Happy Days

It’s been a while since I had a good old fashioned downtrodden rant (about the length of time since my last blog post). So let’s get started. I have developed a habit, over the course of the last 20 years or so, of not only failing to look on the bright side of things (intentionally) but also mentally preparing and planning for the worst possible outcomes. For me, it’s a survival tactic (and I’ve recently found that it’s surprisingly common and has a name, defensive pessimism). Nevertheless, it has gotten worse over the last few years, much worse (or is it “better”). It’s now to the point that I actually will sometimes stop myself from getting excited about something I have every right to get excited about. My most frequent response to most things now-a-days is a muddled “meh” (said with slightly upward tone if ever so slightly on the upper side of “don’t-give-a-damn”, and downward if it’s negative). There comes a problem every now and then which threatens to make this behavior more exacerbated. When I actually do allow myself to get excited, and something goes wrong. Such was the case last night. As you all know, I am building a rock crawler. I am VERY close to finishing the front suspension with my custom designed and built 4-link coilover shock setup. In fact, all I was waiting for was enough money to buy the coilover shocks, and then mount them (all of the axel trussing, frame mounts, links, link ends, and axle rebuild have been done in the last few months). Well, I just hit my 5 year mark at work, and they have a thing where for every 5 years of service they give you a $500 gift of your choosing. Well it didn’t quite cover the shocks, but it put a pretty good dent in the price, and I was going to need them one way or the other. So I used the money to get them. I’ve been researching them for quite some time now, so I knew exactly what I wanted. Well they arrived yesterday. I was very excited when UPS dropped them off, but managed to force myself downstairs to finish some homework before I opened the boxes. I won’t bore you with the details, but there is some assembly required. The dual springs need to be installed, the natural ride height adjusted, and the whole setup fine tuned. Some of this is going to need to be done on the vehicle, but I figured I could assemble the springs and see how they looked complete. Right as I went to install the first spring, I encountered a problem. The spring won’t slide over the stop ring (I don’t expect you to know what this is, but the spring SHOULD glide smoothly over this both during assembly and while in use). So I ran downstairs and got my digital calipers and started taking some measurements. The ID (inner diameter) of the spring is correct, the OD (outer diameter) of the shock body is correct, however the stop ring OD is too large. In fact it interferes with the spring by 0.012”. And when you include the bolts which are supposed to clamp this ring down, it adds another 0.061” for a total interference of 0.073” (this is about 4 times the thickness of my thumbnail). This will not work… period. These things are brand new, fresh off of the machine (which is in Las Vegas somewhere) and they have a serious problem like this. Furthermore, they appear to have been designed this way. This means that they didn’t include springs in their design constraints (which has me concerned for other things). I can’t help but wonder how ANYONE has been able to utilize these shocks? Maybe they recently changed their design and failed to consider all of the appropriate information, but this design cannot work. And you know something, I really shouldn’t have let myself get so excited about them. Because when something goes wrong, and I have over $700 worth of CRAP that I can’t use, I get a little angry. And all of that excitement crawls into a cocoon for about 20 minutes, and when it emerges it has morphed into a vile, witty insult spewing, deep cutting, unreasonable, high concentration maniac fuel. This is a bad time to write someone and tell them they screwed up, but I did it anyway. Time will tell what their response is, but my plan now is to post a blunt and angry review on some of the 4x4 forums I frequent and then design and built my OWN stop ring (which will probably take several days of my scarce free time). The problem here isn’t that something went wrong and I’m overreacting. The problem is that “people” fail, and they seem to do so frequently related to the few things I allow myself to get excited about. Solution 1, “people” need to stop failing (this solution is trivial, it’s like having an eigenvalue of zero, it doesn’t mean anything and it’s not really possible). Solution 2, eliminate the ability of “people” to let me down (i.e. do not get excited about ANYTHING EVER AGAIN!). Solution 2 is workable, however it aggravates a pronounced antisocial condition, and certainly doesn’t do anything for improving my outlook on life. So lets make a list of upcoming events which I have already gotten excited about, or may possibly get excited about.

Hunting season starts soon, and I generally look forward to it. I should expect that the weather will be too hot, I will see nothing worth shooting, waste a few tanks of fuel and 3 weekends, and come home frustrated and empty handed.

We should have another baby soon. I should expect that the child will have significant illness/deformities and rather than succumb to these challenges shortly, will persist for years. Before the child eventually passes away, it will have destroyed our financial situation, our peaceful household, our marriage, and what little shred of sanity I have left.

I should be graduating next spring. I should expect that there will be an issue with credits which has somehow been looked over by both me and the academic advisor several times. This will prolong my graduation indefinitely because of a lack of motivation on my part.

I should get a promotion next spring when I graduate. I should expect that should I actually graduate, the position will fall through and I will have no choice but to leave my current job because they cannot pay me enough, and I cannot justify working for that kind of money with a BS in physics. Also, whatever job I do get will suck. Alternatively, I am offered the position, but at a significantly lower salary that is acceptable.

I should be able to get a new truck next year. I should expect that I will not be able to sell my current truck for anything near what it is worth, so I won’t have sufficient money to justify the purchase. If I do happen to sell my truck and am able to make a purchase, I will not be able to afford what I want, so I will settle for something which I can afford and hate it for the rest of my life (which is probably how long I will own the truck).

I have always wanted to retire early and spend a great portion of my life doing what I want to do each day. I should expect that the reasonable savings I have built up will be required for some unforeseen disaster (and although it may stabilize some bizarre situation for the time being, will delete my ability to stop working before death). Or that, try as I might, inflation just outpaces my ability to save. Or maybe my assumptions about future income will prove to be too inflated (as described above). Perhaps my will to live will have just withered and I’ll spend the last few years of my life urinating on sidewalks and cursing everyone around me under my breath. Or maybe I’ll move to Alaska and live like a filthy hobo in an abandoned bus (if there is room, some of the reports I am hearing lately suggest I may be one of many who end up in this situation).

I should state that my reasons for writing this stuff down isn’t because I think anyone will care. It’s more for documentation purposes, sort of a way to tell myself “I told you so” when I do something stupid. Also, to provide a few data points along the way so I can figure out how I ended up… however I will end up.