August 2003

I’ve posted my old IBM ThinkPad T22 for sale on eBay. Only about 2 days left folks, get it while the getting is good

When I took my car in a few weeks ago to have the side mirror replaced (it was hit off this past winter by a snow plow ), the guy at the dealer told me there was a recall out for my fuel pump. He explained that it wasn’t a safety recall, but more of a customer satisfaction recall. He couldn’t perform it that day because apparently you have to have less than half a tank of gas (they have to drop off the entire fuel tank) and I had just filled up that morning. So I decided to wait until I got back to Troy to get it done.

Now going back to my car troubles ealier this week. I ended up taking my car from the small Mobile station where I managed to get it to on Tuesday down to Latham Ford. Luckily the Mobile station only charged me $14, which is the price of the New York State inspection (which apparently my car passed, which is surprising giving that it barely started!). So I had to drive it about 10 miles from Troy to Latham to the Ford dealer, and the entire way my car was producing a thick cloud of black smoke, and on a road where the normal speed limit is 55 mph, I was really only able to keep it at about 30 (it kept puttering and dying on me!). I managed to roll it into the lot, and on Friday they called me up and said that they finally figured out what was going on.

They replaced the fuel pump as part of the recall, and apparently that fixed everything What would’ve cost me about $1200 (in parts, labor, and that stupid engine light diagnostic fee) was completely free! Now what they need to do is upgrade the status of that recall to be something slightly more important that just a customer satisfaction recall. I could’ve been in the middle of the interstate when my car died and then I would’ve had to pay for a tow!

I realized why I haven’t updated in a while – since my laptop last crashed, I hadn’t bothered to reinstall the Semagic LiveJournal client. And since I hate the web-based client, that meant that I never posted any updates. Sorry about that!

So yesterday Josh and I were at Price Chopper in Troy about to head back to my apartment. As I was pulling out of their parking lot, my car lost power and just died right there in the middle of the little side street. It has been idling weird since I got back from Ohio a few days ago, but I didn’t really think much of it. We pushed it back into the parking lot and tried to start it up again. It would turn over, run for a few seconds, putter and then die. It sounded like I was out of gas, but the gas guage said I had slightly more than a quarter of a tank. There is an Autozone in the Price Chopper plaza, so we stopped in there and asked what they thought. One of the guys came out and listened, and he said the same thing, that it sounded like somehow the car wasn’t getting enough gas.

Interestingly enough, someone from RPI’s Public Safety (the campus police force) was doing some personal shopping at Price Chopper at the same time, so we hitched a ride back to RPI. The person asked not to be identified, but was really cool! They also asked us not to tell anyone they were at Price Chopper shopping while in uniform, on duty, and driving a Public Safety car The funny thing is that only an hour before at Wal-Mart we saw another Public Safety person buying some donuts, driving a different Public Safety vehicle. So if something was going down yesterday at RPI, might as well radio up to Brunswick to find everyone

So we rode in the back seat of this Public Safety car (which is needlessly exactly like a police car) all the way back to RPI to pick up Josh’s car. Then we drove back to Price Chopper so we could try to figure out what to do with my car. Apparently letting it sit for a while was good for it, because I was able to get it started, and as long as it didn’t idle for too long it didn’t die. So I rev’ed it up, and got up enough momentum to roll down the hill toward the Mobil station (which has a garage).

I put some gas in it to see if that might be the problem. Actually it did run a bit better when it had more gas in it. I’m wondering if I got ahold of some bad gas somewhere. Anyone ever had that happen? Does that happen in the US? It still wasn’t quite running right, and of course by the time I got there (about 7 PM) the garage was closed, so I pulled it into a parking spot and handed the keys over to the gas station attendent there. This morning I called the garage and they will take a look at the car early this afternoon and call me back.

Since a car is really just a big computer, and since I understand computers fairly well, I really wish that they distributed those diagnostic computers with the car when you buy it so that you could make the initial diagnosis yourself. I honestly think cars are smart, and I have faith that most people have at least some intelligence, so together they should be able to work together to figure out what’s going on!