u/ABQmechanic

Looking for someone dependable who’s interested in cars and wants to get more hands-on experience. Could be a good fit for a student, someone in automotive school, or someone just trying to get their foot in the door.

It’s paid, very part-time to start, with the potential to grow into more if it’s a good fit.

You don’t need years of experience. Being reliable and willing to learn matters more.

If you’re interested, DM me a little about yourself and I’ll send you the full details and application link.

Oil change and pads/rotors. Labor for everything was very competitive, and the customer wanted to supply his own brake parts.

Get the wheel off and brakes apart.

Pads are wrong.

Rotors are wrong too.

I tell him no problem — I can put the old brakes and wheel back on, and he can call me when he gets the correct parts.

He says no, he wants it finished today and asks me to go get the right stuff.

Before I leave, I tell him what the total correct pads and rotors will be including tax. He agrees, pays, and I go get them.

Drive to the parts store, buy everything, drive back, finish the job.

Then AFTERWARD he starts looking up the part numbers on AutoZone and complaining that he found them cheaper online.

I offered to button the car back up at no additional parts cost, you specifically told me to go buy the correct ones, I gave you the exact total before I left, and you approved it.

The whole customer-supplied-parts adventure added about 2.5 hours to my day and I made maybe $60 on the parts.

I genuinely would have rather he just showed up with the correct set of brakes in the first place.

Customer-supplied parts policy needs to be updated.

The government really says “pick one of these two horrible options and then we’ll blame YOU for whatever happens” and people act like this is some sacred fucking privilege lmao.

Manufacture two shitty choices. Spend billions convincing everyone those are the only choices that matter. Tell us we have a moral obligation to pick one. Then use our participation as proof that we consented to the system. What an incredible fucking racket.

Wars? You voted for it.

Bomb somebody halfway across the planet? Well, elections have consequences! Another trillion in debt? Should've voted harder. Government program turns into an expensive dumpster fire? That's democracy, baby.

Politicians lie, corporations buy influence, innocent people get killed, everyone's paycheck gets picked apart.

Lmfao. I love the “lesser of two evils” argument. You just admitted I'm being asked to choose evil. Why the fuck are you surprised when my answer is “neither”?

Then comes my favorite:

“If you don't vote, you can't complain!”

Oh really? If somebody gives me a choice between getting punched in the mouth or kicked in the balls, and I say neither, apparently I'm prohibited from complaining when they kick me in the balls anyway because I FAILED TO PARTICIPATE IN THE PROCESS.

Absolutely brilliant.

I refuse to participate in the ritual and then pretend my participation means I consent to this fucked-up rat race of war, killing, corruption, debt, lies, coercion and political theater.

And no, that doesn't mean I think refusing to participate magically makes the government disappear.

It means don't put my fucking signature on it.

Serious post because I genuinely don't know who else to ask. For the last three weeks somebody has been adding concrete to my driveway while I'm asleep. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I've measured it, photographed it, called the police, and installed two cameras. Three weeks ago it was 11'2" wide. This morning it was 18'9".

At first I assumed I was remembering it wrong, so I drew a Sharpie line along the edge and took a picture with a ruler beside it. The next morning the line was six inches inside the concrete. There was fresh concrete where part of my lawn had been, including one of my sprinkler heads, which was now just embedded in the driveway. I asked my neighbor Kevin if he'd seen anyone working outside at night. He stared at the new concrete and said, “Driveways settle.” I said, “They don't settle sideways,” and he told me not to worry about it.

That night I installed a camera. At exactly 2:38 AM it disconnected, then came back seventeen minutes later. There was another section of concrete and a Home Depot receipt underneath my doormat for one bag of Quikrete purchased with cash at 2:11 AM. Somebody had actually written PHASE II on the back in black pen. I showed Kevin and asked what the fuck Phase II meant. He laughed until I asked him what Phase I was, then he just said, “You're going to appreciate the extra parking.”

I called the police. The officer was nice but clearly thought I was insane, and honestly I don't blame him. He suggested a second camera that records directly to an SD card in case somebody was interfering with my Wi-Fi. So I installed one facing the first camera. Last night the Wi-Fi camera disconnected at 2:38 again, while the SD camera recorded until 2:41 before fifteen minutes of footage disappeared. When it resumed, the driveway was another fourteen inches wider and there was a white plastic chair sitting in the new section facing directly toward my bedroom window.

I pulled the SD card and there was a file I didn't recognize called PHASE_II_FINAL.mp4. I swear to God I did not create it. The video is only seven seconds long and appears to have been recorded INSIDE my bedroom. I'm asleep in bed while somebody stands in the doorway. Right before it ends, whoever is recording whispers, “Still occupied.”

My wife can see the video but says there's no person standing in the doorway. She says it's just seven seconds of me sleeping. She also says there's no voice. I can see the person and hear it perfectly. We watched the exact same video at the exact same time and argued about what was on the fucking screen.

I went to Kevin's house and showed him my phone. He didn't even watch it. He just asked, “Did you sign yet?” I asked him what I was supposed to sign, and his entire expression changed. He said, “Oh shit, you're still in Phase II,” shut the door, and wouldn't answer again.

This afternoon my wife noticed our flower bed was smaller. I measured it and we'd lost fourteen inches overnight, meaning the driveway isn't just expanding outward anymore. It's moving toward the house. I grabbed a sledgehammer and broke into the newest section because I wanted physical evidence before calling the police again. There were three separate layers of concrete underneath it, and buried about two feet down was a laminated document.

It says RESIDENTIAL PARKING EXPANSION — PHASE III. It has my address, full legal name, parcel number and a diagram of my property converted into 46 parking spaces. My house isn't shown anywhere on the diagram. At the bottom, under PROPERTY OWNER AUTHORIZATION, is my signature. It isn't similar to my signature. It's fucking perfect, including a weird little stroke I've made since high school.

Under my signature somebody wrote: OCCUPANCY: 3.

There are only two people living here.

I immediately went back to Kevin's house. His truck was gone, his curtains were gone and nobody answered. While I was standing there, I realized his mailbox said 46. His address has always been 44. MY address is 46. I took a picture of it, but when I looked at the picture on my phone, the mailbox said 44. I looked back up and it said 46 again.

Then I noticed Kevin's house had two front doors.

I have lived next to this man for six years. He has never had two front doors.

The second door was about three feet to the left of the normal one and had a little metal sign reading SPACE 01. I don't know why I did this, but I opened it. There was no house behind it. It opened into an underground parking garage that absolutely cannot physically fit underneath our neighborhood.

The lights turned on one row at a time.

There were hundreds of cars.

Every car I have ever owned was down there. My first car from high school was there. My dad's Buick that was crushed at a junkyard in 2017 was there. There was also a black hearse with my name printed on a piece of paper behind the windshield. Next to it was an empty parking space labeled with my wife's name.

I slammed the door and ran home. When I looked back, Kevin's house only had one door again.

My wife wanted to leave immediately. We started packing, but when I went into the garage there was now a yellow parking-space line painted directly across the floor. It starts outside, passes underneath the garage door, crosses the entire garage and continues about six inches UP THE WALL. There was also a parking ticket tucked underneath my windshield wiper even though the garage had been locked all day.

The ticket says VEHICLE MUST BE REMOVED BEFORE PHASE IV — LOT CONVERSION 3:00 AM. Under that, handwritten in the same handwriting from the Quikrete receipt, it says 46 SPACES REQUIRED. 45 COMPLETE.

I called 911. While I was explaining this to the dispatcher, my wife started screaming upstairs. I ran up and found her standing outside the guest bedroom. The bedroom is gone. When you open the door there is literally a parking space where the room should be, with asphalt, painted lines and a Honda Civic parked in it. This is on the SECOND FLOOR.

The Honda is running.

There is nobody inside.

Its license plate is 46.

I told the dispatcher my address again and she went silent for a few seconds. Then she asked me to repeat it. I said 46. She told me there is no residential address at 46 anymore and asked if I was calling from the municipal parking structure.

I asked what she meant by “anymore.”

She hung up.

It's 2:53 AM now. The hallway upstairs is noticeably shorter than it was ten minutes ago, and the yellow line from the garage is coming up the stairs one step at a time. My wife keeps asking me where our bathroom went. I haven't told her that I can see Kevin standing underneath one of the parking lot lights across the street.

He's wearing one of those orange reflective parking attendant vests.

He keeps pointing at our house and looking at his watch.

The laminated document changed too.

OCCUPANCY: 3 has been crossed out.

Now it says OCCUPANCY: 2.

My wife is standing right beside me.

I don't know who it stopped counting.

Blew a tire at 1AM, called a mobile tire guy, and three hours later he shows up without a tire that fits my car. He looks at my wheel, looks at HIS car, and apparently decides the solution is to take a wheel off his own vehicle and put it on mine. Different size, car drove like a refrigerator falling down stairs, but he said “just take it easy” so obviously it was fine. Next day I’m bringing his wheel back, hit a bump at maybe 5 MPH and CLUNK. One stud snapped and the other FOUR lug nuts are completely fucking gone. Not loose. Not nearby. Just deleted. He comes back, takes one good lug nut off another wheel and says he can “rethread” the destroyed studs, then absolutely buries it with an impact for like five straight minutes. UGGA DUGGA DUGGA DUGGA. Metal shavings everywhere. Lug nut getting hotter than the sun. Eventually he tries a tap, makes it worse, says the hub is fucked, takes his wheel back and leaves my car sitting on bricks. This is where I realized I clearly know more than this guy because I know what a hub is now.

So I order an $80 hub, buy some tools and watch about nine minutes of a 23-minute YouTube video before realizing the rest was mostly unnecessary talking. Axle nut won’t come off so I put a six-foot pipe over a ratchet until the ratchet explodes. That’s not user error. Get another ratchet, get the nut off, car moves a little because I forgot jack stands, put a cinder block under it. OSHA can email me. Caliper won’t come off so I remove everything that looks like it’s attached to it. Brake fluid starts leaking but brake fluid is supposed to be a fluid so that checks out. Rotor is stuck, beat the absolute fuck out of it with a framing hammer until it comes loose. Missed a few times and hit the studs but those were already bad. Hub bolts won’t move so I heat them until a rubber thing starts smoking. Pretty sure that was just some factory anti-seize evaporating. New hub doesn’t fit perfectly, but the holes are close enough that three bolts start by hand and the fourth one starts with the impact. Put everything back together, have three bolts left over, ABS light is on, brake pedal goes to the floor unless I pump it six times and the wheel moves a little when I shake it. Is that suspension travel? Took it around the block and it grinds when I turn left, but only left, so as long as I plan my route around right turns I don’t really have the issue.

Then I started thinking about why this happened in the first place. Five lug nuts. FIVE. Pentagon has five sides. The Pentagon has government vehicles. Government vehicles have wheels. Wheels have hubs. My new hub cost $80. Interstate 80 goes through multiple states. States have governments. You’re telling me all of that is unrelated? Also the tire guy was three hours late. Five minus three is two. My car has TWO headlights. Headlights use electricity. My ABS light is electrical. That means the ABS light probably isn’t from the sensor I ripped in half, it’s warning me about something larger. I checked the old hub and it has five holes arranged in a circle. That is literally a pentagram if you draw lines between them. I drew the lines with a Sharpie and suddenly everything made sense. Then I noticed my neighbor’s sprinkler has five settings. I asked him where he bought it and he said Home Depot way too quickly, like he already had the answer ready.

Anyway, I’m thinking of starting a mobile mechanic business because I’ve now done a tire, wheel bearing, brakes, ABS wiring and partial suspension work in one weekend. I already have an impact, half a socket set, a hammer and a multimeter that reads 1 no matter what I touch it to. Thinking $149 diagnostic fee because I’m not trying to attract cheap customers. Also does anybody know why every AutoZone closes before midnight? You’d think a parts store would want you fixing your car at night unless they don’t want you seeing what’s inside the hub.

Actually I just looked at the AutoZone logo. Red letters. Stop signs are red. Stop signs tell you to stop. Stop doing what? Working on the hub. I checked the receipt and the cashier’s name was Mike. Tire guy’s impact was Milwaukee. MIke. MILwaukee. Both start with MI. Michigan starts with MI too and Detroit makes cars. I don't know how much clearer they could possibly make this. And everyone keeps telling me to “torque the axle nut to spec.” What spec? Whose spec? The manufacturer? The same manufacturer that installed the five-sided government hub in the first place? No thanks. I tightened it until the impact changed pitch because sound is frequency and frequency can be measured. I went back outside and counted the lug nuts on my neighbor’s truck. Six. Mine had five. Six plus five is eleven. There are eleven letters in “wheelbearing.” I know somebody is going to say wheel bearing is two words but that's exactly the kind of distraction I'm talking about. I checked underneath his truck and there was a differential. My car also has a differential. Two completely unrelated vehicles both having differentials? Okay.

I'm keeping the three leftover bolts in a Ziploc bag as evidence. I wrote the mileage and atmospheric pressure on it. One of them moved overnight. My girlfriend says she moved the bag cleaning the counter but she also has a driver's license, which is issued by the state, so unfortunately she's not exactly an independent source anymore.

I haven't slept in 37 hours but I actually feel extremely focused. I can hear the refrigerator compressor cycling and it's almost the exact same frequency as the grinding noise when I turn left. Refrigerator. Refrigerant. A/C compressor. Serpentine belt. Belt. Seat belt. DMV requires seat belts. DMV is the state again.

​

Still haven’t touched a dab. I’m definitely not sober. I still use edibles and I still smoke, especially in the morning, but compared to where I was a few days ago this feels like a completely different life. The edibles have actually been working really well for me because I can measure what I’m taking instead of constantly chasing another hit. Smoking is the next thing I’m trying to cut down. Mornings are by far the hardest for me, so instead of trying to eliminate the hardest part first and making myself miserable, I’m starting at night.

The plan is:

No late-night smoking, move the cutoff earlier and earlier, eventually get down to one smoke a day, start skipping days, then slowly taper the edibles.

Maybe it sounds stupid and simple, but this is the first time cutting back has actually felt sustainable instead of me saying “I’m quitting tomorrow” and then immediately getting high again.

I thought cutting back was going to make life boring. But it’s been the exact opposite. Movies are better. Music is better. I actually want to leave the house and do things. Conversations feel more real. I’m not spending the entire day thinking about when I’m going to smoke again. When I was doing dabs all day, I thought I was making everything more enjoyable. Looking back, I think I was just maintaining a high so constantly that being high stopped feeling special at all. Now when I do get high, I actually notice it. And when I’m not high, I’m realizing I actually enjoy being alive and doing normal things. The less I use, the less desperate I feel to use.

I’m nowhere near done, but for the first time I’m excited to keep going instead of feeling like I’m giving something up. Anyone else start cutting back expecting life to suck and then realize being high all day was actually making everything worse?

Ive been taking dabs regularly and my breathing has gotten to the point where at night I sometimes feel like I can't get a full breath. Sometimes I get a blood/metallic taste when I wake up and cough too.

The fucked up part is I'll be lying there struggling to breathe, thinking I seriously need to stop, and then the next day I'm taking another dab. Has anyone here had dabs start fucking with their lungs enough that it finally made you cut back or quit? How did you actually break the habit?

When I was a teenager, everything hit. Smoking, drinking, eating, watching movies, music, sex, driving around. Even just hanging out doing absolutely nothing felt exciting because everything still felt new.

Now I can eat my favorite food, watch a great movie, drink, smoke, buy something I wanted, and my brain is still just static. Then I'm bored again.

It feels like adulthood is just endlessly trying to recreate 10% of the excitement you used to get from normal life.

DAE feel this way? Does getting older just make everything less exciting, or did we overstimulate ourselves so much that nothing hits anymore?

Customer says it’s overheating again because it has a 190° thermostat and his IR gun found 206°.

Apparently he’s been walking around the engine bay shooting everything with it trying to find where the extra 16 degrees are coming from. Radiator, hoses, thermostat housing, probably the alternator next.

He says anything over 190° proves the thermostat isn’t working because “otherwise why would they call it a 190?”

I told him to check the exhaust manifold next. If he finds 600° I’m quoting an engine.

What else should I have him point the gun at before I send the estimate?

The customer is convinced his car is overheating because he got 206°F with an IR temp gun on the surface of a coolant hose.

His reasoning is: “It has a 190°F thermostat, so it should never go above 190.”

Customer tells me the car is overheating again because he checked around the cooling system with an IR gun and saw the surface of the coolant hose was 206°F.

His argument: “The thermostat is 190°, so it shouldn't ever get hotter than 190°.”

How are you explaining this one to the customer? 😂

It was nice having money yesterday. See you all on October 1st.

I posted about my “third body experience” before and I thought things were settling down.

Tonight I unlocked my apartment with my keys and put them in my pocket. I walked into my bedroom and the exact same keys were already sitting on my desk, covered in oil. My pocket was empty.

What scared me wasn't really the keys. The second I saw them, I remembered putting them there earlier. But I also clearly remember using them to unlock the door.

Both memories feel equally real and I can't figure out which one actually happened.

Has anyone here experienced memories contradicting each other?

Got home tonight and unlocked my apartment like normal. I remember physically taking my keys out of the lock and putting them in my pocket. Nothing seemed unusual until I walked into my bedroom and my keys were sitting on my desk.

My same keychain and bent grocery-store rewards card. Everything. Except they were coated in oil. Immediately checked my pocket because obviously I must have been holding something else.

There was nothing in it.

I went back to the front door and checked the lock. Nothing. I emptied every pocket and retraced the few steps between the door and my bedroom. I haven't touched the keys on the desk.

The oil is weird. It's thickest around the actual key and inside the grooves, and there's an oily outline underneath them like they've been sitting there for hours.

I've posted before about what I've been calling my "third body experience," where for a few moments I could feel myself existing somewhere else while still being completely aware of the body I was in. Ever since then I've occasionally had these tiny moments where something feels like it already happened, except I remember it happening slightly differently.

When I saw the keys, I got that feeling again immediately.

For maybe a second I remembered putting them on the desk. Not imagined it. Remembered it. I could feel the oil on my fingers. But at the exact same time I remembered unlocking the door with them less than a minute earlier.

Those two memories don't feel contradictory in my head. That's what's scaring me. They both feel equally real. There has to be some stupid explanation I'm overlooking. Maybe they're duplicates I somehow forgot about. Maybe my memory of unlocking the door is wrong.

But then why do I remember both versions?

And if those are the keys I left on my desk, what exactly did I unlock my door with?

UPDATE: I talked to my neighbor because of the missing 47 minutes and now I'm more confused.

They asked if I was okay earlier because they heard me moving around really fast, banging into things and apparently yelling or screaming at one point. They thought I was having an argument, except they never heard another person.

I don't remember any of that.

After they told me, I actually looked around instead of focusing on the keys. My bed is shifted away from the wall, a chair is knocked over and a couple drawers are open. There's some hair in the bathroom sink and one of my fingernails is split. None of it is extreme enough that I couldn't have done it myself, which makes this worse.

I still can't remember those 47 minutes.

I do have one really vague memory coming back, but I don't trust it. It feels like the third-body thing again. I remember looking down my hallway and seeing someone moving around in my bedroom.

The problem is when I try to remember who I was looking at, I keep getting the feeling it was me.

The odds don’t stay the same all night. That is impossible. I’ve been watching the tables and there are certain periods where everything starts lining up at once. Cards, roulette, even machines across the room start hitting in patterns.

I think most people leave right before the casino enters what I’ve been calling the “open cycle.”

Tonight I’m bringing $500 and I’m not leaving until I catch it. I wrote down the times from my last three visits and there’s definitely something there.

If I suddenly stop updating this post, assume I figured it out.

The mosquitoes are different now.

I used to be insanely good at killing them. If I spotted one flying around my house it was basically over for him. I got so good at clapping them out of the air that I had probably a 90% success rate. Sometimes I'd literally grab them out of the air with one hand. Years of unwanted mosquito combat experience.

Not anymore.

Something changed recently and these things are fucking FAST. I'll spot one, go for the clap, and it instantly changes direction and disappears. Then 2 minutes later it's somehow behind my other ear.

It's like somebody increased their movement speed in the last GMO mosquito update.

And they're stronger.

I've managed to catch a few of the new ones. Twice now I've grabbed one out of the air, opened my hand expecting mosquito paste like every other mosquito I've caught in my life, and the motherfucker JUST FLEW AWAY.

Excuse me?

I just compressed you between two human hands and you're cleared for takeoff??

Before, if I got a clap on one, that was it.

Genetic modified mosquitoes are an actual thing. So we're already modifying mosquitoes. I'm just supposed to believe nobody touched the SPEED and DURABILITY sliders??

And now there are regular flies and other flying insects showing up around my house in numbers I don't remember ever dealing with before. Maybe unrelated. Probably.

But this is exactly how these things start.

You alter one insect. That changes something else. That changes something else. Suddenly the flies are occupying the kitchen, mosquitoes have unlocked evasive maneuvers.

I don't know what version mosquito we're on now but I don't want any more updates. The old ones were annoying too.

We are cooked.

Years ago I worked at Sonic. I was technically a grill person and trash taker outer which I know is a great combination of responsibilities.

One night we were closing and somebody realized something was very, very wrong with the milkshake machine. Someone had put ranch into the machine instead of the milkshake mix.

Not like a little ranch got mixed in. I mean we had apparently been making and serving ranch milkshakes for the entire night.

We immediately started trying to figure out how many people we'd served them to and somehow realized something even worse:

Nobody complained.

Not one person came back. Nobody called. Nobody said their Oreo shake tasted like ranch. Nothing. They called the GM because obviously this seemed like information the GM should probably have.

After they explained that we'd spent the night unknowingly selling ranch shakes to people, he was just like:

"Wow, they must've liked the ranch shakes!"

And that was pretty much the end of it. We all laughed about it.

To this day I still think about all those people who drove away from Sonic drinking a ranch milkshake and apparently just accepted that this was what Sonic tasted like.