January 29, 2011

an ounce of prevention is a pound of cure.

I’ve been trying to do some preventative maintenance on the automobile, so that we can avoid having some big hits on auto bills. In December, I got an estimate of different things that need to be done with the car. There was enough stuff that just the preventative stuff was going to be almost seven hundred dollars. This is smart, as the car was my wife’s before we were married and she wasn’t that good at keeping up on the regular stuff. When we had the brakes done at about 65,000 miles she had to admit that she had never had the brakes looked at. Then recently, the precipitating incident for the recent car-consciousness, the battery was dying and she want to ignore it. The old battery died on the day we bought the new battery (but before we were able to get it through a painful install).

So- doing some basic things on the car, like alignment and tire rotation and an oil change and nothing should be the problem. I wanted to get the cheap and easy stuff done. However, one tire had been having trouble holding air. Nothing easy here; the problem was bigger than I though. My rim was bent.

My mechanic said we should be able to have the thing fixed, so we took the wheel off. Unthankfully, the wheel is a special kind of aluminum. Aluminum is hard to work with because it is not as flexible as steel, but this wheel is covered in a special kind of plastic glaze that gives it a chrome look. The downside is that you can’t tool the metal without a chance of it breaking and the machine shop must have some sort of insurance reason not to do the work.

Even the fixing of the wheel would have been expensive. It was estimated for about two hundred at first for the fix. But without being fixed I have to buy a replacement wheel. I could buy one from the junkyard, an aftermarket place, or a dealership. Each choice was about a hundred-dollar step up. I’m waiting on a junkyard to call be back so that I can pay three hundred on top of hundred I paid for the earlier stuff. The lesson: sometimes an ounce of prevention is a pound of cure.

January 20, 2011

My Biography

One day early in the year the first space shuttle reached orbit, a singular sperm reached a human egg and fertilized and grew. I was born crying into this world on October 17, 1981. In the course of the years, many things happened. I enjoyed most of them, and most of them were solitary. I liked to build models and read books. When I did thing socially, I liked to be in charge unless I didn’t know the power relations between the individual members of the group then I was quite and reserved.

I went to school. I did well.

I moved around and made new friends. I moved more and lost touch with them. I learned early how to lose friends. I learned to not make friends too closely.
I got a job. I did well. I got more and did well at times and worse in other aspects.

I went back to school. I fell in love. I got a job. I got married. I got another job.

I lost a job.

I continue to read a lot. I have stopped reading fiction and instead read nonfiction and worry about the world. I am now learning and happy to be in a professional situation with adults .

January 15, 2011

Malthus Overlord Inc.

Malthus overlord is in the business of contraception to avoid the overpopulation of the planet and to be sage stewards of the world we live in. We focus on both genders starting at the age of ten. We believe our approach is the most moral and ethical approach to the elimination of suffering the world over. We do the majority of our work in developing countries where the population growth is over the replacement rate of 2.1 live births for every female of reproductive age. MOI is also developing groundbreaking technology to increase the incidence of homosexuality in the human population. We know the world does not necessarily want our services; but remember Malthus Overlord Incorporated, because the world needs us.