Car, Phone, What's Third?

Well now,

In the last 7 days my car has been declared terminally ill, my phone, which isn't MY phone, somehow suddenly stopped booting up.. Its meant to be a PHONE!

It is most irritating when things like this start getting in the way of other things which are going really well. Our band played our third gig last Friday. We probably technically did better in the first two, but this was a much bigger crowd and it adds a lot.

Now i'm faced, for the fourth time in my life, with buying another car. Lets look at my record:

1 Ford Fiesta - 9 years old when I had it, and I had it five months or so before flattening the left side against a gate post. £1400, effectively written off, but I had no comprehensive insurance at the time, so nothing doing.

2. Ford Fiesta - 7 years old when I had it. Lasted almost two years, although it sounded awful. Probably would have lasted a little longer if it had any oil in it when it last reached operating temperature. £450, died of mechanical failure. This was by far the best value car i've owned.

3. Peugeot 306 - 5 years old when I bought it. Lasted a year and a half. Drove great, never really recovered from a cambelt job gone wrong. 10,000 miles later the belt is wearing away but the thing is so tightly welded together further economical work isn't possible. £2800, soon to die of valve on piston action unless somebody wants a pet project.

4. I'm wanting a Skoda Octavia (its all about reliability and boot space) but recent ones are still £8000 - too much. Ditto a new Vectra. I'm thinking i'll settle for finding a Ford Focus TDCi, as boring as that sounds, but I swear if the crank bolt snaps off in this engine i'm going to hurt someone!

Yes, this was unfortunately a vent rather than an interesting post. If anybody is curious about the 306, the crank bolt snapped off 10k ago presumably leaving half in situ. Whatever the correct solution, the action taken was to create a stub by welding+chemical metaling a bolt in, holding the pulley on with a separate nut. This actually seemed to work, but the belt is wearing too quickly. 50/50 on whether thats due to this or something else eg pump/tensioner. This car could be brought back to life with a new crank - whether the current one is actually damaged beyond use I cannot say, but there are mostly perfectly good parts on this car. If somebody wants to make me a serious offer to make this their problem, get in touch (UK, Midlands - the car will be driveable again, it's just hard to say for how long before the inevitable happens). I don't have the expertise, time or the inclination to do what needs to be done but this really doesn't deserve to be scrapped.

45 miles later...

I am a commuter. Today was without question the worst day of the year for the thousands like myself, and look at that - it's only January 18th.

And when bad weather ravages the UK ("your land was ravaged?!?") i'm left not surprised, just fuming that as a supposedly intelligent person I can't find a better option than sitting in a queue of traffic.

That said I did eventually break off down a sub-cross-country route. Who knows whether it helped me - didn't take me far off course and got me back to the M1 just north of the blockage, which of course cleared just in time to rob me of that fantastic 'only-car-on-the-motorway' feeling.

45 miles in 2 and a half hours. I'd make a simplistic comment about how unnecessary most commuting is, but I don't think I know enough yet. I do believe things are going to change though. With some of the upcoming "green" proposals, they're going to have to.

Slashdot or TechMeme?

I'm now subscribed to too many blogs to keep both Slashdot and TechMeme in my Google Reader. One or the other has to go.

Truth is almost everything reported on TechMeme also appears on Slashdot, it's just they both have innovative but different "discussion" methods.

Slashdot has its newly updated threshold driven comments system which if used correctly can yield some interesting conversations.

TechMeme manages to pull together every other site running the story.

I think i've answered my own question. TechMeme is the logical winner - it will lead me to the Slashdot story if it exists in the majority of cases. In which case, why do I feel so reluctant to shut off from Slashdot's feed? Maybe i'm more loyal to organisations than I realised..

Damn. Looks like i'm keeping them both. Thanks Blogger, this achieved nothing.

Gig Tuesday

Its quarter to midnight on the 16th Jan and i'm on a high having just played my first gig. This wasn't just any first gig - this is the best known venue in town. We may not have appeared the most professional band between songs, but the music certainly sounded great and very few mistakes were made.

This of course answers questions I posed quite some time ago.

I said that I crave a stage i'm not comfortable on (link). Turns out thats only partially true. I do crave the stage, but the feeling when standing on it isn't discomfort, just good old shyness. This is a revelation to me, because I tend to be able to overcome shyness is almost any situation once I get used to it.

Good to know. I'll play another 3 in the coming weeks, so we'll see how they go. Certainly tonight I enjoyed myself in a new way. It's been a while since i've felt that. Feels good.