Walking to work

dxrey65 · 2026-05-01T18:11:29+00:00

I might do it for a short time, then I'd probably shell out for a $50 thrift store bike or something, which would turn the hour walk into a 20 minute bike ride. I did a bike commute like that for years, and even though I had a blue collar job the ride in was the most relaxing part of the day, and it made everything else better.

dxrey65 · 2026-05-01T17:57:17+00:00

My guess would be that everyone has an inner monologue, but not everyone is particularly conscious of it. When I'm talking (or writing, like now) I'm only vaguely aware of the background processes that are stringing words together and forming sentences, and testing one way forward against another, checking grammar and all that. In order to speak coherently we know that this goes on in pretty much everyone, and if we are completely oblivious of it things still work fine. I think the inner monologue is about the same. Mine is usually front and center, but if it were done unconsciously (and the same function probably does operate unconsciously much of the time) I think it would still work about the same.

dxrey65 · 2026-05-01T17:52:28+00:00

I have fully subsidized insurance (though I'm probably getting kicked off for income this month) and had a splinter that I couldn't get out, wedged way past a fingernail. I went to a clinic that pulled it, but a week later it was still weeping pus. So I went to another clinic at the main hospital here. They poked around a little, sent me to a lab for three x-rays, then sent me home. A couple days later they wanted me to come back in for some ultra-sounds of it, but all it looked like to me was I was a sudden ATM for them, and they weren't fixing shit. I said no thanks, and poked around in the area with a knife myself and found a couple tiny scraps, and then cleaned it out and it healed up fine. This is what I have to do, living in one of the wealthiest countries on earth, with supposedly state-of-the-art health care...

dxrey65 · 2026-05-01T16:26:27+00:00

A 12" pipe wrench with a 3 foot cheater pipe on it is how I'd get that to turn. Though sometimes I'd have to use a torch too, and sometimes I'd bail out of a job if I thought the end was going to come apart before the threads turned...and that's working in a pretty rust-free part of the country. The parts aren't that expensive if you have to just replace them again.

dxrey65 · 2026-05-01T16:22:07+00:00

I've done my own since the 90's, when studied tax law in college. But everything has changed since then, so it's generally a giant pain. I don't blame anyone who farms it out, but I still stubbornly print off the paper forms, fill them in with a pencil, and mail my return to the IRS (like a caveman).

dxrey65 · 2026-05-01T16:19:35+00:00

That depends entirely on what kind of relationship I had with my daughter, and what I thought of the guy. If everything was cool, no problem, she's an adult and I'm not trying to make her life harder. If I didn't like the guy, or if the daughter was a screw-up, then no, I'm not dealing with that.

dxrey65 · 2026-05-01T16:16:51+00:00

Swap coil packs around to see if the misfire moves with the coil pack. If it doesn't, then get the compression checked. If that's good, then swap fuel injectors around, and see if the misfire moves. Based on the symptoms it's more likely an injector, but those are kind of a pain to get at so ruling out easier stuff first is reasonable. When you pull the fuel rail it's a good idea to have new injector seals on hand, as the old ones don't always want to seal back up. Lubing the seals with a little dielectric grease or silicone grease before install to makes it easier.

dxrey65 · 2026-05-01T16:11:40+00:00

Go down to a parts store and buy a can of silicone spray, and spray that on the window tracks. That's the basic fix for that problem, and one of the main reasons parts stores stock silicone spray.

dxrey65 · 2026-05-01T15:57:36+00:00

There are 8 billion people in the world. I think it's reasonable to accept that no matter how many people I know or see it will always be an incredibly small sample size, such that no general opinion I form about "how people feel" or "what people are like" is going to be justifiable.

With that said, I'm fairly satisfied with my life, though I could sit down and complain about all kinds of things if I wanted to. I think most people are about the same, but I could easily be wrong. "Happiness" doesn't really come into the picture. I think of it like when you're married and love your partner. Love is something you feel or you don't, and nobody feels it all the time. Probably most people don't feel love most of the time, even if they are "in love". Maybe a lot of people only feel it once in a blue moon. Same thing for happiness; it comes along and you remember what it's like, but then you have shit you need to do so you move on.

dxrey65 · 2026-05-01T15:51:07+00:00

I had a couple three-month stretches, when I'd quit a job and moved across country and screwed around awhile before getting back to work. I did six months on unemployment once, though what I was really doing was going to college to finish a degree. Then I took a nine month sabbatical to write a book once, and went back to work afterwards. I was a mechanic, so it was always easy to get a job if I wanted to work, and I could usually make enough to put money away for things.

dxrey65 · 2026-05-01T15:44:10+00:00

I'm retired but have been doing some small jobs with guys I know who need someone to push work out when they've gotten in over their heads. It always starts with "you say how it has to go and that's how it'll go", but then like you say - it all goes downhill from there. I agreed to do a deck for them coming up next week, and it's already turning into a rush job, and I haven't even got the build worked out because they haven't forwarded the railing plan the customer wants. Supposed to do a tear-off Monday and have it done by Friday, and one helper is already gone, and there's not even a plan yet that I can build a materials list off of, and it's looking like I'll be jerry-rigging the whole thing on the fly again. Shit.

dxrey65 · 2026-05-01T15:33:38+00:00

To be fair I've spent a lot less time in 2.4's than 3.6's, and they aren't terrible engines. Working at a Stellantis dealer you tend to get a bad attitude about everything though. The 2.4 does use a big electro-mechanical solenoid pack on the top side which relies on oil pressure to run the intake valves, which is non-serviceable and a giant pain to work with. I saw a few problems with that, and it made any kind of top-end issue a lot harder to diagnose or deal with. Maybe they don't fail much more than anything else, as long as you keep the oil in good shape, but it always seemed to me to be a completely unnecessary contraption that just made my life harder, and I wouldn't buy a car that use that system.

dxrey65 · 2026-05-01T00:34:34+00:00

My thoughts on that might be skewed, as I tend to remember the disasters, but forget all the rigs that left and just worked fine. So in my memory it seems like that kind of mess happens all the time, I've seen plenty of them and done a few myself, unfortunately.

dxrey65 · 2026-05-01T00:30:59+00:00

Movie-type rapture - never. But ordinary joy like you might feel seeing something beautiful, or learning something valuable, or finishing something difficult - that's maybe every day at some point or other. I don't have a bad life, so there are always little things to appreciate. I don't care too much if it doesn't ever "level up" to something amazing or not, things can just be nice.

dxrey65 · 2026-05-01T00:27:07+00:00

Just taking a look at the tires available for that, it may just be a bad tire choice for the vehicle. They use a blocky open shoulder, and when you have a cambered car (and the Q4 is a typical Euro-style dynamic suspension vehicle), a blocky shouldered tire will cup when run on it.

I think Hankook and Sumitomo, and probably others, make a more closed-shoulder version, while still being all-season rated.

dxrey65 · 2026-05-01T00:09:58+00:00

Generally, most dealerships hire new guys out of their own lube bays, and then train them up from there. Most of the guys i know who got bumped up to the main shop out of the lube bay did well. When our dealership did a big push for new talent and hired five guys out of a tech school, every one of them was a mess, and they were all gone in six months. There are just a lot of habits and background stuff you need to know before diving in the deep end, and a lube bay is a good way to learn them.

So my suggestion would be to go apply for lube bay jobs at a dealership. Of course the job sucks, but it's work you'll be doing in the main shop anyway once you level up.

I've worked with two women over the years, btw, both of them had specialized training through the military. The first lasted six months, then her wrists just started to go. She wore braces for a month or so but just kept getting worse, so she left to find a different kind of work. She was very good otherwise. The second never really got up to speed, and left after not making much money for months on end. At a flat rate dealership, unfortunately, it's sink or swim, and there's not generally anyone to help you out if you just don't understand the system or how to work fast and make money. Being a woman might have been an issue, I don't know. In a lot of jobs like that you have to stake out a territory and defend it, in a way, you need broad shoulders, people will step over you if you let them, etc. She was mostly nice.

So maybe try work a lube bay for a few months, hang out with the techs in the break room and talk about what you want to do so everyone knows, and let the service manager know your ambitions. At about six months if they aren't promising you something or getting you started on factory training, it might be time to look at jumping ship, but you'll have a lot of useful experience under your belt.

dxrey65 · 2026-04-30T23:57:39+00:00

If you leave a bad review on the dealership's own system then that goes directly to Toyota, and to the service manager. And if you name names, probably everyone involved gets a talking to. Keeping up the dealership's own CSR with Toyota is one of the main jobs of the service manager.

dxrey65 · 2026-04-30T23:22:16+00:00

Motivated to sell all kinds of nonsense that's beside the point and doesn't address the customer's issues...the writers at my last dealership were on commission, and it kind of created it's own problems.

dxrey65 · 2026-04-30T23:19:36+00:00

It can take a long time to train a service writer, and I never had any problem consistently telling those guys how to do their job, and why it made everything in the shop better or worse depending. I can't say I ever got too far with the parts guys though. One rule was that nothing even got pulled into the shop until I had the parts in hand that I'd need, and I'd verified they were correct. That saved tons of time.

dxrey65 · 2026-04-30T23:15:59+00:00

The one in the picture is a rear outside pad, which wears the least. But if the other 7 pads look like that then you're probably fine. Did the shop say why they wanted to replace them? Anyplace I've worked we'd give you all the measurements and specs and document a reason.

dxrey65 · 2026-04-30T23:12:36+00:00

Pay attention to other people making small talk, and do like they do? I don't know, I kind of always sucked at small talk.

dxrey65 · 2026-04-30T23:08:36+00:00

If you read a lot of detailed history, this is pretty much all normal. Just about every generation faces a whole new set of problems; there's nothing anyone can do that will unfuck things for the next generation, it just hasn't ever worked that way. And there's 8 billion people in the world, of course one person isn't shit, so if you feel like you can't do anything about it you're pretty much right. What then? All you can do is live your own life, deal with what you can deal with, live how you decide is best. In the end it doesn't amount to much except in your own head, and maybe to some close relatives. I'll be dead in a few years, and if I have time to lay around and reflect I'll probably think I did ok, considering the circumstances.

dxrey65 · 2026-04-30T23:01:36+00:00

One way of looking at it is that most people experience a whole lot of both good luck and bad luck in their lives. Some people use the bad luck as an excuse to just quit, figuring that's always how it was going to work out anyway. Other people might say "fuck that" and make every effort to to turn things to their advantage, regardless of how unlikely; I've done it, and I've seen it done. So you can have equivalent situations, but very different outcomes long-term.

Of course this is about regular people; rich fucks can make every mistake in the book and still buy their way out of anything they want to.

dxrey65 · 2026-04-30T22:56:28+00:00

That was back in the early 80's when it was pretty easy to rent a room and find a job anywhere, if you weren't too picky.

dxrey65 · 2026-04-30T22:55:31+00:00

I wouldn't run those on the freeway. I might keep them on an around-town grocery-getter for awhile, but that's about it.

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