Some People Should Flat Out NEVER Work on Their Car

I saw this story on an Audi forum today and had to repost it. Never has an "oil change" story made laugh and feel a little sad at the same time.

You guys might appreciate my story...

So I've decided to start doing my own oil changes on my new car. I purchased Rhino ramps, oil filter, oil, oil filter wrench, a funnel, a creeper (to lay on and roll around) and an oil bucket.

Here's my story:

I drive the car up on the ramps in my garage. The underside of the car has this aerodynamic cap on it that I had to remove... so I was a little frustrated with this. I roll around and try to find all the screws to take this cap off. This takes 20 minutes with a flash light. Once the cover is off, I can't seem to find the oil pan bolt and there seems to be two canisters that look like they could be the oil filter. So I take a guess. Surprise, it works. I start to unscrew the oil pan bolt and position the oil bucket to catch the oil. Little did I know the oil was going to shoot 10 feet beyond the bucket. So I've got a full on Exxon Valdez oil spill in my garage. And that $hit was hott, I started getting burned. So I've got oil on my arm and face. It really sucked. Finally, I get the bucket in place and things are going smooth. I wait another 10 minutes and take off the oil filter and replace the oil pan bolt and install the new oil filter.

Now comes the easy step of putting the cover back on. This took me a good 30 minutes to figure out. It kept falling out of the track and hitting me in the face. Now I'm getting really pissed. Finally, I get it in the tracks and start putting in the screws to keep it in place. The holes are hard to see so I have to use the flashlight. About halfway through the process, the flashlight dies. So I have to get up and run inside to find more batteries.

After getting the cap back on I am faced with the dilemma of pouring the oil in. After putting in about 6 quarts of oil, nothing is showing up on the dipstick. There's no way this car needs more than 6 or 7 quarts of oil, but to show nothing on the dipstick makes me think a ton more oil needs to go in. So I'm thinking nothing is showing up on the dipstick because the car is up on the ramps and tilted at an angle. So I get in the car but I don't start it. I put it into neutral and start rocking the car back and forth to get it off the ramps. At this time, it is important to tell you that NOBODY is home to help me and I'm doing everything in sandals. So I get the car rocking. And I give it one final hard push.

You can only imagine that a car that weighs a few good tons would roll nice and slow down the ramps right? That f###er took off! So I jump in the car and, of course, there is no power since the car isn't on. So I try desperately hard to press the brake down (no power brakes mind you) and I pull the emergency brake. It worked! Not only that, but I was just inches away from ripping off the hood as it would have caught the edge of the house and surely have torn it away. I'm surprised I didn't slip and fall and have the car go past me and into my neighbors house across the street. Seriously. Bad $hit.

That's my story fellas.

Have a good day.

- original post (should be preserved on a "best of" page)

Written in Recreational / January 25th, 2009 / 0 Comments

El Salvador and Back Again

El Salvador, I <3 you and will be back very soon. Whether it's the beaches of La Libertad, La Paz, and Usulatan, or the mountainous hills of Sonsonate or Morazan filled with delicious coffee, there is much to do in this hyper tiny (but dense) country. Everyone is very friendly and amiable, shockingly so from this American's perspective.

The civil war from 1980-1992 ripped El Salvador apart. I have trouble putting to words what it makes me feel like to learn about the atrocities that occurred there at the hands of their anti-leftist republican government and its wide-sweeping military arm. It makes it even harder to swallow when you learn that the United States strongly backed the government of El Salvador both with copious amounts of money, weapons and military training throughout the civil war.

There is tons of info out there on the civil war, but if you want a cliff notes version Noam Chomsky has summed it up fairly well (note: this short essay was written in 1993, a mere one year after the war ended; much has changed in the country since then but the history is the same). A particularly horrible and well-known massacre was the Massacre of El Mozote, but sadly there are many more that have occurred in the last 150 years or so.

On the bright side, the country has clearly recovered and doing very well right now aside from having an economy strongly tied to the US. It doesn't help that the US dollar was adopted as the official currency in 2001.

They are currently in an election season right now (election days: March 9-17, 2009), with the two leading parties being ARENA (republican) and FMLN (democrat). What really excites me about this election is the simple fact that the FMLN is a serious contender for the presidential seat this time around. I mean we're talking about a party that if you were even remotely associated with during the civil war times (especially the early years), it meant there was a bullseye on your forehead. The country is filled with FMLN flags, advertisements and people really excited for this election. Such an amazing contrast to how it must have been 20-25 years ago.

Since I have never lived in El Salvador, I'm not going to try and pretend I know which party is "best" for the country, but still it excites me in the direction that it seems like El Salvador is headed.

Not to just completely switch gears, but while I was there a kickass family member gave me a tour of La Constancia, a brewery who runs a very nice facility in San Salvador producing a variety of light beers and pilsners both for export and nationally available. They also happen to produce a whole bunch of Coca Cola products that you'd recognize as well as a variety of the El Salvador favorite, Kolashanpán, known as La Tropical Superchampán. Kolashanpán is probably the best soda ever, I broke a 5 month soda strike to drink the stuff.

La Constancia also happens to have a female brewmaster, which is not exactly a very common occurrence for a high-production facility like that. Damn cool.

Touring a high production beer facility is fascinating. I've done a bit of home brewing and also toured some small time setups, but to see everything on a huge scale is really great. Far and away, the most interesting part to be able to see/touch would be the bottling/canning lines. Really makes you appreciate what goes into something as simple as a bottle of beer. Plus it's fun to grab an unlabeled, unpasteurized bottle off the line and crack it open right there for a taste.

Written in Recreational / January 9th, 2009 / 0 Comments

Austin Android Users: Unite and Help Each Other

I created a Google group so that I could find people in Austin who are writing apps for the new Android powered phone from T-Mobile, the G1. Obviously this conversation extends beyond this one phone, but it's currently (Fall 08) the only one available that is running on Android.

I am not a Java coder, so I have a lot of learning to do. I have worked on one or two Java projects in the past and certainly did some Java coding in my college days, but those are long gone. Before I switched to Ruby programming a few years ago, I was a C#/.NET developer so I guess that experience will help me a little bit.

Hope some people find this list so I'm not all alone.

Written in Recreational / November 6th, 2008 / 0 Comments

Thank You Barack Obama

Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you

Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters. Thank you voters.

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Patriotism = renewed

Written in Recreational / November 4th, 2008 / 0 Comments

Takers and Leavers

One hundred years from now when our grandkids have all had sex

will they look back to the past and know what they've missed?

Will they think we had it better than the way they have it then?

Will they gaze at a strip mall where a field had once been?

Will they think they're born late like the way we now do it?

Or will they curse at the present and lend credence to it?

Will they hear all the old songs and think they're all true and hate all their own songs and everything new?

Well I'm here to tell you something that's known,

from someone who's lived it from someone who's grown,

the somebody who somebody once loaned a home to.

The grass is always greener, the past is always cleaner, the present is crap and everyone's meaner.

They say we're moving towards something but I think we're moving from something.

There are some folks who are more apathetic and then there are some folks who are more money grubbin'.

Well, I know there's always been greed and green acres, and war and peace makers.

And then there's your takers and your leavers, your havers and your needers.

And in this great froth as we skim through the batter, there's now many more of the former and less of the latter.

Help us climb out of this pitfall disaster led by dynasties, charlatans, but not poetasters.

Where there is a mortal disconnect spawned by gluttonous connection, where you pick your own culture without viewer discretion.

Where there is no more history and nothing is learned.

Where you shun all your kin and all your bridges are burned.

Where you are what you buy and you're who what you own; and you think of yourself and you live all alone.

You make yourself feel fine when everything's wrong.

The world keeps turning but you're brittle as bone.

So to all you future dreamers and lovers and leavers,

to all those who know there's still something between us that binds us and reminds us of times that passed,

I appreciate you listening to this one man's last gasp.

In spite of all the words that we can't fit to song,

I'd thank you to take off your eye shades, please... sing along.

- Poem Takers and Leavers on the track Livin' a Dream from the Dr. Dog EP Takers and Leavers.

Update: Just saw Dr. Dog play last night and had the opportunity to talk to Zach for a second. He confirmed that Scott wrote this poem.

Written in Recreational / October 20th, 2008 / 5 Comments