Expensive Times
The past several weeks have proven to be unpleasantly expensive and plagued with misfortune.

The first event of annoyance is that my car failed the mandatory emissions testing requirements, as I wrote about earlier. A possible cause was the catalytic converter, so 250 bucks was put toward a new one. However, the mechanic said the old one looked clean. A retest failed again, even with the new catalytic converter and premium gas. So, another 200 was expended to have the emission mechanic look more closely into it. In the end, the only apparent symptom is that it actually passes when the engine is cool (just started) and fails when it is hot. This is opposite of most cars, so a cooling problem may be the issue. Still, only a conditional pass was allowed, so the issue has to be re-examined next year. And it was expensive.

Next, last Saturday morning, I was woken at 0830, which is at least 3 hours too early for a Saturday. There were several centimeters of water in the basement; the hot water heater had blown up and was spewing water everywhere. I blocked off the heater and spent the rest of the day draining the water, cutting up old carpet, and generally cleaning up old junk. Luckily, the water did not get to the computer room. A new heater was installed promptly by the gas company.

The final bit of unpleasantness comes from my concern over my laptop still not being acknowledged. I was told the Dell repair people would give me a call once they knew what to do. They did not. When I called them, it was the same 900 dollar speech that the parts department gave be. They would not fix it under warranty, so I told them to fuck off and send it back. I bought the replacement motherboard on eBay for $340. Still don't have the laptop back, though.

The week was not all bad. Kyle set up a planet.engsoc.org for fun, so this thing is finally syndicated somewhere. I doubt a lot of people read it, but I still felt like creating a "hacker-head". They are meant to look silly, so I figured the clichéd sunglass theme would work.

Also, my brother bought a Polar Lights TOS Enterprise model. I've been putting it together with him today. It certainly is a well-designed kit. In fact, he is doing most of the work, and it works well enough that I don't think he will lose interest before we get to things like proper painting. He may have himself a very nicely built model in the end, by mostly his own doing. That would be an accomplishment for a first model.