03.10.07
Driven (Part Two)
I woke up Friday at 7a. That in and of itself wouldn’t be all that out of the ordinary if I hadn’t stayed up until 1a the night before handling minor tasks around the house. In any event, my disposition was not going to be particularly sunny for the time being. I got my stuff together and delayed leaving for as long as possible to allow the chargers for my phone and computer to absorb as much power as they could. That part’s important, too.
The first thing I needed to do was to head off any trouble before it could get caught at the inspection. The only obvious thing was the need for an oil change, and being the frugal individual cheap bastard I am, I decided to get it at the Wal-Mart near my house, namely because I knew that it wouldn’t be too crowded on a Friday morning. An hour later, I learned that my front tires were badly out of alignment and were almost bald. That was just great, I thought, hoping that that was the worst of it. I paid, got back into my car, and took it to Monroeville for the inspection.
Now here’s where things start to get interesting. I got to the inspection station– a Monro Muffler/Brakes situated near the mall and in between a McDonald’s and a Honeybaked Ham store– at just before noon. My car didn’t get moved into the garage until about 12:45 or so; that was understandable as I hadn’t secured an appointment beforehand. Anyway, at 1p even they called me in and said that my gas cap had failed inspection and would need to be replaced. “Fine, whatever,” I said, “just do it.” I went back to what I was doing.
What I was doing, in fact, was desperately thinking of something to do because I had forgotten to charge my DS the night before. I had pulled out my laptop and was tinkering around with some local files when I remembered that I had the ability to use Wi-Fi. The problem was finding an access point. McDonald’s has access that must be paid for, so that was out of the question. There were a couple of other networks in range but only one looked promising, an unsecured “dlink”. I am sure that I am not the first person to have used an open access point they just stumbled across, so I connected and started using it. The speed was remarkable and I was certainly not dumb enough to log in to any secure sites or use anything that could have had a compromising effect on my security.
Around 1:30p I was called back into the garage. The mechanic took me to the front tire and started wobbling it. “See that?” he asked. “Yeah,” I replied. “Feel it,” he said, indicating I should wobble the tire myself. “It’s wobbling, I can see that,” I said,, jamming my hands firmly into my pockets, “and I presume it’s not supposed to do that.” “No, it ain’t,” he said, apparently dismayed that I had not bought into The Car Whisperer’s Holistic Mechanical Therapy, “but come look at the other one.” We went around the car to the other front tire, and it, too, wobbled. “So, that’s wobbling too,” I said, stating the obvious as he continued to fondle the rubber. “Yeah, they ain’t supposed to do that. You need a new tie rod on both of ‘em.” Cultural note: The Pittsburgh accent’s peculiarities managed to convert “tie rod” into “tireodd”, and it took me about twenty minutes to understand what it was I needed. Not coincidentally, it took twenty minutes for an estimate to make it to my eyes. The grand total with tax was $730, and that counted the two tie rods, two tires, the inspection(s), and the labor… and the gas cap. Seeing no other choice, I consented.
Historically, the fact that I spent $700+ on a car the day after payday means that my car has less than a week to live. I’m actually hoping that that particular idiosyncrasy doesn’t recur.
Anyway, it was 2p by now, and I was hungry. Where did I go to eat? McDonald’s, of course– since I was currently undergoing a walletectomy (the surgical procedure performed by mechanics whereby they remove your testicles through your credit card), cheap food was the order of the day. I ordered one fish sandwich and a large tea; got two fish sandwiches and a small and large tea (in that order), and paid for three fish sandwiches and a large ball of Coke-flavored earwax waved under six anemic Chernobyl-grown tea leaves. Yeah, not going back there again. In any event, I sat back down at the garage and started to think about the access point I was using.
I’m a pretty principled person; at least I think I am. I decided that I should probably do some checking to make sure nobody with a shotgun would be coming for me because I was “stealin’ mah internets with brain lazers”, and so I did a little poking around in the dlink network. There was one workgroup on the network, called “hbh sales”. I wasn’t exactly sure who or where they were at the moment, so I decided to delve a little deeper. There was one computer on the network, named “laptop”. I tried connecting to it, and came to the familiar “enter your credentials for SMB authentication” screen. My first thought was to turn away; I then thought, “What the hell, they couldn’t possibly be that stupid.” I clicked “connect” with a blank password. “laptop” threw the doors open wide for me on the Shared Docs folder. With read/write access, no less.
Oh, the fun I could have had. It was by chance that I managed to look outside and take note of my surroundings, seeing the Honeybaked Ham store for the first time. I had to make a difficult choice– decide whether to be a pissant kid inflating my ego for no tangible rewards, or to be an adult and hold them for ransom in exchange for free food. I packed up my laptop, told the garage to watch the rest of my bag for the time being, and went over to the Honeybaked Ham store.
I spoke to the manager, who seemed a little unconvinced. “Well,” I said, “I happen to have my computer here,” I said, pulling out the MacBook and setting it on the counter. I showed him every file on his laptop, and he said, “Wow. OK, so why are you telling us this?” “Well, partly because I feel a little guilty about using your access point for the past three hours,” I said, “but also partly because I want a free ham.” “Well, a free ham is a little much… how about lunch?” “Sure!” I said. He then turned to the clerk and said, verbatim, “Give him whatever he wants.”
It was, I kid you not, the single most delicious tuna salad sandwich I’ve ever had.
Thus satisfied that I had done the right thing, I went back to the mechanics so they could suture the hemmhorage in my bank account. It wouldn’t be until 4:30, and it would take two test drives because the mechanic apparently wasn’t familiar with my car. He tried to sell me a new set of struts as well; I wasn’t going to buy into that. I finally got out at 4:45, and drove back home to collapse into bed.
Yeah, ultimately I’m not disabused of the notion that we’d all be better off just using public transportation. I could focus on the fact that I have continued my unbroken streak of getting ripped off at the mechanic (3 for 3 so far), or I could focus on “hey, free lunch after the fact”. As I like food, I think I’ll pick that one.