Ever pull up to a stop light in traffic and look next to you and there is no car?  I mean there’s a car in front of you, and a car next to him, a car behind you and a car next to him, yet there is NO car next to you?  I always wonder which one of us has lost it.  Either that guy who stopped short sees a car that isn’t there, or there IS a car there and I can’t see it.  I’ve noticed it never happens when someone is in the car with me so I can ask, “Do you see the car sitting next to us?”

This happens a lot around Charlotte.  I think it might be insanity brought on by the fact that red lights last long enough here to read a novel.  Or, if I’m the one not seeing the cars, it’s insanity brought on by driving amongst the drivers here.

E.W.

Is there a rule in a book somewhere that says you have to count to 10 after the light turns green before you move?

During this past weekend’s Nascar race in Phoenix, Sir Evil said:

Breaking News: Dark Matter Has Been Found

I know where the dark matter is…

1. It’s invisible, you can’t observe it directly. It requires the skill of special personnel to tell you it’s there.
2. It’s apparently dangerous to motorists.
3. It stops time.
4. It only stops time after you get the sense that time must have stopped.
5. It has another name: “debris on the track.”

I love my old Chevy truck. But it is old. Which means things break on it every now and then. Of course the AC pump’s been broke for a loooong time. But it finally got so bad I needed to take it out. It was whining so loud that people would look up to try to see the RC plane they heard. I may one day put a new one in there, but then, I like summer and have never had a vehicle with AC. So… not today.

I got a pulley to replace it and set about removing it. Seemed like it would be a pretty easy repair. Take off the belt pull the electrical connectors and hose connection. Remove the three bolts, whip it out and drop the pulley in place and zip tie the lose electrical and hose connections. I’m going to kill the next person who asks me to do something and adds, “it’ll only take five minutes.”

I pulled the belt. Pulled the connections. Loosened the five inch long bolt and discovered that there was only two inches clearance to pull it. It jammed up hard against the pulley of the compressor that it was holding in place. Ditto with the other two bolts.

After looking at it a while it was clear that the pulley would have to come off the compressor. I looked online seems I’m not the only one who had this problem. Some of the guys actually cut the bolts off. As you will see in a moment that’s a Real Bad Idea ™. But several of them said that the bolts will come out if you wiggle them around..

I took another look at it. The pulley probably can come off, but it looks like you need The Special Tool ™. I don’t have it of course. So I tried the wiggling idea. After some unproductive moments trying really hard not to say any words the group of 6 years old gathered around don’t need to learn, suddenly, one of the bolts is now flush with the ridge on the pulley that was blocking it. I was momentarily fascinated by the fact that it seemed the bolt and the pulley were now occupying the same space and time. But I didn’t bother to really wait to figure out what I was seeing and jerked the bolt out.

Now, with the bolt in hand, I had time to be fascinated again. At first glance the bolt appears to be a standard metric flanged cap bolt. However, one side of the flange is ground away flat, which allows the bolt to come past the pulley when magically turned just right. So basically, instead of designing the bracket’s bolt diameter to be just an 1/8” larger, the solution was to make three special bolts only for this AC compressor. All those people that cut them off and bought new bolts were screwed.

We really should spend some time and resources to find the Design Guy and eliminate him.

E.W.

I bet you can buy the Special Bolts ™ from the dealer. I bet they’re ten bucks each.

I saw a thing on the morning news where they were talking about Holiday Etiquette. To help people out I thought I would give you a short, but instructive quiz on the subject. It’s just one question.

You’re in a mall toy store searching for the must-have toy of the season, The Uber-Marketed-Dolly ™. You just spotted the very last one on Earth, currently at the other end of a long aisle. In front of you to the right and approaching the toy is one soccer mom. On the left, slightly behind and also approaching the toy is soccer mom #2 who is pushing a baby stroller.

Do you:

A. Give up and prepare to tell little Susie about the realities of Christmas?

B. Wait till one of the mom’s picks up the toy and then start a bidding war to buy the toy?

C. Jump in front of soccer mom #2, plant your foot in her stroller and use it like a skate board to rush past soccer mom #1 and grab the toy?

If you answered C, then you lose because I vaulted over your shoulder to plant my foot in the stroller and I’m already at the check out. Next year maybe you’ll have your game on.

E.W.

Perhaps your failure here is that you didn’t drink enough coffee before shopping. It’s a common mistake.

© 2015 Evil Wordsmith, Evilwordsmith.com. All Rights Reserved.

Somewhere back in July I made some kind of minor misconfiguration as I hurriedly built the business machine for my company. The massive update (Kids, NEVER let your Gentoo box go 3 weeks without an update!) from two weeks ago demanded payment for my arrogance in ignoring that little misconfiguration. That box is now hosed until I have time to Do It Right ™. So now I’m on the back up machine that I built correctly.

I’m buried alive in work right now, don’t really have time to post this, but I’m pissed off. Yesterday on-board sound failure (really worried the motherboard was toast) on the back up machine had me looking at lots of sites online before I confirmed it was a hardware failure. I found the most irritating website I’ve seen in a long time. I’m not going to link it cause it’s got too much page rank already. But it is a Linux Forum ORGanization, if you get my meaning…

On there, they block part of each page with an ad. To get rid of it so you can read the forum post you would have to create an account and log in. I am loathe to create accounts online, I got millions of them that I almost never use and it’s a password headache as it is. This is not a social networking site, it’s a forum for people looking for solutions and hopefully people with informative answers. I’m looking for solutions to problems other people have already posted about and obviously I don’t have an answer. So I don’t have or want an account. And, since it’s me looking at it, if I really want to read the post I’ll view it in Lynx…

E.W.

Speaking of people with informative answers, there are some people out there, probably the ones who think these kind of places are for social networking, who post helpful answers like “Well, did you run alsaconf?” in reply to people who posted the error message they got from running alsaconf. These people also piss me off.

I get the call last night from the field to bring the Thing We Don’t Have On The Truck ™. Of course the call came just as I pulled up in the driveway coming back from the shop. So, I head out to the shop to get the Thing We Don’t Have On The Truck ™. Just as I get there, it starts to rain little balls of ice. By the time I get to the jobsite with the Thing We Don’t Have On The Truck ™ it is pouring rain, snow and ice.

I find the crew, and having made do without the Thing We Don’t Have On The Truck ™, finished with the project. Our main crew guy asks me, “Do you still wanna scrap the stuff we removed?”

Amazed by this question, which translates in my head to “Do you want some free money?” I say “Yes of course we scrap it.”

He says, “Then we need to put it on your truck, there’s no where to put it on mine. Besides you are going near the scrap yard on the way out in the morning.” And he tells me where the scrap yard is.

I find this whole conversation suspicious but can’t quite put my finger on why. So we put the 380 pound chunk of steel onto the back of my truck and I go to the house.

This morning I get up. It’s no longer snowing or icing. Just rain. Lots of rain. Knowing that I’m about to singlehandedly roll a 380 pound chunk of steel off the end of my truck, I want my boots and gloves. Unfortunately, said 380 pound chunk of steel is rolled up tight against my truck tool box, where my boots and gloves are.

I head off to the scrap yard. As I head toward the scales, I notice the big mud field down the other road and am glad the scales are the other way. I get on the scales and the guy comes out and informs me that I need to now drive back around and go down into the big mud field and toss the 380 pound chunk of steel at the pile beside the railroad track.

I plan my route carefully since I really don’t want my two wheel drive truck stuck in the mud. I aim for the high ground and thankfully I have traction. I stop my truck and try to step out on said high ground. My foot, along with my white tennis shoe disappears into the mud, about to my ankle. So… in for a penny they say… I get the rest of the way out of my truck and make my way to the tail gate, hoping my shoes come back up with my feet at each step.

I climb up into the bed of my truck and begin to chuck the smaller pieces of steel into the mud. The first two disappear completely. The next two seemed to be on top of something down in the mud. I notice that this causes a little spring to well up near the front of my truck. Reminds me of the opening credits of Beverly Hillbillies, only I ain’t gonna be getting rich today. Finally I amaze myself by being able to roll said 380 pound chunk of steel off my truck.

Now for my escape. I figure once I get started there will be no stopping in this mud. So I was going pretty fast when the back bumper of my truck hits the concrete barrier block on the side of the mud field. On the plus side, I can get to my boots now cause nothing in my truck is near the front of the bed.

My big fear is not the scrap I have made of the tail of my truck now. No my fear now is that I am stopped in the mud field. There may be no escape. I put the truck in gear and amazingly I can move forward. I can also see the concrete block now… I take a chance and stop since I don’t think I can get out by moving ahead. In reverse I spin the wheels. Only one way to go… forward. I hope there is a hole.

Turns out, there is a hole. The hard road that isn’t muddy on the other side of the tracks. The road that the guy meant for me to go down in the first place. So I get back on the scales, get paid and get out of there.

Next stop: the car wash. I get out of my muddy truck and put my money in the machine and proceed to wash my tennis shoes, and then with the leftover time the truck.

E.W.

As I write this I am in the laundromat washing my shoes. I just pulled them out of the dryer. One is completely dry. The other is soaked. I am pretty sure this is some kind of physical symmetry violation.

I have mentioned before the evil menace that is the unknown person I call The Design Guy. He is an especially evil madman who, by little tricks of broken design, is bent on slowly and methodically driving normal people (using myself as a benchmark of course) insane. Today I am going to talk about one of his evil designs: the standard coffee maker carafe.

What you say? You haven’t noticed anything wrong with the carafe? It is the hallmark of The Design Guy that he is insidious and subtle. Think about this for a minute, when you use one of those plastic tea pitchers you can pour liquid out of it at the rate of a gallon per second without spilling a drop. You could put out a fire with it and not spill any.

Try that with a coffee carafe. By the time you have your cup half full you’ll need to start another pot while you mop the floor. In fact, I can pee faster than I can pour coffee out of one of those. On a cool morning the coffee at the bottom of my cup has already gone icy by the time I get coffee to the top of the cup.

Here’s the thing, I don’t like coffee much. When I’m pouring coffee it is because I am:

A. Sleepy.

B. Cold.

C. In a hurry.

D. Need to crap.

E. Switching from type B to type A for the morning commute.

F. All of the above.

I am most definitely not having a sensuous, slow moment with the coffee. I’m not filming a remake of Nine and a Half Weeks or pretending to. If I want to do that, I’m probably not going to work and coffee breath is not exactly a good start for that anyway. No, I need my coffee to come out like a fire hose without dripping. And it’s the 21^st century, I know we have the technology.

E.W.

I’m also beginning to suspect that the coffee dribble cup I have (which amazingly only dribbles when I’m wearing a non-black shirt) is the work of The Design Guy.

Sung to the tune of Let It Snow:

Oh my stomach sure is upset
And the Tums just aren’t working
I really would like to fart
Let It Blow! Let It Blow! Let It Blow!

Update: Seems I got this wrong, the first part rhymed better per the Queen so it should be:

Oh my stomach sure is hurtin’
And the Tums  they aren’t a workin’
I really would like to fart
Let it Blow! Let it Blow! Let It Blow!