Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Interesting Parts of My Weekend

My weekend started a little early as I left work early Friday to go to the doctor.  Sure enough, I got pink eye in my left eye.  I got it in both my eyes last year.  Sucks getting it again.  So he prescribes me some medicine and I go to pick it up.  $100 bottle of eye drops.  I don't think so.  Had the pharmacists call the doctor back to get it changed as the last time I might have paid $10 for what I needed to fix the pink eye.  So I come back once it's ready and when I get home, it's an ointment and not eye drops.  So that makes it more annoying to do as it coats my eye as well.  So this part is no fun but at least the price dropped to $8 for it.  Only thing is it didn't say how long to put this very small tube of ointment on for.  So I called the doctors nurse and she said until it runs out.  That's going to be a good 2 weeks.  Hopefully it works as I'm not sure if it is or isn't right now.

Saturday morning and the first thing I needed to do was put down some weed and feed for the lawn while the dew still had the ground wet.  So knocked that out then I went to working on my car.

I borrowed some ramps to get my car up so I could change out the oxygen sensor on my car.  Bought the part around a week or so ago.  Got it a good price.  When I went into Advance Auto Parts, they didn't have it at that location and only one location in town did have it.  I had a coupon from a book I got from them in the mail.  The guy said if I bought it there, he would take 10% off for having to drive to the other location to get it plus take the coupon off.  Sounded good to me so bought it.  While the reciept was printing out, it printed out a rebate as well for $10.  So a $70 part I'm going to get for like $35.  I was happy about that.

Now to backup a little, I tried with a friend of mine that I got the ramps from to get the oxygen sensor off on Thursday.  We were on a time cruch and I couldn't get it off but the plug wasn't actually connected.  It just fell out when I touched it.  Which made us wonder if that's why it was showing up bad for the check engine light.  So he let me borrow his ramps and I went by Advance Auto Parts for them to check it.  It still showed the oxygen sensor was bad.

So back to trying to fix it myself, I got it up and no matter what I did, I couldn't get that bolt to turn.  I had even sprayed that oil lubricant to loosen up rusted bolts all over it.  Called my dad and if it's that stuck, I would need to heat that sensor with a blow torch to get it to expand so I could get it off.  However, having it up on a lift would make using it easier and just using the ramps wouldn't be a great idea as I didn't really have the room to be using it.  I called a shop I went to recently the last time I had an issue and the guy said if he could change it out in under 30 mins, he'd only charge me $20.  Said I'm on my way.

So I get there, he lifts it in the air and then he grabs a socket with a groove down the side for the wire section to go in for where the oxygen sensor wire is stilling out.  One good hard push and he got the sensor to turn and off it came.  Having the right tool for the job makes the world of a difference.  So $20 and my oxygen sensor is on.

When I was at Advance Auto Parts, that read out showed I was having misfires in the engine as well.  So I bought new spark plugs to replace the old ones.  That I knocked out myself fairly quickly.  Luckily I had a spark plug socket or it would have been a lot harder.

After all was said and done, I unplugged the battery for 10 mins to clear out the computer and then plugged it back up.  My check engine light is off.  My 1997 Saturn is driving smoother now like back when I first bought it and it still has air conditioning in it too.  It didn't lose it over the summer like last time.  I guess I should also mention that I replaced the E.G.R sensor in the car about 1-2 months ago as well.

After getting my car fixed, my 5 year old wanted to take her training wheels off again.  So I took them off and she finally got it.  She rode that bike on and off for most of the day, or rather, the rest of the weekend.  She got it down for turning while riding without stopping to turn around, got her to start pushing back for her brakes, got her to pedal up the drive way for the little hill climb and trying to get her to understand the importance of the rules of the road.  I had to make her get off and go inside since she didn't listen to me one time to make her understand that she has to be aware of her surrounds when riding a bike on the road.  I definitely need to keep a watchful eye on her until she understands when to get out of the way and how to pay attention to what's going on around her.

My wife finally finished Brave, The Disney movie Brave, so I could finally run through it on hard to knock out all the achievements she didn't get.  So I ran through it all and I got stuck, unable to beat 1 of the 4 bosses to finish it on Brave difficulity.  I was so frustrated.  The next day I finally figured it out and beat it only to not get the achievement.  I had to start a new game and beat it all the way through that way.  It's a lot harder without all the upgrades that I had from before.  I was smart though and made a new game save on the cloud instead of the xbox 360 hard drive.  So all the upgrades on the easy setting could be saved and not lost if my kids want to play with it on easy difficulity.  So last night after watching The Voice, I beat the game for a 3rd time and got the last achievement to finish the game. 

Saw on trueachievements.com this morning that beating Brave gave me my 140th completed game.  So that's cool.

I took Monday off to try to knock out this pink eye more but it's not making much of a difference.  So hopefully it'll mostly be cleared out before next week.

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