... one of those weeks where you just suffered high-school-grade awkwardness at every turn? Where not only did you not know how to accept a compliment, you couldn't even fathom how to accept a statement about the weather? Where you couldn't even introduce people to one another on one of those delightful occasions that you actually remembered everyone's names?

D'oh.

Snuff. I can't possibly live without Snuff. They rock, they roll, they have hilarious and poignant insights into feeling like a drunken loser in a remarkably succinct package.

In any case, you can't go too far wrong with Snuff

It's not the sort of thing you can usefully ask most people. But major kudos to Dr. Science, who, even though he was out of town, was able to lend me a bottle of CO₂, to get me rolling with the welder even though I failed to shut off the gas the last time I had it out. Somehow (ahem), over last ~four months, all the CO₂/Argon mix I had managed to escape through the welder's valve, leaving me attempting "MMMMMM" welding, instead of "MIG" welding, since Metal was still in effect, but the Inert Gas was nowhere to be found.

Of course, that kindness can't undo the damage I've just inflicted on another part of the 325is' seat which I'd just welded back together. Cross your fingers for me. I'm going to try doing delicate work with vice grips, which can hardly be called an auspicious beginning to the end of the seat repair project...

This, I thought, was a brilliant summary, related in a tone of celebration. It was provided by Trent when I texted to tell him that the in-tank transfer fuel pump on the 325is was making no sound and drawing no current.

This underscores one of those wacky things about playing with cars... And perhaps something to keep in mind when you're getting a car fixed. In some cases, the fix is the labor-intensive part. If you need your engine rebuilt, that's going to use a lot of time. On the other hand, if your car (like mine recently) is performing a sporadic hiccup which isn't obviously attributable to a particular item, then the big time-eater is diagnosis. In some cases, the actual fix can be trivial. But I've spent dozens of hours (multiply that by $90/hr if you're having a shop do it) trying to locate problems. Keep that in mind the next time you go to a shop and are hoping they can "just figure out what it is." It may be that they can, but if it's something a little tricky, don't be too put off if they can't do it on the spot or cheap/free.

In my case, it's going to be a relatively easy and neither cheap nor end-of-the world-costly fix. I need a new fuel pump, at about $190. Of course, Murphy is never too far away, and I'll only be certain this is my problem when I replace the pump and the car behaves itself.

In any case, I'm just super-excited about the hope that this week-long mysterious (stumble on acceleration) problem will hopefully be remedied in time to try out my new race tires at the first Portland autocross on the 22nd... Woohoo! [For those who are playing along diagnostically, and wondering how a completely dead fuel pump could result in only a driveability issue, this car has two fuel pumps, and it's the low-pressure in-tank pump that's failed. I guess the high-pressure pump's been able to draw enough fuel to keep it running, sort-of.]

Just under a year ago, whilst I was in Vancouver, B.C. on one of my mercifully infrequent instances of being shipped someplace by work, I was sitting in a meeting, frantically trying to take notes on the website we were taking over, when my Thinkpad stopped being sporadic in its hardware issues, and went Dead. Not Mostly Dead. Going-through-the-pockets-for-loose-change dead, and it doesn't even have pockets...

Since then, I've alternately OD'ed on computers at work, borrowed Nerdygirl's laptop, begged one old desktop from Dr. Science, and built another...

Recently, as one of the several delightful side effects of my tax refunds, I bought a motherboard via eBay. Less delightfully, the first one I got was probably physically fine, but the little "security" chip that plugs into the motherboard didn't match up, and it wouldn't work... Dude was quite helpful, and refunded my money most promptly. But better yet, I am typing on the results of eBay motherboard number two... So far, so good. This thing's been running for a good fifteen minutes now! Don't uncross your fingers 'til I tell you...

That's not the right image. And I can't remember my db login right now to fix it. It should look more like this:

D'oh. I told you I was tired.

Okay, I'm not going to manage the kind of deep thought needed to post another desert island album today. Instead, I'm going to borrow the album cover meme thing from KFR (he borrowed it to, go there to see from whom and get the howto).

My result is this:

I thought I'd hit the jackpot with my random article and random quote, and then that image trashed it all. I blame that for the lack of inspiration you see in the uninspired layout and so forth... But hey, I'm tired. I just finished changing the rear shocks and springs on the BMW, making the front brake splash guard not grind annoyingly against the brake rotor, and it's just after eleven. I'm done. But at least the car's almost ready for autocross season, opening here in Portland Sunday, March 22nd.

This of course assumes that I drifted ashore with a solar-powered mp3 player, or even more literally a solar-powered turntable and so forth, but that's just being stupidly nitpicky. In any case, for KFR, I will happily take a stab at what music I want to be stuck with for the rest of my life, at least right now. Castawayhood might change my mood...

Oh, the time it flies. And there's work in the morning, before which I've gotta get my car to the muffler shop. So, I guess this is just a first installment. Four more to come. In no particular order...

Okay, actually, I've just gotten my income tax refund. And as I said to someone earlier, it's burning a hole in my pocket like allowance day when I was eight.

I have had, of course, any number of varyingly silly ideas as to what to do with it, but I think I've settled on the right balance of fun and practical for a significant chunk. The absurd '87 BMW I picked up a year ago has so far been neat and quick, and a complete pain in the ass, (engine replacement, interior-de-molding, four destroyed tires, the list goes on...) which is fine. That's what cars do. The thing that really gets me is despite the fact that it looks suspiciously like a 13-year-old's bedroom poster of a supercar of the '80s, I've mostly failed to fall in love with it.

What I've realized is that the one thing it's still really missing is that it's wearing these silly lowering springs which didn't firm up the ride at all, but are purely for show. Exacerbating this, and really the larger problem, is that the shocks are dead, and so it handles something like a '73 Buick. This is not something I find attractive in a car, and a total letdown where this is supposed to be one of this car's strong points.

So, springs and dampers are in order. The autocross season is going to start pretty soon, and this is the biggest piece of work to be done first. It's also something which must be done before I can determine whether I ever really will come to feel at home in this thing.

I suspect, somehow, that while I'll probably enjoy it for a while, I'll have to move on before too long. Partly because I'm just a car nut and there are too many cars I want to experience. And partly for a matter of personality and what fits. I'm not so sure this is my car (C'mon, people. Pretty in pink? Blane?). I think (fear?) perhaps something else might be more appropriate.

Maybe the shocks will help.

Today is different. As of a little more than an hour ago [as I started to write this], we mark the end of eight of the most stupid years (on several levels) in the history of the governance of the USA.

Not only do we get someone who's not the guy we already had, we've even managed not to elect another old white guy. There have actually been a couple old—or at least aging—white guys who I've been reasonably excited about, either at the time or after seeing what they were once the handlers stopped handling them (Kerry and Gore, respectively). But this is even more than I had hoped for on those occasions.

While the state of the nation and of the world may not be at their most auspicious, I'm genuinely hopeful and excited as we embark on Barack Obama's presidency. I'm not expecting miracles, but I'm cautiously hopeful that he might inspire the enthusiasm and confidence which seems to be one of the most needed things to help the economy get moving (don't let's start about the insanity of the economy needing a psychoanalyst as much as a mathematician), and most of all that we might see an end to an era of the celebration of ignorance and a return to pride in America as a place where critical thought is admirable.

In any case, I don't have much to add to what so many people have said, and can't say it so well as many of them. I just figured that today was important enough that I would like to have my own little memento.

Okay, fine. I know any organization as large and prolific as Microsoft is going to have problems with some of their products, and that they're going to get publicized. But still... All Zunes go splat simultaneously?

Well this is unexpected. I'm writing from the Palm Springs airport. Nerdygirl is in line, getting us swapped onto a flight to Seattle. All of which is odd when you consider that we left Portland three or four hours ago, flying to Sacramento and expecting to have driven to Chico by now. Sacramento was socked in, and after two abortive attempts to land, the crew gave up and here we are.

I never expected to visit Palm Springs (and I still don't expect to see anything but the airport), but I have to confess that the weather is beautiful. It must be close to 70 degrees, with clear blue skies. I was a little bummed that it appeared by the forecast that Chico wasn't going to provide a respite from the grey Portland winter. So while it appears that we will have been traveling for thirteen or fourteen hours by the time we actually reach Chico, we will have been to Palm Springs, Seattle, and Sacramento, in that order. It's going to have been a full day. For now, I just want some lunch.

Too bad our lunch break isn't a little longer. I was also thinking this might be a prime opportunity to buy a rust-free southern California car (MGB, Midget, Triumph) which would be more valuable in Oregon. And perhaps more fun than continuing this trip via major air carrier...

You may (though unlikely) be wondering what happened to the engine which arrived in the 325is. Since I was unable to determine what part of it was to blame for the low compression, I couldn't really sell it as anything other than a possibly-rebuildable core. And that had such little value that attempting to ship any of it or even fielding craigslist responses seemed like more trouble than it was worth. So, last week, I took it to the nearest scrap metal recycling yard.

I sometimes wonder, when dealing with very Blue Collar institutions and individuals, whether my hair's a little too spiky, my glasses are a little too hip, or whether that's just the way they deal with everyone who comes in. The particular item I'm thinking of is that after walking in, I asked the first person I ran into what I ought to do with the engine sitting in my truck. He said "Let's take a look," and grabbed a forklift. He then picked up a forklift-adapted tub from behind one guy's pickup, dropped another one off with another guy, cruised over to my truck, and told me to get a push cart and take it the engine into the building that way. Well, the cart's bed is about eight inches off the ground, and since we got a giant old F250 4x4, the tailgate's about three feet up... I certainly wasn't going to try to lift the at least 200-odd-pound block out of the bed and set it on the cart by hand, so I lined everything up as well as I could and dropped the engine off the gate. I got lucky and it didn't bounce off. It would have been really awkward trying to end-for-end the block up onto the cart Sisyphus style, with the cart trying to roll away while I was doing it.

I do wonder whether that guy was screwing with me or whether he just figured that that's how you handle it if you've only got a few objects, even if they're heavy. Or maybe in all my time playing with computers and working on cars, motorcycles, and other similarly foofy pastimes, I just never picked up some basic skill of the scrapyard worker that would've made that really easy. I dunno.

It was the only correct thing to do short of going to the trouble of taking it to an engine rebuilder. Next time, though, I might do that instead, even if I have to give it away. For my trouble, along with my block and crank, cylinder head, and steering rack, Metro Metals gave me $8.40. Of which I actually only got $8 because I opted for cash, which it turns out they don't keep in the office, but in a specially-repurposed ATM across the parking lot which doesn't give coinage. It probably almost paid for the biodiesel to haul it over there...

I still enjoy things like my scrapyard trip in some way. While industry and progress aren't the same thing, there is something about doing things where you've created the desired physical change in the world when you're done, whether it's building something, moving something, or tearing something down.

Whatever became of the '87 325is? People ask me this all the almost never... But I'm going to answer it anyway. I found another engine, after much ebay-hunting, craigslist-scrounging, and in the end most effectively, pestering the folks over at , who were able to at least give my phone number to a friend who had a late-'90s 328is engine sitting around, gathering dust, and waiting for him to admit to himself that he had neither the time nor the money to insert it into his own '80s BMW.

After considerable time wading around in the maze of engines I'd created in the carport, and discovering first-hand why the three-wheeled engine stands are a bad idea for engines as long and tall as an inline-six-cylinder one (went to pull it out into the sunlight, and instead dropped it sideways onto the cam cover from four feet up, destroying said cam cover, a brand new $35 gasket, and putting a worrisome distortion into the outer box of the cylinder head), not to mention various other small episodes involving epithets and epidermal erosion, I finally got the new engine back in the car.

So far, so good. It does have a nasty vibration that comes in around 1400 RPM and varies in disturbingness, but after finding out through trial and error and eventually professional opinion* that it was in fact not a miss, but a mechanical vibration (probably due to the flywheel/pressure plate combo being out of balance, curse you CarQuest!), and that it's not bad enough to cause any serious worries while I wait for the weather to get back to clutch-job-friendliness, I'm feeling okay about driving it. I'm really sorry about that last sentence, but I don't feel like rewriting it in the name of readability. It's markedly faster than before (surprise, surprise), and even more glaringly in need of springs and shocks, which unfortunately at least prefer the same weather that a clutch job demands. For now, the only immediate task is mounting the front license plate before the car gets any more unwanted attention.

* Incidentally, this is the first time in about fifteen years that I've taken my car to a shop for anything other that a specialised service like wheel alignment. It just finally got to the point with the weather turning and my attempts to get rid of any phantom "misfire" failing, and with the only real remaining guess being the clutch (which is a big pain in this car, quite possibly involving removing the engine along with the trans), I was willing to swallow my pride and cough up some cash rather than spend two more weekends validating my guess. Turns out my guess was right, and I'll have to do that in the end, but at least I got a knowledgeable estimation that no harm was being done in the meantime, so I can drive with a clearer conscience.