Glow bowl birthday party

It was a this way.
No that way.

Follow the signs to get to the party.







It was a cake fit for a rocket boy. Or at least a boy on a sugar rush. Looks so good, you can't eat it.

But the base was a carrot cake. And it was good.
Surrounded by cupcakes with robots and spaceships.


And glow in the dark bowling to use up all that sugar.
This place has gutter guards. More fun for the little people.
Although Kieran did get it in the gutter. Once. How? I dunno, but he was close to hitting me with the ball.

Mama put in a lot of work for this one.
So much work, she wore herself down and was looking for the Extra Strength Advil.
Thought that was just marketing stuff eh?
Stuff works. I took the last one.
The regular stuff is for the common people.


Click me for more bowling photos.

one, two, free, four, PIBE

He's healed up nicely from the crash of a week and a half ago.
You can't even tell he's had an accident. Kids have amazing healing powers. But that scar he got from t-ball on his left eye is still there. I think because of his allergies and they've been really bad this year he keeps rubbing it and doesn't allow it to heal.

We've visited that hill again and he's ridden down it successfully twice since. Showing him the more controlled way of riding a hill.

Kieran's 5 today. And he's got all the scars to prove it.
His hands, his head, chin, eye, cheek and knees.

He still doesn't know what day of the week it is. To him Friday comes after Sunday (I wish). But hey, every day is a play day. Except at school, that's work and the TV doesn't work when there's school.

His party isn't until Sunday, but we gave him something to open today since it's his birthday.

Today at school he gets to show photos that depict the first 5 years of his life.

This is what he chose to bring.
From day 1 to a big wall, to ice cream.
Click me for highlights of the last 5 years.

Master full

We finally finished the master bedroom today. This project started in March 16 and took us 8 days to get the room prepped for repainting. But this week I just put back all the trim. Now we just have to put the stuff back in the room. After painting it took a while for the fumes to finally dissipate.
We insulated the master bedroom exterior wall full of rigid insulation in anticipation for scheduling a second post-audit and getting additional rebates from the Federal and Provincial governments via the Eco Energy audit programs.

But I just found out that the gov't has pulled the plug on the programs. No more applications are being accepted as of March 31-2010.

If you have already booked a pre-retrofit audit before that date. You are ok. You will then just need to get your retrofit work by March of 2011. And the sooner the better because the gov't can pull the plug at any time for whatever reason.

If you have already done your pre-retrofit audit and a post audit. You will not be allowed to re-enter the program. See link to NRCan site for notice.

Which means, it SUCKS to be us. Cause that's what we were hoping to do with this work, plus all the other work we had planned. This week we got back our Federal rebate for the work we had already done and we're expecting the Provincial one to come in soon for the same amount.

We were going to do all this work anyways. We had calculated that the rebates would cover the entire cost of the materials, which would have been a big bonus. We'll still eventually get the money back, the insulation of the walls would have paid us back in reduced energy bills over the years. The NRCan Eco program just meant we would have recovered our initial costs much sooner.

Click me for more photos

The room aside from the paint, looks like the same old room. I have only the one bedroom left to do. And then the stairwells. That's all for insulation projects in our home.
Now our rooms will be much warmer in the winter. Even though we got new windows and a new furnace. It's still chilly in our house. Our walls have a 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch air gap for insulation. In the winter the walls are freezing. And if the temp and humidity is high, condensation forms and paint cracks and the walls sweat. With the insulation, we won't have this problem anymore. After this year. That will be it for a while.

Low speed wobble

We were supposed to go skating, but Kieran has been coughing a lot and not feeling well so we asked him what he wanted to do. And he did not want to go.

So after school, he said he wanted to ride his bike. He took me to the park, where we played with some other kids for a bit and then we headed home. Took a different route home, instead of the street, we took a path behind the homes. There's one little downhill. Unassuming, for an adult. I went down first and then Kieran followed.

He's a really good rider. Balance is really good. But little wheels, little bike, short wheelbase. The thing gets twitchy. How do I know? I rode his 10 inch bike down a dirt hill in Swansea. Much steeper than this. And I wiped out. Got my sevens jeans dirty, damn it.

I watched him in horror as I saw his front wheel start to wobble. I couldn't get off my bike fast enough to catch him before he crashed. I could see he was trying to slow down. Panicking a bit by putting his feet down to slow himself, instead of braking with the pedals. His handle bars started turn back and forth, he was losing control and then he lost control. And he face planted.

Carrying him, his bike and rolling my bike, we headed home. Good thing we were just around the corner. Poor kid, he was crying clutching his hands, but not wailing. Telling me he was trying to slow down and couldn't. His knuckles and his lip were scraped, his mouth covered in blood, I was worried he lost a tooth, but I saw none were missing, his teeth were covered in a lot of blood. It's like he went 10 rounds with Manny Pac-Man Pacquio.

Tresa cleaned him up, while I went out to get some popsicles so he could have a treat and ice his mouth at the same time. Popsicles always seem to help a hurt. When I got home, he had fallen asleep on the couch. Probably his body shutting itself down to heal from the trauma. Before he fell asleep, she said he told her he was okay, just wanted to be held. I felt bad. He had fallen asleep clutching an icepack to his mouth. Tresa pointed out the goose egg on his forhead and the scrape on his cheek, and his mouth had swelled up a lot.

He's awake now. We put together some icy-juice, pancakes and oatmeal. He said the bump in his mouth was gone, but his lip is really swollen. So he's drooling a lot. I'll put on some polysporin on his scrapes again after he eats breakfast.
His spirit seems good, almost like nothing happened. But no school today. He didn't want the kids to keep asking "what happened?" he said with a lisp and some drool.
I think I'm going to get him one of those full face helmets. Maybe one for me too. And maybe some little gloves.
I didn't think these bike accidents were a genetic thing.

Franken Gummy

Dr. Fran-kieran-stein was doing an experiment the other day.








And here's the piece de resistance.

IT'S ALIVE!!!
Plastic tubes and pots and pans
Bits and pieces
Magic from the hand
we're making
Wierd Science....

From the eyes of a fly

Ever wonder what a fly on a wall sees from his perspective?
Check this out.

It's a mystery. Listen for it.

Aries the Ram

One month.
One cake.
5 candles.






Lots of opinions and each thinks they're right and everyone else is wrong.




These are all Aries.
This is a month of people who were born to butt heads and chew out anyone and anything (not just grass).

Make a wish.
I wish for world peace. At least in this part of the world. Just around the dinner table at least.

Knock Knock

I was replacing this today. It's a knock sensor. I was getting a CEL (Check Engine Light) on it repeatedly. I thought it was getting triggered by the misfiring of the CYL 4 problem. But the sensor was defective. That's what the code actually meant.

I didn't think it was necessary to correct it since the sensor is malfunctioning. But the problem is that when the knock sensor is working and it detects 'knock', which is a combustion phase problem. It will alter the timing of the engine to correct the 'knock'. So you can't just leave it. The emissions will be impacted and fuel consumption possibly.

So 1 bolt to undo and a harness to disconnect and I'm done. 10 minute job. For a part that costs about $200.00 incl tax.

Guess where this thing goes. This is a photo of part of the engine bay.
I put a circle and highlighted where this bolts on to the engine.

I had to disconnect the battery terminal, then remove the mass air box and the operator cylinder part (that you can't see) so I could even get to the damn bolt that holds this thing to the engine block. And I had to use a flexible attachment for my ratchet to still get to it. Without it. It's next to impossible to get out.

That circle in the above picture highlights where I stuck the camera and took this next picture of where if you look closely you will see the bolt that fastens this sensor to the block. It's right in the middle of the pic, partially hidden by the wire. But you can clearly see the bolt head. It's 10mm bolt. I could barely get a snip to cut the tie that held the wires so I could get it out. But I got it out. That was the easy part. Mounting the new one was the fun part. I could barely get my hand down far enough to get 2 fingers to reinstall the damn thing. And getting the bolt on without dropping it was tricky and frustrating. I took one of Kieran's earth magnets and taped it to an old bike cable housing and used that to guide the bolt into position. I did it on the first try. After I tried and failed on a previous attempt with just my fingers. I had to think of a better way. That home made magnetic picker upper did the trick.

I'm sure this service at the dealer, just for labour would be about $200.00-300.00. At least. Just from reading what it says to do in the service manual and then actually doing it. Then the part is another $200.00. I got the actual Subaru part. I had read that after-market ones don't always work 100%. And with the aftermarket part costing almost the same. I went with the dealer.

I used the following link as reference, but this guy's car seemed to be way more accessible than mine was.

DIY link to replacing the knock sensor on a Subaru

But I did it. The car is running great. Almost like original. Only thing left for me to do is tighten the heat shield on the engine manifold cuz it's rattling a bit. That should be easy as pie, compared to this stuff.

Plug it where the sun don't shine

My Subaru was sometimes chugging and hesitating and sometimes felt like I had no power. My check engine light was going on and off and then remains solid. Originally it was happening the odd time, but lately it was more frequent. My OBD-II computer was telling me two codes.
The first code was for the knock sensor.

And the other code I was getting was for a CYL 4 misfire.
I figured the misfiring was causing the knock sensor to go off.

So I check on line and the forums say to replace plugs, coil pack or injector is burnt out, or something I forget. Start with the plugs since they are the cheapest.

Then there's the ignition wires but I checked those and those are still fairly new and in good condition. Not hard and brittle, no cracks. So they are fine. And the coil pack is the most expensive part.



For $9.99 at Part Source you can get a pair of NGK plugs. If it works then it's $20 bucks and I'm done.
If not I have to go and try the next thing.

So for today, the day after April fools I give it a go. Never having done this before I reviewed the service manual (not the OWNERs manual, that's got nothing useful in it) first.

Gotta remove the battery. Then the washer reservoir. Then I can get at all the plugs. Of course the plug that might be causing me the problem is the hardest to get at. That's how they always do it. It's by design. So you can be swearing to the skies about why the hell they designed it this way. Obviously the engineer or designer, doesn't service his friggin car.

But I got them out. Phew. So now I have an undriveable car. I can't sit around having a beer. I won't be able to get something to eat.

Just by visual appearance old ones were pretty worn out. It's supposed to a little needle like thing there, not a rounded nub. And that gap is supposed to be 1 to 1.1 mm. These were a bit more than that.

I have the images in order from cylinder 1 thru 4. And 4 was misfiring.
This is plug number 4. You can see it's by far the most worn down. Hopefully this solves my problem and the misfiring goes away.


I did notice the knock sensor code came on. So maybe it's malfunctioning and needs replacing.

But I got it done. By myself. If I can do it. Anyone can. You know if you took this to the dealer to get done they would stick you with a bill somewhere between $200 and $300. And they'd charged you $17.99 per plug. Because it's an OEM plug. And just doing the diagnostic to get the code. Is a $90.00 up the butt charge. And then they'll say your handbrake needs tightening or something just to get more of their hand into your pocket.

This job cost me $20.00 + tax.
The dealer can put that OEM plug where the sun don't shine.