Diary of a Wolfeman

Well, I got some work done on the car today, and we have progress. My girlfriend’s sister’s fiance is a mechanic, and he did me the favor of running the Beastie through his scanners to find out that there is a problem in the timing and I had a bad fuel injector.

No, boys and girls, those are not the ignition coils like I had expected. This is good, because those things are a bitch to replace.

Anywho, he replaced the injector for me and reset all the trouble codes in the car’s memory. I’ll drive it for a few days and see where that gets me – there’s still a chance something has gone wrong with one or two of the sensors, and I need to build some more symptomatic data before a diagnosis can be accurate.

The good news is that the car starts every time I turn the key again, but on the way home there was some sputtering and missing whenever I accelerated from a low RPM range. Hopefully this will smooth out as the car gains usage data and reprograms itself for the replaced injector.

Modern diagnostic bonuses aside, I still miss the days of simple engines.

Wow – basically a week since I’ve posted anything. I guess I’ve been busier than I thought.

Most of this has been due to work – amazing how having a full-time job cuts into my internet time. Hell, I’ve barely had time for lunch, most days. The rest of my free time is being divided up between kids and my lady. Things are going well on both fronts.

The Ratboy surprised me the other night with his first plans for moving out of the house; he hopes to implement them by this summer, when he will only be 17. I laid some conditions down that he must accomplish before I will give this serious consideration. Worst case scenario, he gets his grades straight. I love it when he hands me the means by which to chain him to his studies :)

The Pookster’s next school has pretty much been chosen as well. The EMC is a pitbull when it comes to planning our daughter’s future, so my part of this decision was largely to say “sounds good to me,” which it did. Having gone to magnet (magnate?) type schools herself, the EMC knows all the ins-n-outs of getting the best choices, so she is emminently qualified for the task.

The Little Black Beastie has once again validated my wish to return to a good, old-fashioned musclecar. She is in need of replacement ignition coils, which are far easier to purchase than they are to install. I don’t know how things are now, but in the late `80’s, Chevy didn’t know how to put a medium-sixed engine into a small space and still make it accessible for repair. The Book says it’s a 1.5 hour job, but I beat my head against the wall for two hours before calling it quits. There’s just too much junk in the way, and it really needs to be on a lift instead of jack stands. So, until I can scrape up some extra dough, I’ll just need to be cautious in how I drive it.

Unless, of course, anyone knows a mechanic with computer problems – I’d be happy to trade labor rates :)

This will be a recurring topic, so watch for it to be updated in the future. Here I will describe some of my fellow inmates at the assylum for your bemusement.

Note that aliases have been granted to protect the guilty.

At some point in our lives, usually not long after we leave home, we all end up in some sort of multiple-roomate situation. Here’s how The Townhouse went down.

Follow the bouncing toad… Read the rest of this entry »

Ok, there has been more debate over at Frizzen Sparks regarding the separation of the two, and that whole stupid sticker business. He got pissed for the opposite reason than I did, that the schools were teaching evolution as fact in the first place, and not theory. I agree that it should be taught as a theory, just less vehemently than he :)

Anywho, down in the comments for that post, a gent goes on a bit about how nearly all modern laws can find their roots in the Ten Commandments handed down to Moses by God. This is completely true.

However… Read the rest of this entry »

MSNBC reports on how a Federal judge has ruled those stupid stickers in Georgian biology textbooks stating that “evolution is just a theory” be removed.

ATLANTA – A federal judge Thursday ordered a suburban Atlanta school system to remove stickers from its high school biology textbooks that call evolution “a theory, not a fact,” saying the disclaimers are an unconstitutional endorsement of religion.

“By denigrating evolution, the school board appears to be endorsing the well-known prevailing alternative theory, creationism or variations thereof, even though the sticker does not specifically reference any alternative theories,” U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper said.

C’mon, folks. The Constitution grants us freedom of religion, which also grants us freedom from religion. Public schools should be science-based in their curriculum – this is the only way to ensure a fair education to everyone, regardless of their religion (or lack thereof). If you want your children to be educated in a religious manner, put them into a religious school.

This story reports that a New Jersey think tank has built the prototype of a smart gun, a weapon that uses biometric identifiers to decide whether or not you can use the weapon.

Since 1999, NJIT has spearheaded efforts to develop a personalized handgun that can instantly and reliably recognize one or more pre-programmed authorized users. To date, the New Jersey legislature has awarded NJIT $1.5 million for the project.

Corzine called the NJIT’s dynamic-grip technology cutting edge and said that it represented a really positive step forward in public safety. “NJIT is involved in important life-saving research,” he added. “There is no question that manufacturing handguns with advanced technology to limit operation can save lives. No child could pick up a gun and pull the trigger. The gun just won’t work, and that’s how it should be.”

This is gun-control I can stand behind 100%, since it effectively makes it impossible for someone to take your weapon and shoot you with it. Mind you, this does not eliminate the most effective means of gun safety, it merely supplements a solid education in gun use. While it’s nice that unrecognized users like your kids cannot use the gun, it is still best to educate them about gun safety and keep the weapon properly stored when not in use.

This will also put a small kink in the works for gun thieves, since they would have to take an additional step of disabling the biometric sensors before being able to use or sell the gun. If designed properly, the manufacturer could make this a time-consuming and expensive operation.

The Little Black Beastie has been not only running poorly lately, it has complained about starting at random intervals, requiring up to three attempts before it fires. The sounds it has made while running led me to believe something may be up with the ignition circuit, so I picked up a set of spark plugs for it today.

Wouldn’t you know it, but the first plug wire I removed came apart in my hand, the crimped end pulled right off. Yay.

Plug 1 came out looking used, but otherwise clean. 2 and 3 came out really dirty and/or oil-covered, and number 4 came out a bit less dirty. Obviously time to replace them eh? Me being me, I was able to repair the first plug wire, but heat damage indicators plus the repair I had to make tell me it’s time for a new set very soon. I’m thinking something in a performance product this time. I’m not looking forward to this, though, since the last time took me most of an afternoon. This model’s distributor is actually a crank sensor mounted on the bottom side of the engine at the crankshaft, which means each plug wire has to be threaded through the restraints from the top front of the engine to the bottom rear of the engine, with me on a creeper. Not my idea of fun.

I also need to look into replacing the valve cover gasket, as that’s where it looks like most of the oil found on plugs 2 & 3 came from. This is a fairly easy job, so no big deal, provided the part isn’t expensive.

After that, though, comes the transmission service the poor Beastie needs. That is definitely going to be on the expensive side of the line…

Wow, what a busy week.

It’s been different, this going back to work idea. I find I suddenly don’t have time during the day to take care of the little things, like trips to the bank or maybe some poking around under the hood of the car to figure out why it doesn’t start on the first try every so often. A small price to pay, I think, for the security of having a job.

We have been really busy, and I’ve consistently had three computers at a time on the bench in various stages of repair. Today I maxed out at 5, but it doesn’t really count since three were waiting for something else to happen. Today’s woes?

-Failed hard drive
-Failed IDE controller
-Lost IDE controller (I hate Dells)
-Data recovery
-Crashed system that turned into a new build because the guy got an iPod for Xmas, and his old system wouldn’t run iTunes

Plus I spent half the day trying to gt a pair of 200GB drives formatted. Ugh!

Still,better to be busy, and I enjoy the work. Except for dealing with blown-up Windoze installs, anyway. It amazes me the crap that people will install on their machines thinking it will be useful. That last Dell had so many toolbars on IE that there was almost no room for content when you finally got to a page. (Not to mention the 15 or so programs running in the systray…)

Today was the first day of my new job, and I am pleasantly surprised. It is a strange concept for me to be employed by a techie and working with other techies. Everything I learned about the operation today made perfect sense to me, and came directly from perfectly logical reasoning.

What a concept!

Sure, there are still a couple of illogical things (most of the techs are anti-AMD for some stupid reason…), but it was very nice to be able to simply step into a job role and be able to go almost directly to work.

No world is perfect though, I suppose. The first task set before me today was to call Symantec’s support line. It seems they have had a problem with their authentication code database, as several brand-new retail packages of theirs have come up with invalid authentication codes. I spent almost two hours on the phone with some jackass in India trying to get him to give me a new code or fix the one I had. His response, of course, was that he could ship me a new copy.

Uhm, fuck off? We retail your product, and you want my customer to wait another three days to get their computer back because you had an internal security problem? I don’t think so. No, you had better re-think that position, or I’ll see if MacAffee has actual Americans on the support line.

So how did my new year start? Rather grogily, as a friend from far away called me just as I was dropping off to sleep to wish me a Happy New Year. It’s ok, dear lady, I won’t hold you in violation of the usual “you had better be bleeding” rule ;)

I was awoken again several hours later with some disturbing news: BtFR called to ask me for a ride home – he had been on his way to go skiing with a friend when he had run afoul of a patch of ice and put his truck in the ditch. The bad news: truck is totaled. The good news: nothing worse than a bruise on either one of them, despite the fact he disobeyed the “shiny side up” rule. Three cheers for American safety engineering! Sure, he’s out some cash, but none of it will be spent on medical bills.

The rest of the day was just your typical routine – watched some cartoons with Pookie, read her a book or two, quick trip to the store for dinner fixin’s, spent some time in a book of my own while she played on the computer. All in all, not a bad day.

Tomorrow will be a bit of anticipation for me, as I start my new job on Monday, and I tend to spend the day before going through all the stuff I think I may need so as to not show up unprepared. Of course, I’ve been doing that for several months now, so this will mostly amount to ironing a shirt and re-checking everything else. Almost everything I will need already exists in my backpack: multi-bit screwdriver, software diagnostics kit, pen and paper for taking notes on their processes at the shop.

The pen and paper will get the most use, since the eventual point of hiring me is to get someone to mind the new store. So, they will be teching me the process they use for tagging incoming equipment to service, billing rates and practices and other administrivia. Then I leave at 1:30 or so for a 2:00 appointment with their HR outsourcer to sign all the paperwork and set up the drug screening (which I will pass).

The hardest part of the day will probably be getting to work less than a half-hour early – good thing I have a book to read ;)