Screaming Metal Death Trap

June 19, 2005 - 12am

I drive a 1993 Ford Tempo, and it’s on its way out of this world. I maliciously beat the hell out of it, maintain it only as much as is necessary to continue to drive it around, and occasionally stub cigarettes out on it. If you hadn’t guessed, I really hate my car.

The link above isn’t of my car, but it is the same model and color. My car is in far, far worse shape. Due to a number of front-end collisions, I’m missing the fiberglass front grill and my radiator is clearly visible. (One of those accidents was on my first date with Christine. Moderately funny story. Maybe I’ll tell you about it sometime.) The most recent collision buckled my hood, and it had to be replaced… with a hood from a white car. I spray painted the hood black a couple weeks later. While I was at it, I painted over a couple of the rust spots on the body. They’ve since rusted through again. I did a really half-assed job of spray painting, so the repainted areas aren’t the same black as the rest of the car, and they’re matte. Since I never wash my car (there’s no point), you don’t really notice the difference most of time.

I haven’t changed the oil since October. When I finally checked it last month, I found to my surprise that I was around three quarts low in a four-quart engine. (I’d like to clarify that this was due to indifference, not incompetence. I’d check my oil regularly if I gave a flying fuck about my car.) When I opened the oil fill port to add a few quarts of 10W30, smoke actually came out.

Due to a late-night incident with a curb, the hubcap for my left front wheel is in my trunk. I’d put it back on, but the wheel is so bent that the guys at Sears Auto couldn’t do it, so there’s no way I’m going to try. Having a wheel that warped makes it constantly feel like I’m driving on a bumpy road. I think that happened in November or so.

My front bumper is falling off from the combination of front-end collisions and my habit of intentionally ramming snow banks. I think three or four more good hits would take it right off.

My left headlight housing is partially shattered and wobbles whenever I hit a bump. I think the strobe effect bothers other drivers.

My brakes squeal, my tires are bald, my roof is buckled, my panel vents don’t work, my engine chokes and hiccups, there are knife holes in the dash and cigarette burns in the upholstery, the floor of the backseat has been partially dissolved by battery acid, and my transmission is failing.

I’ve decided to kill my car in the vicious ways possible and blog it for your amusement. As soon as I get a job that will allow me to make payments on a new vehicle, I’m going to begin the process of annihilating my car and blogging the results. I intend to keep driving around the Tempo until there’s nothing left of it, and then buy a new car.

I haven’t decided on a name for the site yet. I’m considering ScreamingMetalDeathtrap.com. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

FYI: I didn’t get the Microsoft position. Mike told me that it went to an internal candidate, and that they’re hard to beat out. This actually makes me feel better: if the person who got it had just been some jerk from Ohio, I’d have known that I wasn’t good enough. As it was, they went with someone that they knew for certain could do the job.

Commands

June 11, 2005 - 12am

Commands I’d someday like to be able to give to my army of fearful but loyal minions:

  • Kill them… kill them all.
  • Increase the weather control machine to full power! BWA HA HA HA HA!
  • Bring me the head of Paris Hilton. Oh, and while you’re at it, kill Nicole Ritchie, Michael Jackson, Carrot Top, Paul Schafer, Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Lopez, Andy Dick, Wayne Brady, Fred Durst, Carlos Mencia, anyone remotely involved with reality TV, Tim Allen, Ann Coulter, Jean Claude Van Damme, and the Bangles. Huh? Yeah, you’re right. Tim Allen’s career is as good as dead anyway. You can leave him off the list.
  • Bathe the girl and bring her to my chambers. Put the rest in the dungeon.
  • Can you go to Burger King and get me one of those spicy chicken sandwiches they’ve got? I don’t have any cash on me… can I just pay you back later? Ok, cool. Thanks.
  • BOIL THE PACIFIC OCEAN!
  • I’ll have the panda and manatee cheese condor egg omelette and a side of… do you have tiger bacon? Yeah, I’ll have that. Awesome.
  • What the hell is wrong with you minions? It’s a guy and his comic-relief sidekick, running along the turrets of the castle, clearly silhouetted against the night sky. Are you trying to miss? Can’t one of you fucking HIT HIM?! Alright, that’s it. Tomorrow, every single one of you are going to basic marksmanship classes. Anyone who fails get his or her health insurance revoked for ninety days.
  • If the prisoner speaks again, cut out his tongue.
  • Minion number two-six-four-nine-zero… drink ten.
  • Hey, you. Minion. Yeah, you. Come here. Are you Eddie? Good. Alright, Eddie, I have some bad news for you. The IRS has been trying to take away our tax-exempt status because they don’t seem to think that I’m the messiah. The guys in Accounting have been “massaging” the numbers, and they decided the best way to cover this up was to pin it on a low-level grunt like yourself. So, long story short, Eddie, you’re going to prison for tax evasion for a very, very, long time.

If you haven’t seen it before, this list was clearly inspired by Peter’s Evil Overlord List.

Also, this is probably one of my most irrelevant blog posts ever. Not quite as bad as this… though I doubt anything could be… but a waste of time nonetheless.

Post-Interview

June 1, 2005 - 12am

Well, I had the interview yesterday. I studied my ass off, changed around my work schedule, meditated to calm myself down just before it, and went through a mock interview all to prepare: and it was six minutes long.

Yeah. Six minutes.

Contrary to the reports I’ve read about initial phone interviews with Microsoft, my conversation was not an hour long, and didn’t have questions like, “How would you test a toaster?” My interview consisted of “Can you legally work in the United States? Will we find anything on your criminal record if you permit us to look? Do you have any questions for us? Ok, I’m going to forward you a technical questionnaire for you to fill out and send back.”

I took last night off to calm my frazzled nerves, but tonight I’m going to start on the questionnaire. I’ll freely admit that there are several things on the test that I don’t know and have never dealt with before. I’m hoping to have it done by Sunday night. I plan on learning them all between then and now.

This is going to be the most important take-home final I’ve ever had.

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© Marc Teale 2008.