(Phaysis)

Some replacements that’ve needed to happen for a long time are now happening at once. It’s unsettling.

First is my laptop. It’s old, it’s busted. It has developed a habit of shutting off at random. After some testing, I determined it was either a) that my installation of Windows XP somehow got pooched or b) the power circuitry, cdrom, or battery is intermittently killing it. So, I uninstalled everything, backed up my important stuff to my desktop machine, and reinstalled Windows.

Reinstallation is, for some of us who live on our computers, a debasing ordeal; all your customizations are lost, all the hacks, programs, and shortcuts you take for granted to get your stuff done are completely undone. You realize what it is about the default configurations that drive you to make those changes. And now I’m going back through all that.

So far, everything is fine. The power did zap off during the install so I had to restart, which makes me wonder if it’s actually the hardware instead. If it is, and if I can’t get this thing to run confidently, then I’m essentially without a laptop again and I’ll need to replace it, which is a pricy possibility.

Second, yet foremost on my mind, is The Dragonfly, my 1993 Mitsubishi Mirage. It’s thirteen years old, smokes like a train, fails emissions tests, and is falling apart. So, after eight and a half years of faithful, everloving service, I have to give it away.

In that regard, it’s time to replace it with another car. After very little looking around, I’ve found the car I want: a green 1999 Honda Civic LX. Four doors, five speeds. I test drove it yesterday, and it does well. I put a deposit on it to hold it, and the dealer offered $200 on a trade-in of my Mirage; basically giving it away (with a car that old, I’m pretty sure, the wholesalers will sell it for parts).

What I’m worried about most is this: money. The car, after all taxes, title, license, and dealer fees, will be $9321. I can swing that through financing. And I have $1000 available in my bank account to go towards down payment. But the dealer, it seems, wants $1500. I’m trying my bank’s financing to see what they can offer. A $500 difference won’t make much of a change in the monthly payment amount, but it’ll affect my interest rate. I guess if I can borrow out of my 401(k) plan at work, I can make it all work out, but everything will have to wait until Tuesday when the work week picks back up.

I know that I want this car, and that it’ll treat me well for years, but I am completely full of trepidation. There’s this feeling I get when it comes to dealing with large amounts of money, like I’m in trouble with my superiors or something. I felt it twice every semester back when I was in college: once at the beginning when I signed my promisory notes for student loans, and once at the end when I was signing another loan to round out my account for finals. I felt it when I signed the financing for my Mirage. And I’m feeling it now.

Am I making a $9321 mistake? Did I make a $200 mistake on the non-refundable deposit? Am I outstretching my reach by affixing my signature to the dotted line without more research, more digging, more financial wisdom? I hope not.

So last night / this morning someone stole the right two wheels off of my car.

You read that right.

I came home at 2am, parked. Nothing out of the ordinary. I woke up around noon and looked out to check the weather; I noticed that the nose of my car was leaning forward more than usual and figured maybe I ran over a bolt or something. When I grabbed my laundry and attempted to leave around 5pm, I checked the tire to see if it was flat…and both were gone. Instead, the right side of the car is chocked up on top of a granite block. Even the lug nuts were gone.

Shock, despair, anger.

Called the cops, made my report, got a case number. They dispatched an officer to dust for prints. There were no prints. However, a neighbor saw that I was at the car with a cop, and came over to offer an eyewitness account. Apparently, at 7:30 to 8am, she had her apartment door open to let in the breeze. She stepped out onto the balcony and noticed a man at the car; he saw her, looked nervous, and then carried a tire in each hand to his car and drove off. She thought he was my car’s owner and didn’t think anything of it. The description she offered was rather generic: light-skinned black male, bald, medium height and stocky build. She got no description of the car.

I have no hope of getting my wheels back. By my estimate, it’s $150 out of my pocket to replace them. The wheels were nothing special: cheap stock rims, cheap tires that were nearing a replacement. Why my car was targeted, I don’t know. If it was at 7:30am, then yeah, I don’t know. If it was during the night, then the lighting in the lot, the shadow on the right side of the car, the right side facing the street and away from the apartment building, would all make sense.

I’ll need a ride to pick up some spare lug nuts, get a set of locking lug nuts, and top off the air in my full-sized spare and my donut spare so I can limp around tomorrow to get new wheels. Until then, I’m stranded, deflated, defeated.

To get you all caught up to speed, now that I’ve had enough time to recover, the Nine Inch Nails show last wednesday was incredible. It was hot, it was sweaty, it was dusty, it was crowded, it was steamy, the pit was angry, the band was loud, and it was everything I had hoped it would be. Since my date fell through, I sold my “date ticket” to a friend of mine for dirt cheap (the friendship discount); I sold the other two tickets for relatively cheap (I’m not greedy) to some dude from San Antonio who made a request on craigslist. Once I got all three tickets out of my hands in exchange for money, I was finally happy and able to look forward to the show. All-in-all, I spent $144 on tickets and made $210, which means I got paid to go to see NIN. I like that.

The week before the NIN show, I got free passes to see the sneak preview of Star Wars Episode 3 before the rest of the world did. I kinda have a smug attitude about it, but it’s not every week I get to do something few others have the opportunity to do. Y’know? I’m planning to see Ep3 again this weekend. On my own dime.

My boss has taken to bringing his large dog to the shop. It sits in his office all day under the a/c instead of at home where it’s just too hot to leave the little doggie outside where it can walk itself. Last week I received a delivered package and proceeded to take it to the boss’s office. As I crossed the threshhold from the hallway to the office the dog lept up, took an offensive posture, and proceeded to bark at me in a deep tone. I backed up, put the package on the shelf next to the door, gave the boss a pissed and freaked-out look, and just left. He later apologized and decided that placing a handmade sign next to the door would prevent future disaster.

My Memorial Day weekend wasn’t as grand nor as fun as I had wanted. One of my plans was to ride my bicycle as often as possible; thanks to the crappy weather (rain and storms almost every day/night) riding my bike and being out on it wasn’t such a smart idea. So I drove. Also, the allergens seem to be getting bad; every morning I woke up with headaches that don’t clear until some time after getting up. I still have the headaches. Stupid allergies. Add to that the migraine I had on sunday night and then trying to recover from it on monday.

There weren’t too many problems with the weekend itself, tho. It’s just that overall things were just bland, unexciting. Icky, if you will. Just…blah. No overarching excitement; no bonus, no rewards. Just moodiness and sticky May weather.

It appears my car has taken up the habit of smoking. I don’t know why, but it’s been getting worse over the past 4 months. It’s kinda embarrassing, y’know? I mean, I know my car has 158,000 miles on it (original engine), so some smoke should be normal, but not this much. It’s turning into one of those cars you call the DPS about to complain about the pollution. I don’t know if I’m burning oil – well, I know it’s been burning slight amounts of oil for years – but that much? I also know there’s a crack in my exhaust manifold; would that affect my emissions controls that much to make me burn a rich mixture? The smoke really isn’t so apparent until I’ve been sitting at an idle for a little bit, like at a traffic light or a drive-thru lane, and then when I step on the gas to move the smoke just billows out. It’s blue-grey and white.

I love my car; I’m used to it. It has become a part of me and my life. It is the only expensive thing I own. I don’t want to trade it in for another 3 years of car payments. Yet rebuilding or replacing the engine, though it seems like a cheaper option, might actually be the wrong thing to do considering the 12-year age of the car. I just don’t know yet. I’m planning on getting some professional advice on the matter first thing this weekend. So we’ll see.

In the meanwhile, now that the weather’s permitting, I’ve taken to riding my bike more often. Maybe outside of the car thing I can make a weekend of riding my bike. Yesterday I felt like I was having heart/chest problems — it must’ve been heartburn because I had no problem hopping on the bike after work.

My friends Ed and Melanie are expecting and tomorrow is the day. The baby (a girl) was expected last weekend but she was taking her time. Mel’s O.B. decided to induce labor this friday, so congratulations to them. I’ll see them this weekend when I visit the delivery ward at their hospital.

For what it’s worth, the Republic of Texas Biker Rally (remember me talking about that 2 years ago?) is back in town. Apparently it’s every year on the weekend after Memorial Day weekend; I had gotten confused. Maybe I’ll go downtown and look at the bikes for something to do. Or maybe I’ll go downtown and fake unconsciousness to see how many doctors leave their bikes to come resuscitate me. Who’s to know?

Ok, hope this passes for a journal update.

So here I am. Whatever. Nothing ecstatically, fantastically great to report. Whatever. I hate technology. My Time-Warner cable modem connection has been sucking shit for the past three weeks. You expect me to feel gung-ho about life when I can’t reliably tell anyone? Time-Warner states that there indeed is a problem in the neighborhood. No shit. It’s not like it’s rocket surgery. Fix the fucking thing, or I cancel service. Then again, going to another company wouldn’t work — they all use the same fucking equipment. Whatever.

Last week, during the morning of a major downpour, there was water pooling and flowing across the road in the construction zone outside of my apartment. It’s a stretch of road I have to drive every day to get to work. Around 3pm, I stick my head out the back door of my job to check on the weather. It was then that I noticed that I was the proud recipient of a flat tire. Fuck. Three-inch long piece of stamped steel, looked like a hinge or a latch, buried in my left-rear tire. It must have washed into the roadway from the construction debris. So, I finished up a job, excused myself, clocked out, put on the donut tire, and limped to the nearest tire shop. One hour and $100 later I have two new tires to replace the flat and the other rear tire which has been patched a year ago. So, with all that, I was officially, undeniably poor. I still am until this friday, a long-overdue payday.

Things suck.

If you know me (which you should, since you’re visiting my site), and you see me in my recent daily life, you’ve probably noticed (if you cared enough) that I’ve been getting really short-tempered lately. I’m growing impatient with a lot of things. My tolerance of bullshit is growing really thin.

Case in point — the bosslady is growing on my ever-fucking nerves. I really don’t know what the hell is up with women who grew up as the girls who made THE RULES of the playground. They made all the rules, they made all the games, and if you weren’t playing according to the rules, spoken AND unspoken, then you were the target of their anger. So the bosslady, a.k.a. the woman married to the boss, has joined our team in an effort to police her husband make things more efficient and to help “set up ‘systems’” (that’s a term straight from corporate hell). Whatever. If she doesn’t stop pandering and condescending to us, I’m afraid she’s not going to have a workforce left to help pay for her future retirement. We’re adults. We’re not her daughters. Stop that shit.

So, yeah, I’m hating my job. Too much bullshit. Leave us alone and let us do our jobs. That’s all we ask.

But you can’t tell her that.

I was going to go to Texarkana last weekend to see my mother for her birthday weekend, but I don’t feel comfortable at all with driving that distance with my timing belt getting as old as it is. It’s about 50-thousand miles overdue, and I don’t like that. How much will it cost me to have it replaced? Hold onto your lunches, because I lost mine: no less than $450. What the fuck for? God. Something replaceable like that, there’s a system for doing it if the mechanic’s experienced. No sense in that shit. $80 for a new belt and water pump, so what’s the rest of the cost? Four hours of labor. Fuck that shit. Bullshit.

Nothing good to brag about. Sorry. Tune in later.

Things haven’t been peachy as of late. Last weekend’s case of sinusitis and bronchitis put me off my course, and I’ve decided to make some serious healthy-living choices. I’m doing better, but my mood this past week hasn’t been the same. More in a frump, so to speak.

Even though I’m not too happy with my job at times, I’m more serious about it now, more involved in the work there, more with my head in the game. As long as I can run the machines, as long as I can get away to work on my own, I’m happy and more confident. If it’s just me to deal with, then my world is conquered.

My laptop has been at the Dell service depot in Memphis, TN since monday, so as of now I’ve been without it for coming on a full week. I’m not too happy with the pace of service. They are replacing the motherboard in the hopes that it will fix the docking station problem I’ve been having. They’ll also replace the keyboard for the missing spacer key, the dvd-rom drive for the broken faceplate, and potentially the LCD screen for the “hotspot” that’s developing at the bottom, just above the heat-producing, backlight-powering voltage inverter.

The official word from Dell is that it’ll take 3 to 5 business days; my friends who work there told me around 2. Come tomorrow, it’ll officially be 5 days, and if Airborne Express doesn’t show up to my job tomorrow with a package for me, Dell will have hell to pay. I’ve been without my main mode of communication to my friends for a whole week, and it’s seriously bothering me. There was a reason why I asked Dell to pick it up on Monday instead of the Friday before: I didn’t want to endure a weekend without it. Well, that happened anyway. I was complaining about the issue with our secretary at work at close of the day on Friday, and she remarked, while waving hands mockingly, “Oh my, I’ll have to actually talk to people, oh no!” It may be funny to her, but it’s not to me. I do more with that machine than chat and browse. I actually write code and do work.

So, in the absence of my laptop diversion, I’ve been spending more time at home on my desktop computer, trying to write code (and being productive), and when I go out, I’m kind of reconnecting with some of my offline friends and disconnecting with my online friends. It’s disturbing that now that I’m in the “real world” I’m closing down, looking off into the distance, and not really wanting to talk at all. Right now, people can go to hell; my patience is short, and I’m not into bullshit. And, for once, I can find some kind of clarity in that. I’m not trying to “keep up” with people, I’m not trying to get into their lives or have them get into mine, I’m just going along on my own way. I pay them no mind.

And I’m writing a journal entry about it. I’m full of oxymorons.

I did treat myself yesterday, though. I took care of something I’ve been lacking and needing for a while. I made the heady resolution to go to a car audio shop, browse their selection, and I bought a new car tuner/cd player. It’s a 200 watt tuner from Dual. By happenstance, I found a unit that had everything I demanded; it fit my tight specifications: a volume knob instead of volume buttons, external line-in for my laptop or someone’s mp3 player, and adjustable bass and treble. The usability factor is seriously high on my list; I’m not going to buy a unit that required me to take my eyes off of the road when I’m driving 85mph in order to change the station or play with the equalization. So I took my new purchase, some CD’s from the apartment, and my toolbox and went to the parking lot behind my job and did the installation myself. I preferred the relative obscurity and anonymity of doing it there than the “I know where you live and park” danger of installing it in front of my less-than-trusty neighbors in my own parking lot. The install took about two hours, and it sounds great. Went on a long drive last night. I’m happy with it.

So there it is, folks. There’s my snapshot of my current life. But, as always, there’s more under the surface, more that I’m not letting on, but it’s only available for those who scratch.