Justin Buist

If, by chance, you’re looking to change the spark plugs on a 2000 Jeep Cherokee you should note that the “thingies” that look like spark plug boots on the right hand side of the engine are not spark plug boots.

They woull be your fuel injectors.

If, by chance, you are driven to remove said boots from the engine block thinking that they are spark plug boots then you’re an idiot.

Welcome to my camp.

Now, removing said boots isn’t a big deal. There’s four bolts and you just do your thing with them, yank on a pipe, and viola — injector heads. To put them back is just the reverse, just be careful to line everything back up right.

The problems, for me, started to occur when I sheard off a bolt head. Snapped it clean off!

No problem, head to Home Depot on Sunday to grab a drill (lost my old one) and a left-hand screw extractor.

Sucker came right on out.

Come Monday I get to work putting it all back together and make a trip to the hardware store to replace the O-rings just to be safe. Might as well do it right!

Sheared off another bolt head.

No biggie, I’ve fixed this before. Problem is, this one didn’t shear real clean and I can’t get a good start on the thing. Smack it with a phillips screw driver a couple of times to get a starting divot but it didn’t help.

Yeah, I’ve pretty much reamed the hell out of the threads on that hole, gone through a couple of drill bits, and I’m totally freaking stuck.

On top of that, odds are I’ve gotten a metal shaving or two into my fucking cylinders.

So, off to my online stock trading account to snag some cash. I’m gonna need it to get this shit all fixed up.

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But Funny!

Found this comment in some code I’m working on today:

This gets a little crazy… sorry if you have to deal with it :)

Nice.

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So far I’ve learned that Chuck Norris can:

• Eat very hard plastic. The evidence of this is a hole in my eyeglasses. Best I can figure a cat (Murphy) knocked them off my usual resting place and Chuck figured he’d munch on them for a while.
• Open the bedroom door. I think Murphy taught him how.
• Clear the room with a fart.
• Chase cats. He can’t catch ‘em, but he can chase them.
• Look cute.
• Hold is bodily functions while we’re out of the house.
• Fail to hold his bodily functions while we’re actually home.
• Jump on the couch when nobody is looking.

I guess that about sums it up for now.

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Working in IT (Information Technology) gives you the opportunity to examine the internal procedures of a company in great detail. It’s fascinating stuff when you’re able to detach yourself from actually trying to model the system and data in software and just sit back and ponder 1) How and 2) Why the company’s procedures evolved into what they are.

You learn things about companies that they think are prefectly normal but strike you as odd.

One client doesn’t have unique serial numbers. They were (and are) unique only to that model, so you have to provide the model and the serial number to identify the product. It works, but it’s weird, and you wonder why it’s Just That Way.

Another client has a mission critical system that’s run on a machine somewhere in that data center room, and they’re pretty damned sure it’s got “Sun Microsystems” on the front if it but damned if they know which box it is.

Then you walk into a client’s business where the sales team has informed you that you’re The Guy because the sales team determined that they cannot send in a Jew, Mexican, or woman. The client’s “ERP” system was written by his partner’s brother that had a degree in advanced physics and took a class or two on database design and whipped up an “ERP” system in Access with tables, views, and queries named not after the products, not the departments, not the processes, but the name of the freaking person responsible for updating them.

I actually didn’t mind working with that guy. Smart fellow and a straight shooter. He was a bit offensive at times but I can deal with that pretty well.

Then you come to the customer I’m currently working for. A local county’s court system to manager juvenile cases.

Holy balls. Every whaked out business procedure I’ve seen is light years more straight foward than this.

I reckon the oldest business I’ve ever worked for is about 80 years old. The court system is, conservatively, pushing upwards of 400 years given that the US inherited a buttload of nomenclature and proceedings from the British. That means lots of strange words that I’m not familiar with and have a hard time wrapping my head around. The whole issue is further compounded by the fact that a judge, rightfully, can change their mind and totally change the course of action on a dime.

The ramifications of such a decision are simple — but the amount of data that has to be consulted and manipulated is staggering. I have a new found respect for those that deal with such paperwork every day. It blows my mind, and I know now why criminal records are simply lost from time-to-time.

The good thing is that the project I’m working on has, without a doubt, saved time for multiple departments within the system and we’re now working on cleaning up a few things to make the proccesses faster and reducing the window for human error.

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It’s true. Unless you yank him away Chuck Norris will eat his own shit.

Chuck Norris has two speeds. Walk, and Kill

Cute, isn’t he?

Okay, one of the reasons we named the dog Chuck Norris is because when I started dating the girlfriend I’d randomly spit out a Chuck Norris “Fact” now and again because I found them funny. My favorite:

When Chuck Norris goes to donate blood, he declines the syringe, and instead requests a handgun and a bucket.

I’m not sure why I felt like sharing that, I just did.

Good news: He’s stopped shitting and pissing in his crate. I’m really stoked about that. He’s still pissed on the floor here and there, but it’s progress.

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It’s true. Chuck Norris shit in my kitchen, kicked it around a bit, and later that evening kicked me in the freaking head.

I’m lucky to be alive.

In related news my girlfriend and I picked up a puppy from the Kalamzoo county pound on Friday and she actually let me name him Chuck Norris.

I’m lucky she puts up with my quirky sense of humor.

Don’t fuck with Chuck

He’s about 5 months old right now. Not sure what his story is. He’s definately got a good helping of Black Labrador in his genes, but I’m not sure what else is in there, if anything. Right now his front paws are as side as my four fingers when he’s standing on them, so I suspect he’ll turn into a pretty sizable guy.

He’s a perfectly lovable dog and loves contact with people. Unfortunately he’s nowhere near house broken. He not only shits in the house but he’ll shit and piss in his crate if we leave him in there for a few hours when we leave the house.

Hell, he pissed in his crate this evening after being in there for under an hour and we had walked him just 20 minutes prior.

That’s not good, but we figure it’ll work itself out eventually.

The good stuff is that not only is he friendly but he’s not aggressive at all. At the pound we were able to touch him anywhere and he was fine with it. Ears, neck, mouth, whatever. Upon arriving at home I made sure I could take food from him and he’s got no problem with that either. He has no qualms with me putting my fingers inside his mouth to grab things he shouldn’t be chewing on to boot.

I think he’ll work out just fine.

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Cool. That wasn’t too hard at all. I’ve now got my site running on a host provided by GoDaddy.

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I’m going to move the site to a new hosting provider, so if old links disappear for a bit that’s why.

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The other day I was watching the Discovery Channel and caught a bit of a new series they’re running: Future Weapons.

On it they had a segment devoted to a new Israeli born weapon to replace their main battle rifle. The Steyr AUGs instead of desining your own…. Oh. Yeah.

Then I laughed at myself for my own stupidity.

Steyr-Mannilcher supplied firearms to the Nazis during WWII.

Yeah. I don’t blame them for trying to roll their own.

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I was way off with my hopes that they’d be coming out around $800. According to a post by Bill St. Clair they’re expected to start at around $2k for the carbine length version and then go up from there.

I’m really not so sure that’s going to fly.

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