Entries Tagged 'Life' ↓

Ever read a book that was so good you felt like you didn’t want to read any more books anymore?

As if there was no other book that could possibly meet the standards of the one that you just read?

Left: toilets. Right: sinks.

Well, folks, just wanted to tell you about plungin’ toilets.  No, no — I know you probably don’t wanna hear about this, but it’s really important.

See the plunger on the left?  That’s for a toilet.

See the one on the right?  That’s for a sink.

Use the right one for the right job, or else you’ll look like a dumbass. -_-’

I got a flat tire going home on Friday of last week (well, it was more like I had a tire explode on me…), and had to put on my little wimpy space-saver spare in a parking lot. (It was a church parking lot, too!)

So, I get online and order up some tires real quick from TireRack.com, get ‘em shipped to my house, and wait until today to put them on my rims — I just take the rims off the car and bring them up to the tire shop directly, since I hate anyone else driving my car.

Well, they were real busy there, so the guy just told me to leave my rims and the new tires there, and I could come back in about an hour and pick them up. Well, I come back and they’re not done with them yet, so I wait around for about another hour or so (it’s a Saturday, so they were real busy, and I overheard the manager guy saying he had someone quit just that morning), and then the guy tells me to pull my car around so he can give me the the newly mounted tires.

Well, to make a long story short, he didn’t make me pay anything! Yay! Said he felt bad that it took so long — it’s not a tiny gesture, either, since it’s like $40 to mount two tires at this particular place (they do a good job, usually).

I won’t say what the guy’s name was, so he won’t get in trouble or anything, but it makes me feel good to know that there’s still people like that around — lets me know that I can bring my car there in the future and not feel bad about it. Repeat business, and all that.

Sleep sleep sleep.

Drive drive drive.

…

Eat eat eat.

Do you realize that for the past year and a half I’ve had two peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches every day for lunch?

What the hell is that doing to my system? Probably nothing. It’s very bland food, so it’s probably not having an effect one way or the other — kinda like if I ate rice or jello every day for years as well.

I eat it because it’s cheap and it doesn’t go bad. (I don’t know how the people that I work with can eat out every day for like $10 a pop. That’s like $50 a week. $200 a _month_. Just on their lunches. In a month, for my lunches, I spend about $20.)

Walk walk walk.

I walk about a mile every day just walking between where I work and where I park my car.

Climb climb climb.

I climb up eight floors worth of stairs because I don’t like elevators. The people really cram into them in the morning. Also, it’s good exercise, though during the summers it can get a bit hot walking up them.

Stare stare stare.

I stare at a computer screen almost 10 hours a day. Thank god it’s an LCD screen or else my eyes would be shot by now.

Read read read.

I read a lot at work, conicidentally enough, to give my eyes a break from the screen.

Earn earn earn.

And then I get paid and it’s all worth it.

Bills bills bills.

And then I wonder where all the money went.

This weekend I managed to:

* Fix my cellphone with a $20 part from Ebay;

* Perform a cooling system flush on my ‘89 Mustang;

* Install “Ubuntu 7.10″:http://ubuntu.com on our three laptops;

The first one of those was so easy it was freaky, even though Alltel had said that the phone wouldn’t be “cost effective” to fix. Well, stuff it up your ass, Alltel — I took care of it myself.

The second one of those was fairly easy, but it took two hours and got me covered in oil (don’t ask) and antifreeze. Though, it did seem to make my car run a *lot* cooler afterwards.

The third one of those worked fine on everyone else’s laptops — except for mine! Well, mine is the oldest and most set in its ways, and here I came along wanting to update its operating system — it’s probably being ornery just to show me that sometimes the latest versions of things aren’t always necessary. Duly noted.

Yep. A completely incongruous series of events which led to its poor little LCD screen being smashed upon my knee.

First, I was wearing a pair of pants that I had that couldn’t use the side pockets on — the pockets were too small (what the hell were they good for then, eh?), and couldn’t be used for anything more than my pair of keys.

Thankfully (or not), there was little “mid” pocket on them, about halfway down the leg that had a zipper and everything — perfect for those items that are too big to put in your side pockets, right? So, I stick my cell phone in there and forget about it. It’s sitting around banging against my knee when I walk, but at least it’s not falling out of my pocket and getting lost.

Well, later on Nina and I go to my sister’s house for supper (she was cooking Italian sausage soup that night, so at least that part of the night was good), and she’s showing us the new bed that her and my brother-in-law had recently got, and she’s all like, “Jump up and see what it feels like,” and I jump up on it, knees first like an idiot, and then Crack! it’s broke.

I knew just from the way the “crack” felt that it was broke. I pull it out of the pocket and the LDC screen looks like someone’s spilled chemicals inside it — those things look weird when they break, I’ll tell you what.

Luckily enough for me, my phone still worked — I just couldn’t see anything on the screen. Text messaging is impossible, of course, but at least it still functions as a phone.

And that’s that. What do I do? I bought it outright so that I didn’t have to get a 2-year contract with my cellphone company (almost unheard of where I live), and I don’t have the money to pay full price for a new one right now. So, I thought about repairing it myself.

I actually wanted to give Alltel a chance to make some money (why the hell not — they’re one of the better cell phone companies in America), so I took it up to them to ask if they could fix it. I was willing to pay a little bit more for “quality” service from them, if they could fix it immediately.

Well, I found out that not only do they not repair cell phones at the local Alltel shop where I live, but that they couldn’t even send off for the phone to be fixed — they said that it wouldn’t be “cost effective.”

Read that as: “We’re selling these phones to you at a 1000% markup — you’re paying $300 for something that cost us like $30. Why the hell do we want to repair it? Just buy a new one.”

Sorry, Alltel — no can do.

So, I go on Ebay and find a new LCD screen for $20. Hell, it’s worth it — even if it doesn’t work and I have to get a new cell phone in the end, I’m only out $20.

Had a nice weekend.

Went to see “Henry Rollins”:http://henryrollins.com Thursday night — got my white car driving again Friday night.

Finally did an oil change on the Bug Saturday night — finally played WoW again Sunday night.

“Robert Jordan died today”:http://www.dragonmount.com/RobertJordan/. Word is that the final book in the Wheel of Time series will still be released, since there’s quite a bit of unpublished material that he had lying around.

Apparently, he was writing (or at least dictating) up until the very end.

Well, there’s a new addition to my family of computers — it’s my wife’s new portable laptop, Henry. (You just _always_ have to name computers — if you don’t, it’s bad luck! Kinda like with ships.)

!http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1157/1342842965_7bb70e7705_m.jpg!

Nina needed a slightly smaller laptop so that she could sometimes bring it to school — eh, who am I kidding? _Slightly_ smaller? No insult meant to the laptops we already had, but I’m firmly convinced that they were never meant to be portable — just _smaller_ than desktops. My personal laptop and hers are 15-in *8 lbs.* _monsters_, from about four or five years ago.

Now, this nice model (the Compaq Evo N410c), is from that era too, but for its time it was made with a completely different paradigm — it’s only 0.9 inches thick, weighs slightly less than 3.5 lbs, and is only 12 inches, diagonally.

…and I got it all, used, on “Ebay”:http://ebay.com, for less than what people pay for iPods.

…_used_ iPods.

We’re running “Ubuntu 7.04″:http://ubuntu.com on there right now, with all the bells, whistles, and fancy effects, and it’s more than capable of running it (3D-emulation worked right away). Not only that, but the installation was slick as shit, too — I’ve never had one run more smoothly than it did with Henry. Even the bonus wireless card that the seller included (one with a Prism GT chipset) worked right away, with absolutely no tweaking needed whatsoever…

The battery seems to be quite old, though (laptop batteries _never_ last very long), so I’ve ordered a new one that should be here soon.

I’ve been fiddling with my cars lately, too, in various efforts to fix them and tune them up.

The Beetle was brought to Montgomery in the guise of performing a break-light switch recall, and whilst it was there, I told them about a “funny vibration” we had been hearing for a while — I cringed the entire time I did this, knowing that, if it turned out to be something under warranty, the examination cost (about $70) would be covered, but if it wasn’t covered under the warranty, I had to fork over the dough.

Well, turned out the noise, which I had been thinking was an exhaust leak and malfunction, turned out to be a rear wheel bearing that was slowly wearing out — oops (it was my second guess, to tell you the truth). However, it’s covered under the warranty! Yeah!

My other cars have not faired so well. Ever since doing an oil change on my white Mustang (and disconnecting the battery so that I could clean off the terminals), it’s been shutting off at weird times and sometimes refusing to start up at all. I actually got a chance to check around the engine compartment today, and during the course of my examination, I decided to pull one of the spark plug boots off (just to take a random look)… and the spark plug boot fell apart in my hand, with most of it still remaining on the spark plug.

Yeah… I don’t know if that’s what had been originally causing my problem, but I’m sure it doesn’t help.

My purple Mustang has been having problems of its own, as well. It’s been “pinging” (a sound caused by ill-timed detonation of the fuel inside the cylinder) for a while now, but it’s gotten worse. I bought a “timing gun”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timing_light about a year ago with the intention of fixing the timing on my purple Mustang (if it needed it), but I couldn’t figure out how to use it with my car (the front engine compartment is very, _very_ cramped).

Well, today, a year’s gone past, and I’ve since figured out how — by moving my upper radiator hose two inches to the left.

That’s it. Why the hell couldn’t I have figured that out sooner?!? Now, to figure out what the hell I’m looking at and how to fix it!

It was this one and the one from Consumer Reports (Mean Failure Time — 100 Watt Challenge!) that had me laughing out loud.