{"id":1919,"date":"2005-02-22T20:12:03","date_gmt":"2005-02-23T01:12:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/?p=664"},"modified":"2005-02-22T20:12:03","modified_gmt":"2005-02-23T01:12:03","slug":"the-bug-is-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/?p=1919","title":{"rendered":"The Bug is Better"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nothing like spending the morning in the auto shop&#8230;<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nToday was day two of the Vacation Overload Extravaganza, so naturally I spent half of it in the auto shop.  There were a couple of things that the poor bug needed to have done to it:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Find out why the brakes are making noise.\n<li>Reattach the engine shield that came off in the heavy snow on Sunday.\n<li>Figure out if the rattling noise at around 2500 rpm is the exhaust system coming loose.\n<li>Fix the passenger side door so it closes tightly.\n<li>Replace the burnt-out headlamp.\n<li>Replace the rear-side turn indicator lens.\n<\/ol>\n<p>All of which are now done.  The answers to 1 and 3 were cheaper than expected (&#8220;road salt&#8221; and &#8220;Yes, but it&#8217;s fixed now and we didn&#8217;t have to replace anything&#8221;) which balanced out the more expensive answer to number 2 (&#8220;We can&#8217;t reattach it, we&#8217;ll have to put on a new one&#8221;).  Numbers 4-6 were fairly trivial too.<\/p>\n<p>And while they were laboring away on the car, I got to hang out and read the newspapers and magazines in the waiting room.  After finishing off today&#8217;s USA Today, last month&#8217;s National Geographic and an outdoorsy sporting goods catalog of indeterminate age, I discovered a two year old Reader&#8217;s Digest on the table.<\/p>\n<p>That brought back some fond memories&#8230;  It&#8217;s been ages since I&#8217;ve read one of those.  My grandpa Q even got the large-type edition when his eyesight started to go.  I used to read all the articles and laugh at the humor features.  So I picked it up and breezed through it&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>What a lousy rag.<\/p>\n<p>Seriously, has the old RD taken a nosedive in quality in the last few years, or has it always been such a stinker and I&#8217;ve just now noticed?  I mean, the jokes in the humor columns weren&#8217;t even funny.  I swear I remember some of them (verbatim!) from the old large type books in grandpa&#8217;s house in the late 80&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<p>I just hope whoever submitted those stale stories gets paid $300 each time they get recycled.  That sort of money adds up over a couple of decades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nothing like spending the morning in the auto shop&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[24],"class_list":["post-1919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-personal-blather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1919\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}