Oh yeah, I remember that. Bono's ego has always entered the room long before his body. He got all political last night and it was interesting watching the crowd react. I know he's done a ton for raising awareness on global issues, but last night it felt like he'd crossed the line between "raising awareness" and "exploiting for personal gain".

I'll just stop there before I go into full rant mode.

 

Actors/Musicians and political types all fall into the same boat.
They lie and tell stories. What ever it takes to may the public happy.

End minor rant.

 

Agreed...it feeds their egos and pockets.

On a happier note, I had some of those Tamales tonight from Yakima (see my post a couple of Friday's ago). I highly recommend them. The masa was amazing. The pulled pork was nicely seasoned and not mushy. The asparagus and cheese needed salt and pepper, but were still good. Can't wait to try the chicken.

Our annual trips to Walla Walla are being moved to a new venue, but anytime I pass thru The Yak I'm bringing a cooler and stocking up.

 

I'm thrilled to have garage space to do things myself, but these first time jobs sure keep throwing curveballs at me lol. The Ex is currently on jack stands in the garage because I'm doing the Power Stop brakes and Russell steel braided brake hoses and the front assembly has a little more to it than 4x4s because the rotor has the wheel bearings and seals built into it and I bent the inner seal enough while removing it that it is no longer reusable. O'Reillys wanted $40 a pop for the Motorcraft seals, so I Amazon Prime'd two for $10 each, but that leaves me with a postponed brake job for two days lol. I'd probably disgust a seasoned mechanic, but in a strange way it's fun learning this stuff first hand and fixing my mistakes. Next time around ill know what to do and what not to do. I still haven't taken the time to try to extract that coil pack bolt that I broke a few weekends ago, but I've got the stuff to do it now and already got a replacement bolt.

 

Nice job. It's fun reading about your repairs, thanks for posting.

Funny you mention Motorcraft parts on Amazon. I started a "Ford OEM Parts" folder there last month where I save parts that I find. So much easier and cheaper, especially if you watch the price fluctuations and buy at the bottom.

 

There is the low trust factor for the reason I don't like Amazon and Ebay
for critical parts. But then again I don't mind spending less on some things.

 

Understandable, we shall soon see how Amazon matches up with sources for this specific Motorcraft part. My trust factor goes down when places like O'Reilly mark up a part 400%. $40 for that seal should be considered highway robbery.
Rockauto has the same seal, same PN for $9 each, so at least one trusted source doesn't have their head up their rear end. I just didn't want to wait for shipping since I get free two-day from Amazon Prime.

 

It seems to be the 3rd party sellers on Amazon that really cause the issue with counterfeits.

 

Interestingly based on what I can find, these seals are sold by Amazon LLC and come with the Motorcraft 12,000 mile or 12 month warranty for Ford/Lincoln/Mercury applications. Will be interesting to compare the part to the OEMs I pulled off the Ex.

 

Man, I love Amazon. Never had a problem with counterfeit parts, but I do try to watch for those.

I tried buying shoes this week. Not holding my breath

 

Seems that Microsoft has taken a stand on this and they a
have supplied an update for XP and up.

Here is a link to the thread.
https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...ew-update.html

From the thread you can get the link to the article with some info on the possible why
and a direct link to MS for the updates.

 

You know it's bad when we have to go back and patch stuff we've stopped supporting... This is case and point why I cringe when people tell me they refuse to install updates on their computers.

Details for any other nerds here, best I can put together from the bulletins and information I have at my disposal:
Microsoft patched this vulnerability back on March 14th. The only systems at risk are systems that have not taken the March 14th update yet. Reasons for not being protected from this virus lay almost entirely with system admins and device owners who have disabled automatic updates to their Windows PCs, or admins/owners who prefer to keep running Windows XP even though Microsoft has stopped actively supporting XP. The virus is only designed to attack Windows 7 operating systems and older (XP, Vista, Server 2008, etc.) Windows 10 PCs are not being affected by this specific virus. The following link is the technical bulletin detailing this particular virus:
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/...-date-systems/

Moral of the story (I tell people this all the time): Keep your computers frequently backed up to a separate hard drive and always, always, always keep your Windows operating systems up to date.

I know no matter how many times I tell people that, most will still not listen. <sigh> Oh well, just another day in the life of a computer guy. =P

I can't give Sean any reps, so cheers!

 

Silly I know and I still do it.
XP on 2 active machines but they don't get any Emails of do any surfing.
And the 2 Laptops are for IDS. Old ver that tends to be in love with XP.

The Mac right now is out of date do to machine capacity. You would think
that I would have it already moved onto the new one but I am slow. I
just have too much crap that I want to access and a few programs that Apple
broke. Bad Apple,Bad Apple.

 

I can't imagine why one still needs to run XP, but I work at Boeing and there was some panic a few years ago when Microsoft stopped supporting that OS. Just shows you how ingrained this stuff gets into our life. I've got a MacBook Pro that's almost 7 years old and it just stopped getting updates. I've replaced the hard drive once, but otherwise it purrs like a kitten. Kinda sucks having to buy a new one, especially since the specs on the MacBook Airs are the same as my old Pro. Goofy Sheet.

I think I talked the wife into getting a PC laptop "for the kids". Now I can INOP all the BS chimes and crap Ford programs on the new trucks.

What are everyone's plans for the weekend? I'm going to put some miles on the truck...

 

Now to get this dern assembly put back together so I can do the other three lol