My problems with modern technology continue unabated.

I broke down and took the truck to the dealership on Monday morning. Of course, on the way, the check-engine light turned itself back OFF, as the truck did its best to make sure that by the time it rolled into the garage, nothing would actually be wrong. It almost made it, but they were able to deduce that the problem was a burned-up ignition coil, which they repaired, and for which I was charged $316.

I won't go into the nagging feeling I have that Ford only makes their cars difficult to work on so that they can prop up their service industry. I'm just gonna say that I could have changed the spark plugs AND the ignition coil on my '96 Saturn with a few hours of effort and a lot of cursing and probably saved myself $200. Then I'm going to move on to our washing machine, which currently looks like this:

It won't agitate, for some reason. At first we thought it wasn't spinning OR agitating, but I've been able to make it spin. That may, however, be because I tightened up the belt. It still won't slosh the soapy water around like it should, even though some little doohickey (I think it might be part of the transmission) underneath is definitely twisting back and forth. I have a query in to some website that apparently is full of answers about these kinds of things, so we'll see what they say. Of course, our home warranty, through which I could have gotten this repaired for something like $50, expired 2 months ago.

If I can't figure it out any time soon, I'll probably just buy a new one. The existing one may be older than I am, so it may be time. Oh well. Since I'm not being very funny today (it's been a long couple of days, and things show no signs of letting up any time soon), I'm going to send you to a couple of amusing links:

Paris Hilton's Phonebook. I'll give you a dollar if you can get through to Lindsay Lohan and post what she says somewhere, preferably in my comments.

No, you can't have a pony. I'm hoping to put this on business cards and hand them out to whiny people at work.

I'm sure you're all familiar with the original Numa Numa Dance, which I'm proud to say I linked here a few days before it went all buckwildfire on the web and news media. Now, see the parodies. I'm particularly partial to Jiggling Mario, but they're all good, from the gratuitous use of Bob Ross, to the trio of retarded, head-banging, nipple flashing teen boys, to the silly hats. Check 'em all out, and feel free to pee.

P.S. - Is that Roger Clemens with a lightsaber?