Why My Life Sucks

Well, I got a new battery.  Actually, I got two.  Let me explain.  I go into $CarPartStore across the street from where Darling Wife works and next to where Redheaded Girl used to work. At $CarPartStore, I speak with Clerk Dude about my need for a battery.  Clerk Dude does some computer fu and comes up with a type of battery I need and said that if I bought a 1 dollar “mounting kit” (two felt thingies that go under the cables and some sort of portected goo/lub stuff) he could install the battery.  Sounds good to me, not dealing with heavy toxic acidic crap inside a car is worth a buck, plus I get the little felt thingies under the cables, score all the way around.  He even yumps the battery out to the car for me.   He undoes the battery, puts in new one, plus mounting kit and tells me to start it up.

Nothing.  Not even tick-tick-tick etc.   He putzes about with the cables.  Tells me to try again.  “tick-tick-tick-tick”  Really weeny tick-tick-tick, I might add.

“Oh, that’s your starter.” sayth Clerk dude.

“No, It’s not.  If I hook up the Jump Buddy to it, the car will start.” sayth me.

“I don’t think so, but let’s try it.“  At least he was willing to listen to the customer, unlike the last “expert” I had to deal with (see rant about Vonage VoIP provider below)

Hook up “Jump Buddy”.  Car starts, as expected and predicted.  Clerk dude, to his credit, shrugs and takes my old battery into the store and puts it on on the battery tester.  It’s dead Jim.  Highest value, 6 or so volts, at any sort of amps.

He takes the portable tester out and hooks it up the “new” battery.   It’s even more dead, Jim.  Highest value, 4 volts, and dropped to under 2 under load.  It wouldn’t even power the clock whose display at least, is a 7400 TTL based system, which means 5 volts or it’s dead. (It bothers me some times that I know things like that, but don’t remember what the syntax of a SQL insert statement is.  It’s not like I’ve done any IC works since, oh, 1978 or so.)

He takes the portable test in to the store, takes battery number 3 off the shelf and test it.  Good to go.   Replaces battery number 2 (i.e the one I just bought) and has me do a “turn in” paper work thing.  (zero days on a 3 year pro-rated warranty, comes to, oh, full price….)  While he’s doing that, the store manager type (aka PHB for you Dilbert fans out there) wanders over and asks what’s going on. Clerk dude explains.  PHB looks amazed that a product that is known to have a life span is dead.  Shocked and appalled even.  Really appalled, at one point he was standing with his arms out at 45 degree angle over his head [heralds don't pun, they cant] {rim-shot} Thanks, be here all week. Try the fish...)  PHB doesn’t think clerk dude knows how to run the tester correctly.  (It’s not hard.  I can do now.  Hook up battery like you were jumping it, i.e. red clamp on the positive terminal, black on the negative. Push test.  Enter the Amps of the battery.  Watch LCD. Wait 45 seconds. Read result.  I could train Velifer to do it, if he had the thumbs to hook up the battery.)  PHB putzes with cables.  Pushes Test etc. Still dead.  Reads, if any thing, lower than it did out side attached to the car.

I sign the papers and leave, while PHB and Clerk dude start talking about checking lot numbers and who gets to do what with this issue etc.  That sounds like a load of fun and games. But Not My Problem.

Got the new D&D group’s first game tonight, I’m all sorts of happy about that.

Well, the machine isn’t dead.     I did figure out why it went into thermal shutdown however.   The speaker grills on the front of the machine are also the inbound air intakes.   Closing the lid, with the machine running isn’t a good idea.     Of course, NOT closing the lid when it’s running something in back ground isn’t a good idea with as many cats as I have.

Solution:   Don’t let it run in background mode unless I’m in the room so I can keep Pip and/or Velifer off of it.

And so does The Darling Wife.

The only thing useful I’ve done in the last 48 hours is to ‘Topspot’ all the critters.   Well, not all the critters the squirrels out side I didn’t bother with, but I did do all the dogs and cats.

bleh.

Actually, the badness started some time Friday afternoon.   I got a migraine, which responded, more or less, to my Midrin, however it didn’t go away, so I ended up take several doses over the weekend.   This is first time since I started on my current “don’t freak the fuck out” drugs that I have had to do that.

I’m not going to again.

There seems to be something about the Midrin/Adderall/Diclofenac/Temazepan/Cymbalta combination that, well, doesn’t freaking work.

Let me explain.   Saturday, The Darling Wife noticed that Pressa wasn’t feeling well.   I made a vet appointment for her on Monday.   Short version, she had some sort of liver disease and on Tuesday, we had to have her put to sleep.   Run with Bast, my lesbian love kitty.

Due to some work related issues, I was already fairly well stressed out.   When the vet told me over the phone that we needed to come in and say good by to Pressa, well, I totally lost it.   Complete and total break down.

Which I just found out isn’t over.   I just lost it at my wife, who I love more than life itself over where to put a bunch of broccoli in the fridge.

Oh, God, please, make it better, I don’t want to live like this any more.

This is Velifer, yet another cat named after bats. Velifer is The Darling Wife’s cat, but he likes any one that will pet him.

He also likes to drink bath water, but only AFTER a human has gotten into it, which is a bit weird.

Or should that be moar kitteh fotoz? Any rate this is Vampyressa Pusilla, normally called Pressa, yep, it’s another cat named after a bat. Pressa is one of Ben, the owner of The Original Game Shop kittens. She’s also great for taking low light photos of because she will hold very still for you.

This is the last photo I took of JoJo, the spherical cat of uniform density.

Rest in Peace my old friend

We had to put JoJo ,our eldest cat, to sleep this weekend, after he had a stroke. The stroke rendered him blind, plus he had little to no control of his body. JoJo was 19.

I do have some photos of him from before, so I’ll post him next.

Run with Bast my old friend.

I’m going to do a set of photos of my various pets. Today it’s “Pipistrellus” or “Pip”. Yes, he’s named after Pipistrellus pipistrellus, the common small gray bat. A lot of my cats are named after bats. It’s a Family Thing.

Pip is also known as “The Miracle Kitty” due to how we found him and what it took to keep him alive. Let’s just say that a “dot com” era bonus check was spent on this cat. May have been the best thing I did with any of those checks.

I had to bury a kitten today.

Run with Bast, little Paladin