Ahhwoooooo!
Here’s my little bit of happy for the evening, and it goes out to all my lichen lycan friends out there. It’s a WoW video, yes, but I suspect it works pretty well even if one’s not steeped in the lore of Azeroth.
Jargon and Gender
Serious question – I’m interested in your honest opinions.
We’re on the bridge of the Enterprise, in starship combat. Worf is injured, and collapses to the ground. Captain Picard orders, “Counselor Troi! Man the weapons console!”
Question:
Missed connection
Predictable, really. The fuel filter was delayed a day, and didn’t arrive until this afternoon. Guess whose car refused to start with any cajoling this morning? Guess who missed work?
Since the part was in, there was no point in waiting around. I unboxed the filter, got out my Chilton manual and my DIY pictorial from the Internet, and went to town. Getting the rear seat out was the hardest part; it took me a while to figure out that the front edge is held in with sliding tabs, and there was nothing to unbolt there – just pull hard. I had intentionally run the gas tank kinda low, and armed with warnings from the DIY, spilled almost no gasoline. The pump came apart easily, and the filter was about 20 minutes work to replace. I insist than anyone who’s ever taken something apart and put it together again can do this.
That’s when I noticed something. The electrical harness connection to the fuel pump showed signs of serious arcing. The wiring itself was good, nowhere corroded through, but the scorch marks on the plastic showed that something had clearly been loose. I bent a couple connectors to tighter positions, and replaced the harness and pump.
The car started right up, smoother than it has in months. I shut it off, and started it again – it started right up. I’ll do so again in 20 minutes as a further test.
Could the problem have never been the fuel filter or the pump itself, but simply a loose connection? Did the dealer even look? Were they about to charge me $550 for a bad connector in a wiring harness?
I’m not sorry I changed out the filter, that can’t hurt and may improve performance. But if that was the problem all along? Then I’m a little mad.
EDIT: Oh, yeah, speaking of pumps, our fridge died last night also. By an unusual coincidence, we have a backup fridge… but we now have to walk to the garage every time we want a soda.
Parts is parts
Awesome. Misty-kitty just found the reset switch on my power strip. Well, the computer was about due for a clean restart anyway, I guess.
Anyway, to add to the wonderfulness of my week, my Hyundai has learned a new habit: it stalls out sometimes when starting, requiring long wait periods (sometimes hours and hours) before it will again start; once in a while it’ll stall out on the highway, too, which is awfully fun at highway speeds during rush hour.
I managed to get it to the dealer yesterday, after much finagling. The dealer wants to put in a new fuel pump, for $550 – which right now I just cannot afford. So I did a little Internet research. The culprit is most likely not the pump, but the in-pump fuel filter. While one can’t replace said filter with five minutes and a Swiss Army knife, the step-by-step DIY I found is clear enough that anyone with basic intelligence, and an awareness of which end of a screwdriver points out, could do the work. The difference? The necessary part is only $30 or so. BUT – you can’t buy the part at your favorite local auto store. They will all just shrug and offer to sell you the complete pump, which adds another zero to the part’s price. The manufacturer just does not want you doing this yourself.
Well, I found an online source, and I expect the part to be here by Monday – only one more work day of praying that I make it to my job and back, then I should be good with about an hour’s work in the driveway. But it’s just one more source of aggravation. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to pick up some prescriptions for Starr and dinner fixins – the pharmacy’s closed by the time she leaves work. Cross your fingers that I get home!
Data from a eight-foot medical tricorder
The doctors have scheduled me for gall bladder surgery on Wednesday. Everyone is telling me it’s a perfected procedure, I’ll be home that afternoon, and that I’m really not likely to miss it all that much. And y’know, I happen to be married to a registered nurse. So, okay, I’m about as optimistic as one could possibly be about this.
But there’s something I didn’t get around to mentioning back on the 28th. The CAT scan that revealed the gallstones also displayed a mass on my kidney, which the doctors wanted to follow up on. Yesterday, I got the lowdown, complete with pictures.
The mass is a tennis-ball-sized lump of tissue on my kidney, and the doctors are quite certain that it needs to come out. This is no outpatient laproscopic surgery, either; they’ll have to cut me open and remove it the old-fashioned way, and I’ll be on my back for days afterwards. The good news is that the artery and ureter aren’t involved, and I’ll still have half a good kidney on that side when they’re done.
I took the news pretty calmly, and waited until after a good lunch and an afternoon nap before having a meltdown. (That mostly involved tripping over sentences I’m trying to assemble, and getting a little strident in my tones from time to time. Yeah, I’m a fireball.) Luckily I had Starr and a couple other understanding friends there, who even kept offering me a little alcohol if I thought it would take the edge off. Not my speed, but I appreciated the goodwill.
So, the kidney surgery will probably be in three weeks or so, and I’ll be posting more details as I have them. Sigh.
Stolen heredity
Some Ponyo research led me to an article about Lupin the Third, and it suddenly struck me that I should read some Lupin the First – just for purposes of self-education! Luckily the 21st century makes this pretty easy for anyone capable of reading this LJ entry; thank you Project Gutenberg for this collection of Arsene Lupin tales.
I found the first book of stories to be entertaining reading, though I noticed that Lupin resembles the Bronze Age Superman – nothing is truly a challenge for him. If author Leblanc needed Lupin to escape a locked room, frequently a subsequent scene would show him out of the room with no explanation, other than a shrugged “it’s Lupin, what do you expect?”
And this is what put the brakes to my reading of the character, when the French author decides to place Lupin against Conan Doyle’s famous Sherlock Holmes in “The Blonde Lady”. It’s a pointless battle from the start; Holmes at least engages in his own equivalent of Star Trek technobabble to justify his more unlikely successes (“I can recognize hundreds of brands of cigars by their ashes, of course.”) Lupin has no such limitation, and in this tale penned by a Frenchman, the French thief walks all over the English detective.
Of course, I knew that Holmes would lose the contest – I can see the author’s name at the top of the document, after all – but I’d have enjoyed a real battle of wits, with each side forced to play their best game against the other. Instead, Holmes is shown as completely unprepared for Lupin, and incapable of causing him even mild discomfort. It’s an ungentlemanly treatment of another author’s work, and I’m hardly surprised that Conan Dolye’s estate demanded the removal of Holmes’ name from reprintings. I could not even finish the novel, such was my irritation with it.
I’ll go back to Lupin III, I think. The unstoppable thief is more fun in the slightly deranged world of anime shenanigans; but I’m glad to have briefly met his grand-dad. (Leblanc’s estate does not approve of Lupin III’s use of the name, btw, and in several countries he’s had to be called “The Wolf.” Pot, may I introduce you to kettle?)
Hey… where’s my watch?
Like a sledgehammer to the gut
Recap of yesterday:
40 minutes into my hour commute, halfway across the Monitor-Merrimac bridge, when my usual mild morning nausea turned powerful, and changed over to intense pain. I don’t know how to describe it to anyone who’s not felt it, but one would gladly give up PIN codes and passwords just to make it stop. I got the car to work, and the pain briefly subsided, but as I walked into my office, back it came. I was floored – literally. I fell to the ground in the fetal position, moaning.
My co-workers found me, and called the ambulance. My work managed to reach Starr, and she met me in the Emergency Room. I felt quite certain I’d experienced a flareup of 2006’s diverticulitis. The doctor found it likely, but decided to do a CAT scan to be sure. I spent an hour drinking a nasty ‘lemonade’ drink, and then they put me in the big donut.
Well, no diverticulitis. The CAT scan says I have gallstones, and the doctor says they’ll need to remove my gall bladder. I’m really less than thrilled with this, if for no other reason that I’ve just spent a couple of years trying to improve my diet, and now that I’ve got it where I like it, I may have to make further changes. More importantly, I’m not thrilled with this ongoing loss of body parts fate is demanding from me.
Well, I can’t go back to work until I’ve seen the surgeon. At this rate, I don’t even know when they’ll want to do the surgery. I’m on Vicodin, antibiotics, and nausea medication, and sitting in bed playing with my Wii. But I’ve been reminded over the past 24 hours that I remain a lucky man – I may be losing an organ, but I’ve got insurance that’ll pay for it, and the support of many wonderful people to back me up. Starr’s been a treasure, there for me every time I needed comfort or assistance. I’m thankful.
Now, I just have to figure out how to retrieve my car from work.
Subspace radio is down
This Monday, we finally got the DirecTV service replaced with Cox cable. Only problem: the HDTV is upstairs in the bedroom, which was in NO condition for visitors. (You may theorize why.) So, we had the guy install the HD box on an old standard TV downstairs where was located one of the two coax connections the DirecTV used, explaining that this was a temp television for a week or two and that we’d be getting an HD soon. Then I figured I’d move the box upstairs to the other coax connection, since he was nice enough to make sure they both remained intact.
I went to do that tonight, and discovered that he’d hooked up the wrong cable. There are six coax lines running into the house; the downstairs line was working, but he’d hooked up the wrong one of the other five. No worries, I can figure that out. I ruled out one immediately: it was so corroded that the center wire broke off the moment I examined it. I ruled out another because I’d already verified that one wasn’t working; so I tried each of the other three in turn, hooking it up, rebooting the box, and waiting for start up. I did this three times. Nothing worked.
Finally, in a desperate attempt to work out which wire worked, I hooked the output of a VCR to the upstairs cable and dragged a (not especially portable) television outside hooking it to each one in turn. None of the three worked, which startled me seriously – one of them had been working not two days ago. With mounting horrified suspicion, I picked up the corroded cable, stripped it with my Swiss Army Knife, and replaced the coax connector. (Oh, did I mention that dark had fallen by this time, and I did this with just the reflected light from a streetlamp a few dozen yards away?) You know what happened: the TV lit right up with the old Mystery Science Theater tape I had running upstairs.
So, to wrap up the story: a few minutes later, cable box was beginning. We get signal. Main screen turn on. I called the cable box a bug-jumping cork-sucker, and may possibly have danced around the room a tiny bit; but in a battle between me and technology, I’m not backing down until I’ve tried everything. And tonight it paid off. (Wonder what my Shadowrun 2nd Ed. target number was on that one?)
Any chance to get aboard the Enterprise
Since my friend Celia has never seen Wrath of Khan, and we were looking to relax after a couple hours of Super Mario Galaxy and Iron Chef America: Supreme Cuisine, I retrieved the DVD and we loaded it up.
Odd, showing this movie to someone who had almost no context at all for it. We explained that Kirk was an intergalactic hero once who’d been pushed into a desk job, and this was his old ship and officers. I had to reconfirm that yes, those are Montalban’s real pecs, and explain why no fan was surprised that Kirk had a son he’d never met. Shatner’s rug was sadly obvious on the very large TV, too.
But still, the movie’s just as strong as it was twenty-seven years ago. Starr cried again during the funeral (a quite appropriate response), but this time did so for Scotty’s nephew as well. She explained that the “word is given” dialogue was quite realistic, and she’d seen it many times at her work: people who are dying, and know it, frequently ask for permission to do so. They need to know that it’s okay for them to pass away.
My bias is confirmed: TWoK remains a stronger film than The Voyage Home or First Contact, though it’s in fine company with those two. The reboot movie, though I enjoyed it very much and will see it again, doesn’t come close.
