My car is mocking me.
No, really.
A little over a week ago I hit a bump on the highway which caused something to go strange and produce a sound like two pieces of metal rubbing together at high speed (the pitch of the noise tended to change when I used the brake). I'm not an expert at auto maintenance, but this struck me as a BadThing(tm), so I stopped driving it until there was a happy coincidence between when I had enough time to go to the garage and the garage was actually open (the 4th of July weekend caused problems with that). Monday was the first time this happy coincidence occurred, so I got up early(ish) and went down to drive my car to the mechanic's.
No rubbing noise.
Tuesday morning: no rubbing noise.
Tuesday evening: it's determined that I have to come in very early to perform a core library upgrade on our project, so I won't have time to go to the mechanic's this morning. So naturally the moment I get in my car the noise returns.
It's mocking me. I can tell.
I know at some level that it's probably changes in air temperature and humidity that are causing parts to slightly realign and behave improperly, but then again when I worked in the computer lab at UIUC I did have a reputation for having intimidated all the equipment into working properly. So, I guess that for better or worse, animism does make up some of my core belief structure.
Now, if you'll excuse me I need to go swear at my computer for taking so much time to add these library files to source safe.
Cars are evil, and we deal with them because they get us to point A to wherever we want, sometimes. At least, this has been my experience. They're like a Stephen King kind of evil, where it seems like they're your friend, they seem to do their job, and yet they go wrong at intervals and in ways that you do the fixing, you pay again and again and again, and even though there might be catastrophic failure at some time or other, you just *buy another car*....
All horses do is defacate regularly. Grass is cheaper than fossil fuels. I need a good rural community.
Posted by: Naomi at July 9, 2003 09:03 AMUm... I think I'll stick with my car. Horses can't do 110 on the highway between L.A. and Las Vegas. Besides, changing my car's oil is something that gives me a sense of satisfaction, and I think a horse would become quite grumpy if I tried to change its oil.
Posted by: matt at July 11, 2003 01:22 AM