Repair Lessons, Dealers Bad, mmmkay?

A couple months ago I took my S10 pickup truck into Larry H Miller Chevrolet to get the tailgate suspension cables replaced on a recall. Foolishly I had left the recall notice home (it was a 3rd or 4th notice, I hadn’t been in a hurry to fix something so small). When I got there I was told that there was no recall notice for my vehicle and if I did actually get a card that I needed to bring it with me to prove such a recall existed. A couple weeks later I did return with the card and got the cables replaced. While I was there I asked about the cost of fixing some bad alignment that was causing tire wear. For about $80 they fixed the problem and I was pretty satisfied. Somehow that lulled me into a false sense of security about dealing with the dealership, despite a small parts department fiasco.

I had broken the release latch for the drivers rear half-door a couple years before and my brother had broken his several times and complained about it being such a flimsy part. For about three years I had put off fixing it, because I figured I could cast a bronze latch from the broken piece and have a durable part that I made myself. While the car was having the alignment checked I walked down to the parts department and inquired about the latch replacement. They quoted me $60 for the replacement, which I thought was insane, so I went back to the casting idea. Upon relating this story, my friend Sam pointed me at partsgeek.com and I found the same part for $6, plus $11 in shipping, so I bought it. I still want to cast the part, but at least my door is working for now.

This leads me up to the nice spring weather we were having last week. I was driving along and rolled the windows down to enjoy the weather and noticed that my brakes were squealing in a bad way. My last truck was a Toyota manual that I had for 10 years and over 160,000 miles. I’d never needed a brake job on it, and hadn’t had one in the 40,000 miles I’ve put on this truck, so I’ve never really had any experience with brakes. Intellectually, I knew that brakes are something I should be able to do with a little internet research and a trip to the parts store. I’d even chatted up Jack, who I knew had done it recently, and he offered to help. But the return of crappy winter weather and basic laziness overcame my thrift and Monday I ran back to the dealership figuring that I’d just get it done.

In short order they came back and told me that it was going to cost $250 per axle, and that all four brakes needed to be done. With what I hoped was my best poker face, I said I thought I’d take it somewhere else. The repair liaison said ok, and he’d put it back together. As he was checking me out he told me he found a coupon online that I could go home and print out that would save me about $50 per axle, if I remember the figure through the red haze of anger that was building. I acknowledged with a nod as I signed over the $55 it was costing me to have the evaluation.

When I told Debbie, she said I should have taken it to her cousin’s place. I hadn’t even thought of that, even though we’ve had her old car in there a couple times. I went in today (without telling them about the dealership fiasco) and they came back and told me the front brakes were ok, with about 40% of the pad left, but the rear were down almost to the metal. They were able to replace the pads and turn the rotors for a total price that was way below what the dealership wanted for just one axle.

Now the final straw that pushed me into publicly telling this tale was when I got back to work after having the repair, I got an email from my brother that had a forwarded message he’d received from Larry H Miller that was addressing me asking me to take a survey about how well my visit went. Somehow they’ve even crossed up our info in their database.

So I’m done with LHM and dealerships in general, and if anyone is looking for a good mechanic, I’d have to recommend The Back Shop in West Valley at 3105 West 3500 South.

Fun with Bryce3d

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Back when I started working with Jared at ZDSC he showed me this 3d artistic rendering program called Bryce 3d. I think at the time it was the most I ever paid for a non-game piece of software, but I used to sit around on Sunday afternoons and just play with the boolean architecture creating little ships and scenes. I’m not quite sure where along the line I shifted on to other things, but I kept the software current on my computer for years. I even dug it up and put it on Debbie’s computer down in Mt. Pleasant before we consolidated households, although I didn’t do much more than show it to her and Kayla.

Now I have this new Mac and still haven’t come up with a home computer since the epic technological failings of 2010. I just installed the other software I need to be learning so I can help with the media responsibilities I’m sharing with Sam for SC11, so I thought I’d look for some online help. While I was poking around for tutorials on illustrator and Final Cut Pro I ran across the current version of Bryce, Bryce 7, and found it was free for personal use.

So here I am, after 10:00 on a Sunday night, just like old times with a rough little rendering of a calvin-and-hobbes’ish daydream of organic spaceships hunting each other across rugged hostile terrain. Maybe next week I’ll get something productive done.

Ouroboros Route

I come in to the office abnormally early, my mood black as my nerdy t-shirt, a relic of a defunct corporate handout. The once flashy logo cracked and faded on the sleeve. My sleep, plagued by jittery dreams as if sourced from a scratched phonograph endlessly skipping back seconds to replay what would be my final act.
I am granted admittance through the act of swiping my ID, a near meaningless hi-tech sacrament repeated without reflection. I avoid the elevator and turn counter clockwise, winding up the stairs numbering each tread in my mind. 13 stairs to a flight, 2 flights to a floor, 5 floors to my level. I pace an additional 14 steps to the second carded gate I must pass. 144 paces in all. 12 squared, and the 13th Fibonacci number. I must pass this portal with more than a perfunctoral scan of my badge. I place my thumb on the altar of plastic, “I am me”.
With a tinny click corroborating my existence I push into the priory of geekdom. I’m not as old as some, but I remember a time when the pre-dawn glow would have been a greener monochrome. Out of the corner of my eye I see the sleeping monitors their surfaces reflectively dull and speckled with dust. I pass another old-timers cube, his monitors’ sleep function overridden and dancing with a simulated waterfall of Matrix code.
I turn counter-clockwise once more at the end of the aisle to my low-traffic station. My monitors alive and endlessly drawing and redrawing what would seem to be a layout of aged European cities. As I fall into my Aeron Chair the screens awake seemingly in anticipation. I drop my hands to the keyboard in another holy rite and my fingers affirm my password without the aid of thought.
For the first time I hesitate. I have little inkling what derangement led me to this juncture, but I find my inquisitiveness overrides all caution. Maybe it’s the endless knocking of near-do-wells and outlaws at my digital gates. Somehow I got the idea in my head that maybe there was more to the endless, mindless probing. Possibly it was one too many Laundry novels; some Pratchett predilection that posited the path I now undertake.
Many things are unnatural, and most have consequences. I begin my work of undoing to weaken the world. Opening an xterm I use secure shell to connect to another machine and invoke the virtual machine manager. The manager spawns a Windows minion in a new screen. Inside the virtual windows machine I call upon xming and SSH back to my desktop completing the unholy circle. Machine alerts begin to register in my task bar and I see the load begin to spike under a deluge of requests for admittance. I feel I can hear the nameless horrors I’m about to receive. One last command to type before my newly profaned processors perish. My hand hovers over the enter key…
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Space Nuts

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I was just over 5 years old in December of 1972 when my dad sat me down with him in front of the TV. He told me it was going to be the first time a rocket carrying astronauts took off at night. I’d been crazy for spaceships ever since I could remember. I had Apollo print pajamas and a sleeping bag sporting sputnik’s. I remember it was special because I could watch this one with my dad. It’s funny, I even remember where the TV was sitting, but for some reason I don’t remember it being in the winter. It’s funny the things you remember as a kid.
Today the Shuttle Discovery took off on its last mission. Peripherally I was aware it was coming up, but when I saw a news article saying it was today, my productivity at work shot out the window because I discovered NASA streams the launches online. I called up the NASA website a couple hours before launch time and saw them strapping in the last of the astronauts. I was pleased to find that most of the commentary wasn’t the inane dribble of tv talking heads, but mostly live radio chatter with some explanation by a Kennedy Space Center official.
I tried to just listen to the audio while going about my other work, but I kept getting sucked back in by all the little details. The crew that was buckling in the astronauts wore their mission patches on the tops of their hats so the cameras could see the patches as they are standing while the cockpit is aimed heavenward, so the camera is pointed down. The harnesses that the white-room crew wear to clip in their safety lines has the primary tether access on the shoulder, rather than the back, so they can wear their oxygen tanks and not have them in the way. And my favorite, they said one of the astronauts “…worked at KFC for 5 years before she became an astronaut.” I had a mental double-take at that before I realized that KFC probably stood for Kennedy Flight Center, and not the chicken place.
Time ticked away and, as interesting as it was, I was getting a little impatient for the launch, and I vividly remembered asking my dad why they couldn’t just “light it off”. A small piece of the ceramic heat-resistant tiles came off when removing the protective tape around the door. A glass slurry was used to patch the hole and we heard discussion of how that patch cleared the rules for repairs within specs. The radio chatter with flight control started ticking off more completed items off the checklist above the 400 mark about then. The detail of our downtime checklists have stirred a bit of pride in me at work in their detail, but these were pretty complex and infinitely more thorough.
I had shared this time-killer with my team in an email, and every so often Sam would come to my cube, or I would run to his with some exclamation at the developments. Before the planned hold at nine minutes one of the downrange communiques reported in a rather stressed voice that there was a problem with downrange monitoring and they were a no-go. Flight control stepped in calmly and asked them to work on fixing it.
I was awestruck contemplating the bulk of the procedures involved that I hadn’t considered before. I’m fairly anti-bureaucratic and have done my share of scoffing with news reports of the boondoggle that goes on in any government agency, but in this case I found myself struck with wonder at the balance that has been achieved in safeguarding not only the lives of the astronauts and crew but the huge monetary investment of the mission. A valve was discovered to be .9 degrees outside the allowable differentiation in temperature. The area was checked and showed that one side of the valve was sitting in sun and the other side in the shade. A little discussion showed that fit in with an allowance that could be made regarding natural elements causing temperature differentiation.
The countdown resumed at nine minutes with the downrange still broken. An agreement had been made that the countdown would continue as planned until five minutes to launch and a window could be held a further five minutes to resolve downrange problems before scrubbing the attempt. In a dramatic climax you would expect from the movies the clock ticked down to fifteen seconds left in the window before the hurried commands were given that cleared the error and allowed the count to resume. The cone over the nose of the main fuel tank retracted slowly and the control surfaces and engines gave their final computer-aided tests, swiveling back and forth in a pre-programmed dance almost as if eager to leap from the pad. Flight Control gave the word that the launch area was being bathed in water in some sort of acoustic dampening procedure to withstand the launch stresses. The count hit zero and the sparking ignition sequence lit. For two seconds Discovery hung trembling and with my heart tight in my chest Launch Control said the word “Go” and like it had been unleashed Discovery began to climb.
And again I was five years old and trying to hold back tears at the roar and the light propelling a handful of people outside the safety of the Earth. I was struck with the accomplishment of putting together in working order such a broad spectrum of knowledge that we can move men to an extremely hostile environment and support them there and bring them back again.
In the end I was a little sad at the thought that there are only two space shuttle missions left. Maybe NASA will undertake great projects again, but the step back to single use rockets for supplying the ISS as well as the push for commercial companies to step in to that role also seems to be the ending of an era. Looking back to that December night when, with my dad, I watched a black and white tv and dreamed of being an astronaut, we didn’t have any idea that the Apollo 17 mission would be the last time that man would go so far into space for more than 40 years. Maybe the hope is with commercial space ventures and a reboot of competition to push back the boundaries once again, but I was always a NASA kid.

You should have heard the music, too…

So I had a long couple days reconfiguring the basement and even got out to the dump today. I don’t believe I’ve ever been to the landfill in February before. Anyway I’m dog tired and filthy, so I figure it’s time for a shower.
That’s not what’s weird, though.
In the shower I drop the soap, and I get a little freaked out.
Not like that.
The soap drops and sticks a landing like a little green Chinese gymnast on it’s narrowest end, defying Newton to say anything about the sudden loss of inertia.
But that’s not the weirdest part.
It’s the dozen Neolithic drain monkeys that swarmed up and began touching and barking at it almost as if it could enhance their chances of survival.
Stupid drain monkeys.

How do you know?

I want something.
I don’t know what it is.
It has caused a bit of trouble, including almost getting kicked out of a car in the middle of the Mojave…
In 2006, I decided I could, with a little help from my friends, build a largish garage to replace the one that was falling down and end up with a studio of my own. I really wanted that studio.
The studio is not done yet. If I really wanted the studio, wouldn’t it have been finished by now, despite the tumultuous few years I’ve had? It is close, if I only had some money I could get the insulation and drywall done…
If I really wanted it done, wouldn’t I have the money to do it?
I have a digital video camera on my desk.
I thought I needed to have it because I had so many ideas for little movies and this new youtube thing sounded like it might catch on.
I don’t think it got 5 hours usage and it’s quite dusty.
The video editing software I bought with it won’t install on any current version of windows.
I could probably repeat this scenario a hundred times, and not just with material things. My education butted my wants up against reality several times. Even after I found myself in a respectable career I decided I could finish a degree that wasn’t pressing me to use it daily, but could just be an enjoyable aesthetic enhancement. I’m reasonably close to a couple degrees.
It turned out I really didn’t want that, either.
Or, at least that’s my assumption.
It could be that I just don’t want anything, but it seems like there is some sort of pressure there.
Not knowing what I want really causes problems when people are trying to decide where to eat. Some of my friends and my wife have mostly learned to deal with it. It’s not often that I’m craving anything specific, I just get hungry. And I don’t often run up against a place I don’t want to go to. When Debbie found out after ordering pizza that it would be my 5th pizza meal in a row a while back she got a little angry. “Why didn’t you tell me you’ve only had pizza since lunch yesterday?!” Well… For one, I like pizza, and two I didn’t have to decide what to eat. Left to my own devices I often had dinners of microwave popcorn and soda. Or more frequently several trips to the fridge to find the same nothing inside and then off to bed.
But I digress.
Some questions can bring me to a screeching halt. “What do you want for your birthday?” is quite a show stopper. “Do you want to go to a movie?” is an easy one, the answer is always yes. However, “What movie do you want to see?” is fairly problematic. That question is closely related to “What do you want to eat?” But for some reason, with a movie I often care.
Right now I don’t know if I want to finish this entry.
That’s not unusual, I often have 3-5 unpublished entries floating in limbo that eventually meet a bad end in the lightcycle arena, or something.
And it wouldn’t be the first time that I thought I wanted to write about this topic and ended up being wrong.
Maybe it will be the last.

Have you seen my totem?

So Sunday morning I was dreaming that it was a warm, sunny day and I was trying to arrange my little bonsai tree that’s struggling. I wanted to give it the most light it could get in the shade of a tree on campus. It only has one leafy branch and I had it in a dappled sunny spot and was trying to figure out where to put it so the sun would shine longest on that branch when a BYU football player came up to me in full uniform. He started telling me he needed to direct traffic to the big BYU-Utah football game and his daughter was telling everyone it started at 12:03, but it really started at 12:05. He was pretty worried, and I was annoyed he was bothering me. I told him it didn’t matter, both times were close enough, and I wasn’t really in charge of football parking.
I woke up.
And I bumped in to a friend on 13th East and 2nd South. It was raining and dark but it seemed he was happy to see me and asked if I’d walk with him to his office, because he had something he needed to tell me. I said ok, and as I turned around I ran into another friend who lives out of state, and I hadn’t seen in a long time. He asked if I’d go to lunch with him and I said OK. As I turned again I saw the first friend who looked disappointed in me for forgetting about him so soon. I tried to quickly explain that I’d catch him after lunch, or the next day and that this other friend wasn’t going to be in town long and this was my only chance to see him. I was a little annoyed I had double booked and…
I woke up.
again.
I was in a shabby casino, standing in front of a huge craps table made entirely from chocolate with a molten surface three inches deep. The croupier urged me to play quickly and I found a couple chocolate dice just against the inner wall. I picked them up and threw one, rolling a six. The die began to soften in the molten confection and the dealer urged me to throw the second quickly. I was curious how I could see so clearly in the molten liquid. I threw the die and it came up five and she shouted, “Winner!” She handed me another die and told me to roll it to see what I won. It came up 5 again as the first two dice dissolved into the liquid mass. The dealer counted me out 5 large square chips confirming each as a hundred as she lay them down on the candy rail. A die rolled past nearly round as it dissolved, the six dots on its face constantly towards me. “Buy yourself a new saxophone, kid!” she said. I picked up the chips turning towards the cashier and thought, “Who am I, Lisa Simpson? I don’t play the saxophone…”
And I woke up.
The sun was shining brightly in the room, and outside it sounded like a car pulled away from the curb. My first thought was, “Damn you Leonardo DiCaprio!” And I wondered if I ought to do anything that came into my head all day.

2011 Resolutions

So I don’t make resolutions. I find it kind of silly to hinge change on a single day, and on a day when everybody else is doing it as well. Maybe it’s just that latent rebel in me that also wouldn’t let me read Harry Potter or listen to Green Day. Maybe this year is different, though, or maybe it’s just that it’s an 11. I like 11’s.
So here’s how it’s going down. I resolve this year to make resolutions. New Years is as good of a time as any, and I think I’m adult enough to know I’m in a constant process of evolution, but there may be something to setting a few clear goals at the beginning of the year and follow up on them at the end.
To begin with here were my handful of goals from last year that definitely weren’t resolutions.

Continue reading 2011 Resolutions

Analysis Paralysis

I can’t help but think I’ve used this title before. I feel like I’ve been in a holding pattern spinning and waiting for my clearance to land, only with no other traffic ahead of me. I’ve got so many things I want to do, combined with all my responsibilities I really can’t seem to get started for deciding what comes first. I get my mind set to do something and before I can start I second-guess the best plan of attack and put it back on hold while I try to decide all over again.
I took today off work and actually did accomplish a little around here, and that’s a start. I moved a lot of the scrap wood cluttering the basement to the garage and I got the old kitchen cabinets that the Hallman’s replaced when they did their kitchen in too. They’ll probably work good for garage storage if I ever get the insulation and the drywall (and their respective inspections) done. I’m too afraid of getting stuff in there and then having to juggle things around while I do the finish work, but I don’t really have the money right now to attack more than one problem, and I have too many that need attention; which brings me back to needing to move stuff so I can get started on one project or another.
I made the temporary post and got it installed under the centerline beam in the basement to help support the sagging kitchen floor, and moved the jack to the front of the house to get the last of the adjustments made so I can hopefully start on the living room floor before too long. I was telling Jack the other day that I’ve been in my house for 10 years and it still feels like that first apartment when you moved out of your parents house and had the thrift-shop furniture and cinderblock-and-pine shelves. Before I got married I had my kayak in the living room for 2 years because I didn’t have anywhere big enough to put it. Sure, it made a conversation piece, but it’s not like I got enough company to justify it.
Somehow, I also got a week out of sync. I thought I had one more week until the Clay Arts Utah Potters Workshop with Brian Jensen, and that it was going to work out great because it would be on spring break Saturday when the studio would be closed and I couldn’t work. Now I have a bunch of stuff languishing in the studio that I won’t be able to finish unless I take a day off next week too. I may have to take one, though, I don’t think most of it will last more than a week without drying out.
And speaking of Clay Arts Utah, I don’t think I’ve posted anything about my new position. I was nominated (and ran uncontested, I guess) for the Secretary position for the next year. We had our first officer meeting a couple weeks ago, and I think it’s going to be a good thing for me to have to have responsibilities associated with my membership so I actually get out and see what’s going on in the community. I really need some sort of gallery representation, or at least get my online presence going because I’m kind of stuck artistically too. I keep making the same stuff over and over, and while I get a lot of wows from people that see my stuff I think I need something more concrete that will force me to grow a little, or maybe even give me some incentive.

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