Changed oil in both vehicles today.
Cavalier: 88,195 (Fram PH3387A, SuperTech 5-30W)
F-150:

Looking for a cool project for your truck or car that has practical safety value, looks sweet, and can be done in an afternoon? Consider adding automatic daytime running lights to your vehicle for around $40. My truck has automatic headlights that come on when the ambient light level gets below a pre-programmed threshold, but with the new LED strip lights and two relays from NAPA Auto Parts, I built running lights that come on whenever the ignition (accessory circuit, really) is on, but the headlights are not on. When the retained accessory power turns off, the lights will automatically turn off.

The idea is to never have to worry about a dead battery, while making it easy to drive safely with improved visibility to other drivers. I never have to touch my headlight switch, if I don't want to; it's all automatic. Take a look at this project page to see how I did it... Coming soon.

Turnouts:
 Coat- 42 wide, 32 long.
 Pants- 36 wide, 30 long.
 Gloves- Large

Woodland:
 Coat (Crewboss)- Med
 Pants (Wildfire 800-426-5207)- L30

I'm excited; I've completed drawing the new decal for my truck. I just need one more good paycheck from the county and I'll be making this newest unique design public! It's gonna be sweet! Pics will be coming asap.

Gotta put the kids to bed.

"Firefighters, EMT's, Paramedics, & Law Enforcement Officers work the streets day & night to keep people safe. They are missing their family to care for yours. In 2010, there were 85 Firefighters, 39 EMS and 160 Police Officers killed in the line of duty. Re-post this if you are a Firefighter, EMT, Paramedic, or Law Enforcement Officer, Love one or Appreciate one, or just take a moment to thank them."

A lot has transpired since my last blog entry. I entered college, taking the Emergency Medical Technician- Basic course at Walla Walla Community College. I sold my Eclipse and used the money to make a good down-payment on a 2006 Ford F-150 SuperCrew truck. Little Ben is now a year old and walking instead of crawling; Hannah is two and a half and getting smarter, sweeter, and more fun every day. It's been busy working full-time for Charter, going to school four nights a week, three hours a night, working on a networked Quickbooks solution for Mark DeBroeck, and trying to still have some time for the family. I'm glad it's mostly over!

I've completed the EMT class, and have the National Registry of EMTs exam scheduled for this weekend. I'll be studying after work just to try to make sure I haven't forgotten too much, and there is, of course, the new practice test that I coded to help get me ready. Wish me luck!

Updates, it's been a while. I've more or less stopped trying to sell my car for a while. even if I did sell it at a reasonable price, I still wouldn't be able to afford Evo payments right now. We're saving for too many other things. So I can again start slowly doing small projects on it.

I've been responding to every fire call for my station lately; i've been lucky enough that a call has not come in specifically for station 43 during the day while I'm at work, so it's been fun. A lot of false alarms, but there were some small grass fires on the Fourth of July from fireworks.

I need to get busy with the NCTI Installer Tech course that my boss ordered for me. I don't want the end of 6 months to sneak up on me and have to cram it all in before I have to pay for it. the dang thing cost $650.

Speaking of work, I better head in. Another day, another dollar.

After a lengthy stay in the garage, my car is back out on the street for sale again. The door handle broke, and once I figured out I can remove it without disassembling the power window (thank God), I did not want it out in the open without that part installed. That's all fixed now! Also found where water was leaking into the rear hatch under the spoiler and siliconed that. All major catastrophes with that have been addressed, and as a side bonus, I now know exactly how to remove and replace a door handle on a 1997-1999 Mitsubishi Eclipse GS in about ten minutes. Contact me if you need help!

My sister's truck is once again legal to drive. I have installed two 6x2" oval LED amber lights on the front bumper, six 4" round LED lights on the rear bumper (two red lights for running and stop, two amber lights for turn signals, hazard blinkers, and strobes, and two white lights for reverse), a 5-LED white license plate light, and a 17" red LED third-brake light behind the headache rack. The same lights that function as turn signals front and rear can also be switched into strobe mode, using a Sho-Me strobe-style LED flasher that randomly cycles through 7 different modes. I will try to take some video and post it to youtube or something, it's definitely a different truck than when Leigh Anne bought it a few months ago. I'm still working on adding rear- and side-facing working lights to the headache rack, and waiting on a 30" LED traffic advisor lightbar to come in to mount between the work lights. I also want to rebuild the center console inside the vehicle and install a CD player, speakers, and a working antenna (all of which are lacking right now). Much to do still!

I've just added another couple of functions to this site: a Javascript function to add the current timestamp to the header of standard or blog pages, and the ability to upload new images directly from the insert form of each page, rather than having to add them from the admin page first, then go back to the page and use it. Fun!

Firefighting academy is getting more and more involving. There's so much homework to do in 2-3 days between classes, especially still having to work full-time and spend time with the family. Even the hands-on training is ramping up. We're learning how to enter a burning building as a team and move charged hoseline around corners, in the dark, without being able to see very well anyway (can't wear glasses under the facemask for the SCBA) at about as break-neck a pace as you can manage wearing about 50 extra pounds of gear. It's getting pretty intense. The live burn was pretty fun though. We got into full PPE, started a fire in the drill tower, closed all the doors to the room we were in, and cooked at about 400 degrees for a good ten to fifteen minutes. That's a very poignant way to prove if your bunker gear works or not!

I will be posting the Eclipse for sale on craigslist, autotrader, and the UB sometime this week if I can. Check out the pics I have up here on the website and contact me using the form here or number on the home page if you have any questions or want to stop by and see it!

I'm new to this concept of "blogging", but bear with me. I'm going to use this page to write updates on my family and myself (this is a personal website also, after all), changes in the website (like new features being added or bugs fixed as people bring them to my attention), and different projects I'm either working on or have completed.

Right now, I'm still working on making this site as perfect as possible, so I can build a new website for people using as much of this script as I can. Why re-invent the wheel every time? There's already a lot of really cool things that my site can do:

I can log on as an administrator and change anything on any of the pages, delete stuff,  and add new stuff. Normally, any new page that I add will support either one or two columns, and doesn't require a picture to be associated with every entry. But if you want to show a page of pictures, you can convert a page to gallery-view, and then it shows pictures three across and four down per page. If there are more than 12 pics, it breaks those off into another page of 12 pics. When you upload an image to the site, it automatically resizes them to 800x600 pixels if they are larger than that. On a gallery page, thumbnails are shown of the pic itself, but if you click on that, the full-size pic opens in a new window. This is all done automatically, making the site easy to use and update.

For new sites, if you want something similar to this site, just ask for a basic website, tell me what you want it to look like as far as color themes and graphics, and you'll have something to look at and tell me if you like it within a couple weeks. If you want something different or new built into the site, it may take a little longer and will cost a little more, but I will get it done and meet your needs as quickly as possible.

That's what I'm doing for web design here, now what other projects am I working on?

My sister's truck needs almost all the lights replaced on it. Her headlights work, but that's it. She has no tail lights, stop lights, or turn signals on front or rear. So I'm installing new LED lights and new wiring as soon as she gets the holes cut into a new bumper that someone welded on for her. Pictures coming soon on the Car Pics page. We'll also be decking out her truck with green/amber volunteer firefighter strobes shortly after that, but making her truck legal to drive takes first priority.