Nov 1 - rrrrrumble

First things first, I went to Tire Kingdom to get them to check out my BMW hummer :).

I described the symptoms and he was pretty sure ... tech came out with me (actually me with him) and confirmed ... up on the hoist, doubly confirmed -- left front wheel bearing. Interesting -- rotate the wheel and you can feel it. The vibration goes right up the strut. I could have done that !

I asked him how long it would last like that and he said probably at least six months. Well, I don't think that I could take another six months of the noise that it produces !

It's a good thing that these cars won't start in gear otherwise we'd have jumped over the curb. The tech got in, turned the key ... and of course it wouldn't start because you have to depress the clutch pedal. Whew. That would have been a bit of a surprise !

They priced the bearing -- $170, plus labor of course. Of course it's only $80 online, including shipping and tax, so I've ordered it and it's already in shipping. They will charge me for 2.25 hours labor at their shop rate, which I think is $100. Perhaps this is something that I could do myself but also perhaps I wouldn't have the appropriate tools, since the bearing and race unit needs to be extracted and then pressed into the hub. The rear comes with the hub, and is a little, but not much, more expensive. I don't need a rear, however.

Tomorrow I'll get the alternator / battery checked out. The battery is just over 3 years old so I should get a pro-rated price if they can find the bill, which I don't have of course.

Also tomorrow (today by the time anyone reads this) we're moving our furniture from Saxon to Keely. I talked to our agent today about renting ... we're going to move forward as quickly as possible on that.

What else ? Oh yes, I did go for a ride. On the way back I was going 22-25 mph and could still feel the wind at my back. On the way out ... well, it was a struggle. I opted for roads that had protection from the east side and that minimized the tornado effect ! I did feel good, even though it was only 2 days since the 200k. I'll go again on Thursday, with any luck.

What else ? nothing that I can think of ...

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The sky is clear and it's windy again. Still dark, Stotts, the mover, is going to call us when he's leaving for the house. We'll meet him there.

I think that I'm pretty well done what I wanted to do vis-a-vis Linux upgrades. I'll play around some more when the new / replacement disks arrive, just to make sure that they work. As I type this, I'm downloading a CD image of the version that I have installed. I'll burn that onto a disk so that if I need to do any rescue work, I can boot from the CD. I really should have done that first, but most of my work was still using the ext3 file system and I have an older version on a secondary disk that I booted a couple of times to access the newly created versions and patch disk references etc. that were not booting correctly.

If I really want to get carried away I could also get the spare pc booting. I don't even remember what's on it at this point. I don't recall whether or not I was able to get Linux running on that machine.

I don't know if I noted that I also have a new all-in-one printer that I installed. It's an HP-whatever, and it has its own network card, so it's not connected to a pc directly. It's working well.

The reason that I bought this new printer is that the old Samsung, same as the one up north, stopped working from a scan standpoint. It prints fine, but as a scanner (fax, copier, scanner), it misses bands across the page. Sandy uses the fax-out regularly dealing with medical & dental bills and the copier occasionally. One in a blue moon I use the scanner. Come to think of it, I'm not sure that I can use the scanner over the IP connection ... I will have to try that.

Printers are so cheap these days. This printer was just over $100. That's because they come with cartridges, in this case a laser cartridge, that have very limited life. They, the manufacturers, make their money on the ink.

At this point I have both printers still installed. I'm still using the Samsung as the default printer, because it has a reasonably fresh toner cartridge. I don't remember when it was installed. I have a fresh cartridge downstairs that I'll take to the cottage for the identical machine there. Hopefully the scanner won't die on that one !

Onward ...