I could have posted half a dozen updates by now given everything that’s been happening lately—admittedly, most of it rather uninteresting to the common folk—but I didn’t, so now it’s time to stuff it all into one entry.

My Trans Am is over at the dealer now, having its fuel level sensor replaced. This, as previously mentioned here, will require a load of stuff to be dismantled and then reassembled. Additionally, I have come to learn that it was most likely a tankful of Shell Oil’s contaminated gasoline which caused the malfunction. Recently, Shell delivered a shipment of gasoline to hundreds of stations in Florida and Georgia that had been refined incorrectly, and contained excessively high levels of sulfur. Sulfur is a corrosive which attacks the silver contacts in many fuel level sensors, destroying them beyond repair. At first I figured this couldn’t have been what happened to me, since I only get gas at Mobil and Texaco. But then a notice was posted by the community we live in, stating that the Texaco-branded gas station on the property (which I use almost exclusively) received a shipment of the fouled gasoline, and I had undoubtedly put it into my car.

Beyond damaging fuel level sensors, high sulfur levels in gasoline can destroy a car’s emissions equipment, particularly the catalytic converter, after just one exposure, according to the EPA. Obviously, though, since such damage would mean higher emissions, the EPA is going to say whatever they need to say to make it look real, real bad for the environment. A catalytic converter is a pretty cheap piece of equipment, but I think my Trans Am has several—maybe even four. (The new Corvettes have six!) Replacing all of them wouldn’t be fun. Even better, then, that I’m planning to sell the car in a year or so…I think that not only have I been unlucky with stuff failing on the T/A, but the poor car itself has been unlucky in all the fucking shit that’s been hurled at it by Florida drivers, Florida insects, Florida roads and now Florida gasoline. I can only pray that my next car won’t be so abused by everything around it.

So anyway, I didn’t discover the sulfuric fuel issue until after the dealer had already agreed to replace my level sensor under the GM Major Guard warranty, and do you think I’m going to say anything now? Hell no, not after getting a look at the requirement from Shell Oil’s insurance company. If I want them to cover the repairs, I have to get four estimates, go to one of their approved dealers (there isn’t an “approved” Pontiac dealer any closer than the other side of the state, by the way), and then they MIGHT decide to honor my claim. Fucking shit. I’m going to just play the fool and let GM pick up the tab. Sucks for GM, but I’ve taken a lot of crap from them too in the last few years, so they can eat a dick…and the bill. I won’t lose any sleep over it.

So while the T/A is getting torn apart, I’m driving the old Formula to work. It’s been almost a month since I took that car out onto public roads, and I was reminded today of how fun it is to drive and to be seen in…the car’s a classic for my generation, and it’s awesome even for all its problems. Some days recently I’ve felt like maybe I should get rid of it, but as soon as I reacquainted myself with the car, I realized I could never do that. Even with wonky wiring to the exterior lamps, raspy, clattery exhaust and fuel vapors everywhere, it’s a vehicle that makes me proud.

What else is going on? Last night I succeeded in taking the plunge into wireless networking. It’s something that’s daunted me for some time, given all the security implications and such, but since we now have a notebook computer with 802.11g wireless built in, I figured it was time to upgrade to a wireless-G router. Now that I have done so (I bought the Linksys WRT54G), I’ve come to realize that it’s really not so hard after all—and once again, all the FUD over wireless networking security is rendered completely pointless by anyone who actually takes a moment to set it up correctly.

I spent a good few hours last night getting the router configured just how I wanted it. One cool thing about this particular Linksys router is that its firmware is Linux-based, and as such, is required to be open source. Many people have taken Linksys’ firmware source code and improved upon it, so I flashed the device to the latest version of the Wi-Fi Box custom firmware to enable a few extra options, such as configurable transmitter power level and other items. Following that, I connected all of my wired devices and got them set up. I tackled the wireless notebook last.

It was really a breeze. I switched the router to operate in G-mode only, since I have no 802.11b devices. I then enabled WPA security with a TKIP Pre-Shared Key. I created a key that was some ungodly amount of characters long, plugged it all into the notebook, and the thing immediately was able to log onto my wireless network. Moments later I was surfing the Internet! After that, I turned off the router’s SSID broadcast so wardrivers couldn’t pick it up (oh yeah, gotta watch out for those war-drivin’ old fogies with the laptops in their Cadillacs!), and further added to security by filtering out all MAC addresses from the wireless network except the one belonging to the notebook computer’s wi-fi card. Voila. Functionality and security in one neat package.

My wife and I carried the notebook all over the house, but couldn’t find a place where the signal strength brought the connection speed below that of the 3 megabits we get from Comcast. Strength dropped off in the bedroom after a while, but tended to kick around between 5 and 25 megabits, so it seems to be acceptable. We haven’t tried taking it out back to the lanai yet, but as it’s so freakin’ hot here these days, no one would want to be surfing out there anyway (unless by surfing you mean on water with a real board). We’ll probably address that when winter comes. For now, everything’s working perfectly.

I also got my new Canon PowerShot digital camera and have played around with it…it’s extremely awesome, very small and compact, the battery charges from zero to full in two hours flat, and it shoots video that actually looks halfway decent and has remarkably good sound quality. (One of these days I’m going to shoot a few in-car vids.) As a matter of fact, I have some related news on that subject, but will save it for a subsequent update to follow. It’s more like an official announcement from Oddball Land, if there is such a thing.