just how hard is it to rebuild a WRX engine

Today I sent my brother Bob an email asking him to review a job description for a .NET developer (my work may be getting me my own developer!!!!).

He made some edits and sent them to me. My favorite part of the email is when he wrote:

"you should put in something really funny like "10+ years with visual studio 2012"

I responded:

Cool, THANK YOU!!!!!!

I'll try to not abuse the developer and get him / her to do things like build me a mobile app so I can order sushi without having to talk to a human being...

He responded:

I would not eat sushi in Denver.  Around here, you can get it at most grocery stores, and it's awesome and caught the day you buy it. haha.  with self-checkout, you don't have to interact with anyone.

Lately, though, I've been going to auto parts stores to buy various things like jack oil (for hydraulic jacks) and various misc fuel line hoses and crap like that.  There's no way to get these random things on the internet and the counter people are total idiots.  Walk into your local auto zone and ask them if they have a tool box.  Then you have to say it really slow, Tool ... Box.  No, not a shopping cart.  A metal box with a handle that you put your tools in.  What?  They don't actually have one?  argh.

Luckily, I found a shop manual for my car online.  No more printed books that get all greasy.  But now I fear when I go to put it back together, my laptop will get all greasy :)  I just need to know how hard to torque all the bolts down.

I was a little intimidated (ok, a LOT intimidated) when the new gaskets arrived - 4 bags full of anmarked gaskets of varying sizes.  I suppose I'll be able to figure out which is what, but the shear volume has me a bit worried.

I watched a youtube video of a master mechanic taking out a non-turbo Legacy engine - 4 hours, video edited down to about 20 minutes.  I've been having more difficulty than him - stuck bolts that require soaking in wd-40 or pb-blast, etc.  Also, I had some other stuff to do that I thought my friends could help with.  

I had to mow the lawn where I was going to park the car.  Then I decided that I should trim the bushes back in that same spot.  Then I pulled the car into the space, and it is sloped a bit, so I had to jack up half the car.  I took out the battery and alternator and power steering pump, but it got way too hot.  I put together a 10x10 tent that I had in the shed.  I was REALLY hoping to offload these tasks to friends, who didn't show up, even though they said they were interested and I only really invited them to watch and take pictures.

So I looked into renting an engine lift, and it turns out that harbor freight had one for $150 - wich was cheaper than renting one.  I put it together (yet another thing I was hoping to offload) and it didn't have enough fluid in it - so I had to undo the whole thing and repair the lift (argh)

So basically I've been a little frustrated by my friends, and wasted a ton of time doing non-taking-the-car-apart things.  But like every other project, I've had trouble getting others interested and willing to help.  It's a bob thing, I think.  

Here are some pics.

why is he rebuilding the engine? um, why not

here's a picture of all the stuff in the engine...it's a lot of stuff, and it's all interconnected

I would guess this is to protect the rebuild from the elements?

um...the engine...and he's going to take this apart...and put it back together...he will do it!

aforementioned hydraulic lift...I wonder how many sisters have brothers that own a hydraulic lift

I mention these things specifically because I had dinner tonight with my friend Gadget whom I haven't seen in 10 years (last time I saw him was around this time in 2005, he was on business from Baltimore, we met at midnight and did Torrey's and Gray's and then I made it back to the office for a 9 am meeting). He brought me a new member for my female army, Steph. She asked me to mentor her, which was flattering.

The female army grows.

Dear male world:

My army will be taking over. There will be no warning. And it will be a gentle take over, we come in peace. 

All we want is equal pay for equal work. And respect for female geeks, we don't give a shit if you want to date brainless waitresses or teachers, just don't treat us like your (inferior) sig o. And opportunities for females to do cool nerdy shit without having some bag of dick guys repress us by saying negative shit or ignoring what we say because you think we don't notice when we come up with a good idea and you take credit for it later...we do.

We're better at math than you. And better at sports. And coding. Get over it.

Or we'll teach you how to get over it. The hard way. And that's not a double entendre. 

courtesy of the female engineers of everywhere
we have you surrounded
give up

sincerely, us

...and the rest of my crazy Thurday (coke heads and crackheads)

On thursday after the project work meeting, I didn't get home until 730. I headed outside for a workout which finished around 830 because I was tired and needed to go to bed early to be at the office for a 7 am meeting.

Right as I was pouring a glass of wine my doorbell rang. It was the sister in law of my crazy next door neighbor (among other antics, he was supposed to pick me up from the airport after my surfing trip in February but got the date wrong and got everyone at DEN stirred up because he thought I had been kidnapped ). 

Anyway, she said my neighbor had a massive mental break down two weeks ago and they were going to get him committed but he disappeared. Before disappearing he destroyed his phone so no one had a way to contact him. And for what ever reason he told his sister in law that I was the only person he trusted.

She asked if I was hiding him in my house and I said no. She asked if I could help find him and I said fuck no. She said she thought the mental problems he's having are related to drugs and I was like no shit. She said "I know he smokes a lot of pot" and I told her that he was also doing coke (at least at the dinner parties I attended). I also showed her the disturbing text messages he sent me right before he disappeared.

...and that's when my doorbell rang again. This time it was two crack head women (seriously, they smoke crack) who live across the street and two doors down from me. They said their kitten was stuck in the engine block of their van and asked if I would get the kitten out. Seriously. Do these people come to my house because I'm the only one who is dumb enough to answer my door after 8 PM?

The sister in law is a kitten lover so she was like "you have to help them!" So I got my mag flashlight and went out to the van and looked around the engine block until I found the kitten who was in fact not stuck. The fucking kitten was just hanging out in the engine block. 

I was like "This kitten has no reason to hang out in the engine block. It's too stupid to live." And the crack heads and the sister in law were like "No, save the kitten!" So I said I was going to dump some water on the kitten but they were like "noooooo, that's sooooo mean!" I tried to fish the kitten out but couldn't get my arm in the engine block in such a way as to not kill the kitten pulling it to safety. Plus the two crack head women were holding the engine hood open and I didn't have a lot of faith in their ability to not drop it on me if I leaned to far into the engine. 

So I got some tuna fish out of my pantry and put it under the van and the fucking kitten climbed out of the engine block and ate the tuna.

Here's the kicker. It wasn't their fucking kitten. It was just some random kitten. They realized this only after the kitten climbed out of the engine block.

I was like seriously, are you fist fucking me?

I gave the sister in law my cell number and promised to text her if my neighbor came home. By this point it was 930 and I was on the verge of an exhausted collapse but I had to eat something because I hadn't eaten much all day because I was just too busy.

I had a tuna fish sandwich because I was in the mood to be ironic.

...a word about a cool project I'm working on

This project I am working on with a colleague of mine (it was his idea, I'm just doing the architecture and the code, we work on it after hours because it's not part of my real job) which is a really cool project got a tentative green light. We're briefing the project sponsor next week. We briefed the CIO and the CTO on Thursday and they are on board. The CTO is the one who ultimately green lights us and he said "In all the years I've been doing this I have never had a project come through my review with as much done as what you've done. You've pretty much built the software." 

(I included the code and sql statements from my prototype in the briefing because I'm proud of them and yeah I did fucking build the software, hopefully the dev team will just have to cut and paste from my code to their dev environment).

The above mentioned briefing was after hours because the CIO and CTO were in meetings all day. We thought we'd get 30 minutes, we got an hour and a half. During the briefing there was a huge storm (we almost lost power). After the CTO and CIO left the major and I wrote up some quick notes and then headed out (it was almost 7 by this time and only the emergency lights were on in the building because who is at work that fucking late and good job [my work place] for being environmentally conscious. 

As my colleague and I  walked outside from our dark emergency light office the sun had that weird quality of super bright fakeness that happens after a big rain (I'll spare you the scientific explanation of that phenomenon unless you're interested - I learned about that in my meteorology class). And there was, seriously, the BIGGEST fucking rainbow I've ever seen in the sky. We both stopped walking as soon as we saw it and we both said "look at that fucking rainbow" at the same time. 

I hope it was a sign from the atmosphere saying "nitrogen, oxygen, and argon support you and we are the foundation of life so go fucking deploy some software and shit! and since we have your attention, fuck carbon dioxide, and thanks for recycling!" 

(I was, instead of the above sentence, going to make a joke about reflection, refraction and dispersion but then thought "I'm really tired, I've written a lot of code this week, and that joke probably isn't funny even to a meteorologist")

The best part is the software acronym is the same as my dad's initials. And if it works it's going to be a big deal...

I've spent the past 4 weekends working on the prototype and sad to say went to bed at 8:20 on Friday because I was so tired...

unlike big foot we have proof...actually, maybe Mr. Army IS big foot...

I sent an email to my friend G about the cookie exchange I had with Mr. Army.

G responded back:

Mr. Army is comically idiotic. Does he seriously exist?

I wrote:
Yes he's real. And he's funnier than two greased midgets fucking in a burlap sack.

Actually, I would not find that funny. I don't even know why I said that. Midgets give me nightmares when they're the ones with disproportional hands and heads.

Shit, now I'm going to be thinking about that for the rest of the night.

Where was I...

Oh yeah. I'm going to stir him up on Wednesday by bringing in more peanut butter cookies but I'm going to record him and send you the recording so you can see I'm not making this shit up. The cookies will taste good but I'm going to make them look really fucked up to instigate as much mayhem as possible.

You will laugh. 

I'll take pictures of the cookies too.

NO. 

IDEA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I will bring in my quinoa snacks. Yes!!!!!! He'll have a verbal coronary!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, doing that on Wednesday...