What is the sound of one geek clapping?

Why the hell is it that in the middle of March, I have the heat turned completely off in my apartment and my air conditioner is on because it’s so damn hot?

After driving around in what was a thoroughly unsafe vehicle because my brakes were wearing low, I went to my friend Kayte’s place today to get them replaced. Kayte’s husband, Jim, is a mechanic, and has a pretty nice home garage set up, and he graciously offered to do the brakes for me.

So I drove down, we jacked up the car and took the wheels off, and took a look at the brakes. However, after working on them some, we looked at the rotors that I had and realized that I only had half of them. Not only that, but the half that we did have… didn’t fit.

So I called the local Pep Boys where I’d special-ordered them and spoke to somebody about it. They had it on record that I’d already picked them up, so i asked them to check their inventory and make sure, at which point they realized that they still had them (duh, since they weren’t in my possession) and I told them that I was coming to pick them up.

So Jim and I drove the 45 minutes to go pick them up, and brought the incorrect ones with us. They gave me the rotors they had in stock, we verified that they were the right size, and drove the 45 minutes back. Somehow, the idiot guy at the counter convinced me to test the rotors on the other wheels, even though I knew that the holes drilled into the rotors didn’t fit the wheels at all. It wouldn’t have mattered if I’d returned them anyway, because they don’t carry rotors in stock, so I wouldn’t have been able to replace the other ones anyway.

So, the upside: I learned how to replace brakes on my car, and it’s easy as hell. The downside: I only got half of them done. It’s really not much of a downside, though, because it was the rear brakes that were the ones that really needed to be replaced anyway.

I am kind of pissed at the guys at Pep Boys, though, although they really don’t have much to be responsible for, since it was listed right there in the computer as a part that fit my car.

(Please excuse the pitiful pun of a subject title; I couldn’t think of anything wittier.)

Just upgraded to WordPress 2.0.2, which has various security updates. I think I’m actually coming up with a neat method of keeping my custom functions without having to rewrite whole files, which is nice. Now if only I can figure out a way to make it so I don’t have to update ANY files to keep my custom stuff in there, it’d be perfect.

EDIT: Interesting… I think it may have reset my stylesheets on me. Testing…

George Washington… Come on, you can do it. You know you want to.

Looks like I’m not going to California after all, or at least not during this month. The person out in California who is responsible for contracting us is waffling on it and rather than negotiate and pressure her into getting a move on, my company is just going to put it off altogether.

So I guess the St. Patrick’s Day celebration is off. Why is it that the fates always do this kind of stuff and never the “we realized that we’ve been overcharging you for your health insurance so here’s $500” kind of stuff?

Was there ever a moment in your life when you realized that the innocence was gone?

It may be a little stupid due to the whole 30-day/31-day/28-day month thing, but tonight marks two full calendar months without a cigarette. It was officially eight weeks (56 days) on Monday night, but this is the numerical line of two months.

Time quit: 8 weeks, 3 days, 1 hour, 44 minutes
Cigarettes not smoked: 708 (My God, that’s insane!)
Money saved: $177.00

Well, not really.

However, I was approached by my boss today and was given the opportunity to go to California for work for a couple weeks. So starting sometime the second weekend of March, I’ll be flying out to San Diego for two weeks, heading back on the 27th.

Anybody in that area want to get together? The weekend of St. Patrick’s Day, I may be flying up to the Sacramento/San Francisco area to hang with some friends, too.

Man, talk about exciting!

If you haven’t seen the Saw movies… see them. Seriously.

That’s all.