Tuesday after picking up Isaac from daycare I got on craigslist to fart around looking at motorcycles and scooters to see what all is out there. Of course I can’t go on craigslist for long without looking for a possible cheap e30. Just so happens one had been posted that morning. I showed the link to Cody who said if the guy would go down just 50 bucks on the price he would drive up to Cedar Park to go get it for me.

Well, the guy agreed.

I finally have my e30. After 4 years and about 7 attempts there is finally one in my driveway. There are some major differences in this model vs the one I had back in high school. The biggest is probably the fact my old one was a coupe and this one is a sedan which is super cool. This is also an “eta”, which means the engine is modified to conserve fuel and give good gas mileage from the inline 6 in the engine bay. I seem to recall my old 325is getting hysterically horrible mileage driving just from the house to school. Cody got this from Cedar Park to San Marcos on about a quarter tank.

So yes, the engine runs great, no stalling, no sudden death while driving down the road like the 325is did so many times. Most of the power devices work including the windows, sunroof, and cd player.  It has tinted windows as well as 3 near perfect tires, the one that gets power is pretty bald though.

And here you see why it was 600 dollars. The car had run into something quite recently as the inspection stickers are from 09. Possibly a pole or something but interestingly enough only the outer portion of the bumper is harmed.  Of course the hood is dented as well as that fender but I’m not too worried about those because I can easily replace them on my own. Since the bumper is busted I want to do a full plastic bumper conversion on the front and rear. However, I will be taking it to a local body shop for installation because I can’t stand body-kits flapping in the wind. Also I need the entire car primed. While it’s getting updated and primed for paint I’ll have them fix the massive dent in the hood. Cody thought it had been rolled, but there is no damage to the doors and all the glass is factory. My guess is a tree branch fell on it or something.

Great news, this car has about HALF the miles my old one did! The engine starts quickly every time with no trouble. There are a few other problems I’ll need to get fixed during my painting process. As of now the power steering is totally shot. I filled up the reservoir this morning and took it for a little drive around the neighborhood to no effect. However, fluid remained at the same level so at least that means there is not a massive leak, but possibly a busted pump. Whatever it is it will be fixed at some point during painting. The brakes work but not well enough for stop and go traffic so that too will be assessed before painting is done. It will be a very long process and by the time I am done with painting, brakes, steering and suspension the engine may be toast.

So basically here is a rundown/timeline of work that will go into the car:

1. Body prep – Purchase bumpers and rear window moldings, send to shop for bodywork and priming. During this time the car will be started every day and let run 10 minutes to keep parts lubricated, it will be driven around the block average twice a week.

2. Painting – Once body is complete and primed I will be hand painting the entirety of the vehicle with a most awesome design that I have not yet come up with but totally will here shortly. Basically my own BMW Art Car.

3. Functionality – Because I can still paint the thing with a blown engine it only needs to stay running/operating long enough for me to get it to the local shop for the bodywork, brakes, and power steering. So at some point during painting or afterwards (Depends on how long it takes and how much money I have) I will assess the aging mechanics of the car to get it street legal in the sense of passing inspection.

4. Engine Swap – Because its inevitable that the engine will probably eat itself at some point during this process I am not even thinking about updating the exhaust, intake, etc until a clean rebuilt engine is installed. I also do not yet know what kind of engine I want to use for the swap. It could be anything from a stock m20b25 to a rb20det. So until then no changes will be made to anything that would potentially be attached to such engine.

Let the fun begin!

So, doing research online yielded mixed results as far as which New Balance shoes were still made here. Some said yes others said no it was really a dead end as you had to trust the sites selling the shoes to be labeled properly. I did a little shopping around at the outlet mall down the road only to find that the vast majority of the NB shoes were made in China (as far as the discount stores and Journeys was concerned). I lucked out at Academy though who had an extensive collection of them. I managed to find about 6 pairs of them that were not horribly hideous or looked like work shoes. You will notice, looking around, that the shoes marked Made in USA run over 100 dollars. There is the median range of “Made in USA of Imported Mats” wich run 50-80 bucks, then of course the chinese versions which are in the 30-100 dollar range.

These are great and actually feel really nice to wear. I did look at a pair that had a similar design but a white sole. As someone who works around screen printing inks and paint, etc its best to steer away from white shoes of any kind should you want to keep them any kind of clean. I liked these the best and they are actually a girls shoe ;D

To get to the point:

My birthday is the 30th and I am looking to get a new pair of kicks. I currently rock two pair; low top kelly green Chucks and my Silver high-top Nikes. The chucks are several years old but I never got around to wearing them so they look brand new. The Nikes are on their last leg with seams and stitches coming out left and right. I was pretty upset that the 130$ Nikes turned to junk so fast but I was later informed that sports shoes are only intended to last one season of use. So for instance these are a basketball style of shoe and are designed to only last one basketball season which is around two to three months total assuming you buy a new pair for the playoff games. That wouldn’t bother me if the shoes didn’t cost so much but if you’re really pressed for cash you wouldn’t be buying Nikes in the first place. Thankfully there is this massive Outlet Mall down the road from my house and I got the shoes new for $40  instead of the retail $130.  Now one year later I’m up for some new shoes. I’ve generally worn very flat shoes since forever, as a kid we all had Keds which leave your feet about a 18th of an inch from the ground. Later in high school I dabbled in skate shoes which are totally flat but very well cushioned and last much longer than general sports shoes. Then in college I got my first pair of Chuck Taylors, red high-tops that took a while to lace up. I love high-tops but the only issue with them was the time needed to take them on and off as well as the inability to wear them with shorts. So when I had Isaac I switched to the vans slip-ons which worked out great for the longest time. Then last year I up and decided to get some nice squishy shoes again and picked up the Nikes. Not once did I ever worry about where they were coming from.

When researching t-shirt brands for my little home-printed shirt company I came across a very divided line amongst the printers and the fans of printed shirts. The printers all favored the cheapest shirts possible due to financial reasons, while the designers and purveyors all wanted the highest quality shirts with the most impossible prints on them…for as cheap as possible. Well since you can’t have everything you end up with crazy prints on cheap shirts or simple prints on high end shirts. Since my little business was just starting out with no real start up money I went with the industry standard shirts for my first print runs. They sold just fine. However it did later occur to me after getting several shirt samples from various manufacturers that there was only a tiny handful of companies still producing shirts in the US. My cheapies were made in Honduras while the more expensive shirts were made here in the US. At first I could not afford the price difference (triple the cost), however now that I have sold a few I have the funds to start printing American prints on American Apparel. Now there are several T-shirt companies that are based in the US like Hanes, Anvil, Gildan, etc. but they do all of their manufacturing overseas.

I found the exact same situation in the world of athletic shoes. Sure, there are hundreds of mom and pop companies selling hand sewn leather shoes, boots, and womens sandals that are 100% mad

e in the USA but what about the most common shoes in the US? Practically 0% of the athletic shoes sold here are made overseas. According to most companies this is because there are no facilities in the US that make the raw materials for the shoes. Last time I checked most my old athletic shoes were made of foam, glue, and leather all of which I know can be made here. Of course when I started my search I knew exactly which shoe companies to avoid entirely, Nike was the first on the list, those that we all know are not made here and probably never have been. However I was quite surprised to find out that my Chuck Taylors were made in China. At first I didn’t believe the internetz so I took my shoes off to see for myself and sure enough “made in china” right under the washing instructions. Apparently good ol’ Nike bought them out in 2000 and had them readily outsourced to their buddies in China, before that Chucks had been produced in the US since 1917. Way to go Nike. (Just as good with preserving history as they are with drop shipments.) Doing more googling and browsing I came across another little bit of info regarding New Balance. Now most New Balance running shoes are in fact still made in the USA. However…since they import several of the materials that go into the shoes some styles are assembled overseas. The rules for “Made in USA” labels require a certain percentage of the product and components be made here. Just look at the back of your iPhone, it says “Designed in California, Assembled in China” because technically you could use Italian glass, German plastic, and African rubber but if you had all those components put together in China it’s still made in China. If you look on some labels you will find “Made in USA of foreign materials” meaning they ordered all the components from other countries then sewed it all together here before boxing it up. This may be the case with some styles of New Balance shoes. This doesn’t make them a bad company, I’m sure American Apparel imports a percentage of its cotton and other poly fibers as well. The important thing is that the finished product was produced in the USA. Take cars for example. I can buy a Subaru Forrester that was totally assembled by tax paying Americans in Indiana, the car is therefore technically “made in America” even though it is a Japanese car company, yet that new Dodge turbo diesel was as

sembled in Mexico.

“But Jetgirl, you could just get some hand made or designer shoes that are made here!”

That thought crossed my mind, but I don’t have $300 bucks for custom or designer shoes. Neither do most Americans right now. The point of this little quest is to find shoes anyone could potentially buy, not just rich folks in California, New York, or South Austin. I even went the rout of looking for some of the more “yuppie” vegan, earth friendly, organic shoes. Well, guess what…THEY ARE MADE IN CHINA TOO! Those funny looking shoes with the individual toes? China. Tom’s shoes? China (I don’t care how regulated sales and PR tells me they are).

So my question to anyone reading this out there, are there any other affordable sneakers still made in the USA besides New Balance? If not, then I know what shoes I’m getting for my birthday.

Now I have printed on the basic American Apparel t-shirts before and this cream colored version was no big surprise to me. It printed well and accepted the ink just fine. The raglan shirts are ultra super soft, however they are a little thin, probably fine for guys but gals might wanna wear a tank or shirt under it unless you want everyone to see your back tattoos or paisley bra.

Don’t make too much fun of my horrible screen coating abilities, I don’t do it everyday. But here you can see the screen all set up and ready to print!

I use an environmentally friendly waterbased ink for all of my screen printing. Every Austin Apparel shirt with color ink so far has been printed with Permaset Aqua inks. (I use Matsui discharge.) I love the strength of this ink and how well it holds up to washes and how non-existent it feels on the shirt after being washed for the first time. It costs a little bit more than plastisol but is well worth it when I can just hose my screens off in the backyard.

Just look how they turned out! The thin baseball shirts accepted the ink quite easily (I was almost scared of it bleeding but turned out just fine) and the lusitania shirts look way better with black ink on the cream shirts. (this is the same art from the discharge test a few months ago) I’ll be shipping these out Saturday morning and can’t wait to what the gals at Missed in History think about them.

The Lusitania shirts will be up for pre order on my Austin Apparel site here soon, however the Team Lili shirts are not for sale (being S and K’s idea in the first place) so they will have the only two existing shirts.

The Caldwell Zoo is in Tyler, Tx and is the zoo we always went to as kids from kindergarten all the way to about the fifth grade. When I was a kid the zoo had always been free, however a few years ago they began charging to get in, as well as remodeling a few areas and getting some new animals such as white tigers and penguins.

The indoor snake exhibit had gone unchanged since the last time I had been to the zoo some nearly 10 years ago.

In fact, this may be the same lion I saw here when I was a kid lol.

Their African plains exhibit is unique in that they group the animals to appear in their natural habitat with the zebras and gazelles just an invisible ditch away from the lions, making them appear to all be in one area.

The giraffes and elephants were still in the same place as they always were.

The new baby rhino was there too.

Always fun to take pics of the Toucans.

Their parrots are in open air exhibits as their wings have all been clipped.

My favorite animal to see when growing up was the flamingo. It was the first animal you came across after walking past the entrance and sure enough they were still there.

Isaac had a good time at the zoo, his curly straw cup he got in the gift shop is now his favorite cup ever.

Only downside to the whole event was that it was at 1pm which means it was 100 billion degrees outside:

There was a DJ set up playing music the whole time so it never got boring:

You had your staple car show cars: Nissan 350z’s, 240sx’s of various years, GTI’s and of course no car show is complete without an 86:

Some cars were heavily sponsored, but not too many:

Of course I would have paid 10 bucks and bought a shirt just to see this car all by itself and take pics of it for 3 hours alone:

I almost started to cry because the inside of it smelled like mine:

Some other cool cars were out there including this one that goes to a lot of local shows, the famous two tone koi painted subie:

Another cool hand drawn paint job ehhehe:

We wanted to stay to see who won stuff during the raffle giveaways but it was just too hot and I had gone through a lot of water and we needed to get back. We had a ton of fun taking pics and video of all the cars. The second I got home I jumped in the shower, washed the salt out of my face and put on my spankin new t-shirt:

Video here of me wandering about:

Isaac had his third birthday this weekend and all of his cousins and aunts and uncle and friends came!

Now, Isaac’s actual birthday was last weekend but we had to move the party to yesterday to make sure his papa could make it.  When I asked him if he wanted a Thomas the tank engine cake or Buzz Lightyear cake he promptly responded BUZZ!!!!! So thus the party suddenly had a Toy Story theme! I decorated the cake the night before and started icing the cupcakes. I really wanted to geek out and make an actual Buzz out of cake but I had some issues with the T-shirts I made for the party so cake making was delayed so a simple Andy’s Bed version was made:

Isaac had a great time at the party, lots of family and a few friends of ours came out to visit and have some lil burgers and hotdogs and chicken wings. Isaac’s favorite part of course was the cupcakes with sourworms in them. He LOVES sour candy. I was concerned earlier in the day because it was storming all night and still muggy and rainy out that morning. However by noon it had cleared up and warmed up to the point it was perfect outside!

He got all kinds of presents for his birthday including some sets of blocks, water toys, and an actual Buzz Lightyear toy. Cody and I got him this Toy Story bike with some of his birthday money! He is getting the hang of pedaling and should be able to ride it great by this summer. Just means I’ll have to fix up my bike so we can ride around.

Today I brought the screens to work to expose them because I don’t have my own exposure unit yet. Well I mixed the emulsion before 8am, coated the screens at noon during lunch, and checked on them around 2. They LOOKED dry but I must have gotten this new stuff too thick because it wasn’t completely dry enough because as soon as I got it out of the exposure unit and hosed the screen off the emulsion began to pull away from the screen. So I’m letting the other two screens dry overnight and hopefully they will work as I only need two screens to do the shirts. I have one set of art for the adult (parents) sizes and one size for the kids shirts. To make the art fit the screens I had to omit my Austin Apparel sponsor on the back of the shirt, but it should look better in the end.

In other Isaac birthday news its totally going to rain on Saturday which is making pretty angry as we went to all this trouble to get the back yard in shape for a party. If it rains we’ll all just sit inside and do whatever, any kids that show can just attack the pinata in the living room like a zombie horde.

Now, I am no professional researcher or scientist by any means and I don’t claim to be.  So please take all of this information with the knowledge that this is just my opinion/speculation on the issues. Other than that, flame on!

Sounds like nothing! – Sure the biggest thing most folks who switch from a gas/desiel to electric car will be the “VAROOOM”  being replaced with “WOOOSH”. However, you find that out the instant you take it on a test drive. What I am more worried about is the lack of you being able to hear the car coming…at all. Folks on bikes, pedestrians, etc won’t be able to hear you coming which can be a horrible horrible thing. Not to mention the terrifying idea of a motorcycle you can’t hear changing lanes beside you in a car they can’t hear going down the road. I guess we’ll all have to get louder horns or yell “MOVE!” really loud like kids who ride bikes on busy sidewalks.

Distance Driving – Imagine for a second that your going on a cross country trip. Lets hypothetically make it a trip from Georgia to California.  If your using a fully electric car you would have to stop when your car runs low on power. Not a big problem because if everyone has electric cars they will have more recharge points at gas stations and hotels. What IS  a problem is when your driving along and suddenly realize your car is out of juice just like you do when you ignore your iphone all day until your ready to call someone and it’s red bar tells you your screwed. Your then stuck somewhere between Barstow and have to call a tow truck to come bring you a jump-generator or spare battery that will cost you the rest of your Disney vacation money.

Refueling – While I’m on the point of refueling, let’s say your on a schedule and have to be at the dry cleaners at 7:30, work at 8, lunch meeting at 11:30, pick up kids from after school program at 5pm, soccer at 6, dinner at 7, dance practice at 8. You get home and flat out forget to charge the car. With a recharge time of anywhere from 2-8 hours, your’re taking a sick day from work if you don’t live anywhere near a bus or train station (99% of Texas). Also, what happens if there is a natural disaster? Say a snow storm or hurricane hits and your car is dead, no power to recharge it and no time to get out. Not a good thing….

Battery Issues – They keep talking about how new lithium Ion batteries are going to save the world. They can make them cheaper and longer lasting and all that good stuff. Now take in mind what you use that has a lithium ion battery right now, your kids gameboy, your laptop, cameras, etc all use very small ones. Now look at the biggest battery, the one in the lap top. What happens when it is on for too long? It gets HOT. Not only hot but have a tendency to overheat and as the case with a “bad batch” can even EXPLODE. So yeah now lets take LOTS of those batteries and put them in a pickup truck on a nice 112 degree summer day in San Antonio idling on I-35.  You fill in the blanks there. I can’t wait till it becomes cool to have a 4ft wide Zalman coming out the top of your hood like some sort of space age intake. If yall thought the Pinto was bad just wait.

Big Brother - Not that they can’t do this NOW thanks to computers controlling most of the internals of the car your driving today but I just see it being pre-built in on every electric  car that comes out. OnStar can already stop the car if it’s stolen, now just imagine driving car thats fully electric. They could block you from starting the engine, opening the doors, using the panic button, etc. What would be the worst is that in an electric car they could monitor your acceleration, braking, turning to find out if your speeding or driving unsafely and ticket  you without the need of speed cameras or cops on the road. You car will be telling on you.  They could even go so far as to increase the rev limiter afterwards as a way to keep you from speeding again.

That and I saw a pretty schweet GTI 2.0 tarbo at Chuck Nash this weekend, anyone wanna buy a Subaru? XD

Anyway, the other day I received two t-shirts in the mail from Tilteed for review here on the site. Tilteed is one of the many community driven online t-shirt shops that accepts artwork from various artists and selects a winner via community voting. The winning design gets printed and available online via pre-order for 72 hours after which the price increases and it is added to their online shop. They also carry various limited edition designs that are only available during pre orders and not added to their shop afterwards. Having worked as a graphic designer I tend to be weary of “contest design” as its basically spec work. However, this is not the case for Tilteed as they do compensate the winning artist more than a considerable amount if their artwork is chosen. And of course, they aren’t being forced to submit anything but they do seem to understand that art is worth more than a 50 dollar gift card and your name in lights. Props to Tilteed.

Moving on, here is the first shirt I got in the pack: “EL PLAN” , totally reminds me of Heathcliff cartoons from when I was little so I am biased in my decision of liking it . The shirt is on American Apparel new sliver and is a very clean three color print.

The printing on these shirts are spectacular, compared to other 24-72 hour online shirt slingers these are not garbage. I was very surprised to see how well these came out considering their 12 dollar pre-order price tags! Good job Tilteed.

This is the second design, a much much larger and more detailed print. This one is called When Zombie Snails Attack! (thanks Bo!) I really like this design as I am partial to all over huge prints on small shirts. You may not be able to tell from the pic here but this is actually a three color print. The seaweed stuff in the background is a tan, the dark on the snails is black and there is a white underbase under the shells themselves which gives a subtle contrast to the cream/natural colored shirt.

Holy awesome printing batman! Just look at that registration and how thin all the ink is! Is this a 300 mesh print? Pretty sure its all plastisol but these guys know what their doing and make it look bad ass. Of all the community driven design sites this is the only one that will see my money. Great Job!

Tilteed
Packaging: Good (standard poly bag)
Labeling: Good, not any on the shirts (printed or sewn) and bag came with some cards.
Design quality: Awesome
Ink quality: Epic, best plastisol ive seen!
Price: Affordable @ 12-18 USD