Windmill Star Trail (Jan 4, 2015)

2013 Nissan Altima - Headlight Adjustment/Fix for Beam Height

Make your 2013/2014/2015 Nissan Altima safe to drive at night. Seeing 60 feet in front of you is bad enough at 30mph, but down right scary at 60+mph.

This is a very simple mod that anyone can do. (EDIT:  There are is a super easy way to make the adjustment from inside the engine bay if you have a long enough screwdriver. Find details below in the comments that others have left). If that doesnt work for you, you can try my method as a backup.)  I could not find any clear directions online (when I wrote this in 2014) on how to fix the Altima headlight problem (lights only shine 60 feet in front of the car), so I did some digging around on my car while changing the oil. At a minimum you will need a screwdriver, but a jack will make your life a lot easier. I have my tire removed for the picture, but when the car is jacked up it creates enough room that wheel removal isnt necessary. This process can also be used for changing the headlight bulbs too. (The oil filter has the worst location I have ever seen on any car.)

1. Jack either the passenger or driver side, so that it will open the wheel well up so you can get in there easier.

2. Remove the plastic clips on the wheel well cover with the screwdriver, so you can pull the wheel well cover down and get to the headlights in front of the wheel.

(The yellow markings are where the most important clips to remove are located)

3. Pull the wheel well cover down like in the photo below. It will bend so dont worry about breaking it.

4. To adjust the headlight beam, you need to turn the silver screw (circled in the photo below) in a counter-clockwise direction to raise it.

5. Lower your car and check your beam height. When you get it to where you want it, put the clips back in the wheel well and you are done.

McGavock Nissan Amarillo, the last place to buy a Nissan

My first dealings with McGavock Nissan in Amarillo is when we were looking for a new Altima. We test drove one on the used lot why the salesman telling me he could get me $500 for my car. I could have sold the engine alone for that much. Their prices were a couple grand above where they should be, so we found one elsewhere. Your typical shady dealership in my mind.

So we come to today. I needed a recall done so I thought I would get us a 2nd key, since we only had 1. I was quoted $100 for a new key when I set up the appointment along with having a recall done. Drop the car off and never hear anything about the cost or what it should be. The new keys are expensive, I know this before hand. The prices I had seen online never topped $200 to have it done, so I thought maybe they had a decent rate. WRONG!  When I come back a few hours later to pick it up, all I hear is that it will be $362. WHAT!?

Who and the hell quotes $100 and doesnt mention the other $262? The $100 is the labor cost alone (which is a rip in any profession for what was maybe 30 minutes of work at best). $13 for the blank key and $15 to cut it. $200 for the blank microchip part with $20 in tax.

Want to buy a Nissan and live in the TX Panhandle around Amarillo? Go elsewhere unless you want to deal with the worst dealerships around.

I am so sick of dishonest practices in this world. Dont want to get blasted on the internet, treat your customer right and I would be praising your work instead.

Happy Union, TX Tornado Timelapse Oct 12, 2012

Timelapsed video of the Happy Union, TX tornado (SE of Plainview) on Friday Oct 12, 2012. Textbook supercell mesocyclone evolution which produced atleast 3 tornadoes, 2 of which can be seen clearly on this video.

Google Adsense = Waste of Time

This is a warning for others, so you don't waste your time like I did (and many others have from the stories I have heard). I had been using Google AdSense for the past few years, but I had only accumulated a couple bucks from it, far from reaching the payout of $100. In the last year it had picked up to where the $100 payout was actually a possibility down the road (still at least a year away). I had spent a good amount of time placing the adds in good spots but not enough to annoy anyone. Always followed their rules and never clicked on on any of the ads on my own page intentionally or tried to get other people to click on them. I had also enabled the partnership program with YouTube, which I think most the revenue was coming from. It took forever to be accepted into that program. I had got most of the 200,000 views that I have now, before even being accepted. YouTube is flooded with videos now so my views have fell drastically from what I was doing in 2008 and 2009, by the thousands.

I got an alert the other day AdSense had locked my account because of invalid click activity, which killed my YouTube Partnership Program as well. I appealed to no avail and got no explanation. Too bad Google doesn't make it more clear they never intend to pay you a dime, so I could have spent that time on something more important. Considering my appeal was denied at 1:30am seems like an automatic denial if I have every seen one. I seriously doubt any human even looked at my case. I just wanted to say "Thanks Google", this blog is for you.

OK Tornadoes - March 18, 2012 chase summary

Last Sunday turned out to be a spectacular day. I had high hopes for this chase, and were exceeded with ease though our exact target area was a bust. Had multiple issues this day, like only having internet for about 10% of the time and my camera stopped recording in my dome halfway through the chase. Despite these problems it was still a great chase.

Started the day targeting the Eastern TX Panhandle, but focused more on the NE Panhandle. We set on I-40 for an hour or so, but eventually moved up to Pampa till about 4:45. After watching the stuff near Childress go for a couple hours finally gave up on the NE Panhandle ever firing and decided to head SE. I made a straight shot into OK to near Sayre and cut south in front of the slow moving storm cluster. Going this route instead of coming in from behind gave me one of the best storm structure shows of my life, which made my day even without the tornadoes. I set in the area around Willow, OK and let the storm come to me. Witnessed 3 tornadoes before the storm even got to my location and saw 2 more within the next 20 miles of driving on the clogged highway. Total tornadoes for the day is 5, but I could easily argue 7 or so not that it matters.

This day will not be topped anytime soon, because I have rarely seen structure like this that also produced so many tornadoes, even a quite large one you can see in the first photo below. As long as it took me to give up on the other target I really should not have any tornadoes to show for Sunday, but mother nature threw me a bone after my pathetic showing in 2011. I am going have another 25+ tornado year one way or another. I got close in 2010 with about 22 tornadoes, but have not topped 25 since 2007. An active year here in the Panhandles will be key to this happening though. With the recent rains it is not that far fetched anymore.

Timelapse video -

First chase of the year tomorrow

Technically it is not my first chase this year, but on a day that has any real potential it is. Will be deploying my reconfigured camera dome with a new HD camera tomorrow. Stream should be up around 4 to 5 tomorrow. Also this will be the first chase with the dome on my Saturn Ion. Think I got most the kinks out of the system on Wednesday so I am hoping it is all smooth sailing tomorrow and on Sunday.

Target area for tomorrow and Sunday is the Eastern Panhandles for now. Better shot of tornadoes is for Sunday, but will take anything at this point to start making up for my 2011 season.