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In a few short hours we celebrate the Holy Birth of Little Baby Calendar, who went on to become Pope Gregory, as well as Emperor of Prussia.

Little Baby Calendar was a young prodigy, much like Mozart, only smarter. Legend has it that when Little Baby Calendar was very young (they didn’t know how old he was, since years hadn’t been invented yet), he invented time. Then, continuing his master work, he went on to invent days, weeks, months and years. In his playful times (since he was a baby, after all) he invented leap years. As he grew older, he invented hours, minutes and seconds, and dictated to the world the proper times to eat the daily meals, and when to have tea. Before this, people just shoved food into their mouths whenever they were hungry, instead of using the civilized concept of the meal, as we do today.

So as you can see, we all owe a lot to Little Baby Calendar, and if we continue to celebrate his birthday once a year, on the beginning of each of his years, he will bless us, and not rain fire upon us. For he who takes Little Baby Calendar’s name in vain shall suffer the ultimate curse of the 16 hour work-day.

Now its time to get drunk, bye.

My mother recently told me that Mercury was in retrograde, and that the astrological phenomenon was largely targeted toward vehicular abnormalities. As soon as she detected the cosmic vibrations of a retrograde Mercury, she ran outside to find a spurting gas leak from the fuel line on one of her old VW Beetles. Her friend Sage’s alternator stopped charging as well, heralded by the vicious machinations of a wayward planet.

She told me this shortly before Madalene and I drove from Missouri to Colorado, as a warning to keep an eye on my vehicle’s condition. I was unconcerned, because the car was in tip-top shape, and had just recieved a complete tune-up. However, upon arriving in Colorado, I realized there was a problem. Normally I ignore my mother’s crack-pot ravings, since they are usually the shameful result of a diseased mind, worthy more of pity than consideration. However, this time I looked up to the sky and felt Mercury’s baleful gaze upon my engine. With the car in Colorado and half our trip completed, I began to have trouble starting the car. With each crank of the engine, and each failed start, I got very uneasy.

I applied to my skin a tincture of essential oils, and marked myself with ashes. Clutching a dream-catcher in one hand and my trusty digital multimeter in the other, I attempted to open the hood of the car. As I pulled the hood latch, I heard laughter in my ears as the latch snapped off in my hand.

20 minutes later I had utilized a bless’d charm and some zip-ties to repair the hood latch, and was finally able to reveal the engine compartment. With a zealous fervor, I began troubleshooting the electrical system. The engine would crank fine, but the pre-glow lights were not lighting up, meaning there was a problem in the glow plug system. I disconnected the relay and began checking the glow plugs one by one. Lo and behold, plugs #1 and #3 were open-circuit. A diesel engine will start when one glowplug is out, but with two out, the engine could not preheat enough to overcome the chilly weather and malevolent planets.

That evening I eventually was able to start the car by boiling a few gallons of water, and slowly pouring the hot water over the cylinder head. As the temperature of the head rises, so to does my chance of starting on only 3 plugs. A few solid cranks later, and my brother and father who had come out to help me cried out in victory as the engine sprung to life. It misfired horribly, and the smoke of unburned fuel belched from the rear, but it ran. After several minutes, all 5 cylinders were firing, and the engine smoothed down. I allowed it to idle until it reached operating temperature, and drove it to Madalene’s.

Our prognosis was clear, keep the engine warm until replacement glowplugs could be aquired. Fortunately, Autozone carries a Bosch plug, P/N 80006 that is a good fit. Checker also carries a suitable plug, of the Autolite brand.

The car got us to and from Boulder and Denver, starting just fine as long as the engine was not allowed to return to ambient temperature. Upon arriving home, my dad and I ripped out the offending plugs and replaced them. I’ll be replacing the other three soon, since once one plug goes, the rest usually follow close behind. With new plugs, the car started like it was brand new, and has continued to do so ever since, safely returning us to Missouri. Even this morning when the weather was a bitter 18 degrees F, it started on the first try.

Clearly Mercury’s vile retrograde is no match for a little perseverance, and a holy multimeter.

We are leaving in the next few minutes to drive to Colorado. We’ll be arriving sometime Sunday, and staying until the following Friday. Unfortunately, I have to work next Sunday, so that it limiting our vacation time a little bit.

We are taking the silver surfer biodiesel wagon (with several totes of fuel in the back), which has recently been all tuned up and made ready to rock. It has new windshields front and back, new wiper blades, a fresh change of Rotella T fully synthetic 5W-40 diesel oil, a new oil filter and air filter, and spares for just about everything. I even put a de-icer in the windshield spritzer tanks, and Rain-Xed the windshield. Bring it on, world.

If you want to get ahold of me while I’m in Colorado, just send me an email.

I’m lucky I have four computers at my disposal, otherwise I’d be screwed. Yesterday two of them broke. The Sawtooth mac was upgrading its OS when it crashed. Now it kernel panics whenever it boots up. It wouldn’t be a big deal, but I can’t find my 10.3 CDs at the moment.

Then, my old PC (the music server), died again. It had a hard drive failure on its system drive a few months ago, and Berg kindly gave me a brand new drive to replace it. Unfortunately, that new drive has now failed. Curses! The drive is still under warranty, but I have to pack it up, ship it in, and wait for a replacement, all pains in my ass.

Fortunately my other Mac and my media PC are both functioning. For the moment.

In the world of improved computer stuff, I have a small announcement. I bit the bullet and upgraded this blog to MovableType 3.12. This is the version with more restrictive licensing, which is frustrating. However, it also has some major enhancements, particularly in the realm of spam-blocking. In the last week, I’ve been hit with over 3000 spam comments. The existing system for blacklisting and removing spam was functioning, but the overwhelming deluge of spam was beginning to expose the software’s weaknesses. It was time for an upgrade.

Now, comments to posts older than three weeks will be moderated, meaning I must approve them before they appear. If this happens to you, don’t worry, I’ll approve your comment as long as you aren’t selling penis pills. Also, comments with more than two URLs in them will be moderated. If you have to post a lot of links, go ahead and do so, but know that your comment won’t appear on the website right away, I’ll have to approve it (which, again, I’ll do as long as you aren’t selling penis pills). The amount of spam actually appearing on the website should decrease drastically from this point on, though one may occasionally slip through my ever-tightening nets.

If you feel like you have been blocked or needlessly moderated, or I seem to have forgotten to approve your legit comment, please contact me.