2006-10-22

red letter day

aaaarrrggghh!

And that's not because I missed Talk Like a Pirate Day by more than a month.

Before noon today the desktop computer in our little home "office" crashed and our Passat (my mail delivery vehicle) came home leaking oil; so much oil that it left a trail!

This is not good. I've managed (with significant help from a very nice Dell customer service man from India who, once he slowed down his speech, talked me through the process) to fix the corrupted boot sector. Then I was on my own for getting the ATI Radeon 9800 card inside to get out of its "inifinite loop."

Then the car guy called (a shop that's open on Sunday... I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry about that) and told me there was so much oil slopping around on the engine that he couldn't tell where the leak was coming from... and, by the way, my tires are bad and I have a coolant leak too. The tires aren't as bad as he says and I don't know how I could have a coolant leak without the coolant level getting lower but there you go. Things aren't looking too good here just now.

Hope your Sunday is going better than mine.


Update:
Is it still an update if you haven't actually published the post? As I was typing that last sentence above, the car guy called back. They isolated the leaks (notice, it's pluaral) and they vary in severity from 'must get fixed right away' to 'can wait five or six months.' By dinner time tomorrow I'll have my car back and be about 5 or 6 hundred dollars poorer.

At least the computer repair didn't cost me anything.

Genuine Post-publishing update:
The car guy called back again. When you factor in the labor and materials used for finding the leak, I'm looking at close to 7 bills. Ugh. This day just keeps getting better. Now I've got to call the post office early in the am and try to convince them not to call me tomorrow.


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