7 hours, 3 beers, 4 Sprites, 2 rounds of Gojo, 1 large pizza, and no busted knuckles later, Joes’ maxima has 2 new front struts and a fresh oil change. I think we could do it now in under 3 hours if we had to do it all over again. Joe’s upper suspension mount + bushing was making some extreme noises, and since his car has 138k miles on it, he decided he wanted to get some Monroe Sensa-Trac struts, and he asked, “Harold, do you think you want to tackle this?” ...

If you use Firefox + Gmail, here’s a cool extension that adds the ‘Delete’ button to the gmail interface. link

Stupid quiz of the week: WARNING: There’s some VERY obscure stuff on there….

There are few experiences to equal being at work at 8 o’clock at night replying to email from your boss’s boss, explaining why your crack team of developers didn’t deliver on the function your reported was “done” two days earlier. You know what? I take it back. I’m GLAD I got her fired; we’ll be lucky if she’s the last, given how cavalier everyone’s working these days. So yeah, here we are, knee deep in code, with my normal unitized team, decomposed into two halves, each working on a significant chunk of work. I had a meeting, told them deliver me three things in 4 weeks: Code, Running unit tests @ 80% coverage, and Documentation. ...

I came in #3 overall indexed time at today’s event. Unfortunately, Mike took #1. :) Still, a GREAT day autocrossing.

Fired my first person today. Well, I didn’t do the firing; my manager did, but she was on my team and I could’ve made it go either way. If I’d insisted she remain, she’d have still been here, but I didn’t. Hence, I fired her. I feel bad about the finality of it, but it needed to happen. She was unprofessional, and a drag on the morale of other members of the team. Still, the associated sob story is rough: Two small kids, her husband is a lout, and she was a very personable likable woman. ...

MINI UK Announce Factory JCW Option Daddy Like! However, this close to the model changeover, I might wait for the 07 and the factory changes….I’d really like to try that 4-door (rear suicide doors) version

Muhahaha….A new blogger in town. Welcome to the blogosphere, Marshall.

From the GM Fastlane Blog Therefore, we are introducing the 2006 lineup this month with an emphasis on value. We have cut prices on 30 of our 76 models. For instance, the Chevy Silverado Crew Cab was $31,045 in 2005, but the 2006 is priced at $27,990. We are launching new models at prices that are aggressively competitive, such as the Pontiac Solstice at $19,995, when we could sell them all at twice that much this year. Also, we are extending our warranties on certain models and adding former options as standard equipment. ...

After some not-so-subtle hints from my sweetie: Our new house, and Sharkey: Joey’s room (2 views)

The Apotheosis Saga

Check this out: TadaList Lets you maintain a very cool web todo list/lists and edit it inline in your browser just like in an app like Lotus Notes, Outlook, or others. :-) Type C personality, here I come.

…no amount of money can make you enjoy a job you don’t like. I’ve bellyached to everyone that will listen, and they’re (apparently) very tired of it. Everybody has problems, and whining about a job that pays you an obscene amount of money to (literally) twiddle your fingers all day doesn’t get much traction with most people. I don’t blame them. It is getting kinda sad that no one sympathizes with me in the least…doesn’t help the crushing loneliness I feel every night when I go home to my empty house, that’s for sure. ...

I confess. I’m a parking lot slut. Most people park in the same parking place every single day, without fail. Makes them feel comfortable and safe. Not me. Oh no, some days I’m in the mood to park in the very front, where everyone can see my shiny MINI; other days, I find a spot in the very back of the lot, away from those who would ding the Pup. ...

A book on loan from my friend the Mac fiend, this is the first in a series by Roger Zelazny, and it’s a quick involving read at only 176 pages. The guy’s terse and vivid and the action never stops, but I found the basic premise to be so much Fantasy that the characters were hard to get into. Basically, the idea is that there’s one “true” city (Amber) and that all the other universes and dimensions are “shadows” of that one. Amber’s ruled by a central monarchy, and that monarch has died (or…something…). Anyway, the remaining 9 boys and 6 girls of his brood all fight it out to see who can recapture the throne. ...

Well, they’re going to get rid of 275 of us over the next month. Regular employees only (we’re the ones that are ongoing legacy risks–401(k)’s, pensions, healthcare costs) have the option of taking a 4-26 week pay package (based up # of years of service) plus 3 months of health care coverage… …or you can just wait until Aug 25th and find out if you get the Involuntary Exit Program (i.e. “You’re FIRED”). It’s unknown if you get the severance package with eh IEP

As part of the company’s ongoing optimization of its expense structure, Lexmark also announced today that it will reduce its workforce by approximately 275 employees through the first half of 2006 with a majority of the affected employees exiting in the third quarter of 2005. A majority of the reductions are expected to occur at the Lexington site. However, the number of people employed at the site will remain about the same on a year-over-year basis as a result of R&D hiring this year. ...

It sucks to be 36.5" tall. That’s what I learned taking Joey and Whitney up to Kings Island on Friday in Sharkey. Sharkey’s our Olds Intrigue. I name my cars…sue me. Digression…The names of all my cars and those I’ve been in contact with: Li’l Green My 1995 Nissan 200SX SE-R. It was Teal, a tint of green, and it saw me through every stupid thing a 16-20 year old can do with a car, including a bad accident with a deer. ...

Shout out to the unloved Lexmark X5150 All-in-One (Scan/Print/Copy/Fax) Did all 31 sets of invitations, reply cards, reply envelopes, and a mail-merge of different envelopes and everything came out perfectly. We took several days of calligraphy down to 2 hours of Microsoft Word. Coolest part had to be doing a mail merge from an CSV Excel spreadsheet with the guest list into the envelope screen in Word. I’ve never done this, and it was a snap. The M$ guys should be proud of how reassuring and robust this process was

i bought a car, a 2001 Olds Intrigue. It’s sweet and navy blue. I went to Kings Island with Joey and Whitney. It was fun. I laughed, I cried, i got mad. I bought some tires for the MINI yesterday before we went to PKI, Bridgestone Potenza G009’s 195/60R15, mounted on my regular MINI wheels. The budget didn’t quite allow for the 15x7 Kosei’s that I wanted, but this is a decent compromise. ...