Please…make…it…stop:
- Last Friday, my 2-week-old Powerbook encountered a kernel panic trying to update the operating system to 10.3.6 and would only boot up into single-user mode. As I was unable to get the network subsystem to fire up or to get it to mount an external firewire hard drive, I was unable to recover the 10+ hours of work I had done for a performance I was supposed to give last night at Fiske Planetarium, and had to cancel.
- Winds up I would have had to cancel anyways, as yesterday Melissa, quite accidentally, bumped into my Powerbook and broke the cable off coming out of the CardBus interface (which goes to my audio interface). The cable and CardBus card were both damaged. Cost of replacement: $380.00.
- While driving back from dropping Jalen off at school last week, I noticed that my car seemed to be losing power even as I accelerated. When I finally got on my road and started driving up the hill, smoke started coming from underneath my hood and I smelled burnt asbestos. After getting the car towed to Super Rupair in Boulder ($60), I was informed that my clutch needed to be replaced ($668), along with the rear access cover & rear main seal ($115), the throwout bearing sleeve ($165), and a machining of the flywheel ($30). I also needed to replace the right rear wheel bearing ($358), and threw in a tune-up ($197). I’ve been informed that I really should also replace the steering rack ($725) and the front struts ($535) as well as get new tires (~$400).
- Melissa’s truck also needed new tires ($460), and the 4wd mechanism won’t engage and is blinking on the dash; there’s also a funny engine smell and it’s increasingly difficult to unlock the doors with the key. Add to that there’s something wrong with the rear door latch such that the “door ajar” light always stays on, which meant that we had to disconnect the interior lights or risk running down the battery.
- We ran out of water Thursday night and did not have water in our house until Saturday morning. The well repair guys came out and did a “reset” of the pump system. Cost: $60 service call.
There’s also been some bad luck with some other shit that I won’t go into here, but let’s just say that it also involved losing money and is too embarrasing to go into, even for a blog as frank as this one.