Moral-Flexibility.Net

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Well, I’ve been waylaid with either a cold or allergies from hell. Either way I’ve hardly been in tip-top shape, and this combined with my semi-full time return to the dispatchers chair at work has left me feeling a little drained. I’ve got a few rants that lack sufficient anger to be either funny or effective so you’re left with this, a pretty bland entry.

Speaking of work, one of my co-workers has entered the blogosphere, swing by and give him some love.

For now I’m going to curl up with some alcohol, a zombie movie and do my level best to stop producing mucous on an industrial scale.

We’ve all been watching the aftermath of Katrina, I know many of us are looking for ways to help the victims.

If you haven’t already donated to the relief effort feel free to swing by the Zombie Squad website and contribute to their Katrina Relief Fundraiser (if you don’t feel comfortable giving your money to a zombie survival group their fundraiser page also has a link to approved charities you can donate to directly).

Every little bit helps.

[Edit: The fundraiser is now closed, $2,500 USD was raised by the members of ZS. Nice work guys!]

These last couple weeks have been fairly insane. The car (see my last post) was on it’s last legs, Lisa has returned to school, my brother Piet arrived from Texas seeking documentary evidence that he exists, I had agreed to work a few extra shifts here and there (on exactly the wrong days as it turned out), and real life kept intruding to keep things fairly fluid.

(Uncle Piet and Jilly)

Despite this chaos (and you have to believe I feel in desperate need of a break) we got a fair bit accomplished, managed to spend some time with Piet before he returns to the US of A, and even managed to muddle through a changes in vehicles without a serious hiccup. The website being down has really been a non issue for me, I doubt I’d have had the time to post anything even if it had been up…

In all this chaos I entirely failed to;

1. Get to the range (to take part in the postal matches I’ve been plugging)
2. So much as see an old friend who came into town during this chaos (Sorry Robin!)
3. Complete any work on the anit-zombie field gear I’ve been experimenting with. (More on that later)

It was worth it however, Piet have a safe trip home!

Those that know me are more than aware of the problems I’ve experienced with my car. Since I purchased it gremlins have infested the vehicle, causing all sorts of difficult to locate problems, and associated headaches for me and those that come into contact with me.

The epic story of my struggle with this car dates back to Vancouver. About a year after I bought this car (used, but in what seemed like good condition) it developed what I termed a “James Bond Accessory”, that is a randomly deploying smoke screen. The vehicle would blow black smoke from the tailpipe, and fuel consumption dropped to about 250km per tank of gas (thats about half what I should be getting). A gaggle of mechanics poured over the vehicle, replacing random parts to no avail, and after 9 months of these sort of shenanigans I ran out of time, and drove the car (smokescreen and all) across the country.

My mechanic was the only straight shooter in this melee, replacing the O2 sensor 4 times (for free) and telling me that he lacked the diagnostic equipment to find the problem. I then took it to the dealer, who happily ran around replacing parts (with no positive effect) and who was eventually told to put the old parts in as it would run just as shitty without the $900 in labour and untold hundreds in parts they wanted to charge me (with the tailpipe still emitting smoke), final kick at the can was given to Canadian Tire who began the same process of removing key components and finding the replacements failed to correct the problem.

In the end I spent about $1000 on work that was in all probability not needed, and entirely failed to correct the problem.

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