Goodness. I've let this lie far too long, and I apologize -- particularly since my last post of any substance was "I'M HAVING CHEST PAINS."

I should remedy that, and shall.

First and foremost, HEALTH:

Said chest pains proved not only to be not life threatening, they weren't even a significant health issue. They were, yes, Pre-Ventricular Contractions, and, yes, I do have a family history of PVCs -- but there are no structural issues with my heart. The doctor said that I could go climb Mount Kilimanjaro were I so inclined.

The "flips" have entirely faded, at this point, and considering that they started immediately after I got back from last year's Maker Fair ... I rather suspect the high-voltage jolts I got for funsies from the Van De Graff generator a few booths down from us might have triggered a little persistent twitchery in the old timer.

(Come to think of it, that anxiety/panic attack I had at dinner that one night during Maker Fair might have been the first manifestation -- that feeling of "panic" and "trouble breathing" might have been connected to "GAH MY HEART SHOULD NOT DO THAT" ...)

WORK:

I am quite enjoying my current employment. My experience with interpreting and displaying complex, abstruse data clearly (read: "Your Obedient Serpent Knows Stupid Excel Tricks") has made me the go-to guy for our company's more esoteric reports, and while I tend to get buried in these Special Projects, I really can sink my teeth into them.

It's still a 50-mile commute, but I'm no longer carpooling with kohai_tiger; a few times driving solo gave me a taste for getting in and getting home earlier ... and earlier ... and earlier. When I flew out to Midwest Furfest last November, I started running on "Chicago Time" ... and really never shifted back to Pacific Time. Most days, I roll out around 0400, get to work around 0500, leave around 1400, and get home around 1515, plus or minus fifteen to twenty minutes either way.

Oddly, since I've shifted my shower-taking habits to evening instead of morning, I get up at about the same time as I did when I was carpooling and getting to work between 0730 and 0800 -- but since I seldom if ever have to contend with anything resembling traffic, I get home three to four hours earlier. Drying off becomes relaxing downtime instead of rushed getting-ready time.

I've also found that I enjoy driving in the early hours of the morning, and not just because of the light traffic. I'm very much a morning person, and those crisp, clear pre-dawn hours just seem more alive to me. I confess that I've also been prone to a bit of Seasonal Affective Disorder for the past few years -- but I never had an issue while on The Chicago Schedule. It tried to sneak back on the few days that I shifted back to a "normal" schedule during the winter months. I think a key factor is Getting Home After Dark: if you get up before sunrise, you've Seized the Day. If you get home after sunSET ... the day has seized you.

FUN:

I've been mostly keeping up with the speculative cinema; I can't believe I've let both Captain America: the First Avenger and Marvel's The Avengers slip by without comment, much less any other movies. On television, Game of Thrones is an amazing achievement, and on broadcast television, I found myself wholly engaged and impressed by Arrow.

I am down to a single game on the RPG front: the monthly Star Wars game hosted by rikoshi and tealfox. The Wednesday night game sessions alternating between Ironclaw and The Dresden Files were becoming increasingly untenable for me, and once I switched to Chicago Time, I simply couldn't continue. Honestly, I'm suffering a bit of Gamer Fatigue on that front; once the Star Wars game wraps up, I will probably gafiate from gaming for a year or three.

My chronic automotive issues were finally traced to a glitchy OBD-II (On Board Diagnostic) computer. That took nearly two months to get replaced and functioning properly; if she proves stable, I may start keeping a packed Go-Bag, so I can head out for spontaneous road trips on random weekends. I spend far too much time traveling the same hundred miles of road (I take different routes in the morning and afternoon), and spending the weekend sitting around home not going ANYWHERE only goes so far. I'm a traveller by ancestry, instinct, and long, long experience, and by golly, I need to TRAVEL.

Oh, and I've picked up a few more volumes of Raymond Chandler ...

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Have you ever had a near-death experience? How close have you come to dying?

Oh, hooray, something morbid to contemplate.

I've had a couple, the first being at age 5.

Our family was vacationing at Yosemite National Park, and my two sisters (the oldest being all of Eight Going On Nine at the time) were set with the task of watching me as we wandered around an outdoor display of old gold mining machinery.

Well, at some point, I got it into my head that I was going to Go Find Mommy, and ran off at full tilt...

... right into the sharp, blade-like edge of some century-old piece of Gold Rush apparatus, set conveniently at Five Year Old Noggin Height.

The blade sliced neatly through the skin of my forehead, along with the layer of muscle underneath, and a major artery. Yes, one of my earliest memories is seeing the world through a red curtain of arterial blood.

Parents were not far distant, as it transpired, and the park ranger responded very quickly (dropping his groceries, as it was always related in later family tellings). With the subcutaneous muscles cut, my forhead skin sagged alarmingly, causing my father to think that there was an actual chunk of skin missing; wonderful parent that he was, he sent my sisters back to the blood-soaked ground to find it.

I was bustled to a doctor's office and stitched up, and I still have a scar neatly along my hairline; four decades later, it's only barely visible. There was a lot of blood lost, of course, and as my mother tells it, I passed out in the car at least once. I have no idea how close I came to death, but if any of several factors had been even slightly different ... .

The other time that I can remember isn't nearly as impressive a tale, and it's been told in this journal fairly recently: the 70-mph blowout I had on I-680 back in March, In this particular instance, I was wholly uninjured, but, again, a slightly different array of factors could have been Very Bad Indeed. If I'd been driving my late, lamented Aspire, with its slimmer wheels and higher center of gravity, I almost certainly would have rolled; the Aspire's tires were brand-new when it was destroyed, but if the blowout was because of something I'd run over, that wouldn't have made a difference.

However close I did or did not come to my Final Destination on that highway, it was shock enough to knock me out of the clinical depression that had plagued me throughout 2009 (if not longer).

Ultimately, I guess I survived that by keeping a firm grip on the wheel and remaining in control during the worst of the crisis.

I suspect that's a metaphor.

---

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Do you give your vehicles names? If so, what are they?

My vehicles name themselves, except when they don't.

My first vehicle was a '71 Chevy van, dubbed "Baby" (her full name was "Come on, Baby, please start, don't do this to me again").

A decade later, I found myself with a Camaro of similar vintage. It never really had a name besides "The Camaro".

The car I owned the longest and loved the most was, of course, my '97 Ford Aspire. I attempted to dub it something else, originally, but two different people looked at this small, round, purplish-blue thing, and proclaimed, "It's a grape!" And lo, she was indeed The Grape*.

After six months, the Saturn Station Wagon still hasn't told me her name. We're still getting to know each other, really, even though we've already had a pretty spectacular adventure together.**

I also name my computers. My first one, a 286, was named "Oracle" (after a cybernetic "Ghost in the Machine" from my early '80s Champions campaign). My second had a huge (17"!!) monitor, a huge CPU case, and an operating system that stubbornly demanded that I do things the way it wanted; I dubbed it "Colossus", and gave it a desktop theme from The Forbin Project.

"Rocinante" is my current desktop machine; it's been piecemeal-replaced over the years and now has no components in common with the original version, but there was enough continuity that I never bothered to change the name. Besides, I like it.

Rocinante's been sitting quietly for the last few months, though. My current primary machine is an Acer Aspire laptop, tentatively dubbed "Dancing Star".

I've toyed with renaming it "The Grape", in honor of my last Aspire, though.

---

*I need to go and tag the earlier entries about that little purple car; we had a lot of adventures over the years, and not ALL of them involved repairs. For that matter, I need to tag the entries about her ignominious demise, as well.
Dammit, I'm all misty again. I loved that little car as much as any dog or cat I've known.

---

**...okay, "Silver Lady" has suggested itself a few times, but I already call someone else by that name now and then, so it might be a little awkward. Of course, people name boats after their Significant Others all the time ....

---

According to my manual (a used car that came with the original manual! Amazing!), the "Service Engine Soon" light is indeed the "Check Engine" light.

Modifications made to the engine, transaxle, exhaust or fuel system of your vehicle, or the replacement of the original tires with other than those of the same Tire Performance criteria (TPC) can affect your vehicle's emission controls and may cause the "Service Engine Soon" light to come on.

Obviously, I just changed a tire -- it's the same kind as the other three, but there are differences in wear patterns, and I don't know if they checked and filled the pressure in the old ones, so there might be enough difference there to freak the chip out.

Rewiring the fuel pump might also count as "modifications to the fuel system".

halfelf revealed that AutoZone stores will check the OBD II chip for free, so, once I grab a shower, I'll head out to the closest one.

[[Edit: Crap. No, they don't, anymore—at least not in California. Argh.]]

I didn't mention the odd not-quite-metallic smell that I noticed when I got out of the car last night; thoughtsdriftby confirmed it. If it was coming from my car, then it might still be a bit more complicated than New Tires.

Oy.

---

When I described last night's adventure to my mother, on the phone, she said, "You had a blowout at 70 miles an hour in the fast lane, and you got over to the shoulder without you or anyone else getting hurt. 'Blowout at 70 miles an hour' usually winds up on the news. You are an awesome driver."

I've got to give some credit to my Saturn station wagon, which is lower-slung and has much better suspension than the Aspire did. Things might not have gone so well if I were still driving the Grape.

That aside, though, I have to say...

...yeah, I am pretty awesome.

---

Today, I went up to help my sister in the last stages of her move from Berkeley to Vallejo.

Although I've driven to the house in Berkeley several times before, this time, I made the error I've told myself not to make every time before, got in the wrong lane, and wound up heading toward the Bay Bridge with no way to abort. I had to pay the toll and turn around on Treasure Island.

The move itself went off with no hitch, though I did miss ANOTHER turn in Vallejo, and wound up having to do a bit of maneuvering to find Big Sister's new house.

Unpacking went smoothly, with half a dozen people helping. By the time we finished the traditional Moving Day feast of pizza, it was after 9, and time for me to head hom.

I took 680, which was disconcerting. Unlike 880, which passes through that long strip of dense habitation along the coast of the Bay, 680 passes through...nothingness. Mile after mile of blackness, punctuated only occasionally by a community or two, full of exit signs I didn't recognize.

And then, I ran over something. No idea what. My car veered a little, but I steadied it.

And then, there was a rhythmic noise from the back.

Mental activity over the next minute or so:
"Crap, did I knock something loose when I hit that bump?"
"It's just road noise."
"What if it's not? Maybe we should pull over and see."
"It's late, we're tired, and we have no idea where we are."
"Hey, Mission! We know where that is!"
*signal for a lane change, accelerate to pass van that keeps trying to pace me*
[FWUMP]
"OH CRAP WHAT WAS THAT?"
*smack hazard light, start lane change*
[[THOOMPslamSKREEEEEEEEE]]
"This is very bad."
*absolutecalmfocusedonlyongettingtoshoulder*

...and then, after the car was more-or-less safely on the shoulder, and after checking the wheel (shreds of rubber clinging to the rim), and getting back in on the passenger side, and picking up the cell phone to call quelonzia to see if our AAA was still active...

...THEN, I lapsed into hysterics, on the phone with Quel. She calmly reminded me that I had a card in my wallet with AAA's number. I called them, and they had a truck out in about 30-45 minutes.

The AAA guy replaced my rim with my emergency donut, and then noticed that the tire had damaged a wiring harness when it blew. So, we checked the lights: Hazards worked, obviously; tail lights worked; brake lights worked; turn signals...didn't.

"Try starting the car."
[[Car turns over but refuses to keep running. Lather, rinse, repeat.]]
"Well, THAT'S interesting."

Current hypothesis: the wiring harness also leads to the fuel pump.

The car is currently in a shop in Milpitas. The tow truck dropped me off at the Denny's on Mission; Quelonzia picked me up and dropped me off at home (thank you, Precious!).

I got home around midnight.


I have now decompressed sufficiently to sleep.

I await phone calls on the morrow.

---

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At the moment, my Dream Car is the Aptera:




Every time I post a link to the Aptera, though, I get a lot of people whining about how impractical it would be in the snow, and that sort of thing. So, if money is truly no object, it would be sharing my garage with this cinematic classic ...



Yes, it still exists, it's been restored, and it's out there.

And if you make fun of my Aptera, I will take my Landmaster, run over your silly little SUV, and drive through your HOUSE.

---

Yet Another Power Failure Knocks Out The Large Hadron Collider!

This makes me a little nervous; I'd joked earlier that the last few LHC glitches coincided with the escalating assaults on my late, lamented Grape.

I have a NEW car now, dagnabbit!

---

quelonzia and I went out car shopping today, and came home in separate vehicles!

I now own a silver 2000 Saturn station wagon with about 107K miles on it. It seems to be in fine shape -- the engine sounds great, there were no obvious oil leaks, the interior is roomy and comfortable. It handles nicely, though it's a Much Longer Car than my late, lamented hatchback; THAT will take some adjustment time.

It's over all a better car than the Grape, and in better condition, too, despite the extra 20K miles. Oddly, despite its larger size, it may actually get better fuel economy.

Over the next few days, I'm going to be putting all the personal gear from the Grape into the new machine. I may not bother with the steering wheel cover, and the old seat covers stayed with the little purple car (because they disintegrated when I tried to get them off), but my dragon-decorated floor mats are definitely goin' back in.

I'll need to drop by the DMV and swap out the plates for my GRAUPH personalized plates.

Oh, and the plastic divinity of my choice is goin' on the dashboard.

---

A statement like that might seem to need qualifiers, but really, it doesn't.

I don't know what the hell I'm doing.

About very nearly anything.

---

Okay. Theoretically, the settlement check should be getting here today.

Does anyone have suggestions for places to look in the Bay Area for a decent car for about $2500-3000?

It's got to have an automatic transmission, and I'd prefer something smaller, but otherwise -- I'm easy.

We'd prefer a dealership, rather than a private owner.

---

This place had some tempting listings, but this review sets off ALL KINDS of alarm bells -- evidently, as recently as Halloween, they were operating under another name at the same address, and that place got lousy reviews.

---

If you follow this journal, you know that October has been a long succession of disasters for Your Obedient Serpent. Many of them were car-related, and, of course, the climactic one, the destruction of my car on Halloween morning, was the proverbial bolt from the blue, the quintessential smite of angry divinity, if your metaphysics lean that way, or cosmic irony, if they lean in the other direction.

It's enough to prompt even the aggiest agnostic to wonder, "Why me? Who did I piss off?"

Well, I have a confession to make.

On September 15th, 2009, Jessica Simpson's dog was snatched by a coyote.

This was a minor news item, but one that prompted some small degree of amusement -- in part because so much of the "action" happened on Twitter.

We found one line in particular amusing:

Simpson, 29, has offered a reward to anyone who can reunite her with her 5-year-old, caramel-colored dog.

Quoth halfelf: "It's like she's expecting a ransom note from the coyotes, or something."

One thing led to another, and, before the hour was out, "CoyoteLuvsU" had a Twitter account, and had posted the following:

@JessicaSimpson WE hAVE YouR TAsTY tASTy DoG. DElIVeR 100 bOnz + 1 roDe RUnnEr To THE olD TRee In THE MeADoW. CoME alOnE, NO AnImAL CoNTRoL.

Today, on the phone with my mother, I mentioned this gag. Being no great fan of either Twitter nor Ms. Simpson, she found it uproarious -- but then stopped, and asked, "So, when did you do this?"

"September 15th", I answered.

"Aha!" she said, wise in the ways of Old Man Coyote. "That's when your trouble started. You took His name in vain."

My mother has a wonderful Ominous Prophecy Voice, and it has only improved with age.

I confess, the logic is inescapable. Indeed, at the time, I said, "I am so asking for trouble by doing this."

Friday the 13th seems the ideal time to Confess and Repent one's sins before the Trickster.

Coyote, forgive me! I have taken Your name in vain,
and trespassed upon a Gag that was rightfully Yours!
The forces of Cosmic Irony have weighed heavily upon me,
and more heavily still upon my late, lamented Grape,
who has suffered in my stead. I repent of my sin,
and my hubris in attempting to leech your Yuks!

---

You know, when I first came into possession of that Little Purple Car, I asked the opinion of a former Aspire owner, who had rolled his on Interstate 5 a year or two before, and come out unscathed. He said, "They may not look like much, but they'll give their lives for you."

Indeed, sir. Indeed.

---

The tow truck just took my little purple car away.

I loved that little car. It was the first vehicle I ever owned that wasn't a piece of rusty crap from day one.

I had that car longer than any dog I ever owned, and we'd been through a lot more together, so please pardon me if I mourn an "inanimate" object as if she were alive. I knew her moods, I knew her limits. I could and did out-drive Porsches in that little four-banger, because I knew exactly what she could do.

Goodbye, Grape. I loved you.

---