Wednesday, December 13, 2006

The Graduate

The old timer, our 1987 Volvo, passed it's smog test today. Last year I had a lot of trouble getting it to pass. They replaced the catalytic converter and then did a lot of tweaking to barely get it to pass. Obviously the place I took it wasn't adequately experienced at correcting the problem. A1 Foreign Auto Repair in Mountain View obviously is. They're a California State Gold Shield smog test and repair station. That means they're allowed to do the retest after repair so everything was completed in this second visit. The original test had to be done, and fail at a test only station. Could they make it anymore complex?

Anyway, the NO reading was 2406ppm to start. They replaced some odd parts, the air box thermostat and the air mass meter after which it passed with only 138ppm. 785 is the maximum allowed. So much better than last time. Maybe we'll get off the 10 most wanted list now.

I enjoyed the walk home, about 4 miles. I stopped along the way for breakfast at Whole Foods Market. This is the first time I've had breakfast there. I enjoyed a mushroom omelette and home fries, with bacon. It was very good, and quick.

I then dropped by the construction project I've been watching next to Fry's Electronics in Palo Alto near our house. Monday they seemed to finish up the rebar and forms to pour the concrete for the second half of the ground level floor of the parking garage. I was afraid they might pour it Tuesday when Lou and I were busy in Santa Clara. Fortunately, it rained Tuesday so I still had hopes that they wouldn't pour it. They did and I missed it. Darn! I do like watching other people work. Kind of a sickness.

I then worked on the laptop setting up automatic backups to a web server and external hard drives. I am trying a product called MEMEO Autobackup. It seems to be very versatile and hopefully does the job.

Lou's been studying for her real estate license continuing ed test. Dawn had one of her final exams at San Jose State today.

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