A Budget
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A Budget Last Updated: Wanna buy a pen?
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Update At 2100 I arrived at work to find that a number of laptops that hadn't been used in a week or two (don't ask - some people have more flexibility than others in their working arrangements - which is fine by me) couldn't log into the network. Most of them had grabbed IP addresses that were outside our normal range - but rebooting and releasing wouldn't work. I finally threw in the towel when I had three people at once bugging me, and gave them fixed IPs in a reserved range (in the same block). All was well. Then a fine gentleman came in with perhaps the single most corrupted bit of logic I've ever encountered. He has a unique situation in our upcoming marketing project - a large percentage of his clients aren't included, as they're covered by a single contract with a nearby city. So he says to me "well, I waited a month to make sure this problem was taken care of." Excuse me - what part of "unique" didn't you understand? So that ate my morning. Midday disappeared in a whoosh of one subsidiary suddenly deciding they needed something taken care of by 1/1/2005. Er, by my trusty old-fashioned watch, I'm looking at the date, and it's the FREAKING THIRD. So I stomped on the little idea there simply by stating "sorry, folks, we have a procedure we need to follow - and you'll need to step through the process." It was a bit like watching an empty oil tanker steam ahead-full into a solid granite outcropping - and keep going. The afternoon disappeared in a rush of "damnit, they worked LAST WEEK" - which is about what one should expect when one cobbles together laptops from the "junked" pile. Fortunately, I had spare computers available. The coup de grace for the day was a little piece of crap known more widely as "Microsoft Publisher". Said piece of software has demonstrated a complete inability to save to a network drive. Neat little feature I discovered today - when you select Save As, give the file a new unique name, it opens "something" on the network drive, drops the connection, then says "sorry, this file already exists - pick a new name". Right. Try it again with a new name. Watch it create the new file - "this file already exists. Pick a new name." I just did. Third time's the charm. "Sorry, this file already exists..." Ah, bite me. Save to local drive, use Explorer to move to networked drive. Well, duh, that works. Go figure. So as I'm on my way home (and I had to stop for gas because I was below an eighth of a tank), I'm blissfully unaware that my cell phone is turned off. I get the kids, get home, check voice mail - and my wife has a "small" problem. She is on her way to her vehicle. Her keys, however, are not. They're still in her office. Oy. Load back into the car, call off the dogs (she'd called a friend to pick her up), get her, head BACK to St. Paul, get her keys, then return home. Via Arbys for dinner, as it's nearly 7 pm at that point... No rest for the wicked. Hopefully, it'll get better. Then again, there was one good laugh when we got home. The "night" job was so desperate for warm bodies that they asked if I'd come in and work the returns counter. Not. So my "new" look debuts a bit later than planned. Oh well.
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Update At 2245 One fellow, our sole Mac user, burst in and indicated a problem with his e-mail - he could receive, but not sent. Okay, I'll get to that tomorrow. "No, now - I need this right now". Er, no, I'm sorry, you misunderstand. "Fine, I'll tell my boss" (er, the CEO). Lovely. Balls to the wall I managed to get three computers ready, out the door, into the van (along with assorted other necessary bits for the expo), and also toss him two bones of work-arounds before I rushed off downtown. Mental note for all of you responsible for assigning people to set up trade shows - always, ALWAYS pack a ladder, and always, ALWAYS vary the heights of your team members. For example, do NOT send your two five-foot-eight people when you have four people six-six or higher available for setup. Especially on an eight-foot-high booth which requires lights at the top of the walls. No day would be complete without a screwup by yours truly, and today's was a whopper. As we have an entire fleet of some forty vehicles, all lovingly cared for by a full-time DOT-certified mechanic and his assistant, I had a fairly reasonable expectation (for me) that the vehicles would have working door locks. As they did, in the passenger compartment. The van we used, which had a solid divider between driving compartment and storage area, had door locks on the back door and the side door (it's a big van). No one told me I didn't have the keys to the back or side doors. Fortunately, we didn't discover this small problem until we were on our way back home and had to put the eight-inch-deep-by-two-feet-wide-by-six-feet-high booth case between us (as there was no more room in the booth). So, yeah, we looked kinda stoopid with the big empty back end of the van and the stupid case packed in between us up front. Go figure. Oh well. I've got the night job tomorrow, so it's unlikely that you'll see anything from me here. |
Update At 2210 That's a hard question to answer. For years, I've kept CNN.com in a window in the background (and yes, in the foreground on occasion for a few minutes' break) on my desktop - it refreshes every thirty minutes or so, and once I got a decent browser with the ability to kill the X10, NetFlix, and other crap that would popunder, it's not a bad site (once you block 90% of their advertising). It gets me the basic headlines of what's going on - and I can drill deeper if need be. I don't have to deal with eleven hundred cookies and other assorted crap that MSNBC delivers, and I don't have to filter the bias from Fox News. It's been running in the background for about eight or nine years now - whenever I log into a computer I'll be using, I pull up a browser. Window one is the portal page I have, and Window two is CNN. I know, I know, I'm a news junkie - can't help it. Since September 11th, I can't help but keep checking it - both at home and at work - just so I know "what's happening". Since the day after Christmas, almost the only main headline story I've seen on CNN has been the tsunami or the aid brouhaha. There was a brief cycle where the governor of Baghdad took a bullet to the head (or the non-metaphorical equivalent) - then back to "all tsunami, all the time." Today there's a headline about 35,000 troops being on patrol on Iraqi Election Day. And then back to all-tsunami, all-the-time coverage. Part of what the rest of the world doesn't realize is that the American media, for all of it's expensive graphics and multi-million dollar sets (and anchors) and thousand-dollar suits, is a gaggle. They'd love you to believe that they're sharks in the water chasing the scent of blood, but it's closer to the truth to see them as turkeys, running full-on when they hear the feed hit the trough - and a fair percentage of them will look up when it rains. Were it not for roofs over their heads, the fat dumb bastards would literally drown - and that's straight from a "turkey rancher" (honest to God, he called himself that) himself. The American Media so very much loves these sorts of horrible disaster stories - they offer the opportunity to launch a dozen big-name reporters into far-off lands, where they'll all have the opportunity to find unique heart-breaking stories of deep emotional pain - and bring them to you in full color at the dinner hour, so they can remind you that Amber Frey, next month's "who the hell was that?" Name-In-The-News, will be on their nightly newsmagazine at 9, the morning's follow-up news show, and appearing on Broadway next week in "Death of a Salesman" - as either death or a desk, I forget which. The media as a general rule lacks the attention span that God has given a goldfish, and unless they're reminded constantly that this sort of horror existed, they'll be looking longingly at the Robert Blake trial - it's in California, land of fat internet pipes, a Starbucks on every corner, and the ability to "end the day" while there's still daylight, as their stories must be filed on New York time, not California time. Sure, it leads to some early mornings, but that's where the big bucks are. The tsunami is one of those things that completely outstrip's the news media's ability to apply superlatives. "Unprecedented" is about the only one that seems appropriate - the rest is largely inadequate. The death toll has risen to a point where comprehension isn't really possible - at least not by me. But me writing about that here is pointless. However, my personal response to this has been framed by two things. The first was fairly guaranteed by Jan Egeland, or whatever his name is, when he criticized the US as not being particularly generous. The second was the report that the Arab media is blaming the United States for this horrific disaster - apparently we've unleashed a bomb underwater which caused the wave. On the monetary front, frankly, I would infinitely prefer that my government NOT have the money to donate to something like this - because it indicates to me that my government is taking far too much of MY money and has it to blow around. I would much rather see me keeping more of my money, and taking care of them that way. But that's just me. As for Mr. Egeland's contentions, frankly, I think the man should quietly go away. Just shut up and go away - his manipulation of the situation is abhorrent, disgusting, and painfully obvious. And next time a disaster needs a response, we'll respond. But it won't be the same, and someone else will criticize American generosity. On the Arab view, I'm so far beyond stunned it's not funny. Sadly, the problem is that the people who are hearing this sort of crap are the type of people who don't care what the truth is - because you can't explain it to them anyway. At least not in scientific terms. If you explain that it was massive plates floating on magma which finally moved, and toss in the spirit of the great stinking wildebeest and American Imperialism, the response will be "yes, OF COURSE - damned Americans - and that smelly wildebeest". Plate Tectonics, which are 100% to blame, aren't even on their radar. So in the end, there's not much new to be said about the tsunami. At least, not by me. There's plenty to be said about the assholes who are using it to further their own political agenda, but it's not like ranting and raving here will educate Jan Egeland, fundamentalists of any strip, or any of the rest of you.
[Link] Minnesota Budgetting and Government 101 - Our state legislature meets each year from the first Tuesday in January (provided it's not New Year's Day) until some constitutionally mandated date in mid-May. In even years, the legislature handles "social issues" and a bonding bill (and re-election), while in the "odd" years there's the state budget. The state budget MUST be balanced - the state can finish the year with money left over, but never with a deficit. The governor has a limited line-item veto for spending projects which, depending on the governor, can be either a scalpel or a baseball bat, depending on how the governor decides to use it. The bonding bill is the part where the boondoggle projects come into play. Bonding is different from budgets, in that we sell bonds, which are paid out over many years, for major projects. Things like new buildings or renovations for the state colleges, roads, stadiums, and the like. Last year, the nitwits didn't do anything about a bonding bill - well, that's not true. They couldn't agree on a bonding bill, so they did nothing. Now they're back in session and needing to do both a bonding bill AND a budget - welcome to hell, folks. The lege is back, and they'll be looking for your wallets. But not in that nice, above-board way, because our fine Governor, Tim "No New Taxes, but Fees Are Fine" Pawlenty has decreed "No New Taxes on my watch". Fees, as I've alluded to, are fine. As are taxes - so long as Pawlenty doesn't have to sign off on 'em. I admire a politician with the balls to come out and say "here's what we're doing and why". I despise the cowards who say "I'm not going to raise your taxes" - then he cuts the budgets for every single entity with taxing and fee-based authority, so they can raise their fees to compensate. How nice.
[Link] A couple of co-workers were discussing the amount of courage religious fundamnetalists show in committing suicide - either through a bomb strapped to themselves or by flying planes into towers. One made the comment "I don't care who you are - it takes a lot of courage to blow yourself up." "No, it doesn't" I interrupted, as my soup continued to pop and bang away in the microwave. "Consider that the individual who's about to go boom 'knows' in their minds that they are going to a heavenly reward - whether or not they are isn't the point - it's what they believe which creates their reality for them. So they know they're about to get rewarded with 70 virgins. They go blow themselves up." "Yeah - courageous." "Not. It takes courage to get up tomorrow and continue to fight. It takes courage to say 'I want to live, and I want to see my life get better." Anyone who is that fundamentalist to think that a good way to die is in the middle of a fireball isn't wholly sane. They KNOW they're getting a reward. It's like little kids before Christmas. They're helpful, they're good, and they're trying hard to make up for the year of bad behavior by the three weeks before Christmas, because there's a reward. The fundamentalist knows there's a wonderful reward they can't obtain here, and they're going to it just as soon as they pull the trigger. Then they're done withthe battle. All gone. Nothing to worry about. It's their brother, or their father or mother, or kid, who has to get up tomorrow and continue to struggle that's the courageous one." "Why?" "Because they're not looking for the easy way out. They don't want to die for a reward - they'd rather live for one." My soup finished heating, I took it back to my desk. They were discussing it still as I left the room. Three minutes later I had to tear past the lunchroom to the CEO's Assistant's computer, and I heard the inevitable phrase "Yeah, the Pack are going down in flames Sunday." Right. Not bloody likely.
Update At 2230
Unbelievable. Absolutely Unbelievable. |
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Update At 2345 Yeah. Like that. All right. They say this is cathartic. We'll see. This morning I got up a little late because it's Friday - which means Chess day. I got up, got dressed, got Jack ready to go, got Rhiannon moving (she was feeling fine yesterday, then was throwing up last night, and was a little slow today), and then the phone rang. It was work. Wondering why the network was down. Huh? Well, since I'd checked my internal e-mail not two minutes before I got the call, I knew the "network" - or at least the servers - were fine. Turns out it wasn't the network - just three people. One of the accountants, the head of customer service, and the receptionist. Okay, so it might LOOK like the whole network when you've got six people in the office, and three of 'em can't use the network. So I walked the head of customer service through manually setting an IP address - which worked. Then I got Jack and Rhiannon ready to go (the others said they could wait, after they saw the long, torturous process we had to go through - it was pretty easy for me, but some people are frightened when they see the words "Control panel"). We got out to the car, and I started it. There was this loud, squeaky squeal. I got worried, turned the car off. Got out of the car, popped the hood latch, and opened the garage door. I went around to the front and the hood hadn't popped up that little bit. Well, with the ice storm we had last week it's possible the hood had frozen shut. Okay, so I tried to lift the hood. Couldn't get my fingers in the crack. All right - grab the ice chopper (think wooden hoe, except the "hoe" part is straight, flat, thick, and narrower). Try to use that to pry up the hood. No joy. Gee, maybe I didn't pull the latch hard enough. Go around to my door, open it, and look down. The little flap I pull is sticking up in the air. As the biggest of the little voices in my head said, "this ain't lookin' so good". Okay. So instead, we go around and see if there's an obvious release method. Of course not. Time for panic. I call my mechanic buddy "Tom". Tom says that yes, there's a way to get under the car and release the hood, but it take time and tools. Did I really want to try that? I made the judgement call to start the car and see. I started it - no squeaky-squeaky. Called my buddy back, told him no need to call out the marines, all was well. This is where that giant whatever it was tipped his head back and roared with laughter - "oh, silly little foolish mortal." In the car I went, off to school where the kids hopped and ran, and off I went to work. Two blocks from the office, I get another call. The guys down at the last day of the trade show had a problem with the booth computers. Okay. I got into the office, checked the head of Customer Service. He'd had problems getting onto the network, but we finally got it. I called the guys at the trade show.
"We wanted to close the laptop." Okay. Bad idea, guys. Got the powerpoint presentation restarted, and all was well with them. So I went on to the accountant. She was having problems printing. While I was doing this, a second accountant caught me with a "hey, me too" warning. Gave both of them fixed IPs, and we still had printing trouble. One guy would send jobs, they'd hang until I rebooted the printer - then all was fine. Then the head of CS came back to find me. "I'm off the network again." (Anyone getting any ideas yet? Me either, back in old real-time). Went back, rebooted. He was fine. More printer problems. Back to the printer. Rebooted. The jobs ran. Back to the head of CS. Wait a minute... I checked. I'd given him the IP address 192.168.1.162. He had, however, entered 192.168.1.12. And what was that printer's IP? 192.168.1.12. Doh. Okay, so that got fixed and all was well. So I spent the balance of the morning getting some loose ends tied up, and prepped for the booth tear-down. Called to confirm with the rental company that they'd be there to pick up their $11,000 in gear from us. Cool. Rounded up extra volunteers to help take down. Even better. Got a phone call from Ann. A friend had stopped to drop her kids off at school, Rhiannon looked unwell. Rather than let her sit in school until she decided she was sick and called me, she brought Rhiannon home with her. Since it was from the before-school program and they know us well, a phone call to Ann was all it took for permission. Lovely - one extra stop for me tonight. Finally, managed to find not one but TWO wheeled carts for hauling our gear out. Wunderbar. The day was looking up after all. So we went to get into the van - and I remembered, too late, that we only had two seats in the vans - the rest of the room is empty for equipment. Okay - I volunteered to sit in the back of the van on the floor. No problem. Well, one problem. We often use our vans for transporting chemicals and the like. So there are little pinholes in the floor (well, bolt-holes, actually) for seats and the like - though they also work well for rinsing out chemical spills. In the winter, when you're driving at 60 mph down a wintry road, a hole in the floor that happens to be immediately in front of you serves as a deep freeze for your privates. I thought to myself "wonderful - after the kick in the soft squishy bits to start the day, now we're gonna freeze them off." We rode downtown, pulled up on the street next to the trade show place, and hopped out. Hauled out our two two-wheelers, and in we went. Onto the show floor, and we found the booth. It took us less than 45 minutes from the gong marking the end of show until we had it all down, packed, tied, and in the vehicles. All except, of course, the $11,000 in AV equipment. They were "5-10 minutes away" - after 45, I called again - and they were closer. 45 minutes later, they finally pulled into the building, and we (my boss and I) left. While we waited, we went over my job description. I'd added a few things from my job duties, and he liked them, so we kept that. He bought me lunch, and told me that the company had been very, very pleased that the first guy had said "no" to them - "we got the right guy" was his statement a couple of times. He also alluded to "raise at 90 days" several times. Which would be nice. So we had lunch, got into his truck, and got back to the office. We talked about the next trade show, and together took an idea which sounded like it would be a negative and turned it into a positive with just a few changes - and it will work VERY well... So we get back to the office - and miss, by only about ten minutes, the head accountant. The same accountant who didn't have trouble earlier in the day (other than his print jobs going to a printer with an IP conflict) was now unable to get onto the network. Yes, I'd restarted the DHCP server. I'd even de-activated the scope, shut the service down, renamed the databases (on NT 4, DHCP databases are found in the \%systemroot%\System32\DHCP folder, along with a backup in \%systemroot%\System32\DHCP\Backup\New - they're both deceptively named DHCP.MDB - access will not open them, nor will any other tool besides DHCP - and DHCP can't delete some of these older expired leases - it says "no more data is available". WTF does that mean? I just want to delete 'em, I don't care what they are...), and restarted. It created new DHCP.MDBs. Then, like a doof, I reconciled, and it added the IP addresses it said it needed - and all of the old leases I couldn't delete (which had, by now, expired) were back again like Canadian quarters in an American pop machine. Go figure. The painful part was that the accountant DIDN'T complete the check run, which had my near-$100 expense check in the pile, so that'll wait until Monday (hopefully no longer). Oh well. I looked at my watch. 4:30 pm. Bad. Very bad. I needed to be 20 miles away (through traffic) in 30 minutes. Okay - bathroom, car, and ... wait a minute, the rear tire is low again. Get the compressor out, plug it in, start it up, and pump the tire up to 35 psi (as it says on the side of the tire). All the while muttering "I hate aluminum rims". So I head south. Remember to remind Ann I've got to work. Ann tells me she's taking Rhiannon to the doctor - again - for her stomach. Then I listen to my inner chipmunk. Actually, the inner chipmunk moved under the hood, I guess. Lots of squeaking. This is not my inner chipmunk. It's my car's inner chipmunk. Then I remembered something my buddy told me when the A/C in the car packed up about two years ago (yes, it's a 92 - so it's the big 13 this year - and yes, I know what that means - GET A NEW CAR). The A/C compressor is also used to cool and de-humidify the air when you're running on defrost - which I was. A quick shift to floor and my car's inner chipmunk became it's inner silent as a sedated church-mouse once again. South I traveled, to the night job, headed in (30 minutes late), to, of course, run into the head of HR just inside the door. Bull-by-the-horns time.
"Hey, Ed, how are ya?" So I do - except ... "Not a valid employee". Lovely. Still problems with getting paid, etc. Back into receiving. A half-size crew for a 90% full truck. Oh, and the compactors? 90% full as well. Lovely. Two boxes and a compaction - then shove the stuff down into the chamber, and try again. The average was one 90-second compaction per three small or one medium box. Two for one on the big mothers. So I'm crushing and stomping cardboard boxes and the hairs on my neck go up. I ignore them. I'm male. We don't have "intuition". We have lust and an inate sports IQ - we do not need intuition. We keep moving stuff out of the truck. I rip my shirt just before break time. Wonderful. I stop for break. The hairs on my neck are still figuratively up. I don't know why. Pull out the cell phone. Call Ann.
"How's things?" Lovely. Say goodbye. Hang up. Nope. The hairs are still up. What in the hell's bugging me? Why do I have this insatiable need to be home, "RIGHT NOW"? What's going on? The rest of the receiving crew is on break. I go back to the lunch room. Feed my change into the pop machine, getting my bottle of Mt. Dew, and reminding myself that I'd had the "free" lunch, but no breakfast - a candy bar or pop tarts or something from the snack machine might be good. "OUT OF ORDER" on the snack machine. Lovely. And the hairs are still up. I sit down, listen to the banter. We've got two seven-foot-plus kids working in receiving for us. One was on tonight. Yes, he plays basketball. Nice, quiet kid. They all are, pretty much. They're talking about school, girls, parties, girls, cars, girls, schedules, girls, video games, girls, computers, girls, cell phones, girls, and, of course, girls. What is bothering me? Check the schedule on a hunch. I'm penciled in on the bottom. Well, at least I'm on it. Yup, once again scheduled on a Tuesday Cub Scout night. Not good. Let the boss know as he's leaving. "No problem - work when you can". Thursday's fine. Okay. WHAT IN THE HELL IS BUGGING ME? I can't figure it out. I tell myself "it's nothing, you're just nuts." We finish break. I stand up. My shirt rips even more. I've now got a six inch high strip of my flesh exposed. This is not a good thing. Fortunately, because of the dysfunctional snack machine, no one ate much. No huge pools of vomit. WHAT THE HELL IS BUGGING ME? I give in. Run upstairs. "Hey, Ed? I've got a sick kid. I hadn't planned on working tonight, but my wife's really worried, so I've got to get home to take care of my son so my daughter can get some help." I sign in and out since my card didn't work, and he signs off on it. "Thanks for helping out, glad you could, no problem, get going." See why I keep these guys around? So I hop in the car. Get out on the road. It's about three miles from the night job home - which, on a bad night, is twenty minutes. As I pull onto the street in front of the night job, the inner chipmunk returns. Or the car's inner mouse is no longer sedated, and is now a crack-smoking cat-humping meth addict - with about 90 of his closest personal friends in for a good old amphetamine binge that sounds like it could last the balance of this century. As so often happens with these quiet little church mice when they encounter such an opportunity. Or so I'm told. Just as I reach for my cell phone to call my wife and tell her I'm on my way home, the party ends. In conjunction (or perhaps in relief, I'll never know) the lights on the dash dim ever so slightly - perhaps in honor of the ceremonial lighting of the memorial "idiot light" otherwise known as "Check Engine" which does come on. How nice. As Orwell would say, "Double-plus ungood". Or as I said, "Fuck." Two and a half miles to home - I shut off the radio, the fans, the dash lights - every possible thing I can. As I'm turning onto the street where my house is, the steering "glitches". Smooth and one handed one minute, difficult to turn with two hands the next. Gee - did I just lose a power steering/brakes belt? I bet so. Into the driveway, up to the garage, and to a smooth stop. Out of the car, reach for the hood latch, and ... you do remember what happened a week ago (at least, in this narrative) AKA - this morning? Yup. The hood latch - the hood doesn't open. See above Orwellian/personal comments. Well, on the positive side, most of the hairs have laid down. So I go through the front door of the house, thinking "well, that swallow a live frog thing is probably a good idea right about now, at least it can't get any worse - I'm home." Call my buddy the mechanic.
"Hi John, what's wrong?" He laughed. Thank God. We set a date for tomorrow - provided I can get it the mile and a half from my house to his. We'll see what we'll see. I sat down at the computer. Read my e-mail. One from my father. "Hey, kids - we're looking at moving to assisted housing. Make your list and check it twice - the county will not help us out unless we've got lots less stuff than we have now, so let us know what you want. No guarantees you'll get it, but if you make a list, we'll see what we can do..." There's the part of me that says "good, they'll be safe, cared for, and have more time for the fun stuff, no housekeeping and the like." Part of me says "I want that spot under the tree where I used to hide my marble pouch, and I want the corner of the shed where I fell and cut my lip, and that big hunk of granite in the yard we used to pretend was home plate, and ..." Sometimes I really, REALLY hate being a grown-up. Really and truly. Tomorrow's got to be better, right? The all-down or all-up days I can stand. These pogo sorts where you bounce up and down (today, mostly down) like a hyperkinetic kangaroo are really, REALLY stressful. I suppose the only positive I can take from this is, as of this moment, the hairs on my neck are no longer up. |
Update At 1100 Daisy has this thing she does when she wants to play - both front paws come up off the ground and she thumps them down - and then starts romping all over the place. We've come to know it as her excited "let's play" face. Yesterday, this 80-pound dog would whomp both front paws down on either side of 9-pound Tish, the black cat we have, who would swat her nose with his front paw (declawed), and Daisy would jump back, run away, then run back - and repeat. The odd part is that this was done before witnesses - Tish isn't often playful these days, and while Daisy often is, there's some huge amounts of trust that would have to be involved were I to initiate "play" with someone nearly ten times my size. Then again, if there was someone nearly ten times my size, they'd likely just kick me in the soft squishy bits like yesterday. So it goes. |
Update At 1345 While I wrote yesterday's post, I was waiting for my buddy "Tom" the mechanic to give me a call. He did around 1 pm, and I started the Eagle and headed on over. When I pulled into his driveway, the battery light was on - but no other idiot lights. He promptly said "no problem to get under the hood, I just need to reach under and flip a latch." This "reach under and flip a latch" wasn't as easy as he'd thought. He ended up having to reach up past the radiator, unbolt the hood latch, and then use a long pry-bar to poke the release until it snapped open. Easy to describe, but 45 minutes in fifteen-degree (farenheit) temperatures with a windchill has you contemplating a number of options, including cutting both latches and bolting the hood down like a racecar. However, just when things looked worst, he managed to give it a proper poke. Then it was easy to open the hood. And the problem was obvious. Over the years the cable running from the latch back to the car compartment and the little lever had grown more and more difficult to move, and the steel cable within it stretched to the point where pulling it had no effect. This, combined with the years of grit and wear on said latch made the latch a little difficult to work. The end result was a stuck latch, a stretched cable, and no way to open the hood. The "broken belt" thing turned out not to be so. The main belt (I know that's not the term, but it's how I refer to it) that powers the alternator, power steering, and all the rest, had slipped off one of the pulleys and wasn't spinning any of the other three rotors it should have been. A slip back on, an adjustment to the tension that should have been done a few months back, and viola, we had power. The ability to open the hood easily was another problem - much bigger, in the grand scheme of things. Our ability to re-use the existing cable was out of the question - it wasn't going to happen. The latch could be greased up and re-used, but the cable was shot. So we put our heads together and did some thinking, and went off to a nearby "crash" auto parts store, where they tend to carry less "original equipment" parts and more "well, this might work for that since the original's too expensive/difficult to work/etc." stuff. We quickly settled on a "cable release" cable and a few other parts, but the way to hold the cable's shield was stumping us. Perhaps I should explain. If you've any bike experience (riding counts) on a bike of over one speed, you've probably got experience with hand brakes. The hand brake is a lever which you pull back on - or squeeze - and it, in turn, causes a pair of pads to squeeze your wheel. The way it does it is it pulls a wire. Since this wire can't be dangling out there all over, it has to be fastened. But if you fasten down the wire, then it can't move. Thus, shielded cable. It's an exterior shield which does not move, and an interior material - wire, cable, whatever - which can move. The big problem, of course, is that we not crush the exterior jacket onto the cable, and bind it. Then we're back on the drawing board. Which is why most cables of that sort are made with specific lengths and have proper fittings on the end. As we were about to jury-rig something, a "proper end" wasn't possible. At least, not from the factory. The "starter" end of the cable was no problem - a knob in a housing that had a few bolts and washers would hold that end still. It was the other end which needed to attach to the latch which wouldn't work. For a while we looked at "speed nuts" - flat pieces of metal shaped like a very narrow U, designed to slip over something else (presumably with a hole) and then allow for something threaded to pass through (or in some cases they'd cut threads as you twisted the thing in). Then Tom and I started talking weird things - different pieces we'd found in the auto parts store we could adapt, until I said something like "what we need is something that would act as a wedge all the way around - like a plumbing fitting." Tom's eyes lit up, he grabbed the auto parts guy, and then went into the back. Ten minutes later, as I was starting to wonder if they were STILL laughing at me (they hadn't when they left), they came back - laughing. With a couple of little fittings which were EXACTLY what I had talked about - compression fittings. We'd managed to stumble by accident into one of those auto parts stores that also sold things like Nitrous Oxide booster kits. Now, if you've seen Fast and Furious you know NOx is a power booster that has to be carefully managed. And it's used under pressure. Which means "plumbing". And compression fittings. Tom had managed to find the proper fitting which fit around the cable, clamped on it from all sides, and also slid into the channel on the latch (which we'd brought - we're no dummies). A near-perfect solution. Gotta like that. So we checked out - and our total cost was $12. Gotta love that. Back to Tom's house, and the next major issue was confronted - we had a six foot long cable - we didn't want to string it back into the passenger compartment for many reasons, not the least of which is that it was too short (the longer cable - about twenty feet - which would have worked for that was $24.99 - no thanks). Our solution was elegant, unique, and efficient - we drilled a hole in the middle of the "eagle" logo and mounted the knob there. Yes, I know - I've just made it easy for someone to steal my battery and my engine and perhaps even my car. But as I told Tom and his wife, "anyone who tries to steal this car shouldn't be jailed - they should be placed in a mental ward." So, $12 poorer but much richer in other ways, I returned home, hopped into a quick shower, and then we got ready for my company Christmas Party, which took place in the upstairs part of a bar in downtown Minneapolis. I was thinking last night on the way home - in early 2000, my then-employer took us to a catered dinner at the top of the Hyatt Regency downtown, and then we walked the block and a half in sub-zero temperatures to a theater for a performance of "Triple Espresso". My next employer was in a "cost-cutting mode" when the holidays came around, so we did an in-house pot-luck. Fun, certainly, but nothing like this. We walked in, I was given a nametag and assigned to a team - "Pine". This is why I work with a landscaping company. Ann and I each were given two drink tickets, and told "pop's free, these are for alcohol". We mingled, chatted, and then Ann bonded with the wife of the accountant - good, good plan there. My co-worker whom I supervised came over and said "hey, how are ya, I don't drink, here's my tickets." Cripes. Buttering up the boss - I passed them to Ann who started chatting him up - good girl. Dinner came out - an assortment of pasta with an assortment of sauces, and we all had our fill. The white elephant gift exchange was seriously fun (we didn't bring one - I ran out of time for it, and decided rather than high-balling or low-balling the whole thing, it'd be better to play dumb and bring an appropriate gift next year). One guy got a pair of aerating sandals, someone else got a wall mural, my assistant got this gawd-awful lighted centerpiece made with green plastic cups and clear christmas lights - and promptly threatened to bring it into the office we share - for lighting - if the lights over his desk weren't fixed. Sounds ugly to me... Then came time for the fun - the accountant forgot, so our operations manager went out and got some cash for quarters - each table was given a bunch to "go play games". There were various video games and darts and the like around the bar for people to play - and we started. Then the reason for the teams became apparent. The "trivia test" came out. 50 questions on general trivia ranging from city nicknames to specifics on the company's performance. My team, for which I was just a grunt, was comprised of a field guy, three arborists, one of the accounting/office assistants, and myself. We started grinding through the questions, and did the worst on general trivia (the first page, where I wasn't able to see or read the first page), the best on math (the palm pilot calculator came in handy), and did about middling on the company-specific trivia - such as "how many permanent and temporary employees did the company hire?" or "how many saw blades did we go through" (for the record, last year, 172). We scored 100% on the movie trivia, which was "name the movie this line comes from" - and it wasn't multiple guess. The most fun were the single largest tree removal (the team with the guy who did it got it wrong, because the accountants gave the client a discount after the fact) and the company's total business. I was certain the accountant would get it right, but he had it wrong - until he started insisting he WAS right. And it turns out neither was, so we got a pass on that one. In the end, we got twelve wrong out of fifty. Pretty good, until we found out there was another team which got ten wrong. Ouch. The winners got portable gas grills, boxes of "No-name Steaks" and remote-reading meat thermometers. That would have been nice. Oh well. Next year. Then, door prizes. I came home with a genuine Leatherman Micro, which is pretty slick. I also got a $25 Home Depot gift card, as well. So that's nice. It was a very nice night, overall, and reminded me, again, of how glad I am to be with this bunch. I'd probably have been relieved to get any job, but last night again reinforced just how good a group of people I'd fallen into. |
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