FTP 40 Years Old Today . .

April 16th, 2011 �

[The story you are about to read is true. The ideas presented here are for entertainment only. This is not to be misconstrued as advice. If you choose to follow the trail I have blazed be aware that your results may vary. You may be seriously injured or even killed by trying to duplicate the procedures presented in this tale. Proceed with caution.]

Image Source:autopartsnetwork.com

The cost to replace my catalytic converter was enough to persuade me to put up with the annoying rattling from underneath my truck for longer than I care to admit. At first I thought the heat shield was loose (I have had that happen in the past) and a spot weld or two would likely shut up the rattle. However, on closer inspection I discovered the heat shield was firmly attached.

 With the engine running at idle there is no mistake that the catalytic converter is the source of the clanking rattles. It must be that the guts of this thing are loose and causing the racket. So, resigned to the fact that it must need to be replaced; it's off to the interwebs to prepare myself for the inevitable.

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Friday, January 14, 2011
The Sound of Running Water
Source: http://stephenparrish.blogspot.com/

A few days into the new year I contracted a virus and lost nearly all of my hearing in both ears. The degeneration occurred over three disheartening days, at the end of which I could only hear people if they shouted in my face.

Otherwise stifling, suffocating silence. Frustration rising to panic as I banged objects known to produce distinctive sound waves yet sharing none with me. Finally a macabre claustrophobia, the feeling of having woken up inside a buried coffin.

Sudden deafness.

As I was about to discover, however, gifts come in strange packages.

I visited an ENT doctor immediately, of course, and declaring myself an emergency, got in right away. My community of 43,000 is a medical mecca, with numerous clinics and several large hospitals. I sometimes refer to it as "the Mayo Clinic of Germany." Given that German medicine is unsurpassed to begin with, I have the best doctors in the world at my service. When your dermatologist has to schedule you around his international lecture tour, you don't need the Yellow Pages anymore.

My ENT played around with a tuning fork, said my problem would "probably" repair itself, and told me to go home and be patient.

I went home and tried to stay focused on writing and reading, activities that not only don't rely on external stimuli, they tend to dampen them. They make you forget you're deaf. But you can't write and read all the time. After a few days I was in such a panic I was nearly hyperventilating. That I would "probably" recover wasn't good enough. I wanted out of that coffin. Yesterday a friend ordered my ass back to the doctor to insist he do something.