The New Year is upon us...

The CV Joint on my car recently started to sound like it is having problems and the speedometer likes to go to warp. Other than that it is in good condition.

Ugh I got rear ended twice in 2013. First time wasn't too bad, but I didn't even have my license yet. The second I had my license for just a few weeks and a drunk driver totaled my car. Fuck...

My new (old) car feels like it's falling apart, and in some ways it actually is.

Hah no depression problems for me, kinda high on life atm.

Car troubles? Brakes dont work for my car! Sorta a problem.

Good thing i have money... oh wait, i dont.

HOWEVER, i got a raise at work so i'll be making it rain soon enough.

I got promoted! :DDDDDDD

I've gone from making nothing to making shit. Next time I'll upgrade to making something more along the lines of ass.

I love my job.

At least shit is edible!

As for cars, where I live the driving age is 15.5 for permit and 17 for full license.

My old car had a cracked head, and after the third time it burned out on me I gave up on it. My "new" car (an 87') needs a bolt extracted from the trans. pan, and a new tie rod (I'd spent the summer and fall restoring it.)

As or my resolutions, (I'm in talks with a firm in South Bend, Indiana (just south of Notre Dame) looking for an intern to start immediately, and I have consumed more alcohol in the last 2 weeks than the last four months combined. No such luck with my second resolution, I continue to grow fatter by the day...

So, resolutions, I'd like to at least have a CCNA by the end of the year. Maybe lose a little weight, figure out why my vision is rapidly deteriorating, maybe get some of that nifty healthcare shit.

As for my vehicle, I was driving down the road when this fucking median jumped right out in front of me, tore the fuck out of my oil pan. In the process of towing the car to a shop to replace said oil pan, the front bumper frame thingy kinda got bent a little bit. Not the best, but the hood still closes and the car drives now, so who am I to complain?

I chipped the paint a little tiny bit when I backed into a tree going very slowly? Other than that never really hit anything.

Angatar wrote:One of my friends wanted to major in Mechanical Engineering but the same thing happened, and now I think he's sunk to Marine Biologist or something lol. Good luck, Rasq'!

Lol. That's quite the career change.

Nocbl2 wrote: And I could totally see Rasq using his powers as civil engineer to plan cities so toxic waste filtered into the water supply.

Not tricky enough. I mean, if I wanted to filter toxic waste into the water supply, all I have to do is get hired at Hanford and do nothing.

No. I will be a traffic engineer, working for a place like Sacramento or Los Angeles. The chaos and despair I sow will be absolute and terrifying.

How is a mere traffic engineer supposed to bring such mighty cities to their knees? It defies the imagination, but it's possible.
One day, carefully timed disruption of the stoplights will cause the mother of all traffic jams. It will be like dropping a grain of salt into a supersaturated solution: Crystallization will be immediate and inevitable. Freeways will grind to a halt. Traffic will come to an utter standstill over nearly a thousand miles of roadway.

Reversible? Yes, given time. Which is why this will occur at noon on a day where temperatures are expected to reach record highs. Imagine, all those soccer moms and yuppies in their econoboxes, gradually loosing their tempers and cranking the AC up. With the cars stationary under the hot sun and forced to run to keep their passengers cool, engine fires will be inevitable. Indeed, they will be epidemic, and the gridlock will then be complete.

Fires will spread. Emergency crews will not be able to reach them, or the people dying of heatstroke and fume inhalation. People will be stranded far from home, with no way out other than walking. And when they take their frustrations out on each other, the riots will start. It will make the Rodney King riots look like a frathouse kegger.

You know the saying, "Society is only two meals away from collapse"? Society will already have collapsed by the time the food runs out. Save for airdrops by the National Guard, there will be no way to deliver food to the inner cities.

The ones who will thrive in the chaos are the criminals who are armed in spite of every law passed to disarm them, and who have already shown a predisposition to seizing other people's property. There will also be the men and women who rise to the occasion, surviving through craft and brutality. But the soft people, the socialist whores and politicians who introduced the graft and the rot, will be trapped. There will be no more bread and circuses with which to distract the voters. All the pontificating about social justice and eco-friendliness will be revealed as nothing more than the banalities they are. Politicians and their programs are a luxury, a drain on society that the city can no longer bear.

Those who escape will do so on foot or in the odd automobile that was on the outskirts of the city. By escaping, they will have proven that they are worthy to survive. By design, they shall be few in number.

Nocbl2 wrote:Rot would, of course, be evilly masterminding some shifty plot all the while.

I'm not sure what he's going to do, but my plan is missing a key element that I'm considering contracting out to him. I need a way to prevent the politicians and fat cats from taking the easy way out in a private helicopter.

Dud Doodoo wrote:I got promoted!  :DDDDDDD

I've gone from making nothing to making shit.  Next time I'll upgrade to making something more along the lines of ass.

I love my job.

You're just working your way up the digestive tract, aren't you?

PiEdude wrote:I've totaled two so far. This year I'm hoping to not murder my car.

Come on, man, you gotta share the full story!

As for me, well, it varies.

Two years ago I was driving the Jeep Cherokee. Can't remember why, something... oh. Yeah. I accidentally rear-ended someone in my 1985 Mercedes 300D. I had to replace a headlight and a slightly dented grill. They, in their 2011 Ford Explorer, had $1000 in frame damage.

So, while driving home in the Jeep Cherokee (Pullman to Moses Lake, Washington) the water pump fails. I don't know why, but the engine is overheating.
So, I bootstrap 30 miles to Richmond, where I'm picked up. I was on my way to my little brother's high school graduation, and my uncle just happened to be bringing an Oldsmobile Aurora up. So, we had a car trailer and the biggest pickup I've ever ridden in to tow me home from there.

Ladies and gentlemen, when your car keeps overheating like that, just pull over and wait for help. It's frickin' expensive to replace a warped cylinder head.

Got some help from these old folks who lived on a farm outside of Washtucna. Wish I'd listened to reason.

Ok, and right at the beginning of December, I was driving my Mercedes again. I'm late to school, I'm using the Rear Defrost as a de-icer, I pull into the parking lot and park...
And there's this loud noise like someone dropping a heavy cardboard box onto a concrete floor. A crack, but strangely muffled at the end.
I turn around, and I see that the rear windshield has spontaneously shattered. Spiderwebs atop spiderwebs atop spiderwebs. It's all in one piece, even after I drove it home to Moses Lake, but it cost somewhere around $250 for a new windshield and gasket. Yikes.

Well, the first one I was making a left turn and got nailed by a crappy Chevy. They ruled it my fault, even though the guy was probably doing 50 in a 35, and came from over a hill.

The second one was on the first day it snowed last year. I was on my way to the hospital's outpatient center. I was on this sort of side road when I lost control and slid right into a telephone pole.

Yeah, I'm a bad driver.

So what you're saying, Rasq, is that you plan to do to Sacramento or Los Angeles what the Chris Christie administration did to Fort Lee back in September by closing two toll booths on a bridge?

Rotaretilbo wrote:So what you're saying, Rasq, is that you plan to do to Sacramento or Los Angeles what the Chris Christie administration did to Fort Lee back in September by closing two toll booths on a bridge?

That was a dry run, yes.