Road Trip: Vinyl Fever

My first official act of 2018: made a store run with a vinyl tablecloth frozen to the roof of my car.

I'm betting none of you can say that.

Why? The car's sunroof leaks. I've been using a canvas tarp to cover it when it rains...BUT...if it rains hard or long enough, the canvas gets saturated with water and basically lets it through--and the sunroof leaks anyway.

So I got the vinyl to lay under the tarp. It's got a fleece lining so the vinyl doesn't slip. When I covered the car yesterday, it had already been drizzling. Wet roof, now close to freezing, and now there's a plastic tablecloth frozen to the car.

Stupid thing stayed there all the way to the store and back. I had to pry it loose from the windshield and fold that one little section back, but other than having it flapping like an idiot flag all the way there and back, the tablecloth didn't budge. No way I'm going to try peeling it off. With my luck, it'd take the paint with it.

==

Addendum:
Looks like the thing's staying frozen until at least tomorrow. It barely broke 33, is already 32 again just at dusk.

==

Jan. 2: Still there. At least now it's 41F. But at least my interior stayed dry.

Fun With your CPAP...

It's forcing a constant stream of air into your nose.

You quickly learn to close the soft palate at the back of your mouth.

If you don't do that and your mouth is closed, you get a mouthful of air and look like Dizzy Gillespie blowing his horn.

If your mouth is open, the air just comes out there (path of least resistance). This is why people who sleep and/or breathe through their mouth get a different mask from the "elephant" one I got.

Here's the fun: if you know how to play trumpet or other brass instruments, you know how to "buzz" your lips together. With a CPAP, you get infinite sustain on that note!

If you know how to whistle, you don't even have to blow. Just put your lips together and let the ol' Snortmaster 3000 do it for you! Look Out, Roger Whittaker!

It's low pressure air, so you're not going to be very loud.

But the techs who look at your machine's data stream later might tattle to your doctor about you not breathing properly while you sleep.

==

Something to keep in mind: careful where you put the machine. It "breathes" the same air you do. So if you have it in, say, a bad spot near your bed and you (for example) break wind, that stupid thing will draw it in, filter it, and blow it up your damn nose.

Funny-not funny.

The most "Florida" encounter I've had...

Just had a Florida animal encounter.

Went to the store. As I'm shutting the car door, I see one of our big, brown roaches crawling along the side window frame toward me. I reached out right-handed and flicked it off the car to land maybe 10 feet away, in the parking lot.

A smarter creature would have pondered, turned, and scuttled off away from me.

Nope; the little shit revved up all 6 legs and came running at me like Barney Fife on a mission--"You wait right there! I'm gonna give you what-for! These legs are certified lethal weapons!"

He covered that 10 feet in moments, like a little dragster. Pretty impressive.

So I stepped on him. Self-defense. =P

Women & Blacks & Hank!, oh my...

Every once in awhile I wonder how Hank! is doing without my stepfather around to pull his nuts out of the fire. Has he learned to take responsibility for himself? Or has he found someone else to protect him from the consequences of his actions?

Back in the late '70s, Hank! was busted for shoplifting. He was caught with socks in his back pocket.

Socks. He stole socks?!

Well, I'm one to mock...I got busted stealing a freaking dollar penlight. Without batteries.

The store manager called the cops and the Old Man, who went to the store and did a little song and dance--not the first, not the last--to get his boy off the hook. Can't have him going to jail or having a record or having to pay for his crime.

Maybe somewhere there's a list. Just for the sake of blogging, I wish I'd made up a scorecard, but I stayed away from Hank! as much as possible. Guy's a dick. He went from being a shoplifting dick to a drinking dick to a drunk-driving dick to a paranoid psychotic drunk-driving dick who walked along the right-of-way in front of his mother's house holding either a shotgun or a rifle. Screamed at passers-by to get off his street. People out for a walk would cross the street before passing that house.

The neighborhood adored him.

Then--early '90s--he became a drunk-driving dick who had a car wreck that landed him in jail. There were injuries. He was facing 30 days in jail. Actual consequences loomed in his future!

...and step-pops pulled some Fred Astaire magic, that old song and dance, and Hank! ended up with 6 months' house arrest instead. In our house.

If I didn't like Hank!, my mother loathed and feared him, especially after he pushed her into a wall because she was in his way. The Old Man took Hank!'s shotgun and rifle away, so Hank! wandered around the yard with a sledgehammer instead. I hid it, so he toted a jack handle instead.

The neighborhood--different neighborhood--adored him, especially with his racist screaming at the black family next door and his more mundane screaming at the white folks.

His own mother stopped letting him stay with her, so he bounced from our house to his siter's to his son's and back, never actually welcome, only endured.

I learned something the day the old man danced to get Hank! house arrest instead of jail.

I learned that "women and n*ggers" were responsible for Hank!'s plight.

The Old Man came home from the court hearing ranting that "one day I'm going to make it my business to get even with all the women and n*ggers!"

Amazing!

The past few weeks, I've amused myself wondering what the mechanism for this vast conspiracy against poor, much-maligned Hank! might be, and which group, for example, bears responsibility for which problems in Hank!'s life.

Was it the women, the blacks, or both who forced Hank! to drink?

Which group made him drive? Was it women who engineered the traffic "accident" that brought down this mighty Titan? Black people who conspired to get him arrested yet again?

Thunderstorm kills the TV? WOMEN!

Sportsball team loses the game? BLACKS! GAWDAMMIT!



I don't really have an ending for this post, other than to say I'm glad I don't share blood with him. I can't get too smug about that, though, since I did a little digging into my birth family and found one habitual offender who could well be the Hank! of that family. Felony battery, burglary, criminal mischief, larceny, prison time, five different mug shots since 2003. Makes Hank! look like an amateur.

HAPPY 2015th BIRTHDAY, 'MURKA!!

pew pew, pew pew pew.

Pic of the Day: The Internet Loves Us

The Facebook Oracle offered this to us this day; the first "Related" link is comedy gold:

Song of the Day: Spring is Here, Suh-puh-Ring is Here!...

...and here's the ever-brilliant Tom Lehrer's "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park"

Song of the Day: Horrible 'O Holy Night'

Because someone somewhere played "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" and that just deserves a nuclear response.



Enjoy :)

X-11: In Which I Accidentally Make Things Better...

It's been a few months since I inconvenienced an a-hole by being unable to start my car.

I still haven't figured out what caused the problem. Haven't been able to reproduce the problem since then. In the last month, as a matter of fact, it seems like I fixed the supposed engine/battery/starter problem by replacing an exhaust hanger.

It'd be pretty damn cool if that's what happened.

About 6 weeks ago the car's rearmost exhaust hanger failed. I was in traffic, heard a CLUNK and clanging, heard the catalytic converter grinding as I pulled into the driveway. When I looked under, the converter and the outlet pipe leading to the muffler were a few inches off the ground. The muffler itself was dangling at a 45 degree angle, the exhaust tip nearly touching dirt.

I dug through my camera box. That's not as random as it might sound.

Back in 2008, I bought a few sets of exhaust hanger straps, U-bolts, and a mess of 1/4"-20 screws for making lightweight camera rigs. One of the hangers and U-bolts made a good clamping mount for a bicycle handlebar. I'd been planning to use that on one of the "hike & bike" rides out to Fort Pickens.

All the hangers and parts were in a bag. Once I sorted through it all, I had three complete hangers ready to go. Free is better than shopping for all new stuff.

It took a few more days to get my legs convinced to let me go out (all the going up and down stairs in the cellar the day I picked the spare X-11 engine off the back of the Tracker messed up my left knee). Took half an hour to get one of the hangers modified to fit the car's factory hanger bracket.

Man, the muffler is a mess. When I first got the car nearly 5 years ago, the thing seemed solid. Some burn-throughs in places, probably from too-rich, too-hot exhaust. One scary detail: the right rear bumper guard, a piece of hard black rubber, is partly melted. It sits several inches above the exhaust tip. Looks like there was a hell of a flaming exhaust problem at one point. Yikes.

Anyway, the muffler's belly is torn open and it's spilling rusty muffler guts everywhere. Got a replacement on the way, nice and shiny and keeping its guts inside.

Back to that hanger. Some previous owner had rigged up a hose clamp to replace the rusted/broken original strap. The hose clamp finally gave up, snapped, and dropped another project in my lap. A freaking hose clamp.

Took another couple of days, but I went back out to replace the other two hangers, certain that they were all snapped, given how low the exhaust was hanging. Hell, I've been needing to replace them since I got the car. Knew it, kept putting it off. Even knew about that stupid hose clamp. Hitting a speed bump or something at the wrong angle would get me a loud, embarrassing grinding racket or even a momentarily much louder exhaust as the spring joint at the front end was pulled open. Fun, fun, fun!

Didn't have to worry. Middle hanger was fine, next one needed to be adjusted. And that brings us to the accidental making things better. For the past year or so, I've had some random problems with a crappy idle after driving long enough to get the car warmed up, going into a store, and trying to drive it after letting it sit hot for a few minutes. More recently, it was the starting issue, where the hot engine seemed to get harder to turn over (or the engine heat was overloading the starter).

Ever since I tightened up the exhaust, though, no trouble. Engine cranks and starts more easily cold or hot. No trouble restarting even after a long drive. The only thing that makes sense is that the drooping exhaust was causing a restriction that kept the engine from breathing properly.

Saved myself the cost and effort of replacing the starter, and the disappointment of realizing that the starter wasn't the problem. What the hell, an accidental fix still counts.

Pic of the Day: Bagged a Deer!

It happened in April of '07, so it might have been out of season.

I was out on a delivery run and one of the shops was throwing this monster away. I nabbed it to put into storage for a few months, thinking that Toys for Tots would be getting one big donation from me that year.

When I got back to the store, I left it on the back of the truck. Went inside and told everyone I'd hit a deer. Broke its leg and neck.

Made it easier to fit into the Tracker, though!

I don't know whether the thing ever made it to a kid once I dropped it off at Goodwill. If not, I don't want to know. I'd rather think that there's a kid somewhere with a big, dopey red-nosed Rudolph to play with.

Picture of the Day: Please Don't Feed the Scientists

I don't like zoos, though I can understand the need for keeping an injured animal in a safe place if it can't be returned to the wild.

I wonder what happened to these scientists. I hope the California Academy of Sciences has them properly tagged, in case they get out of their cage. We all know how dangerous wild, roaming scientists can be.

Pretty neat how their natural environment has been carefully replicated. Judging by their coats, they're in good health, but I'm curious about there only being one male and how the gender groups have staked out territory on opposite ends of the enclosure. That could easily be part of their daytime sciencing behavior, foraging for research funding and making fun of wandering tribes of creationists.

The installation seems somewhat sterile. I didn't see any openings to sleeping pens. Poor creatures.

Pic of the Day: Republican Derp.

This poor little Texas filly had an abortion that made her look like a Republican Dumbass.

Oh, wait. That's just a Republican Dumbass holding up a sign. If he were a hipster I'd accuse him of doing it ironically. But being as how he's a dumbass, it could just be that he plain cain't read.

Mr. Dumbass was protesting in Texas with some other guys from the Dumbass family; Wonkette has some pics of them in their natural, stupid plumage.

Pic of the Day: Size Matters.

Lou Costello Stunt Double and demented hatemuffin Tony Scalia had himself a reagegasm over today's 5-4 Supreme Court decision overturning the idiotic Defense Of Marriage Act.

He's not the only tiny wingnut railing at the skies, demanding that the heavens open up and thunder vengeance upon their betters.

Bonus pic:

bwahaha!
Huh. That baby even looks like Scalia.

[Edited to add new freakouts, below]

Paul Kraft of--get this--Renew America--whines that wingnuts should secede to prevent gay marriage.

Then there's this teabagger who says the country's one step closer to civil war over the DOMA decision.

Something the wingnuts really need to have explained to them--preferably by a William Tecumseh Sherman-like father figure--is that the point of a democracy (or a democratic republic) is that the people make decisions and the wingnuts get to live with that...or leave. They don't get to secede just because things don't go their way.

Childish jackholes.

Song of the Day: Rush accepting Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 2013 Induction

Wish I'd seen it in mid-April, but I forgot.



It was nice of them to let Neil "The New Guy" Peart speak first.

Alex Lifeson's speech is memorable!


Bonus, from 2008: an 11 year old girl plays one of Rush's more technically difficult songs.

Solo.

On an electric piano.

Pic of the Day: Snowden

It's fun watching Glenn Greenwald and his pet genius' implosion. Snowden's hysterics over the NSA and FISA might have been warranted...if we didn't already know about them.

Bob Cesca has been doing some heavy lifting to find what's important and what isn't in all this.

Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs blew holes in Snowden and Greenwald almost from the beginning of this non-scandal.

Nothingburger. Formerly a main course of the teabaggers trying to swamp Obama in scandals (Fast & Furious gun-running, Bengazi, the IRS investigating teabaggers who want tax-exempt status).

Apparently Greenwald and his supporters have discovered the savory emptiness of nothingburger, as well.

Song of the Day: Cheerios Spoof

A few weeks ago, this happened:




...and the wingnuts predictably fell all over themselves trying to come up with the most vile thing to say about the ad's interracial couple and their little girl.

Too bad they won't see the humor in this spoof:



The song? Yeah, wingnuts as they scream scream SCREAM!!!!! over the rest of us living our lives the way we damn well see fit.

ADDING: Bonus! 11-year old kid sings National Anthem, wingnut scum crap their cages (some Twitterrhea at the link)...and the kid's doing an encore tonight. bwahahaha!

Pic of the Day: Mission Accomplished!

In observance of Fratboy's "Mission Accomplished" stunt 10 years ago, we present...the guy who actually got bin Ladin! :)

Dunno who did the 'Shop job, but it's funny :p~~~

(posting this early since I'll be away from computers for a few days, sunning my pale skin in California)

When Troubleshooting Just Causes Trouble

Just to show how good I am at overthinking car troubles (and why I'd probably starve if I had to work as a mechanic)...

I was cruising along in my '83 Citation (the '81 X-11's "little sister") maybe 10 years ago, headed north along Scenic Highway. As I passed a last line of houses and started seeing undeveloped woodlands, I heard a loud BANG, like a gunshot.

Didn't stop to check for bullet holes. I just hit the gas and looked in my mirrors. Didn't see anything. Once I got home, I didn't find any damage. The event was shrugged off and forgotten.

The Citation's engine developed a rough idle, slightly worse gas mileage. I looked over everything, checking carb settings, ignition timing, engine vacuum. Didn't make sense. The carb settings were fine, timing was a little off but not causing trouble. Engine was breathing fine, maybe a little low.

But the idle stayed rough.

I went through the shop manual's troubleshooting guide--carb's okay, timing's good, vacuum's good...all the easy stuff got checked off the list. The manual suggested that the timing chain might have jumped a sprocket, and all the symptoms seemed to agree. I hated to think this might be the problem, since it was more work than I wanted to do.

Drove around like that for several months, occasionally trying those simpler checks--carb, timing, vacuum--in the hope that I'd missed something simple. Finally stopped putting it off, parked the car, and got to work.

Busted out the jack stands, got her nose in the air...loosen the belts, lose the water pump, timing cover...huh.

Timing chain looks fine. Rolled the engine a little to line up the crank and cam timing marks.

They're fine.

Shit.

Oh, well, probably the original chain, and as long as I'm already here...put in the new one, double-check timing marks...new seal on timing cover, new gasket...water pump, pulley, belts.

As long as I'm here, though...let's do the valve cover gaskets, get rid of that little oil leak.

Kind of a pain in the ass. Some stuff in the way--SNAP!

Shit!

There's a little trident-shaped set of pipes that are part of the emissions controls. The engine computer blows fresh air into the exhaust system through these to burn unburned or partly-burned fuel.

I'd just snapped one of the pipes. They tend to rust pretty quickly as it is, but on a 20-year old car they're brittle. Turning the nut holding the pipe in place just folded the pipe.

Wrecked all three getting the thing off of there. At first, I tried fabricating one from brake line (which is all the pipes were, basically) but couldn't bend the stuff with my limited tools. I put that project on the back burner, plugged the exhaust manifold with pipe plugs, fixed the valve cover gaskets, and buttoned everything up, pissed that I'd wasted a weekend on a not-bad timing chain.

Car started up as always, ran just fine, but that idle just wouldn't stabilize. Bugged the hell out of me. And again I tried all the simpler stuff yet again--carb settings, ignition timing, vacuum check. No leaks, no computer trouble codes, and still no idea what was causing the roughness.

A year went by. I still occasionally tried to ferret the problem. No magical new information in the troubleshooting guides. I wondered whether the engine computer might be acting up; it controls spark timing, fuel delivery, and all that. I thing I pulled it out and looked it over, decided I wasn't going to screw with it, and bolted it back in. No easy way of poking around on a plastic-sealed circuit board. Nothing looked burned or damaged.

I don't know what I was doing, the day the problem was solved. Maybe just checking the spark plugs, something I hadn't done in all the troubleshooting. I know I'd never looked at the things because...

...you car guys will love this. Really.

Put your drink down.

As I was feeling along the back side of the engine, I found the #3 spark plug hanging by its wire.

Remember that "gunshot" I thought I'd heard? I remembered it, then.

I'm guessing that I didn't tighten #3 down properly sometime before the "gunshot." Every time the plug lit off the air and fuel in the #3 cylinder, the concussion worked the plug out a little. That BANG was the final air-fuel charge blowing the loose plug out. From then on, my V6 was a V5.

Threaded the little shit back in...tightened it properly (this time). Engine ran perfectly.

The X-11 is just the latest in a line of cars with laughing rights on me.

Grounded, Pt. 3: Embarassingly Simple!

This is one of those times I'm glad my car can't talk, let alone laugh when a big, complicated problem boils down to something stupidly simple.

The X-11 has earned some laughing rights. Maybe she's just being nice to me because I'm kinda slow, like the time I ran out of gas just a few yards past a gas station...and coasted the damn car a quarter-mile downhill trying to get it started.

Ha, ha.

Or how about the time I tried to start her up, got nowhere, did some testing and decided that the fuel pump was bad. When I tried to replace the pump, I ended up breaking several bolts in the exhaust system, which is inconveniently in the way of the pump. Ended up having to replace every bolt in the engine end of the exhaust. Got the new pump in, got the exhaust system bolted in...and still had the same problem.

Turns out it was a couple of bad fuel hoses. A couple of bucks' worth, compared to 6 weeks' work and too much money.

Hah. Hah. Hah. Goddammit.

Now, I'm slowly putting things back together after trying to find an electrical fault. For all the circuits under the dash, there's a single common ground, a black wire with a ring terminal that's bolted to body metal (One Ring Terminal to Rule Them All!). I've got the dash in the back of the car, car guts all over the floorboards and back seat, I've gone over every wire and connector, pored over wiring diagrams, sat in the driver's seat and stared at the mess I've made, looking for that damn ground, and all this time it's been right there, dangling from the wiring harness.

Some previous owner screwed around under the dash and ended up bolting the ground terminal in the wrong place: a metal bracket that doesn't touch any other metal in the car. Might as well have left the battery disconnected.

All this time, the only ground for everything under the dash has been a skinny wire and crappy terminal from an aftermarket power radio antenna kit. When I pulled the old radio to try running wire to a newer one, the tenuous connection was broken--and everything either stopped working or freaked out. The air conditioning fuse self-destructed (must have been an impressive burnout).

All this because one wire got put in the wrong place years before I even had the car.

Hee, hee, hee, hee. I'm dyin' over here.

Pic of the Day: Right where he wants them.

The wingnuts just can't stop themselves from doing stupid things. When Nobel Peace Prize Recipient President Obama mentioned skeet shooting at Camp David a few weeks ago, the moronati cranked up their conspiracy generators and grumbled about how this makes him a racist, he's lying, there's no proof he ever did any skeet shooting. A very stupid woman from Tennessee doubted his claim and challenged him to a shootin' match.

It's amusing to think that Obama and his minions were trolling for wingnuts, being as how the fishing has been pretty good lately and they just keep hitting the bait no matter how many hooks they've already swallowed. Part of the skill is in letting them come to the bait, nice and easy...wait for it...then set the hook and bring 'em in.

As a Superbowl weekend gift, the White House released this August, 2012 photo of the Fisherman-in-Chief cross-training at Camp David. The wingnuts did not disappoint. They hit this bait just as hard, claiming it's a Photoshop job ("ya kin tell by the PIXELS, man! The PIXELS DON'T LIE!!"), all part of his continuing ploy to take are gunz.

Meanwhile, I imagine the planning stages of Operation Skeetgate might have looked like this:

Hook, line and sinker.

It can't be much longer before the Three Morons of Bengazigate (McCain, his poodle, and their 'deeply-troubled' female replacement for Joe Lieberman hold a press conference demanding a briefing on Skeetgate while skipping the briefing. Darrell Issa, in a desperate bid to seem important, will investigate and hold hearings on the matter, and all of this will get us through February.