Life of metro

Hello my faithful blog readers, which I am sad to announce does not include my wife. Throughout my life I have owned a couple of Geo/Chevy Metros. Mind you, this was not by choice, I inherited them, but it has been my experience that you don't look a free car in the mouth, or hood, or whatever. With my experience I have learned that the Metro has a very predicable life span, or more accurately, a death-cycle. The first thing to go out always seems to be windshield. I have no idea why, but I have never driven a Metro that has more than 60,000 miles on it without a replaced, or severely cracked windshield, and I don't mean a little rock chip. No, they crack all the way across the thing. I am pretty sure that I now have three separate windshields in my car that are held together through some sort of magic. The next thing to go is the transmission. It doesn't even matter if you have an automatic or manual transmission. The worst part is that it will go out without any warning. This happens around 100,000 miles. Notice I didn't say that it was exactly at 100,000 miles, that would be too much of a warning. Also, that probably won't be the first time you have had to replace the thing. Luckily, like everything in the Metro, the transmission is not too expensive to replace. At 120,000 miles the oil pan will begin to leak. This is particularly annoying because it not only cost money to have it replaced, it is annoying to do and will make a mess out of your drive way. The next thing to happen is that the windows will stop working. This happens at 130,000 miles and usually starts by knobs falling off. This is where my car is currently. I will continue, though it will only make me depressed knowing what I have to look forward to. Now, at this point the car is no longer worth fixing but have no fear, because most of the essential parts on the car have recently been replaced. No, the next thing to go is the doors, this happens at 150,000 miles, not that the doors fall off, they just stop opening. At this point, most sane people would just junk the car, but in my family we run our cars into the ground, literally. We were poor and buying a new car was like buying a house, something did every twenty years or so. The car will continue to run for another 50,000 miles if you treat her right and jerry-rig just about everything on it. After 160,000 miles the fans stop working. This happens in one of two ways, either, they never turn on or they don't shut off. By this time you have become so accustomed to the check engine light that it actually startles you when it turns off. And of course, that is the next thing to happen. It just stops working. You know that there is something wrong with the car cause you can hear the scatterings and caughings over the roar of the wind, that you hear if the windows are up or down. Which as I mentioned earlier, is more of a condition than something that you can change, ever. For the next 20,000 miles or so, the car will slowly die, until, finally, you go out one day and the thing doesn't start. Then you have to find a way to get rid of it because the towing charge will actually cost you more than the car is worth.
So there you go. For anyone that ever wanted to know what happens to a Metro. Hopefully, I can get rid of the thing before too much of that happens. Wish me luck.

Work

Whenever my boss introduces me, he calls me the temp. While this does not bode well for my future at the company I am working at it does frequently bring the question of what exactly I do. To this my boss usually replies, "everything." The normal response to this is a chuckle and then they ask what I really do. The problem with this is that my boss is not kidding, I really do everything thing that needs to be done around the lab. I am kinda like the "go-to-guy." What that means for me is that sometimes, when there is a lot to do and no one wants to do it, I am quite busy. At other times, I sit around and do nothing. I can't remember where I was going with this, but I am sure it was funny. Oh yes, that is right.

I never wanted to be the "go-to-guy." It sucks. I would much rather be the guy with a specific job that can just come in and be given a task that he can work on and really delve into. Unfortunately, I seem to be decent at a number of different task and then am asked to do them all. Now, I'm not trying to toot my own horn, notice I didn't say good, just decent, but being a jack of all trades has never been the path to great monetary gains; perhaps enlightenment, but not wealth. Point is, I am not sure what to tell people what I do at work so I end up just telling them "I make drugs." You would be surprised how many people just roll with that. I think that I could actually be making illegal drugs and people wouldn't bat an eye. Any way, I've been rambling on long enough and wasted enough of your time, which is probably why you are reading this in the first place.

To my loyal fans

I really must appologize. I want to post at least once a week, but life, being what it is, has kept me from finding anything truly intruiging. Most of the things that I run into are more annoying than funny. So, any suggestions as to what I should write about would be great. The more suggestions that I am given the better my post will be and the more often.

On a different note, tomorrow being the inaguration of Obama, I have to say that everyone seems to be a big fan of the future president. Recently I heard that they named a beer after him. That is pretty amaving, you know you've reached true celbrity status when you have a beer named after you. Next stop, amusement park called Obama Land.

Any way, sorry this is so short. Please let me know what you want to hear about.

My first blog

So, here I am at work, with nothing to do, and I thought to myself, everyone wants me to start a blog. I have often thought about doing this but have never started for several reasons. Paramount in these reasons is the fact that I am uncertain as to the tambour of the blog I wish to dictate. I have tried to write something silly, and as in this case, it ends up so serious.

That being said, I would like to discuss Utah drivers. I am honestly perplexed by the “un-written” rules of driving in Utah. As some of you may or may not know, I have a fair commute on my hands; let’s say about 100 miles a day. Really rough on the car- especially since it is a 1999 Chevy Metro with 130,000 miles on it. I think that it is only supposed to last 100,000 miles. But than the wear and tear on the car, it is really rough on the driver.

Let me just explain what I mean with a couple of examples. Today, as I was driving into work, I hit a rough spot of traffic. It was stop and go for a couple of miles. I was wondering who had died, because surely it had to be horrific to cause such a massive back-up. I reached the site of the accident only to discover that the reason for my delayed commute was because someone needed a jump and everyone had to see what was going on.

It might just be me, but where I grew up, we only slowed down if there is a head in the road, and I mean only a head. That’s when started asking questions, and I mean why not. “Where’s the body? Did someone throw the head out of a car or did CalTrans forget to clean up the head?” And even then we would only slow down to 45 mph: Which would get you honked at for being a lookie-loo.

My next, and last, because this blog has gone on way too long as it is, example happened a couple of days ago when it was snowing pretty bad. I was going over the point of the mountain, at a blazing speed of 10 mph, when we really got going, and this little metro I own is more than capable of going 45 mph in these conditions perfectly safely. Now, if your not from Utah then you can’t really understand this situation, but to help illuminate it for you, 90% of the cars on the road in Utah are trucks that are built to go off-roading. Now it was snowing, but the plows had been out. Why is it that the heavy-duty trucks have suck a hard time in the snow? I think that it has more to do with little-man syndrome, and I’m not talking about being short.

Well enough about that. I will let you all rest and think about this for now. I am sure that you will hear me rant more about driving in Utah later. Thanks for listening.