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Ah, well into a new month, of a new year. Yup, my car's due for more problems, and like clockwork, it's reared its ugly head like a groudhog on its day. Lovely. Six more weeks of car fixing.

So I wake up this morning for church, barely coherent and definitely in need of another three hours of shut eye. As I cranked the engine and backed out, the car went "BEEEEP", and the coolant warning light came on, flashing.

I stop, pull back up the driveway, and pull out my trusty owner's manual. It says that I should stop immediately and that if there's steam coming out of the hood, I should not open it to check for leaks and stuff. Since I hadn't backed out more than 10 feet, no steam.

I shut off the car and run back in with manual in hand, trying to figure out my next move. The manual said to check the coolant level to ensure all is okay.

I run back outside and prop my hood, checking to see if the level was okay. Maybe a tad on the minimum level, but nowhere near empty. So I have enough coolant.

I don't have time to muck about, and I definitely don't want to drive my car - as much as I despise this now lemony wonder of joy, I just paid it off in November, and I'd like the extra cash in my bank over yet another five years of vehicle payment.

Long story short, I didn't have time to pull out the VAG until fifteen minutes ago. I sat in my car, freezing my ass off like you wouldn't believe. Needing a power source, I plug in my DC to AC inverter and boot up laptop.

My inverter starts going crazy. It beeps like a Chinese fire drill - a steady and loud piercing monotone breaking the silence of the still night air, reverbing through the tiny cabin of my Golf, making my ears squint and my eyes ache (or was that the other way around?).

So I shut off the power supply, but so too does my laptop - and I've already booted into windows 98; a hellacious slow process if I've ever waited for one.

Near to cursing, I turn the inverter back on and bear the banshee shrill as best as I could. Covering my ear with one hand and pecking with my other, I finally get the VAG program open and set it to scan.

Let me tell you, the world of computers has progressed. USB, no matter how slow it is (even USB2 is kinda slow) is light-years ahead of the good old serial port. Sure it worked in the day, and was even useful, but the transfer rate of such an ancient relic has had its day. That is to say, it took f-ing forever for the VAG to finish scanning, all the while having to put up with the inverter going "BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP".

Finally, after like five minutes, it does its thing and you know what? It doesn't throw a code! And there's no way to clear it. It just sits there stupidly, blink, blink blink. I was ready to swear, I really was. I threw a quick prayer to ask for some sort of divine patience, but I guess God ran out because I sure did. I slammed the laptop shut, yanked out all the cables attached to the car, and I wanted to cry.

Well, just. I took a deep breath, and put everything down (it's freezing in the car by the way). I re-adjust my driver seat, and I figure I'll start the car and warm it up, maybe the coolant level is low because of the cold. Let's warm it up to see what happens....

Only to hear my car go "Whirl, whirl, whirl." then nothing.

The stupid laptop and in-car lights drained the car's battery. I now have a piece of crap sitting on the driveway, rendered useless because of a simple thing like coolant and dead battery!

....So that new Civic looks pretty sweet.... posted by losir at 12:23 AM