Ahhhh.....

First things first: It's "Ebony." The car's name is Ebony. First suggested by Sydne Fredrickson, and later by Matt Sware (although he suggested the German version, Ebenholz), this name appears to have stuck. Here's a recent beauty shot, taken in front of John and Dee Zimmerman's house. Look how the early morning light plays over the complex surfaces of the body:

Make717 Hardware Caddy Part 4: Done!

The Make717 Hardware Caddies are done! All the heavy lifting of design and prototyping have been documented in part 1 (initial prototyping), part 2 (detailed instructions for mounting drawer slides on the plastic boxes) and part 3 (building the case), so now all that's left to do is celebrate the completion. Here are both caddies in the Make717 Innovation Center:

Welcome to the Fleet!

In my last couple of posts, I've been hinting at a new car in the fleet. I've been waiting for all the paperwork to be done before making it official on the blog, but today the title and registration paperwork was completed, and it's really ours: a 2007 BMW Z4 3.0si Coupe!

John and Emery Drive a Rocket

John Zimmerman and I had a very rare treat last Sunday - the chance to drive the brand-new, rare as hen's teeth Tesla Model X. Of course, Tesla is much in the news these days for making a success of selling vehicles that are electric only - no gas engine at all. The nephew of one of my choristers had managed to get his hands on one, and had kindly offered to let John and me drive it. It's a very nice ride, and driving it was a real treat!

POST 100: The GSG Story

Hard to believe that this modest blog has achieved the milestone of 100 posts! When it began, this was to be a log for a single project: my 1999 BMW Z3 Coupe. There are plenty of posts about that car, but after a while I began adding other projects, to the point that car-related posts are in a distinct minority.

But it occurred to me that I had never really done a post about the Grant St. Garage (the GSG among its friends and admirers). It has come a long way in a little over four years! So let me indulge myself by going down memory lane, and creating a single place to go for pictures that tell the story.

Upgrading an iPod

This little device is the iPod Mini, made in 2004 and 2005, with the huge-for-the-time capacity of 4 Gigabytes of storage. It has remained a popular model in part because it, among all the iPod variations, is the easiest to repair and upgrade. There were two "generations" of the Mini, and the second generation is preferable for its much longer battery life.

If you click that photo to enlarge it, it's easier to see on the screen that this is no longer a 4 GB Mini - now it has 128 GB!