Chrysler Sebring, Day 9

Haven't made much progress this week, but today we removed the:

• wiring harness, 
• exhaust pipes,
• exhaust manifold and
• intake manifold.

The engine itself may be well designed, but all the stuff that goes in around it is just a mess. You can't disconnect the wiring harness from the starter until you remove the heat shield over the starter, and you can't remove the bolts that hold the heat shield on until you remove the exhaust pipe. Well, it might be possible, but it would certainly be a royal pain: the last bolt is obscured by the exhaust pipe. You could probably reach it from underneath with a box wrench, but it would slow going getting it out. Likewise in order to disconnect the wiring harness from the A/C compressor, you need to remove the alternator. To disconnect the wiring harness from the fuel injectors, you need to remove the intake manifold. The whole thing is like this, heat shields and brackets on brackets on brackets. I wonder what it would be like if somebody spent the time and effort to design this stuff to fit together instead of just tacking one thing on top of another.

The car spent a couple of years in Iowa before it came West, so the exhaust pipes are all solidly rusted together. Once we got the engine out I was able to get a real wrench on the bolts holding the exhaust pipe flange to the header pipe. They turned easily enough: they snapped right off, so we get to drill out the old ones, and if we are lucky, retap the holes. Might have to use nuts, which will make it difficult, or buy a new pipe, which will be another expense.

Bad Teacher

The kids are all home so we thought we might take in a movie, and they picked Bad Teacher with Cameron Diaz. It's a comedy and it's pretty funny. It was a little odd seeing such a risque movie with my kids, but it didn't seem to phase them. Cameron got most of my attention.The Amy-the-Squirrel character made an impression, made me wonder just what did happen back in 2008. Justin's character turned out not to have any real substance, amazing that he could even stand up. The kids noticed the gym teacher. He didn't make any impression on me, but then I was busy watching Cameron.

Old Town Music

The Marshall amp isn't producing sound like it should, so we went to Old Town Music to see about some replacement vacuum tubes this afternoon. They have some bins of old power amplifier tubes which they sell for a couple of bucks, but after consulting with one of the storekeepers, we opted for a single new tube for the preamp for $16.

On the way back I thought I would take Morrison over the Morrison bridge. Bad idea. Start of rush hour, you can't get on Morrison bridge from Morrison street, or avenue, or whatever it is. Six lanes of traffic merge into one that goes through a entrance ramp meter light. Not that it makes any difference, traffic on the freeway is at a standstill. It normally takes about a half hour to drive this distance. Today it took an hour. Why does creeping along in traffic seem to take so much longer than it actually does? I can spend ten minutes driving and it will feel like, well, ten minutes, more or less. But ten minutes of creeping along can seem like a week. Why is that?

Update February 2017 replaced missing picture.

Shuttle Service

That big black tower in the center is part of the Steel Bridge in downtown Portland.

Loaded the electric piano in the back of the truck and left the house at ten this morning. Put a hundred miles on the truck and returned home at four in the afternoon after two trips to downtown Portland, two trips to the airport to pick up two of my kids and one trip to Jantzen beach to sell the piano to a woman from somewhere in Washington.

Electric Piano in the back seat area of a four door pickup truck.  Not a very good picture.

What is it about musical instruments that encourages delivery in parking lots of obscure shopping centers? My son purchased his first guitar amplifier under similar circumstances. Who knows? Anyway, the couple who showed up to pick up the piano brought a four door pickup truck, and the piano fit in the back seat area.

While I was at the airport waiting for my son to arrive, I noticed a large lounge area on the other side of a big glass wall. The far wall was also glass and looked out onto the aircraft loading area. But it was completely devoid of people. That's odd, I thought, so I went looking for an entrance. I found one marked with a big STERILE AREA DO NOT ENTER UNDER PAIN OF MANY BAD THINGS HAPPENING sign. Okay that's even weirder, a secure area, with windows and no people. Well, nothing to be done, so I went and sat down, and as soon as I did a person walked through the sterile area, and then another, and then more, one or two at a time, sporadically. I finally realized it was a hallway leading from one wing of the terminal to another, and the only people who would use this hall are people who are changing planes.

America, The Insane

I'm reading View From The Porch this morning and Tam mentions Michele Bachmann, whom I have never heard of, so I Google her name and find this story about her in Rolling Stone. It is an amazing story, both in quality of it's snark, and for the unbelievable-but-true story it tells. No wonder America is such a mess. Well worth the time it takes to read it.

Behind Enemy Lines: Colombia

Not the best movie in the world, but it moved along. They seemed to try for some technical accuracy, especially at the beginning. There were several things that were not accurate / believable. Kind of a mix of good and bad.

The best part was the opening where the narrator is explaining the economics of the 40 year old civil war that is going on in Columbia. The United States Government sends a billion dollars a year to the Colombian Government to help them fight the war against FARC, which is a guerilla operation that controls the cocaine business there. They also control about half of the land area. The citizens of the United States send a billion dollars a year to FARC for cocaine.

Actually, we probably send several billions to FARC: say 800 tons times 2000 pounds per ton times 454 grams per pound times 100 dollars a gram comes to roughly 72 billion dollars. That's retail. If you figure only 10% of it gets all the way back to Columbia, that's still 7 billion dollars, which is quite a bit more than the one billion our government is spending.

Have you ever heard of anything quite so insane? You go to work, you work all week, you get paid. The government takes $100 and sends it to Columbia for them to shoot cocaine farmers. You spend $100 with your local dealer for a couple of hours of entertainment. That $100 goes to buy bullets for FARC to shoot at the soldiers shooting at them.

All this noise, and less than one percent of the US population uses the stuff. Well, at least according to some people. 800 tons is enough to supply five percent of the population (13 million people) with one gram of coke a week. I supposed we could have 3 million people doing 4 grams a week. I can't imagine spending that much money on toot.

Back to the movie. The SEAL team is going to do a HALO drop into Columbia. They fly down in a Hercules, they are wearing oxygen masks and helmets with face shields. I wonder how high you can go with just an oxygen mask but no pressure suit? There is one scene just before they jump where they are standing in the aircraft with the roof just over their heads. Sorry, not accurate. The Hercules is a big plane, you are not going to be short on headroom. One of these days I would like to see a scene where they depressurize a Hercules cargo bay before opening the big doors. It's got to be a serious step, though I'm not sure there would be anything to see. Anyway they jump and they fall for a while, but they still open their chutes while they are still kind of high up, but what do I know? I've never done a parachute jump, much less a HALO. I suppose the main trick is having the airplane high enough up that no one suspects any trouble from it. With the aircraft at 30,000 feet, you wouldn't hear it on the ground.

Then there's the scene where they want to break into an enemy compound. The place is surrounded with a big fence, but they notice a water tank inside the compound and another one a short way up a nearby hillside. They surmise the two are connected by a pipe. Only in Hollywood would that pipe be large enough to swim through. In South America, they would be lucky if it was big enough for a rat. Not only is the pipe large enough to swim through, there is enough light to see. It was one of those things that you know is bogus, but hey, James Bond does this kind of thing all the time, so why can't our commandos do it too?

Update November 2015. Added pic.

Old Science Fiction

Post-Hip's one deficiency is that they (actually he: Scott) doesn't carry any Science Fiction. It's his book store, he can carry what he wants. But somebody had just dropped some books off, and some of them were Sci-Fi, so he dropped them on me. All are old, the one on the bottom of the stack (Chessboard Planet) is pert near ready to disintegrate. I have no idea whether any of them or any good. I imagine I shall find out eventually.

Update February 2017 replaced missing picture.