Neanderpundit

My optometrist, Dr Wes Molenaar, the coolest optometrist on planet earth, stops by this morning at ten, and we ripped the back off the pig of his truck to chage one of the oil seals. That was an in and out, we were done before noon. Dr Wes is a spry 70 something, and is down under the truck hammering around like a teenaged kid. Like me, he’s cheap and mistrusts the work of most shops.

This afternoon Partner and I replaced the fuel pump in the older sploder. Back when I was having troubles with it, before i realised it was a self inflicted manufacturing defect, I replaced the fuel pump. As of about March, the fuel pump decided it was not long for the world. The original pump was probably still fine.

So let me just say something to the Robert Bosch corporation, who made the pump that failed before 140,000 miles were up: Fuck you in the neck, you kraut motherfucker. While I’m thinking of it, you gave Partner and I some grief withy his Alfa before we managed to figure out it’s problem, so for Partner’s Alfa and it’s annoyances, fuck you in the neck too. And I think there are a few lost victories I remember at Indy due to the failure of Bosch components, so fuck you in the neck for that too. Dumbasses.

Anyhow, it’ll need a shakedown, but i think it’s gonna be fine now. Still runs smooth as silk, after 400,000 miles.

Beat now, a long day of wrenching. Off to bed.

have a handful of car repairs to do today. The fun, it never ends.

of women doing the job I do.

Oh, there are plenty of women in engineering jobs, in fact there are quite a few of my customers who have talented and in fact inspired engineers of the female persuasion.

Field work, not so much. They don’t even apply for the jobs. I’ve had a few that I practically begged to come apply for jobs at my company, and they all begged off.

I wish to hell I knew why. It isn’t as if my colleagues were mysogynists, in fact like myself most of them would rather work with women, because as a general rule female engineers are more ordered and methodical than men. It isn’t as if the job is particularly difficult, because for a gifted engineer it isn’t, and as I’ve already said the most of them I run across are in fact gifted.

In fact in memory the only woman I encountered in my travels was an engineer named Susan who worked for Brown and Sharp, working on CMM’s. Susan was very good, and in fact is still one of the most respected women in the business. She was on a job I was also working, some eighteen years ago.

I remember she drank hard in off hours. In retrospect the loneliness of the road must have worn on her, it was early enough in my career that I had yet to be beaten down by the road. She was a seasoned road warrior, and in the couple weeks we worked together I learned a lot from her, about how not to let life on the road plainly suck out your soul. Maybe by hearing her warnings- which I heeded- I saved myself from being battered as badly as I might have, I don’t know.

I do know that people like Brigid are one in a billion. And she’s so much more talented in every way even than many of the men whose nearly exclusive territory she occupies.

Watching what she does and seeing how she works helps me understand some of the sense of weary sadness that I sensed from Susan, all those years ago.