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My long-time faithful automotive companion, the 1982 300SD, is on its way out as a 1998 A8 Quattro comes in. It's just old enough (and low-spec enough) to have come with an ordinary radio instead of a LCD navigation unit. Unlike the 1997 which became the parts car when I got this car, the CD changer at least speaks an ordinary and boring protocol and it can be emulated away for those who would like a line input instead.

I grew up a poor white boy-child in Santa Cruz, which means that there were three ways in which I was privileged, and only one of them was location. Growing up with a single mother with no car when surrounded by the affluent and mobile meant that those were the only ways in which I was privileged. Any place I did not reach via operation of my Chevrolegs had to be visited via the shame train, also known as "The Bus". And riding the bus incurs a stiff penalty.

Some while back, I bought a 1997 Audi A8 Quattro with a bunch of problems for a little too much money, let's just not talk about how much. Not a lot, but still too much. I've worked through most of them problems, but then had an electrical issue that sent me back to looking for a front-end harness. Long story short, I wound up buying a parts car for $300 and then driving it home in limp mode over the Hopland Grade, like a boss. And since it's nicer than my car, I'm just going ahead and swapping the long-ago-warranty-replaced transmission which I've had fitted with the Transgo main pressure valve fix into the newer, nicer, lower-mileage car. And yesterday, I actually managed to extract the motor and trans from the 1997.

Assassins Creed is a really nifty psuedohistorical series of parcourt assassination games, and Assassins Creed: Unity is one of the recent entries in the series — which was included in a Humble Bundle of most of the titles. This post is not a news flash. It is a summary I'm writing because I don't want to have to track this information down again, distilled from a couple of pages I found googling.

Today I balanced the Dead Cat drone's motors with a zip tie and a hot glue gun. Wow, this is EASY. I got the idea by searching Youtube for motor balancing videos. For those too lazy to watch a video on the subject, you don't need one. Here's the steps to go through to balance your motors.