With a name like "The Rings of Power", I knew I was going to see an exciting documentary series about the development of piston rings. Piston rings were used as far back as 1825, so they're not exactly a new thing, but the show started off with people waving swords around and wearing metal armor. There is such a thing as starting your story too early. Just as I feared, by the end of the first episode they still hadn't even mentioned the hemp packings that predated rings on steam engines.

My initial rating on this show is 2 Mario Bros.

Last night I heard a bad noise from the parking lot outside my apartment. I peeked out the window and saw a guy stacking one of the decorative bricks back on to the landscaping that he had hit. I took the kitchen trash out before the weather deteriorated this morning and saw this:

Hmm, one seems to be missing.... Oh, there it is:

I guess that's why he sounded so upset last night.

Around lunchtime I saw a tow truck pulling away and a brick sitting on the ground. It looked like he called for help and they cranked the wheels far enough over to pull it out.

Some years ago, I found myself with a dead battery in the office parking lot. One of my coworkers tried a jumpstart. His puny little four-banger couldn't do anything more than produce a sad little click on my very large heavy-duty V8, so he took me down the street to the nearest store and I bought a new battery.

Now, it's important to put yourself in the shoes of an average city-dweller with no particular mechanical or automotive interest to understand what happened next. He'd always lived in town. He'd had a cell phone for years. He'd always had AAA. If you look at a modern engine and then at all the fasteners involved in changing the battery from the perspective of a totally non-mechanical, non-electrical, non-handy type, you can see how it might be a little intimidating.

After he saw me replace a battery in the dark in only a few minutes without even getting my office clothes dirty, he realized that it was actually pretty easy, just a step-by-step process you had to understand and a couple of tools. It inspired him to do a little learning, even though he always had help close at hand, simply because he saw value in being just a little more self-sufficient.

But that didn't make him reckless. The next time he had a problem that, at a glance, seemed like it should be easy, he sat down to do his own research. He saw that it was clearly more than he could handle, so he had a shop do it.

That's the best possible outcome. He will never do much of his own work, nor should he because that's not his background or his interest. It really isn't mine either, and he knew that, so seeing me just casually do something that had always looked like black magic flipped a switch in his head. It gave him the power to make his own decision, and he had the wisdom to know his own limitations.

Excerpt from a police report on an accident:

A preliminary investigation has found that the vehicle was traveling east on 223rd Street. The vehicle went over the railroad tracks in Bucyrus, lost control, went into the south ditch causing it to go airborne. The vehicle crossed 3rd Street in the air, struck a tree, struck the roof of the residence and landed on its side trapping the driver. Speed is believed to be a factor.

The driver lost control at the railroad crossing and hit the ditch fast enough for the car to go flying over the street, bounce off a tree, bounce off a roof, and land in somebody's back yard. Yes, I think there is a chance that speed might have been a factor here.

Rolling down the interstate.

@HammerheadFistpunch That class is clearly not named correctly. It should be "Leadership in Large Companies".

@HFV The engine doesn't have boost so they use boosted paint to make sure every car can have boost. But if they put that paint on a car with the turbo it would be too much boost and the car would explode.

@Highlander Volkswa Genitalia?

I had to hit a Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep/Ram/foo/bar/baz dealership parts counter, which was near the back of the lot in a separate building with all the service and repair work. This was on display by the door. I was short on time and the light was bad, so no really good pictures.

When people make a mess at S.H.I.E.L.D., they really make a mess. So I think I should make the budget work to get myself a Viper.

The Viper AS1050R runs dual brushes at 240RPM and can scrub a 3-foot swath at 5mph. They claim it can clean over 84000 square feet per hour and scrub its way up a 16% grade. It has 53 gallon solution and recovery tanks - no running dry at critical moments. And I can use its USB power outlet to keep my phone charged while I work to ensure that I'm always reachable in case of a custodial emergency.

To be clear, wanting a Viper isn't about the bragging rights, or the night shift basement corridor racing scene, or the women. Sure, all of those are great, but really it's about the heroes. I don't mean me, no matter how often people say I'm the real hero I still don't feel like one. I mean the field agents who lay it on the line to keep the rest of us safe. You can't afford to have your team distracted by a grimy floor when the fate of the world could be hanging in the balance. After all, all of us in the business know that Kim Philby used spills to distract people when he smuggled secrets to the Soviets during the Cold War, and a key strategy in the HYDRA infiltration was leaving greasy fingerprints on the interview room walls.

A while back I got a call from Kraus who cleans the Avengers compound. Almost her whole crew was down with the flu. Next thing I know, there's a big battle on TV, and then half the world turns to dust. And who had to clean up all that dust? Only about half the janitors were left. I had to give Bobby's wife a vacuum cleaner bag of his remains, and I didn't even have time to go get a flag to drape over it even though he died in the line of duty wiping down the doorknobs in corridor 3C.

People were still finding that stuff two years later. With the right cleaning equipment maybe they could have stayed focused and reversing the snap might not have taken 5 years. See, the real reason I want- no, not want, need a Viper AS1050R is for all of you, and for the rest of the world, and for the whole universe.

Here's some footage of this baby in action:

@tophercrowder Robin Williams: "I had to stop drinking alcohol because I used to wake up nude in front of my car with my keys in my ass."

@CarsOfFortLangley Considering the official subject matter, shouldn't this be somehow based on the Chevron logo?

@Fish-McSticks What kind of plebe would do a single-engine swap? If you're not going to step up to at least two engines then why even bother.

@davesaddiction But that rake is broken!

@fhrblig I can't speak to beard oil, but more generally I haven't been very impressed with the scents of the handful of men's beauty products I've tried. I wouldn't say they were all unpleasant, but none were something I'd want to smell all day.

@facw As @jminer pointed out, in MO you get a paper temp tag from the dealership, which they get as a book of blanks from the state. St Louis is also right on the border with IL, so you have a lot of people who buy a car in one state and live in the other. You'd see a lot of temp tags even if you did issue real plates at the dealership for in-state buyers.

All of the things that you bring up require money and technology that are hard to come by in most of the state. For St Louis in particular, there is also widespread hostility toward police (which is beyond reasonable but not entirely unjustified). That makes funding more advanced enforcement tools a tough sell, especially when much more serious crimes are completely out of control right now.

@ForSweden The area has always had a problem with fake temp tags, but after a lot of the local cities stopped enforcing plates it got much worse because as long as you had something you'd blend in well enough.

A man in St Louis has been arrested on a federal forgery indictment for selling counterfeit temporary tags. He was also selling fake insurance cards and fake dealer plates. A search of his residence turned up fake car titles. Other coverage said that the search found signs that he may have been trying to figure out how to counterfeit money.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-edmo/pr/st-louis-man-accused-manufacturing-fake-vehicle-temporary-tags

The investigation started when a cop pulled somebody over because the temporary tag looked wrong and his city was ramping up plate enforcement after ignoring it for the past few years. An explanation of the possible charges for using a counterfeit motivated the driver to reveal how she obtained it. That led to an undercover operation, the seller was in the next town over so that brought in a second local police force, and counterfeiting state documents brought in the Missouri Department of Revenue and the Secret Service.

@ForSweden So... kind of like when you bash the zombie in the head?

@davesaddiction I give it a qualified "no". The company in its current form probably isn't going to make it, though maybe 5 years is a little pessimistic? It might live on in some form through acquisition by somebody else. That could mean anything from going ahead with the current designs to just slapping the Rivian name on a glorified golf cart.