Saturday, September 8, 2007

Day 197 - 09/05/2007

We had a win party after work that I didn't want to go to, but when the boss comes into your office and asks whether you're going, you put your corporate face on and say "I'll be there -- I even dressed for the occasion!" (as evidenced by the corporate logo shirt I had on). Actually, I had completely forgotten about it when I got dressed this morning. Oh, well, sometimes things just work out like that.

I got to the reception pretty much right at the opening bell and stayed for an hour or so. It's a good thing I did leave as a few folks stayed late and continued the party in the bar once the open bar at the reception shut down.

After getting home I set to work repairing the turn signal on the Altima. For the past six months or so the signal has been intermittently failing. Sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn't. After I changed the bulb, it'd work for a few weeks until the bulb burned out. Or until I thought it did. As it turns out, there's a short somewhere causing it to think the bulb is burned out and therefore display that information to the driver in the form of rapid on-off flashing inside the car.

I stopped by the local auto parts store and picked up a replacement socket for the bulb, in hopes of replacing the one that was there, but it wasn't a match. Apparently the guy who picked it out for me (and who I thought knew what he was doing) went solely on the type of bulb it supported instead of also determining whether the socket supported the make and model in addition to the bulb.

That being said, I put the assembly back together and, lo and behold, the short is gone; the blinker now works fine. I guess it was just a matter of twisting it a few times. I'm not sure how long it will work, but at least it gives me some time to find the part before the inspection is due.

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