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Having replaced our minivan’s struts, I thought it wouldn’t be much of a problem to help my brother-in-law replace his struts. Or rather, his minivan’s struts.

Even though I knew what to do and how to do it, it still took about 2 hours per side. The main culprit is the sway bar link bolt. If you have any vehicle whose sway bar link design includes using an allen wrench to hold the bolt still while you turn the nut with a normal wrench, replace it as soon as possible.

Looking back, I think it would have been worth it to get a 3/16″ hex head socket for my wrench, rather than trying to use an allen wrench. As it is, I lost another 3/16″ allen wrench. I have about 3 sets of allen wrenches, you know the plastic organizer with 8-12 allen wrenches lined up. And they are all missing only the 3/16″ size. I would love to be able to buy a 5-pack of 3/16″ allen wrenches. But all I can do is buy another full pack of all the sizes, because no one sells normal allen wrenches of just one size.

Technically speaking, I didn’t lose my last 3/16″ allen wrench. I have it, but I can’t use it anymore. Before starting the project, the allen wrench looked normal, with a ball-type thingy on the long end and a standard end on the short side.

Here’s what it looks like now:

Notice the ball-end has been snapped off. It’s stuck inside the sway bar link bolt. That was after the first problem:

I had to switch to the long end because the short end was too far gone. It ended up rounding itself off, but that’s after it twisted at least 100 degrees around. That bolt did not want to give up, and it was stronger than the allen wrench.

After running out of allen wrench, my only option was to grind the bolt off. That was slow going. I really need to get a cutoff wheel for my angle grinder, rather than just a grinding wheel. And it heated up the bolt so much the ball joint on the other end of the bolt fell apart. The ball joint of the sway bar link, not the wheel hub ball joint. That would have been bad.

After spending a while grinding off the bolt but getting only about 1/3 of the way through, I thought I’d try again because the grinding was taking forever. This time I clamped some vice grips onto the other end of the bolt (the stock link is perfectly round, so you can’t get a good grip on that end – except the grinding gave it a nice big flat spot). The nut certainly wasn’t freely spinning, but I could turn it. I think the intense heat is what broke it free. If I had realized that earlier, I could have saved myself some time.

After all that, I had a new sway bar link to put on but no allen wrench to keep the bolt from spinning. I was so glad to see the aftermarket part did away with that design and the bolt can be held in check by a hex shape on the ball-joint end. No allen wrenches needed.

It took us two days to do the job, because they gave my brother-in-law one strut that was correct and one that was backwards. At least he thought to compare the new strut to the old before we took the old one off. So the first day we replaced the one strut we had, and then he went and got the backwards strut replaced, and he came back the next weekend.

All’s well that ends well.

Sticking with the theme of last week’s post about having a plan for how you child will learn how to navigate the internet, I’m posting this week about what we did with introducing phones.

It seems a lot of kids are getting phones while in elementary school. I remember a few years back, my brother-in-law was telling us how his 6th-grade daughter was complaining to him how she was the only one in her class without a phone. He thought she was being dramatic, so at the parent-teacher conferences, he asked one of the teachers if that was true. The teacher answered that yes, the daughter was the only one without a phone.

Now, just wanting to fit in with the crowd is not necessarily a good reason to get something.

We tried to wait as long as possible before getting a phone for our kids. The oldest got his first phone in 8th grade because there were a number of things he was involved in after school that he needed to call or text us when he was done and needed to be picked up at the school. Back when I was in school, I used the pay phone in the lobby to call home collect for things like that. But since there are no pay phones anymore, we decided to go ahead with the phone.

We certainly didn’t buy him a phone, as that’s a waste of money. We just went to the phone store and got a SIM card for one of our old phones that would have netted us only $30 if we traded it in when getting our new phones.

I had been looking for a cheap flip phone as a sort of learner’s permit – one that could call and text but no internet. All the flip phone still came with web browsers, so those weren’t safe. We settled on the old iPhone, which has the convenient feature of being able to disable the browser (and other features if you want). He doesn’t have the passcode to enable the browser, and he doesn’t have his own iTunes account, so we will let him search the app store for games and apps, but he has to have one of us install it. There’s a lot more flexibility on the iPhone regarding parental controls than on a flip phone.

Plus, one of the things we didn’t foresee when we got him a phone in 8th grade is that the high school classes are setup assuming the students have certain apps on their phones. I’m sure the teachers would have made arrangements if we had said he doesn’t have a phone and can’t do what you assigned. But it makes the kid’s life easier just having that there, and not being annoyed that he has to go to the teacher to get special arrangements.

Beta got his phone is 7th grade. I was trying to wait until 8th grade like we did for his brother, but with kids at the elementary, middle, and high school, our schedules were a little more packed than they were when Alpha was in middle school. He had to borrow a phone to call us to get picked up and by that time we were familiar enough with the limits we could put on the phone so it wasn’t as big a step. Gamma and Delta still have to wait until middle school activities keep them after school though, before we get phones for them.

Alpha has his permit for driving. Our state requires a gradual phase-in of driving permissions, not quite as much freedom as we used to have but it seems to be safer. Imagine your son is about to start driver’s ed. He has been wanting to drive for a while and is pretty excited to start. Here is an example letter that might be good to set his expectations.

I think it’s a fine process. But a lot of parents just do whatever the government requires. What if there were something that could cause as much emotional and spiritual damage as a car can cause physical damage?

Let’s replace “driving” with “using the internet” and see what happens.

Or you could replace “internet” with “Facegram” or “Instachat” or whatever. My point is that kids need instruction and oversight when they start poking around the internet. Sure, it is easy to use. But that doesn’t mean it is safe.

There are programs you can install that will block bad websites and limit what users can access. I’d say that’s a good thing for younger kids, but it should not replace a parent’s supervision. One reason being that those programs are not perfect. And the other reason being that it doesn’t prepare the child for the real world. Going back to the driving analogy, it would be like limiting the car to first gear. Sure the kid might stay safer, but he also wouldn’t have the right experience to drive wherever he may need to drive once he’s out of the house. So for older kids (middle school on up), I suggest having very few restrictions, but make sure they know that you check on what they are doing. And even middle schoolers know to delete a browser history, so be sure you have a program that logs the sites regardless.

The point is to let him have to make choices. And know that he will have to account for those choices. Such as why he chose to click on that ad (“Son, never click on any ads”) or why Google image search is not always a good idea. That’s what raising kids is all about – make sure they know what good habits and choices are so they are prepared for life.

Now that no one is talking about the Knuckleball font anymore, it’s time to announce that Font Grill has released a new font.

Introducing: Brontosaurus

Go download Brontosaurus.

This was patterned after the Behemoth italic font, with the fancy swashes. I wanted to name this font Leviathan since that is what naturally pairs with Behemoth, but that was taken. So I went with Brontosaurus, which is supposed to be the modern name for the biblical behemoth.

Subtitle: in which I improve the government’s records

Allow me to introduce to you the 2018 SFS List of Baby Names that Combine Similar Pronunciations. That baby name list is the place to go in case you are wondering what are the most popular baby names in 2018 regardless of how they are spelled. The Social Security baby name list does not adjust the rankings based on alternate spellings (like Catherine/Katherine), but SFS does.

It was just Mother’s Day, so the SSA released the name rankings for 2018. Last year’s champion, Jackson is again the most popular boy’s name in the US. Aiden is losing popularity fast – if it were a stock I would say sell now (or rather, you should have sold last year).
No controversy for the girls – it’s Sophia again.

Some Stats

• The top 6 names for the boys are the same, but Noah and Aiden switched spots in #3 and 4.
• The top 6 names for the girls are the same as 2017, it’s just that Amelia jumped 2 spots from #6 to 4.
• Again, Liam has the title of the highest-ranked boy’s name that has no spelling variations, at number 2.
• Again, Emma is the highest-ranked girl’s name that has no spelling variations, at number 3.
• Girl names still have more spelling variations than boy names (275/1000 vs. 186/1000 alternates)
• Kason once again took the prize for the most spelling variations for the boys at 8 (and Kayson overtook Kason as the more popular variant). And Aiden lost a variation so now it has only 6.
• For the girls, Adaline lost a variation so it is now tied with Madalyn, Layla, and Amaya at 6.
• Sophia is still the runaway favorite for the girls, but the gap is closing. Sophia is on the decline. In fact, all the top names, other than Amelia, are on the decline.

2018 Improved Baby Name List

Click on the link above and peruse to your heart’s content!

Here is a tour of what May can look like in Michigan.

We’ll start with my favorite group of the bunch: firespray tulips

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In the last month or three, we had the announcement of the 2019 NFL schedule. Now that we know who will play whom and when, we can start predicting wins and losses.

I keep my predictions over at Some Fun Site. View results of previous football seasons.

2018 Summary

Last year, I predicted that

• Chicago Bears = 8-8
• Tennessee Titans = 8-8

How they actually did was

• Chicago Bears = 12-4
• Tennessee Titans = 9-7

The Titans prediction was close, but the Bears was not. So that’s not worth much.

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