Street Rod Everything!
Lets face it, a died in the wool Street Rodder just can't leave anything alone and we get excited about the strangest things. With that in mind I have a funny but typical story to share that will more than likely sound familiar too many of you. I keep in touch on a semi-regular basis with John Vernon through e-mail.  You remember John from RodVisions.com. He's the guy who drew the artist's renderings of Project33.

A while ago John remodeled a house on some oceanfront property.  After he moved he sent me a picture of the view from his home office window and it was spectacular, so  I e-mailed him back and asked him to send pictures of his house. His reply contain two pictures, one of his garage and one of a showerhead.  In his e-mail he wrote briefly about his plans for his garage and then included several paragraphs about his new showerhead.  I could tell the highlight of John's home remodel was not the ocean view or new floor plan but a $29 showerhead from Home Depot :)  I got a chuckle from his enthusiasm and stored his suggestions for showerhead somewhere deep in my mind in case I needed a new showerhead in the future.

My wife is lead purchaser for large hotel development company.  Her job is to buy everything needed to build a hotel from the walls to the linens.  One of the perks of her job are salesman samples.  I'm not sure whether they come bearing gifts in anticipation of a sale or an appreciation of her business, but either way it's great! A while back she brought home a new shower head from one of the vendors she works with. It even came in a velvet bag - very ritzy ;)

Our master bath has one of those control valves that's either on or off and turning it only adjusts the temperature. The shower had an energy saving shower head with a flow rate of about 2 tablespoons a minute, so I installed the new head. Without the ability to control the water volume the new shower head could literally rip flesh from bone! It was like being blasted by a riot control fire hose - the pressure throwing you across the shower stall, pinning you against the back wall.

My wife likes taking power showers but I prefer the soothing "tropical rain" variety so remembering John's showerhead  enthusiasm, I set out on a mission to Home Depot.

The best marriages are formed on compromise so I picked up a "Y" fitting with on/off valves and a new "Deluge" European shower head. Now we can both enjoy our choice of shower head or even run both simultaneously if we want. Now I know why John was so stoked.

What about the car?
It's been kind of slow going with the project lately.  Yeah, I know...I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but really - things just keep getting away! Not only am I swamped at work but other things keep cropping up. Let's see...what's happened in the past couple weeks?

For starters the server that project33.com resides on (as well as several other sites) had to be relocated to a new facility. If you're thinking "what's the big deal?" then you've obviously never moved a web server :-)  A temporary DNS server had to be built to route traffic prior to move and once the main server was moved, every IP address on the machine had to be reentered. Planning and executing the move consumed about three days work and a couple nights sleep. It paid off though - the server was only down a total of two hours.

Consuming more of that "free" time I spoke about last time are projects for the kids and fulfilling a promise I made my ten-year-old. Next to her dad, she has the most "stuff" of anyone in the family and the smallest room to put in. I told her ages ago that I'd paint her room and build her a loft bed. The time has come to make good on my promise. As you can see, the garage has been taken over by the new project. For those of you interested in loft beds, it will have a desk underneath for her computer, music keyboard and other junk. It should free up a lot of floor space in her bedroom. Since this picture was taken it's been painted white and the post tops have been cut and capped with decorative balls. Her room has yet to be painted. When everything is completed this project will have consumed about two weeks of spare time but her beaming smile will be worth it! The car will still be there waiting for me.

Now I just hope she doesn't sit straight up in bed some night - Ouch!  ;)