Diary of a Network Geek

What happens when you torque converter goes out?

Well, for starters, you stall at stop lights a lot. That’s what happened to me on the way home on Friday. Twice. I almost messed myself.
But, I got it home and called a friend of mine who has his own garage business. He’s real good about trading me free computer advice for free car advice. And, he’s got damn good rates, too. Mainly, though, it’s just nice to have someone I know I can trust.
Anyway, he came by and took a quick look at it on Saturday, which is when we discovered that the Explorer had: A) a leak and B) almost no transmission fluid in it. So, we poured in the magic transmission goop that he said we should buy and got a quart of trans fluid to pour in, too, just in case. Well, that helped a lot, but it still stalls out at a stop light if I get it up to 45 mph before stopping. So, he’s going to take a look at it tomorrow for me.
He says he thinks it’s the torque converter solenoid that’s sticking, whatever that is. It sounds expensive. *sigh* But, not as expensive as getting a transmission rebuilt! So, all in all, it could be worse.

Stay tuned!

While I was looking for something totally unrelated, I came across the following news story:

“Marjorie Nighbert, a 76-year-old Florida woman, was hospitalized in 1996 after a stroke. Before her hospital admission, she signed an advance directive that no “heroic measures” should be employed to save her life. On the basis of that directive and at the request of her family, the hospital denied her requests for food and water … Until her death more than 10 days later, Nighbert was restrained in her bed to prevent her raiding other patients’ food trays.”

The Washington Post National Weekly Edition, January 13, 1997, page 23.

This is truly the most horrific and cruel thing I have read in years. Since when were “food and water” considered heroic measures? Why didn’t the family do something? At what point did denying her food and water seem like a reasonable thing to do? How could a doctor, having taken the Hippocratic Oath, allow such brutality to occur?
Is it any wonder why law makers want to protect us from ourselves? We hold ourselves as an enlightened society, superior to the rest of the world, but things like this go on here still. I’m simply stunned.

Wanna’ be the next Red Hat?

Well, here’s a site called Linux From Scratch that will help you do it. The whole site is dedicated to creating a Linux distribution from the ground up. And, if you have a particular application in mind, like a firewall, you can go to Beyond Linux From Scratch and get info there.
Of course, Red Hat has all the marketing and support stuff knocked out already, but still, you could have your very own distro. Hmmm, imagine that, the Official Diary of a Network Geek Linux Distro. Sounds yummy, doesn’t it?

Well, enough dreaming, back to studying for my Linux+ test!