Steph's work
Steph's work is doing better. She managed to handle all the accumulated issues that had gathered as a result of the transition from the previous employee holding her position, combined with that employee visceral lack of respect for established processes and tendency to patch problems rather than solve them. It is no little feat that she went through and I am very proud of her.
However, things can't ever be too nice, now can they? Steph is fighting hard with that same person that used to hold her position, and who behaves like, pardon my words, a true bitch. Apparently, Steph is able to handle the bitching of someone close to her and that she cares about (let's say for example me), but unable to handle the bitching of a complete stranger... That sucks...
Business level rising
I am starting to be quite busy again. Proof is how little care I give to the blog. I am really supposed to work full time with nexB. I am not quite up there yet, but getting there. For example, last week, I had to "take a day off", in order to take care of the Jetta and its damaged trunk, and to take care of the little green Ninja who broke its clutch cable.
Regarding the Jetta, I am pretty amazed at how much the insurance system works in the US. The the only flaw of that gentleman who hit the car is that he gets distracted while driving big-ass pickups. Besides that, he has been a model of responsibility. After giving it some thought, he decided that it would be preferable for him to have his insurance cover for the price of the repair to the car, he informed them of the accident.
So, yes, in principle, you are supposed to have the freedom to take your car to the repair facility of your choice. Now, let's look at what happened with that guy's insurance: since none of the three body shops I went to to have estimates made belonged to their prefered network of body shops, they decided they didn't want to trust the estimates and that they had to send someone over to produce an estimate themselves. On the other hand, if we brought the car to one of their prefered facilities, the repair would be done no questions asked. It seems to me that my freedom of choice is seriously impaired by these proceedings...
bmt mechanics extraordinaire
And yes, as I was getting to my prefered grocery store, some 10 miles away from home, the stupid clutch cable broke. On that respect, a motorcycle is easier to handle than a car, in that you can still go up and down gears pretty easily. Still, it is not good for the gearbox, and I really did not want to force the bike back home in that state. Corollary was that I would have to repair it myself, as it was also out of the question to go borrow a pickup and ramp to bring it back to the mechanics.
Admittedly, I am pretty proud of myself for changing the cable. Not that it was extremely difficult, but I still had to do some heavy unmounting to extract the broken one and insert the new one. Indeed, the cable runs from the left handle through the body of the bike, right under the gas tank, to the right of the engine. Thus, I had to unbolt the tank, finding out by the way that one of the support rubber pieces for it was missing, which might explain why some of those bolts were so hard to unscrew, as the askew tank was pressing on them.
sun 2003-10-12
