So, being in the fire prevention business, I am one of those people who used to actually test the smoke detectors in the house regularly. By that I mean, I go and look at it, see that the little green light is on saying the battery is ok and then press the test button to hear it sound off.

Back before My Queen, I lived very compactly. As in one 15’x10′ room. Being a technical kind of guy, creature comforts were never a big deal to me. In that room, was my TV, stereo, bed, my office chair and desk and computers. I lived, slept and worked in there for a decade. Only thing it didn’t have was a kitchen, for that, I had to travel down the hall to another room.

This started after I finally got smart enough to leave my first wife. Being fairly poor I rented my old bedroom from Mom. Later, she moved out to live with her boyfriend and I had the whole house to myself. Much to the irritation of my buddies, I didn’t spread out to the rest of the house. I liked compact.

So, one night I go into the kitchen and put me on a pot of spinach, which was halfway between a meal and a snack in my thinking. I had a craving. The phone rings, it’s business, my favorite customer. He likes me a lot and he likes to talk, so we talked as usual for quite a while. Long enough for me to get sidetracked from the task at hand.

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I’ll get to the smoke detector in a minute. First I have to tell you about my recent re-encounter with a Design Guy device that is so old it proves that he’s been around mucking stuff up far longer than the Unabomber. This evil technology is called the TORX screw.

Some time last week, the cable that supports the tailgate on My Queen’s ’95 Bronco broke. She was taking her Mustang in to Ford for a handful of repairs that only the dealer can make (I felt a great disturbance in the force, it was as if thousands of dollar bills cried out in agony and then were silenced into someone else’s bank account.) and she asked me if I wanted to let them fix this. Hell no I said, it’s 4 bolts and I don’t even have to do any kind of contortion to reach them.

After buying the cables for 44 bucks EACH (It’s an 18 inch piece of 3/16 galvanized aircraft cable with a couple of crimped on eyes, I was expecting it to be high priced at around 15 bucks…) I was DAMN sure that I didn’t want Ford to make this repair. So I buy the cables.

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Well, if you’ve been anxiously waiting for my first posting, please, make sure you take your meds immediately. Speaking of meds, if you have read this far here’s the legal info: I am not responsible for anything anywhere, don’t come suing me Jack. If you are still reading, note that you will not get your previous 2 minutes back, no refunds. At this point if you’re still here, then I would like to point out that there are fine psychiatric professionals who can probably help you.

Ok… still here? Welcome, there’s no hope for you. You may as well read on.

This is a place where I intend to bitch. A lot. Loudly. My significant other has stopped listening to it so I figured I’d shoot it out into cyberspace. Quote my five year old: “If Daddy is gonna be this grumpy, he should go back to bed.” I hate it when people make me laugh while I’m mad.

I also intend to expose the work of the most evil man on earth, and since no one knows his name I’m calling him: The Design Guy. His workings are insidious, they hit you slowly and from every angle and every where, such that you don’t consciously notice it. But it’s there, like a spray of automatic weapons fire in slow motion. In these posts, I’ll expose him and his evil work so that everyone can see him.

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