To The Metal

I hadn’t driven the VW since… Thursday I think. I usually take the truck in on Friday’s, and I didn’t go anywhere this weekend. I get into it this morning, start it up, and make it nary 10 feet from my driveway before the motor starts shaking like mad. I push the gas down, hesitation. GREAT! I immediately guess that there’s a misfiring cylinder.

The check engine light came on after a minute or so, I switched my engine computer over to read the codes and get P0304… Misfire, #4 cylinder. This is when the fun starts, as it is… maybe 10F outside right now, and somewhere over the last 20 years it has become common practice to make engines look like anything BUT engines… So I take the plastic shroud off the motor, then some little plastic device, then a bit of metal which is covering the #4 cylinder, and I’m finally at the coil.

So I unplug the coil, give it a little twist, a little pull, and the damned thing comes off in my hand. It snapped off right at the top of the unit. A lovely electrical-burning type smell also joined the black scorch mark from the core of the coil to where it shorted out and snapped it.

Great. Monday, i’m just about broke, and now I need a new ignition coil for an effing VOLKSWAGEN. Can’t imagine it’s very cheap. So I go to the dealer, to my surprise it was only $25. The parts guy says “When you go to VW training, there are 2 things you do not do… badmouth the company or bring up those ignition coils.” Makes sense to me.

The coil was $25, and the pair of pliers I bought to pull out the rest of the original coil was another $20. Guess I’m not eating out this week, but at least my car is running.

Picked up Star Wars: The Force Unleashed via Gamefly yesterday. After 2 solid days of play – I beat it. The AI is either tedious or idiotic. The controls are overly complex only if you want your moves to be overly complex. The plot line is solid (and better than the last 4 films combined IMHO). The amount of tedium involved in the game was enough to incur outrage over satisfaction though. Tack on beating it in 2 days, I couldn’t imagine buying it new. Rent it, or buy it well used. Star Wars fans will be satisfied, but overall the game is forgettable.

So I get out of a meeting today, and the entire call center is off the phones, listening to Obama’s inauguration.

I stop at the bank to cash a check, all the tellers are away from their stations, listening…

I stop at the car wash, and every car there had it cranked.

I really don’t care about B.Hussein Obama, at all. I wish him the best of luck, I truly do. I hope things get better now. But I don’t care.

See, 8 years ago, I was fooled. I bought into the hype. I was sold on the “new tone” bill of goods. I believed the “restore honor to the office” line. 8 years later, I know better. Sure, I haven’t been blown up, but lets be realistic – the economy is in tatters, I fear for my job, and generally speaking there hasn’t been much good news (actually reported).

Today, its painfully obvious that it only took 8 years of George W Bush to fool everyone else!

The true gem of all this hype, is that the people who believe in B.Hussein Obama right now – actually think they’ve got one up on people like me. The truth is, nothing has changed, nothing will change, and 8 years from now we’ll just have a new flock of sheep ready to sip the kool-aid.

It amazes me that it doesn’t matter what Government does wrong, all they need to do is put a new face on the same broken machine, and you idiots actually believe things will change.

Caught a story out of Newsbusters showing that Sean Hannity’s new show “Hannity” completely trounced the competition, bringing in ratings even higher than when he had fire marshal bill as the co-host.

Maybe fair and balanced doesn’t win the race by a big enough margin. Fox News has been trouncing all the other major networks for some time (much to the chagrin of people who only watch all the other major cable news networks)… Their message of “Fair & Balanced” which generally involves covering EVERYTHING – has held them in first place.

The bump that Hannity has received after Alan Colmes left makes me seriously wonder if it is time for Fox to scrap the “Fair & Balanced” tag line and just go for it. I don’t see the idealists of the political Right losing any audience, especially with the Messiah ready to take over in… 6 days?

I’m not saying that FNC doesn’t have its share of spin, but apparently it is what the rest of us are watching while the elites are slouching towards inauguration with their noses in the air.

Congrats Sean.

Flip on the radio this morning, listening to O&A, they’re doing the Liquid Ass bit.

I know what Liquid Ass is.

I know because I bought it MONTHS ago.

I bought it MONTHS ago because STERN did the effing bit MONTHS ago.

I really don’t care for Stern, so when my favorite show does the same effing bits, I’M STILL NOT GOING TO EFFING LIKE IT.

I picked up BSG Season 4.0 yesterday, and finished watching it at around 1am.

Amazing how much better that show is when I’m not playing video games while watching it!

Anyhow, so the 6 is pregnant… They’re leaning towards Tigh having done it.

My problem? He’s a Cylon. Cylons apparently cannot reproduce.

Logical Conclusion A: Someone else impregnated the 6. Baltar maybe?
Logical Conclusion 2: The final 5 are hybrids, not entirely Cylon, not entirely Human.
Logical Conclusion D: Tigh isn’t actually a Cylon.

I’m going to lean towards conclusion 2. The normal Cylons were created by man, and I’ll guess that the final 5 were created by the 13th tribe, or that the 13th tribe WERE these original hybrids, which is why they’re different.

As for who the 5th model is, it’s Galactica itself. That’s just my guess.

Road commission calls for gas tax hike

Another useful idiot chiming in that we simply aren’t driving enough to fund road maintenance with the current fuel tax. Call me crazy but if we’re driving less, if the demand for fuel is low enough that it now costs around $1.40 a gallon for regular… that the roads would cost less to maintain? Why not invest in cobblestones? They’d cut speeds down, require less maintenance, and increase fuel economy.

We’re now at a point where the environmentalist lobby and their loyally paid government stooges wanted us to be. The regulations paid off. They buried the big 3 automakers and forced many people to drive cars that couldn’t survive an errant pigeon dropping without a trip to the body shop.

Demand is low, people are driving less, and using less fuel to do it. Right now is the ideal time to CUT the tax and spur growth. Get more people driving! Instead we get endless calls from people who likely can afford to pay whatever gasoline costs, or have their tanks filled on Joe the Plumber’s dime, to raise the gas tax.

We’re screwed either way.

So I’m coming home from the bar tonight, I get to the light in PI, head up towards Goshen, and this little prick in a silver Focus tears past me, doing maybe 70 in a 30 zone. These are the guys who never get stopped on this road while the powers that be whine about lowering speed limits.

Seriously, I wish they could just plant trees in the road for some people.

This is why Gamefly rules. See, after the first Far Cry game was simply so… awesome, I’d expect them to get at least one of the subsequent sequels right. Whoops. Far Cry 2 looked cool enough. The graphics are outstanding. Considering you start the game with a 10 minute cinematic that involves driving your character into town, where you succumb to malaria, run into the guy you’re supposed to kill, and then get gunned down as you try to escape the hotel you’ve collapsed at…

What the hell were they thinking? I’m sitting there on my couch, trying in vain to skip this calamity, but I can’t. A couple of neat features? The ability to sleep through time (you get plenty of experience with this in the intro), repair your vehicles, and also perform some minor healing on yourself. Essentially what we’ve got here is a massive open sandbox style map, the absolute necessity to drive vehicles that can’t survive a single gunshot without breaking down, and an AI that plays peekaboo.

I cannot tell you how frustrating this game is without cursing, so I’ll cut this review short. There is no targeting system, and everything blends together. Many MANY times I found myself being shot at, and all I could do was blind fire until I was dead or they ran out into the open. Many MANY times I was being shot at while driving my machine gun mounted jeep, only to have my pursuers VANISH every time I stopped to shoot back. I ended up having to restart the game after landing myself far north of where I needed to be, out of health needles, and unable to get more than 40 feet without being attacked by numerous bad guys.

I get what they were trying to do, a FPS Sandbox in a world of TPS Sandboxes. They failed. Horrible implementation, annoying features, this game is great if you want to take a nap or toss your controller through the television. Other than that, I’m glad it was only a RENTAL.