Holy Manboobs of St. Paul, I’m hungry. But before I figure out which of my officemates would be the most succulent and tasty, I wanted to share a few random thoughts:
- You may have noticed I didn’t publish anything yesterday. That’s because I was having technical difficulties, after which I finally gave up and spent the afternoon attempting to adjust the steering alignment in my truck, which is off after I got the airbag worked on in December.
So, I began by unscrewing the bottom of the casing around the steering column, only to discover that once you get all the screws out, it’s still held in place by part of the dash. So I found two bolts that held the underside of the dash in place, and removed them. The dash was no looser than it had been before.
So I pulled off the fuse-box cover, and discovered a bunch more bolts, some of which also held on the emergency brake and hood release gadgets. I carefully took those off, hoping that the truck wouldn’t then go rolling backwards down the driveway with me half-in-and-half-out with my head stuck behind the clutch pedal. The panel STILL wouldn’t pop loose, but I realized it was definitely being held somewhere at the top. Then I discovered the panel ABOVE it was only held on with little felt-covered friction-y brackets, so I popped that off, removed 2 additional bolts, and voila, wasn’t any nearer to figuring out where the alignment adjustment occurred.
So I took the top off the steering column casing, which necessitates popping out the ignition, which turned out to be rather disturbingly easy. (I’m pretty sure I could steal any late model Ford pickup with little more than a power drill. Admittedly, that’s rather specialized information, but still.) Once I got the top casing off, I realized I STILL couldn’t figure out what was going on.
So I crawled down underneath and laid on my back on the floor, wedged between the seat and the brake pedal, to look up at the steering action. It was then that I noticed the massive bolt on a U-joint that appear to lead through the firewall and into the front-end steering mechanism. So I carefully loosened that up, and tried to twist the steering wheel to straighten it. No dice.
I crawled back underneath, and wiggled the u-joint a bit, which caused it to completely separate from the steering wheel mechanism. AHA! Based on how things fitted, it was clear that there must be some kind of adjustment WITHIN the steering column. So I set about taking it apart.
This is where you’re probably hoping to read that I inadvertently set off the airbag and shattered my left arm, but in reality I didn’t get much further because every remaining bolt on the damn steering column used one of those Star-of-David-shaped “Torx” bits, which I do not own. I spent about a half-hour trying to remove some of them with a regular allen wrench, but that didn’t do much but strip a couple of the heads slightly, so I gave up and put everything back together.
Hours spent working on truck: 2.
Accomplishments: 0.
I hate modern automobiles. I’m gonna buy a 67 Impala and drive it until I die.
- So my wife is apparently meeting with some Education minister from Panama today. Seriously. HearnWife and her cohorts at work apparently are the Cat’s Very Own Ass when it comes to their projects, so now they’re getting consulted by other countries. Sure, it’s not Germany, or the United Kingdom, or even Kamchatka (geography as I know it is shaped by my knowledge of the RISK boardgame), but it’s still pretty damned cool, if you were to ask me, which of course you didn’t, so let’s just move on.
All I know is that she dolled herself up for the occasion, and it got me a little chubby. Just so you are aware.
- Some of you are wondering why I went with a particularly effeminate design for the ol’ website this week. Come on, people, it’s frickin’ Spring! SPRING! Spring means flowers and totally righteous spring-y colors! Although I have to admit that the orange in the <BODY> background is a little Halloweenish. Perhaps I’ll have to lighten that up.
Anyway, I’d had the “Eagles” theme up for a month, and it was starting to look like I was in mourning. So it had to go. You’ll probably remember I did a pretty righteous Spring theme last year, although of course it’s long gone since Blogger basically forces me to make all the archives look like the mainpage if I want anything to work properly. Argh, says I.
I’m hoping to start working on some kind of short sci-fi story tonight; depending on how inspired I am, you might get to see that tomorrow. If not, I’m sure I’ll manage to come up with some kind of boring drivel that I can post so Dave V. stops IMing me with “What, nothing to write today? Whatever will we do?!?” So look for either really poor fiction tomorrow, or really poor humor. It might even be both!
