Friday, September 4, 2009

First Day Back for Nick

Nick's first order of business was to go for lunch at the Singapore Restaurant on Carling Avenue, one of our absolute favorites because of their Malaysian soup, Laksa.

Nick was dying to get behind the wheel, so I threw him the keys and Jon and I put ourselves into his hands. He was a bit scattered, but nobody died. Every day above ground ...


We listened to the Kings of Leon on the way ... oh yeah, he twisted my arm this morning to pick up a couple of Kings of Leon tickets for him and Jon ... so that's why they went on in the car. They'll see that concert while I am in San Antonio later this month.

On the way, I was playing with my new cam to see how well the stabilization handled a moving vehicle at full zoom (270mm equivalent.) I shot 5 images I think, a couple were a bit too blurry to use, the rest were usable. One was quite sharp.


I consider that a decent performance.

Anyway ... back to the Laksa ... Singapore's version in incredible ... a light curry broth filled with perfectly cooked rice vermicelli noodles, a hard fried egg, a checken breast cut up and curried and two jumbo curried shrimp. And lots of hot sauce .... man ... oh yeah ... shallots on top ...


Best soup in town ... even better than the Phu Yen's Spiucy Beef Noodle.

When we got back, we worked on Nick's car for almost an hour ... boosting it until we got it started, then cleaning the contacts on the battery and trying again when it failed to start after running for 15 minutes.


Nick then drove it at highway speeds for 20 minutes and when he got back, it failed again. So it does not take a charge ... that's a total bummer. Running a lead-acid battery flat is a bad idea I guess .... anyway, we're off to hit a bucket shortly and then we'll hit Canadian Tire for a replacement ...

Edit: Took it in today (Saturday) and found out that it is physically ok (liquids are fine) and that it is at 5.5V, which is much better than 1V. It is still under full warranty, but they think it will be fine tomorrow once they have charged it up. Turns out that a flat battery cannot be brought back by simply running it for half an hour. That adds at most 1V. So it needs the charge they are putting into it. We'll know tomorrow ...

Edit: After we had our wonderful Broadway breaky Sunday at noon, we stopped over at Canadian Tire and found out that the battery was happily sitting at 13 volts. I installed it in Nick's car when we got back and it starts and runs just fine. While I was at it, I unstuck his trunk latch and all appears to be well. One feels so very manly when he fixes two items on a car and neither costs a dime :-)

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