Angelo DiNardi's Blog

2011 In Review

2012-01-01T00:00:00-08:00

I like to track things over time. Looking back over the last year I realized the path I took was, well, a bit random at times.

February: Moved, again. So far I haven’t lived in the same town twice yet, but we’ll see how long that lasts. This was the 5th town I’ve lived in here in California.
May: Bought a Cannon T1i to so that I could really begin to learn photography. Getting out to photograph things has been coming in spurts, but overall I think I’m improving. It has given me a new appreciation for excellent photography. In general, it’s nice to have high resolution reminders of the past.
May: Bought a meat smoker and experimented with another way to cook delicious food. I’ve used it a few more times since then and have improved my methods a bit.
June: Embark with friends on an attempt to build a 6 person “bike-car”. Although we’ve so far failed at doing so, it got us to buy lots of fun and useful power tools. I’ve learned to weld steel, which has come in useful for repairs to the Beetle. Most of the other tools have also come in handy. Having a well stocked workspace is incredibly convenient. I hope that even if the “bike-car” is a failure, we eventually do finish some sort of large-scale project.
July: Traveled to the Washington D.C. area to see some old friends.
July: Bought a 1969 Volkswagen Beetle. I’ve been interested in the Beetle since I was very young and have always said I’d get one “someday”. During a commute on Caltrain, I have no idea why, I opened up craigslist and looked at Beetles to get an idea of availability and asking prices. I asked myself why I shouldn’t buy one now and I couldn’t come up with a good reason. Found a great listing, checked it out, bought it. It is definitely the most random and awesome purchase I’ve ever made.
August: Took a family trip to San Diego. The weather and the area was awesome. Relaxed on the sand, went snorkeling, read books, and took pictures. It was a great trip.
October: Traveled to D.C. again for my friend’s wedding. It was absolutely some of the most fun I’ve had all year.
November: Apture, where I had been working for about 20 months, was acquired by Google.
November: Trip to Orlando with the family to see my grandparents. My family is full of silly people.
December: Started working through a book to learn Italian. I’ve meant to do this for years. So far I’m a couple of lessons in to the book. Hopefully I can keep it up; I get distracted easily.

I’m sure there’s more I’ve forgotten. I classify a lot of the random stuff I’ve picked up this year as a “quarter-life crisis”. I was always using the excuse of being “busy” and that ”I’ll do it when things slow down”. Things never slow down. If you don’t do it now, life will pass you by. Sure, there’s more opportune times than others and you may have to plan ahead to meet financial goals – but in general there’s no better time than the present.

I also decided this year that my single track of focusing on software and computers all day, every day was becoming monotonous. Building software products is a great, rewarding, and challenging career which I absolutely love. But to come home and keep doing that at night and on the weekends leads to burnout. I decided to primarily focus on software at work and home was for all the other hobbies. I’m much happier because of the change.

The arbitrary measure of time that was 2011 turned out well.

VW Beetle Project Part 6

2011-11-09T00:00:00-08:00

Recently I decided to re-upholster the seats in the Bug. Thus far I’ve made it through the two front seats. It’s been about 16+ hours of labor so far.

The process is basically:

Take out seat
Strip seats to frame
Make repairs to frame/spring

In this case I had to weld the backrest spring back together.
Put new cover on spring
Put new cushion on
Cover cushion with felt
Put cover on seat
Attach buttons on backrest

This was interesting because I didn’t have new buttons to attach. The original seats were red and the new seats would be black. I decided I’d keep a little bit of the old car in there by keeping the faded, red buttons on the black seats. It adds a bit of uniqueness to the car.
Put seat in car

The seat on the left is the re-upholstered passenger seat.

The full gallery of images is here.

VW Beetle Project Part 5

2011-09-25T00:00:00-07:00

I’ve accomplished a whole bunch of stuff over the past month on the Bug (but I haven’t had time to post about it).

Washed the car
Lubricated frontend
Checked master cylinder
Adjusted the brakes
Adjusted e-brake setting
Adjusted steering wheel alignment (hooray driving straight!)
Fixed the passenger defrost vent airflow adjustment dial
Passenger seatbelt was attached incorrectly, causing it to be twisted
Replaced the door window rubber seals
Replaced door seals
Replaced visor clips
Fought with bent hinges on the driver side door (door doesn’t close right)
Replaced trunk liner
Replaced door panel attachment clips
Replaced trunk wiring cover
Replaced trunk rubber seal
Replaced engine rubber seal
Attempted to adjust the camber of the front, passenger wheel

VW Beetle Project Part 4

2011-08-22T00:00:00-07:00

Today I finally solved the mystery of the gas fumes in the cabin. The gas smell seemed to be heavy in the trunk, where the gas tank sits. Looking around I realized a few things:

The gas cap washer was dried out and brittle
The gas tank fill lines looked original to the car
The defroster vent hoses were a mess
One of the fresh air hoses in the engine compartment had a hole in it

Any or all of these things could have been the cause so I just fixed it all.

Every time I open another box from Wolfsbürg West it’s like Christmas

After I removed the gas fill hoses

The replaced gas fill hoses

I vacuumed and cleaned up the rest of the trunk.

The engine compartment is starting to look (and run) a lot better now too.

VW Beetle Project Part 3

2011-08-11T00:00:00-07:00

Over the past weekend I dove in to the first of the maintenance on the Beetle.

Valve adjustment
Oil change
Spark plug gap adjustment
Adjust distributer points
Adjust idle

Took me most of the weekend to work through it all and get it to the point where I was happy with things. At the beginning of the weekend the car would idle incredibly rough, stutter on acceleration and generally be a bit sluggish. I attributed this to the car just being old. Boy was I wrong. By the end of the weekend I was zipping around the block and it felt like a whole new car.

In the days since the weekend I’ve continued to work on tuning the idle. I got a new Tach-Dwell Meter on Tuesday which enabled me to check the distributer points more precisely and also verify the correct idle speed (850 rpm). The idle is a bit finicky, but as of Wednesday night I think I’ve finally got it between 850-900 rpm and running smooth.

During the spark plug gapping we discovered that the cylinder #4 spark plug was threaded incorrectly at some point in the past and now sits at a nasty angle. It definitely still works but I have a feeling that cylinder isn’t working at 100%. I’ll be investigating solutions including inserts and possibly replacement of the cylinder head.

It’s amazing what little things can make a big difference in a car. Today most cars “just work” and computers control most of the functions. Being able to see how every little thing in a car works, though, means you have so much more appreciation for what it does and how it does it. I’m starting to get a good “feel” for the car and can tell when things are “off”.

Next up I’m hoping to replace some worn engine parts such as the spark plugs and air hoses. Then on to replacing some of the gas tank parts. Those hoses are pretty damn old (and leaking smell – but no gas yet).

MailWrangler 1.3.3 Release

2011-08-03T00:00:00-07:00

MailWrangler for iPad 1.3.3 is now live in the App Store. Fixes include:

Google Apps user authentication
Last added account disapearing from account list

As always, feel free to email mailwranglerapp@gmail.com with any issues. If you like MailWranger please remember to rate it in the App Store!

VW Beetle Project Part 2

2011-08-01T00:00:00-07:00

As of tonight the overhead dome light is completely operable. Last week I was able to get the light turning “on” via the switch on the light. Turned out that some of the fuse and wire connectons were corroded and were failing at doing their job. Cleaned up the contact points (some by dumb luck by disconnecting and reconnecting, even). After all that I got the emergency flashers and the “on” switch for the light working. The door activation mode for the dome light still wasn’t working.

Tonight I go to get the open door activation mode of the dome light working and what-do-you-know? It “just works”. I’m not sure what happened, but I’ll take it.

As I was in the trunk (front of the car) I noticed there was a rigid metal cable running from toward the cabin to the front. After tracing it I realized it was a trunk release. It looked like when the glove box was replaced the trunk release lever wasn’t put back in. I just thought the trunk didn’t lock. I removed the glove box and disconnected the cable from the release latch. Then I ran the cable through the hole in the glove box and back in to the trunk. The lever got reattached to the glove box and I reattached the glove box to the car. Then the cable was reconnected to the latch.

Almost done now, I had to re-adjust the hook from the trunk lid since it had been made short to prevent latching (since you were unable to release the latch). Took me a couple of tries to get the right length on the hook – but it works now.

So far this car is exactly what I wanted. A project with lots to do and lots to learn.

VW Beetle Project Part 1

2011-07-21T00:00:00-07:00

This week I purchased a new (to me) old 1969 Volkswagen Beetle as a “project” car. To understand why we’ll go back in time a ways.

The Past

When I was young (as far as I remember we’re talking 15-20 years ago) I discovered the Volkswagen Beetle. I fell in love with the car and collected books and models. When the “new” Beetle concept got out, I was all over it. I (for some crazy reason) had a love for the VW Beetle.

Fast-forward to today where I now live in California (where Beetles are prevalent) and have the resources to acquire such a car. I had been browsing craigslist every so often to get a feel for the market, but I never saw anything that really “struck” me as what I wanted. I stumbled across this car and what I immediately found interesting was that it is an Autostick model. I had been fully prepared to jump in a manual shift car – but this was, well, intriguing. The more I read about them the more I saw how this was actually both cool and relatively unique/rare. People generally don’t keep Autostick models around apparently.

Thanks to the Autostick I was able to jump right in this car and drive it. Awesome. I absolutely fell in love with the car and the fact that it was (comparatively) well maintained. I could focus on incremental improvements and have a functional car. I wouldn’t have to worry about replacing some major system right away.

My current goals for the car are to “restore” it to as much of it’s original glory as possible and to keep it as original/stock as possible. Although I have no idea if I ever want to deal with “car shows” and such, I’d like to return its condition to that of “show quality.”

Part 1

I’ve so far “fixed” one thing and investigated another. The first was that the vent wing lock mechanism was immobile so you could not open the vent wing (the little window in front of the primary window in the doors). A little WD-40 fixed that right up.

Next is the interior, overhead dome light. It doesn’t work. Switching it on and/or using the door activation method will not activate the light. I busted out the multi-meter and checked the wires coming to the unit. It appears there’s virtually no current (.03 volts it seems) getting through the wires. It should be 12 volts. I traced the wires back to the trunk (front of the car, remember the engine is in the rear) and found the two ground connection points (for always on and for the door activation switches). They appeared to be hooked up. I was unable to fully trace the power wire to the source, though, and gave up for the night.

What’s next

Next I’m going to continue trying to fix the overhead light. Right now it’s a pain to deal with at night since I have to use the flashlight on my iPhone to get around inside the car in the dark. After that, I’m not sure. We’ll see what bothers me the most.

MailWrangler 1.3.1 Release

2011-06-30T00:00:00-07:00

MailWrangler version 1.3.1 has been approved by Apple and is rolling out to the iPad App Store now. This version comes over a year after the last release of MailWrangler.

Included in this release is:

Multitasking Support
Improved login reliability (including support for 2-factor authentication)

This is just a small step in improving MailWrangler. I hope to have another (larger) feature release later this summer.

For support please visit the MailWrangler Support Page.

Doin' it live

2011-06-02T00:00:00-07:00

I’ve basically given up on hosted blogging services. They all suck in their own special way. Notably, Posterous is so restrictive I can’t even add additional javascript to the site (their concerns are somewhat legitimate).

Instead, I’ve decided to once again host my blog – except I’ll be using Jekyll. The choice is thanks to R. Tyler Croy showing me his Jekyll setup one night at SF Night Owls. And, in standard geeky fashion, I’m releasing this on the world completely half-baked and hacked together.

I’ll be working on the style over the coming weeks to try and find something that works. I mostly wanted to kill off the three broken blogs I’ve got published right now. Also, I’ve been able to migrate the old wordpress posts into Jekyll so that everything is in one place. Sweet.