11.20.09

Watching NFL games online

Posted in Home Theater at 8:53 pm by mike

One of the upsides of having a Home Theater PC connected to your big screen is the ability to watch streaming media from the comfort of your couch.   With that in mind, I’ve been playing with various online streaming sites to watch out-of-market NFL games as well as been investigating streaming technology for my own business use.     There are basically three categories of service out there:  Legitimate offers with NFL licensing, pirate P2P sites and a couple offshore fraud sites after a quick credit card charge.   Let’s call them: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

The Good

Or the legitimate sites.     First of all, the NFL is streaming every Thursday night game on the NFL Live site.    The coverage of the game is a little different than the standard TV coverage, but I actually like it better.     In this format, they’ve decided to not be so concerned with realtime tracking of the game.    Instead, they will often cut away from the game to highlight the last touchdown drive or other interesting set of downs.   This includes detailed slow-motion/rewind/whiteboard analysis which football strategy fans such as myself are sure to appreciate.   It reminds me of post game film review back with the coaches in High School, just with better technology.     They then cut back to the game with the luxury of jumping back in time if something interesting happened, or simply catching you up on the current action.     Currently, there are far fewer commercials in the stream than you would see on TV (the stream is pretty heavily front-loaded before the action starts).

On the downside, the player does NOT allow you to expand the video to full screen.    It is also resolution aware, so decreasing your resolution will not make the image any larger.   The one trick that does work is using the Windows magnifier app, but you have to make sure not to bump your mouse.   Also, hit F11 to hide your browser bar and tabs.

NFL Live streaming of Thursday night football

NFL Live

As you can see, the quality is nothing special, but much better than you’ll get off the P2P sites listed below.   Also, definitely not a simple 10ft interface for the naive Media Center user, but easy enough if you have a wireless keyboard.

ESPN 360 has a streaming player  download which will expand to full screen mode.    The quality is definitely a step up from above.    It appears the player can handle HD video, but it appears most the content is in SD format.    On the big screen, you still get a number of lighting and compression artifacts coming through.

ESPN 360 Video quality

ESPN 360 Video quality

While they have plenty of MLB and NBA games, along with College and CFL football, I have yet to see any NFL games here.   They are also partnering with Comcast, who is exploring more streaming options for paying customers via comcast.net.   There may be some potential here, but given the traditional tight-fisted greediness of the NFL, I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Finally, the NFL also offers Game Rewind.    This is actually an impressive service.   For $24.99 (mid-season price) you get access to the entire archive of 2008 and 2009 seasons.   So in order to write a complete review, I just had to order and try it…

The video quality is by far the best out of all the options.    It happens to use the same player as ESPN360, which means ESPN could be streaming this same quality if they wanted to.

Best Video quality by far

Best Video quality by far

Once again, the full 1920×1200 image.   The snapshot doesn’t really do the picture justice.   There may be some loss in the PNG compression as well.    So I’m pretty happy with the quality, but I suspect I won’t use this all that much.    There is a mode which will let you watch 4 games at a time, switching 3 small screens into the main one.    It seems like a great idea, but the fact none of this is available until after the game is over, it’s difficult to even justify the $25.     I probably should of done the $7.99 for one week just to check it out.   Not a bad option if there’s one game you missed and you just have to see it.

On my wish list for both of these is a Media Center plug-in and the ability to control the app with the remote.   I may hack something together to do this in my copious spare time.

The Ugly

So the truth is, you want to watch your game when its actually happening, and not after you’ve seen the score go by on the ESPN Ticker.    Well it turns out you can do this, but now we’re probably crossing some DMCA lines, especially as far as the NFL is concerned.    On the otherhand, these games are being broadcast over the air in other markets.   If I have a very powerful TV antenna which gets a signal from another market, who’s to say I’m violating any copyrights?    Well, if you want, you can think of the following as antenna extenders:

There are basically three or four sites out there that act as a central clearing house for users who happen to be streaming a particular NFL game. Unfortunately, the quality is extremely variable, if you can get the stream at all.      Here are some I’ve had some luck with:

MyP2P – Will usually show you a number of streams to choose from for each game.  All the streams require some sort of StreamTorrent player.  Quality is actually improved if there are more people near you watching the stream.    Most of the sites appear to be in the EU or Australia, which tells me the NFL cracks down on these when it can.  They also show various TV shows including some premium channels, but I really can’t imagine trying to watch those at this quality level given so many other choices.

Justin.tv – Justin.TV seems to have higher quality streams using a built in flash player.    Of course since they are a legitimate company based in the US, they need to be a little better behaved.   I don’t know if they proactively filter for the NFL games or not, but after the first quarter or so,the game is often replaced with a DMCA take-down notice.   Here’s a snapshot from this weekend’s Minnesota game.   Although the quality is low, the feed appears to be the Fox satelitte feed in that there are no commercials.   Probably coming from overseas:

Justin.TV Fox Football Feed

Justin.TV Fox Football Feed

ATDHE.NET These folks appear to be based out of France.   It’s also a clearing house, so you may get an mms stream which Windows Media Player can handle or sometimes it seems to redirect you back to Justin TV.

UStream.tv – UStream is another legitimate company which will probably take down an NFL game fairly quickly.   They are partnering with many content producers, so they will have other high quality broadcasts.

There are other similar sites as well, often they will point back to one of the three above.    The problem with most of these is that they take advertising from some very questionable players…

The Bad

So even a google search for NFL streaming will bring a couple of these shysters up in the ad blocks.    They basically try to sell you either a PC Satellite TV or a tag line like “Watch NFL & College Football Online Access All Games Live in HD Quality”.    In fact, I bet my AdSense plugin pulls a couple of them up right now:

What these slimballs do is charge you somewhere between $29-99 and then redirect you to the sites listed above. I’ve listed a couple of them here, with the names edited so they don’t get any free SEO out of my posting.

  • www the-honest-review com - gotta love the name
  • www live-football-now1 info
  • livefootballstream info/
  • www squidoo com/watch-nfl-online
  • live-online-now tv/ncaaf

I’ll try to keep this slimeball list up-to-date as I find more.   You’ll also find a number of BS blog sites recommending these services.     First red flag on these websites is you can’t find any “About Us” link on the page, and the Terms of Service mention a Bahamas or other off-shore country.    All their credit card processing and support is done through legit companies, so if you do get suckered by one of these, your credit card company will have no problem reversing the charges.

In summary, the options out there are getting better, especially as 10Mbit+ home connections become the norm.    It would be really nice if the NFL offered a pay-per-view for a specific game, but I believe they are still locked into an exclusive deal with DirectTV.    It would be interesting to know when that expires and whether they plan to keep it exclusive…

Bookmark and Share

11.14.09

RadioParadise High Fidelity Streams

Posted in Uncategorized at 3:57 pm by mike

So RadioParadise turned off their 192K MP3 stream in favor of  Octoshape, a peer-to-peer Windows Media Player plugin to get RadioParadise in 192k format, unfortunately I experienced quite a few drop outs and choppy sound.    Possibly there aren’t enough users yet to get critical mass.  Interestingly, Comcast took down the FAQ which claimed they don’t interfere with P2P traffic.   The FCC came down on them for doing this last year, but with everything they are doing to fight the Net Neutrality movement, I wouldn’t put it past them.   I switched to the 128K ACC+ stream with the Orban plugin.   No drop outs and the quality sounds pretty good.   Note that ACC+ received a much higher quality rating than MP3 on the MUSHRA score.

Bookmark and Share

11.02.09

“The Future of DVD” Panel and Happy Hour

Posted in Home Theater at 5:39 pm by mike

Join EFF in San Francisco Monday for Discussion on Hollywood vs. Consumers’ Rights

Please join the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) for a panel discussion on “The Future of DVD” at the Varnish Gallery in San Francisco on Monday, November 9, at 5:30pm.

Panelists include Kaleidescape CEO Michael Malcolm, RealNetworks Vice President and General Counsel Bill Way, and EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann. “The Future of DVD” will examine the legal battles over DVD rentals, ripping, backups, home media servers, and portable media players. These questions surrounding RealDVD, Kaleidescape, and Redbox underscore the continuing struggle between Hollywood, consumers, and innovators over the future of the DVD.

“The Future of DVD” panel is free and open to the public, and includes a hosted bar sponsored by RealNetworks.  For more information or to RSVP please email events@eff.org.

WHAT:
“The Future of DVD” Panel and Happy Hour

WHEN:
Monday, November 9
5:30pm to …

WHERE:
Varnish Gallery
77 Natoma St.
San Francisco, CA

Bookmark and Share

10.21.09

Orijnal’s Hulu Desktop WMC Fix

Posted in Windows at 5:06 pm by mike

Orijnal at thegreenbutton.com threw together a quick fix to eliminate the various remote control problems people ran into when combining the Hulu Desktop with the Hulu plugin.   You can read this thread for all the gory details.   I’ve just offered to host the file for him, so shoot any complains his way.  :)

Instructions From Orijnal:

Just unzip it and put a copy of it in the StartUp folder in the Start Menu (to ensures it’s running when the machine starts up). Make sure it’s running, before you try it out (you’ll see a little hulu logo in your system tray). I spent about a half hour on this, and certainly haven’t done extensive testing, but I haven’t run into any problems with it, yet. It works on 7MC and should work on Vista as well.

Worked like a champ for me.

Bookmark and Share

10.20.09

HTPC Config Posted

Posted in Home Theater, Windows at 10:26 pm by mike

I’m now keeping a running page of the HTPC configuration.    This is mostly for my own reference so I can remember what I’ve done and I’ll be keeping it up to date as things change.

Bookmark and Share

10.19.09

Windows 7 Installation – Part 1

Posted in Home Theater, Windows at 8:48 am by mike

OK, my first hiccup while installing the SSD drive was not having an extra SATA cable!   Solved for $10 (probably $9 more than I needed to spend) with a quick trip to Radio Shack on my wife’s scooter.   Decided to time the installation since I got to figure the SSD will make a significant difference.

Total installation time for Windows 7 Ultimate: 17 miinutes, 30 seconds.   Subtract at least a minute for my typing and pauses.

Unfortunately, it took me twice that time to put the machine back together and get all the cables reconnected.    Digital Cable connectors can be quite problematic at times.

Step #2.   Download latest ATI Catalyst software for the video card.  Windows Update automatically found something, but it didn’t install the full ATI Catalyst system.

That’s as far as I got yesterday.  Family responsibilities cut into my fun and I needed to switch back to Vista to record shows during prime-time.   Copying over the channel and recording settings is going to be the most time consuming part of the project.

Bookmark and Share

10.18.09

Windows 7 Party Pack Arrived

Posted in Home Theater, Windows at 3:46 pm by mike

So for no good reason at all, Microsoft sent me a complimentary copy of Windows Ultimate along with a box of party swag (streamers, toys, coupons, bags, etc..). I was actually going to hold off on the upgrade of my HTPC (which is pretty happily running Vista), but with Microsoft’s encouragement, I broke down and used my Amazon coupons to buy a 128G SSD drive.   Went with the CORSAIR P128 after reading this review.   I’ve decided to do a fresh install rather than an upgrade, this way I can simply switch back to booting Vista off the old 1TB drive.   Eventually, I plan to hang that drive off of Buffalo NAS and silencing the HTPC completely, but that will be another project.    In anycase, given that the rebuild of the media center is non-trivial, I’m taking the week off to do the reinstall before the party bond with my new son.

Finally, I’m going to track the whole process here for my own reference, since it’s helpful to know exactly what drivers and software I installed when, and why.    Makes a great reference for my HTPC consulting work.

BTW: Yahoo has upgraded Wordpress for me which at first brush looks pretty nice.   I still need to figure out how to leverage FB or Yahoo identity management, so people don’t have to create their own accounts to comment on my site.   If you know how to do this, please drop me a pointer.

Bookmark and Share

09.25.09

Microsoft: You can’t play Apple’s Game

Posted in Mobile, Windows at 8:32 pm by mike

So I read the NY Times Zune HD review last week and I hope every Microsoft employee is experiencing the embarrassment I feel for them.  The feature set reeks of committee compromise.   It’s obvious that so many different parts of Microsoft needed to have their say in the Zune design that none of them won, and the goal became to make the second best media player in the world by copying a couple features from the best one.    Rather than play up Microsoft’s strengths against Apples weaknesses, the Zune HD tried to hit all the IPod’s strong points, and comes out second best.   Somehow, even in Job’s absence, Apple was still able to maintain rigid control over every touch, click and byte over every product they make.   This IS NOT Microsoft’s strength and they will fail trying to emulate it.

What Microsoft does best is give their development community fantastic tools for expanding the platform.   This is the one area where Apple still lags far behind Microsoft.   I say this as a Mac enterprise application developer who is currently suffering the pain of lack of binaries compatibility between 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6.   But if I believe this review, Microsoft has abandoned developers for the Zune HD.

One example I have to mention is NControl.   This is the best remote control application I’ve seen for Windows Media Center.  And BTW, it runs on the IPod/IPhone platform.   Where is the Zune version?   Sorry, you can’t even start working on it yet because according to David Pogue the development environment and Zune app store is closed.   I have a very difficult time believing this, especially when I see other announcements about XNA Game Studio and the like.   If this isn’t true, Microsoft needs to get the NY Times to correct that part of the article.

So where can Microsoft trump Apple?   The one evil thing Apple does is lock it’s users into a box which they are not allowed to escape.   Now, Apple marketing does a wonderful job convincing customers they really want to live in that box, and life will be better if they just give Apple their credit card numbers, and never leave the box.    Google has already begun to play on that theme by making Android as wide open as possible, and they must snicker every time the see Microsoft try to pull the Apple trick.    But there are at least three places Microsoft can win while making Apple look like the evil empire:

#1: Jail-Break everything!

Take the handcuffs off the developers and let the hacking community loose.    So much time is wasted fighting the DRM requirements for media that developers are losing interest in the Media Center platform.    Take a hard look at XBMC.  There’s simply no way that a company the size of Microsoft can compete with their development community when it comes to innovation like this. Rather than try to create a poor mimic of that interface, provide a mechanism for it to tie into the CableCARD pipeline and MCE recording engine.    Yes, I know the legal issues surround DRM are non-trivial, but Microsoft is one of the few companies in the world with the resources to manage the Entertainment industry’s legal charge to their own death.

At the same time, open up the XBox to anyone.   Sure, some small percentage might be lost to Linux gaming stations or crypto decoders, but it’s never going to be enough to effect the bottom line and that minor revenue loss will make up for itself in marketing value.    It’s a much better solution than what you have today, where people buy the machine anyways, hack past the DRM and then just promote more bad press against the Microsoft experience.

Furthermore, this obviously puts Apple on the defensive, since they need to keep their users in the box to micro-manage the experience.   It appears Microsoft is trying to emulate this with the Zune HD, and it’s a fatal mistake.

#2 Build a mobile browser that works on ALL WEB SITES

Another area where Apple convinces it’s users the IPhone box is a good place to live.   You can’t stream video or audio through Safari.     Meanwhile, Skyfire (which has been blocked from the IPhone App Store) has done it for Windows Mobile with a Proxy RDP browser architecture.  Every Flash, Silverlight, Javascript, etc.. site works perfectly!   With the Zune HD touch controls, you’d have all the slick touch controls of the IPhone, but without boxing in the user.  The only problem they run into is when a site decides to block their proxy.   I assume Microsoft could correct such misunderstanding much faster than a small startup.    A full web browsing experience could the the killer app to take a big bite out of the IPhone.

#3  Support the development community

Of course Microsoft hasn’t abandoned their developers, but they certainly weren’t included in the Zune HD announcement.   The community needs Microsoft to do a couple things.   One, solve the hard grungy problems, like CableCARD OCUR specs and running Flash and Silverlight on the same handheld device.   Two, provide a roadmap through the plethora of Microsoft API’s and SDKs especially with respect to the three screens and the cloud.   How about some $1M contests and prizes for the best Zune/Mobile app, or the best combo 3SC app?  Apple basically abuses it’s development community, counting on the fanatical user community to beat them into submission.   That strategy will not work for Microsoft, and I fear the company is trying to emulate Apple in this respect as well.   The danger here is all the interesting applications get pushed to IPhone, Android and Palm.   There’s still no Stitcher app for Windows Mobile.   It’s now been pushed to your third or fourth port after BlackBerry, Android and soon Palm WebOS.

Now that Microsoft is releasing some amazing products (W7, XBox, Zune HD hardware),  it’s time to go back to Microsoft’s roots, and focus on the developers.   There’s plenty of cash in the coffers to throw at the development community, and the bang for the buck has to beat a Windows 7 launch party.   This is the place Microsoft can win big and avoid the large company politics sucking the life out of product development.

Bookmark and Share

09.10.09

Comcast Digital Transition

Posted in Home Theater, Windows at 9:28 pm by mike

So it seems Comcast has finally turned off the analog signals for the extended basic channels in San Francisco as I alluded to here.   Since it took over 3 months from the actual announcement, it gave me plenty of time to crawl all the forums and websites to understand exactly what happens from here.    Futhermore, a couple new news items popped up in the meantime which clarified what Comcast and other cable operators are doing.

So I’m currently running Microsoft Media Center on Vista, and I actually don’t experience all the horrid Vista stories you slash.dot readers may be accustomed to.   That said, there still are a number of quirks, but keeping an eye on thegreenbutton W7 posts, I haven’t been convinced that Windows 7 Media Center is going to be much better.

No More Analog Channels

So as Comcast started turning off the analog channels, I started seeing complaints from Media Center as it could no longer record shows on those channels.    Running a channel scan didn’t pick up any of the new channels, which I thought was odd since I knew the digital broadcasts of the extended basic channels are not encrypted (yet).    It turns out that Comcast sets a privacy flag on those channels which VMC respects and thus doesn’t automatically tune the channel.  (Thanks John) Instead, you have to go through a fairly cumbersome process of adding the channel by hand, editing the listing of the channel to merge it with the old analog channel in the guide, and then edit the sources of the channel and disable the analog signal (which is just static at this point).

For those of you who simply bought a TV with a digital tuner, connected your cable to it and found all the channels you paid for the same way your old analog set worked, that should still work, assuming your TV ignores the privacy flag.   If not, I’m told the digital TV tuners provide a similar mechanism to enter the digital channel number.    Unfortunately, Comcast and the other cable providers have received an FCC waiver to encrypt these channels as well.   So eventually everyone will need to either have a full set-top-box, a DTA converter, or a CableCARD compatible tuner.

So it’s unclear when Comcast will start encrypting those channels.   In order to do so, they will need to either replace or upload new firmware to the DTA’s currently distributed to customers.   Supposedly, these devices are designed to be updated in the field,  but I suspect that’s easier said than done, so we may have the unencrypted channels for some time.    That said, the current situation does allow Basic Cable subscribers to get Extended Basic without paying for it, but to do this you need to be pretty savvy (or read this blog, and who does that?).

Tuning Digital Channels

So how do you find the digital channel numbers for the clear QAM extended basic channels that VMC or your TV won’t scan by default?    Well first there’s the hard way.   It turns the new DTA’s deployed by Comcast have a simple diagnostic mode which will tell you the actual frequency and program number the current channel is broadcasting on.  Once you have the frequency, you can either do some math, or look it up on Wikipedia to find the channel number.

Or, you can simply go to SiliconDust, enter your zip code and find a complete listing there.   Make sure you choose the right line up.   After tuning a couple channel using the first method, going to SiliconDust is simply cheating.     SiliconDust is the maker of the HDHomeRun which is a combined DVR/media server solution.  Unfortunately, the value of this product will be greatly reduced when Comcast starts encrypting the extended basic channels.   It will still be able to record all the local broadcast channels, but that’s going to be a much more limited set than what they have today.   I suppose they can always offer a CableCARD version of the product, but their current customer base is probably going to be very unhappy.

Just Install the Damn CableCARD!

So not only would all these headaches go away if I just picked up a couple CableCARDs from Comcast, but I’d also be able to record a slew of new HD channels my VMC box currently doesn’t see.     The problem here is that the current CableCARD firmware incorrectly adds DRM to all recordings, even when not specified by the broadcaster.   This means everything recorded on the HTPC must stay there.   This means my daughter can’t watch Sesame Street on the laptop while I watch football, which is unacceptable.   The DRM also disables the commercial skip capabilities provided by programs such as ShowAnalyzer.  Futhermore, who has time to actually watch the shows when you’re spending so much time hacking the system?  In any case, the CableLabs OCUR (OpenCable Unidirectional Receiver) spec has finally been updated to remove this requirement.    But in order for this to work, a firmware update from ATI is required for the DCT.  I’m hopeful, but I’ve heard this story before.

Bookmark and Share

08.05.09

Mike vs. the Oil Filter

Posted in Uncategorized at 11:58 am by mike

So I was insistent upon changing the oil in both cars last week, even after I threw out my back picking up my daughter.   So 600mgs of Ibuprofen and Tylenol later, I’m gingerly lowering myself onto my creeper and sliding under the G35.   No pain while standing or lying down, just the transition sucks incredibly.   Now the one upside to that pain, it really makes you stop and think: “Do I have everything I need?”  before you lie down and slide under the car.

So I’m one of the few people I know who still changes the oil it their own car.    But (this story aside) it’s one of those things that is much easier once you have all the right tools.     When I was trying to figure out how to pull speaker wires through my walls, a friend of mine suggested pulling the floor boards and running the wires behind them (a coming post).    The task initially overwhelmed me, until he lent me his air-compressor and nail gun.   Suddenly I was having a lot of fun.

But back to oil changes, there are a couple things you need to make your life easy.    First of all, you need to be able to get under the car.    A couple wheel ramps and a creeper help with that.   One thing you don’t want to happen is for your ramps to slide when your trying to drive the car up them.    That’s what the rubber Tweedy mats are for.

An oil recovery pan is necessary as well.   These need to be resealable so you can take the waste oil down to your local gas station or auto-parts store and dispose of it.   Kragen in San Francisco offers free disposal.

Finally, you need a decent tool set (sockets, wrenches, etc).   I’m still using the Craftsman set I bought while I was working at a gas station in high school.   Most importantly though (especially for this case), are the filter removal tools.

Unfortunately the G35 has a plastic rock shield covering most of the oil pan and undercarriage.    They did leave an access whole for the drain plug and filter such that if you’re a 12 year old girl, you might actually be able to fit your arm up there to take off the filter.    I usually remove 3 of the screws holding on the shield and stick my arm around it.   Usually the big-blue rubber glove will give me enough traction on the filter to remove it.   That was certainly not the case today.

Now at 6′3 I have pretty big hands and there was a time when I was bench pressing around 300 lbs, so even with the back screaming, I’m able to put a good amount of torque on a oil filter.    This one wasn’t going to budge.   But I’ve had this happen often enough that I fell back to the socket filter tool.   The one you see below is made out of some sort of polyurethane or ABS plastic.   It just so happens the G35 and Mazda Protegee use the same filter, so I picked up one of these for a couple bucks.  (I also modified one to replace the $30 BMW tool for the K75)  The tool fits snugly on the end of the filter, using the grips on the filter for traction with a square 3/8 socket attachment in the center.

The first couple tries, the tool stripped the grips filter, deforming the filter itself.    To solve this problem, I wrapped the filter in some duct tape, and tapped on the filter wrench with a small hammer.   Plugged the socket wrench back into the filter tool, and cranked.  This time I managed to strip the socket attachment of the tool itself.    (During all this, please don’t forget the excruciating pain I’m going through each time I have to slide out from under the car, stand up to do get a tool, and then lay myself back down on the dolly).    So the tool isn’t ruined yet, since it also has a 1 inch hex nut on the top.  So I grab the 1 inch wrench and figure I now have far more leverage I need, only to see the tool start slipping again, even on the duct-tape-wrapped filter.  (sorry, the cell phone close up isn’t that clear)

As you can imagine, my frustration level is pretty high and I’m now fantasizing about driving to the Infinity dealer and finding the idiot who used a pipe wrench to tighten the filter on, and borrowing his pipe wrench as blunt force learning tool…  Instead, I take a few deep breaths and move to plan B.

The second tool in the arsenal is basically just a square steel rod attached to a nylon strap loop.   The idea is you wrap the oil filter into the loop in the same direction you want to turn, and then use a wrench on the steel rod to apply more torque.    The problem was I now had to remove the entire plastic undercarriage protector (15+ screws) in order to have enough access to the oil filter to perform the task.    This is one of those tools you look at in the store and you question whether it can work, and how difficult it is to use.    You do need to use two hands to wrap the filter in the tool and then hold it there while you attach the wrench.    The torque you get is two fold:  as you turn the steel rod it tightens the strap on the filter and applies the turning force at the same time.    When you’re trying it, you don’t have any confidence it’s going to work.    But when I saw the first movement of the filter, it was the same feeling when you find that one non-null terminated string that was causing the memory arena overwrite crash two hours later.

From there everything else is pretty uneventful.  As much as I’d like to go scream at the dealer who last changed the oil, it’s not like anyone there would care, and I suspect it would be a rather non-fulfilling exercise.

Finally my last tip for you is clean up.   If you’ve never worked in a gas station or repair shop, you may not no about lanolin based cleaners.    If you’ve ever tried to use regular soap to clean engine grease off your hands, you know its next to impossible to do.    It turns out that if you mix sheep skin oil with the right cleaning agents, you get a very disgusting paste which instantly removes grease from your hands without requiring any water.    The trick is to not wet your hands first, and rub just the cleaner into your hands and fingernails and then wipe off with a paper towel.   You usually want to wash your hands normally after that, but you’ll be amazed at how easily everything comes off.    I’m not particularly attached to this brand, but you find this stuff at any auto parts store.  Just buy whatever is on sale:

So while the oil change on the Infinity did take over an hour, I was able to whip through the Protege in less than 20 minutes.    There’s a huge sense of empowerment in doing something so simple rather than having to pay someone else to do it for you.    Bad back and all, it made my weekend.

mp

Bookmark and Share

« Previous entries Next Page » Next Page »