I am Goddess of Turn Signals. (Also Very Dumb.)

So I finally triumphed the turn signal problem. I am currently shaking my head at my own stupidity. Shake, shake, shake.

 You know what is crazy about it all? Last week when they went all funky and my hubby was all like, get it fixed, get it fixed. Now, now. This weekend, this weekend! I had a feeling that I should wait until this week–like Monday or Tuesday to fix them. I guess the reason why was I didn’t need the three parts we tracked down nor the special tools or to spend hours of our lives on the problem.

It turns out that when I was checking fuses for the radio last week I somehow managed to scramble them up. Specifically, the turn signal one which is right under the radio one and is the same colour and also the only one visible if you don’t hunch down. So, anyway I pulled it and it ended up in an empty slot. And obviously not the correct one.

I checked the fuse box so many times this weekend! And every time I assumed that the turn signal fuse was in with the hazard flashers as I couldn’t see ‘flashers’ or ‘turn signals’. For whatever reason, it wasn’t until today that I noticed the off-to-the-side empty slot (hiding behind the large circuit fuse) that said above it ‘T/SIG’.

Well, I have to have a ‘duh’ moment every once in awhile, so hopefully I will be okay for at least several months.

In the end, I still have my appointment with Kal Tire. (When I changed the appointment from turn signals to CV Joints the guy was like, it was a fuse wasn’t it? Ack!) Anyway, I have to get the CV Joints replaced so now it shall be done–before something breaks and the car crumbles into a brick wall. CV Joints are not something that I am equipped to do on my own. (Ignoring the fact that I don’t have a garage and there is snow on the ground.) And of course, presuming that I would have the desire to fume and curse at my car for at least 20 hours in order to change them on my own. Well, maybe only 12 hours. Still, a lot of fuming and cursing and several trips to the parts/tool store.

Speaking of which, I have a lot of parts to return.

Still Glitchy

Well, the glitches won’t get out. They won’t get out of the car and they won’t get out of my website. So, basically, yesterday was a waste.

It is so foggy here at the moment that I can’t even see the house across the park. So, when that lifts I will go tinker with the car some more. I made an appointment with the shop for tomorrow. But they cahrge $90 an hour. When did that happen? Didn’t it used to be $60? Maybe they just hate electrical crap. I know I do. So, I’ve done more research on the Internet–I am not alone in my troubles. Anyway, I will go out later and wiggle some wires and see what I can discover.

As for my website…the cascading style sheets still aren’t loading properly which results in tiny links and smaller than specified fonts. So much fun. But I have an idea. I’ll make a dummy page and steal its css code. Or at least compare the two.

Or maybe I’ll live with the glitches.

That’s great.

Just great.

I had almost all the banner gifs working on my site and then I did some more work and uploaded everything again and now NONE of my banner’s work. However, my bio page is finally working. Let’s see, was that one step forward and about one back? I thought I was supposed to go at least two forward and one back!

On the bright side, the tools I need to fix my car are now on their way home. Let’s see what I can go screw up over there…I mean, fix.

Glitches

Wow, I feel like for every step forward these days, I run up against a wall. If the world could just stop for a day or two, I might actually be able to catch up. But that would be boring.

 The cup of coffee I drank a few hours ago has me super jittery. My hands are a-shaking! So, it is time for a little classic music. Okay, that’s not helping. Not at all. I just want to speed it up. I just switched to The Offspring. Much better. My hands feel less jittery and out of synch with this stuff. Plus I can burn off all that caffeine with jiggling my leg. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea adding that instant mocha stuff to the coffee. That might have been a bit too much for me.

So why glitches? I am trying to fix my turn signals and keep running into problems. So, I guess problems and dead ends more than gltiches.

So, let’s see. I’ve tried replacing the flasher in my car. (No, no not the nude guy that’s supposed to be in the glove compartment according to my manual–he’s actually hanging out behind a panel.) Anyway, he’s A-okay.

So, screw the $8 fix. On to the $100 fix. After tracking down the part so I could have turn signals before the weekend is over, I discover that after talking to my dad, logically, it really can’t be that part. Even though the lame $25 manual said it would be. It just reinforces that Haynes manuals suck. Give me a Chilton anyday. Anyway, I learned how to use my little power meter for more than just checking my AA batteries today. I also found some more glitches.

So next stop is checking the igintion switch. Easy enough, right? Disconnect the battery so the airbag doesn’t blow up on me and pull the steering column cover so I can access the switch and test it. (Yet another use for my meter.)

Except that I don’t have the correct sized torx. So I borrowed some, but I can’t get the recessed screws with the T20 torx. Plus there is this funky torx screw head. So, after some research on the Internet, I discovered that it is a ‘tamper proof torx’ and discovered all these ways around it–including sending my hubby back to Parts Source ($5). That coffee I bought an ex-student on Friday has been well worth it. But that’s another story. (He saw me the other day in the Tim Horton’s drive thru and we were yelling back and forth from our vehicles and he ended up recommending Parts Source. Since then I’ve managed to find what I needed at P.S. two times. And because I was ahead of him in line and he is such a great guy, I bought his coffee when I bought mine. I’m glad I got to pay him back for his Karma-like help right then and there.)

Anyway, we will see if I can get to the switch in a bit when I have the right tools. Then maybe we can get to the bottom of this problem.

On the other hand, there are still a bunch of glitches on my website. When I fix two, I create another one. So, eventually, I will be down to only one glitch that won’t go away…in theory. But I’m stubborn and I will survive. I will survive…

Lars and the Real Girl

We went and saw Lars and the Real Girl last night. It was pretty good. The writer(s) took it to the edge and then pushed it a little further. I like that. This movie is the true definition of quirky. If you liked Little Miss Sunshine you will like this one.

See, Lars is having issues which he decides to solve by ordering one of those ‘real’ sex dolls off the Internet. Not to have sex with her–he doesn’t even kiss her until the end when she is ‘dying’–but to have a girl companion. Just someone who will love him and listen to him. It is pretty sweet. Now of course, his family thinks this is pretty odd. (Nuts.) She’s in a wheelchair and doesn’t speak much English. (She’s shy, you know.) But the whole town goes along as they love Lars. Pretty soon, well, I don’t want to give the movie away in case you haven’t seen it…but things get goofy. It is a very touching movie in a laugh your head off sort of a way.

I recommend it!

10 for 10

I think I am 10 for 10 now.

 That means 10 things (electronics or their associates that I have destroyed or somehow tripped up) in 10 days.

Yesterday I took out the turn signals in my car. I got in and they were gone. Not so good. I took out the radio a few days prior. I also put the final nail in my husband’s sattelite radio receiver over the weekend. My laptop, however, seems to be stable again. I’m not working on it though as I don’t fully trust it. Plus, once you have a huge monitor and surround sound, you can’t go back. Continuing along…the router had to be replaced. Dreamweaver is still glitching on me, but I mostly have my website up and going.

Speaking of breaking things, as I have been posting my archive blog postings, I have been sort of skimming them. This has sort of made me realise that I have trashed an awful lot of things over the year. I am hard on stuff. And I don’t mean to. I try to be gentle. Things just break. What’s a girl to do? I seriously considered finding a cliff for my car to ‘ooops’ slide over last night. (Not with me in it of course.) But I guess that this weekend I get to spend my time tinkering and fixing all the little things I’ve broken on the car lately. Either that or do taxes.

Dreams

I had a dream last night.

I had a dream that when I woke up this morning my hubby had found something on the Internet. It was an agent I had queried who put part of my first page on a website. Sort of a ‘how not to’ sort of a site. It had my title and everything. She had taken the first few sentences and put them in poem format and in that format it was this hideous string of adjectives and adverbs that went on and on. I was embarassed as it was a ‘before’ version of my first page that she had posted and there it was for all to see.

I guess all that talk about adjectives and adverbs on AgentQuery did me in. Or the fact that I got a rejection email from an agent I had almost forgotten I’d queried a few months back. And yes, I had sent her a ‘before’ query with my old first page that I now know wasn’t up to par.

It reminds me of the time in university English when the prof used an example of something I had written on the overhead. And not a good example. After trying so hard, it was very humiliating. (At least he didn’t use my name and had another student’s work up there as well.) So after that I said to hell with it and you know what happened? He thought I was plagarizing because suddenly my writing improved so much and so suddenly.

Moral of the story? Well, I guess it would be just let it flow when you write and don’t get your work put up on the Internet or an overhead as a ‘poor’ example if you can help it.

Refresh

Keep Hitting the Refresh button on your browser, I’m changing things all the time. Well, no. I do eat and sleep and go skating and sledding and to French class too. And laundry. But considering, I did all that today, I did get an awful lot done on my website. You’ll notice that the old blog link is now working on the right and I’ve almost got all my archived blog entries from FrontPage in here now.

There are still a few glitches, but I think I can solve them once I get all the old stuff cleared off the browser–but I have to finish with it first. So hopefully all those glitches will soon be gone and my site will be awesome, incredible, super-duper, fancy pants happy.

 Enjoy!