So I'm trying to do something most ladies don't ever attempt...

I'm trying to diagnose and fix my own car.

I've claimed flibbertigibbet in the past when faced with automotive distress, waiting for the guy to come save me when I'm tied up to the railroad tracks...

More often than not, though, I'm then treated like a dumb blonde who needs help getting the key off of her keychain so she won't break a nail. (Someone actually told me that!)

I'm tired of it. The claiming ignorant when it comes to all-matters-car is over. If I wasn't already in school I'd be signing up for a program at Nashville's own NADC. I've been scouring the internet incessantly since monday, trying to educate myself on the problem my car has. Not only do I now know what that problem means literally, I've learned what sorts of things can cause the dreaded 'service engine soon' light to come on as it does in my case. I've started posting my problem on several 'Ask a Mechanic' websites, and as of late, I've registered on a couple of different message boards for Nissan Sentras. I've even found a lot of information tonight about things I shouldn't do (which happens to be exactly what the shop I took it to wanted me to pay for) and some things I could possibly do to fix it. I even found a board where two different people had my exact car *and* problem, asking for any solutions they could find. I told them my story and what I've found so far so they won't buy unnecessary parts, namely pricey sensors. We'll see if anyone else responds to my posts so I can figure out what to TELL someone to do instead of ASKING them what should be done. I'm trying to educate myself to the point where I can determine that this was most likely the result of some recall on my car (there have been 4 - count 'em, 4!) so they'll pay for it to be fixed... but I think that last hope's in my dream world, where things are actually fair, so I'm not really expecting, just hoping. Here's what I've been submitting:

"My 2000 Sentra is showing a PO171 "System too lean - bank 1" code and the shop I took it to is telling me to replace the Mass Air Flow sensor but I don't think that's the problem. I've had to replace an oxygen sensor before (2 years ago) and had recalls completed on my car for a faulty crank position sensor (about two years ago as well.) My SES light started to come on for a few days and go off for a few days, with a tiny bit of sputtering while accelerating up a hill (around 2000 RPM) before I took it to the mechanic, but now it's having more trouble than before. When I start the car for the first time in the morning, the car starts fine then won't accelerate and sounds like it's going to stall then doesn't. It goes a few feet, then has the problem accelerating again (press the pedal, nothing happens). If I stop and wait a minute for the engine to warm up, it accelerates just fine and doesn't give me the problem for the rest of the day. How do I know if it's an oxygen sensor, the fuel filter, fuel pump, or MAF sensor? Should I change my spark plugs/ have a tune up early? (They're platinum tipped and according to the owner's manual last 105,000 miles.) Do I need to start replacing less expensive parts and work my way up, or is there a test I can do to find out exactly the problem? Thanks!"

This also reminds me that I'm a misplaced engineer. I love tinkering with things to find out why they work, how to fix them, and how to make them better. I'm a ninja with my hands in that respect. I somehow became a jock, thought math was bad, and stopped paying attention to careers-that-suit-me like engineering. I'd make a killing, since I communicate best with engineers of various types. Probably doesn't hurt that they see me as their dream girl, though, when I'm trying to get their attention... ;)

Ed, honey, after I get my Master's in biology, can I start taking prereqs to get a Master of Engineering??? ;)

I also wanted to share something funny that happened with Ed and I last night - he was watching Ultimate Fighter and I told him I couldn't be in the room while that was on. That show bothers me on many levels - to the point to where just hearing it rattles my nerves and riles me up to the point of frustration because of the people involved. I was around people like that all the time as a jock and they fundamentally perturb the bejeezus out of me. Ed was understanding about it, though, and understood why I'd feel that way... He said it would be like how he'd have to excuse himself from the vicinity if I was watching a 'Bad Math-a-thon' or 'Programming for dummies' on TV. I found that humorous...

Someone told me the other day that Ed and I sound (and look) like we go together like peas & carrots. I think that's the best way to describe the nature of our relationship I've heard yet. :)

So I've been thinking about the incorrect biases we're taught growing up...

...you know, the things that were emphasized by the adults around us, both at school and at home. These ideas were taught to us either because those adults were taught the same erroneous 'facts', or because those adults thought that some new scourge was scary and bad - and that all children should in indoctrinated to prevent the spread of that scourge. Adults made lots of things sound much scarier than they really were - drugs and pregnancy are the two that come to mind first. Growing up here in the states, we had DARE and health class - which told us that having sex one time would result in some disease and/or unwanted pregnancy, and that nothing good could ever come from taking any drug of any kind. Mind you, not that I'm saying that sex & drugs (& rock and roll) are completely safe and innocuous - it's the 'cold, hard facts' that they told us that were a bit exaggerated. I grew up thinking - mainly because of the information given to me - that having sex one time would most likely result in a pregnancy, and that anyone who used any kind of drug experimentally (especially marijuana, LSD, and cocaine) would immediately lose all brainpower and be relegated to a white trash life in the local trailer park, never to get a good job or go to college. Now I understand why the adults did this - it was for the good of the mainstream teenager. If you don't make something sound like it has horrible consequences, almost all of them will try it, like it, and continue thinking it's not that bad. Now there are always teenagers (and people) that will do whatever they're not supposed to for the sake of rebellion and they're not going to listen to whatever indoctrination you tell them to boot. I think, though, when you get to be a certain age when sex hormones and adrenaline are no longer ruling your body they should let you in on the secret that what you had been told wasn't completely true and was only one side of the story - and your job now was to find out, responsibly, what they were really about, keeping the actual facts in the back of your mind all the while. For most people, that's what college is about - to go a little too far over the line of moderation, not get too hurt from it, and emerge a well-informed person who's done most of the crazy things they're going to do before graduation. You'd then go on to be a productive member of society, knowing the true dangers of sex & drugs for yourself. Yes, there would be some people who couldn't handle it when told these 'facts' were indeed half-truths and would be found dead in an opium den in two weeks. Survival of the fittest is what I'd call that. Or people who would be faced with the choice of what to do with an unwanted pregnancy - they'd learn the consequences and grow up, either to have the child or not, to have that choice in the back of their mind indefinitely to govern future choices.

Now, the problem with this system is that it involves people being able to be responsible and make decisions in line with what that person really wants. You want to be a doctor? Don't do anything that kills to many brain cells. Want to avoid lots of responsibility and continue to do what you please? Find a good, reliable method (or two) of birth control and use it (them) properly. It's just easier for the adults to tell you scary things than to teach you how to think for yourself.

It's amazing how often things boil down to 'what's the easiest thing to do?' instead of 'what's the best choice for the situation?' - which is exactly what most schools teach us to do, and most parents don't go against the grain. Some kids seem to have an innate idea of how to think for themselves and will emerge as the smart ones as the generation ages - but it's the rest of those children who could be taught, with some effort, to think for themselves that aren't instructed how exactly one should go about that. I think that's where me as a science teacher comes in. Thinking scientifically and practically about a given question helps you make an informed decision about these sorts of topics. Understanding the brain and how chemicals affect it help you know what your brain on drugs really feels like and not that it's just an egg frying. Understanding reproductive processes gives you the concept of how easy it can be yet do difficult it can be to get pregnant and carry a baby to term. Thinking through a problem leads you to a hypothesis which can be revised again and again instead of thinking in absolutes. Finding and taking in all the evidence available before devising your experiment keeps you from making rash decisions. I think that the problems of drugs and sex could be mitigated better by teaching kids how to think and how to gather evidence rather than presenting incorrect facts. When the kids try the drug and nothing bad happens, or they have sex and no disease or pregnancies appear, the kids start thinking about the other things that were dramatized and no longer take the adults seriously. And you wonder why teenagers think we don't know anything - all the things we tell them 'for their own good' aren't actually true. Adults, for the most part, are the grown-ups who cry 'Wolf!' and teenagers know it. As a teacher, the buck stops here!!

Ah, I've been a ranting Swede but not quite as angry... time for breakfast!

So I think we've decided...

...what day(s) to get married on. We're going to technically get married on 10/24, and count 10/23 and 10/24 as our anniversaries. Ed wants 10/24 because 1024 is how many bytes are in a kilobyte, and I want 10/23 because of Avogadro's number (6.02 x 10^23). It's nice that we found a day us nerds can agree on. I could imagine that most people think about when to get married because they have the time, or that's the best time for the family to gather - for us, it's what day we'd like to be celebrating for the next 50-odd years. Considering what days we like to have as anniversaries, we'll probably get married after we've come back from our honeymoon. Well, since I usually do things out-of-order, this isn't that big of a difference from my overall trend.

Doesn't look like I'm going to yoga this morning - my back was hurting quite a bit last night and I went to bed early. I feel better, but not anything-more-than-restorative-poses. I also can go pick up my cell biology test before my seminar class. That means I have to leave here in just a minute...

Ed and I were looking at destinations for our 'honeymoon' - looks like it's supposed to rain just about everywhere in the caribbean we're looking... so we're looking at the relative percentages. It's actually quite humorous, since predicting the weather that far in advance is a crapshoot anyways.

The first 'room captain' meeting is this afternoon. We get our 'packets' - whatever that means. I have a feeling I might be sitting in a room full of stay-at-home-moms wearing tracksuits and driving SUVs. Not that people can't still be cool and have that sort of an arrangement, but the chances are slimmer than being in a room full of blue-haired chicks with tattoos. Then again, they can be bitches just the same... Regardless, I'm not a room parent for social reasons - I am because of kids, namely mine. Let's hope I don't embarass him anymore than I already have...


Natha's going to Parent's Night Out tonight - so we'll go out to an adult dinner with friends, I think... Ah, the friday-night-adventures of white people living in Brentwood...