Oh, how I hate modern technology. Wait...hate? That might not be the right word. Perhaps it's love. The two are so intertwined, and I'm of such a brilliantly paradoxical nature, it's hard to tell. Anyway, today's topic is modern technology, and why it is awesome and/or pisses me off.

Exhibit A: The XM Satellite Radio. I purchased one for Hearnwife for Christmas, got it all installed and actimavigated, and I am here to tell you it is so awesome that riding in HW's car is a joy. (Before, it was rather painful; her car is very slow.) It has something like 150 channels, including weather and traffic for most major cities, three classical channels, three comedy channels, a bluegrass channel, a broadway channel, news, sports, and, most importantly, the "decades" channels. You get a channel each for every decade from the 40s to the 90s, so you can listen to Glenn Miller get his 'bone on, and then immediately switch to the 80s station to catch "I Think We're Alone Now" and "Funky Col' Medina." It goes without saying that this is pr0niffic.

Exhibit B: modern automobiles. My truck is running poorly, and the check engine light has come on, so I said to myself, "You know, I don't think the spark plugs have ever been change on this thing. Might be time to do that." So I stopped by Pep Boys and picked up 8 plugs.

This morning before work, I figured I'd spend an hour wrenching them out of there and then be done. So I gathered my tools, popped the hood, and started rooting around among the various cables and pipes and things, looking for plug wires. But they were not to be found. Anywhere. I crawled underneath the engine compartment, and still found nothing. Apparently I've been driving a diesel all these years and not known it.

So I went inside and sat at the computer, and did a little investigating. Apparently, instead of having one ignition coil that powers 8 spark plugs, each plug has its own coil. Which is inside what appear to be the valve covers. So replacing spark plugs, which on my old Saturn was a 10 minute job, becomes a 2-8 hour workstravaganza. This is not thrilling to me.

I threw all the stuff back in the garage, and then grabbed my laptop and my diagnostics code reader. I plugged all that stuff in to get the problem code that generated the "check engine" light, and sure enough, the system is detecting misfires on cylinder 2, which if I guess properly is the cylinder all the way at the front on the passenger side. One guy online had had a problem where something, probably a chunk of loosened carbon deposits, had gotten into the cylinder and bent the spark plug, so I'm hoping that's my issue as well. This weekend, I get to pick up a Chilton or Haynes manual and try to figure out exactly how I get the spark plugs out, and probably have to buy a torque wrench to do so.

It occurred to me today, that having a vehicle that currently is not under any warranty, that I can't do simple work on like change the spark plugs, is going to be costly down the road when, say, a fuel pump needs to be replaced and it turns out you have to completely disassemble the front half of the truck to get at it.

My plan "going forward" (ooh! Business office cliches! Life is good!) is that HW and I should always have one nice car, preferably leased and warranted, so that when it has problems requiring complete disassembly we can just take it to the dealer and have them fix it. HW can drive that car around, and I'll buy a 1982 Toyota Corona or something equivalent to that so I can get to work, and that when it breaks, it's simple enough that I can easily fix it, or just torch the car and spend $500 on another one.

I predict that within the next year, the truck will be traded in on a 2005 Camry, and I'll be tooling around in a 1977 Caprice station wagon. And all will be gravy.