August 27, 2018

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Getting Settled Into the New Office

The move is over, and for the most part we are settled in. One of the first rooms I set up was my new office. I decided to take the opportunity to trim down, a lot. In fact, there are now 5 boxes of stuff from my old office in storage.

I’m now working with just what I need, nothing more. It feels great. I don’t like clutter, but I’m something of a hoarder. I guess you could say I’m a man of contradiction. Still, I would argue that for the most part I’m effective at what I do. I just struggle sometimes getting motivated to do what I have to do. Like I said, a man of contradictions.

I love the new office. I have a ceiling fan now. That’s a nice upgrade. I also have a new computer. That’s been a long time coming. I got my last computer in 2013. It was starting to choke on some of the footage I was trying to edit. The new computer doesn’t have any problems when I edit at all. In fact, it takes a fraction of the time to encode new videos. I like that since I’ve been rather late with my edits lately. Mostly because I’m still trying to recover from the move. Instead of a vacation this year, we moved. If that sounds like more work, you’re right, it was.

Don’t feel bad for me though. The new house is great and the entire family is happy. A happy family is something I strive for, and to actually achieve it, well, feels like mission accomplished, and not in a George W. Bush kind of way.

I hope to create new and exciting things in this office. If nothing else, I have a great view of the sky and the tree out front.

The Craftsman Launch in Baltimore

I did travel once during the month of August, and that was to the Craftsman launch event in Baltimore MD. I’ve never been to Baltimore before, and after visiting it for the first time, I found I liked it very much. I hope to get back there one day.

Craftsman seemed to spare no expense when it came to this event. First, they put us up in the 4 Seasons right on the water. That was cool. They also had a handful of celebrities in attendance. Chip Foose, Richard Rawlings, Dennis Collins, Wayne Carini, and Alan Taylor.

In addition to the TV celebrities, they had, I think, every driver that drives for a Craftsman sponsored race team. My apologies for not knowing who they were.

The launch itself was great. Craftsman is coming out with a lot of new products in the coming months. They’re also pushing to produce tools in the USA again. No definite date on that, but I think they’ve gotten an earful on that topic and they’re looking to win back those customers who were not happy when Craftsman moved some of their production overseas.

In all it was a great event. I especially liked getting caught up with some of my friends who also attended, HumbleMechanic, BleepinJeep, and DeBoss Garage. Not to mention some of the new friends I made.

The #MiniSeries

I have a few more videos in the cue for the Mini that will be coming out over the next few weeks. I’ve been driving the car for a little over a month now. It’s become my ‘daily’. I like the car. It’s fun to drive, and very good on fuel. I think I’m getting somewhere around 25mpg driving around town. I’m not always a light foot either.

Yes, I like driving the car, and yes, it gets great fuel economy, but I still can’t get over the fact that it’s a cheaply made vehicle with expensive replacement parts.

Now that I’m settled into the new house and I don’t have any travel in the near future, I’m going to be selling the car. Given the work I’ve done and the condition of the car, I think I’m going to ask $5400. I think that’s a fair price. I suppose I’ll find out when I post an ad for it.

A Pile of Parts Waiting to be Installed on the Civic

I’ve been collecting the parts I need to fix up my 1999 Honda Civic for my son. After my initial inspection, I found a couple more issues that I plan to address. My oldest son, the one that’s getting the car, lives in New York state. They have an annual mechanical inspection, and I believe emissions testing also. My goal is to make it so the car can easily pass both inspections.

I recently posted a video on ETCG1 asking viewers what videos they’d like to see of this project. I did this because I simply don’t have the time to create another #MiniSeries with this car. It’s interesting because several viewers took the opportunity to tell me what they wanted to see more of/less of on the ETCG channel as a whole. Some also offered me tips on what to look for on the Civic as potential mechanical problems.

I want to thank everyone who weighed in on the topic. It’s given me a lot of food for thought on how to move forward not only with the Civic videos, but also with the EricTheCarGuy channel in general.

The #FairmontProject

The Fairmont has pretty much been parked since I got back from Iola WI. However, I did take the opportunity to take it to the drag strip one Friday in August for a test and tune.

I learned several things with the 3 passes I was able to make. First, I need to learn how to launch the car better. Still getting a fair amount of tire spin and it’s costing me time. I did a lot of things wrong this time out. I did too big of a burn out, I should have avoided the burn out box, and next time I think I’ll start out in second gear instead of first.

Second, I learned that I need to jet up the carburetor. I ran a bit lean on my trips down the track. There were several people that pointed that out in the comments of the ETCG1 video I made about that trip to the track. What they seemed to miss was the part at the beginning of the video where I stated I just drove the car to the track to see what it would do. I was not prepared to do any adjustments while I was there. The internet is full of people that know everything it seems.

You can read all about my experience in the blog I did for General Tire.

It will likely be a few weeks before I’m able to work on the car again. I have a small list of things I’d like to do to it before I head back to the track.

My New Workbench

I’ve been waiting for 6 years to get a BadAssWorkbench. I first saw them at a tool show back in 2012. It was love at first sight. These benches are built to the hilt. I plan to turn my bench and work area into a ‘Fabrication Station’. My welding has improved, and I’d like to do more fabrication work going forward. Those of you that have been following me know that I love to build things, especially from scratch.

I plan to do a full review and post it to my EricTheCarGuy channel. Look for that in the coming weeks.

Garage Door Fail

During the delivery of my new workbench, which had its own challenges BTW, my main garage door broke. Specifically, the cables that attach to the spring at the top of the door failed. They got all tangled up and the door would not go up or down. I spent half a day trying to correct this problem. During that process one of the cables snapped and the door came crashing to the floor. Anyone who has everr been around when this has happened can attest to the noise something like this makes.

I’m grateful to have walked away unharmed, but since it’s a unique size door, 12’, the parts are special order. This means it could be a bit before I’m able to use that door again. This is OK for now because I have a ton of work on the Civic, but soon I’d like to be able to bring in other vehicles to work on. I can’t do that if I can’t open the door.

Premium Member News

Premium Members got the usual 3 exclusive videos this month. “Mini Cooper Rear Hatch Latch Repair (Extended Version)”,  “Looking Over the Civic Before Repairs”, and “Behind the Scenes ETCG’s New Office (Exclusive Video)“.

This month was a little tough because of the move into the new house. I didn’t have as much time as usual to work on videos. I’m happy that I was able to deliver these 3 videos to Premium Members though. You guys are awesome.

The Premium Member (Exclusive Video) library is growing every month. As of now there are over 200 (Exclusive Videos) for Premium Members! That’s like having an entirely new ETCG channel to watch.

Premium Members get up to 4 exclusive videos per month. They also get additional perks on the website, and they help support the site with all of it’s useful, free, repair content.

But wait! There’s more! Premium Members now get a 5% discount on all orders from J&B Tool Sales!

Get your membership today! Details on the new Premium Memberships here.

In Closing

My new office has a standing desk and I’m growing to love it. Honestly, I didn’t love it at first as I’m not used to standing so much, and that was the problem.

Between video editing and the other work I do with ETCG, I spend a lot of time at the computer. A lot of time at the computer sitting. Over the years I’ve noticed that hasn’t been good for me. It’s taken its toll on my back and hips. I’ve also heard that ‘sitting is the new cancer’. Hence the reason I wanted to try something new with a standing desk.

I realize that many of my viewers are IT people and also spend a lot of time sitting in front of a computer. I would urge you to look into a standing desk or equivalent solution. It’s done wonders for me in just the few short weeks I’ve been using it. In fact, it’s weird to sit in front of my computer now and I feel so much better for it.

So if you’re a person that spends a lot of time at a desk sitting, I recommend getting off your butt. You might be surprised at how good you feel after a day of work when you’re not sitting all day. It might also save you from expensive hospital bills later down the road. I’ve been in hospitals, they aren’t fun, and they’re expensive.

Think about a standing desk.

Thank you for reading!

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Be safe

Have fun

Stay Dirty

ETCG

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