My plan for today involved heading in to the office to sort out some problems so I can make plots tomorrow. This is somewhat time sensitive, as the plots are for my boss to present at the big panstarrs global team meeting on Tuesday. I figured I could head in about 3:00, and finish the work up by 6:00, and then head out to grab dinner, and see the meat counter at Safeway that one of my co-workers emailed me about.
Because, see, the only meat counter I've found is at Whole Foods, and that's kind of silly. I want to be able to talk to the meat guy, to peer through the glass case, and select "that filet, no, not that one, back one, and over one to your left." I'd like to be able to ask the meat counter guy for a specific cut of meat, or for suggestions as to what's good today. Unfortunately, no one does that anymore, so it's all pre-cut pre-wrapped stuff, with no one around to tell you anything about the stuff you're buying. We should all mourn the death of the local butchers.
Anyway, when I went down to get in my car, I discovered that it would not start. Nothing. No clicky sounds, no "guh-guh-guh-clunk," nothing. A check with the multimeter (yes, that was my first thought) showed that the battery had 6.68V. This is clearly not enough to make things go.
Luckily, I have met the guy who parks next to me, so I went to see if he could give me a jump. I have lived in Michigan for too long, and that has caused me to expect everyone to have jumper cables, and for every store in existance to sell them. Since there is no winter here (Today's low: 65 degrees), none of that is true. A quick trip to Sears to buy cables, we returned to discover that jumping my car results in the "alarm" to sound the horn. Repeatedly.
Google told me that this was not a sign of demons or gremlins, but rather the security feature my owner's manual conveniently forgot. To stop the horn, I needed to unlock the driver's door. Not start the car with that key, not push any of the buttons on the key, unlock the door. That kills the horn, allowing you to continue your jump-start-ification. Once the car was on, and running, I discovered that I had left the interior lights on Friday. I'm going to accept 75% responsibility for my car dying, since it would really be convenient if I had interior lights that illuminated when I opened the door, like every other car I've ever seen.
At this point, it was 5:00, and I had a car that ran, but had a dodgy battery. Since driving around charges, I took a quick trip over H-3 to Kaneohe, and then back. A quick check at home that the car would start again once I turned it off (it did), and I was able to start my plan of doing work at 6:00.
My original time budget was an hour for each of two tasks, with a buffer hour in case something ran over. This was quite the overestimate, as I was done and gone by 7:00. This allowed me to start my original plan, of heading to eat at Burgers on the Edge, followed by a check of the Safeway meat counter.
After eating, I went to the Safeway (it's only across the parking lot), only to find that the counter closes at 7:00. Oh well. I picked up some stuff for this week, including the bottle of "potato wine" (as Julie calls it) pictured above.
You might notice that there's a security cap. I didn't until I got home. So, protip for people stealing liquor from the Safeway on Kapahulu: they don't seem to set off any actual security system. Unfortunately, they are four kinds of hell to get open, even if you have piles of tools at your disposal. Forty minutes, and numerous scratches later, I had this:
I guess the lesson here is to make sure they take those things off before you leave the store. Also: turn off interior lights on your car.
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