Some Blog Site

I wish I would have started working on cars earlier in life – it would have saved me a bunch of money. Here are some things I’ve learned over the last few years of working on my own cars.

• The speedometer in our 2007 Cadillac stopped working. A bit of internet searching revealed that the motor for the speedometer needle is known to go bad. So I ordered a replacement dash gauge from Ebay, and while I was waiting for it to arrive I noticed the mileage on the odometer wasn’t increasing either. I actually looked around the car then and found some mice had chewed up some wires. I spliced them back together and the speedometer and odometer started working again.
• Also in that Cadillac, the right rear brake caliper was locked up – that brake was always noticeable hotter than the others after a drive. I installed a replacement caliper and it still had the problem. It turns out the cause was a bad brake hose leading to the caliper. A little bit of extra investigation before installing parts can save extra work and part costs.
• The old minivan (2012 Chrysler Town and Country) was a little wobbly, so I went to replace the back shocks. The bolts for those shocks are not very user-friendly, especially the upper bolt and especially after 8 salty winters. I gave up on the shock bolt and ended up unbolting the shock bracket from the frame. That’s 4 bolts instead of one, but they’re more accessible. The problem was that one bolt snapped off rather than move, but I reinstalled it with 3 bolts and figured that was good enough. Then I went to do the other side and only one bolt came out and 3 snapped off. We drove that van with one shock missing for a few months and then ended up junking it due to other problems.
• For that generation of minivan, if the dashboard display “Key in ignition” when the key is not in the ignition, the problem is the TIPM not the WIN module. I bought a WIN (several hundred dollars), installed it, still had the problem, but was able to return the WIN and get my money back (minus a restocking fee).
• A couple years back, I bought a pressure bleeder for the brakes, but I was using it wrong. I finally figured out it’s a lot less messy and quicker too, to not put brake fluid in the bleeder. I think you’re supposed to do that, to keep the master cylinder filled with fluid. But now I just top off the reservoir, then attach the pressure bleeder and just pump it full of air, run the brake bleeds while checking on the reservoir, and if it’s running low on fluid I start over, without spilling brake fluid out of the hose because all it has is air.

I’ve been a card-carrying member of Home Depot for many years, and I thought I knew how store aisles worked.

But today I learned something new.

Here’s what happened: I was looking for an item but it was a small obscure item (lamp socket adapter) so – while I was in the store – I looked it up on Home Depot’s website. It said there were several in stock, and it was located in aisle 44 bay 11.

I found aisle 44 and bay 11. That had a bunch of electrical boxes but no adapters of any sort. So I hailed a nearby employee who asked a couple questions then took me right to the item. Which was in aisle 44 bay 11.

But the other aisle 44 bay 11.

Which made no sense to me.

I saw the sign for aisle 44 and went down aisle 44. I thought aisle 44 was on one side of the aisle, like if you’re looking down an aisle then 44 would be on the left and 45 would be on the right. But nope, they have aisle 44 being both sides.

And that would be okay if the bays were numbered differently, such as odd on one side and even on the other. Or 1->n on one side and n+1 -> n+n on the other side.

But nope, they have 1->n on one side, and 1->n on the other side.

It would be like if your address were 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, but there was also a 1600 Pennsylvania Ave across the street from you.

But now I know – there are two separate places to look any time the HD site gives the location of an item.

This is kind of a part 3 of our spring break trip to Texas.

The trip home from Texas was mostly uneventful. We got home, we unpacked somewhat, went to bed no problems, got up the next day, had breakfast, attended church, did some relaxing (day of rest) in the afternoon, bedtime, morning again – nothing out of the ordinary.

Partway through Monday, Some Wife needed something out of her wallet and when she opened it, she noticed she did not have her drivers license in her wallet. She checked the rest of her purse, then she checked her carry-on bag that unpacked already, then we checked the other carry-on bag.

Nothing.

I checked the van. I checked the luggage again. I checked the van again.

Nothing.

I blame TSA.

We knew she had her license when we got on the plane, because we had to show ID at the gate, as well as at security to get into the terminal. Our flight had been randomly chosen for a secondary check. So she had to scan her boarding pass as well as Gamma’s and Delta’s boarding passes, and show her ID, then carry all her stuff through the plane to our seats.

My plan was that she would take one kid and I would take the other, but we were all together and she was first so they asked her for the boarding passes and she had them all so she obliged them. I had to scan my own boarding pass, and Alpha and Beta were responsible for themselves too.

Anyway, in all the hustle and bustle of the extra ID check at the gate, stowing the carry-on luggage in the overhead bin, getting settled in the right seat, and making sure the kids were doing the right thing (in-seat entertainment screens for everybody, so no problem getting them to sit down), her drivers license didn’t make it back in the wallet.

Ok, back to Monday. I called the airline for the items-lost-on-the-plane department. Their phone menu has a selection for that, but all it does is direct you to the website. I don’t know that you could talk to a person about that if you wanted. So I went to the website (it’s actually a third-party company that seems to run that type of stuff for them and maybe some others) and put in our information. I figured the item was easily identifiable enough – if they found it they would know whose it was. I got an email saying they got the request. And I checked on the status later that day and they were still looking for it.

That evening, I looked into what it would take to get a replacement license. Actually, I was looking to see if I could even get her into the SOS (Michigan’s DMV) to get a new license. Next appointment was weeks away.

But they did happen to offer some online services to renew things, and a replacement license request was one of the services. And it was only $9.00, so I decided to go that route. If the airline did find the license, we’d be out only $9, and if they didn’t find it we’d be all set.

It was mostly the unknown that made me decide to order the license. Otherwise it would be a guessing game – how long do we wait for them to find it? how long can we go with my driving everywhere? But if I ordered a license, there’s no more unknown.

So I ordered the license that night. I was able to print out a temporary license that was valid until her actual license was received, so she was never inconvenienced at all (since we had no plans to go anywhere that Monday anyway). A few days later, her new license showed up in the mail and all was good.

Then a couple days after that, she got a letter from someone we didn’t know. With her full name on it. She opened it up and some person from New York had found her license and returned it. It was mailed from NY, so that person must have been on the next flight in that plane, and found it and decided to be a Good Samaritan and return it to its rightful owner.

That explained why the airline was having trouble finding it; I cancelled the lost item request to help their system out. And I saved the old license in a safe place (because to order a replacement license you have to know your license number, which we didn’t know without her license, which was a bit of circular logic until I remembered somewhere I had documented her drivers license number).

And while I do appreciate the finder of the drivers license being kind enough to send it back, I do think that was not the best thing to do.

The moral of this story: if you find something that has been lost on and airplane or at an airport, please turn it into the authorities there.

Since we didn’t discover it was missing until our second day home, I’d bet if that person had turned it in when they found it, it would have been registered in the system by the time we put in our request, and we would have been matched up with it fairly quickly. We might not have gotten the license right away, but we would have known right away where it was and that we were able to get it back.

I was glad to get it back though, even if it was already replaced by the new one, because then I didn’t have to worry about someone putting her license to nefarious use and her getting implicated for something, or us having identity or credit problems later. So if you are the person who mailed the license back, thank you.

Not so unusual: last month I ordered something online.
Quite unusual: it took a month to be delivered.

There has been a bit in the news recently about how slow the USPS is, due to more packages being shipped and lack of staffing due to COVID-19.

But my experience tells me that some of their problems are self-inflicted. I don’t know how typical my situation is, but if it happened to me I imagine it’s happening to others too.

When the package first shipped on Jan 25th, the tracking website gave an estimated delivery date. I forget exactly what it was, maybe 3-4 days out from there.

But then that date came and went, and the tracking page just said “In transit”.

After a couple of weeks of that, I submitted an inquiry via the USPS website form. I got a response the next day that said basically “Don’t worry, we still have your package and it will still be delivered. It’s in transit to the next stop.”

Which wasn’t helpful, because it had been in transit for a while, and didn’t seem to be getting any closer to me. At this point, the package had started from PA, went to AL, then IN, then AL, then MI, then back to AL. And it was sitting there for many days.

It seems my inquiry spurred some action, because the package then went back to PA. And then over to NJ, and then back to PA. And then nothing, so all that action was useless.

So I confirmed the seller had both tracking and insurance on the package, and I told him that it’s been almost a month and my parcel hasn’t arrived yet, so let’s get going on that insurance. He put in the claim on Feb 22, and magically the package found its way from PA to MI and to my mailbox in 2 days.

My purchase spent a month travelling the country. Nice little vacation at someone’s expense. Not sure whose expense, but I’m guessing USPS didn’t come out ahead on that deal.

So far, I’ve been attributing this mishap to incompetence. Were people scanning it wrong? I can understand going to a central distribution point and then out from there. And if they’re overworked, I can understand it sitting somewhere for a while. But PA to AL to IN to AL to MI to AL to PA to NJ to PA is neither of those situations.

The alternative to incompetence is malice or causing the problem intentionally. Maybe someone didn’t like the look of the box and sent it the wrong direction. But everyone at every location?

Once they were going to have to pay a chunk of money for their delay, there was no problem sending it the right way, so I know there was not problem with the shipping label.

Maybe their tracking system is broken, like the package didn’t actually go all those places. In which case the problem at USPS are not so much a personnel problem as an equipment problem. But if the equipment is bad and the package wasn’t where the tracking said it was, how did they find it so quickly?

‘Tis a puzzlement.

In summary: if you ship something via USPS and you care at all about it, make sure it’s insured. I hate to think how much longer my purchase would have been in limbo, taking the scenic route, had it not been insured.

Watching various Marvel movies and seeing who is in the credits, I am sometimes surprised. For example, I watched the first Thor movie thinking it was Ed O’Neill playing Dr. Erik Selvig and it wasn’t until the second movie that I matched the character with the actor. It turns out that it was not actually Al Bundy playing a scientist in the Thor movies. It was some guy named Stellan Skarsgard, who has been in some other movies too but I never saw those.

Ed O’Neill:

Stellan Skarsgard:

I had a slightly different problem with the Iron Man 2 movie. There I paid attention to the credits and was surprised to see the bad guy was played by Mickey Rourke. I said to myself “that is not the Mickey Rourke I remember.”

It turns out I was picturing Mickey Rooney

not Mickey Rourke.

And the other problem I had was early on in the Iron Man franchise because I had grown up hearing about Morton Downey Jr, so I had to stop and think about which Mr. Downey Jr. was playing Tony Stark so I didn’t accidentally say the wrong one.

For reference:

Robert Downey Jr.

Morton Downey Jr.

Take a look at this shot from Google street view and tell me what you notice, or rather what you think I want you to notice:

I had never heard of a lottottery before, but apparently there is a convenience store that can meet your lottottery needs.

Curious, I tried to get a better view of the store.

It turns out that Google was just trolling me with some deepfake image. I thought it was pretty well done, after I compared the two images. All the other views of the convenience store showed they sold regular old lottery tickets, not the fancier lottottery tickets.

Not the most interesting thing on Google street view, but it’s something.

I had a slight mishap while working on one of our vehicles. I jammed a finger. I’ll give you two guesses as to which finger it was:

Guess 1:

Guess 2:

Spoiler alert if you haven’t already figured it out.

Since it was my ring finger, my ring was seeming to prevent the swelling from working its way into my hand. That was not so good, because it kept all the swelling in one place and my wife was concerned that it would get infected.

Apparently my brother has jammed his finger before, since his advice was to take the ring off immediately when you jam your finger. Which would be fine if I could get my ring off.

Even though my ring was stuck on, it never got tight enough that I couldn’t maneuver it to be able to see daylight between it and my finger. And the discoloration never made it all the way to the end of my finger.

My finger is back to normal now. My words of advice: keep your hands away from a tire that’s bouncing around.