For four years my sister and I, and a few friends here and there, have had something to talk about after almost every episode.  To keep humanity alive characters had to make decisions they hated, like forbidding any kind of abortion because the human population was so small.  And for four years, the humans, again in a rag-tag fugitive fleet, have been led by Commander Adama from the last remaining Battlestar for Earth, a planet they hope will be a safe place to life, will harbor advanced humans, and will give them the way to defeat the Cylons.  We’ve watched as some Cylons befriend the humans, but are still treated like outcasts by many due to hatred and prejudice.

And then the story is ready to wrap up.  I had read that the final episode may be 2 hours and the one before it sets up that episode.  I wasn’t sure if it was a 2 hour episode airing all at once or 2 separate episodes.  It was listed on the guide on my DVR as Daybreak, Part 1, and Daybreak, Part 2.  The episode before it was titled Islanded in a Stream of Stars.  So I wasn’t sure which one was the “ramp up” and if Part 2 was just the 2nd part or 2 hours (the guide didn’t show me for sure).  To be sure, I kept the episodes from Islanded in a Stream of Stars on the DVR, checking to make sure they were okay.  Then, last Saturday, when they were all on tape (and it turned out Daybreak, Part 2 was actually 2 hours and ten or more extra minutes!), I sat down with root beer and a special treat of store-bought (not air-popped) popcorn, ready to enjoy what I now knew where the last four hours of a journey I felt like I actually started 30 years ago.

I got through the first two one-hour episodes, then hit the ceiling in anger.  I have Verizon FiOS, which is usually perfect service, but somehow the Sci-Fi channel, and ONLY the HD feed, was messed up!  It actually stayed messed up the whole weekend, until some lazy idiot schmuck dragged his carcass out of bed on Monday morning and hauled his butt in to fix it.  So the HD version of the 2:10 finale was totally fubar on my DVR!  My sister had it on her DVR in the normal format, but that long a show won’t fit on a DVD for her to burn!  I finally find out it’s on On Demand, so Wednesday night I finally have time, curl up with another root beer, and find out On Demand is NOT working!

Well, tonight it was finally working.  Tonight, after 30 years I saw Commander Adama reach the end of his journey, along with tens of thousands of humans.  I know what happened to the humans now, and to the Galactica and to Starbuck and Apollo (the names of two pilots in the early version, but only their call signs in the later version).  I know how the Human-Cylon war ends.

And you know what?  While it was not worth waiting 30 years for that resolution, I do feel satisfied.  I feel like the ending fit the story and the characters all went in directions that were true to themselves and who they are/were.  There were religious issues and questions raised.  There were questions that were answered in ways I know a lot of people will just hate, and whether you hate the answer or not, in some cases, it only raises more questions.  I finished watching this hours ago and still my mind is spinning.  I’m still thinking about the implications, the questions, what I think the answers are, and where the show went from the start to the end.

I’m thinking about how the original was a cheesy show that couldn’t, with any degree of competency, address issues of good and evil, or bring up ethical dilemmas and make us agree that what we would normally consider wrong might, in some cases be right.  Yeah, it was cool for a teenage kid to watch, but this version, the good one, the real one, is for adults.  Many episodes don’t have a lot of action.  We’ve seen characters at their best and worst.  And now it’s over.  I don’t watch many TV shows, but there are some I’ve stuck with while they went on for a full decade, yet I have never felt like a show took me the places this one took me — especially in that finale.  This is one of the few TV shows that I want to have on DVD in entirety.  Not once did it insult my intelligence and every week it raised more questions to talk about with people I knew.  I can honestly say I am a better person because I watched all of this one show.

On the one hand, I’ll miss watching it, but on the other, I’m glad the story is complete because, at times, it’s been exhausting.  I think the series finale and the end of a two-part story earlier in this season are the most intense hours of TV that I’ve ever seen.  In many ways it’s good I did not see the finale after watching the two hours leading up to it.  The finale, on it’s own, was such a ride and, at some points, so intense, that I’m glad I was able to see it by itself and not after I had watched another 2 hours leading up to it.

This is probably only the 3rd time I have ever seen a finale that I felt was 100% appropriate for the show and the characters and it is the only time I have ever seen one that took me to some of the places this one did.

I still don’t know if doing seven dances for your first comp is hard or not. All I know is I did it. I figured I knew the dances so I might as well do them. It wasn’t costing me anything to try them.

Well, actually, it was costing me something. $25 an entry, but why pay for the price of a hotel room, the general entry fee, gas down and back to Raleigh (about a gazillion dollars at today’s prices), and not dance as much as possible? As long as it’s taking me a day and a half and I’ve already got a lot invested, why not just do as many entries as I could? After all, what’s the point in driving that far and spending that much money to do one or two dances totaling less than 3 minutes? So I ended up registering as a newcomer (as in never having competed before) in tango, foxtrot, waltz, Viennese waltz, cha-cha, rumba, and bolero.

To go into just what was going on when I was at the comp, I need to make two stops with the way-back machine. The first is in, as best I can figure now, the summer of 2005. I’ve already mentioned this in another entry, but it bears heavily on this, so I’ll bring it up again. One evening I drove over to The Dancespace to try beginning ballroom dance lessons. It took me a bit to find it and by the time I did, I was running a bit late. I climbed the steps (it’s on the 2nd floor) and looked through the square window in the door, at face level. I saw a line of men, moving in what seemed like unison, as they were trying a dance step. There was a line of women watching them. Everyone seemed to know what they were doing, even though it was a beginner’s class. I’ve said I left. The truth is I bolted down the steps to make sure nobody would see me.

That’s what going through kindergarten to twelfth grade in a school with the same kids constantly teasing you for your lack of coordination will do to you. Even in my 40s, there was still that kid in me that never could do anywhere near as well as the other kids in school and was terrified of trying any kind of movement in front of the others. Having teachers call me names like, “physical degenerate” in front of the entire grade didn’t help either.

So I walked up the steps to a dance class, finally conquering my fears, and I see everyone moving like they knew what they were doing and I took off. I figure it was the next summer before I was finally able to go back and try it again. It took me that long to get over all those childhood and teenage images of being inept and incapable.

The second stop with the way-back machine is last Wednesday. My business computer was working well after a recent RAID crash where I lost 3 out of 4 drives within minutes of each other, thus bringing the entire system down (note to self: never buy a Maxtor drive again, in this lifetime or any other). I had gotten it working again the previous week and now the last drive, the system drive, crashed (and yes, it was a Maxtor as well). The computer my whole business was based on was not working and the backups I had didn’t work as well as they should have.

Then the window in my car door was rattling, requiring me to take apart the door to fix it and I had to make an unscheduled trip to Charlottesville on Thursday. Friday I was rushing to get my computer so I could at least verify I hadn’t lost data, as well as having to pull the car door apart. I was covered in grease and going back and forth, from my computer to the car and back, depending on whether the computer was working or waiting for input (and I had to continuously wash my hands over and over!). Both were taken care of, but it resulted in me leaving about 2 hours late, picking up another dancer, then getting to the hotel 2 hours late and starved. By the time I finally got to sleep, knowing I’d have to be up early the next morning, it was late, even for me.

It’s my first competition and I get up for it exhausted from the past few days and can’t help remembering, as I’m getting ready to look smooth and suave, that less than 24 hours earlier I was sitting on the concrete, in grimy shorts and t-shirt, with grease splotches from the car window device all over my legs and arms. I don’t know if I clean up well, but at least I can be cleaned up.

We get to the dance studio for the comp and they’re running late. By now I’m really glad I know the Litany for Fear from Dune and I keep reciting it to myself under my breath. Then the dancing starts, about an hour late. (”I must not fear. Fear is the mindkiller…”)

If you’ve never been to a dance comp, it’s all done in heats. In each heat they have a number of couples on the floor dancing for about 60-90 seconds. You could be competing with dancers in that heat or in other heats. You can practice for weeks or months and it comes down to about a minute of dancing when they judge you. Sometimes you’re doing another dance in the next heat so you just stay on the dance floor for that one. If not, you leave the floor.

I’m in the 4th heat so my instructor and I walk out on the floor when we’re called and wait. Instead of starting the dancing, the announcer says, “Just a reminder that lunch is ready in the other room so you can eat it whenever you can take a break.” My instructor looked at me and said, “Okay, I’m ready for a break,” and started to walk toward the other room.

It was all I could do to keep from cracking up. For all I know, that made all the difference because right after that, I was much more comfortable and when the music started, we did a foxtrot. I wish I could say what the song was. I did notice it, but I didn’t recognize it. At least I wasn’t so nervous I didn’t know what was going on. I do know that when we did the Viennese waltz it was to a Strauss waltz, but other than the Blue Danube, they all sound the same to me.

Immediately after the foxtrot, we had the waltz, then skipped one heat and did the tango, where, again, instead of starting the music once we got out there, something else was going on, leaving me to start at my instructor and stand ready to dance for somewhere around a million years, until the tango music finally started. Then it was few hours off until it was time to do the Latin dances. That started with the bolero, then a good break, then the cha-cha and rumba.

By the time we reached the rumba, which was right after the cha-cha, I think my brain was a bit scrambled. While I haven’t taken French since high school, I was thinking in French and may have even started talking in French. I don’t know, but I missed them saying it was the rumba and was trying to ask my instructor what we were doing. It just wasn’t straight in my head, but once the music started and I heard the slow-quick-quick beat, I knew what to do. Then, when we finished, we walked off the floor and I was about ready to just collapse.

We have no idea how we’ve done until the awards, which were after dinner (which was about 45 minutes late and, of course, the awards were delayed even more). After announcing the big rewards, they announced certificates of participation. The other dancer from our studio, was called up first, then my instructor. We were surprised they called her up, since she wasn’t competing. (My heats were pro-am, with her being the pro, so I was being judged and she wasn’t.) She came back with a score sheet of all the dances she did with me and the one other dancer and I started looking at them when she pointed out one to me. I saw a box, with three columns, the first was our names, the second said, “Average Score,” and the third column said, “Place” and under that was “1.” I looked at it, wide eyed, then asked her, “Does that mean actual place as in first, second, or third? As in if it’s a one, I won?” She smiled and said, “Yes.

She let me have the sheet and I scanned it in a hurry, looking at every box with my name in it. One. One. One. One… All the boxes I could see with my name in them said “1″ in the place column. I looked for the one titled “Contested Tango.” Yep. One. And that’s when I started feeling happy. I did another scan and saw that all seven of my dances were there, each with a “1″ under “Place.” I looked up at my instructor. “Does this mean I won them all?” And she smiled, nodded, and said, “Yes.” “Yeah!” I said, then, without knowing I said it, “Yeah! Who’s your daddy!?!”

About that time they called my name for my participation certificate and the two of us walked up to get it and my smile got bigger and bigger as it dawned on me that I really did win every single dance I did!

We left soon after that, just the other dancer and I, so we could get back to Richmond. (After all, I had nobody to walk the dog that night, so I had to get back!) The poor guy! All I could think of was that first dance lesson, the one I saw through the door, and ran from. Over and over, on the drive home, I kept saying, “Damn!”, then, after another second or two, “Did I really do that?” It just would not sink in. It’s still not sinking in.

I honestly don’t know what it means. I don’t know what the other dancers were like and haven’t checked to see how many I was up against (I know I was competing with several others in some dances), but my lowest average score was 94, so I must not have done too poorly.

I do know it means a lot to know that the kid a teacher called a “physical degenerate” in front the entire grade did something a day ago that most of the show-offs at that school who called me names will never do: I placed first in seven different dances at my first dance comp.

It’s not about revenge or proving anything to them, but I do think with as much self-improvement work I’ve done on myself, it still took that to prove something to me.

(For pictures of me, my instructors, the other dancer from our studio, and some other dancers, click here.)

However, I’ve realized there is something that’s become a passion of mine in the past year that I have yet to write about here and it’s something I do love doing and talking about. Anyone that knows me knows I love cycling and enjoy walking and lifting weights, but that’s about the limit of any training I’ve had in movement.

And yet in August I’ll be competing in tango and a number of other ballroom dances. How did that happen?

What really gets me is when people say, “I can’t dance.” And I’ll dump some personal history here on why. I was the kid who never did any sports in school. It was a private school so we had to stay extra for athletics in high school. I helped with the trainers and did the hiking and canoing program when I could. I was not good at any sports at all and would have never made any team even if I had tried. All through school (I went to the same one from K to 12) I was constantly teased about my lack of coordination. One time we were playing volleyball and I swung at the ball, thinking I was going to actually get a good shot. Everything lined up perfectly and I put force into that swing and watched as my hand went up to meet the ball, then kept going. I missed the ball by 2-3 feet. Later my eye doctor explained that I have slight astigmatism. Long story short, the ball looked like it was where my hand was heading but there was no way I could tell it was farther away than I thought.

Fast forward to about 18-19 months ago or so. Actually a little later than that. I thought learning ballroom dancing would be neat and knew where they did lessons on Wednesday nights. I drove over there, went up the stairs, looked in, and saw one row of men and one of women and they seemed to know what they were doing. According to the clock, they should have just started. I was terrified looking at all those people who knew what they were doing. The men were in sync and the women could see everything the men did. I took off.

Finally, a few months later, I went back and started trying. Even for a simple foxtrot (for the guys, step forward on the left, forward on the right, step to the side with the left, then bring the right foot over to close — for steps, forward-forward-left-close — see how easy it is?) when the teacher started to show us, I started to feel like that kid in elementary school and felt like everyone was looking at me, taunting me and just waiting for me to fail (or fall!). I was facing a deep fear to do this and I kept coming back each week. After six weeks we were back to the same dance and I had forgotten everything. I didn’t learn much that first 9 months or so, but had started enjoying it.

About the only thing I did learn by going once a week was that I could face the fear and make my feet move the way the instructor showed me. Then about a year ago, that instructor opened her own studio. I started going one night a week, then two, then three, then also including their Friday night dance parties, which scared me to death when they first started because nobody was there telling me what to do when I got out on the floor.

I started this, in part, to face my worst fears and that’s what I did. Then, a few months ago, I realized that I was out there taking lessons or going to the party 3-4 or even 5 days a week, not to face my fears, but because I wanted to be dancing. It occurred to me during an advanced tango class that I no longer felt like the kid in elementary school that was scared to death of learning something new that I might fail at. I was actually looking forward to new steps and was facing them with confidence.

And now I’ll be competing in tango, bolero, and several other dances this August and am expecting to do a showcase dance for a special event at the dance studio this September. All this from the school klutz.

I’m so sick of people saying, “I can’t dance.”

There are a number of music services available now that let you pay a small price for a song, download it, and play it. But the question is what are they really offering? For example, Major League Baseball used to sell videos of games online. You could pay for a game, download it, and watch it as much as you wanted on your computer. Then, a little while later, MLB changed their system. Suddenly all the videos people had downloaded would no longer play. People had paid for videos, expected to be able to watch them whenever they wanted, and without any warning these videos were suddenly nothing but useless files on their hard drive. Someone I know has a subscription to Rhapsody, a music service by Real.com. Rhapsody has made some changes and suddenly this person is not able to download or play their music as before.

This is the result of something called DRM. Officially DRM stands for Digital Rights Management, but it might be more accurate to say it means Digital Restrictions Management. Record companies are scared. The big stores have had to close and their entire business model is changing. This fear is leading to a lot of dumb moves, including heavy use of DRM. What this means is that you can pay for music and they control it. You can buy a song, but only play it on certain devices. If they decide to change their business methods, you may no longer be able to even play that song again, just as all the customers of MLB’s video service suddenly lost the ability to watch videos they had paid for.

This is where “free as in speech” comes in. Free speech is about being able to say what you want, to express yourself, and to have control over your freedoms. Even most music on iTunes is not free as in this sense. Buy a song for 99 cents and you can play it on your iPod or several other devices, but that’s it. You’re limited in how many places you can play it and adding and removing devices can be problematical. Recently iTunes has added a new possibility. For $1.29, instead of $.99, you can download songs that are in a higher quality sound format than their regular MP3 files and these new songs are DRM free. For an extra $.30, you can download songs you can play anywhere you want.

This is free music. Yes, you pay for it, but once you get it, you control it. If your computer crashes and you want to play it on another computer (provided you’ve backed it up), there’s no issue with authorized devices. Free. Play it where you want, when you want it and they can’t change their system down the line to make it unplayable later.

Another interesting side story involves Microsoft and their take on DRM. They have been pushing DRM for a few years. If you examine the new features in Vista, you’ll find that there is more in Vista focused on DRM than anything useful. From their point of view, this makes sense. If they can control what you do with songs and videos you pay for, and collect fees for doing so, they make a lot more money. They start controlling how, when, and where you can listen to and view your songs and videos. Last year they came out with a music player called the Zune. At that time they had been using a format called “PlaysForSure” for DRM. Here’s the catch: If you had downloaded songs under “PlaysForSure,” then tried to put them on Microsoft’s own music player, they wouldn’t play. After buying music from Microsoft and their partners, if you wanted to listen to it on their player, you had to pay to download the songs again. You buy it. They control what you do with it.

So what makes sense? Paying someone for music they can control or paying someone else for music you control?

So far I’ve only covered a small part of the story. I haven’t touched on the file sharing issue. In short, record companies feel they are losing money because people buy songs, then make them available, for free, through file sharing. I won’t go into that on this post, but in short, it’s not only illegal, it’s immoral. It’s one thing to have control over my music, it’s another to give it to the world so people don’t pay those who created it. There’s also Sony’s debacle. To protect music on some CDs they were selling, they put a hidden program on the CDs. If you ever played one of these CDs on Windows, it secretly installed this program which actually made your system vulnerable to attacks by viruses. At any level, hurting your customers like this is just plain dumb — and that’s going with a polite interpretation.

So, after saying all this, how about doing something to solve the problem? Here are links to several places on the web where you can download music that is not restricted by DRM:

1. iTunes: Perhaps the best known online music store of all. They sell music that is both DRM protected and DRM free (as in no restrictions). Just be clear on what you’re buying before you buy it. The DRM free tracks sell for $1.29 instead of $.99. The only issue to be aware of is these tracks are also in a different format, providing a better sound (MP3 files have some issues with quality). Instead of being MP3 files, they are in AACS. Check to be sure your music player can play this file format before downloading.
2. MTraks: Sells DRM free music of all different types. They also seem to be focused on providing a place for discussion and to build a community around the music you like.
3. Amie Street: Not only does this site provide DRM free music, which is free as in speech, but it provides music that is free, as in beer. They have an interesting pricing model. The more a track is downloaded, the higher the price goes. If you’re like me, and more interested in the non-mainstream, then you can find a lot of music that’s free.
4. Amazon.com: The granddaddy of all web stores offers music for download, but, even better, is that it offers DRM free music. I’ll add a warning that I have not fully explored what they offer, so I would advice checking to see if the tracks you’re downloading are DRM free or not. Perhaps it’s all DRM free, I just haven’t had time to check it.
5. Walmart.com: It hurts me to include this, but even a broken clock is right twice a day. While I boycott Wal-Mart for many reasons, one thing they’ve got right is selling music without DRM. This is a link to the music part of their site where you can buy DRM free music.

I have not bought music from any of these online stores. I’ve checked into them and looked up some info on them but I have to admit I’m still stuck on the idea of physically owning what I buy and still prefer CDs. Besides, I don’t run Windows, so I can put in any CD that will play on a CD player into my Linux computer and copy the files to my hard drive so I can play them through Slimserver.

So why would I, a strong supporter of local stores, come within an inch of saying to someone in a store, “That’s okay. I’ll get it on Amazon?”

When I was a teen, my second job was working at a local grocery store named Ukrops. I learned a lot about business by watching how the store worked. While I still think, as an adult 3 years (okay, stop laughing and stop adding a zero to that three!) later, that the manager of that store had some issues and did make work harder for some of us than necessary, overall, I learned how to treat customers and employees. The store closed at 9:00 P.M. That meant at 9:00, we’d lock the door. Then one of the managers would step over to one of the intercom phones at all the cash registers and page the store and say, “Joe, turn off the lights.” I saw them do it even if Joe or Bob or whoever they paged was only 3 feet from them. However, nothing was ever said to a single customer about us closing the store. Joe (or Jeff or me or anyone else) would go around and turn off the lights in the coolers and freezers, but the overhead lights were left on. Most lights were still on. If customers asked for help, we helped them. Then we’d get a customer count and they’d keep only as many cashiers and courtesy clerks (the polite job title for grocery baggers who also carried the groceries to the customer’s car) as needed. I remember waiting over 20 minutes on some nights for customers to finish up and check out before I could take their groceries to their car. One friend told me he waited 45 minutes one night.

It didn’t matter how long we had to wait, we were patient. We didn’t complain. We helped the customer. There was a woman who would show up at 8:55 three or four nights a week and rush in and would often finish about 9:10 that night. We called her the “Nine O’Clock Lady.” It wasn’t a mean name. The Front End Manager might say, “Hal, get a customer count,” and I’d come back and say, “Just the Nine O’Clock Lady.” He’d roll his eyes, as if to say, “I should’ve known!” and dismiss all but one cashier and courtesy clerk. One rare night she bought enough that she wanted me to carry her bag out for her (she usually only bought a few items). We chatted and she told me she was a nurse in home health care and she worked with a woman at her home and could never leave before about 8:45. The reason she was in so many evenings at 8:55 was because she was on a long shift and that was as soon as she could get there. She didn’t want to keep us late, so she didn’t want to pick up much at a time.

We just never know what is going on in someone else’s life and Ukrops made life much easier for this woman by staying open and not kicking her out of the store at 9:00 each night. If we were more aware, and if I, or any other courtesy clerk she had talked to, had thought about it, we might have made sure that we were expecting her one night a week so she could shop without rushing.

Tonight I was at a dance party. (I’m taking ballroom dancing lessons and on Friday nights the ballroom dance studios usually have a party for their students to enjoy.) At one point they played a song for the Viennese Waltz. I had never heard this song before and thought it was beautiful. I asked the studio owner the name of the song and she showed it to me on the CD. (For reference, it was written as “Once Upon a Dezember”, but I found it spelled with the normal American spelling for December on the soundtrack for the animated “Anastasia.”) When I left, it was 10:45 and I headed straight to Barnes and Noble, which closed at 11:00. Personally, I strongly prefer Boarders Books and Music, since they have a much broader suggestion. I think Barnes and Noble has a nice atmosphere, but their selection is quite limited, more like the “Top 40″ than an in depth selection for a broad range of book and music lovers. I also tend to prefer the smaller, local stores over chain stores. Still, I don’t hate Barnes and Noble and buy a lot from them.

I got there about 5 minutes before closing and told the clerk in the music section I had heard of a song, what the title was, and could we find it? We thought it was on a Disney CD (I only found out which movie it was from later). I was looking and he helped, but their search system is limited. If you search for “December” in a title, it only looks at the start of the title. It won’t match a title that ends with December or has it in the middle. (From a programming point of view, this is easy to deal with and it’s hard to see how anyone but an idiot would overlook this.) We were looking when the announcement came out over the intercom: “It is 11:00 clock and Barnes and Noble is now closed.” We were still searching and I had started looking for “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” to see if I could find it on an album since their search system was crippled. The clerk was back behind the counter and he called out, “Sir, We’re closed.”

I almost hit the ceiling! I didn’t say anything, but I was shocked. Anywhere I’ve worked, you don’t just kick out a customer you’re helping at closing time. You try to finish up with them, but he said I could come back tomorrow. I left, came home, and found the song with 1 search on Google, then got the album on Amazon immediately.

Any wonder why I’m not going to bother going back to Barnes and Noble tomorrow to see if they have the album in stock? They had me in the store and could have had my cash in their pocket, but the clerk said to come back the next day. I’m not going back. I will call the store and ask the manager if it’s their policy to finish helping customers at closing or to shut off the register immediately and tell the customer to go home when it’s possible to make the sale rather quickly. I don’t care what their answer is, since their attitude has already told me just how much they wanted to make the sale. If I don’t order this from Amazon, I won’t buy it from Barnes and Noble. Would you?

There have been times when I’ve made a friend and within a day after I get a forwarded email that ends with, “Forward this to 200 people within the next 5 minutes and you’ll have great luck, the war in Iraq will end, and global warming will cease. If you do not forward it, then you’ll hit and kill 12 squirels while driving tomorrow and you’ll be in misery for the rest of your life.” If it’s not that, then it’s an email about how the Roswell UFO incident was exactly 9 months before Hillary Clinton was born.

That’s untrue, by the way. However, approximately 9 months after the Roswell incident, Al Gore, Wolf Blitzer, Rhea Perlman, John DeLancie, Andrew Lloyd weber, and Stevie Nicks were born. Does that mean anything? Does anyone care — that is, unless they’re so desparate to trash Al Gore and make their candidate look good that they’ll go to any lengths to trash him.

And that’s part of my point. Many emails I get that are forwarded to me are often full of hate and invective. Recently I got one about Barack Obama and I am so used to people using these emails to trash people that I just assumed the woman sending it to me was doing so with the intent of making Obama look bad. The truth is she was fed up with the same kind of slander and lies that gets forwarded for no good reason, just like I was.

There are problems with forwarded email. The least of the problems is with emails asking to be forwarded to others to bring some kind of good will. Many don’t see how they can be a problem. They are. If I forwarded every such piece of email that arrived in my inbox, I would have soon done nothing other than forward emails. Soon a number of people in my address book would never want to read a single email of mine again.

Email is for communication. It’s so I can tell my friends what is going on, so we can joke back and forth, so we can discuss serious issues, or for other forms of communication. When that channel of communication is needed for clarity and it gets blocked up by many “feel good” emails, people don’t hear what needs to be communicated. I have a policy, hard and fast, that I use with any such email. Any time I get a “warm fuzzy” email from someone that asks to be forwarded, I return it to them and say, “I do not forward emails to other people. I do not return emails that ask to be returned. No exceptions. If you do feel this needs to be forwarded, I’ll forward it to you 20 times.”

I’ve never had to do this more than 2-3 times before I stopped getting “warm fuzzy” emails from a person. I’ve never seen any indication it’s hurt a relationship with a person, but people do seem to get the message. The plain truth is that before I started doing that, I got so many warm fuzzies asking to be forwarded I couldn’t keep up with them.

For some people, such emails may serve a purpose. They’re a way to let others know they’re thinking of them, but when you add the burden of forcing someone to forward it to more people, it becomes, as I said, a burden. It’s just not right and not fair.

The other situation is worse. I’ve gotten, literally, hundreds of emails about political candidates and personalities telling me that they did this and said that. Whenever I get one, I think of Socrates and his three filter test.

A man came up to Socrates and said, “I have something to tell you about one of your friends,” and Socrates said, “Is it good?” And the man said it was not, then Socrates asked, “Is it true?” and the man said he didn’t know if it was. Then Socrates asked, “Is it information I can use?” and again, the man said, “No.” Then Socrates asked, “Why do you want to tell me something about someone if you don’t know if it’s true, it’s not good, and it’s not useful?” His three filters are if something is true, good, or useful.

I’m not trying to insult or slam anyone. I am making a point about forwarded emails. People get an email from a friend and think, “I know this person, so it must be true,” then they forward it without checking it, not realizing their friend probably did the same thing, and so on, through a good 20-30 people.

Isn’t this even worse than gossip? It is spreading information that is often negative and hurtful without even making sure it is true, or even just assuming it is true without checking on it.

When I get email like this from someone, I look up the key words on one of two sites:

http://snopes.com
http://truthorfiction.com

There used to be one great one, UrbanLegends.com (or .org?) but it seems to now have most of it’s data on snopes.com.

If I find that the data being forwarded is false, I reply to the email with a link to the page verifying it is false on one of these two sites (or another if I use Google). Most of my friends have gotten the point: Don’t forward something until you have checked on whether or not it’s true. Some even send me emails they’re unsure of so I can check it out for them.

The bottom line is that many people forward emails, over and over, to others without ever checking if those emails are true. Many times these emails contain nasty rumors that make others look bad. Forwarding them amounts to lying about people and spreading lies to make others look bad. It’s not nice, it’s inappropriate for pretty much any religion, and it’s just plain wrong.

If you want to forward an email, please use Socrates’ three filter test to see if it’s worth sending and please check to see if it’s easy to prove true or false first.

Thanks!

It looks like just fun entertainment, but one issue I work with in writing and other work is the issue of identity, as well as integrity and sense of self. I don’t mean integrity as in just honesty, but also a sense of integrity as in being true to who one’s self is. For example, did you ever see the series “Taxi?” If you haven’t, Danny DiVitto plays a slimy character named Louie who makes some kind of promise to God. I think it’s about his Mother’s health and his end of the deal is to be the best person he can be. He fails miserably at being a good person and is in fear of retaliation form God until another character points out Louie promised to be “the best person I can be,” and that he’s such a slimeball he was the best person he could be, which is not a very good person. The issue had a lot to do with who he was.

It’s like the old story about the scorpion that asks the frog to take him across the creek, but the frog doesn’t want to because he knows the scorpion will sting him and kill him. The scorpion says he can’t do that because if he kills the frog while they’re in the water, he’ll drown as well. Once they get halfway across, the scorpion starts stinging the frog because he can’t help it. He’s a scorpion and it’s his nature to sting. As much as he tries, he can’t not be who and what he is.

In The Music Man, Harold Hill is a con man and he gets off the train in River City because he hears it’ll be a challenge. He’s nothing but a con man. Marion (Shirley Jones) sees who he is, but nobody else does (except maybe the mayor). He does the classic con and creates a fear and need, then steps in to fill it. So far all he’s done is be himself: a con man. But here is where things start to change. He convinces the Woman’s Art League (or whatever they call themselves) that they are talented and beautiful. We laugh at them posing like images on a Grecian urn, but these women are starting to believe in themselves. They are moving out of their comfort zone to become something more than they were.

Then he goes around to the townfolk and lies to them, but he makes them feel special. Marion’s Mom knows what’s going on when he runs the spiel on her, but he makes her feel so good she is willing to pay him because of that good feeling he gives her. He even gets Marion’s young brother to start believing in himself, in spite of his bad lisp.

There’s the 4 men on the town council (or some local board) that the Mayor has told to get Harold Hill’s credentials. He shows them they can sing in harmony and they’re so proud of their new sound and ability that four men who hated each other are never seen apart again.

Then there’s this wonderful number about the Wells Fargo Wagon. It’s something we can all relate to: the delivery wagon is coming to town and everyone wants to know what it is. Is it something for me? Is it for someone I know? What kind of wonderful treat is it delivering? At this point Marion has proof that he’s a fraud, but when the Wells Fargo Wagon arrives and the kids get their instruments, her kid brother is so excited about his shiny brass horn that he doesn’t care about his lisp and is babbling on in excitement. Even if he’s a con man, Marion sees this wonderful gift he’s given her brother: a sense of excitement and a feeling that there is something about him that is worth something.

Then she starts to fall for him and we realize, bit by bit (but mostly because we know it’s going to be a happy ending), that he is really falling for her. So much so that when the uniforms are about to arrive and he can skip out, he stays behind because of her. We also see, as he’s standing on the foot bridge, looking into the water, that deep inside, behind the con man faced, he *wants* to be the conductor he’s pretending to be. When he belts out a song like, “Seventy Six Trombones Leading a Big Parade,” he really, down inside, desperately wants to be in that conductor’s uniform leading that parade with 76 shiny trombones and “rows and rows of the finest virtuosos of every shape and size.”

So far he’s been true to the shallow version of himself, but now we see, as he finally admits it to himself, that there is something else, another self, one with a higher level of integrity, down inside. He’s probably been scared to admit it because he didn’t think he could do it, so he spent years covering it up with lies.

But even with the lies and the con going on, he was still true to that inner self. At some level, even though the “Think System” was crap, somewhere in him, he was still working on making the boys into musicians. As he tells Marion’s brother, he always believes there is a band. He can only carry on a fraud by making himself believe it’s real, but, even more, he has to believe it because he wants it to be real.

And now, right here, in River City, for the first time, he has a reason to face his fears: Marion. He’s fallen in love so he doesn’t run from the town folk and from his own fears. He faces them, knowing he’ll probably be tarred and feathered. He is willing to take responsibility for what he’s done, but all he sees is the bad. Then Marion steps up and points out the good he’s done. The Women’s Art League is performing and they believe in themselves. There’s a sense of pride in River City that goes beyond Iowa stubbornness and it’s all because of Harold Hill. They’re still ready to tar and feather him, but then the kids start playing. It’s horrendous and barely recognizable, but the kids are playing their instruments and everyone sees what can be. They don’t see what is, as Harold Hill has for decades. They ALL see what can be.

And that’s when a con man is transformed into a member of the community.

He started as a thief and liar, but it was not possible for him to be anything other than himself, which may be a con man on the surface, but much deeper down, is a boys band conductor. He has given the town a gift of self worth and they give it back to him and in the next shot (in the movie, it can’t happen that way when done on stage), we see him in that uniform, leading a parade with all the town excited to see what’s happening.

The lies have been lived for so long they became a truth and the people he taught to see something special in themselves now, almost against their will, do the same for him.

Yes, on the surface, it’s just a fun movie with a wide variety of music, but just like Harold Hill, when you scratch that surface and go beneath the song and dance, there’s something much more interesting.

At least that’s the way I see it.

When I bought my 380SL the radio was one of the lowest priorities on my list because I knew if it didn’t work well or if I hated it, then I could just swap it out and put in the one that came with my 450SL. I knew the radio worked, but it had a cassette deck in it, so I thought it wouldn’t have a CD until I looked closely at it. After buying the car, I found it had a 10 CD changer as well. It may sound odd that I didn’t check that first, but when I found this car on the Internet on a Thursday night, I wrote down everything I was concerned about and drove up to Ashland, about a 30 minute drive and got to the shop at about noon the next day. I had already contacted Mercedes and was penciled in for an inspection if I liked the car. My concerns were to make sure the body was in good shape and there weren’t rust issues, to be sure there were no mechanical issues the inspection would find as serious, and that it just looked and felt good. The radio and some items like if there are a few tears in the seat covers are almost frivolous. If there’s no rust and the body and mechanical systems are in great shape, replacing seats or seat covers or a sound system are trivial in comparison.

While shopping for a car, I found many people did not realize it and saw people very interested in cars with a nice interior who weren’t going to check out the engine or other factors. They didn’t know much about the engine but figured if it started and the car could move forward, it was in good shape. Personally, I like people like this. They focus so much on aesthetics that usually easily fixed that they often buy the klunkers and leave others who are more careful to go for the good ones. Less competition on the good ones means no price wars. This is why I didn’t pay attention to the sound system until about 5:15, after the car was officially mine. Yes, I said 5:15. I first reached someone by phone at 11 am, was there at noon, and by 5:15 pm I had test driven the car, then gotten permission to drive it down to Richmond for an inspection, been told by the Mercedes mechanic it was in great shape, gotten a fair price, stopped at my bank for a certified check, paid for it, filled out the papers, picked the car up from a nearby inspection station, and then drove it back to the shop lot where my other car was parked so I could move all my stuff to my new car! All that in just over 5 hours!

For those that don’t know Virginia law, I’ve talked about two different kind of inspections. The first is a pre-purchase inspection by someone who knows the type of vehicle. The pre-purchase inspection is what told me I needed to put in 2 trans mount bolts, needed to fix the soft top release mechanism (which I just realized I haven’t written up yet) , and replace part of the fuel line. The other inspection was required for the seller and is the yearly state inspection all cars licensed and garaged in Virginia have to go through.

Once I got in my new car and had transferred everything from the old one, I looked in the back at what I thought was the CD changer. It was easy to figure out so I started loading it up with my CDs. I don’t want to leave a lot in the glove compartment or in my car during the summer when I leave it parked with the top down that could easily be stolen, so I only put burned copies of CDs I have at home in the car. That’s when I had my first problem with the radio: the CD changer did not read burned CDs well. Out of 10 CDs in the changer, it read something like 2 and didn’t even read them all the time. Then I realized the changer was easy to spot when the car was parked. It was on the deck behind the seats and not in the trunk. I liked that because I could change CDs easier, but it wasn’t as safe. I also found out that it was not easy to just pop out a CD to put in a new one I wanted to hear. I got the car on Friday and by the end of the weekend I was fed up and wanted my old single CD player and radio in the old car.

Most of this is straight forward so I don’t need to go into more detail here. I removed the radio from my older1973 Mercedes 450SL (for those unfamiliar with these models, the 450 has the same body and interior as the 380SL, my new car). I had already checked the radio in the 380 (again, the one I had just bought) and saw that, while both radios had wiring harnesses and plugs, they were not the same size, so I would have to cut the wires and reconnect them. The wiring from both harnesses was what I’ve seen as standard with the same color coded wires on both radios (I double checked. The installation manual for the radio on the 380 was in the glove compartment and I downloaded the .pdf form of the manual for the radio in the 450SL from Sony.) Any wires I might confuse, I labeled with paper stuck to the wires with tape (as seen in the picture on the left). I also labeled all the wires in the dash on the 450 as I cut each one. While there is some color coding, it would still be easy to confuse some of the wires. Once I got the old radio out of the 450, I took it over to the 380. You can see in the picture what I did: instead of removing the old radio, I put the two side by side so I didn’t have to label the wires. I cut a wire from the old radio and immediately connected it to the new one.

When I finished putting in the new radio, I pulled the old one out and had to pull the cable leading under the carpets and back to the rear deck behind the seat to the CD changer. If you’re doing something similar, remember to eject the magazine and get your CDs out before disconnecting the radio or changer, since, in this case, I could not eject the last CD that was still in place to be played without restoring power to the changer! Once everything was out, I put the radio that was in the 380 and that controlled the CD changer into the 450 and ran the cable to where I would put the CD changer. Other than testing, I didn’t want the changer in place. I knew I was going to sell the 450 and figured the buyer might want to mount it in the trunk. When I did sell it, I told him that it was not fastened down, which also meant they could leave it on the back deck behind the seat, then easily pop it off the cable and store it in the trunk if they parked it in a high risk area, or they could fasten it where it was, or put it in the trunk.

I guess I should be completely honest and say the speakers in the 380 were worn out and I swapped all for of them out to the 450, bought new rear 6″x9″ speakers and put the almost new front speakers from the 450 into the new 380. I finally had a car with a nice sound system! It’s not ultra-high end, but it does sound good and the buyer of the 450SL was happy with his sound system. One day I want to setup a shock-mounted embedded computer in the trunk to store music in so I can listen to my full music collection in my car and control the selections and what the computer plays back from a unit on the dash, but that will be a while. If possible, I’d even like to get a Becker AM/FM/Cassette faceplate like the 1985 380SL originally had and mount that on a custom designed system to control a computer music player. The face plate would match the car’s production era, but I could pick whatever music I wanted from my collection. Until then, I’m quite happy with what I have!

I am very lucky with the car I bought. While it’s 22 years old, the actual amount of work it’s needed from the start has been relatively minor (although I did just recently have to put in a new camshaft, but that’s another story for another post). I had it 5 months before having to take it into the shop and when I did, the shop owner, who is a local expert on this model Mercedes, said he was impressed with it. Because of my luck, I don’t know if restoring is the right term to use for any of the work I’ve done (or had done), but it’s the closest there is. I basically bought a classic (technically not an antique until 2010) and have tracked what I need to do to bring this car back to as close to the shape it was in when it left the showroom as possible. That I am able to do so is not because I’m good with cars. I have a LOT to learn. This car can be restored to mint condition (or damned near close to it) because the previous owners, over 22 years of this car’s life, have taken excellent care of it.

Keys:

The car came with one, maybe two keys. I have a small family and wanted to be sure my sister and Mother, both of whom live within a mile of me, had a key in case they needed to use it in an emergency. I also like to have an extra key that I keep inside but can have in my pocket when I’m working on the car. I don’t want to use the one on my keychain, since it has all the house keys as well. And, last but very important, I want a safety key. When I bought a Jeep Comanche pickup in 1988, within a few weeks the dealer mailed me a plastic sheet about the size of a credit card with two cut out keys in it that could bend out from their connection and be used on the truck. One was for the door and one for the ignition and the credit card sized plastic they were attached to fit perfectly in my wallet. I can remember one time, in particular, where it was pouring rain and I left my keys in the car and that safety key saved me from a miserable experience.

Unfortunately, when I borrowed my sister’s digital camera, it took me a while to get used to it. I found, after some shots I was not likely to take again, that an image could look focused in the display but not be focused. It’s quite different than the nice Nikon 35mm I inherited from my brother. In other words, some images, like the one of the keys, are blurred and not likely to be replaced with good pictures. My apologies!

When I was driving a 1973 450SL, there was no problem with getting a flat key to leave in my wallet. One of the keys from the previous owner was flat and worked fine for that purpose. I don’t know when Mercedes switched, but in 1985, they were using the keys that didn’t have the rises and ridges of a “normal” key and were already using the more secure keys. I had to get replacement keys cut by Mercedes and wait for them to arrive at a cost of $22 per key. All the keys had the rubber around them and it is no longer possible to get the valet keys that don’t open the trunk. To make a safety key, all I had to do is place one key in a vise and cut along the flat side of the key with a hacksaw to cut off some of the rubber. It was quite easy and the picture above shows one regular key, my new safety key after I’ve pulled the key from the rubber, and the left over rubber that has been thrown out. My current walled even has a flap designed for just such a key.

Air Conditioning:

I’ve said it before, even in this post: I got lucky. That’s all there is to it. Even when it’s over 100 degrees and humid, I still drive with the top down. I may crank the fan, but I still drive with the top down, but I figured I might, at some point, want to use AC. I think I’ve used it 4-5 times this summer and for those of you who know what a Richmond summer is like, few people will put up with the heat and humidity together. It just doesn’t bother me that much, but, still, if you’re working with a classic, there’s the urge to get everything working. I realized the car had AC when I first test drove it. When the Mercedes mechanic inspected it (always get a pre-purchase inspection!), he told me the AC was not working. I mentally added a huge chunk to the cost of the car when I heard that because I figured it would cost a lot to fix. A day or so after I got the car home, it was still in March and not warm enough for me to take the hard top off for the season yet (and I want that hard top off as soon as it’s warm enough to drive topless with a heavy sweater!) and I was looking over everything and saw a plaque on the frame, under the hood. I was very lucky because the AC had already been converted over to R134a coolant. For those that aren’t familiar with this, older cars use coolant that can no longer be produced legally in the U.S. Supplies are still around, but conversion cost to the new coolants is expensive. My car was already converted!

The other good point about a car that uses R134a instead of an older system is the valve with the blue cap on it in the picture on the left. That valve is for refilling the AC system with coolant. With the new system, you don’t have to take it in and have a professional do it. For about $20 (I can’t find the receipt, but that’s about what I remember), you can buy a can of coolant like the one on the right. If it’s your first can, you pay more to include the attached hose and valve. Then, once you get it, you can refill your AC system on your own. It’s amazingly simple, but it’s important to remember that while you’re doing this, you’re working with high pressure gases. I’m not going to go into the details of how to do it because the details are not only on the can of coolant, but I’m not about to put myself in a position where someone can do this without reading the can and try to sue me later.

I will include this extra picture, though, of the hose connected to the valve with the guage showing that it now has the minimal pressure to operate the AC. I used a 2nd can to increase the pressure more into the normal operating zone and turned on the AC. It worked. That was back in the second week of March and now, in September, I’ve tested it again and it’s still working. Many systems lose coolant over a year or several years and it seems that was the only real problem with my AC: it had lost coolant. I have no idea how long it’s been since this car was driven regularly before I bought it. It could have sat for a few years. Either way, this was an amazingly easy fix and I hope others that need to try this find it as easy as following the directions on the can, since that’s all it took for me.

Trans Mount Bolts:

This is underneath the car, in the center, where the transmission ends and the drive shaft continues to the rear wheels. The picture to the left, near the title of this section, shows the mount without the needed bolts. To the right is a slightly out of focus picture with the bolts in place. (Here’s a puzzle: with both pictures I had the digital camera flat on the driveway underneath the car, why is it only out of focus in one?) I went over this with a relative because no matter what I did, the bolts from Mercedes felt like they were too big and I just could not get things to line up. This is a case where I might be able to pass on useful info to another newbie to this field. When I talked with my relative, he said that it was the kind of thing where I’d spend 45 minutes pushing things around to get to the point where it just fit together in 30 seconds. That’s about the best description I can give. If you look at the picture with the bolts missing, it looks like you can just slide the bolt up, use a wrench, and tighten it. If you’ve done this before, that sentence has caused a lot of laughter. I thought things would be lined up and that I should not adjust anything.

That was far from the way it worked. I had to use a screwdriver or two to move things around, to give me leverage to hold parts in place and to align pieces. It does take a while to get things so it just fits in. The best advice I can give to someone is to be careful to not break anything, but to not be afraid to reach up behind the covering that is on the bottom, feel around, see what it is like in there, learn where all the parts are and get a sense of what has to line up with what. Then use a heavy duty screwdriver. Actually, come to think of it, I used a smaller pry bar that I could get up in there, to re-align things so the bolts would finally slip in. If I had talked with my relative before doing this and knew it wasn’t as simple as it looked, it would have taken me about 50 minutes, including driving up on the ramps and putting it in park, which, incidentally, is the wrong thing to do. Leave it in neutral and use blocks and the parking break to keep it in place. As it was, I must have wasted 45 minutes trying to get it to work before he told me to put it in neutral and to use a pry bar to line things up.

The Antenna:

My radio worked, but I wasn’t getting good reception. The antenna was not going all the way up! I apologize for not having more pictures of this because this is something that a lot of people seem to have problems with. I started with Man’s Tool #2, WD-40. (And if you don’t know what Man’s Tool #1 is, it’s duct tape!) The problem was that not all the segments were extending. The picture on the left shows how 2 segments stuck in place. Some WD-40 loosened up 1, but that wasn’t enough. I ordered a new antenna mast. The mast includes the metal part we all know as the antenna but also a long, nylon, snake like extension on the end with gear teeth on one side. The nylon part slides into a box in the trunk with the motor and gearing to raise and lower the antenna. It has a large gear that meshes with the long nylon extension on the antenna that coils it up when it lowers the antenna and uncoils it, sending it upwards, when the antenna extends.

I found I had to take the whole antenna gearbox out of the trunk and detach the motor and turn the crank by hand to get the teeth to line up and to get the nylon snake to slide in place. Then, once it was in place, I took it back to the garage, slid the antenna (with the top knob unscrewed) into the hole in the body, then slid the rest of the antenna and the nylon snake through the hole and out of the trunk. Once I got the gear box back in place and re-wired (not hard at all), I had to turn the car on and lower the antenna. This is not an easy job! To raise the antenna, I’d leave the radio switched to on and the antenna switch on the dash to “high”, then turn on the car. The motor would uncoil the nylon snake and try to raise the antenna as high as possible. From there I could raise and lower it by flipping the antenna dash switch to high or low. To fully lower it, I had to turn the radio off. This is where it gets dangerous, both for you and your paint job. It is possible to raise your antenna all the way up so the snake and antenna are ejected from the gear box and fly up and coil up rapidly in the air or on your car. I came close to scratching my car once. It’s best to have one person controlling the radio and dash switch and one person at the antenna, either feeding in the snake if need be, or making sure it doesn’t scratch the car as it slides in.

I took the difficult way and got a long wooden pole and used it to turn the switches on the dash while I was back with the antenna. I don’t recommend this. Once it’s done and slid into place, fasten the antenna mount to the car. This will make sure the antenna can’t extend too far or fly out of the frame. Then be sure to fasten the tip back on the antenna. Without the tip, the antenna can retract too far into it’s holding tube and leave room for rain to fall in. If you work with the antenna, you can count on replacing the rubber grommet around where it connects to the car body. There’s a picture of that above and on the left. It’s about $2 for the grommet, so I’d suggest buying one before starting. They break easily and it helps to have one there so you can put it in when you finish the project.

Interior Lights:

This was one of the simplest fixes of everything I’ve done.   The dome lights are two of the interior lights on the 380SL.  There are also lights in each foot well.  I thought the lights were not out.  I would open and close my door and the lights would not go on as they should.  I found out that the dash switch turned them on and off.  If the switch, which is a rocker switch, is to the left, the interior lights are always on, if it’s to the left, the interior lights don’t go on and if it’s in the middle, they go on when the door is open.  Neither door, when opened, would trigger the lights going on.  It took some research and tracing circuit diagrams, but I found out the light in the passenger footwell was out.  I replaced it and found that light went on when I opened the passenger door.  After asking for help online and checking the circuit diagram, I found the passenger door ONLY turned on that one footwell light.  Opening the driver’s door turned on both footwell lights.  I tried the driver’s door and no lights turned on.  That limited the problem to the switch in the driver’s door or wiring near it.  I played with the switch by hand and saw no change.  I sprayed some WD-40 on it, then held it down and slid my thumb off so it “jerked” up, which would not happen when I opened the door (the door would not move fast enough).  I did this a few times: pushing down on the switch and letting it pop up as fast as the spring pushed it.  Within 10 attempts I saw the lights go on.  Another few attempts and it worked fine.  I had heard that dirt can easily lodge in the door switches and letting the spring work full force had shaken it up enough to dislodge the dirt.

At least that’s the feeling I hand until I had worked on a fuel line a few times and got used to it. With my new car (often called Mrs. Peel because she’s such a classic beauty and can kick some serious tail, if you haven’t been following along), one of the two mechanical repairs I needed to attend to quickly, that could actually effect the functioning of the vehicle, was a leaking fuel line at the rear, near the fuel pump and fuel filter.

I was lucky that I only had to replace part of the fuel line and not the fuel pump. Replacing the pump would not be too much harder, but it would cost more. At the left I have a picture of the area. This is only a thumbnail. If you click on it, you can see the parts in much more detail. This is under the back of the car, near and behind the passenger side wheel.  To get to it, you’ll need to back the rear wheels up on ramps.  Note how wet the metal tube on the right is. That is from my fuel leak. I suggest, if you can, opening that picture in another window or printing out either the picture or this text so you can see both at the same time. As much as a computer geek as I am, you’d think I could put labels on the picture for you. I do have a good photo editing program, Gimp (it’s open source, as is all the software I use), but it’s late and I’m trying to get a lot done so I can return to the deep, dark, dank pit of serious, hard programming work so I can finish some of that up. So, sorry for not directly labeling the picture, but, as sometimes happens, life has gotten in the way.

Note the cylinder with “10/2001 1,000K” written on it. If you don’t know why that is there, it’s because this car has been very well cared for. Fuel filters need to be changed regularly. Many people keep records of when fluids and filters are changed. In this case, even if no records were kept, anyone working on the fuel line at this end will know when the filter was changed. (And before anyone asks, I decided to keep a ledger of repairs and fluid and filter changes, so I did not write this info on when I changed the filter. I guess nobody’s perfect…)

The cylinder with the numbers on it, if you haven’t guessed, is the fuel filter. The cylinder below it is the fuel pump. The thick tube coming into the fuel filter on the left is from the gas tank, which means if you disconnect it, it will leak gas. You can use this if you ever need to drain the gas tank. To the left I have a picture of parts I needed for the repair I was doing. Note that I’ve included a good sized flat reservoir. Whenever you open the bottom end of any tank, whether it holds oil or gas or whatever, it’s hard to be sure exactly where the fluid will start pouring out, so I like having something like this I can catch it in. Then, once the stream is constant, I can put a gas container in place. I’ve had friend who say when they deal with something like this, they’ll do one of two things: 1) They’ll have all the parts laid out so they can move quickly and once they have to undo a hose like this, they’ll plug it with their thumb, hold it there, then do all the other work, or 2) They’ll plug it with a bolt that they kept handy for this situation. Notice I have a couple bolts read because I’m not sure of the size of the hose I’ll have to plug. In the long run, none fit and I had to just let it drain. Since the gas went through the pump first, it wasn’t draining too fast and I was able to get everything done at a slow pace without losing much gas. What I did lose just went back into the tank, since it wasn’t dirty. It’s also comforting to see fuel come out of your tank and see it’s not full of sludge.

There are different repairs to do under here. My general thoughts on something like this is that if you’re in the neighborhood and a filter is not new and you can replace it, go ahead and do it. It saves a trip under the car later. I needed to replace the fuel line and decided to do the filter as well. It would not have taken much more work to replace the fuel pump, but there’s no sign my pump is dying and I didn’t want to have to pay for a new one.

I’m not going to describe any one repair, but to go over what is here and what can be done and what needs to be remembered. The first thing to remember is that you need crush rings for each joint you’re going to be working on. If you don’t use them, you’ll be back under the car again, putting them in from the leaking joints. The Mercedes dealers all have access to EPC, the Electronic parts catalog. You can also gain access to the same catalog for $20 a year (yes, $20 a year!) at http://startekinfo.com. If you have access, the diagram you need is under “47 Fuel System” and the sub group is “60 Fuel Pump Package.” Pick Diagram Number 4. That will give you a diagram of all the parts included, but it may be confusing because it’s reversed from the angle you’ll likely see this assembly from. Use that to make sure you have all the star washers, nuts, and crush rings you’ll need. If a nut looks at all rusted or seems like it’s wet or saturated, I’d suggest having a potential replacement ready. If you’re like me, you don’t like having to get out from under the car to get more parts during repairs.

In my case, I removed the metal part of the fuel line that connected the fuel pump to the fuel filter and the accumulator. In the diagram on the left, you can see gas draining from the fuel pump into a gas container. You can also see a small cylinder above and behind the filter. Unused gas returns from the engine and goes in the accumulator, where it can go through the filter and go back to the engine again. The hose on the right is one metal hose that connects to all three (the accumulator, the filter, and the pump). I suggest if you’re going to take this, or any part, off back here, you’re best off starting with the connection nearest the tank, so you have only one leak to deal with and not multiple ones.

I’m getting out of order, but overall, I’m still trying to describe the parts and what to do in handling them. Notice in the first picture (again on the left), there is a protective covering that sits in front of the assembly we’ve been discussing. (In front as in between them and the front of the car.) I’ve found it’s almost impossible to work on the fuel filter or pump without removing this shield. Then there is one more “must remove part”. Look at the metal band that goes around the filter and the pump. There’s a long screw that goes through this band and is bolted on the other side. Remove this bolt, otherwise it’ll be hard to remove the fuel filter or the fuel pump, or to shift them to get to parts more easily. It’s also one of those “oh, I forgot to put this back in” parts that is very easily forgotten when finishing up.

In my case, as said, I was fixing a fuel leak. I was hoping it would be just a crush ring or a loose nut. That would save a few bucks, but if you look at the are that is wet, you can see that the wet part is above the metal fitting (behind the electrical connector). If it were a loose nut or a crush ring, I doubt the wet area would have crept up so high. While the car was running, I could see drips form on the rounded section of the connector.

For any repairs in this area, first remove the protective shield, then remove the bolt from the strap holding the filter and pump in place. Make sure you have a large reservoir ready and in place before removing any nuts or connectors on the tubes. I like to have one “splash” reservoir for the initial splashing out of fluid while I’m still loosening (and later tightening) a bolt, then another gas container to keep the gas in so I can pour it back into the tank later. After removing the shield and bolt, and making sure you have all the parts you need, including all the crush washers, make sure your parts are laid out on a clean surface you can keep under the car with you. I keep the parts on one side of whatever I’m using (a clean board or another shallow pail or something like that) and the tools on the other side. Also, when it comes to crush rings, my general rule is to use one between each bolt and surface. If a bolt goes in between two parts, I use a crush ring on each side, if it fits. Why? I’m paranoid.

Now you’re ready for whatever you need to do. Undo the bolt or fastener on whatever connection is closest to the fuel tank, so you won’t have a number of leaks to deal with. Once it’s unconnected and you can position it and your gas container so the fuel is captured, you can do what you need. Most of the work for here, for whatever you’re doing, is pretty simple. Basically, disconnect the part or parts you need to remove. At each point, be sure you pay careful attention to what nuts, bolts, and other connectors come from each connection. This is not rocket science. Basically, you undo connections, making sure you keep track of which nuts and washers go on which parts. Then remove the part or parts you need to replace, put in the replacements, then reconnect them. I’d suggest reconnecting the part closest to the fuel line last. When you’re done, clean off everything.

When I started working with computers, I learned an important rule: never replace the case until you’re sure everything works. It’s Murphy’s law in action: If you think it’s perfect and put the case back on before checking everything, you can almost be sure something will fail. With cars, I want to make sure I’ve done what I need to do and can check it by running it before I take the car off the ramps. On the left you’ll see a picture of the same parts again. Notice all the leaked gas is gone from the pump. If you look closely at the connection that was leaking, you can see the crush rings in place along with the new hose and connectors. This was taken after I had checked everything out and had started the car. It was still on ramps and I had not yet replaced the protective shield. Note the bolt holding the metal strap around the filter and pump is not in place yet. Once you’ve made sure it’s all working, replace the bolt on the strap and the protective shielding. In this photo, you can also follow the metal line I replaced from the fuel pump to the fuel filter to the accumulator above it.

I realize I could include more details, but I wasn’t sure whether to go through replacing the filter, the pump, or the less common repair I had to do, which was replacing the line. Maybe I’m oversimplifying things, but basically if you follow the directions I have given and keep track of the bolts, nuts, washers, and crush rings as they come off the parts you’re removing, then replace the bad parts and put it all back together, that’s about all there is to it. It can be difficult to slid the filter or pump out of place and the new one back into place. Generally patience helps here.

If you need more detailed help, please don’t hesitate to ask in the comments. I’m not professional mechanic, but I’m glad to share what experience I do have.