I was pulling into my neighborhood yesterday and heard the dreaded sound of a flat tire. The tire had a slice on it’s sidewall on the INSIDE of the tire, which I don’t even understand. I pulled off to the side of the road to swap it out, jacked up the car, took off the lugs, and couldn’t get the wheel off. I called
hawkeye
The god of headlamps hates me
I have replaced one or both of the headlamps in my car several times (4 or more) in the past 365 days… Yesterday I replaced my passenger side low beam. This morning while the car was warming up, the drivers side low beam blinked out. What the fuck is going on?
Please, don’t talk about getting hand oil or residue on the bulb, I’m fully aware of that and quite careful.
Me == Jackass
Hawkeye has had some tar on his fenders for awhile now, and I finally purchased some tar and bug remover to get it off. The can required me to pry the lid off, a task intended for a screwdriver, but since I didn’t have any handy, and I am impatient, I chose to use a key for. And of course, I chose the tiniest, most fragile key I possessed for this task. My mail key snapped almost instantly, and we don’t have a spare… Fortunately, it was a fairly clean break and the hardware store was able to successfully copy the key. I had a spare made as well, banking on the fact that my stupidity knows no bounds.
My leg checkup the other day went as expected… Progress has been great, same ominous warnings as always (i.e. “you can’t do that much damage to your knee and not have negative repercussions later in life”, etc.) He asked to see me once a year to monitor my cartilage and joint spacing. He said that he expected it would take quite a while for this to catch up with me, and worst case if no medical advances were made in the next 10-20 years I would probably need a knee replacement. But I’ll hold out for bionic knee action or at a minimum human-animal hybrid cartilage.
This weekend will involve much laziness as well as some home improvement… In an effort to make the condo sellable/showable,
Headlight Jesus Didn’t Die for MY Sins!
I had the 3rd headlight in like 6 months die on me yesterday… I am very careful not to get oil from my fingers on the bulb, so I don’t know what’s causing it.. I changed brands this time, so hopefully that will make a difference….
In other Hawkeye news, I had to get his brake pads replaced on Saturday (the little scrap-y doohickey was doing it’s job, so I knew it was time). The mechanic said the rotors needed to be replaced too, and I trust this place a little bit, so I went with his opinion… Rotors for my car are apparently only $40/each so it’s not as bad as I expected. I even did the smart thing and drove over (the mechanic is in Cambridge) and walked back to the apartment, and then when they called saying it was done I walked back, which was about 4 miles total.
Bull
On Monday my drivers side windshield wiper stopped moving.. I stopped by the dealer first thing Tuesday morning to have it fixed, and it turns out the nut that holds it on to the motor came loose so all they had to do was realign it and retighten it.. But since they considered it an “adjustment” I had to pay for it (it wasn’t covered under warranty). Total bullshit.
Weekend et. al.
Had a fairly laid back weekend…. Friday night I just stayed home with
Sunday we caught The Matador with the film club, which was pretty funny. A bunch of us are headed to Rochester after work on Friday for the first FUMN in ages… I’m really looking forward to that (but not particularly looking forward to the drive…).
Fun With Snow and Parking
The 5-6 inch storm that hit Boston was a 12-14 inch storm in Chelmsford where I work. It was snowing when I woke up yesterday, and although it was enough to disrupt traffic, it wasn’t enough to keep me from trying to get into work. It took 1:45 to complete my 27 mile commute, most of that was getting through Brighton and Cambridge and to the highway. Looking out the window all day at work I knew the commute home was going to be a nightmare, and I was right.
I sat on Route 3 for about 45 minutes without moving at all… For some reason the plows intermittently plowed the right hand lane, which caused all kinds of traffic as people merged. This, combined with the usual traffic of people getting on 95 north (I go south) meant a nightmare commute. It ended up taking me about 2 hours to get to Alewife. I decided to park my car at Alewife over the weekend so I didn’t have to worry about the parking situation on the street here. It’s only 5 bucks a night, and since it is supposed to be above freezing the next few days I figured it was a small price to pay to wait out the snow. If the situation seems less grim here tomorrow I will probably go get it and bring it back. I took the Red Line to Harvard and then took the 86 bus to Brighton Center. My commute home ended up being 3 hours when I walked in the door to our apartment.
In a stunning bit of serendipity, I had decided to make a stew in the crock pot, which was a pretty comforting meal after such a cold day. I had put it in the pot before I left for work in the morning, so it was pretty much all ready to go when we got home… We just kinda chilled last night, both of us had pretty bad days..
Homosapiens have outgrown their use
Open request to Massachusetts: Fucking finish Route 3 already… The road is completely paved, the lines are painted, and the ramps have been renovated… What the shit are you still working on?
I’m finally shifting further into the “new stuff” here at work… My new cubicle is awesome… It’s a little bigger than usual (it’s at the end of a row, so I got the leftovers) and I’m in a row with all the CAD guys, so the lights above my cube are all turned off… I am not a big fan of fluorescent tubes, so this is a good thing… In addition to the lack of overhead light, this cave is in the middle of the building, so I get no windows either… I have mixed feelings about this… On one hand, I hate glare, OTOH, I have no idea what’s going on outside… There’s going to be a lot of upfront design and documentation to take care of before any code is written (or at least, any non-prototype code).
The aforementioned accident was no big deal… I tapped someone’s passenger side doors, nobody was hurt, and my car only got scraped up a bit… I was stopped at a stop sign, looked left and right, moved forward, and a car I didn’t see was moving in front of me from the left… I haven’t actually heard from the lady yet, she mentioned she was going to be out of town for awhile… Not sure if insurance is going to be involved, she said she would get an estimate first… It was a shitty way to start the Labor Day weekend, though… Other than the bad start, the trip was great… We didn’t hit traffic in either direction, and the weather was great.
CSH Welcome Back Weekend was a ton of fun… Met tons of new people and caught up with lots of old friends. Had far too much to drink Friday night (turns out I was correct to avoid Everclear all these years), enjoyed the picnic on Saturday once we finally figured out when it was, had great food all weekend, and perhaps signifying a trend, we didn’t encounter traffic in either direction. Even made it back in time for the Sunday Night Film Club’s screening of “Le Monde du Silence (The Silent World)”, which was surprisingly amazing… I was never into the Cousteau stuff when I was a kid, but this was really entertaining..
Ok, enough effluvia… This album (Busdriver’s “Fear of a Black Tangent”) is really good, you should check it out…