A bad joke

This isn't mine, just passing it along. Don't have much else for this blog because this month's been a waste -- haven't been able to walk worth a flip for most of it due to injury, so my motorcycles are lurking unhappily in the garage and the Jeep is getting tired of the trek to work and back every day not getting any raw beef thrown its way.

So...

A gynecologist had become fed up with malpractice insurance and HMO paperwork and was burned out. Hoping to try another career where skillful hands would be beneficial, he decided to become a mechanic. He went to the local technical college, signed up for evening classes, attended diligently, and learned all he could. When the time for the practical exam approached, the gynecologist prepared carefully for weeks and completed the exam with tremendous skill. When the results came back, he was surprised to find that he had obtained a score of 150%.

Fearing an error, he called the instructor, saying, "I don't want to appear ungrateful for such an outstanding result, but I wonder if there is an error in the grade."

The instructor said, "During the exam, you took the engine apart perfectly, which was worth 50% of the total mark. "You put the engine back together again perfectly, which is also worth 50% of the mark."

After a pause, the instructor added, "I gave you an extra 50% because you did it all through the tailpipe, which I've never seen done in my entire career."

-- Badtux the Easily-amused Penguin

Trabant!

East Germany's national car was the Trabant, a cramped and woefully obsolete atrocity with a maximum speed of 62mph that was suspended on transverse coach springs (no shock absorbers) and powered by a 600cc 2-stroke engine that smoked (and sounded) like a chainsaw engine. The only advanced feature of the Trabant was its front-engine front-wheel-drive layout, in an era (the early 50's) when most cars had a rear-engine rear-wheel-drive layout. Here is an example of a Trabant in action, trying to tow a dead Czech 4x4 out of a yard:

Heh!

-- Badtux the Auto Penguin

The Two-story Outhouse Principle

The average GM assembly line worker makes $27/hour, the average Toyota assembly line worker makes $25/hour (but with profit sharing and overtime, the average GM worker makes $29/hour and the average Toyota worker makes $31/hour). So clearly the wages of line workers are not the problem with competitiveness. But the "corporate culture" of the United States cannot assign blame to management and government policies because that violates the hierarchical principal underlying all large organizations, the most sacred of which is "sh*t falls downwards". That is, no executive in American corporate (or governmental) culture today will ever admit that blame lies in flawed management decisions. That conflicts with the culture of arrogance. Rather, all blame will automatically be passed downward until it reaches the level of people unable to pass the blame further down even if said people have nothing to do with the decisions that led to the current problems -- line workers, in the case of Big 3 auto makers.

-- Badtux the Auto Penguin

Trip update

The Silver Demon worked perfectly on this trip. Granted, I didn't do any hard-core offroading -- I didn't even need to disconnect my sway bars. But it was just reliable as dirt. Which is pretty much what you expect from a design that is as simple as dirt.

I'm going to eventually put a long-arm suspension system and some big-ass tires on the beasty, but that'll wait until it's paid off. Until then, its current configuration -- a Jeep on the cheap -- does everything I need, if not necessarily everything that I want.

-- Badtux the Jeeping Penguin

The world's slowest mechanic strikes again

I'm doing the 24,000 mile service on my Jeep, and it took almost five hours just to change the front differential fluid and the engine oil and filter. Now, granted, I'm also inspecting other things, like the radiator fluid (added some distilled water and glycol), the power steering fluid (seems okay), and the brake fluid (doesn't need any yet, but it's on the line, so keep an eye on it). Not to mention inspecting the crosspin for wear, inspecting the Aussie Locker for proper operation (should ratchet if not being driven by the pinion, should lock solid if being driven by the pinion), and so forth. But still. This is ridiculous!

If I could rely on someone else to be as meticulous as me, I think it'd be worth it for me to pay someone. Problem is how to find someone as meticulous as I am who is educable as to the quirks of my Jeep (as vs. the sort who go, "I've been working on cars for 99 years, I know what I'm doing", well, okay, but the cars you were working on don't have the mods of my Jeep, which has a few more zerk fittings than a standard Jeep as well as that trick front differential with the ratchet in it!). Well, that and being able to afford that person, since you ain't gettin' that for cheap!

- Badtux the Wrenching Penguin
(Who still ain't done, I need to grease the zerks and inspect the brake pads, oh joy!).

Should we save General Motors?

There's been a lot said about General Motors - that the straits they're in are because they made bad cars or not enough small cars. Thing is, they sold more small cars last year than Chrysler and Ford combined and their cars were pretty good technically, if a bit cheap in the fit and finish department (plastick-y interiors and such) because of rampant cost-cutting. If I want a work truck, for example, I want a Chevrolet. Ford and Dodge trucks are designed for rich suburbanites as penis enhancement devices, Chevrolets are designed for work, which is why they have wider and lower beds than Dodge and Ford trucks (who wants to lift a hay bale up five feet into the bed of a jacked-up Dodge when they can lift it up three feet into the bed of a Chevy?). Then there's the notion of bad management. Well, their management certainly isn't the best on the planet, but it's no worse than any other automaker's management.

So what's the deal, then? Well, the deal is simple: HEALTH CARE. General Motors turned into a health care provider that sold cars. There is more health care than steel in a GM car, on a dollars and cents basis. The cost of providing health coverage for 1.1 million GM workers, retirees and dependents is over $10 billion per year. So we can say to GM, "okay, you can go bankrupt". But then 1.1 million people lose their health care coverage. Hundreds of thousands lose their pensions. Probably half a million Americans who are paid directly or indirectly by General Motors lose their jobs, as the failure reverberates through GM's suppliers, most of whom themselves would end up going bankrupt.

So while there's something to say about the notion "GM should not survive", this isn't the time. A down economy such as we have now simply can't take that sort of hit without going further into the hole. In the long term, we need to fix the health care system to take that burden off of GM's back and then do something about GM's management, which has not done a good job of thinking long-term over the past thirty years. But in the short term, unless something is done quickly GM is dead. And we get another half a million people without jobs on the street, and 1.1 million people with no health care. That's called "economic death spiral", folks. And no matter how much you detest GM, we can afford that even less than a bailout of GM.

-- Badtux the Economics Penguin

Hell's Grannies

They're coming for you!

-- Badtux the Easily Amused Penguin