2020-05-28 — I’m So Bad At This 🙃

Let me start off by saying, “Hey, I’m making progress.” I mean, I did start making a list of work boundaries today. I didn’t apply any of them… but I did start making them. 🙃

And I didn’t get a mouth full of pee today. Doesn’t that all count for something? 😊

Just because I didn’t stop working (aside from my brief 29+-minute jog) until midnight doesn’t mean anything. I’m making progress I tell you, progress!

It just… doesn’t look like it…

Anyway, good day, as always. Today was the not-very-productive-but-not-awful-either kind of day. I did a Prius battery, got started on another battery job, but she won’t have money to pay me until next week, when I’ll finish job.

Then I had a tough one. It was a 2002 Pontiac Sunfire…

…I just fell asleep. …While chewing my dinner!!!

1:05 a.m. Gotta get to bed! Anyway, it would start but die right away. It would stay running with brake cleaner in the intake, so it seemed pretty clearly a fuel issue. So… I tried to do a pressure test, which was super hard on that particular model because it uses the old style quick connects. I had to jimmy rig an adapter to get it to work, pressure was good and high. Volume seemed a little low, and that’s the direction I was leaning until… well… until I wasn’t.

#1. I’m grateful David was able to help me figure out that Sunfire. In the end, it turned out to be just a sensor in the system thinking something was happening with the car, so it was shutting off injector pulse three seconds in. I had tested for pulse, but I didn’t test it while I was spraying brake cleaner in the intake, only just while cranking. I guess there’s a difference somehow.

Anyway, the issue was solved by connecting the positive and negative battery cable end to each other and waiting a minute or so for the system to do it’s hard reset.

#2. I’m grateful for the tip the last young man gave me. I spent at least two or three hours working on his truck and only charged him a diagnostic, but he tipped me $30, so that was nice. I had driven to the Toyota dealer, but when he went to leave, his start fuse blew. He put another one in, and that one blue as well. That happened multiple times. As son as he’d put the key in the crank position, the fuse would blow.

So I pulled the starter, which tested good to my surprise. I would’ve thought it would either be a short in the power cable to the starter or an internal short in the starter, so I inspected the cable. Nothing. I pulled the starter. It tested good off the car. I tested things one by one, and by the time I was done and ready to give up for the night, I decided to try the truck, and it fired right up. I never actually saw it not working.

Anyway, I stayed for probably another hour, explaining things about his truck, how to test it, diagnose it, etc. I found his coolant leak for him. I helped him with the questions he had about his mom’s Lexus, and he gave me a $30 tip. I’m grateful for that tip.

#3. I’m grateful that I can fall into bed right quickly here.

#4. I’m grateful that I did actually make progress on my work-boundaries list. Has things on it like no taking calls during sleep time (tentatively 11-7).

#5. I’m grateful to have been able to give Che some love today.

Well, woderful peeps, I’ve fallen asleep probably over 20 times writing this–something that I guess has become the norm…

It’s 1:31. I’d write something more interesting and something more helpful, but I’m just dead.

Add another day to all my thingies, and I’m off to bed.

Lift the World.

~ stephen