When it rains…

It started when I went to visit Jake last month. We looked at my motherboard, and realized that it was having some problems. The chipset fan was not running, and so he (hot)swapped it with one he had on hand. He also noticed a number of capacitors that were blown. While I’ve been fond of this motherboard, I haven’t been overly impressed with it, and so I figure it’s a good time to just replace it. I would have done so already, but I am under strict instruction to not mess around with the computer until my wife is done with school for the semester, which is still a week away.

Monday morning, amid frigid temperatures, I went out to start my car and clean the windows. By the time I was able to see out, the car had stopped, and wouldn’t start again. I tried for a while, and then went in for a bit. I finally got it started half an hour after I first went out. It ran all day, and the next. Wednesday, I took my wife’s car, which starts fine, and Thursday I tried my car again. It wouldn’t start, except that this time it was much warmer. We tried several times during the day, and finally it got towed to a shop.

I just got the diagnosis. One of the cylinders is going out. Their recommendation was to take it home and try to help it be comfortable until the time came. In retrospect, it sounds like the spark plugs were bad, and so now that they’ve fixed those, the car should be fine for the foreseeable future, although it is still dying. It’s had problems ever since I got it 6 years ago, and until this week, it’s been running better than it did right after I got it.<>

<>What this visit to the shop does is it gives me some impetus to replace the car before I have to go through another summer in that unconditioned greenhouse. I guess it is time for a new car. And a new motherboard. Oh, and a new house. Except that I may put that one off for a while, unless our apartment floods.