Category Archives: Ideas (blog)

bug babble.

OIL CAN!

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My car – Fluffy – has always been pretty reliable about oil. By “pretty reliable” I mean I drive about 7500 miles per year, so I get the oil changed roughly every six months. I think over the life of the car, I’ve added maybe two quarts of oil between oil changes.

I’ve gone to CJ’s for the oil changes and pretty much all the other maintenance on this 10-year-old Saturn since we moved to the area. I love these guys. I trust them.

On July 22nd, CJ’s changed my oil.

On August 2nd, I stopped on Rt 422 due to a massive traffick back up. The woman behind me didn’t. Net result: busted bumper, busted up trunk frame, busted car seat (I hit the back of the seat so hard I broke a notch off the doohicky that lets you tilt the seat back), and sprained neck.

I’m in PT for the sprained neck, which isn’t exactly fun, but I’m still working, feeling OK, etc. etc. Enough about me, back to Fluffy.

For the past few weeks, both before and after the body work, Fluffy’s developed a bit of a knock in the engine. Finally getting a bit nervous about it today, I took it into the guys at CJ’s.

They checked the oil, noticed it was low, explained that the knock could be a valve knock – if the oil pressure’s OK but the volume of oil is too low, the valves will be the first area to act up.

They added a quart of oil. Still low.

They added another quart. Still low.

The car only has a capacity for 4 quarts, so their next move was to check under the car to see if the oil was draining out. The parking lot was dry.

I turned on the engine and oil did not go squirting everywhere. The knocking was still there.

They added another quart. Still low, but at least we were finally registering on the dip stick.

Much other searching around. No leaks found.

After the 4th quart, the knocking finally started to quiet. Still no leaks, and no blue smoke billowing out the back.

So my car, which has never burned oil significantly in its lifetime, just burned through almost 4 quarts of oil in under a month. I’m currently under orders to check the oil regularly — something I haven’t had to do since Fluffy replaced Spot, back in 2000.

Can I say whatever this is was caused by the accident? Not at the moment – especially since we don’t know the cause. And it does seem a little bit of a stretch that hitting the back of the car would cause it to burn oil.

Still, I suspect Fluffy, who has over her years bit a deer, bounced off a guardrail, been sideswiped on the Schuylkill Expressway and put up with more than one incompetent mechanic at the dealership down in Devon, might be on her last legs.

Peace

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I was up playing card games with family last night until almost 3. I slept until after noon, and didn’t rise until almost 2.

I write this because sometime in the future I’ll be flipping through these archives while in a state of anxiety, wishing life would slow down. Future self, I don’t “have time” to ignore the laundry and the chores and the mounds of to-do items for work. But today, I took the time to stop.

And having done so, I’m filled with readiness to do so many things… I get things done faster when I’m ready to do things than when I have to.

So, future self, stop. You’ll likely say you don’t have time, or someone will be angry, or you will be angry. I understand how important you think the things you doing are. But like a flywheel, you build momentum slowly when you need to keep running for a long time.

Stop for a day.

Stop.

It’s time for more weird stuff from the internet

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First, do not start playing Fallen London on Echo Bazaar. It’s a deliciously dark choose-your-own-adventure-style text adventure set in a steampunky Neverwhere-like underground London (which is quite a different thing than the London Underground).

You don’t want to play, because it’s weird and warped and fun and addictive and you only get 70 turns a day. You most certainly don’t want to look for me (@kirabug), because then you’d also be following me on Twitter and I post weird stuff and complain all day.

I’ll see you there.

Second, some neat links:

Third, here are some weird videos.

100 Greatest Movie Insults of all time WARNING: NSFW

cows & cows & cows

Teaching

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I remember that a whole bunch of my family were staying at a cabin-like place and the place had giant chicken-like birds that we were supposed to be taking care of while we were there. But a huge part of the anxiety about this cabin was trying to get all the beds in place so we all had somewhere to sleep and none of the women had to share a bed with a guy they didn’t know (because apparently a bunch of work people were there too.)

There was also a major shortage in bathrooms but an overabundance of closets, all of which had the exact same stuff in them. And we couldn’t block any doors.

I don’t remember how the scene shifted from the cabin to a hospital but the next thing I knew I was at an offsite for the OmmNomNom Project (so nicknamed because it eats the budget and staffing of any other project that crosses its path) with at least 4 teams of developers, trying to fit all the bits and pieces together.

But one of the business groups had decided we needed to offer a few new services: video chat, customer education, and a third I don’t remember. These were introduced to us when K, who is very pregnant both in the dream and real life, climbed up on a folding table, and built abstract sculpture of the new capabilities out of an artificial Christmas tree, Christmas tree lights, and newspaper.

The video chat problems were all tech problems – asynchronous delivery of chat and bad lagtimes would make it virtually unusable. Didn’t matter, we had to find a way to do it anyway.

While some of the dev folks tried to figure that out (and groaned and complained and I don’t blame them) we learned that the other project – customer education – was about helping our richest clients pass their high school finals or get GEDs. And the more we all objected to the very existence of this goal the more we were told “if we don’t help them, who will?”

At that point, since we were making no forward progress we stopped the meeting so I could go to my testing at the hospital. The halls were filled with coworkers and small children and I woke up shortly afterward.

Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning

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Read this. Now. Especially if you’re a parent.

The Instinctive Drowning Response – so named by Francesco A. Pia, Ph.D.,  is what people do to avoid actual or perceived suffocation in the water.  And it does not look like most people expect.  There is very little splashing, no waving, and no yelling or calls for help of any kind.  To get an idea of just how quiet and undramatic from the surface drowning can be, consider this:  It is the number two cause of accidental death in children, age 15 and under just behind vehicle accidents – of the approximately 750 children who will drown next year, about 375 of them will do so within 25 yards of a parent or other adult.  In ten percent of those drownings, the adult will actually watch them do it, having no idea it is happening source: CDC. 

Read the rest at Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning.

Hat tip to Pam for pointing it out.