Doomed to fail: Why I do the things I do I’ll never know.

In my first attempt to pass the emissions test for the state of Washington I should have heeded the sign at the testing facility. The sign read “No pets please”. This alone didn’t seem like an unreasonable request. However, the graphics between the words “no pets” and “please” had a snake, a dog, and a rhinoceros. I can understand their not wanting dogs. I can also understand (to a lesser extent), a snake, but a rhinoceros? As it turns out I would have been better off with rhinoceros in the seat next to me. At least I would have had an interesting conversation with the testers besides “you failed, have a nice day”.

Fully allied with the state of Washington to pass the emissions test, I made an appointment to have my vehicle checked out by an “Ecology Authorized Emissions Specialist” (this is what the blue sheet of paper the testers gave me called them). The term Ecology is particularly hysterical. My visit with the organism that operated the repair shop thought it necessary to have my vehicle all day. I thought this was particularly humors considering I had what I thought was appointment and the emissions testing facility takes fifteen minutes to tell me and the rhinoceros in the back of the truck whether I passed or failed. Why it would take this person all day I couldn’t tell you. I opted to go home and get some dinner in me before my personal study of ecology continued.

With my affinity for the internet, I hit the cloud to see what I could learn about emissions in relation to why I failed. I learned enough to be a danger I’m sure. I did call up a different repair shop and found that I could leave my vehicle for a few hours to be tested. However, the $100 price tag kicked in my “manly” DIY instincts. With the knowledge I learned from Internet I headed out to the parts house to get some supplies and a manual for my truck. After I asked the man at the counter for the parts that the Internet suggested MIGHT work the $100 price tag to find out exactly what the problem is started to look better and better. It was at this point that I turned on my jovial outgoing personality to see where that would get me with the guys a counter. I ended up learning that I could put premium gas in my tank with some super duper high octane additive. This should off set the high hydrocarbon emissions from my vehicle. Once I drive around for a few days I can try again.

I left the parts house and headed to the gas station. Only the gas station computers decided to fail and I couldn’t get gas. I decided to wait for the system to come back up while I looked at my manual to find out why my heater fan will on blow on high. As I was looking through the book the pictures and information was just a bit off from what I expected. A quick look at the front cover reviled the fact that I bought a book for a Toyota Corolla, not a Toyota pickup. After the error was corrected I headed back to the gas station only to find out that they had not fixed the problem yet. This reminded me of why they call it a POS system. In the world of retail sales POS stands for Point Of Sale. As the station began to loose business more than one person had a different idea for the acronym of POS.