If there’s an art to motorcycle maintenance, I’m Jackson Pollock.
Truth be told, I’ve drawn plenty of insights from Robert Pirsig’s “chautauqua”. (Who used to be a professor at MSU, by the by…) Ironically, his meditations on motorcycle maintenance … alluded to significantly in the title Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance have proved absolutely worthless. One wonders if Pirsig ever owned a motorcycle … or a motorcycle repair book. Where were the helpful tips like, “before embarking on a long journey, a journey of thousands of miles … and self discovery? … remember to check your oil. You will not travel far on the road to self-discovery without oil.”
Well, that was last summer. Just in the last few weeks, I’ve actually managed to get the beast up and running again … but it turns out that I’m a pretty awful (or “abstract”, if you prefer) mechanic.
Turns out the order of operations matters in subjects other than math. Let’s see … Mike Shappell taught me to PEMDAS: Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally. Or, in non-mnemonic form: parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction.
But for all that Shappell taught me … he forget to tell me to be “PC”: Push-rod-cover before Cylinder-head.
Which is to say: when I was putting my cylinder head back together last summer, I messed up my order of operations, and put the cylinder head back together before installing the push-rod cover. Since the cover was plastic, I somehow managed to get it in place after the fact. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite seal… and during the two weeks or so that it’s been running since, there’s been a flood of oil coming out of the cylinder head.
So that’s what I spend my afternoon doing: pulling the whole freaking cylinder head off again, so I can replace the seals and put it back together again properly. So that I can sell the darn thing…
—
This morning, though, I spent in Helena. I emailed my professors a couple days ago, telling that I’d miss class today. But Outlook Express didn’t understand the word “GMAT”. It suggested that I meant “goat”, instead.
So … I took the goat this morning. I drove to Helena last night and got a cheap hotel room with the hope of getting a good night’s sleep before the exam. Well, so much for that: I was up ’till 2:30 am studying, and up again at 6:30 am. Ug.
Speaking of math… Good lord. I didn’t score as well as I had hoped. But I suspect I scored well enough to pursue my new found grad school ambitions.
—
In other news:
The Montana Republican Party is actively trying to suppress the vote, targeting counties with large Indian, student, and low-income populations. … The Montana Republican Party is challenging the voter registrations of 6,000 Montanans. Over half of those challenges have come in Missoula County, where many, many students live. Other challenges have targeted Glacier and Hill Counties, both Reservation counties. And now, the Republican Party is pledging to challenge even more voters despite overwhelming evidence that their initial challenges impacted many eligible voters!
Read more at: ForwardMontana.org
Good work, Republicans*. Perhaps when you’re finished nationalizing (see: socializing!) the nation’s financial institutions, you can get back to your favorite shenanigans of denying Americans their right to vote. It’ll be just like the 1960’s Jim Crow South, all over again!
* – Actually, the democrats deserve a hearty portion of blame for this one, too. … John McCain is so PROUD of his work, rallying the Republicans to support an utterly ludicrous bail out bill.
How bad have you destroyed that motorcycle and how much do you want for it? 😀
It seemed like there were idiots from both parties signing the bill. However, please note, the Republicans in the Senate were not going to vote for it until they got tax cuts added onto the bill. Now tax cuts without spending cuts seem to have been the hallmark of the Republican party for the past eight years. Had the Democrats not conceded to giving the Republicans what they can’t resist, the bill likely would not have passed.
Now McCain is saying if he was President he would take a black marker to bills and veto the earmarked spending. However, I don’t see why he can’t do that currently as senator. I didn’t see any congressmen or senators complaining about “Wooden Arrows designed for use by children”. Yep, that’s what the nation needs to get itself out of the crisis, wooden arrow heads.
One thing is for certain, when the economy does improve, both parties will claim victory.