All told, not too bad.

So I thought my weekend was going to suck. I didn't find out until late in my work day Friday that I was going to have to work yesterday. I was supposed to have yesterday off, allowing me all day Saturday to hang out with Hannah in the mountains. But that didn't quite work out. Friday and Saturday were both exhausting days at work, but I managed to clean out nearly the entire bench (again) by around 5PM Saturday. I also got a quick refresher in laptop power jack replacement and, more importantly, the permission to use our soldering/desoldering equipment at work for personal stuff. The boss was actually glad to let me since I need that kind of experience. Desoldering I can do no problem. I just need to work on the actual soldering part. But at the end of the day (despite having cleared nearly customer's computer in the store off the work bench and into the ready-for-pickup queue and the boss still asking what I did while he was out) the boss brought in some very good beer. He does this two out of three Friday/Saturdays. I don't know why, but he does. It is free beer. I complain not.

But Saturday morning, Iesu Cristo. I didn't want to go in. This is not usual for me. I just wanted the day off like I was supposed to. But I leave with time, I thought, to get in on time. But, alas, the World had other plans. Not only does the NCDOT think that two weekends before Christmas is a great time to take one of the narrowest parts of I85 and make it one lane, but they do so right on top of my exit! And! My car starts sputtering and vibrating alarmingly rough as it dips into lower RPMs. So much so that it cuts off on me more than once on the short jaunt to work from the highway. It felt like one of two things. Either really low oil or no gas. But neither are the case. The Honda was known to leak/burn oil. So, being the tinkerer that I am, I started looking into ways to fix that. I might have been a little too industrious in my attempts, and then forgetful of said attempts. Thinking the oil might be low, I checked it, adjusted (or what I thought) for the engine having been running and added a quart. The problem, I think is a combination of overfill and the oil filter not having been changed in years before I changed the oil last time. Today I drained the oil and replaced it, leaving the "new" filter on. It's running better, but I suspect changing the filter would help. But I didn't really have the time, space, or inclination to perform a full oil change in the cold of the mountains with only about 2/3 of the tools and such I needed.

I don't know what it is, but I love fixing things. Computers, now cars. I might just be on my way to becoming a gearhead as well as a computer geek.

I haven't really done anything else today. I bought pizza for lunch, and enough for Hannah and her sisters to have some leftovers for breakfast or so. And overall, I've just been relaxing in the comfortable cool weather, but I'm ok with that.

In geek news, Hannah and Sarah seem interested in Mordheim. This makes me happy. I miss that game and I've been itching to play for a long time. Also: I fixed an HP zv5000 that Fisher once had. It still has the broken power button, but I've figured out a workaround. And this very post is being brought to you, live (sorta), from it's exposed and somewhat amalgamated form. Overall, I like it more than I thought I would. 17" widescreen monitor. The P4 cpu isn't the best performer, but it does what I need it to do. And having a gig of RAM in the thing helps. I might try installing Ubuntu on this thing sometime next week. We shall see. For now, I plan on it being my mostly portable recepticle of music and internet access with abroad. It is named The Holy Tome. I think it's appropriate. It's about the size of a "pulpit bible," it can hold all of my music, and it can access the Great Intarweeb Oracle of the Tubes.

So yeah, all in all, it's not been too bad a weekend.

through the lost endless mountains so far away from home...