I’ve come to one of those difficult inflection points in life. This should be a particularly triumphant moment where I’ve finished my engineering internship and am returning to college for my senior year, with the decision to leave my former employer fully and overwhelmingly justified. Consider this for a moment – the factory, at first, wasn’t going to humor my interest in moving from production to engineering at all. I was getting no response, the human resources woman clearly thought I was crazy and wasn’t even going to talk to me about it. She only responded when I put in my two weeks notice in and said I’m going to college to be an engineer, buh-bye. I was the only one in the company, besides two other people who needed to be on other jobs, who could operate a certain machine, so my leaving was a problem that got the plant manager’s attention. He tried to talk me into staying, but on their standard “take a class a semester and work your regular 12 hr day schedule” program. After 8 years of having every minute of every day spoken for, at 58 years old, I’d finally be able to get off the factory floor.

Compare that to the way things should have went down – get off the factory floor after two weeks, in less than a year (because I already had two years of college done) be working as an engineer (albeit, an intern); be a full-time engineer in two years. Not a bad move, huh?

But, I think the elephant in the room here is my age, and my work history as a freelance artist. If you’ve read this far, you probably think I have some value as an artist, and, at times, it’s been good to me. But, on a resume I guess I look like an “old failure” to the average HR person.

I had real good interactions with a couple companies at career day. I caught some good breaks there, the kind you would dream would happen. One of my classes toured two factories. At the end of the tours, there was an opportunity to hand off a resume. One factory was pitching a quality control job they were just opening up. I was the only one with resumes.

Not a single factory contacted me.

In one particularly difficult class, the Professor did after-exam reviews online. I was the only one who showed up. Ever. Apparently I was the best student in the class, at least at the time of the 2nd exam review.

Since I’ve been back to college, I’ve gotten an A in every class and have an overall A average.

Not a single factory contacted me.

I thought about working production over the summer, but I needed to hold onto the online job because its the only thing I can fit around a college schedule. That should have been o.k., but as that job went from start-up to sort-of established, it became harder and harder to make money with it. So I tried to add another one. When I passed their test, they had another test. But they messed that up and I’d have to take it again. I might, but they may be going away in a few days so that doesn’t feel like a good use of time.

Which means I’ve got to find another job, because the financial hits just keep on coming. I was fortunate to be able to fix my car and truck myself. That could have easily went over a thousand if I had to take them to a professional mechanic. But, my water heater needs to be replaced and I’m not going to get a break on that.

So now I’m at a point where, despite having a very successful junior year in college, I’m probably going to have to drop out again; and the end result is that I went backwards instead of forwards, and badly.

Well, I’ve got to go mow the lawn. That’s enough for one post, I’ll follow up later.

I’m trying to figure out how I can continue the comic, because I’d really rather be doing this than anything else. It’s getting late in life for me, and I don’t want to use the rest of it working for someone else. My art has withered on the vine for long enough.

It looks like July is going to close out around 13,500 unique visitors. Even if Awstats is exaggerating by 150%, that is still 5000 readers. There is not much fan feedback to confirm that is real interest though, but it doesn’t seem like something I should drop either. I’ve got some ideas for continuing this story. I need to get a scanner, maybe this process will be faster if I do the line art in pencil and use AI to ink and color it. Then we’d get colored pages. Sorry if that bothers people, but I doubt I’ll be able to make this a full time job just yet, and maybe not ever.

I’d almost forgotten why I wrote Yaoi Hokkaido –

Look at this quadraped robot go –

It would be nice if we could not learn about stuck brake calipers, but that option didn’t come up today.

So here is a spot where a brake goes on a truck –

And here is the damage caused by the caliper failing to retract after the brake pedal was released –

The black brake pad material is all worn off of one side of the pad, and bare metal is visible on the other side. You can see that a huge groove was worn into the rotor by the metal portion of the brake pad. These are ruined.

Here is the problem –

The bolt on the left is not sticking out as far as the bolt on the right. The bolts are screwed into the top of the caliper slider pins, which are supposed to slide in and out, easily, but the one on the left is seized in place. Why is that?

Well, it turns out that the rubber boot split –

Now I get to replace the rubber boots –

Here is the “teachable moment.” Since I’ve got the tools, can do the work, and buy parts through RockAuto.com; this is a $150 repair. If I took it to a mechanic, they’d buy the parts through O’Reilly’s, or a similar store. A single rotor at O’Reilly’s is $100. For a limited time only, they’ll throw in a set of pads if I buy two rotors. Lucky me, my bill is now only $200, but the boots I have to replace are another $16. A mechanic would mark up the parts anywhere from 50% to 100%, so the bill is now $324-$432, but then there’s labor and tax. The average white collar worker who barely knows how to drive a car isn’t getting out of this for less than $500. They’ll have to make three times what the handy man makes to break even with the handy man, if they’re lucky. It might be more.

I figured out my radiator leak. This line here was loose –

How did that happen? The nut was tight. It was tight enough that the wrench was slipping over it, and starting to round it off. I was using a special line wrench, which has a smaller gap on the end, so it more fully encloses the nut. It’s somewhere between an open-end wrench, and a closed wrench. Only enough gap to slip the line in. If that wrench is slipping and the nut feels tight, it should be tight, right?

Here’s the kicker. This nut is either 16 mm, or 5/8; and the line wrench was 17mm. Most wrench sets only give you the “commonly used sizes,” not “all the sizes in a range.” I didn’t look at the sizes, I tried the 15, it was too small; then tried the 17 and assumed that must be it. The nut felt tight, but it could be driven further with the right size wrench; and had to be driven further to clamp down on the line end and seal the connection.

So here is something profound – this 30 year old car is back on the road again, still performing like it is new. It sounds great. It handles as well as this kind of car handles. The ride is excellent. The A/C works. It’s still a nice luxury car, doing all the luxury car things. It’s probably older than most of the site’s readers, but, other than some minor dents and scratches in the paint, and some wear on the driver’s seat, it’s in like-new condition. You can’t buy a new car like this anymore. You’ll pay an amount that used to buy a house, for plastics and electronics that won’t last. Then you’ll do it again, and again, and again. And you’ll have to pay stupendous insurance prices and property tax all along the way.

Is that smart?

This car will eventually die when its computers go. My 72 is 54 years old, doesn’t have any computers, and seems like it could last forever (if maintained.) All the parts are available, and it can be upgraded to do almost anything a new car can do. The phone can connect to the stereo, and there’s a microphone in the A-pillar. There are enough performance upgrades to make it as fast as any sane person would want to be on a public road.

Something to consider as you plan your path through life. What is going to give you what you really want? Most of the “aspirational” stuff I tried wasn’t worth the effort it took to get it. Most of the people I saw who fall in love, ended up thinking the other person was the worst person in the world. Some people want a big house, but who wants to clean it? I used to want a fast car, now driving fast feels like work. So what has real value? I think I’m narrowing it down to two things – a tight waist, and practical skills. With those two things, almost anything else can be done.