PennSilverTaco's "Perfect 5-Lug Regular Cab" Build, Aspergers, and General BS MegaThread!

The big thing on Whidbey Island was the intense windstorms we got every winter; Every year in December, without fail, we lost power at least once!

Due to the mild summers, even the most expensive homes on Whidbey Island did not have central air; I am one of the most prolific air-conditioning users you will ever meet, and I never had any complaints about being too warm in our house!

Cars, however, were an entirely different story; The A/C in our 2000 GMC Safari leaked refrigerant, and every spring we had to get it recharged.

One day in May 2002, we had record-setting heat on Whidbey Island with temperatures in the nineties. My middle school, like pretty much every house on the island, did not have air-conditioning! One thing I absolutely relished after leaving a school with no A/C on a hot day was getting in my mom’s car with the A/C cranked; However, this sudden heat wave had blindsided us and my parents had not yet had the time to bring it to the dealer to get recharged. My mom brought me to the local 7-Eleven for a slurpee, and we ran into one of the other Navy wives; She had a red 1995 Nissan Pathfinder, and one with a 5-speed stick to boot! I actually asked Mrs. Simpson if the A/C in her Pathfinder worked, she said it worked great, and I immediately started seething with jealousy.

My dad had a 1996 Nissan Pathfinder at the time, which also had great A/C, but he’d of course taken that to work and left us with the van...

 

Wow sounds like everything worked out good on that, l don't remember you telling that one before.

 

So he sold the Mustang and leased a brand new 1997 Ford Explorer, a 2WD model since he lived in Florida and didn't need 4WD; Around the same time, my aunt who lived in Colorado leased a brand new 1997 Ford Expedition 4x4...

My aunt was a social worker, and she slipped and fell in the cafeteria at work, really messing up her back in the process; Among other things, she was unable to climb into the large Expedition anymore. My aunt and uncle both talked to their leasing companies, and were given the okay to swap vehicles. My aunt had a much easier time getting into the Explorer, but had no desire to keep it since it was 2WD. Once the lease was up, she gave the Explorer back and bought a used 1993 Nissan Pathfinder that did have 4WD. My uncle fell in love with the Expedition, but did not need a 4x4, so once the lease was up on the 1997 he gave that back and leased a new 2000 Expedition with 2WD. He bought the Expedition outright in 2003 or 2004, and held onto it until at least 2014, when he sold it privately and bought a used 2012 Tundra.

 

It's a nice place, but boy has it gotten expensive in the last two decades! My parents rented a house since they knew we'd be there for only two years. My dad's Navy buddy bought the house in the late 1990s for less than $200K, and sold it to a jewelry store owner and his family for $219K (according to public records) in July 2002. Since the price history doesn't show any subsequent sales since then, I'm guessing the same people still own it. As of November 2020, that less-than-2,250-square-foot, 3-bedroom rancher on a small piece of land is worth more than double what it sold for in 2002!

Also, when I lived there, my biggest grievance was how far it was from everything! There was a Walmart and a grocery store, a Blockbuster video, lots of decent restaurants, and three car dealerships (Chevy, Ford, and Dodge; The Big Three!); However, while we had a 3-screen movie theater and a drive-in, the nearest full-size theater was like 40 minutes away! The local triplex was extremely limited in how many movies it could play at one time, so we often drove the forty minutes out to Mount Vernon to see some of them...

Driving to the airport in Seattle was two hours one way, as was the international auto show (also in Seattle) every year! Oak Harbor is Whidbey Island's largest incorporated city, and the shopping center with the Walmart, the Albertson's, and the Blockbuster Video was within walking distance of our house (I know this because my mom and I actually walked to the video store once in 2001, with Molly in tow; The whole staff of Blockbuster was made up of dog lovers, so they let us bring Molly into the store and spoiled her with treats). Another time in the summer of 2001, my mom's relatives were visiting from California and we walked to Walmart. My cousin Robyn (17 at the time) was jealous of my Razor scooter, and impulsively bought one on sale at Walmart.

 

I like to go up there and eat at a hidden gem called Seabolts. Love that place.

 

The summer of 2001 also marks the last two times I flew on a plane prior to the 9/11 attacks, and it was quite an interesting adventure. My grandparents, the aforementioned 17-year old cousin, and I flew out of SeaTac Airport, made a connecting flight somewhere, and then took that flight to Portland, Maine; Things didn't go as planned. Obviously, the TSA didn't exist yet; My step-Grandpa had a pacemaker, which exempted him from walking through the metal detector. I saw the security people going over my grandpa with a wand, and asked my cousin why he hadn't gone through the metal detector; My grandma heard this and explained in no uncertain terms that his pacemaker could blow up and kill him if he went through the metal detector...

Our flight was really late at night, probably after 9pm, so my parents dropped us all off at SeaTac fairly late; We boarded with no problem. My cousin and I sat in coach and ended up next to a friendly Eastern European man (He was either Croatian or Ukrainian, I forget). My grandparents were in a different part of the plane; They had excess miles and used these to get a free upgrade to first class if I remember correctly. So the flight was going smoothly until the captain announced over the intercom that we would be making an unscheduled stop in Atlanta because an elderly passenger was having a medical emergency. Knowing my grandpa had heart problems, my cousin and I both freaked out; However, our fears subsided when my grandma came to us after we'd landed and told us what had really happened...

The passenger in question was NOT my grandpa; I forget whether he'd been drinking prior to boarding and continued to drink on the flight, or if he got on the plane sober and overindulged himself, but the "medical emergency" had to do with this passenger drinking entirely too much. I don't even think we had to deplane in Atlanta, and we got back up in the air fairly quickly, but we inevitably missed our connecting flight (Once again, I forget where this was; I'd like to say somewhere between Dulles and JFK; May have been Reagan...?). We ended up laid over for quite a few hours until they got us another flight, and then when we finally touched down in Portland we found out they'd lost our luggage!



Luckily, the luggage was delivered to my grandma's door the following morning; Was it aggravating? Hell yes! However, I am almost 32 years old and have flown commercial so many times that I've lost count! I can say with utmost certainty that this was my worst air travel experience EVER; Considering that a close friend of mine once got detained by customs for like two hours after flying from Paris to Atlanta and missed her connecting flight to Philly as a result, and another guy I know who's a year older than me is so afraid of flying that he's never been on a plane, I'd say I have it pretty good! My biggest complaints about commercial air travel are...

• Narrow seats...

• When somebody stinks up the lavatory and the resulting noxious cloud drifts into the main cabin...

 

Got a new mask today; Less cumbersome than the gas mask, comfortable to wear for long periods of time, and my glasses don’t fog up...

Plus, it makes me look like Bane!

 

Last night in the dark I shoved a blade in my saw and cut a piece of wood but it felt really weird for some reason. Today when I walked in the garage l was able to see why, Do'h!

 

What exactly happened? I don't see the issue, LOL...

 

The blade is in upside down, it was really dark last night. As soon as l walked in the garage today l could see it.

 

I did not have an HDTV in my room until 2014 or 2015 (my bedroom TV from July 2005 to August 2014 or so was a 27" Sansui CRT), but it was a small one; Our first HDTV (the 37-inch 720p Vizio) was gifted to me buy my parents in March 2016 when we moved into the new house. The Vizio is now as now over 13 years old as of this post, and is starting to have little hiccups; I had originally planned to buy a new HDTV for myself back in 2016, but my parents told me to save my money and gifted me the Vizio. I happily took it, and I've been happy with it; However, one notable issue with the TV is that one of the HDMI ports does not work. This means that I have to unplug the cable box whenever I want to play PS4, and often when I hook the cable box back up I have to reset it to make it work...



Another issue is that I sometimes have to push the power button on the TV (not the remote, which is almost always chronically missing) to make the TV turn off; The volume button on the cable box remote does not work with the TV. However, as long as the TV keeps working, I'm gonna keep saving my money!

 

Ol’ reliable!

 

Also, when I play video games, the picture seems a tad bit too big for the screen, and if you look at the above picture you will see that some of the image is cut off...

 

Curious to see pics of course..

Same way I got my 1988 Chevy Celebrity, $200 car and didn't know if it worked but the body was worth at least the $200. Battery, spark plugs, then Mickey Mouse the throttle cable (which was rusty) and drove it home then paid $10 for the part I needed to fix it.

 

Mickey Mouse?

 

1998 Trane XE1000 heat pump (5-tons/60,000 BTUs); Biggest thing I've ever "autopsied"!


June 3rd, 2010:

Doylestown, Pennsylvania

 

I had a 13" black and white tv in my room when I was young.

 

I first got a color TV in my room in 2001; 13" Emerson TV/VCR combo (obviously color), purchased at Walmart for $140!

 

Basically just "fix" it good enough to get by without the ability to do it properly. Hacking is another term.

The throttle cable went into a round pulley that also held the transmission kickdown cable to tell it when and how hard to shift. The spring on that pulley rusted up so it wouldn't let the gas pedal release after pressing it. I had to shift it myself to drive it home but it was almost all highway..it would shift on its own just very mushy