friday random elevenish: “maintenance required” edition
In most respects, this week has been pretty darned typical. Apart from my taking the day off Monday, it’s been work, bike, read, watch some stuff on TV. And Oh yeah, deal with the frustration of things breaking or wearing out…again.
The VPN at work has been crashing hard all week, especially on Thursday. There’s nothing I can do about this, apart from the occasional reboot/reset, as the entire Department is on centralized services now; if it’s down for me, it’s mostly down for everyone. Email, collaboration applications, calendars, access to the office network itself? All constantly up and down; usually up just long enough for an email to come out telling everyone email’s not working. Luckily, it didn’t crash during any of my online meetings, and I got the stuff done I needed to get done.
More immediately concerning is the house air conditioning unit showing itself struggling during this, perhaps the hottest week of the summer thus far. It’s struggling to keep up with the heat, and needs some maintenance – parts? recharge? I don’t know – I’m not an HVAC technician. Thankfully, it’s under service warranty for another year; it’s not going to cost me anything to have the guy fix it, which he will do tomorrow, unless the service appointment gets postponed again. Ugh.
Finally, there’s my car. On the NC trip this past weekend, I noticed the clutch slipping a bit at highway speeds. Since then, it’s only gotten worse; lots of revs, less than amazing acceleration. I’m going to need a new clutch, which is one of those things that does occasionally wear out, and I’ve been on the original one for 100k miles now, which is a pretty good run. It sucks, but it’s time. I’ve got that appointment for Thursday, as it was the soonest I could get it into the shop. I can only assume that this lead time is due to the fact that the auto industry is absolutely crazy at the moment and everybody’s fixing their cars instead of buying new (or new to them) cars, because there’s not much on the lots, and what’s there is crazy expensive.
In the meantime, I’m just limiting my driving and being glad I have savings banked for this sort of thing.
Oh well – tunes. Pretty standard with some cool stuff, though the tunes on either end are definitely outliers, but that’s just how I roll:
- “Driver’s License” – Olivia Rodrigo
- “Hazy Shade of Winter” – The Bangles
- That is Why” – Jellyfish
- “Graveyard Shift” – Uncle Tupelo
- “The Good Life” – Weezer
- “Birds Fly (Whispers from a Scream)” – The Icicle Works
- “In Bloom” – Nirvana
- “Beat’s So Lonely” – Charlie Sexton
- “To Live And Die In L.A.” – Wang Chung
- “Kelly’s Heroes” – Black Grape
- “So It Goes” – Nick Lowe
- “Two Little Men In A Flying Saucer” – Ella Fitzgerald
