Ides of March (2008) Update
My last post on this blag was on February 21st, about my new VPS hosting. While I am happy to report that I am still happy with them, I am dismayed at my lack of inspiration for updating here. Granted there are only a few people who read here - and perhaps none anymore - I am to be excused, but I have always found writing for the sake of writing to be therapeutic, and I am in need of therapy.
So, rather than make one big update, here's a bunch of little ones. If you squint your eyes, it sort of looks like one big post.
1) New Jeep - on Presidents Day I went out and leased (ick) a 2008 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon Unlimited. This is the first vehicle I have ever owned that has four nouns to describe it. In keeping with my theme of buying obnoxiously yellow Wranglers, this one is "Detonator Yellow." Why did I buy it? Because my old Grand Cherokee needed a lot of work, and given that my ability to collect a paycheck hinges on my 5h round trip commute, I need a reliable car.
The new Jeep.
The Grand Cherokee I traded in. I also called it "vehicle of impending doom." At least it looked good.
My much older 2004 Wrangler Rubicon, in "Solar Yellow."
It's a very nice Jeep. I don't think it's as good off-road as the '04 Rubicon I had, but it's far more comfortable on-road. I recently bought the MyGig navigation radio off eBay, which adds navigation as well as a 20GB hard drive for storing mp3's. This has cut down on my use of my iPhone as my primary music device (and my poor 30gb iPod video sits uncharged and unloved now.) So, now I'm car poor again. :/
2) VMWare Servers: I'm pretty amazed with the number of hits and comments to my VMWare Server blag. Thankfully it seems nobody is coming here for information on HPUX, which is relieving. Or, it could be that I'm the only person left in the world that has to use it. We're adding another 10 VMWare Servers to the mix. I've made up a nice kickstart to install CentOS 4.6, VMWare Server, VMWare MUI, and install the Dell OpenManage yum repository on the box. I'll probably post that soon.
3) Datacenter Migration: About two years ago we moved a bunch of gear from a colo to our new corporate headquarters. We built a (roughly) 25x25' room in which to store all of our server gear. We left a 1/2 rack at the colo to hold our DNS server and some other odds and ends, because we had a good deal on it. Fast forward a year -- the new server room is full, is drawing close to 200a of power, the a/c is tragically overutilized, one of our portable a/c units committed suicide, and the 1/2 rack at the colo has bloomed to a full rack of gear that is largely powered off. Since the old colo is out of space (and apparently getting out of the colo business anyway) we're moving to a new colo in Manhattan. This is a process that has been in the works for almost four months now, held up by ceaceless negotiations, a director level position above me being created, then the guy who filled it got fired, then we hired someone else, problems with leasing companies, arguments with how to transport gear to the new place, etc. Is it any wonder why I am jealous of the perl programmers we have now?
4) Philosophy: My new boss and I have some differing views of how the world and business works. It's a friendly disagreement. He lent me some Ayn Rand to read this weekend. I've heard plenty about her, but never got around to reading any yet. I'm sure I'll disagree. There's talk about starting an office book club. I think my first contribution to that will be some Hermann Hesse. That'll show 'em. (Note: after I finish Ayn Rand I'm going to start rereading some Hesse, perhaps in chronological order.)
5) RIP Julius Caesar: He got stabbed today, 2052 years ago.
Installing New Dash Speakers in a WJ Series Grand Cherokee
The stereo system in my 2002 Grand Cherokee Overland is pretty good (6 speaker, Infinity amplifier) but the dash tweeters are not protected from receiving full range sound from the amp, and frequently blow. Mine were blown, and one of the tweeters had a loose wire which meant that it kept cutting in and out. Since I spend ~5h a day in the Jeep when I go to New York, I need to have somewhat good sounding music to entertain myself.
The problem is, the factory location for the speakers are very shallow. Most aftermarket speakers will not fit without substantial effort. Blaupunkt used to make a 3.5" speaker (their Overdrive) series that fit perfectly, but it's been discontinued for several years. Given that there is no good option that doesn't require cutting and trimming, I went to Best Buy and picked up a pair of Infinity Reference 3.5" speakers that were the closest to the depth of the factory speakers.
This project was a pain -- it's hard to get tools in the tight space between the speaker location and the windshield. There's a seller on ebay that sells replacement speakers that supposedly fit perfectly, and include a capacitor to block the bass frequencies that blow the factory speakers. That may be a better way to go, unless you're an audiophile.
If you are going to replace the speakers in your Grand Cherokee, and I feel that there will be a 100% failure rate with the factory speakers eventually, this will give you an idea of what you're up against. It took me about 3 hours to do, but I stopped for lunch, and ran in and out to get tools several times.
First off, you're going to want to have a right angle philips screwdriver, soldering iron, wire strippers, wire cutters, knife (I used a small Gerber pocket knife), and either some sort of snips or a Dremel.
Here's the new speaker, compared to the old one. You can already see that it's bigger. The mounting holes are not going to line up.
The new speaker. Note the rubber surround, and the higher quality cone. It's also got an integrated tweeter.
The old speaker.
Start by pulling the trim panel that covers both speakers and defroster out. It's clipped in the middle and the edges. Be careful pulling it out. Once it's removed, you can see the speakers mounted in their factory locations.
The drivers side speaker.
The passenger side with the speaker removed. The white molex connector carries the audio to the speaker. The speaker has a pigtail and a connector that plugs into that.
The drivers side speaker.
Here's the after effects of me cutting and trimming. There's a rubber and vinyl pad that runs the length of the dash that provides sound insulation from the firewall. It's about 1/4" thick, and will need to be trimmed. Get yourself a knife and cut it -- be prepared, you're going to cut out a lot. I also cut one of the old mounting holes and the plastic around it. I also trimmed the plastic near the dash for the speaker basket to fit. When the speaker is installed, the magnet will end up resting on the firewall and it will stick up a bit. There's no way to make it fit better without removing metal, which is not something I was prepared to do.The drivers side is nearly the same. I chose to cut the old mounting hole on the right side of the speaker.
You'll want to snip the wires from the old speakers and solder them to the new ones. This will let you plug into the factory wiring harness. If you buy your speakers from Crutchfield, they should come with a wiring adapter that will just slide on the new speakers and plug into the factory wiring harness.
Despite the new speakers sticking up a bit, it did not interfere with the trim panel when I reinstalled it. Without opening the panel up, nobody would know that the speakers have been replaced. Obviously Infinity Reference 3.5" speakers are not theft magnets, but for me it's important to keep the stock look. Underneath the panel it's a horror show of dremeled and cut plastic, but with the panel on it's all puppy dogs and rainbows.
The Infinity speakers came with a pair of capacitors to block the low frequency sounds that the stock amp will produce. I ended up not installing these, since I mistakenly saw the capacitor mounded on the speaker that protects the tweeter and thought it worked for the entire speaker. What I think I may do is install the caps closer to the amp under the rear seat, and figure out a nice way of mounting them securely. The caps are fairly large, and thinking about it, I don't think the dash is going to be the friendliest place for them. Another alternative for me would be to get an active crossover and mount it near the amp. Since I don't crank the stereo more than 1/3 of the way I don't think I have to worry too much for now, but it's something I'll want to look at in the future.
It seems that Chrysler/Infinity made some boneheaded mistakes when they designed this system. First, the front door speakers are one way 6x9's producing all of the bass, and 3.5" speakers in the dash producing the midbass and highs. They could have easily been two way 6x9's producing bass and mid-bass, and then mount a small (1-1.5") dedicated tweeter in the dash, like everybody else does. Secondly, the factory amp really should have some sort of built in crossover to protect the speakers.
The end result is that I now have un-blown speakers that work all of the time. The sound is a bit bright, but I think it will just be a matter of me getting used to it and adjusting the treble until I am happy.
Another thing that would probably have worked better, and would have resulted in less hacking would be to disconnect the dash speakers and get a nice set of component speakers for the front doors.