Before I get started, the Before and After pics

Before...

...After

Phase 1 Complete

Another before shot. Note 2 tabs; CD and SAT.	Got this little bad boy to install	Push the vents down, reach in
...and give it a tug.	Pull the bezel out along the sides to the bottom	And it comes off like this.
Unplug the top wires first to give more working room	Now this one	Then the last. Set the bezel aside.
OMG it's naked.	Knife goes in	Guts come out
The factory connectors	A shot of my radio model number in case I need it later.	Wrap it up! It's a 12v power source. Not using it.
Plug in the big harness.	And the little harness.	Hook the audio output to the VES input
And plug the other end into the aux-in module.	And the familiar RCA plugs go into the other end.	And now plug the new stuff into the back of the headunit.
Packing everything back in. In this pic I've taken the module off of the cable.	Dry run to make sure I got everything plugged in right.	Bam! It works! Three tabs!
Attaching the 3.5mm to RCA adapter to test it with my mp3 player. Worked like a charm!	Zip ties will keep things in place.	The module buckled up snug!
Out comes the ashtray assembly to drill a hole for the cable.	Hrm, that metal piece looks suspiciously removable...	With a little bit of force amplification, it pops right off.
What luck! There's enough room to pass wires through into the ashtray cup. That's where my finger is.	The chunk removed, no drilling needed. Woo!	Reinstalled and ready to route the wire.
The slack was rolled up and zip tied, and then a bit fed through to the ashtray.	Alright, looks good, reattach the front bezel!	Oops, the ashtray won't go in. The wires tucked back there must be falling in the way.
So now to remove the bezel again.	Another zip tie will fix that up.	Back together, for real this time.
Stealth aux-in!	Oh, and now sometimes when my radio boots up it thinks it's in a Chrysler.	Shit, I had some parts left over.
A shot of the aux-in in use. More to come!

I added a module to give me not one but two auxiliary inputs into my car's radio. One of them will be for a 3.5mm stereo jack (Phase 2). The other one is for some super special sauce I'm still researching (Phase 3).

Magnum

I only seem to blog when I'm sad. Unless I'm too sad, then I don't write anything at all.

A bunch of stuff happened recently. Some bad, some good.

I had been in talks with a couple of neat girls I'd like to have known better but they seemed to have fizzled out. It's not like I lost anything; I just didn't gain is all.

It's fine, I'm working on solving the problem. I should be a date-able size in about a year, I think. The other day I bought some new shirts and pants. I've gone down a pants size. In fact, now I'm down to the size where they don't charge extra, so that was exciting. That's one thing that annoys me about the skinny people I know always bitching about being fat. Have you ever had to fucking pay extra for clothes? Ever pay the fat tax? No? Okay, then shut your fucking cake hole. If you're worried about being fat and you don't know what I'm talking about, then consider yourself fucking lucky, you skinny asshole.

I bought a new suit. It looks pretty nice I suppose.

I got a new job in Des Moines. I went to interview with a place in San Diego, but that's a pretty big story, so I'll try to write about it later. I was freaking out a bit about the air travel, but I did enough research before-hand and rushed right into it. Once I've done something once, I'm fine from then on. Oh, and the new job pays a bit more.

Now I want to find a place in des moines to live so I don't have to commute from Ames. It's boring and expensive.

My sister left her husband, got back together, and has since left him again. My loss of enthusiasm for chronicling their wedding seems justified in retrospect.

Today I detailed my car interior. Tomorrow I hope to wash it if the weather gets in the 50's and doesn't rain. Well, I might still wash it in the rain, I'll just dry it in the garage.

It bothers me how quickly people seem to find other people. Then I realize, oh yeah, they can go places and do things. That's how they meet people. I hope to do that someday too.

OkCupid sends me emails titled "New Users Near Ames!" (I live in Ames). The girls are ususally in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Minneapolis, Minnesota is not near Ames. Also, girls there are dumb.

Women

I fixate. Without distraction I sit here and I just focus on things. They go through my mind over and over and over again. It gets so bad that even things I do to distract myself like watching TV or a movie doesn't work; I tune it out. Eventually I find myself trying to distract myself by checking stuff out online. I have a few websites I visit and I will check them out over and over again, going from one to the next. Some times I don't even consciously do it. I'll close Strangetalk only to immediately wonder if someone said something recently and open it back up again. No, nobody did. And especially this time of night, almost 2am, there's nothing new to keep me distracted. I talk to a lot of people online. Now that I think about it, most are women. I wonder if that means something? Anyhow, they're all asleep now. I wonder what people really think about me, a lot. I made bread tonight. I got this cutesy little kit thing for xmas; it consisted of flour, yeast, etc. in a beer bottle. You just dump it into a bowl then add 1 beer (not lite), stir it up, and bake it. It tastes pretty good. I also made french onion soup. It's kinda bitter. maybe it needs some lemon juice to fix it up. Not sure. I went out to lunch with that awesome chick from Minnesota. I really wish some times that she'd just leave me alone. It's so hard for me to deal with these sorts of things. It's like I'm unable to do what I need or do what's right. Some times the right thing to do is run away. The more I think about it, the more I realize that everything Trisha said was right. Fixation. You know, as a white male aged 18-60, I'm supposed to be in charge of everything. I'm supposed to ahve all my shit together. It's all under control. Whose control? Not mine. I haven't been in charge of shit for a long time. I don't want someone to tell me it's all going to be alright. I want to be able to look at things and say that myself. I don't know if I have a point with all that. So I have an appointment with a shrink on the 17th. I really hope I can get some of this shit fixed. I really don't know what else to do but I really hope this isn't normal, to think like this. I really wish I could stop it from going and going. The static fire in the back of my mind is blazing. Could I harness this? Is there something I could be doing with this? I don't know. Maybe. But right now I'd like it to go away. I don't really like to go out and do new things. It's like something just forces me to say no or not to go. I don't understand it. I think it's what my mom does too. I don't want to turn into a shut-in. This happened to me before, in school. I had a dream this morning where I met a girl. It's so lonely. This is. Fuck it. No paragraphs this time. If I go back to edit it, there's too much temptation to remove shit.

Women

Good girl. I'll miss you.

Pets