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What did you do this week (and weekend)?
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
I bought a 1987 Honda Civic wagon last week off some guy for $1000 and have had it up on stands in the garage fixing its many issues. It seemed like junk to him because it made horrible sounds while driving and practically nothing worked right on it, but actually it's practically rust-free and the engine has good compression.
It has 157k miles on the odometer, but also a dinghy tow kit and damage on its bumper that looks like it got melted from exhaust, so I'm betting a lot of those miles are just from being pulled around on four wheels by an RV. The exterior has a few dings but is overall pretty good, and the interior looks like it's hardly been sat in. Apart from one gouge on the dash it's practically brand new in there.
The big issue is it had watery gas in the gas tank and got very rotten in there. It couldn't run for long because it would choke on rust in the tank. I've sent the tank off for cleaning and re-lining. Next, it was dumping a ton of fuel into its engine oil, which is likely just the mechanical fuel pump up on the distributor shaft having a leaky diaphragm. I've swapped that out and changed all the lines and filters. Then it had a really loud CV joint and the brakes had a terrible grinding sound, but still worked well. Waiting for new half shafts, pads, and rotors now. I've been going around cleaning electrical connections since many of those are corroded from many years of sitting, but everything's come right back to life once the connections are cleaned.
I expect it will be a very nice little car with tons of life left in it once its issues are addressed. It's very tiny compared to most things on the road today and only weighs a hair over 2000lbs, but should get upper 30s in gas mileage. I've always wanted a kei car but one wouldn't be all that useful where I live since there are stretches of road at 70mph to get to the places I need to go. This thing isn't much bigger than a kei car and has all that same charm, but should happily do 70. Plus the insurance is a joke at $6/month.
Those wagons are so dope. Even though you have to do quite a bit of work, it's nice you found a rust free one. Hopefully it's a good little guy for you!! I'm definitely a Honda fangirl, so I'm hoping I can get a weird 80's car from them or something like a CRX or EG hatch at some point.
Awesome! Always nice to get a good deal and a nice little project at that, especially with what many of us "Elder Millennials" might call a "Classic Car" these days.
It's funny, as a teenager, I was always looking for something to "Soup Up" and really liked the rare cars we'd get in North America that had forced induction or were just generally fast. Now, as an old dude, I really appreciate just a well kept daily driver from the 80s and 90s; an immaculate 87 Civic Wagon will certainly catch my eye, causing me to ooh and ahh over it while my wife rolls her eyes.
I'm not a car guy, but I really do admire older cars like this out of nostalgia. When you see a really well-maintained or restored Civic like this on the road, it's a headturner. I imagine you'll have tons of fun zipping around in it once all your work is complete, and it sounds like you're the type of person who knows how to breathe new life into it. Awesome find.
My first new car was an '89 Civic 3-door manual, and that thing was a genuine rice rocket. Got a ticket for accidentally going 90 m.p.h.😁
The manual averaged 45 - 50 m.p.g. highway, absolutely astonishing until you realize that modern safety features, noise management, electronics, etc. mean significant curb weight increase.
It held up to Michigan winters and road salt beautifully. With good care I got 200k miles out of it before the body started looking too shabby and the maintenance costs started to look like car payments (not doing most of the work myself).
Congratulations on your new project!
I am having my first exam week of university, from tuesday to sunday I have 9 exams to enter. I am barely keeping my notes above 50/100 on my main courses, I knew that university courses were harder but didn't expect this level of intensity.
To give a perspective:
We are taking 20-24 credits in total.
Mechanical engineering program takes in 50 people every year, 90 people entered Calculus-I exam, course average is 22/100 ( only 15 people scored above 50 ); you need 50/100 on average and a minimum of 60/100 from the final to pass course.
It is similar situation for Physics-I as well, thought of more than half of class failing makes me feel anxious.
That's crazy! Do you have the option to take some of the exams at a later date (e.g., in the spring)? When I was a student, I also went to all of the scheduled exams in my first exam period, but I realised pretty quickly that it's better to split them up a bit.
Also, I know everyone probably says this, but how others are doing really is no indicator of how well you'll do on an exam. We had a notoriously difficult one that some people had to take up to 8 or 9 times to pass (and I think after 4th or 5th time, you had to pay to do it too). I studied for it but didn't revise because I had a big argument with my then-roommate the night before the exam, and still passed the first time (with like 65/100 but whatever!).
Exams are done in designated weeks across the entire university, I don't believe you can just take exams at an alternative date, besides I will be responsible from 10 exams next semester. Better get them done now rather than later.
I understand that everyone has their own pace, as my elder brother said once: "Do not approach classes based on how others performed, approach them by your own knowledge and interest".
Maybe it is because I started uni with high hopes of social life so being even more alienated than I am currently are feels lonesome.
I've been super busy at work - we're a small team with only one other full-time employee, who was finally let go this week after being a slow and unreliable headache for months. I'm relieved that we'll hopefully be getting someone who will pull their weight, but I know it will get worse before it gets better in terms of workload.
In terms of free time, I was planning to tag along to my partner's academic conference at a far away destination next year in order to take advantage of the free accommodation. Unfortunately, by the time his dates got confirmed, the tickets got so expensive that I wouldn't actually benefit much, if at all, from coming with. This is a big bummer for me because a different trip already fell through for a similar reason, and I've been saving vacation days for the better part of the year. I'll plan an alternative (cheaper) vacation to make up for it eventually, but I already spent quite a bit of time researching and planning for this trip, so first, I'll take a little break to be grumpy about it.
It's not all bad: my weekly dance class was lovely, and my refurbished Steam Deck arrived on Monday! Unfortunately, the (non-refurbished) dock that I ordered for it seems to be borked and I need to send it back. But I've enjoyed curling up on the couch with my dog and playing my weird little indie games. Having access to my main game library on a handheld makes all the difference - my old Switch has been languishing for a while, even though it's essentially the same thing.
I got sick with covid just in time for Thanksgiving after working for 23 days in a row after starting a second job. I'm super bummed out I can't see my family and friends during this break, I was really looking forward to seeing everyone especially since I've been so busy. I'm just exhausted in general from work and two jobs. Idk how people do it.
Thankfully I'm on the upswing, I finally got the energy to reinstall Linux on my laptop. I was getting tired of fighting compatibility with Arch Linux so I just switched to Ubuntu and it's super slick, GNOME is a wonderful DE that works better on my old laptop than I expected. I might install Arch on the second hard drive just to have the option as I still really like the simplicity of the OS.
Aside from computer stuff I need to do more organizing and unpacking around the house. It's only been 4 months since we moved in, lol.
I'm sorry you've had to work all month and your "reward" was getting sick :(
Thanks, it's all good though. I went to a concert one night in the middle of my working marathon to take advantage of the few hours of personal time I had and I'm assuming I got it from the crowd. That's the price I pay for trying to have fun I guess! My fiance likes to call me Charlie Brown because of my terrible luck so it's par for the course for me. I try to take it in stride, otherwise it'll take over your psyche.
It's been a nice excuse to drink hot toddy's for my sore throat and tequila sunshines for the vitamin C so definitely made the most of it!
Do your thing how you want to do it of course, but I just want to jump on and recommend Pop!_OS as a distribution to check out alongside Ubuntu. Pop is originally based on Ubuntu, but has other QoL improvements to the DE that make it really a pleasure to use. And the team who works on Pop (System76) keep the features coming. They're diligently working on their own DE to supplant GNOME in Pop, called COSMIC and written in Rust. It's all still in beta, and probably won't officially be released until sometime next year, but it's looking really slick. I think for Linux users who don't want to fuss too much with their DE and enjoy a macOS-like interface, Pop is really worth taking a look at.
I was just watching a video about pop os! Definitely seems like more what I want, I know the community has it's issues with Ubuntu but I just wanted something fresh. Gonna test this out on my old MacBook for sure now that I'm distro hopping again.
I've got no issues with Ubuntu, it's a solid and mature OS with tons of documentation and a full community around it. Out of the box it has tons of support for a wide array of hardware. I wouldn't think twice about using as a headless server OS. But from a workstation perspective, I feel it's a little stale. Of course, you can make it anything you want, but my days of endlessly tweaking my DE are over because I just don't have the time or desire.
While Pop, on the other hand, seems to be innovating and tweaking, mostly because they're also in the hardware game and trying to sell a complete package. And again, Pop is based on Ubuntu, so you still get that stability and community. I think you'll find the DE both very similar to Ubuntu, but also differently curated in a more thoughtful way. I'm a big fan of Pop's snapping window tiling where you can customize the gaps, giving it a functionality much like i3 WM if you ever used that with Arch. Pop is opinionated, but I find that I like its opinions. I love the default hotkeys and gestures that make navigating workspaces a pleasure. I likened it to macOS because it does funnel you into a way of using it.
A quick tip that just came to me, if you're using it on a laptop I suggest disabling "Automatic Screen Brightness" in the power settings. I believe it's on by default, and it always seems to cause my laptop screens to flicker.
Too much. I'm all done.
In the last 7 days, I've essentially been to 4 parties and as an introvert, I was over it after the first one. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy parties and socializing, but one is far more than enough for me.
The last one was last night and I've told my wife (extrovert) I'm all done, no more people for a few weeks. I couldn't even stomach getting on Discord to talk to my friends right now.
Went to a concert with Kaizers Orchestra on Wednesday with my sister (we're both big fans). In my opinion, Norway's best band. They've been on hiatus for 10 years. More than a year ago, they announced a comeback tour. You had to be at a specific website at 11:11am on 11/11 to get a ticket. I was there, and the website crashed. Got back online two minutes later and was #2000 in queue, but I got the tickets. I think they sold out 80k tickets in ten minutes. I've been looking forward to this for a year. Instead of doing like a couple of stadium concerts, which they could easily have done, they decided to do 56 small concerts (our venue held 750 people).
Best fucking concert I've ever attended. Absolutely worth it, even though our plane was delayed and we got back home at 1AM yesterday (I really feel bad for my sister who had to travel 3 hours for work early in the morning the next day).
Kaizers is a funny band. They've been known as Norway's best live band for a number of years, but never had any big hits. Then they had a big hit with Hjerteknuser ("Heartbreaker"), a ballad. It was a hit 10+ years ago and became a hit again on TikTok last year. But most of their music is really aggressive Balkan-esque alt rock featuring a Hammond organ, accordion, and oil drum percussion. I think the fact that the number of tickets was way lower than demand meant that very few TikTok fans got tickets. Great crowd.
They're going on a European tour next year. I recommend it. They're one of very few Norwegian bands that have managed to build an international audience while having 100% of their lyrics in Norwegian.
Never heard of Kaizers Orchestra before, but after watching that video, I think I'm now a fan... very dark cabaret mixed with gypsy punk, which is awesome. That concert looks like it would have been incredible too!
cc: @0d_billie. I think you would dig this band too, since they give me a similar vibe as Sir Curse.
Thanks for the recommendation! I'll take a dive during work today :D
On Friday my fiance and I celebrated our 5th (dating) anniversary! Took her to a little Italian place in the city, she loved it. We said we wouldn't go big on gifts this year, but I figured we're engaged for such a short part of our lives I wanted to get her something nice she could remember this time with. I found a necklace that matches her engagement ring - I think she really liked it!
Today I started Baldur's Gate 3. I love how I can run it on my PC and stream it to the Steam Deck plugged into the living room TV. We're really living in the future.
Tomorrow I'm doing laundry and studying for a big job interview on Monday. Could potentially double my salary and be half the commute. Fingers crossed!