last week, i had to pay almost $700 for rear brakes since carmax decided when they “repaired” an issue with my rear brakes when i bought my truck, that they wouldn’t have to follow a TSB issued by dodge that would address the problem at its root and prevent its recurrence.

while it was up on the rack at midas (no way i’m touching drum brakes. too many little parts for me to lose) they pointed out that the front brakes were ready to go as well. i ordered some rotors and “premium semi-metallic pads” from brakeperformance.com and had them delivered tuesday. wednesday, i spent 6 hours replacing the rotors and pads. it shoulda been a straightforward thing since the truck is equipped with a floating rotor assembly (the rotors are held on by a bracket and the lug nuts) but since the truck spent its early life in colorado, the rotors were seized to the hubs. 3 hours of beating and spraying w/wd-40 freed them and i was able to get them replaced. stopping distance is much improved, as is noise. pedal feel kind of sucks but i can live with it so long as the truck stops straight and the wheels don’t fall off.

next on the list of things to do to the truck is a bedliner. i’m leaning towards a bedrug because it’s soft and chemical/dirt resistant and can be rinsed like anything else. i’ll plan on doing that sometime later this summer. after that, maybe i’ll do cat-back exhaust or something equally snazzy. maybe some new weathertech floormats if they ever sort out their production capacity issues.

i’ve started playing star trek online. i found that it’s a good trade-off between the sci-fi stuff i loved about EVE but without all the know-it-all assholes that have populated the EVE universe since mid-08. i don’t feel like i’m missing out if i don’t play for a few days and i can easily kill a couple hours doing space combat missions without really having to do any away team missions (they’re boring, derivative MMORPG crap for the most part)

it’s also a very pretty game.