the Ring & Pinion upgrade or the Transfer Case gear upgrade. Some people say, "do the transfer case," while others say, "do the ring and pinion." I also have the option to get lockers. I know I want to do the SPOA lift, but that's later down the road.

I'm also stuck on what engine to swap in next year. It's between the 1.6L VW Diesel or the 1.6L EFI 16v Tracker/Sidekick engine. I like the fact that the Diesel has more torque and better gas mileage. But it's going to cost twice as much to put in. If I go with the 1.6L EFI then I'll have more money for other parts.

I guess I could do the EFI first, then do the diesel later if I feel I need to. I can upgrade the suspension and TC gears first.

Anyway, the first thing I need to do if find the engine.

Our neighbor seems to have moved out last week, leaving two dogs and a cat. I was watering the dogs so they didn't die. They've been there for about a week without anyone around. They have no electricity so their well pump does not work.

Today the county came out due to a complaint about them leaving garbage all over the place. I went over to check on the dogs. Only one was around and I could not find the other one.

After searching around a bit I heard the small one in the house. But I'm not sure how it go into the house. I start looking in all the windows, but I don't see it. I can hear it. It's yelping like it's stuck or something. After investigating we determined that it tried to climb up the heating ducts to get into the house. Now he was totally stuck in there.

We called animal control and told them they need to get here and save the dogs. The poor thing was yelping louder and louder. He was kicking and trying to get out. So I said, "I need to do something about this."

I went into their house (door was open). I found where he was and pulled off the vent grate. He was in there totally stuck. I tried to get him to go back the way he came, but dog's are not too smart.

I had to bend the sheet metal just a bit so he could get out. Since he was so skinny, he wormed his way right out through the little vent. He was so happy to get out of there. I was glad, I didn't want the poor little thing to die in there.

So finally animal control came and picked them up. Off they went to the shelter. They ate two bowls of food before they even left. Hungry little guys.

So, now we have to clean up the neighbors trash from the street because it's blowing all over and the renter left. They are trying to contact the owner and get them to do it, but I'm getting sick of seeing it. Looks like a dump over there. Stupid people.

Today is the day! Databoost.com has one year uptime.

16:32:44 up 367 days, 3:07, 1 user, load average: 0.08, 0.02, 0.01

This is an old Pentium 233 with 128MB ram that has been running non-stop for a year. Really, it's been running non-stop for about five years, but this is the first year it was not rebooted due to electrical problems.

LInux is great!