Last week my emergency brake froze in the "on" position. I use this brake all the time because I drive a car with a manual transmission. This means, if you stop and want to get out of the car while it's running, you put it in neutral and use the emergency brake - or it will roll away. (and unlike in Chicago, we have a few hills around here to help the process along).

The weather last week was rainy and nasty at the beginning of the week, then it turned to freezing with some icing and a little snow. My car (which lives in a garage - although it's an unheated garage) ended up having the brake frozen in place. It wasn't immediately self evident because the handle went down and the brake light went off.

I thought at first the transmission was being a bit sluggish because... hey - it was cold! But after driving for about a mile, I realized that - oops the brake was stuck. This put me into a panic thinking I was going to wear away the brake pad totally. I had something similar happen years ago - it wasn't pretty and that one wasn't my fault - it was something the mechanic did when he made a mistake and turned something the wrong way - but I digress.

I ended up driving a total of 4 miles before I was able to get back home and switch to the dreaded mini-van for the rest of my daily errands. That's because we live in the land of "no place to turn around". By this time I could smell the brake pad (which is quite hideous).

I called the place we have the car serviced. They couldn't take it until yesterday. Nearly an entire week driving the van (yuck!). In the meantime, beloved husband - who is pretty handy with cars - was able to thaw out the brake cable and release the brake. This means I could drive it to get the service done, didn't have to have it towed.

So I get the call - you know, the one where you have to start writing large numbers on checks... my small excursion did very little damage - whew! But, we had asked them to check the rest of the brakes while they were at it. Turns out the front brakes were were shot - along with the rotors. Then they found a coolant leak while looking at the front brakes. Ah well, such is the lot of being a car owner.

They repaired everything, I dashed out to pay them large amounts of cash, grabbed the key and continued on with all the stuff I had to do until my husband got home and we could go pick up the car.

This turned out to be pretty late... about 9:30pm. I get in, start up and hit the road back to the house. It's about an 8-10 mile drive plenty of time for the car to warm up. Unfortunately, although the engine warmed up... the heater did not. I had the thing cranked to the max and the air only got luke warm - my hands were freezing.

This morning I called and told them what had happened. Turns out they hadn't been very careful and there was air in the system somewhere keeping me from getting heat in the car. They asked me to bring it back, which I did... only to find that the emergency brake had stuck in the "on" position again.

I get there, tell them about the brake issue too, they gave me a loaner for the day (a very nice SUV - that's so honkin' big it scared me to drive it). A couple hours later I get the call... yeah your brake cables need replacing, they apparently have hit the limit of what they will do in their lifetime. More dollars go floating by my eyes. (beloved husband says that emergency brakes are tricky things - sometimes they work very well and last forever - other times they fall apart early and often... it's one of those things)

Now, the car is back. I think the emergency brake works, I guess I'll find out tomorrow morning, I have new front brakes - which is a great thing and most of all - I have HEAT! Considering we actually got cold here (finally)... my hands are very happy.

Posted by: Teresa in Ho-Hum at 01:56 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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1 Wow...! I hate that kind of stuff... before Arthur changed me [it can be done] I traded cars in every two years so I didn't have to deal with anything of that nature...
But isn't it frightening? I had brakes lock up a couple years ago and had to call 911 there was so much smoke...

Glad you have heat... your Weather Pixie reports 12 very cold degrees...

Posted by: pam at January 25, 2007 02:55 PM (l6NIn)

2 aww crap. Glad it's taken care of.

Posted by: caltechgirl at January 25, 2007 03:03 PM (r0kgl)

3 Yeepers! Glad it all got fixed - breaks are kind of important!

Posted by: Richmond at January 26, 2007 08:28 AM (e8QFP)

4 Glad you got the heat working... I saw that Boston was below zero the other day, and thought of you.

Posted by: T1G at January 27, 2007 04:57 AM (fqP6X)

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Our office is in the midst of a complete move to a new building. Ah the joy, can't you feel it in the air.

The good part is, we can completely revamp our network which has needed an overhaul for a while. The bad part is, this is all a royal PITA. At the moment we are straddling 2 networks. Half the stuff is in one place, half in the other. Parallel processing is the order of the day - to check out results on the move. So things not only are being run once - but twice - then results are compared.

Today - oh ever more joyfulness - my email has failed. *sigh* Things are stuck somewhere and it's very likely a route change... so my work email has been down all day. I can just imagine the number of emails queued up ready to unload on me when my boss tracks it down

Sadly, I don't know what he changed regarding the email server. I don't know if the messages are blocked on the old server or the new one and all that fun stuff. Also, to make things more fun - my boss was gone for the day to the new office getting a vital server up and running. Because there are time constraints that was more important than my email.

In the meantime I'm trying to help people get up and going on the new systems. Walking through set up procedures on several different types of systems - all of them work differently, of course. We're moving files like mad. Finding out things like forgotten logons, forgotten library files needed to run things, forgotten... forgotten... forgotten. Nothing seems to transfer cleanly and many things didn't have a parameter type file associated with them (because of being older systems) and the information has to be reentered.

The scary part is that we are a small company - very small. I can not imagine doing this on a large scale basis with hundreds or thousands of employees. Holy smokes that would be brain meltdown time! As it is we're doing far better than I expected. Now all we have to do is hit the deadlines. I'd cross my fingers, but I need them for typing.

Posted by: Teresa in Ho-Hum at 01:22 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Which is something that generally doesn't hit until February, the dreaded mid-winter month. Right now I have nothing at all to say. It's week 5 on the Invisilines... they are fine. Otherwise I am feeling boring as all get-out. I think I'll go read.

BTW... I did mean I feel boring... not bored. I can't seem to compose a single post that doesn't make me yawn.

Posted by: Teresa in Ho-Hum at 06:38 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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