My wife got a gift cert last Christmas for Texas Roadhouse (a US restaurant chain). Past experience told me it would be okay but nothing to write home about, especially since the local joint is a new franchise. No big whoop. It was okay but I make a better steak at home.

We sit down and the girl comes up to take our drink order. "I'll have a Shiner Bock." "Um, what's that?" "Just the official-unofficial national beer of Texas." "Oh. We don't have that." "How about a Lone Star, then?" "We don't have that, either."

I didn't really want a Lone Star, but what the crap is up with a restaurant resting its laurels on its Tex-itude and NOT serving the two largest Texas beers?

So my vehicle failed the environmental inspection today, prerequisite to getting your registration and tags renewed in my neck of the woods. It was spewing 50% over the allowed max of hydrocarbons, which means either unburnt fuel or oil (I hope it's not oil!) is coming out the exhaust. I mean, it could be as simple as a bad spark plug, but I changed those all last August, so I'm betting more complex. O2 sensor, catalytic converter work, etc. all is going to cost me way more than I want. If it's oil it could be as bad as a leaky head gasket.

And my reward for passing is to pay the state DMV another 130 USD for the registration... yea me!

The only upside is probably better fuel economy once it's done. And I had an excuse to order up some maintenance that I'd been putting off (due to sheer laziness). But for now I am sans voiture and will like be several hundred USD poorer by week's end:(

Inspections? Gah. Just another way for the gov't to get more money from people under the guise of promoting public/environmental safety. If they REALLY wanted to make cars safer/reduce emissions to help save the planet they'd give car owners incentives to fix their cars or trade up for better/safer/more enviro-friendly models. (I remember cash for clunkers, but besides that I don't think they've done much in a similar vein.)

Running your old car for twice as long is far more environmentally friendly than buying a new car. A metric fuckton of energy goes into producing those things. The inspection is free if you fail, you pay 19 USD when you pass, so I doubt it's a huge profit center for them, in fact, I think that's the encouragement you mentioned to keep your car maintained. It really is about keeping the air clean in the big cities (the only places in my state where it's required save one rather odd valley that just doesn't have any airflow, I guess).

I remember what air was like in the bad areas back in the 80s, truth be told I'm grateful for the standards. Still, it sucks to be stuck with a sudden, and still unknown, repair bill.

There's another thing to consider as well. When you old car finally has the decency to die, your new one will have more advanced technology and hence will be more eco-friendly than the one you would've bought with government incentives many years earlier.

Also, the cash for clunkers program in the UK resulted in the scrappage of many rare cars that I would rather have seen restored.

Don't suppose your friend with the hotted-up Porsche would let you use it for a loaner...

I'm going to bitch about the fact that there is a "bitch about life" thread.

Ironically I am chatting with him right now about the final bill... 1257.73 USD:(

The odds of him loaning me his Porsche (any of the 3, actually) are probably worse than the odds of him loaning me pretty much anything else, between his cars and his wife I'm not entirely sure which he loves the best;)

I know the feeling. We're thinking about selling an older sports car that we've had since 1995, and I'm not sure I can stand to part with it.

Keep it for an even 20 years;)

Heh - well, it IS eligible for classic car plates as of last year so we're debating that, too.

Anyway, I hope the repairs come out okay. A bit of a bummer when the trusty steed has to go under the knife.

The car's back in my parking spot at home. The repairs should be done in the short term. I've got another 1000 USD in stuff that needs to be done, 150 is belt changes which I probably will do pretty soon, the other stuff I can save for several months, the worst one is CV joints, they've still got life left, and you can't hear them yet, but they said the boots were opening up on the axles which means they will go.

As for the environmental quality test, I'll do that in the AM, the infrared at the shop put me way, way below the hydrocarbon threshold after the repairs (seriously, the catalytic converter and the O2 sensor in one shot, fuck me!) so I'm not worried about passing this time.

Okay, I've had enough, therefore I must bitch.

I don't have the slightest idea of what I really want to do about my professional life. I am a graduate in Aeronautical Engineering, one of the hardest majors in one of the top brazillian universities. Yep, it's the kind of major people double-take when you tell them - except I hate it.

It was a 5-year course. For the first 3 years, me and all of my classmates kept thinking "It's going to get better next year". It didn't, and in the 4th year nobody could even care anymore. Many thought about leaving, but I think we all decided it was too late, and stayed. Perhaps the next phase would prove things weren't so bad.

Then came the last year, and most people got into internships. It took me until middle of the year, but eventually I did, too. And while I found most of my colleagues were coming into terms with engineering and actually liking it, I just couldn't. Of the planned 6 months of internship, I left on the third, by the time it became truly unbearable to get up and go to work. By then, I had already changed focus, and decided to try trainee programs for administrative positions, which, I believe, was where I really wanted to be.

I signed up for some 17 different programs. 15 of them called me for the group tests. I failed 13 before I gave up. Bottom line: I do not have the psychological profile an administrator needs. In fact, from the little feedback I got, I recon I'm the perfect engineer.



I'd love so much to make those combustible lemons to burn life's house down.

So I hate what I'm meant to do (I come from a lineage of engineers, actually), and I'm not fit for what I really want to do.

Since I graduated in december, I've joined the competition for public jobs. They pay well, are more relaxed, and give you stability (that is slowly changing for the good of the nation, but even if they gave as much pressure as private companies, they would still be better). It's extremely hard to get into them, but all you need is to do well in a test, and that's what I'm good at (it's the social skills that get me).

Problem is, you have to wait for the jobs to come by, and it's a slow process. Even if you go better than everybody else in a test, you might still need to wait up to 2 years to be called. And since I'm only beginning, I'm running for jobs that will get me a third of the payment I'd get if I went to engineering. Okay, I can live with that and stability, but now come's the catch: my father has cancer.

Chemotherapy has left him in a pretty bad shape, and the cancer is not getting better. I think he won't last much longer. As far as this one rant goes, it means I need money - fast.

And there you go - I have nowhere to run now. I have 3 options - engineering, administration, public jobs. The first I hate, nobody will want to hire me for the second, and the third, though probably the best option in the long term, is too slow. If I get a job in a private company, I won't have the time to study for the public job tests. That, and I don't really know how I'd get into a private company anymore. Most would certainly ask what I've been doing in the last months.

For the last part of this rant, the reason I wrote it right now: I just found out a powerful bank (one of those I'd like to work on) is recruiting for a trainee program in my city (a very rare opportunity). However, it's not just for administration, but for sales. I even went to their website and began to put down the information they wanted, until it finally hit me - Sales? With my social skills? Not a chance.

So, there it is - my own long, over-detailed and boring bitching. I just felt like I needed to tell this story somewhere, and this is perfect.

Very sorry to hear about your father. That's a tough thing to wake up to every day.

For some positive reinforcement, I'll suggest that you don't count out the banking position with its emphasis on Sales. I used to suck at customer interaction, too. Just friggin' terrible at it. But being in that position will make you better at it if you let the job teach you to work with customers.

One thing that eventually helped me was that I figured out that the customers come to me for help, and it simply feels great to work with them to solve their problems and get them back on their way. Now I actually enjoy it, because experience and exposure has enabled me to relax around both first-time and long-time customers and just enjoy meeting new people. So one of the things I used to dread has turned into one of the things I really enjoy about this line of work.

I say go for it.

I know, it would be great if I could get the job. I'd love to develop my people skills, and that would certainly help, but the selection process is very hard - they're really going for the naturals, those who either were born with them, or have already mastered such skills.

If I ever want a job like that, I will have to develop then on my own. I do want to do that, but it takes time. I even have a minor speech disorder - unless I really concentrate, I speak really fast, and people around me don't often understand. I'm taking care of it, but it should take some time too.