Saveitforparts

No, it’s not more Funter Bay History this time, just some local website archeology! I dug up a few horrifying old versions of this very website, from back when I actually pretended to know what HTML was for and didn’t just coast on WordPress! (I totally recommend WordPress to everyone now, it is way easier!)

First off, a proto-website, from the murky days of High School.

Those were the days when teachers encouraged you to share far too much personal data! “Hey teenagers, why not put everything about yourselves online! Throw your home address and phone number on there! Why not some high school transcripts? How about your birth certificate, mother’s maiden name, SSN, and blood type? It’s The Wonderful Internet, the more you share the better you’ll network and get jobs and no one would ever misuse such information!”. Even today people are shocked about how much I share about myself online (or at least, they’re shocked that I do it on an old fashioned website and not more quickly and efficiently with Facebook!)

The proto-website “portfolio” never made it onto saveitforparts.com, although I did have it linked until my high school eventually dumped that server in an old WWII hangar like they usually did with old tech (100% true).

Saveitforparts.com in early 2000 (Oh noes the frames and the animated GIFs they BURN MY EYES!)

It got better pretty quickly, although by late 2000 it kind of looked like a website designed inside a comic book…

By 2003 I seem to have gone with a more toned-down theme:

This look remained into at least 2009, by which time I was only a decade or so behind in moving towards this newfangled blogging style thingy.

And um… here’s some recursion into the current look so that I can come back to this post in another 14 years and say “Oh noes look at these awful templates and headers! This shouldn’t be on the NeoInterTubes! How could I have been so foolish to share photos of myself and enable identity theft cloning!”

It’s always interesting to look at the search terms that bring someone to a site. For my website I often assume that most of my visitors are friends and family, with maybe a few hobbyists drawn by my projects or research. It turns out there’s a wide range of searches that lead people to saveitforparts.com! Here are a few interesting ones (per my stats page).

“redneck sailboat” (71 visitors)

“free kayak plans plywood” (lots of visitors from variants of this, maybe I should put some actual plans online!)

“bayliner buccaneer 240” (again, lots of traffic from variants, hopefully Pagoo is interesting/useful to these people!)

“rusty 1994 honda accord” / “worlds crappiest car”

“airboat with wheels” (and variants on the small airboat theme)

“dont do drugs” (I have no idea what page matched this, but 6 people got here with this search!)

“messy basement” and “messy garage” (Thanks, Internet. Now I have to clean my place:-P)

“redneck raft”

“is course hero worth it” (No)

“how to steal notes from coursehero” (just Google it, that’s all they do to get content in the first place)

“umn advanced gis geog 5563” (see, this guy knows how to cheat without paying a fee for it!)

“design to withstand mine subsidence” (Your design would have to withstand falling into a massive pit, can your house fly? I would suggest getting a map of your local mines and not building over one. For the price of a custom design you could probably pay for some ground penetrating radar or exploratory drilling on your property instead)

“fishing jokes” (yeah, I have exactly one so far :-P)

“define:rustmobile” (OK)

“potato gun plans” (and some variants, I’m glad the spud guns are at least kinda popular)

“monarchmobile” (not mine, but I still see it around town sometimes, I passed it on I-94 the other day).

“redneck casemods” (the redneck theme keeps showing up 🙂 )

“how are mine shafts filled in” (sometimes with bed springs)

“platja des caragol” (apparently this means “Beach from Snail” in Catalan? Somehow 3 people found my site from this…)

“does a cat like to swim” (sometimes, but experiments are not advisable)

I recently sold the rustmobile! The fellow wanted to know surprisingly little about it, the entire transaction reminded me of a certain meme. Hopefully it treats him well and all the little annoyances aren’t too annoying!

By request, here’s a link to the Craigslist ad, the ad is pasted below for when it ends/expires!

Awful car for your awful driver! (Beater 1994 Honda Accord) – $500 (St Paul)

 

Is your kid pestering you to buy them a car? Do you or a friend run into things a lot and need a car that can take a beating? Get this one! It’s cheap, runs pretty well, won’t be a great financial loss if you crash it, and will teach you or your child valuable repair and maintenance skills (like how to use duct tape). Plus, it looks so bad that your kids won’t want to be seen in public with it, and will spend more time doing homework and duct taping parts back on instead of cruising around!

The quick overview:
-1994 Honda Accord LX
-2.2L 4-cylinder
-Automatic transmission
-???,??? Miles (Odometer stopped working 3 years ago at 215,000, so who knows).
-Have owned for ~5 years
-“Mostly” blue (“Sage Green” according to the colorblind guys at Honda). Hood is black-ish and there’s some rust and bondo highlights.
-Lots of “personality” / minor problems (will attempt to list them all below)

The GOOD:
-Engine works, brakes work, and wheels turn (it drives!)
-Lights work (you can drive at night!) Both high and low beam.
-Wipers work (you can drive in the rain!)
-Heater works and heats up quickly (you can drive in the winter!)
-One of the windows still rolls down (you can drive in the summer!)
-Blinkers mostly work (hopefully you know how to use these, unlike many drivers).
-No cracks! (Brand new windshield)
-Front brake pads recently replaced.
-Battery is pretty good, I’ve left the dome light on overnight and it still started.
-Newer starter
-Newer radiator
-New ignition wires, spark plugs, distributor cap and rotor.
-High-performance air intake. I don’t know why, it was just there when I bought it.
-I’ll include some spare parts like new rear brake pads, new fuel filter, set of new spark plugs, and color-matched touch-up paint. Can include a beat up, oil-stained Haynes manual too.
-Despite all the problems, it has been pretty reliable.

The BAD (and the ugly):
-Sometimes it loses power and backfires/stutters when first starting, or when accelerating. No pattern or reason to it. Not a huge deal as you can pump the gas and maintain speed, and it goes away after a while. Sometimes it does this every day for 10 minutes at a time, sometimes it will go weeks without doing it. Mechanics are mystified.

-Fuel line has been replaced with flexible rubber fuel hose where it goes through the engine compartment, and fuel filter has been moved (Honda originally designed it to require 37 rare and custom tools plus two helper monkeys and a double-jointed circus contortionist to change it). The filter is now somewhere you can actually see, which is good, but the line is not stock, which might make your insurance agent cry if they find out.

-Pushbutton start! Why is this bad? Someone was dumb enough to steal the thing (out of a parking lot full of nicer cars) and broke the ignition. Thanks to Ax-Man there’s now a hidden switch/button starter instead of a keyhole. It works fine, but is a little weird.

-It leaks oil. I’ve had it in to various shops and they can’t find the source, it just keeps coming out. I have to top it off once a month or so. Put some cardboard down or expect your driveway to be spotty.

-Exhaust is mostly gone so it’s super loud. This could be a plus if you want to sound like a high-performance racer or something, I’ve had teenagers try to drag race me a few times. The muffler is new, but the pipe between the catalytic converter and muffler keeps rusting away and/or falling off. I’ve repaired/replaced it 3 times and finally gave up. I’ve only been pulled over for it once, and that was because the muffler itself was visibly missing and I was the ugliest car in a yuppie suburb with bored cops.

-As mentioned, the odometer doesn’t work and is stuck at 215k. As a wild guess it’s “probably” between 250k and 300k now, but no way to guarantee.

-Rear windows don’t roll down anymore.

-Driver’s side window opener broke. You can push it up by hand and wedge it in place (wedge included!)

-Power locks are haunted. You have to manually lock/unlock it, but sometimes it will randomly start trying to re-lock itself repeatedly for no reason. Driver’s side lock is… complicated.

-No stereo (stolen) and no speakers. Power radio antenna is jammed half-out, still works fine if you put a radio in. I can include a CD stereo, but you’ll have to figure out the wiring and get speakers.

-Front driver’s side blinker on the bumper is not quite the right size. I ordered one for this model from Amazon and they sent something else, so I made it fit with zipties and science. It has a loose wire and doesn’t always work, haven’t had time to fix it but should be simple. There are still turn signals up next to the headlights (which work).

-Speaking of zipties, the headlights are mostly held on that way. The lenses have a few cracks. They all work though!

-Some bent and damaged parts of the front frame (ran into some stuff). Again, zipties save the day. Nothing really important is damaged and you can’t tell unless you open the hood and look close.

-Front bumper is held on with screws and zipties. If you pull too close to a curb it gets stuck and falls off sometimes.

-Hood doesn’t pop from inside, the cable is jammed. Have to pull on the ziptie sticking out of the grill (see a theme yet?)

-NO A/C. Not your normal “No AC” car that just needs freon, this one is basically unrepairable The compressor seized up, the freon went away, the fan relay is dead, and I ripped out a bunch of the pipes since they were in the way. I bypassed the compressor completely after it seized, the alternator has the shorter belt now.

-Rear passenger side seatbelt doesn’t want to retract. Might be fixable.

-Various body rust, typical for this model with MN road salt. I used to care, so I fixed some areas with bondo and bought the matched color from the dealership. Now the rust is coming back in the same spots and the Bondo is falling off and I don’t care anymore. I’ll include the can of matching spray paint and a smaller color pen in case you want it to look less trashy for some reason.

-Running boards on the passenger side is falling off

-Passenger side mirror is cracked and held on with a bolt. Still works fine, power-adjust still works.

-Minor dent in rear door from high-velocity cherry tomato (There was a potato gun involved and we were like “tomatoes just go splat, right?” WRONG).

-Hole drilled in trunk lid for ham radio antenna. Radio got stolen, so there’s just a mounting bracket there now (doesn’t leak).

-Secondary fan relay is shot (The second fan is supposed to be for the AC, but AC doesn’t work anyway). The fan is supposed to also kick in at higher temps but I’ve not really needed it. The fan itself works and has a switch on the dash in case it gets really hot.

-Speaking of fans, the main cooling fan likes to come on about 30 seconds after you park, and runs for a few minutes. Doesn’t seem to be a problem.

-Below ¼ tank, if you brake hard the car will want to stall since the gas sloshes away from the intake or something. It will start up again afterwards as long as there’s some gas in the tank.

To summarize, it’s ugly, it’s jury-rigged, and it’s got loads of “personality”, but will get you from point A to point B, and possibly meets at least several safety and road-worthiness standards!

Edit: Ad will be taken down once it’s gone, so please don’t email just to ask if I still have it. Email is preferred, I have fewer times when I can make phone calls. Thanks!

This is my new coffee table!

Made to look like an antique mine cart, and it actually works! I had to put bumpers on the tracks to keep it from rolling all the way off, but it’s fun to roll back and forth on the rails.

All the materials are salvaged and scrap, so after time and labor, this was essentially “free”! The glass came with a desk from a garage sale and we didn’t want it on the desk, so even that was basically a freebie. I did pay $5 for some flexible rubber bumpers to help keep the glass from sliding around, but those were optional.

I was tempted to run tracks into the kitchen so we could load up the table with food and then wheel it out to the living room… but the tracks would be a terrible trip hazard as well as difficult to clean around!

Here are some pictures from the construction process:

The salvaged mine-gauge rails and mine-size spikes, along with weathered lumber for the ties. I assembled the track section using the spikes for an authentic look.

Early fit-testing the wheel truck and rails.

The spikes originally looked pretty bad from sitting outside for 100  years (left). On the right is a spike after wire-brushing and cleaning to remove loose rust, then coating to prevent more rust from forming.

A close-up of the rails, before and after getting the same rust removal treatment. The finished rail is still pitted and rust-colored (which I think looks cool), but doesn’t have that annoying flaky rust falling off it.

Early assembly of the mine cart box.

We have a chicken named Pei at our house. On warm days she gets to come out in a mobile open-bottomed coop known as a chicken tractor (when they’ve pecked over all the grass in one area, you can move it to the next). Recently she had an interesting visitor.

A Red-tailed Hawk, about as big as the chicken. Oddly enough, she seemed unconcerned about him perching on top of the tractor and flying from side to side. Usually she would be upset about nearby predators. The hawk has been back a few times, but can’t seem to figure out chicken wire!

Some things I semi-collect: Local and interesting cups/glasses:

Some local-history and regional-interest beers. Grain Belt is a local favorite, Hamm’s and Schmidt’s are good local-brewing-history related although the beers themselves may be a bit meh. Keweenaw Brewing has an excellent selection of historically-themed beer from Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula mining area, Alaskan Amber is brewed in Juneau, and Kronenbourg is a favorite among French catacomb-goers. The Cheese Cave glass showed up at a thrift shop, and I got a whole slew of the Captain Morgan glasses at a garage sale.

A few from Psycho Suzi’s (I liked the old one better), and elsewhere.

Ha, no wonder they didn’t look too hard… this is straight from the Minneapolis PD’s description of my car after it was recovered, not anything that I told them 😛

(It still mostly runs by the way, and the next person to try and steal it will get a “surprise” 🙂 )

I’ve been working off and on with several websites for my job, primarily using WordPress as a basis. I’ve found it quite a bit quicker and easier to update (which is partly why saveitforparts.com is now on wordpress!). In other ways, I’ve found WP to have some limitations, and migrating a traditional site to a blog-based site can certainly have it’s hiccups and roadblocks. There are several parts of saveitforparts.com that are still offline or broken. I also have some pet peeves about WP, such as its tendency to make certain content mysteriously vanish, or force-format your posts into what it *thinks* you want, rather than what you’ve explicitly laid out in html moments before. Overall though, it’s very convenient, easy for multiple technical or non-technical people to manage and update, and lends itself fairly well to the type of content I’m working with.

Some of the work-related sites that I currently manage are:

The Hudson Professional Building Leasing Website

Swan Leasing’s main website for Minneapolis

Rorem Realty (Currently offering Retail/Commercial in Osseo)

And additionally, I’ve been working on a site advertising my parents’ house in Alaska:

Funter Bay Alaska homestead for sale

Perhaps you’ve noticed a trend in my layouts 🙂

Just sent this to Wells Fargo, both by mail and through email. I imagine it’ll just get pitched in the trash down in the mail room or never make it through customer service, but it felt good to write it!

Dear Wells Fargo,

Congratulations on losing a customer to hidden fees and overcomplicated account restrictions. I’ve been a customer for several years, and recently noticed a new “Monthly Service Fee” on both my checking and savings accounts, in the amount of $10/month for savings, and $15/month for checking. The fee seems to have started about 6 months ago. I was a bit mystified by this, since I was told when I signed up that these were free accounts.

I called your customer service line, and the representative explained that I could avoid these fees by setting up an automatic monthly transfer of at least $75 from checking to savings. I already make manual transfers through online banking about once a month, but apparently these “don’t count”, even if they’re over the suggested minimum. She explained that I could circumvent this restriction by setting up the automatic transfer for the $75 minimum, then manually transferring the money back. So you’re basically telling me there’s no point to this requirement, and that I can get around it if I’m willing to play some games and jump through a few hoops?

I called again the next day to clarify some things, and heard that the fee structure and waiver is even more arcane than the first rep described it. I can avoid certain fees if I set up automatic transfers, or have a total minimum balance, or have a mortgage, or have X number of “qualifying” accounts. I dimly remember that I had a different account structure when I started with Wells Fargo, for a short time I had a CD, and did have a higher balance. I can only assume this is what the banker meant by “free” when I signed up, I must have just qualified for the fee waiver. Apparently my accounts no longer qualify to be free, although I can’t figure out exactly how or when that happened.

The second customer service rep was able to refund part of my most recent fees, but their explanation of exactly how to avoid future fees still doesn’t make any sense.  As you may have guessed, since it took me 6 months to notice these fees, I’m not the best at tracking my money. I have a rough idea of what goes in, what comes out, and I keep an eye on the balance to verify this. I do pretty well, but I have to remind myself of existing automatic bill payments like insurance, and I really don’t need another pointless automatic transaction or balance requirement or constant babysitting of the account. You have numerous competitors offering genuinely free accounts with none of these confusing and pointless hoops to jump through.

From what I can tell, the only possible reasons for your system are:

-1. You hope people forget that it takes a series of complicated steps to avoid fees (like I did) and you’ll make a $25/month fee for our inattention. Those $10 and $15 charges are easy to miss if you’re just scanning through a statement.

-2. You hope we’ll set up a transfer to avoid the fees, but will forget about it, and overdraw our checking accounts for even bigger fees.

What it comes down to is; I’m paying $300 a year for the privilege of having a hassle free bank account. Maybe $300 is small potatoes to your execs, but that’s more than three days of work for me! I could buy groceries for a month with $300, or a new Netbook every year, or a cheap flight across the country. I don’t need you nickel and diming me out of any of those things.

So, I’m paying you $300 a year to have an account that already makes YOU money by investing mine, and benefits me in no way. Sure, I get some infinitesimal amount of interest, so I could make back my monthly $25 in about 100 years. And sure, I have the convenience of deposits and ATMs, but for $25 a month I could cash my paychecks at the liquor store and keep my savings in a shoebox under the bed. If I want a bank account with you, I have to play a lot of games, the rules of which might change at your whim, or I have to pay you 1% of my annual income to keep my money in YOUR shoebox.

What’s that you say? The savvy customer should always scrutinize every statement, always read every bit of fine print, and have a firm grasp of banking principles? Well, this customer already has an account with another bank which doesn’t pull such tricks, has no hidden fees, and better customer service (My office got a gift basket from them for the holidays!). Ironically, this is exactly why I moved my accounts from Wells Fargo a few years ago; I was getting hidden fees at my old bank and heard that Wells Fargo was better. I guess I heard wrong. I’ll be closing my account shortly, and telling my friends to consider doing the same.

Former Wells Fargo Customer

-Gabe Emerson

Finally got the Shoebox out on the water! Also got a lot of water in the boat, as the fiberglass turned out to not be very waterproof! Fortunately we had some swim goggles and half a water bottle to bail with. We also had Alex from Milwaukee to take photos and run rings around us in his inflatable raft.

There was little to no wind on Lake Nokomis, but we got occasional puffs that let us try out the homemade sails (blue tarps). Everything seems to work, although we’d need more wind to get a better idea of the handling and performance. I’m not so sure that our homemade sails are the best shape (they’re based on a design from a 1920s Popular Mechanics boat book!)

I think I should have made the mast a bit taller, the sail plan seems stubby now. The guy who started the hull intended it to use a Sea Snark sail, which is probably similar in overall area.

It’s like Swallows and Amazons of the urban jungle 😛