Tuesday, March 23, 2004

Well, Monday was a Monday. All day. On the way to work, the Check Engine light came on in the truck. I have On-Star, so I hit the big blue button, a very agreeable lady came on the line, performed a remote diagnostic. According to her, the truck was sending a very serious code related to the transmission. I headed for the dealership, left the truck there with the information that On-Star had given me, and walked to Burger King to wait for Debbie to come to work. The phone is still in the cabin, so calling her to come pick me up didn't make any sense, and her work, the dealership, and Burger King are all about a five-minute walk apart. After she showed up to work, I walked over and took her Tracker back the cabin and worked from home. I came back into town around 4:30pm and stopped to pick up the cabinet screws for the bathroom medicine cabinet, then went by the dealership to see how many millions of dollars they were going to rip me off for. Of course, according to their transmission mechanic, there were no stored codes in the transmission for today, just some old ones from a couple months back. He drove it around to try to see if it would code again. Of course it didn't. So no problem, but I still had to pay $75.

Thanks, On-Star!!!

Actually, it's hard to assign blame; on the one hand we have a proven-to-be-incompetent garage. On the other, an unproven system staffed by people that I am certain are neither experts in electronics or mechanics. It's hard to say who's wrong. In any case, the code is gone and the Check Engine light is off. The dealership said it was probably the cold. Great. I have a $45,000 Like a Rock (tm) Chevy that can't operate when the temperature is below freezing. According to the dealership, it also cannot be reliably operated in any environment that contains ice, snow, slush, mud, or dust. One supposes wet pavement doesn't do too much damage...

At least the evening was normal. By the time we made and ate dinner, the evening was more or less over. I did some reading for school, then fell into bed.

So that was yesterday. The weekend was uneventful. Saturday, we picked up the medicine cabinet for the bathroom. Other than changing the oil in the generator, that was pretty much the day. My brother-in-law came over Sunday after morning services and helped install the cabinet. They only sent three cabinet mounting screws. The cabinet is four feet long, so I felt it need more support than that. Like I said above, I picked those up Monday and finished the job. We had a youth event after Sunday evening service, so we didn't get home until 10pm. One of the teens needed to talk, so I was on the phone with him until 11:30pm.

So now that everyone is caught up, I don't have much to say about today. Work, then a fast trip to Rapid City for a hair cut, then back-track into Kalkaska for the monthly deacons' meeting at the church. I need to lay some heavy stuff on everyone tonight, so it will be interesting to see how long the meeting goes.

That's pretty much a rap.

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