We spent a few days last week living out of coolers because our fridge was having trouble maintaining a temperature much below sixty degrees. This was not an inexpensive appliance. We bought this back in the days when we would spend money like the owners of a bull that has ventured into a china shop. I was not looking forward to replacing this thing. After a little bit of research; it was decided that perhaps something had frozen over and the device needed to be defrosted. I couldn’t get to where the actual coils were, but there were vents behind the ice maker that were filled with frost and the freezer was working just fine.

I took the kids up to the QuikTrip and tried to load six bags of ice into the van without either of the children getting run over, stepped on, or knocked out by a door. This wasn’t going well, but the most excellent man behind the counter came to my rescue. After right about 24-hours, we fired the fridge back up and it was making nice cool air again. I did pick up a couple of thermometers from HyVee. They have ranges printed on them for what temperature the fridge and freezer should be. I have the fridge up as cold as it can go, and it sits right at the top of that range – forty degrees. The freezer doesn’t quite make it to zero, but pretty close. The most important thing; however, is that I didn’t buy a new fridge!

Regular maintenance is important.

That goes for cars and appliances. I noticed the other night that my allegedly super-charged Regal was acting awfully sluggish. It’s been acting a little irritable for a while now, but we finally got it to our mechanic. It turns out that the super-charger belt had become much too hot, warped into some molten abomination that will never be straight again, and flown off of its assigned position along with a few a tensioner or two and another part whose name I cannot recall.

I’m told that I’m pretty lucky nothing else got ruined. That does make sense – I imagine those pieces came away from the engine at pretty high speed. What I can’t figure out is how didn’t hear it happen. The wife may know something…

All in all, I’m feeling rather blessed today. I got away from a refrigerator malfunction and some significant car repairs for just over six hundred dollars. Here’s to another 140,000 miles!

Many years ago there was a wondrous show on television called Knight Rider. I oughtn’t have to explain to anyone here how completely awesome that show and its star – the super car called KITT – were.

Recently, a vain attempt to resurrect the show was made and I unfortunately watched the first episode. They do have a talking car, but that is about it. The entire first episode was 50% propaganda for social liberalism and 50% commercial (not counting the actual commercials).

When we first meet (the guy who will become) the new Michael Knight, red flags go up immediately. Far from the suave character of the original – whom you might have believed gave a crap about something besides not shaving – this Michael is a scruffy, long-haired, sarcastic punk. This is, of course, merely following the trend that seems to be dominating TV lately. There is only one other kind of young male lead character in rotation today, and all you have to do is replace the sarcasm of the former boilerplate with a healthy dose of being moody and looking like you want to cry all the time. I digress.

We first meet him in bed with a girl. That is fine – then his dopey friend comes in, Michael says something ‘clever’, and then his other girl joins him in bed. Nice – the nicest thing we might be able to call him at this point is a frat-boy.

We are also introduced to a female FBI agent who lives in a house by the beach. She has been out for a swim, showers off, and returns to her room to be greeted by the girl she slept with the night before. She has a couple throwaway lines, including one to make sure the audience realizes that they don’t know each other. It is important, you see, for your talking car action show to take a stand on homosexuality (twice) and promote anonymous sex.

Fast-forward, and our female lead is now riding around in KITT with Michael. Michael makes a snide comment about how romantic relationships don’t last. KITT backs him up stating that it is true relationships don’t last and that 53% of marriages fail. He even has a nifty graph. Thank God we got that information out..

The action finally picks up, and we discover that Michael was part of a special forces team in Iraq. This comes out as part of a discussion about all the fighting he has done and how fighting never makes any difference. He WILL be doing some fighting though, because an evil security contracting company called Blackwater.. er.. BlackRIVER is after KITT.

KITT, this time around, is a Ford. I think it is a Ford Mustang – a Mustang Cobra to be exact. I’m not sure, but that is what I am guessing based on the CONSTANT CLOSEUPS of the Cobra emblem that are liberally interspersed throughout every scene that the car is in. There was probably some sweet action going on, but I wouldn’t be able to tell you about it. I can tell you; however, that it was probably a Mustang.
It is not just any Mustang, though! It is later discovered that since alternative fuels are too rare for a super car that needs to fight crime all over the country, KITT still runs on gas. Al Gore would NOT like this, but what are you going to do? According to the show, KITT can do around 200mph – covering about 600 miles in about 3 hours. Thankfully, KITT is super-efficient and mainly solar-powered and therefore gets about 161 miles to the gallon – at 200 mph.

There are 128 fluid ounces in a gallon. At this rate (going top speed at 200mph mind you), approximately .795 ounces of gas is being used per mile. That means that just over 1.5 TABLESPOONS of gasoline is all that is required to propel a Mustang 5,280 feet at a rate of 200 mph. It isn’t mainly solar-powered. It’s completely solar-powered, and that opens a whole new book of stupid.

It’s the same book of stupid that allows KITT to be hacked later on. The bad men start hacking into KITT’s firewall. This access must be wireless, because I didn’t see any biodegradable CAT5 trailing behind him. Apparently, this top secret super car does not have a switch that allows the driver to simply turn off the WiFi access. The only option is to take the entire computer down.

Of course, with the computer down, you lose all the nifty benefits provided by all the nanomachines  that coat the entire car. You see, you can’t even scratch the body or even windows of this car because of the nanomachines. They will resist your ballistic advances and immedialy repair the car, keeping the inhabitants feeling safe and stylish. You need go really fast, but KITT doesn’t have a spoiler? That is no sweat, because he can just grow one – out of the nanomachines.

That is a lot of complaining about one TV show, I know. But much like the new Dukes of Hazzard movie, nothing about Knight Rider was made for fans of the show. It was made to get a laugh out of the MTV kids by defiling everything that made the series good in the first place.

I was really starting to think that I was going to get away without this issue. I have been putting the ole’ 360 through its paces with Halo 3 over these last five weeks, but to have it just suddenly break… man, that is cruddy. And that is exactly how it happens. I know of a few personal cases and many, many thousands reported online. Everything seems fine, and then the thing just quits working one day.

It doesn’t seem to even be tied to any sort of abuse. I have two friends that had the problem about the same time. One of these friends is very neat. The house is always clean, no kids using the system, and it sits on a hard surface with good ventilation and never moves. The other friend has many children that often go bonkers over the machine. It is very likely that the dog peed on it a few times (after he chewed up all the cords) and the inside of the machine might very well reveal traces of pancake batter and yogurt.

Both machines died around the same time. Now mine has gone to join them. I guess I’m glad it happened within the new 3-year warranty period, but no Halo for a few weeks makes Bill sad.

Another thing that makes me sad is being late for church all the time. This past Sunday, I was in such a hurry that I executed a textbook smash-through-garage-door maneuver in order to shave a few seconds off my time.

I hope you enjoyed that added bit of drama. I put it in there just for you! The truth is that I mistimed the door opening by a second. It is one of those habitual tasks that just got the wires crossed. I have the door timed inside my brain. I usually look back there to make sure it is open, but that is always just ceremonial. I’m not really paying attention to the door.

Well this time I didn’t look, and I did catch the very bottom of the garage door with the very top of the van. Fortunately there was no body damage to the vehicle. It did smash up taillight above the rear windshield. The garage door itself was mangled only slightly, and I was able to use additional mangling to get it back into working order. You’d probably have walk up to it to tell it was damaged, so I don’t foresee us fixing or replacing it any time soon. I should probably repair the van just so that molding doesn’t fall off on the highway and land me in a lawsuit.

Just when I thought my life wasn’t interesting…