Category: Rants

File this one in the “I though Toyota’s were supposed to be reliable” folder.

Last night the “check engine” light came on in the 4Runner. Since I’ve never seen it before I was concerned. I checked all around the engine compartment, looking at hoses, wires, fans, and the like. I looked under the truck for leaks. It all seemed fine.

I took it in to Toyota to have them give it the once over this morning. I get a call barely an hour after I get to work. “Well, there are some problems,” they begin. No, really?

Long story short, at this point in time I’m out at least $1200. Most of that is labor considering they have to crawl around inside the engine area. What happened to the always reliable, never breaks down Toyota mantra? Bah!

Some days it just doesn’t pay to get up in the morning. Today I spent all day working on various odd tasks to make up for a day long trip I have tomorrow. As fate would have it, I spent two hours at the end of the work day building a new PC image only to have it completely fail when I bring it home. The kicker? I need it to work for my trip tomorrow. And my flight leaves at 7am. And its coming up on 11pm now.

Can you say no sleep? Sure you can.

If you know nothing about PHP, Apache, or server side scripting this next statement won’t mean much to you: paths suck! As I continue to rebuild the guts of this site to be “easier” to manage, I’ve discovered the joy of absolute vs. relative paths. Seems like you need a little of both, but where and when to use each is a mystery to me.

I guess I need “wasting time scripting for dummies.” I wonder if it comes in an audio book format?

There are days when the web works great. Then there are days like today, where things just don’t click at all. PHP, a server side language for web sites, is giving me fits. Because of this, throughout this site you’ll see errors that shouldn’t be there. I apologize and I’m working on it, but it’s driving me nuts!

I’ve just had one of those weeks where things just don’t seem to be much fun. My job, such as it is, has been stressful and uncertain. I’m running on very little sleep, after a previous weekend of virtually no sleep. I got a few bills that I wasn’t expecting asking for hundreds of dollars. And of course, I keep running into people who turn sour when I’m around.

The world is just filled with crud these days. Joy.

I spent the day at the local air show today (Moffett Air Expo 2003) and ran into some very rude folks. Not just any folks, mind you, but extremely pushy people.

First they put their kids down in front of the people next to me. This is understandable, they are short and need to be close to see the planes. Next, one of the wives moves in, spreading the kids out into two different parties areas. Next, the fathers move in, push all those new arrivals aside, and try to carve out a large area from about 3 parties. I am now one of the parties.

What amazed me is the complete lack of tact or reason these folks had. I refuse to play the race card here, but I have to say if these were American’s they would have at least asked before butting in. Instead, they pushed in, two at a time, until they took up far more room than they started with. Then they proceeded to tell everyone around them how “they were doing it for the kids” but the kids were not remotely interested in the air show. By about mid-way through the show the kids had split, the daddy’s had PO’d everyone around them, and the mom’s were tired of holding down the fort, as it were.

In the end, they all left and many happy folks got their personal space back. Why people do things like this are beyond me. The oldest kid couldn’t have been more than 10, and with an attention span of a typical TV commercial. How these people thought the kids would enjoy sitting in the hot sun, with noisy planes, craning necks upward for 6+ hours is a mystery.

I enjoyed the planes, though. 🙂

I got to spend a birthday in hot and humid Dallas, TX. Working, too, I might add. I had forgotten how much humidity really sucks and I was blissfully reminded of this fact with three days of exposure to it. How the people in the mid-West and South cope with this issue I’ll never know.

I can say that I had also forgotten just how amazing Texas women are. They are beautiful, well dressed, polite, and just the right amount of sass. If only they could be exported to the female starved CA/BA peninsula I’d be set. For now I’ll have to live with the memories of it all. 🙁

My hobby reminded me today that it’s all fun and games until someone loses an appendage. In my case it was a slice of my finger and about a pint of blood, according to the bystanders. The prop on one of my planes got two fingers in one pass before I was startled enough to pull them back. I think I’ll be fine again once I get the pain to subside. Oh, and my silver airplane has a nice coat of crimson spots on it now. At least I didn’t lose the fingers… a few others have. Lucky me!

I’m closing in on a couple of decisions that impact the checkbook in a major way. On top of this I have work going crazy and a bunch of trips coming up. If that weren’t enough I am feeling a bit under the weather. Oh, and T3 opens in a few days. Could it get any more hectic? Really, could it?

Having a 5 mile commute to work has its advantages… like not sitting in traffic. Today I had to drive up the peninsula via I-280 to get to Palo Alto. What I got instead of a drive is an extended crawl and park. Now I remember why I didn’t like commuting. Good riddance to that dash dining.

The weather has recently turned warm here. Now by New Orleans standards (I was just there) it isn’t hot, just a comfortable 85F. However, after being in doors all day and coming home to a room full of 83F heat simply isn’t fun. Guess its time to look into those PC cryo cooling solutions for the apartment again.

Finally, I recently had to do a bit of domestic traveling on aircraft. What I discovered is that people around the US are fat. I mean really fat. Deserving of ‘wide load’ signs and caution tape fat. I guess these folks just don’t go on international flights or my travels have kept me blissfully unaware of the situation. I now have a new #1 issue on planes: fat people.