Rant n Rave: Clown Cars and Responsibilities

 

Rave:

To bor­row the term from Mr. Mon­ey Mus­tache, I’ve had some very minor things hap­pen with my clown car. I dri­ve a den­im blue 2005 Pon­ti­ac Vibe named Levi. He and I have been through a lot togeth­er! Count­less road­trips, scary weath­er, and tons of fun! How­ev­er.….. Levi is now 11 years old and start­ing to show his age. So far (knock on wood) noth­ing major has gone wrong. Last year I talked about some repairs I made in Why I Don’t Want a New Car. Those have held up swim­ming­ly! Appar­ent­ly, I do good work on my car.

A few months ago, I noticed a mys­te­ri­ous thump.….….…thump…thump.……thump.….…thump noise com­ing from my car. I could NOT fig­ure out what was going on! Repeat­ed pound­ings on my dash­board did noth­ing but leave fist prints in the dusty dash. It would­n’t have been a huge issue, but it was­n’t a reg­u­lar thump­ing noise. It came about at extreme­ly weird inter­vals and just about drove me crazy! (haha get it? drove me crazy? I was dri­ving the car? ok i’ll stop). I tried a vari­ety of ways to get it to stop but only one thing made it sig­nif­i­cant­ly mut­ed: leav­ing the air on recir­cu­late only.

This was ok as a short-term fix, but I can’t just leave my air on recir­cu­late for­ev­er. For one thing, some­times it gets steamy in my car out of the blue and I have to defog the wind­shield. Or, it’s frosty out­side and I need to warm up the wind­shield to help remove Jack Frost. Obvi­ous­ly, that’s not a huge issue now that it’s almost July and 95 degrees out­side but it was when this whole thing started.

One day I final­ly got fed up and went to my trusty friend Mr. Google to fig­ure out what was going on. One “weird thump dash noise Pon­ti­ac vibe” search lat­er and I had my answer. My HVAC actu­a­tor was on its last legs. Now, if you’re like me, you have no idea what an HVAC actu­a­tor is. The HVAC actu­a­tor con­trols the flap that deter­mines whether the air comes from out­side or recir­cu­lates. The gear in my actu­a­tor had bro­ken a few plas­tic teeth and was­n’t catch­ing prop­er­ly any­more. Who makes a gear out of plas­tic? Honestly!

My oth­er friend Mr. Ama­zon deliv­ered the part to my door a few days lat­er, where I prompt­ly set it to the side and pro­ceed­ed to ignore it while being dri­ven nuts by the thump­ing noise. I had a few of the tools I need­ed but not all of them. My cowork­er very gra­cious­ly let me bor­row them over the week­end, so I got to work. And work it was, let me tell you.

This being the Mid­west, I chose a day that was 95 degrees and just about that much humid­i­ty to work on Levi because, well there was­n’t any oth­er kind of day around here. I got a tad bit sweaty as I sat in the car with the AC off (because I was work­ing on it. duh). The HVAC actu­a­tor is nes­tled almost direct­ly under the dash­board, which I did NOT feel com­fort­able tak­ing off. Thus, my only option was to sit on the seat, face wedged tight­ly against the dash­board, and my arms con­tort­ed in weird angles as I strug­gled to remove TWO screws. It took me almost 90 min­utes to remove them, but the feel­ing of pride that washed over me as I beheld the small piece of plas­tic in my hand made me feel real­ly great!

Then I remem­bered that I had to put things back the way they were and my hap­py feel­ing dis­ap­peared faster than a treat giv­en to my cat. I spent more time than I care to admit just try­ing to find the right place for it to go. Keep in mind, it was like doing the work in the dark. With a blind­fold. Aka not easy at all!

The top screw isn’t on there com­plete­ly tight, but it is in there enough to hold it in place and that’s good enough. The screw on the bot­tom was much eas­i­er to get to, so it’s screwed in as tight­ly as possible.

I did­n’t call any shop for an esti­mate, but I’d esti­mate I saved a pret­ty pen­ny by doing the work myself. The part cost me $55 and the tools were free since I bor­rowed them from my super nice cowork­er. I’m one hap­py cus­tomer right now! (plus, I get a lot of props and street cred from my most­ly male cowork­ers for replac­ing it myself 😀 )

The lit­tle blue tab is attached to the actuator!

Rant:

This is all­l­l­ll about work, so if you don’t want to read me com­plain­ing about my job, feel free to skip to the end and leave me a com­pli­ment on my DIY car fix­ing skills.

As I’ve men­tioned before, I work for a Mega­Corp in what’s known as our Ear­ly Devel­op­ment Pro­gram. I’m in IT, so my pro­gram con­sists of 2 18-month rota­tions with­in var­i­ous aspects of the com­pa­ny. My first rota­tion I worked at our com­put­er cen­ter as a Lin­ux Serv­er Admin. It was­n’t great, but it was­n’t hor­ri­ble either.

A year ago, I moved into my cur­rent posi­tion as a DB2/Netezza data­base tester. I knew after the first day this was not a job I want­ed to do for the rest of my life. This posi­tion is VERY tech­ni­cal, requires log­i­cal think­ing, and incred­i­bly exacting.

I sub­scribe to the “good enough” prin­ci­ple of life. If it’s close, I’m not going to fuss over much about get­ting the last few details just so. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, my job requires that every­thing be 100% per­fect. If it’s not, some­one might pay the wrong amount on their bal­ance owed or get charged too much inter­est and that’s bad. Like, get-fined-by-the-Feds bad. I don’t want that. But, I also find it incred­i­bly frus­trat­ing to have to chase down that one line that’s wrong, or change the name of one col­umn in one table.

I’m a peo­ple per­son. I thrive off of inter­act­ing with oth­er peo­ple and help­ing them solve their prob­lems. I sit for 8 hours in my cubi­cle on my lap­top work­ing on test cas­es most­ly by myself. It kills me.

Then there’s the work. They don’t real­ly have enough work for me to do most of the time, so I sit around and do oth­er things like, say, write blog posts. When they do have some­thing for me to do, it is a LOT and has to be done ASAP. So, I waf­fle between bore­dom and crazy stressed out. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there’s no way to smooth out the work­load either. I also don’t have the cor­rect kind of brain to do all this log­i­cal think­ing. I can­not log­ic my way out of a box. If you tell me some­thing needs to be not null but also null in this spe­cif­ic sit­u­a­tion, I’m going to have a hard time fig­ur­ing it out.

My team has been great about hold­ing my hand and help­ing me with the work, but it’s frus­trat­ing that I can’t even do my own work with­out help. In that case, it’s been a great learn­ing expe­ri­ence as I learn about swal­low­ing my pride and ask­ing for the help I need.

Every­one on my team knows this isn’t a great fit. A posi­tion popped up 6 weeks ago that would’ve been per­fect for me. I could’ve lever­aged my peo­ple and trou­bleshoot­ing skills. Alas, it was­n’t meant to be. HR said no, despite the hir­ing man­ag­er ask­ing for an ear­ly release, and both my man­agers giv­ing the ok for me to leave.

So, here I sit. Get­ting paid a lot of mon­ey to do effec­tive­ly noth­ing for the next 4 months until I’m allowed to apply for a new job. Yay me.

Have you DIY’d any­thing recent­ly? Do you have any advice for mak­ing the best of things at my job?