“Police: Elizabeth man dies two days after shooting by Linden man who ... - MyCentralJersey.com” plus 4 more

Police: Elizabeth man dies two days after shooting by Linden man who ... - MyCentralJersey.com
Former radio man makes mid-life career change - Lexington Herald-Leader
Newark investigating string of arsons - Columbus Dispatch
How I Converted My Mercedes-Benz To Run On Veggie Oil - Popular Science
Last-resort auto insurance rates to rise Nov. 1 - Houston Chronicle

Police: Elizabeth man dies two days after shooting by Linden man who ... - MyCentralJersey.com

Posted: 28 Sep 2009 02:45 PM PDT

UNION COUNTY — An Elizabeth man shot last Thursday, allegedly by a man who committed suicide in Linden the following day, has died.

Officials said the men were apparently linked by a woman. The man shot in Elizabeth was currently dating a woman the Linden man had once dated.

Union County Prosecutor Theodore J. Romankow said Jesus Mastre, 35, of Elizabeth died 3:10 p.m. Saturday at University Hospital, Newark.

Mastre was at an auto repair business at 322 Second St., Elizabeth, around 4 p.m. Thursday, when Samuel Diaz, 39, of Linden entered and shot Mastre, Romankow said.

Mastre was taken to University Hospital, underwent surgery and had remained in critical condition until he died. Officials have not released details about his wounds.

An investigation by the Union County Homicide Task Force and Elizabeth Police Department revealed Diaz had once dated Mastre's girlfriend. After Mastre was shot, authorities quickly identified Diaz as the suspected shooter. Local police were asked to keep a look out for Diaz.

Around 8:30 a.m. Friday Linden officer Angel Padilla was driving a marked patrol car along Linden Avenue when he noticed a man walking south on that street who fit Diaz' description.

When Padilla turned his patrol car around to get a closer look, Diaz pulled out a handgun and fatally shot himself, police said. Diaz was taken to University Hospital where he was pronounced dead at 9:09 a.m. Friday.

Linden Police Chief Michael Boyle said Padilla never exchanged words with Diaz and was still in his car a distance away when Diaz shot himself. No one else was injured.

Ballistics tests performed over the weekend determined the bullet that kill Mastre and the one used in Diaz' suicide were fired from the same gun, Romankow said.

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Former radio man makes mid-life career change - Lexington Herald-Leader

Posted: 28 Sep 2009 02:24 PM PDT

Lindsey, 51, was living the new American nightmare: He was unemployed and no longer young, a person with a mortgage and children, whose skills had just been pronounced superfluous.

"If you never expected it, or even if you think it could happen, becoming unemployed stuns the senses," Lindsey wrote in a first-person piece in the Herald-Leader in January.

But Lindsey had saved enough to support himself through the next few difficult months as he looked for a new job both inside and outside radio.

And the months dragged on. One. Two. Five. Six.

He had moral support. He had friends.

One of those friends, Van Kirk, president of Auto Tech Service and Before You Buy Auto Inspections, told Lindsey not to worry about getting his car serviced. Until he got a new job, Kirk was going to help him out.

Lindsey had been taking his car to Kirk for 10 years; Kirk had been, in fact, a weekend radio personality at Lindsey's station as well as a customer. Says Lindsey: "I never drove away from here without total peace of mind."

Lindsey told Kirk that he was thinking of buying a small business. Kirk's response: "Why don't you just buy mine?"

So in late March, Kirk and Lindsey began talking about Kirk selling his car repair and inspection business to Lindsey. Lindsey is an enthusiastic non-mechanic. He tried changing his car's oil a few times, he says, and when the car rolled on top of him, he took it as a sign to leave such matters to professionals.

But Kirk, 54, who said he didn't start his first business until he was 40, wanted to spend more time working on Kirk Auto Group Inc., a business that concentrates on collision reconstruction, collector car appraisals and expert witness testimony.

And he saw Lindsey as an ace marketer for the auto repair business.

Kirk presented the idea of Lindsey taking over the business to his employees, whom he describes as the backbone of the organization. They approved.

"It's my baby," Kirk said. "I'm not going to give it away to someone who isn't going to take care of it."

Lindsey defines his new job as "a different kind of studio" and professes awe for the garage's professionals. "They're like surgeons," he said. "They talk, and they research, and they discuss. It just blows me away."

Lexington career counselor Carla Ockerman Hunter says that midcareer employees who lose jobs have to ask themselves where they fit into the new job landscape. She suggests they start with the federal Department of Labor Web site www.dol.gov which offers a free occupational handbook.

Hunter says people who find new jobs are, like Lindsey, "people who look at the possibilities, rather than the boundaries. They take what has happened to them ... and become very intentional about, 'What are my opportunities?' "

Lindsey says he's waking up earlier these days because he can't wait to get to work.

"You have to know that who you're dealing with is above reproach," he says. "I still very much see it through a customer's eyes."

And the new job is in fact bringing Lindsey back into the radio studio: He'll be appearing with Van Kirk on the radio show Under the Hood from noon to 2 p.m. Saturdays. The program is broadcast by Lindsey's old employer, WVLK.

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Newark investigating string of arsons - Columbus Dispatch

Posted: 28 Sep 2009 02:38 PM PDT

NEWARK, Ohio -- The Newark Fire Department and State Fire Marshal's office are asking for the public's help in catching a possible firebug in the city.

There have been eight building fires in Newark in less than two weeks. All are being investigated as arsons, a spokesman for the fire marshal's office said. The most recent occurred Sunday morning at an occupied business and apartment on Iron Avenue and vacant building on Buckingham Street.

Investigators have determined that at least six other fires in the city have been intentionally set since Sept. 17. Those all were at vacant buildings around the city, some of which were marked with large red X signs to warn firefighters that they were abandoned and unsafe to enter.

While the building on Iron Avenue was unoccupied at the time, it contained a large auto-repair shop normally open to the public. The shop was a total loss according to Assistant Fire Chief David Decker.

"We have a tremendous concern that we may have some copycat arsonists or some teenagers who think it's acceptable to burn a vacant or abandoned building," Decker said.

The Blue Ribbon Arson Committee has announced a $5,000 reward for information that leads to the identification of the person or people responsible for the fires.

Anyone with information is asked to call the state's investigation bureau at 800-598-2728, the Newark Fire Department at 740-364-9329 or Licking County Crime Stoppers at 740-349-6888.

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How I Converted My Mercedes-Benz To Run On Veggie Oil - Popular Science

Posted: 28 Sep 2009 12:00 PM PDT

Without any sort of approval from my girlfriend, I bought a 1984 diesel Mercedes-Benz through eBay. Two years later, the vehicle has provided me with nearly 10,000 miles of service on waste vegetable oil (WVO). The fuel may technically be free, but it has not come without a price. Here's how I converted my car, affectionately known as "Chance," to a veggie-oil roadster, and some of the hard-learned lessons I picked up along the way.

I started with a WVO kit from Frybrid. This company sells a rather high-end (~$2,000) setup for my model of Mercedes. The primary components are:

Heated fuel hoses (hose-in-hose)
20-gallon fuel tank (with heat-exchange)
Heat-exchanger under the hood
Heated fuel filter
Embedded computer to control dummy lights and switches between stock diesel tank and veggie oil tank based on radiator temperature

The idea is simple enough: Place a second fuel tank in the trunk and wait for the vegetable oil to reach a combustible temperature of 160°F. The temperature is important because vegetable oil is much thicker than diesel at room temperature, so you have to get the viscosity thin enough so the pumps and injectors can move it. By tapping into the car's radiator hoses, the engine heat can be transferred through heat exchanges to warm the vegetable oil. Frybrid provides a reasonable kit, but to be honest, I wouldn't do business with them again, as their customer service wasn't the best. My system came with a faulty temperature sensor that I was unable to get replaced.

My conversion took one week with the assistance of a professional diesel mechanic. It was a stressful process ripping apart the car and just hoping that everything would work in the end. Having a mechanic around to offer tips, tricks and tools, and to make minor repairs on the ancient vehicle, helped quite a bit. I don't recommend taking on your own conversion if you're not already well versed with the automotive world. The downside of having a mechanic around is the cost (~$1,500).

Here are a few other bits of advice for anyone else considering such a project.

Do not buy an old car.

I'm not kidding -- this was the single biggest mistake I made. Burning veggie oil is just a matter of heating and filtering, but keeping a 25-year-old car on the road is an entirely different challenge. If I were to do it again I would buy something made in the last 10 years that was well taken care of. I have spent just as much on repairs totally unrelated to the veggie oil as I did on the entire vehicle + conversion + installation. At this point the door locks do not work, the A/C and heating in the cabin are unreliable, the stereo is dead, and the odometer has been stuck at 86,000 miles probably sinces the early 1990s.

Oil collection and filtering is a skill.

I have an overpriced gear pump setup called the one shot. I like it because it's self-contained in a Pelican suitcase, and includes a high-quality filtration system. But getting clean oil that won't clog the vehicle's fuel filter every 300 miles takes more than just this hardware. I like to collect oil from a local restaurant and let it sit for 30 days. Then I run the oil through a highly technical denim filter (literally old jeans from the thrift store). Finally, I use my one-shot to filter the remaining particles down to two microns out of the oil.

Consider making biodiesel

Lots of folks mix up the difference between WVO and biodiesel. Biodiesel is made through a chemical process usually combining lye and methanol with waste vegetable oil that causes the glycerin to drop to the bottom and leaves the lighter biodiesel to be poured off the top. I purchase methanol from a local car-racing supply store and lye from a pet-food shop to make biodiesel at home. It costs me roughly a $1 per gallon and prevents me from having to purchase diesel fuel for the cars stock tank. Just be careful: Both methanol and lye are hazardous.

Making your own fuel and converting a car is an adventure, and that's really the primary reason to do it. Once you take into account the materials you need to buy and the time involved with maintenance and fuel production, I'm not sure that a real savings can be found. In my next post about Chance, I'll include some performance data looking at one year of driving on WVO.

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Last-resort auto insurance rates to rise Nov. 1 - Houston Chronicle

Posted: 28 Sep 2009 01:33 PM PDT

Drivers covered through the state's auto insurer of last resort will pay higher premiums starting Nov. 1.

The Texas Automobile Insurance Plan Association plans to increase rates statewide by an average of 2.2 percent.

The increase is needed because of the costs to repair damaged vehicles, physicians' fees and hospital services, said Jerry Johns, a spokesman for the association.

Also known as the "assigned auto insurance market," the association assigns drivers who can't get coverage to private companies. The companies issue policies providing basic liability insurance required by Texas law, as well as limited collision and personal injury protection.

Most drivers assigned through the association are considered high risk because of poor driving records or high claims rates.

TAIPA assigned 12,000 policies in 2008 and projects it will assign 10,000 this year, Johns said.

purva.patel@chron.com