Thomas H. Chapin IV Musings and General Nonsense

Car problems

Anyone who knows anything about me knows about my car trouble nightmares. As such, when I bought a used 2004 Nissan Sentra SE-R (with 35,000 miles on it) from a dealership at the beginning of 2005, I made sure to buy an extended warranty. Sure enough, within two weeks of owning my new (used) car, the fuel pump needed to be replaced. This repair alone pretty much excused the extended warranty that I had purchased, but after that everything was pretty much smooth sailing without problems.

At around 45,000 miles, I noticed that my car had developed a "ticking" sort of noise in the engine during acceleration. However, once the engine got warmed up the noise went away, so I didn't give it much thought. My extended warranty wasn't going to expire till 60,000 miles and I figured that if the problem got worse I would just have to make sure to have it checked into before then.

At around 55,000 miles (a couple of days ago), I finally decided to do something about it (that warranty expiration was getting too close!). So I drove the car up to a local Nissan dealership, where I left it overnight (so they could hear the cold engine ticking the next morning). At first, they couldn't replicate the problem, but I persisted, and they were eventually able to hear it.

Turns out, my engine had developed "piston slap", where the pistons were hitting the side of the cylinders when they went up and down. The compression in cylinder #1 was only 90 PSI, when it was supposed to be 175 PSI! Not only that, but there was scoring of the metal where it had been rubbing together, and there were metal shavings in the oil. So yeah, not pretty.

So they gave me a new engine.

How do you like that? 5,000 miles from warranty expiration and my used car gets a whole new lease on life! I hope it lasts me a long time, because I still owe a small fortune on that darn car.

Busy-ness

Man, things have been so crazy busy lately. Everyone wants a piece of the Tornado Design pie, and it's everything we can do just to stay on top of things.

Just this last Friday, we landed a job with Warner Bros. Records, revamping a multi-media CD for Green Day. The deadline was Tuesday, and we actually managed to meet it (although I had to work practically all weekend). Then, out of the blue, they referred *another* project to us, a multi-media cd for the Gipsy Kings. The deadline for that CD was Wednesday (today), and we managed to meet it, too! So yeah. Things have been pretty crazy lately.

In other news, I re-vamped my living room last week! I got a new entertainment center and a much-needed coffee table that I've been wanting for a long time. I'll have to post some pictures or something.

My Personality

Ok, so I just took the Myer's Briggs personality test and, according to the results, it seems that I'm riding the fine line between eNTj and eNTp.

eNTj:
"Fieldmarshals will usually rise to positions of responsibility and enjoy being executives. They are tireless in their devotion to their jobs and can easily block out other areas of life for the sake of their work. Superb administrators in any field -- medicine, law, business, education, government, the military -- Fieldmarshals organize their units into smooth-functioning systems, planning in advance, keeping both short-term and long-range objectives well in mind. For the Fieldmarshals, there must always be a goal-directed reason for doing anything, and people's feelings usually are not sufficient reason. They prefer decisions to be based on impersonal data, want to work from well thought-out plans, like to use engineered operations -- and they expect others to follow suit. They are ever intent on reducing bureaucratic red tape, task redundancy, and aimless confusion in the workplace, and they are willing to dismiss employees who cannot get with the program and increase their efficiency. Although Fieldmarshals are tolerant of established procedures, they can and will abandon any procedure when it can be shown to be ineffective in accomplishing its goal. Fieldmarshals root out and reject ineffectiveness and inefficiency, and are impatient with repetition of error."

eNTp:
"ENTPs are usually verbally as well as cerebrally quick, and generally love to argue--both for its own sake, and to show off their often-impressive skills. They tend to have a perverse sense of humor as well, and enjoy playing devil's advocate. They sometimes confuse, even inadvertently hurt, those who don't understand or accept the concept of argument as a sport.

ENTPs are as innovative and ingenious at problem-solving as they are at verbal gymnastics; on occasion, however, they manage to outsmart themselves. This can take the form of getting found out at "sharp practice"--ENTPs have been known to cut corners without regard to the rules if it's expedient -- or simply in the collapse of an over-ambitious juggling act. Both at work and at home, ENTPs are very fond of "toys"--physical or intellectual, the more sophisticated the better. They tend to tire of these quickly, however, and move on to new ones.

ENTPs are basically optimists, but in spite of this (perhaps because of it?), they tend to become extremely petulant about small setbacks and inconveniences. (Major setbacks they tend to regard as challenges, and tackle with determin- ation.) ENTPs have little patience with those they consider wrongheaded or unintelligent, and show little restraint in demonstrating this. However, they do tend to be extremely genial, if not charming, when not being harassed by life in general."

GED

I just learned that my little sister Charity took the GED and got a score of 3,480. The average GED score is only 2,250. She basically placed in the top 1-5% of the state.

Wow.