Thursday, October 27, 2016

RIP Sir Charles, The Red Civic

Well a lot has happened since last Thursday, especially in terms of my mobility. Thankfully all this started on a Friday so I had the weekend to work some of it out.

So the short version is I'm out of a car. The long version is I left the house Friday morning, put my car into reverse and then into drive to go forward, pressed the gas and all that happened was the engine revved. So I tried again, thinking my tires were slipping (winter is upon us and I still have my summer tires on) and the engine revved again. Thinking I was insane and accidentally put the car in neutral, I double checked and pressed one last time. The car moved. That was mildly concerning until I got off the back alley to the road where I would press the gas and it would accelerate to a certain point and then just start revving. I tested it a bit longer to see if I needed to go home, but it got "better" so I drove to work on a less busy road (taking it on Deerfoot would have been catastrophic, so good call me).

I made it to work all right and spent the entire day worrying about it. Gave my mechanic a call and he said he could look at it on Monday. I go to drive my car home for the day and it starts up and accelerates all right. I get about 2/3 of the way home when the car suddenly decides it doesn't want to shift into 3rd gear (it's a little hard to tell on an automatic, but I made an educated guess based on the fact that it would rev if I tried to go faster than 40 or 50km/h).

So I'm driving down Anderson screaming encouragement at my car and begging other drivers (not that they could hear me) to not stop so I could keep speed. Turn the corner onto another road and I'm like OKAY I'VE GOT A DOWNHILL SLOPE TO WORK WITH. So I coast down and get more mad than usual when people don't know how to merge, and keep speed all the way until I have to cross the train tracks...and make it up a hill.

It's not a steep hill. It's a long hill. I could only drive about 30-40km/h all the way up, no matter what I did. I got about halfway up when the engine light came on. So I put on my hazard lights and drove to the nearest residential street I could find and called someone to come get me. Managed to get the car home in low gear once I knew I wasn't going to get stuck in the middle of a busy road. Granted, I was close enough to my house to walk back if needed.

I spent the whole weekend worrying about a verdict I already knew I was going to get, cleaned out my whole car (there was a lot of random crap in there) and got someone to help me drive it to the mechanic late Sunday evening. Monday I got the call that my car's transmission was toast. Thankfully my mechanic only charged for 30 mins even though he could have charged the full hour.

At this point I have to say that hail damage was the best thing to happen to my car as I already wrote it off and got the money for it. Was about to give it away for parts when I got another call from my mechanic. He tells me he has a guy whose son totalled his car in an accident. Turns out it's the same make and model as mine. He says the guy is willing to buy my car for a few hundred because he wants to put the brand new transmission from the wrecked car into my car so that this guy's son can drive it. Been negotiating over the past few days, but, looks like I'm going to get some money and Frankencar Sir Charles will live to drive again.

However, I'm still out of a car. LPs with Shauna are currently on hold because it would literally take me 2+ hours to get to her house from my house on transit. I have a car I can occasionally borrow and I'm carpooling to work, but I'm going to need a new ride asap. I suppose I also have the option of a Car2Go, but there's a limited number in my area. Also going to have to find a ride of some sort to Kathleen's for Extra Life as I don't know if I can find a car and buy it in a week and a half.

In other news, the headphone jack on my work computer (mac ugh) is hosed. Not sure what happened there cause it was fine yesterday and it doesn't look like anything's jammed in there. Yet, the headphones won't fit in there. Guess my computer got the memo and is trying to be courageous. I'll try to investigate in detail when I'm not at work.

Also my phone is still chain crashing and resetting. It's also insisting that I have voicemail when I do not, in fact, have any messages. It seems to think I'm more popular than I actually am. GOD DAMN IT. IT HAS RESTARTED 5 TIMES IN THE LAST 10 MINUTES.

Pillars of Eternity continues, but I'm concerned about this weird static and interference I'm getting occasionally from the mic. Shauna is now way ahead of me cause I haven't played since like...Saturday and she keeps eluding to things that haven't happened for me yet. Shadow of Mordor is still going up and I'm eagerly awaiting Dishonored 2. Apparently the remastered (lol I typed remasted at first) Skyrim is out this week, which I'd likely be interested in seeing more about, but won't be playing yet. Um...Halloween dodgeball tournament all day Saturday so I'll likely be ded that day and actually ded the next day (though I'm trying to set up a D&D session with Shauna and Nick). Got a week of car hunting and then Extra Life November 5, which I still haven't recorded a video for ajsdahjksasjdaksbgsjdsal

Anyway, TL;DR - Car ded but will be resurrected for someone else, computer headphone jack ded because it gained sentience and figured out its an apple product, phone is almost ded and is taunting me, haven't made any progress on LPs since last Saturday, and rubber balls thrown at my face all day Saturday.

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