Caren's car had been making an odd sound on a single, particular on ramp in Dallas. It was worse when the brakes were put on, so we went to Just Brakes and had her brakes checked out. They said she needed new brakes and that her calipers needed to be rebuilt, so we ponied up the $550 to get them done.
Not wanting to let my brakes go to the point where I needed to "rebuild my calipers" I decided to have my brakes checked. Just Brakes told me the same story and wanted the same $500, so I had a second opinion done. The dealership said the calipers were fine and maybe needed some grease, but I would need new pads and maybe rotors due to wear. I also needed a two year brake fluid flush. They wanted $600 just for the pads and flush without even addressing the rotors. To add those was another $400.
So, I got to reading the internet. I found these articles:
I used the flushing procedure from:
http://www.taligentx.com/passat/maintenance/brakefluid/
and the brake job writeup from:
http://www.passatworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=179518
I decided to do them myself. Yesterday I took seven hours and did it all myself. It cost me about $350 in parts and tools. However, I now own the tools and know that I used quality parts. I don't know how Just Brakes could have done it for $500 unless they were using some really junky parts. I'm sure they would have been safe, but nevertheless, I'm going to check the Explorer for premature wear a little more frequently than otherwise now.
I had my difficulties, but I'm proud to say that I got it done, everything works and looks fine, and I didn't swear once!!!
Oh, and my calipers were fine. They just needed a little grease. Shocker.
I'm due for a coolant flush, so that may be a project for a couple of weeks from now. The dealer wants $100 for that and I can get it done for about $30 myself. I'll also learn more about my car which I plan to keep for another 15 years if I can. I may even attempt the timing belt, which is due at 100k miles, but according to most Passat sites should be done at around 65k miles due to a lot of failures that wind up costing you $2500 in damage.
If you're observant, you'll notice this posting is being written at 4:30AM on Mother's day. Let's just say that I'm a bit sore from working out and hunching over all day.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Saturday, April 21, 2007
New email servers active!
This won't affect many of you, but it went so smoothly I just had to write about it. This morning, I migrated my mail servers to Google Apps and it was super easy.
My previous email hosting company everyone.net, finally caught on to the fact that I was using thier service for free. It wasn't anything underhand on my part that made it free, it was just a mistake in thier system. I signed up for thier service in 1999 when they offered a "personal" service for free. This was way back when most individuals didn't even know what a domain name was, much less how to buy one and get your own personal email address.
After the bubble burst, this company got rid of the free service and started charging for the personal accounts. I guess I was grand-fathered, because they never charged me or asked for money. Well, that changed.
However, Google to the rescue! They offered Google Apps, which is free Gmail hosting for your domain name. Each user gets 2GB of space and much more stable servers than I was using.
Google also allows me to create 100 email accounts for free, so if you want a kreusch.com email address, just let me know and I can hook you up.
My previous email hosting company everyone.net, finally caught on to the fact that I was using thier service for free. It wasn't anything underhand on my part that made it free, it was just a mistake in thier system. I signed up for thier service in 1999 when they offered a "personal" service for free. This was way back when most individuals didn't even know what a domain name was, much less how to buy one and get your own personal email address.
After the bubble burst, this company got rid of the free service and started charging for the personal accounts. I guess I was grand-fathered, because they never charged me or asked for money. Well, that changed.
However, Google to the rescue! They offered Google Apps, which is free Gmail hosting for your domain name. Each user gets 2GB of space and much more stable servers than I was using.
Google also allows me to create 100 email accounts for free, so if you want a kreusch.com email address, just let me know and I can hook you up.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Three big events
This past weekend was a perfect storm of three big events.
The first was obviously Easter. You can see us in our sunday finest on our pictures site. Unfortunately, Jack could only wear part of his Easter outfit. Dallas decided it was Boston for the weekend and our temperatures dipped into the 30's, so he couldn't wear the shorts Meme bought him to go with his vest and shirt. The service, titled "Easter: Deal with it" at our church was excellent. If you are in the mood, you can listen to it here.
The next was Caren's birthday! This was her last one in her 20's, and I hope she had fun with it. I got her a special cake from a local cake shop that was out of this world and we cooked up a steak dinner on the grill.
It also happened to be opening day weekend in arlington for the Rangers. They were playing the Red Sox. I was able to get some tickets to opening day as well as the next night. Opening day was in the high 40's and we asked a lot of Jack. The photo above shows the end result. He fell asleep in the hip hammock I was wearing while carrying him back to the car. This is the first time he has ever fallen asleep in a place other than his crib or our car, so that says something. The weather got even worse the next night and was in the mid 30's with snow all around (the game turned out to be the coldest on record for the Rangers), so we decided to forget the tickets we had to the game and go and have fun driving around town shopping instead. We kept warm and had fun, that's the important thing.
Well, keep posted. Papa John comes into town this weekend and will get to see the Jack Man for the first time. I'm sure we'll have lots of pictures and videos to post. I'm also hoping to press another DVD in the near future, right after his first birthday.
The first was obviously Easter. You can see us in our sunday finest on our pictures site. Unfortunately, Jack could only wear part of his Easter outfit. Dallas decided it was Boston for the weekend and our temperatures dipped into the 30's, so he couldn't wear the shorts Meme bought him to go with his vest and shirt. The service, titled "Easter: Deal with it" at our church was excellent. If you are in the mood, you can listen to it here.
The next was Caren's birthday! This was her last one in her 20's, and I hope she had fun with it. I got her a special cake from a local cake shop that was out of this world and we cooked up a steak dinner on the grill.
It also happened to be opening day weekend in arlington for the Rangers. They were playing the Red Sox. I was able to get some tickets to opening day as well as the next night. Opening day was in the high 40's and we asked a lot of Jack. The photo above shows the end result. He fell asleep in the hip hammock I was wearing while carrying him back to the car. This is the first time he has ever fallen asleep in a place other than his crib or our car, so that says something. The weather got even worse the next night and was in the mid 30's with snow all around (the game turned out to be the coldest on record for the Rangers), so we decided to forget the tickets we had to the game and go and have fun driving around town shopping instead. We kept warm and had fun, that's the important thing.
Well, keep posted. Papa John comes into town this weekend and will get to see the Jack Man for the first time. I'm sure we'll have lots of pictures and videos to post. I'm also hoping to press another DVD in the near future, right after his first birthday.
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