e-type-lovers

I have two 1973 240Z’s. One is a basket case and the other is a driver. The driver was getting pretty ratty and a couple of years ago, I was going to paint it. Other projects got in the way and only a few spare bits got painted.

I’m determined to fix the rust and paint it by this summer. I started on the hood a couple of weeks back and sanded it to bare metal. Today I shot a couple of coats of PPG DP 50LF primer on it to keep it from rusting.

Hopefully in a day or two I will get the topcoat on it.

I like electronic gizmos that do something unusual. We’re not talking about Ipods or Palm Pilots here. This is more along the idea of neat gizmos that serve a purpose cheaper than you can imagine.

One of these gadgets is the Bullshooter 2 from Ramsey electronics. http://tinyurl.com/yg4w6t This is a little audio recorder that uses a chip from Winbond that allows you to record multiple messages and stores them forever in non-volatile memory. The uses are endless. If you like toy trains like I do, it can store all kinds of background or station announcemet messages and play them on a timed basis.

Or music on hold for your phone system. I used to do large PBX stuff for a living and the commercial MOH machines we used cost well over $500. This thing will do the same thing for under $70!

I’m what you might call a “professional” college student. I didn’t do well the first time I tried about 44 years ago, too many wild women and parties.

I had been taking classes at the local community college for about 16 years, mostly just a class now and then on something that grabbed my interest. Anyway, I had accumulated a bunch of credits and since my wife works for them, I get a smokin’ deal on tuition ($10 per semester for as many credits as I want to take).

So I decided to try in earnest a little over a year ago and started taking a full load every semester including the summer sessions and what they call intersession classes, that is classes offered during the holiday breaks. Anyhow, long story short, I accumulated about 60 credits is just over a year and am graduating this May with a degree in Systems Administration/Networking. Somehow, I even made the honors list with a 3.81 GPA.

The only class I have left is one in Network Security so I’ve been reading this book for my online class:

The security class is fairly easy because I was always involved in security during my career. I have given presentations to local telecom groups on how to prevent hackers from compromising your PBX and running up huge long distance charges. Many people don’t realize that before the Internet, the PBX was a prime target for hackers.

I have a couple more classes picked out for this summer after I graduate. One is Web development with Dreamweaver and the other is Adobe Flash. Should keep me occupied for a little while. I’ve been doing some Flash on my own and want to get better at it. It seems that many of the the commercial web sites are now built completely with Dreamweaver and Flash.

When I started learning html, we used notepad as our editor. Often times if I have some small changes to make on a website, I will SSH into the web server and edit the page using VI. (For the non-geeks, that means logging into the website using a secure shell program and editing the page using one of the oldest and most basic text editors.)

When I was a young lad, my whole life revolved around internal combustion and wild women, not necessarily always in that order.

Here’s another of my toys from the late ’60’s:

Actually when I look at it now, I seem rather big for such a small bike. I was 6′ 3″ and about 195 pounds in that photo.

This is a picture of me taken in December 1973 while I was visiting my parents in Morenci AZ.

I grew up in Morenci AZ and because it is located above 4,400 ft in the mountains, it snowed often during the winter, sometimes several feet deep. I joke about having to walk to school 5 miles in the snow and it was uphill both ways!

I live in the desert now and only see the white stuff occasionally.

I’ve decided to add a blog to my website. Feel free to add comments and entries relating to Jaguar e-type, Datsun Z cars, or computer stuff.

BTW, that’s my old name tag from the ’70’s when I worked as a Bio-Medical tech for a local hospital chain. (Wish I still looked that young!)

I will be monitoring posts and will delete anything that is spam or inflammatory.