Perpetual Ruminations

Friday

I'm kind of late getting in here tonight. Imagine that, me running late. Oh well, that's just the way it seems to go. Once again I should be in bed sleeping and instead I'm just getting in here. Tomorrow will be another early morning for me, but there's just not much I can do about it except keep on trying. I still have to log into WdC and post this journal entry and update my weekly goals, too.

I was up at three this morning, then off to work, since it was just another typical work day for me. Rhonda came in and I got done, but took a little time to look at the van. She had porblems driving in again, and I tried something to see if it would help. It's been doing this since just after we purchased it. I would take it back, but for the price we paid it was one of them "as is" sales.

We have had it in a couple of times to try and fix it, and it works fine for a while, then starts acting up again. Well, it was doing pretty good up to today, but when she drove in for work she ended up on the side of the road a couple of times, but did manage to get it into town. I got off work, since she works the shift after me, and looked at it. We knew the EGA valve was the item that the mechanic messed with every time it was in the shop. The first time it was the hose, the second time he cleaned the valve. Each time, it worked great after it came out but it never lasted very long before it would start doing the same thing over.

So, not having any tools handy, I couldn't do much. But, I knew what he had worked on, and I knew one time it was messing up what I fiddled with and thought maybe it would work to just unplut these items. I did, but I unplugged both the EGA valve and the mass air sensor, so I do not know which one is the problem. But, I unplugged them, then plugged them back in and started the van.

I had started it and it was barely running. Then I shut it down and unplugged these items, plugged them back in and re-started it. It ran bad for about three seconds then it began to pick up RPM's and run fine. I took it for a spin around the parking lot and it was fine. I told Rhonda, and she drove it home, after work. It was fine. It seems just unplugging these had the same effect as when the mechanic worked on them. I'm unsure if he unplugged the mass air sensor or not when he worked on the EGA valve, so I still don't know which item it is, but I know it's one of the two.

I also know, since all I did was unplug them, that it isn't the item itself but more likely the connection. So, when Rhonda got home I went out and cleaned the connectors. All this was only suppose to take a few minutes, but the seal plug for the connector on the EGA fell off. It fell down between the engine and the radiator. I looked, and Rhonda looked, but we could not fine it. We put the van in neutral and pushed it back a ways and looked again, but still no sign of it.

We spent a great deal of time looking but could not find the damn thing. It would probably be alright for a little while without it in, but since we are likely to get snow and rain tomorrow morning, it would be unlikely that it would work without it in there. I thought on it, and finally figured out a way to get by for the night, I could fill the plug with dielectric grease to seal it. Only, I couldn't find the dielectrid grease.

I finally had another idea to use the weather stripping stuff for plug-ins and light switches to make the item we needed. It's not a replacement, but should get us by for a few days. Tomorrow I will stop at the part store and see if they have the seal for the plug on hand. I would think they are standard items sized by color, and something they keep on hand. I hope so, anyway.

After, I went back to my task of setting up the alarm clock app I have on my netbook, so I won't over sleep again. Then it was time to eat, and then it was time to get in here and get this done. Inbetween I have been working on setting my laptop back up, since I had to resote that back to factory settings. It was running very slow, had no memory, and I couldn't find anything else wrong.

So far, all I've got done is a lot of Window's updates, over three hundred so far. No wonder it won't work right. I can't imagine a program needing over three hundred updates to work. I understand things change and they have to stay a head of everything, but I would think that instead of update piled on update, the previous ones would get removed and replaced by the most current. But, not if you want to bog things down and sell the new opperating system, Windows 8.

Well, I'm done here, and it's past my bed time.