A Car Story

It began with an offer for a place to live and transportation. Upon my arrival in Jacksonville FL, I found myself in a motel. I had already checked out craigslist to see what places there were to live. During my first day at the new office, a coworker pulled me aside, offered me a ride back to the motel at the end of the shift, and then made me a seemingly 'can't refuse' offer. He had a room for rent at a reasonable rate and a car that he wanted to sell me.

Having lived in motels and shelters for the previous 4 months, I jumped at the offer for a place to live. He took me back to his place the next day and the room and rent were adequate for my needs. The car...was another story.

I've thought of several names for her: 'Ol Blackie, 0V3RP0W3R3D, Bang, bang, yer dead, and of course: Piece of Shit.

It's a '95 Civic Hatchback with an engine that belonged somewhere else, an '89 Integra, I think. He told me the engine was banned from import now and that is was a rare find. Oh, and there's no muffler on it so it roars.

This is the engine as I found her. The owner, my landlord, told me it needed work. It had a leaky head gasket. It also had problems starting and when it did, it ran rich and backfired every chance it got. Oh, and you had to put water in it every time you ran it. He told me he was quoted at $1000 to get it fixed permanently.

Not pictured is the hood, which from my vantage point, looks like it took fire damage at one point. Also, one of the tires is working off of just enough thread to make it interesting.

So my landlord wanted $1200 for it. He told me the engine was worth at least that much on its own. He recommended a buddy of his come take a look at it to see if he couldn't get it running. I was really hoping at that point that what was really wrong with it was a quick fix, so I went along, and spent some money on recommended parts. The guy came in to look at it and worked well into the night. About $50 in parts later, he got it to start but said it needed tuning. The backfiring was a big hint there. A neighbor came out to complain about the noise,and a few minutes later a cop showed up. Luckily we had just closed up for the night, and he let us go. I gave the mechanic $200 for the labor - too much, I know, but I wanted him to come back to finish the job, and he went his merry way.

I drove the car to work the next day. I had already arranged insurance for it. I made it into work, then after work I was going to take it to get the tags renewed. I got about a quarter of the way, then the car overheated. I had to use the towing feature of my insurance to get it the rest f the way home. At home, I put water in it, and it seemed to run fine. The guy who had worked on it before had gone to the hospital the day after he worked on it, possibly celebrating with my money a bit too much. But he promised to come back at some point. He never did.

The next day I tried to use it again. I made it to a 7-11 just down the street from work, intending to get some breakfast, and then when I departed, I noticed the engine was overheating again. I didn't make it the last half mile to work. I had to get a push the rest of the way to work, and another tow to get it home.

So now it seemed the head gasket was blown. I had several recommendations, from people I had really just met, for service stations. I had it towed to one, only to find they didn't do head gasket replacements because they couldn't guarantee them. I tried to get my insurance to tow it back home, but they apparently had enough of me and said no. So chalk up another $100 in towing fees.

Next place was a garage that had dealt with the car before, where my landlord got his initial estimate of $1000. I paid to have it towed in. They recognized the car right away, and told me the estimate they had given him earlier was not valid anymore, and finally came up with a figure of $2500, but recommended that I give up because the car wasn't worth that much, and was a money pit. I paid $300 plus to get the car towed there and back and for the estimate. Ka-ching.

And for a while, I did give up on it. I was still paying for insurance, but I wasn't paying for anything else. Then, about two weeks ago, my landlord tells me there's a new guy at work who works on cars, and he'd be willing to do it for $800. I grudgingly said I'd talk to him, and he came out and looked at the car and got some numbers off it. The next day he texted me that the cost was going to be $1500 but he could break it into payments of $750.

He was going to completely replace the head instead of just the gasket. He was going to replace the timing chain and do whatever else needed to be done. I almost did a facepalm, but I agreed in the end and give him $750. It was $1000 less than the last shop, after all. Next, he tells me to have it towed to his home, where he apparently has a garage. I really did do a facepalm then, but I was committed. I should have been committed, I know. another $100 out of my pocket.

He sent me a picture a few days later: Halfway done.

Looked considerably less than that, but I went along with him. A week goes by, my bank account is about to be filled again, so I text him about the car. He wondered how to start it, because there's a trick to it. I'm a little confused as to why he didn't ask earlier, but I tell him how to start it, and then he texted back that he had to replace the battery and the oil case, and that would cost another $100. What's $100 among friends? /sarcasm. I agree because I'm not going to get the money back. The next day he tells me that the battery cost more than he thought and it was another $50. At  this point, I asked him if he'd provide the receipts, and he said he didn't usually work that way, but this time, he would. He got really snitty about it, but he had been working on the car for a lot of hours. He didn't say how many, but I believe him because the car was pure evil.  I did let him know that I'm not made of money.

So we agreed that today would be delivery day and when he finally drove up in it, he told me that he'd been working on it until 1 am the night before because it still backfired and then refused to start at times. He said he cleaned the carburetor and that took care of that issue.

So we took it for a spin and it seems to idle a bit fast, but it's such a hybrid of technology that I can learn to live with it.

I hope the saga is over, but he was worried about the distributor. He couldn't find it, but he promised if I can find it and buy a replacement, he'd install it for free.

Was it worth it? Was 'Ol Blackie my Moby Dick? Well, at least I got it, so I'm no Ahab. Friends and family told me to walk away, even tried to find me cheaper cars on craigslist, but something about this car - heh - tasks me. Only time will tell if was worth it, though the last guy to work on it told me to get a paint job and sell the car. I might just do that.

The Republic of Mike: A 'What If' Scenario.

Maybe it's lack of sleep due to an overactive brain. Maybe it's the overall disgust I have for the current political process. Maybe I'm just nuts. I want to form my own Republic.

Oh, it won't be overly large. It will be stuck in the middle of a desert on land that most people would consider unusable. Let's say 100 square miles, 10 x 10. But since I'm poor I'd have to simply claim it as my own. I might not even say where it was at first. I'd put together a team of robots to start carving out my claim, quietly working at night, and building a city underground.

That's how it would start: The Republic of Mike. The basic Constitution would be similar to the concepts I explored in 'Project Five-Star: The Five Points of Hope:' Guaranteed living quarters, guaranteed healthy food, an education that never ends (as Asimov suggested), health care, and work doing what makes you the happiest.

I think robotics has matured to the point where that's possible. Of course, I have no money, and lack the skills at the moment, but this is all hypothetical anyway.

The point I'm getting at is how the United States government would react if such a claim were made. Let's say I'm able to put together the resources to start such a project. If and when the U.S. finds out about it, what do they do? It would probably start on a local level. Law enforcement comes out to my desert country to find the robots hard at work, and tries to stop them. Being robots, they might be programmed to hide themselves in the sand, only to reappear when law enforcement leaves,

The next level would be the state. Let's say they are ineffective as well, and call out the National Guard. The Guard carpet-bombs the area, destroying the robots (so they think), then leaves it alone. But I'm a bit more clever than that, and my robots feigned death and continue their work.

Now sometime before all this happens I get a visit from the FBI and I'm brought in for questioning. I would still need to work for a living as no permanent structure exists in The Republic of Mike. I would tell them that I'd never be able to afford the equipment necessary and it was all hypothetical anyway. If they let me go (Fools!), then my robots would continue their work until there are viable living quarters and then I would quietly move in unbeknownst to anyone since I work from home anyway.

But eventually, word would get out that I have indeed claimed 100 square miles of desert land as my own republic, after all, if you're  going to establish your own country people need to know that, for diplomatic purposes at least. I'd want to be recognized by the U.N., amirite?

So we get down to the nitty-gritty: How far would the current government go to maintain the integrity of the lower 48? Would the U.S. declare war on Mike?

Lincoln stated that 'A house divided against itself cannot stand,' and used that to justify the Civil War. So if history is any guide, yes, the U.S. would go to war against Mike. So now the question becomes: How many resources would they dedicate to it? Would they carpet-bomb? Seems logical. The only person living there would be me, at least until Mike is established as a sovereign state. But let's say, in this ever-increasing fantasy, that I've prepared for most forms of war and that I resist attempts to invade Mike.

So the bottom line becomes: will the U.S. use nuclear weapons on what used to be their own territory just to bring the Republic of Mike to a fiery end?

I'll leave that question unanswered.

"If you build it..." - Not

Begin Rant

I am the first to admit that I am lacking marketing skills. I used to work for a Radio Shack way back when, and found that if the people came to me, I could sell to them.

But selling books and websites are not quite the same thing as having a physical location and having products that people want to buy.

In other words, marketing is about shoving things down people's throat until they buy what you have to sell. But I'm not like that.

So far the best I can manage is to put out posts in Facebook and Twitter, which are conveniently linked, and hope someone notices. The first time I ran a free Kindle book promotion, I 'sold' hundreds of copies of 'Theater Boy.' I was very pleased. I ran those promotions regularly with all my books, and slowly the numbers are dwindling.

What I'm trying to say is: I can't even give my books away. Is this a testament to the Amazon.com promotional system? Perhaps others have taken advantage of this to the point where the market is saturated with free books and my own books get lost in the ocean of books that Amazon lists.

Making it as an author in the digital age has proven to be harder than I thought. And the biggest problem is that even when someone buys my books, they rarely leave reviews. I'm not the type to pay someone to review my product, and even if I did, Amazon is becoming better at sniffing the culprits out.

I'm a man of great potential and imagination, but also limited means. I can't afford to hire a publicist. So what am I to do?

I could pull a stunt to get noticed and in the mad rush of the press to interview me as to why I pulled the stunt, I could mention that I have several books available. It would have to be the kind of stunt that grabs the eye of the media, even for a brief moment. Lord knows there's a lot of people whose videos of doing stupid things go viral. I'll be the first to admit I've done stupid things. I'm in the process of finishing a task that a fair amount of people would call stupid, but it's not so stupid as to garner the attention I need.

Let me go off on a tangent for a second to say I do not crave attention. I just want people to read and like my books enough to want to tell other people. I'd be happy just writing and publishing like I have been and letting the readers fall where they may. But there's a part of me that's not satisfied with that. In other words, my creative side is at war with my introverted side.

Getting back to the crazy stunt, what sort of stunt grabs the eyes of the media? Looking at CNN.com as I'm writing this: I could launch a missile. I could yell and scream my way into the Presidential debates. I could escape from jail or prison, but I'd have to do something worthy of going to jail in the first place. Hey, there's another crazy thing I could do.

Or I could die.

But I'd have to either be famous in the first place or die in such an unusual way that I garner attention.

Relax, I'm in no hurry to make a spectacle of myself.

At one point in my life, I traveled the East Coast making videos of everywhere I'd been. You can see the resulting videos on youtube. Every now and then one of them gets a hit. I still get regular hits on videos I made in 2012: How to win playing Sudoku, and a video where I show how to work with a portable washer.

But the idea was to capture a video that would go viral and make some money, at a time when I had no regular income. The money altogether too soon ran out and that idea fizzled.

I still make videos and post them to youtube, but they're gaming videos, and my skills are such that I'm not likely to go viral anytime soon. But the time to renew that concept of traveling and making videos might be returning. I just need to make sure that every video description has a link to my books. Hmmm, there's an idea.

End Rant

A Question of Greed

I'll come out right away and say I support Bernie Sanders and his attempt to become President. That said, let's talk about greed.

What is it that causes one person to become so greedy he'll step on his own mother to pick up a stray dollar, while another person will go out of his way to remain poor?

I will admit to big dreams when it comes to money, mostly due to my writing taking off, but mostly, I'm content with a place to live, food to eat and decent Internet. I'm not driven to make more money than I need.

I suppose some of it is genetic, look at the Koch Brothers and the Walton family. I will never understand how people will go out of their way so they can have more money. They even go so far that they'll hide their earnings in offshore accounts.

But off-shore accounts aren't free. Neither are bribes. For that matter, neither are donations to charities, So I'm guessing everything is carefully calculated so as to pay the least amount of taxes possible, right down to the legal fees required to make everything go as smooth as possible.

Power corrupts, or so I'm told. I've never had any real power. But what if the corruption exists not just in the genetics, but in the soul itself? I've heard that babies learn to hate and be greedy, they aren't born that way. But what if instead of Nurture over Nature, where children are taught to hate, or something happens that changes them into uncaring monsters, something else is responsible?

And I'm not talking about genetics, or brain damage, I'm talking about a damaged soul. No one really knows what the soul is, though my stories and dreams often stray to what makes a soul. One of my characters even goes so far as to say that souls are made of the same thing as everything else: atoms. So what makes one soul different from another?

I'm a real believer of reincarnation. Once the body dies, the soul finds an unborn body to inhabit, losing most of its memories in the process. I won't get into what makes a soul to begin with, or if there's such a thing as human-only souls, but what if, in a previous life, a soul gets physically damaged? Say, the body gets burned, and an atom or two of the soul gets destroyed?

I've already had visions of victims of the atom bombs, those at ground zero who got vaporized, having their souls completely destroyed in the process. *Shudder*

Anyway, what if damaged souls are responsible for overwhelming greed and lust for power, lust for war and destruction?

Something to think about, and one of the things that keep me up at night and my imagination humming.

Back in the saddle again

There's this scene from M*A*S*H where Frank Burns, after not seeing Margaret Houlihan for some time, thinks he's going to see her and puts on cologne while clucking to the tune of 'Back in the saddle again.' "Buck buck, buck buck buck, buck buck."

I kinda feel that way at the moment, not from a romantic perspective, but from a formerly homeless, formerly paying outrageous amounts to live in a motel, to a finding a place to live and having things go in a positive manner for the first time in ages, since the end of August 2015.

I have not only found a place to live with a co-worker in Jacksonville, but he has a car he wants to sell me. That car is far from perfect, but if I can get it running, it may be a lifesaver.

Also, for the first time since the end of August, I'm posting long overdue videos made in July and August, and made my first Warcraft video since then, because I now have access to my desktop computer that I built (and recorded building) back in July.

I'm far from settled, still physically exhausted and mentally questionable to a certain degree, but I think the tide has turned.

At any rate, things are looking up, and on Christmas day no less. I guess Christmas miracles do happen.

Hope your holiday is as hopeful as mine!

The Bright Side - Part 2

I've seen it coming since before Thanksgiving. A not so gentle, yet not very detailed hint from my supervisor that not all is well. It had nothing to do with me personally. It was a business decision because Boston costs too much in salary.

The hint was: Would I be willing to move back to Raleigh if the opportunity came? I was puzzled for the first minute after that question, then I was asked if I understood the implications. Then it dawned on me.

I couldn't grasp it at first because when I took the job I was told there was a 3-year contract. I would be secure in Boston at least that long.

While I hesitate to call it a lie, something obviously happened to change minds. Here's what I think happened: The whole idea for having people in Boston taking calls, rather than being in a call center somewhere else was to have people ready to move to the second level of support. That seemed to work at first, as one of our own moved to level 2. I applied for the same position, but I knew the other guy had a few things over me (experience was not one of them). I was patient. See my patience blog for more on that.

Then another opening came and I applied. I found that the job description had changed so that it explicitly said call center experience did not apply to the requirements. I knew then that I might never get that level 2 job, yet I applied a couple of times after that. I never did get the position.

Which leads me to my theory: Since none of the last few Level 2 people has come from the Boston crew - the B team as we were called - I suspect that was used as an excuse to stop the 'waste' of resources paying people to take calls there.

The end result was that the jobs will cease in Boston effective next week.

I did call this blog the Bright Side. And there was a bright side for me, But for every bright side, there's a dark. I'm losing co-workers I'm naming as friends. They helped me out financially when I needed it, and suggested places to live when I was looking so hard.

The timing also is poor. It's almost Christmas. I've been laid off/fired before at this time of year. It sucks. I can't emphasize that enough.

There's another less than bright side for me: I'm being forced to leave my daughter behind - again. I'd just been getting used to seeing her on a regular basis. I enjoyed that. I gave serious consideration to declining the offer to transfer just because of her.

But two things are in the way: First, I'm still technically homeless. Losing income will drive me back nto the shelter as winter begins. I can't really call that a bad thing, but it makes things horribly difficult, and they're already difficult as it is. I explored the possibility of getting work here, and found most of the work is contract, 3-6 months at best, and paying less than I had been making. And finding that work would be difficult in the shelter as I'd have nowhere to put my meager belongings. Even if I bought a suit, where would I put it day-to-day? I'd have to rent a storage facility, yadda yadda.

In the end, it was too difficult a challenge from someone so tired of the struggle. I thought about their offer for 2 hours after I got it, and made the decision.

I'm moving to Jacksonville Florida. I'm making $10,000/year less. I'm getting a small amount to move. It's less than I asked for. I don't really have a choice.

But it's cheaper to live in Jacksonville, and I should be able to find a decent one-bedroom apartment for what I'll be making. That's better than I could do in Boston.

And that is the silver lining. The bright side is I'll find a place to live. That's the bottom line for me.

But I do not forgive for this, and I'll never forget.

You Say Be Patient - But I Do Not Think You Know What It Means

I have lived 54 years and 358 days. That's since I came out of the womb, so I 'lived' 9 months more than that. Well, depending on your point of view, I, as a soul within my body, probably lived a little less. But I digress, possibly a subject for a future blog.

In my 54+ years, I believe I have been extraordinarily patient. Oh sure, as a small child I probably pulled a few tantrums if I didn't get my way. But once I got used to that idea that not everything would go my way, I settled in and waited. I remember asking my sister to play with me, and she said 'in a minute.' Time didn't mean much to me at that age, but the bottom line was: if I wanted to play, I had to wait. I don't remember if she actually played with me, but given my record over the years, probably not. Most likely something else happened that took my mind away from playing, or, my imagination kicked in and I played with myself - not in a dirty way. Shame on you.

I have, what I believe is an uncanny ability to withdraw. My mother used to call say 'Don't go Walter Mitty on me' or something to that effect. I actually liked that movie - the original, not the remake. I could relate to Walter. When things got dull or I had to wait for something, I withdrew into my own little world. Literally. What bugs me about that is why I didn't write things down from the beginning. Maybe the thoughts were too private. Maybe I thought others would kid me about it. Yeah, that's probably it. I've always had a keen sense of what others thought of me.

But the point is, I'm patient. That's something that's being tried at the moment, so I wanted to dip into exactly what I've been patient about over the years.

The old saying 'Good things come to those that wait' has hit me at times, missed a lot more. When it came to girls I could never make the first move, and that's true even today. Even when I did get a date, something usually did or didn't happen to keep the romance flowing. A lot of that was lack of experience. A lot of that was that it takes time to get to know me, and it always seemed like I waited too long to open up, or something happened to tear us apart, like the girl moving away, or me moving away.

Let's put it this way: I admired girls from afar. It might have been creepy from a certain standpoint, but it was just me being me. I offer no ill will toward anyone - with the exception of bullies. I'll admit I got into fights as a kid because I saw or was dealt injustice and I bottled it up until I exploded. I can honestly say no one was seriously harmed in my fights, and I often got the worst of it: Glasses thrown off, a sweater ripped, etc.

But the simple fact was: I was too shy for my own good. That goes beyond being introverted.

I did have one meaningful relationship in my life, in college. She came to me. It produced a daughter. I won't go into details, but the relationship ended. The breakup sorely tested my patience. I couldn't finish my Bachelor's Degree because of the loss of that relationship. It had too profound an affect on me.

So without more than an Associate's degree, I spent years wandering. I went from job to job, from place to place, leaving a job when it was the right time for me, then getting a different job.

I have been a contract programmer for a small company, a file clerk for an insurance company, a slot technician in Las Vegas (after taking an electronics course at a small 'college'), a store clerk in Springfield Mass., a computer operator for a couple of different firms, a salesperson for Radio Shack, an usher for the Colorado Rockies, Broncos, Nuggets and Avalanche, a data entry operator for a Ma Bell company, a COBOL programmer for the same company, all in the space of 15 years.

The list goes on, but the point is I was trying to find what I was good at that I enjoyed. At the same time I was observing different cultures, right here in the Good Ol' USA. I was noticing changes in accents, mannerisms that varied from region to region and how people dressed and generally acted around each other.

I didn't know I was a writer until 1996, when a story came to me so strongly that I felt the need to put pen to paper for the first time. Maybe I'd been preparing myself all those years. I don't know. They say artists have to suffer for their work. What if you don't know you're an artist? I thought I was just a poor loner who was doomed to wander for the rest of his life.

Don't get me wrong. I'm good at a lot of things. Even though I hate anything having to do with phones, I have a pleasant speaking voice and demeanor. So customer service and now technical support were my calling after 2000.

And, of course, computers themselves call out to me. I'm an introverted nerd/geek who can sit for hours in front of a computer, either playing games or typing in general. I've built several of my own computer systems, even thought about going into business custom-building computers - called 'Foxbuilt Computers.' Like all of my other endeavors, it never materialized, but that has never stopped ideas from coming into my head.

Which leads us back to being patient. In all the different jobs I've done, all the different people I've met, I have yet to feel like I've accomplished my given task.

Of course the problem there is I don't know what the given task is. I've written about this before, and it's a major principle of 'Regrets,' and of the song I wrote, aptly named: 'The Job's Not Done.' My song 'Free' speaks of a restless soul, trying to break free.

Yet here I am, sitting in front of my computer, typing this blog, seemingly no closer to my unstated goals than ever.

And here then, is the story of my life: I have been waiting, patiently for the thing I'm supposed to accomplish to happen.

You might say: "But Michael, that's your problem all along. You're not ambitious enough or straightforward enough do be much good to anyone."

To which I might say: "To thine own self be true." I may not be an ambitious money-grubber, willing to walk over anyone in my path. Let's take the 'may' out of that. That's not who I am. I've had the feeling that I've trodden this path before, lived another life before, and I'm willing to bet that I waited for something then too, because the job I'm tasked to do is likely one that will take more than one lifetime.

So if you call yourself patient because you waited in a line for a half-hour, please bear me in mind, who has been patient for lifetimes.