Jeff's LiveJournal

For the last several months my Jeep has been slowly dripping anti-freeze from a joint near the top of the radiator. Within a week or two it would leak the amount of coolant between the "refill needed" and "full" lines on the overflow tank, but I have been carrying a spare bottle of 50% coolant with me just in case I needed to refill while I was away.
( Read more )

Click to embiggenIn any case, by doing it myself I ended up saving about $460 and gained some automotive experience. Now I just have to figure out what to do with the old radiator.

On Friday night, I went and had dinner at Uncle Billy's BBQ and then went to see the band She Craves at Emo's Lounge. Then on Saturday we went to the McKinney Falls State Park and we did the 3 mile paved hike around the park. Next time I go I'll definitely want to try the other 3 mile unpaved hike they have. reanimated wrote a little more about it here and here.

On Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon, I did a bit of electrical work on my car by installing an integrated XM Radio receiver into my Jeep. This was basically added on a hidden XM Receiver electrical box under the driver's seat with cabling that snakes up under the carpeting and into the back of my Pioneer stereo head unit. Even better is that it seems because the XM receiver I bought was factory refurbished, it is still activated and receiving radio content for free. Apparently the XM activation/deactivation signals are only transmitted occasionally for each Radio ID, so I may continue to get free service for a few weeks.

Sunday evening, snaxxx started moving some of her things into the Cowhouse, beginning mostly with her books. She'll be moving the bulk of her things next weekend.

Unfortunately, it seems that the commotion of going in and out of her car might have attracted some criminals, because in between car loads some vandal snuck into her car and my Jeep and looked for things to steal. The burglar must have been scared off as Snax was coming back her car, because my Jeep passenger door was left open with my car insurance paperwork scattered around. The only thing taken from my Jeep was less than a dollar in spare change in the cupholder (apparently ignoring my obsolete Garmin StreetPilot GPS). They similarly took a few dollars in cash and a digital camera from Snax's car, but seemingly not much else (also apparently ignoring her iPhone and iPod). The Austin Police were dispatched out and they took a crime report from us and managed to lift a few good fingerprints from Snax's car, so maybe something good will happen.

Maybe I'll try to get some infrared video cameras installed outside around the house. I had been playing with an open source Linux-based video surveillance package called ZoneMinder a year or so ago, but never really extended it to any permanently mounted cameras.

So tonight's project was to install a security lock box in my Jeep Wrangler by replacing the factory-installed center console storage box. Although the original console box was lockable, I never really felt that it would stop anyone that was actually interested in getting into it. In fact, the plastic around the locking latch of the factory console was visibly white from being stressed during normal usage.

I found someone's personal recommendation to this same problem and how he installed a new console so I decided to buy one of the Tuffy Security Console Inserts myself too. Here are some photos of my own installation:

  

I recently bought a 20 GB Archos portable MP3 player (for only $103 after rebates and discounts) as many other people on FatWallet also did. It's a pretty nice player, especially due to the fact that it has the RockBox opensource Archos firmware project. I've been wanting to hook it up to the stereo in my Jeep, but hadn't been able to because my factory-shipped Chrysler stereo headunit didn't have an auxiliary line-in. Since my Jeep had a CD player and not a cassette tape player, I couldn't use one of those cassette adapters. It also didn't have a CD Changer connector so I couldn't use one of those CD Changer to AUX adapters. And I definitely didn't want to use one of those FM modulators on an empty station, since I knew it would only give me a poor quality signal.

So I figured the best option would be to get a replacement stereo headunit that would allow me to directly connect my MP3 player via an AUX input. ( read about the stereo installation )

  
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