I Brive a Dus

Today I drove a battleship down US 1. I checked out a nice pickup.

I have been whining making perceptive and highly justified complaints about the insane cost of used trucks. I originally wanted a used truck, so somebody else would get stuck with the depreciation, but when I priced F150s and similar items, I found that people were knocking about ten percent off the new price, which is idiotic. Why pay $18000 for a truck with no warranty and 40,000 miles when you can get the full monty for $20000? But it looks like prices on larger trucks are a lot better.

I did not want diesel. I know how great it is, but I didn’t want the smell, the slow acceleration, or the aggravation of finding fuel. But I kept reading good things about the new diesels, and I finally came around. I figured if I was going to go full-throttle and get a heavy-duty pickup, I should get an engine that would last for eternity and never need electrical work. A true SHTF engine.

I can’t believe the things I read about these things. Acceleration like the (admittedly sad) American sports cars of my youth. Better mileage than my roadster. Unlimited hauling capacity. I can’t figure out what the down side is.

I’ve read horror stories about Ford’s newer diesels, but everyone seems to like the Dodges (Cummins) and the Chevys. I don’t know who makes the Chevy engines. Detroit Diesel used to be part of GM. I don’t know whether that’s still true.

Chevys are not that easy to find, cheap. Neither are GMCs. But Dodge 2500s are relatively plentiful. Their late-model diesels come in two flavors: 5.9-liter and 6.7-liter. The bigger one would be a great choice, but for the fact that the Green Weenies ruined it with a bunch of emissions garbage you can’t remove without voiding your warranty and risking annoying nonmoving violations. So the 5.9 is IT. Chris Byrne drives one. It’s hard to imagine anyone who would learn more about a truck before buying it, and he seems to like it a lot.

I found a red Dodge yesterday, with a 5.9 and four-wheel drive. I don’t really need the four-wheel drive, but I suppose it’s good insurance, depending on where I find myself living in the future. It has tow stuff, and it has under 30000 miles. I Carfaxed it. It has a little scrape on the bumper, plus some small dings on a door, but other than that, it looks very good.

I took it out on US 1, and I have no complaints. It’s very big, and parking it will be no fun at all, but it’s comfortable, it rides well, and the air conditioning survived the Miami in September test.

These guys want $27K. I think I’ll offer $24K and let them sweat. I have a mechanic lined up to look it over. It still has nine months left on the warranty, but I want to make sure the odometer is correct and so on.

I can get a 2WD model for under $20K, but it has over twice the mileage, and it was assembled in Mexico, which scares me to death. The Carfax on the other truck doesn’t say it’s imported, so maybe it was made at the Missouri plant.

Either one would be a nice change. I just don’t know if I can force myself to sell the Thunderbird. Sometimes you want to go through a drive-through without causing a scene. Maybe I should sell it and get something cheap and small for running around.

Where do You Put the Anchor?

My disgust over my experiences with car dealers has driven me to broaden my pickup search to the used market. I got fed up with used trucks because the asking prices I had seen were just plain stupid, but given the intransigence of the Ford dealer I tried to reason with, maybe Craigslist isn’t a bad option.

I wanted a relatively small truck. Half-ton. I’m not all that eager to maneuver a tank through Miami traffic. I have no idea how you get a big truck into Miami’s miniature parking spaces. But there are some deals on bigger trucks, and as much as I hate the idea, I can get diesel, with all of its advantages. I found some F250s, but everyone says the Ford diesels are an abomination, so I wrote them off, and I’ve been looking at Chevy and Dodge. I found a monstrous white Dodge with a 6.7-liter Cummins, for $19,000. It has around 75,000 miles on it, but the overhaul interval on these things is 350,000, so I think I could get my money’s worth out of it. Also, people are reporting 18 miles per gallon on these tanks, with excellent acceleration.

Here are the problems. First, it’s huge. We’ve already covered that. Second, there is no warranty. I’d have to buy one. If I bought a warranty, I’d probably have to leave the emissions crap on the truck, and it looks like this garbage is the only thing that can kill the engine. Third, it’s a Dodge, so it was probably put together by monkeys. They have the worst fit and finish in the universe. I have never owned a Mopar product, but the ones I have ridden in were a lot like what you would expect Chinese cars to be like. Fourth, I have a neurotic fear about running out of diesel while looking for a station that sells it. I should also note that it’s a six-cylinder, which makes repairs cheaper but probably makes it rough.

If I took off the emissions stuff, I would have no engine warranty. On the other hand, if I took off the emissions stuff, I would probably never need an engine warranty. Hard choice.

The specs on this thing are like something out of a science fiction movie. It will pull an aircraft carrier on a trailer. It will accelerate better than most cars. It gets better mileage than my Thunderbird. You can put a the weight of the Washington Monument in the bed.

Unless I abused it, you would expect it to last nearly until my grandchildren died. It’s pretty ridiculous.

It’s way, WAY cheaper than the new trucks I’ve been looking at.

It has pimp rims. What is it with people?

Maybe I’ll go take a look at it. I fear it would be like driving a bus. Depending on how cheap insurance is, I suppose I could hold onto the T-bird for a while, for city driving.

Or I could drop the whole idea and become a regular U-Haul customer.

All I Want is to be Only Mildly Cheated

I am really irritated with the automotive industry. It took me weeks to pick out two acceptable pickups, and when I made a reasonable offer on one, the dealer didn’t even counter. I haven’t made an offer on the other one. I guess I could go ahead and do that.

A long time ago, I read one of those expose books written by former car salesmen. The author pointed out that dealers are not always rational. Most of them are used to treating the public like suckers, and sometimes they get very offended when you aren’t sufficiently humble or stupid. Sometimes they will refuse to sell at a price which will make them money, simply because they can’t stand the thought of not cheating you. Maybe that’s the situation I’m in.

I made an offer which is reasonable to begin with. It will let the dealer recoup the cost of an old undesirable vehicle, and I threw in $500 to defray his expenses. I’d go up a couple of hundred bucks, if necessary. All this guy had to do was make a sane counteroffer. Instead, he tried to convince me that I should spend four figures in interest in order to get a thousand-dollar discount. He gets the commission on the financing. He gets the thousand. I pay interest amounting to maybe two thousand. That’s not a counteroffer. That’s a sad delusion. Maybe they’re up there smoking opium and pretending we’re in a boom. But we’re not. Trucks are rotting on lots everywhere. You can’t sell an inefficient truck for $2000 more than you paid for it, unless you’re surrounded by complete idiots.

It’s no wonder dealers go out of business so often. It’s no wonder there is no such thing as customer loyalty. How can you be loyal to someone who spends every second feeling around for a soft place to stick the knife?

I’m going to call the guy I bought the Thunderbird from. Maybe he can get this truck moved down here for me. If I have to pay $200 to move it, it’s still better than giving up because the salesman is crazy.

I have looked at used F250s. Apparently, the 6-liter diesels they put in these things are complete garbage, so that rules out a whole class of trucks. I hate diesel anyway. Diesel smells, the valves make a racket, and I just know I’ll run out of gas…I mean “fuel”…looking for a diesel pump.

I know the 2009 F150 is a very nice truck. When it comes to full-ton trucks, I have no idea who makes the best.

Oh well. Back to shopping.

Somehow it Does Not Seem Right

Yesterday was amazing. I had already been to church on Saturday night, but I think it’s important for family members to attend together, so I went on Sunday with my sister. Sometimes you just know a message is right for a certain person, and this was one of those times. I didn’t want her to miss it.

When we arrived, I let her decide where we would sit. I always take the first convenient seat. There are TVs all over the church. It makes no difference at all where you sit, except that the music is way too loud at the front. But she likes to be up by the stage. Yesterday, she didn’t care where she sat, so we took two seats in the back. The message was great, and when it was over, the pastor’s mom came up and introduced herself. She and her husband sit in the back, and because we were so near them yesterday, they noticed us. That was great. Anything that helps us get more involved is good.

Afterward, I went to watch the Dolphins with Val and Pat and Tommy, and although I didn’t expect to achieve anything with regard to religion, by the end of the day, two people had decided to go to church with me. I couldn’t believe it. We’ll be going on Saturday.

The sermons my pastor is turning into a book contain a section in which he says each of us has four “families.” One family is our friends. He says you can’t hang around with people who don’t believe, because they pull you back into a worthless lifestyle. That had concerned me, so before I went over, I asked God to help me lead rather than be led. And look what happened. I was content to sit there and be quiet. I had very little to do with it. But it happened.

On the way home, I thought about the offer I made on the pickup. They wanted about two thousand over what they had in the truck, and they wanted me to finance it. The theory behind financing is that I get a thousand more off the price, because Ford has a finance rebate. I don’t want to finance, because I hate debt.

Well, guess what? It’s an even worse idea than I thought. If I finance, the payments will be several hundred a month. Under the terms of the contract, I’ll have to pay for several months before I can pay the balance off and get rid of the loan. Now, what do you call the first payments you make on a loan? “Interest.” It has no effect on the principal. It’s pure profit for Ford. Depending on the rate, I’ll be shoveling a huge pile of money directly to Ford, effectively jacking up the price of the truck.

Man, I get tired of being treated like a moron. Do they seriously think I’m stupid enough to pay them over two grand in interest to get a thousand back? On what planet do they find people dumb enough to fall for that?

Show me where I’m wrong. The loan isn’t interest-free. On their sites, they’re quoting 7%. That means something like two grand in interest, and until Ford gets it, the amount you owe remains constant. Principal comes later.

Talking to a car salesman is about like talking to Satan. If you can deal with car salesmen and drug addicts, nobody alive can fool you. Their tactics are exactly the same. You have to wonder how much higher new car sales would be, if people didn’t dread being lied to and abused every few years. Realtors are angels compared to car salesmen. So are most other salespeople. I wonder why the car industry attracts the worst liars. Car people can’t even tell the truth in the service department. The dealers hire slimy salesmen and call them “advisers.” Their advice usually amounts to “spend money and get nothing in return.” Geez.

Lawyers can’t hold these people a light. They are not even in the same universe.

The crazy thing is, this is their best behavior. This is how they act in a recession, while trying to sell an old truck nobody wants. A vehicle which tops out at 18 miles per gallon. I can’t even imagine dealing with them on something that’s actually appealing to buyers.

Craigslist is starting to look better and better.

Not really. It’s horrible.

Anyway, I am passing up the fantastic deal the salesman offered me. Call me crazy.

Pulley Project

I went to Northern Tool and picked up a band saw. I just got done with the basic assembly. If you get one of these things, have a friend handy when you assemble it, because it’s not fun. I used a hoist to get it out of the box and onto its base, but if I didn’t have a hoist, I would have had to cover the floor with a blanket or something, assemble the whole saw on its side, and pull it upright. It weighs about 120 pounds, so it’s not a joy to handle.

Here’s a bummer: one of the pulleys on the belt drive is chipped.

I emailed Northern to see if they could send me a new one. Meanwhile…I have a lathe! I have steel! I have a band saw (which will still work in two of three available speeds). I can make a new pulley!

Maybe.

I have a lot of aluminum. I should be able to slice off a piece and turn it on the lathe. Unfortunately, all the aluminum is square stock. I don’t know how much it will like being turned into round stock.

Anyway, it’s a project I can conceivably do. Very exciting. The original pulleys are cast iron, but I don’t think aluminum will be a problem. The big pulleys on my lathe are aluminum.

Guess we’ll find out.

And Then I’ll Stop

I believe today is the day to break down and buy a horizontal band saw. I have piles of metal and no way to cut it into usable pieces. I thought the dry cut saw was the answer, but I was sadly mistaken. It works great for small jobs, but big cuts dull the blade and take forever.

Looks like it’s time to drive to Northern Tool.

I could have gotten a nice used Jet cheaper, but at the time the ad was running, I had no way to bring it home.

I have to get the garage together. The whole length of my table saw top is covered in junk. During the time leading up to Yom Kippur, I am trying to repent of laziness and irresponsibility, so the garage mess has to be dealt with. Maybe I’ll set up the saw and attack the disorder.

The effects of the fast I did week before last are still with me. In addition to having more self-control, I’m down about nine pounds. And before you say it’s because there are days when I eat fewer calories, let me rain on your delusional campfire. I could fast three days a week and gain weight, because I would more than make up for it on the remaining days. If I go above two thousand calories a day, I gain weight. I can eat six thousand calories in a day without breaking a sweat. You don’t have to eat a tremendous amount of food to do it. Four pints of ice cream, for example. It’s very easy to put 2,000 calories into a meal. The reason I’m losing weight is that I eat less every day, and the reason for that is that I no longer feel the same way about food. This is no different from the testimonies of heroin addicts who have been freed instantly.

I hope I can get similar changes in other areas of my life.

Avenger of Suckers

I made an offer on a 2009 pickup. It amounts to about $500 above the money they’ve put into the truck. I know the cost of the truck and the delivery charge, and I know how much the holdback is, so I subtracted the holdback and added $500. It’s a good offer, for a year-old truck that tops out at 18 MPG. A truck nobody else wants. They should be willing to sell below their cost, given the age of the truck and the current market. That’s how life goes, when you’re in retail. You can’t make a profit on every deal. I know they have other costs, but that’s not my problem.

The dealer turned me down flat. They want $1200 more. Sure, if Mary Poppins and Frosty the Snowman decide to buy a truck so they can drive around the world with elves in the back, shoveling candy to the little girls and boys who go to bed on time and swear allegiance to Barack Obama. Other than that, they pretty much have to deal or sell it to another dealer at auction.

After I got their response, I decided there was no way I was going to contact these characters again. When you’re negotiating, and you make an offer, and the other side pretends to be utterly uninterested, you wait for them to crack. These guys have to get rid of this truck. I don’t have to buy one.

Today, after four days, they got back in touch. It was just an auto-response. But it proves my point. The only way to deal with a car salesman is to apply the screws and tighten them until he squeals. My offer was too generous; they probably think I’m a sucker. The only way to convince them otherwise is to let them sweat. I offered them more than I think the truck is worth, because I don’t think a Christian should hammer people ruthlessly in the marketplace. They should be satisfied with that.

I may respond tomorrow. I may respond Monday. Maybe I’ll get cold feet and kill the whole idea. I try to think of my money as God’s money. I don’t want a truck just for fun. I want to make sure I’m doing something intelligent. Maybe I was wrong to decide to buy. Time and prayer are always good ideas.

Anyway, it’s funny to watch them play the game.

I think my response will be, “Please consider my offer withdrawn.”

They want me to finance the truck, which will get me a thousand dollars in Ford money. They want to add that money to the price, plus over $200. I do not borrow money if I can avoid it. I don’t care if Ford likes it; I don’t care if they understand that I plan to pay it back in four months. It’s a scam, and anyway, I think borrowing is like daring the devil to wreck your plans. If I pay cash for a thing, I’m free and clear. If something bad happens later, I won’t have to worry about collection agents. I won’t have to take a job I hate, because bills for things I’ve already worn out and discarded will be coming to me over the next five years. And nobody can repossess what I bought. When you borrow, you give up choice. You put yourself in a position where you have to earn, regardless of how you do it. And working is less enjoyable, because you’re not anticipating buying good things with the money. You’ve already enjoyed the good things. All that’s left now is the drudgery of paying for them, and paying the people who charged you for the privilege of enjoying them before you really owned them. And if you choose to go bankrupt, the cost is your self-respect and your good name.

The Bible says it’s arrogant to say you will do this or that, in the future. You should say, “God willing, I will.” If you borrow, you’re saying, “I will continue to earn enough money to pay for all the junk I want to have right now.” Is that smart? I don’t think so. The Bible strongly discourages borrowing. It encourages lending, but it does so with the understanding that you can’t charge usury, and you may have to forgive the loans.

I just realized I’m wearing a T-shirt that says, “Borrowing is for the weak.” It’s from Northern Tool. I couldn’t resist buying it. It’s supposed to be funny, but it’s also one of the universe’s fundamental truths.

I wonder what a $200,000 house would cost, if we didn’t have the mortgage system. Probably $50,000. When people pay real money, as contrasted with pie-in-the-sky future money, they have to pay a lot less. Three things make things cost more than they should: insurance, borrowing, and government involvement.

A Harley dealer once told me some guy came in for a trade-in, threw him the keys to his old bike, told him which new bike he wanted, and said, “Make it $250 a month.” That was all he cared about. He opened the henhouse door and drove the fox in with a cattle prod. Over time, the bike probably cost him fifty grand. The picture would have been a lot different had he had to shovel out up front. MSRP would have been something like $18,000. He probably couldn’t afford it.

I don’t like borrowing. I don’t like borrowing. I don’t want to be a finance company’s slave. I don’t care if it looks smart on paper. When you look at the paper, isn’t it “walking by sight”? Aren’t we supposed to walk by faith?

I don’t care if everyone does it. Most people do lots of really stupid things. My errors are sufficiently abundant as it is.

On another subject, I have a question. What’s a reasonable amount of money for one person to spend on groceries, per week? I don’t really know. I have turned into a bargain-hunting maniac, frequenting Costco and subscribing to grocery-chain sale emails, and while I haven’t added up the cost of my food, I’ll bet it’s pretty low, because about 80% of my meals are cheap, simple, healthy stuff I eat just to stay alive. What should I be paying? Seems like I should be able to do very well on a hundred bucks a week, plus maybe twenty-five for treats, but I’m not sure.

The most expensive meat I eat regularly is fish, at around six bucks a pound. I like to buy prime beef for $12-$13, but that’s rare, and lately I’ve been finding it at Costco for seven-something. I buy whole pork loins for peanuts and cut them into chops and freeze them. I avoid prepared vegetables, like Birdseye and so on. I generally steam or nuke fresh produce. I eat boring oatmeal for breakfast. On the weekends, I like to treat myself to McMuffins and pizza and Chinese food and ice cream, but that adds up to about three meals.

I’m looking around the web, and other people claim they do great on a lot less than $125. Maybe I’m overestimating.

Anyway, the information would be appreciated.

Catch a Gamefish, not a Bottom-Feeder

I can’t believe I’m finally writing something that will be useful to God. For a long time, I’ve wished I had some way to put my writing ability to good use, but I came up dry. The main issue is that I’m not qualified to write Christian books on my own. I am not a Bible scholar or a pastor. I suppose I could write something if I had someone with more authority guiding me, but I would have to stay away from anything tending to make me look more knowledgeable than I really am. By helping an experienced pastor with a book, I can bypass the problems. The ideas are his, and he has the final word, so it’s not too likely that the world will end up reading something stupid which I inserted through ignorance.

I wish I had gotten this involved long ago. Christian life is much easier when you know you aren’t alone, and it’s also easier when you’re doing something that gives you purpose.

Yesterday while I was working on the book, I kept seeing one indication after another that God aimed this project at me. I’m not just writing it down. I’m learning from what it says, and it’s exactly what I need. It’s always startling when he confirms himself, which is strange, because it happens so often, you would think I’d get used to it.

The book is about planning a family, and the section I’ve worked on so far is about finding a spouse. Guess what he compares a quality spouse to? A dolphin. The green fish my father and I catch off Miami all the time. He compared unsuitable spouses to catfish. You can catch them anywhere, and the bait doesn’t matter. If you want a dolphin, you have to search and be persistent, and you have to go where they school. When I read that, I remembered what Aaron always tells me. “Fish in stocked ponds.” Coincidence, right? Tell yourself that if it makes you happy.

I had no idea the pastor liked to catch dolphin. What’s my dad’s favorite thing to do? Dolphin fishing. My dad, the guy I pray for all the time, hoping God will get through to him. I emailed the pastor and told him he needed to fish with us. Later I told my dad. He said, “I’m afraid he’ll get the Holy Ghost on me.”

He was joking, but it just might happen.

The book contains a lot of solid advice no one ever spelled out for me before. For example, you have to look at a potential mate’s family and ask yourself if you want your kids to be around them. The example he gave was a father-in-law who gets drunk at seven a.m. and spends the day cursing at everyone. Conventional wisdom tells us you marry the person, and that love conquers all. In reality, you marry the family.

He also said you should not demand fireworks up front. This is another thing Aaron likes to talk about. The Orthodox have their kids meet each other and get to know each other, but they don’t have the kind of long, meandering engagements the rest of us have. There’s no sex, and maybe sometimes the chemistry is not obvious at first, but they expect to grow to love each other. That’s virtually the same take you’ll see in the book. And doesn’t Ecclesiastes say the end of a thing is better than the beginning? That’s a universal principle.

He used Samson as an example of what happens when you date or marry outside your faith. Again, this is something society tells us is romantic and sort of noble, but in reality, it’s a recipe for misery.

He called Delilah a catfish. She was a Philistine, from the same area that gives the Jews so many problems today.

Socially, the church is not right for me and my sister. At least, it seems that way at the moment. I would guess that the church is about 75% black, and a lot of them are from the islands, and a big percentage of the congregation is made up of single mothers. It makes for a tough financial picture. And it’s not the kind of place where everyone will look like me or have a lot in common with me. But I don’t see the problem. It’s working. The closer I get to it, the better things seem to work. Maybe now I can get more involved and find ways to do more to help.

I haven’t heard anything back about the truck I made an offer on. If I get a suitable vehicle, I can help the church with guest speakers and so on.

In other news, the benefits of fasting seem to be lasting. Maybe this is the key to self-control. Maybe if you fast AND combine it with directed prayer, it cleans you up. All I know is, I’ve lost a belt notch, and another one is about to go. And I don’t feel deprived at all. And I feel more relaxed and less irritable, and I seem to have more control in all areas.

I’m the only one losing weight, fortunately. On Sunday, I made cornbread and soup beans for my sister, and yesterday I made her take a loaf of homemade bread home. Radiation is on the way, and so is most of the chemo, so she needs to eat everything she can find. I don’t know if she’s taking it seriously enough, but luckily, this is an area where I have a special gift.

After lunch I’ll be working on the book again. I can’t wait to get to it.

If you haven’t come up with a project for the Forty Days of Teshuvah, there is still time. Get to it.

Your Ears Have to be Exactly the Right Shape

Church was exceptionally good today. I can’t tell you all the reasons, but it went very well, from the time I left home until I left the building after the service.

My sister and I went up to talk to the pastor after the sermon. I wanted to let him know how my work on his book was going, and I guess she just wanted to say hi. I told him I only had 3,000 words transcribed, but he seemed very happy with my progress. I asked him to let me know if I could do anything else for him, and he said, “Cornbread!”

I gave him the URL of my blog last week, and evidently, he has read the blog and also watched my Youtube videos, and one of them is about cornbread. He has ruined my plan, which was to concoct a totally phony personality and convince him I was not only normal, but extraordinarily holy. Now I guess the truth is out, so I may as well relax and be the slouch that I am, in church as well as around the house.

The other obvious problem is that he and his wife may ask me to cook stuff for them, which means they’ll be lucky to last a year without buying motorized fat carts and having multiple bypasses. It has been 20 years since I’ve had a regular pastor. I don’t want to kill this one before I can learn anything from him. He says he has diabetes, so I guess I’m the last person on earth he needed to meet.

I took a bunch of brownies to the church on July 4, for some kind of outdoor thing they were doing, but I didn’t hear back about them. I assume they were spirited away by the first five or six people who got into them, so in all likelihood, no one else at the church realizes they existed. Maybe that’s for the best. At 540 calories each, they represent the worst kind of temptation.

The sermon was almost spooky; it was as if it had been written with my family in mind. A cynic would say that was because I met with the pastor last week, so he knew what to say. But some of the parts of the sermon that seemed most apt had nothing to do with anything we discussed. The basic theme was that you need to get the little private sins out of your life before they become public problems. When you try to lead a Christian life in spite of things you haven’t fixed, it’s like letting a scab grow over an infected sore. Sooner or later, it’s going to open up, and all that filth will spill out onto the surface.

I think when Jesus talked about binding the strong man and spoiling his house, he meant that you have to fast and pray and get the spiritual bad influences out of your life, and then the Holy Spirit will grow in their place. So that fits in with the sermon. You can put on a smiley face and pretend your days as a sinner are behind you, but I think some bad habits come from the urgings of malicious spirits, and you have to do something to render them harmless. Otherwise, you’re using human tools to fight powerful spirit-generated urges, and the urges will eventually win. This is probably why we occasionally see famous preachers on the covers of the tabloids, over the word “SCANDAL.”

Sometimes the pastor mentions things God has let him know. I have to wonder what that’s like. I get all sorts of urges which, in my opinion, come from God. I get insights, and sometimes I suddenly realize I’m doing something wrong. But I can’t say for sure that God tells me anything factual, the way some people say he tells them things. Many Christians cite examples of this phenomenon. I’ve seen plenty of weird things that I know were supernatural, but God never says a word to me. Not that I can hear, anyway.

He hasn’t mentioned the Forty Days of Teshuvah, but he talked about Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur today, in a way that expressed the same ideas. This is the time of year when you reflect, repent, and pray. You try to figure out how you’re screwing up, and you try to fix it. I didn’t feel too concerned about myself during the sermon, probably because I was already caught up in changing myself. I’m always leery of concluding a message isn’t aimed at me, but I think sometimes it’s okay. You can’t be wrong about everything all the time.

He asked us to raise our hands if we had ever committed sins after justifying them by saying we were only hurting ourselves. I didn’t raise my hand. It wasn’t because I was stronger than those people. It was because I generally haven’t bothered to worry about whether I was hurting anyone else. Maybe the people who raised their hands are better off than I am.

After fasting last week, I seemed to have more self-control in my life, and it appears to be a lasting thing. I’m still tempted, but now the self-control is just a little stronger than the desire to give in. That little edge makes all the difference. You don’t have to be nearly perfect to behave. After all, Obama won by only 7 percentage points, and that, unfortunately, was enough to make him the President. This is why we call him “The Iwon.”

For the last few weeks, I’ve had a persistent feeling–I would call it a conviction–that God was about to do something wonderful in my life. I keep wondering what it is. Is it the increase in self-control? That would be plenty, all by itself. Is it the new relationship with my church, which will let me do worthwhile things with my time? Does it have anything to do with helping my pastor write a book? I’ve started hearing really promising new songs in my head. I want to write those down this week. Could they be part of it? I’ve always had a problem with music running around in my head, yet I had a hard time composing original songs. Writing is extremely easy for me, but lyrics were even harder than tunes. Now that seems to be changing.

I have not made cornbread for the pastor, but I’ll be making it for my sister today. She decided she wanted soup beans and cornbread, so the soup beans are simmering, and if she ever gets over here, I’ll get out the skillet and make the cornbread. I don’t want any. She needs fattening food because of the cancer. I used some of my SHTF dried beans. You have to rotate them, because beans only keep for a year, and this seemed like a good opportunity. The beans and cornbread are going to be amazing, but I just don’t have the urge to stuff myself, so I plan to send the whole mess home with her.

I made an offer on a white Ford F150. I’m not doing any business today, so even though I know the dealer replied to my email, I’m not checking it until tomorrow. I hope he’s willing to be reasonable. The recession isn’t going away, and this is a year-old truck. I don’t mind giving him a fair price, but in this atmosphere, covering his cost plus five hundred bucks is very generous. That’s what I plan to give him. I am a sucker for giving that much.

It’s nice being old and patient. If I were in my twenties, I’d be tormented by the urge to make the deal and get it over with. As it is, I don’t care if it takes six months. Judging by the new unemployment figures, it’s completely possible that this truck will still be unsold at that time.

Christianity actually works, if you do it right. Your life won’t necessarily be perfect, but it will be right. If you’re thinking about giving it a shot, I highly recommend it.

Plus Truck Stuff

I am in paradise. I decided I had to have some chili, so I got out my book and made a pot. I had some Jamaican hot chocolate peppers in the freezer, and I thawed out a bag, chopped up some of it, and threw it in. I guess I used so much, it would have added up to more than one pepper. And these things are HOT! Worse than your usual habanero. Very nice.

I didn’t use store chili powder. I mixed paprika and cumin, and I toasted them in a hot pan. Then I added ground chipotles. Beautiful.

I guess when people see tequila in the recipe, they think it’s a gimmick, but you can taste it. I used mezcal. Seems to have more flavor. The only reason I own this stuff is to put it in chili. I remember what tequila and mezcal headaches are like. You wake up, you feel great for one hour, and then you die.

It’s wonderful to make chili just for myself, because when I cook it for other people, I can’t put any heat in it. I’ve gotten so I don’t enjoy it unless it’s roasting hot. A while back, I went to a restaurant, and when the waiter asked how spicy to make the food, I told him, “Try to kill me.”

I think the cheddar cheese I dissolve in the chili (today it was actually Double Gloucester) allows me to use more heat, because butterfat tones down the pain. I served the chili decorated with a handful of cheese chunks (in addition to the dissolved cheese) plus two or three tablespoons of sour cream.

I seem to enjoy food more these days, maybe because I have more self-control and I’m not stuffing myself all the time. I only had one bowl of chili, and I followed it with half a pint of ice cream. I could never have eaten half a pint of ice cream a year ago. Two pints? No problem. Half a pint was impossible.

I’m getting good comments on the truck question. Someone suggested the truck with the max tow package had a Dana rear end. I’m pretty sure the last time I encountered the phrase “Dana rear end,” Jimmy Carter was President. Both trucks have 3.73 gears and limited slip. The FX4 (non-max-tow) has some kind of electronic limited slip. I can’t tell you who makes any of this stuff.

Someone mentioned bigger trucks, like the F250. I don’t plan to tour the country with a travel trailer. I don’t think a big pickup is necessary. If I get an F150 the way I like it, I’ll be able to put over a ton in the bed, and I’ll be able to tow things like motorcycle trailers. That ought to be sufficient. I’ve read about the big trucks, and they sound crude, not to mention expensive and hard on gas.

It’s not so much that I want F250 capabilities. I just don’t want to find out I didn’t get the most I could in an F150. And there are big differences.

Right now, you can get a thousand dollars off if you finance. But I hate debt. I think going into debt unnecessarily is opening the door to problems. It’s a chink in your spiritual armor. On top of that, Aaron has informed me that the Talmud says you shouldn’t price-shop when you don’t intend to buy. Orthodox Jews consider it immoral. If I were to finance, it would only be to get the discount, and I’d pay the loan off as early as possible. It seems like the same basic idea as shopping with no intention to buy. Ford gives you money back. People do paperwork. A company anticipates profiting from the deal. Then you turn around and prove it was all a scam. I know nobody would be crying himself to sleep afterward. But deceit is deceit, regardless of whether the victim is a person or a company or a government.

I think I’ll make an offer on the white Lariat I found. I have to thank Obama. If he hadn’t meddled with the economy and sided against Israel whenever possible, I think we’d be on our way out of the recession now, and these wonderful rebates wouldn’t be available.

Stupid Wheels Ruin Perfect Package

Here’s a question.

What’s better? An F150 with the max tow package minus the really good rear springs (and with the pimp wheels which would have to be replaced to maximize the payload), or an F150 with the regular tow package?

The max tow package has a different steering ratio, big mirrors, a transmission cooler, and a bigger radiator. It ordinarily has big rear springs, but the truck I’m looking at has the stupid 20″ pimp wheels, and Ford won’t combine big springs with them. If I ever needed to get the most out of the truck, I’d have to replace the tires, and wheels, and rear springs.

If I wanted to simulate the max tow capabilities on the other truck, I’d have to change the springs, replace the radiator, and add a transmission cooler. That’s most of it. These things are not extremely expensive, but it’s work. I would still have little mirrors.

The big benefit of the non-max truck is that I may be able to get it three or four thousand dollars cheaper. That should cover any upgrades, with money to spare. Also, it doesn’t have the fruity captain’s chairs the other truck has. It’s pretty ugly, however.

The max-tow truck is a very light color, which would be great in the Miami heat. The other one is red, which is hotter, but not as bad as dark blue or black or grey.

Bet it was Important

It’s late and I am not going to sit up blogging, but I thought I should inform the world that I got my rotary table situated today. Try to contain your joy.

Here’s a tip. If you buy a 10″ Phase II rotary table with a matching chuck and backplate, do not expect the T nuts they pack with the chuck to fit the rotary table. All three of mine were almost exactly seven thousandths too wide at the top. And I found this out after removing my carefully aligned vise from the mill and putting the rotary table and chuck on it (total weight roughly 150 pounds).

I had to take that mess off, put the vise back on, align it, and cut the T nuts down with an end mill.

I put the rotary table back on, centered it, saved the zero on the DRO, mounted the chuck, and used a centering indicator on an end mill mounted in the chuck with the shank end up. By beating the chuck with a soft hammer, I was able to get the mill centered so accurately I was not able to detect any error. I can’t figure that out. I wasn’t able to center the rotary table that accurately, and the chuck was on the table, so you would think the error in the table’s placement would make it impossible to have a part rotate perfectly beneath the spindle. Go figure.

So now it looks like I have a 3-jaw chuck on a rotary table, mounted on my milling machine with extreme precision.

The following question occurs to me: now what?

Space Needed

I’ve had a fun morning, attending to business involving my family and some property we own jointly. Acidman used to say there was no such thing as free sex. I would add that there is no such thing as passive income. Ask anyone who owns a rental house.

I am hoping to get my rotary table working. My sister is off chemo for two weeks, so things should be slow. I already popped the rotab onto my mill table, and I installed the chuck. I still have to put together a system for storing and moving it. The current fantasy involves a flat dolly made from a piece of plywood, plus a chain hoist or block and tackle above the mill. I already wrote about this. Keep the rotab and tailstock on the floor under the table. When needed, roll the dolly out under the hoist and raise the rotab to mill height. Should work.

No one will believe this, but I think I have finally acquired the bulk of the tooling that will be required to make me happy. Small purchases will never end, but I have reached a state where I have the stuff to do just about anything I want. I still need a horizontal band saw, but that’s not a big deal. Maybe I should pick one up today and get it over with. I already bought a good blade.

I still have to do something with the Tobago seasoning peppers I picked, and I have some other bushes that need to be dealt with. At least the lime trees gave me a rest today. Only one lime, and it was a little key lime.

I tried the prig ki nu mixture I made yesterday. I put garlic, salt, and vinegar in a squeeze bottle with red peppers, and within a couple of hours, the vinegar had absorbed a tremendous amount of heat. People say you should poke holes in peppers to make them soak up whatever you immerse them in, but I am not going to do that with several hundred tiny peppers. The vinegar seems to break them down a little and get inside them, so I don’t know if the holes are important.

This stuff would be much better if made with lime juice, but when I did that before, it got moldy, so forget that.

I think it’s a little too hot. I hate to say that. These aren’t my hottest peppers. Not even close. I still have Home Depot cayenne plants I bought because they were mislabeled, and those peppers are magnificent. They’re very sweet, and they taste almost like cherries, and the heat is more manageable. I should try the vinegar thing with them next time.

Looks like today will be uneventful, now that I have my business obligations behind me. I certainly hope so.

Maybe They’re Finally Taking Him Away

Today a truck pulled up and ejected 219 pounds of Enco on a pallet. My rotary table arrived. I think I’m finally done with the basic accessorizing of the machine tools. I still want a band saw, but other than that, I may be set for a few months.

Really! Don’t snicker.

I can’t believe how big a 10″ rotary table is. Half the people I quizzed said “go big,” and half said, “I’ve never needed anything bigger than 8 inches.” The people who said to go big seemed to like 12″, so I split the difference. Guess what this thing weighs? I’ll spoil the surprise. About 118 pounds. And it’s oily and has no good parts to grab onto when you lift it.

I had the truck guy wheel the pallet into the garage. It had several wooden boxes strapped to it, along with a cardboard box containing a cheap chuck. I always try to resist the temptation to lift heavy things, so once I got the lid off the rotary table box, I had to figure out how to get the table out without picking it up. I ended up running a nylon rope through the center hole and tying it to my hoist. I got it up to waist level, figuring I could sort of swing it over to my bench. In reality, the last foot or so was not much different from plain old lifting, but I did try.

At least I avoided lifting it out of the box. One of the worst experiences in life is lifting a heavy object out of a heavy box that tries to come with it. Then you find yourself shaking the object and the box, rupturing disks one after the other, trying to make the box drop. I didn’t have to do that. This is one of the great things a hoist can do for you. Even if you don’t mind lifting an awkward 80-pound tool, you will not enjoy lifting that tool plus the 10-pound box it came in.

The tailstock looked small in the Enco picture, but I would guess it’s about 40 pounds. Hey, I can check. Hold on. Okay, 33 pounds.

Right now I can lift the rotab onto my mill, but I haven’t put a chuck on it yet. Let’s see. It’s 35 pounds, so add that to the rotab and the backing plate, and it spells “truss.”

The chuck looks really nice. I’ll check the runout and see what the story is. You never know. Sometimes a Phase II turns out to be as accurate as a Bison. Actually, I’m not sure checking the runout is possible. Can you do that with a chuck on a rotary table? I would think the table would have its own error to worry about. I’ll figure it out later.

I couldn’t figure out how to manage getting this thing on and off the table. I wanted to put a hoist over the mill, but then I’d have to have a shelf or something nearby, to put the rotab on. And that would be a pain. It would be in the way, and I’d have to screw it to the wall, and I’d have to go around behind the mill to get the rotab onto it. Bad idea. Then I realized there was perpetually empty floor space beneath the mill table, to either side. I can make a little wheeled platform about a foot square and put the rotab on it. When I’m not using it, I push it back under the mill. When I need the rotab, I pull it out so it’s under the hoist. I think this will work. I could make it a little longer and stick the tailstock on it.

A hoist is overkill. A small block and tackle would be faster and easier, but I don’t know where to get stuff like that. I could go to a boating store, but I’m sure the stuff they sell for boats would be insanely expensive. By the time you run all over town looking for something that costs $25, a $50 hoist doesn’t seem like such a bad compromise.

I’m going to try to get this thing working. I have enough junk to make things now. All I need is inspiration and something resembling drawings.

I think I’ll go fondle my new drill bits before I go to bed. Enco put a cobalt set on sale for over 50% off. There was no way I could turn that down. It beat the snot out of the great Ebay deal I was planning to go for. People said I was stupid to get cobalt. I suppose I should listen, but so far, the cobalt bits I’ve used have been incredible compared to HSS. FINALLY, I have drill bits and a nice box in which to store them. Big hurdle there.

I am so grateful for this stuff. I’ve wanted to do this for so long.

I’m open for business. Look out.

Sea of Options

Truck owners, clue me in.

I originally wanted a regular cab pickup with an 8-foot bed, in 2-wheel drive. But it’s easier to get the other good stuff, like the big motor, the good suspension, and trailering doodads, if I go with an extended cab, 6.5-foot bed, and 4×4.

Am I going to regret this for eternity? Will the smaller bed drive me insane? I have no idea how to put a sheet of plywood in a short bed. And the extended pickups have a really stupid pretend backseat, which is utterly pointless. I would rather have empty space.

I am thinking this would still be a good choice for the rare occasions when I’d move very heavy stuff, because it will pull a rental trailer with no problems.