[Last week I missed Monday’s run due to not getting my clothes washed… but I got one in on Wednesday and Saturday]
The old Aerostar gave a mighty “click” on Friday and then refused to acknowledged me. This was in the parking lot after work. A nice lady offered to let me use her running car and my cables to get it started, which worked fine. And I drove home.
On Saturday morning I cleaned up the battery and the cables and it seemed to be somewhat better. But I had already ordered a battery on the NAPA website and decided that maybe with the starter going bad a few weeks ago and the stress on the old battery, maybe it was sensible to go ahead and change it out.
So I drove up to Raleigh, MS, the county seat, where the combination NAPA/hardware/feedstore had my size in stock. I traded in the old one for the core charge.
Then I wandered through downtown Raleigh which is less substantial than the HyVee business cluster in Pleasant Hill. But it does have a courthouse, being the county seat and all.
And I met a nice lady who seemed to be the owner/operator of the donut shop. I asked what was in the filled donuts and she said they hadn’t been filled yet. I asked for cream filling and she set me up.
Now the van just jumps into action like it can’t wait to go places. So it is notably improved.
I was reading a bit online today and some person who claimed historical experience said the Aerostar’s weak point was the transmission. And that is definitely the case in this one. But it is still letting me shift it manually. So we keep on driving it. One point of disagreement is that they also said the MPG should be in the low 20’s. I’m getting around 18, which isn’t very much better than my F150. Maybe that’s the manual shifting.
I spent some time today putting my speakers, amp and turntable back in action. I had a wicked hum for a bit but did some cleaning on the RCA connectors from the turntable and that seemed to help.
I have made some progress on boxes and getting pictures hung. Things are slowly coming into focus.
Work is going OK. I’m making headway. As far as I can tell I am ahead of any known deadline.
It is an interesting place. A privately owned company, they have a number of lines of business including some substantial manufacturing and some professional services. Not a lot of people doing what I am doing though, which has kind of surprised me.
The other thing that has been a bit of a surprise is that they don’t have an official HR office for the white-collar employees, at least not for my group. So I asked a couple of guys last week where they go when they have an HR type question, like if they get a jury summons in the mail. And they said they just take that to their manager. So to the best of my knowledge they don’t have an employee handbook or written procedures… or if they do they just trot them out when called upon.
Everybody says it is a great place to work. I’ve run into a couple of oddities, things which I’m sure they would have told me had I thought to ask, but I found out along the way.
Not much action on the house for sale. We hear from the RE guy and he seems to be alive and know who we are. Also he has stats of clicks and views of the online stuff. Apparently people are looking at it online. But we only know of one, possibly two, people going to look at it in person. That’s kind of disappointing.