Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Day 20 - A big day

A pretty big day today.  For me I mean - had a huge service on the ole Beetle, got invited into a new gaming clan, and something... else...  Something south of here... Hmm - give me a minute.  Oh yah - the new president in the US - or to quote Grandpa Simpson: "The Prez-ee-dent is a Demi-crat!"  I have to mention it here, or it'll come back to haunt me somehow, but more on that later.

I hit something in the parking garage leaving work on Monday - some snow from behind a wheel-well - but it that was it for the plastic protecting the underside of my engine.  The VW New Beetle TDI has a very low-hanging engine.  I swear it has the same road clearance as a Lotus Elsie, or maybe that's just some kind of Freudian slip, but it is so low that it requires a deflector to protect the oil pan from road debris.  The pieces of plastic just cost so durn much that I'm never in a big rush to fix them.  Anyway, something was dragging the whole way home, so I got a hold of my local dealer (Leavens VW) and manage to get a spot Tuesday.  I also need a few other trivial things done  - a "Clean Air" test (Ontario emissions test) and the timing belt replacement.  Since I don't do sarcasm well in blog form, let me elaborate (that's something I do very well in blog form!)  The diesel engine in the New Beetle is squeezed into the tiny front hood and part of the dash, so it is impossible to work on.  When the timing belt needs to be replaced, the water pump, tensioner and belt need to be done at the same time.  And the engine has to be taken out of the car - 5 hours of labour.  Just think about that for awhile.  So I get a call from the service guy asking me where the big 1 metre sq plastic shield is, 'cause they didn't find it inside the car.  At this point, I realize that I didn't explain that I knew the shields were broken and I wanted them replaced.  Oh well, they don't have that part in stock.  Not a big deal, but that was the main reason for taking the car in!  At least nothing was dragging when I headed home.  And the engine was running better with tensioner and belt replaced.  I think it will start better in the cold now too.

One of the attractions of playing online games has always been the community aspect.  Anyone that has participated in a LAN party knows how much more fun it is to play with a whole bunch of people in the same location.  Failing that, we have trusty headsets and microphones and such so that we can have a similar experience without the geo-locality.  To that end, I've been playing Counter-Strike Source on a particular server for a few years now.  One of the big pluses of this group is that the majority of people are at least as old as I am and they have some simple rules on their server: no swearing, no porn sprays, no using map hacks, no being an ass.  Well the last one is kind of a summary.  In other words, if someone is being a jerk, they're kicked.  And, well, they're a pretty good group.  And they invited me to be part of the group - which is pretty cool.  The other clan I was a part of had a similar makeup, but they were all in Seattle, so I never made it to the in-person events they had.  These guys are mostly in Ontario and engage in the occasional group outing, which would be nice.

Then there is that whole 44th president thing.  I watch the main part of the inauguration - by which I mean his acceptance speech - and that was quite good.  It looked like he did the speech from memory - I never saw him glance down or stare through invisible teleprompters or what-not.  The invocation of George Washington was excellent.  I have good feelings about what he stands for and where he may take the country.  The hype was a little much though.  Like my dad often quoth: "Time will tell."

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