View From the Bushes

Long time readers of the blog will be aware of the long battle I have had with my car. I purchased it around the end of last year and though everything seemed fine initially, it didn't take too long for it to become apparent that something was wrong, not in a "the car won't work at all but we can fix it" sense or even a "just take this car out back and shoot it" but more in a "It mostly works but often does not and no one has any idea why," which I think you would agree is the most annoying of the three.

Mostly my strategy was to suffer through the problems and hope that they got bad enough for someone to finally diagnose it and fix it. Obviously not a great strategy, but it was the only one I had. Occasionally I would get so frustrated that I would give it back to the mechanic and let him take another shot. As you can imagine, on a car that's 13 years old there's no end of problems which can be found. Fortunately, (and this is the beauty of an old car) all told including purchase price I still got out of it for less that two grand.

I'm sure you're all now wondering what it finally was. Well it turns out that one of the ground wires wasn't connected to the frame. As far as what the problem actually was, you'll have to review my previous blog entries for that; at this point I just want to put it behind me... To close out, with I refer you to an excellent article at slate.com on executing hackers and the economics of human life something people pay far to little attention to.

Carpe Diem Quam Minimum Credula Postero
Ross