After driving my newly acquired Civic for a few months, the time came to replace the wiper blades. I typically do this twice a year on my vehicles. It usually entails picking up a set of Anco replacement blades and swapping them out.

I recalled seeing, while researching my Civic purchase, that most stock replacement wipers didn’t fit the 8th Generation Civics. The stock wiper assembly are also better looking than the el-cheapo Anco units. So I bought some blades online and went about what I thought would be a 5 minute job.

After 30 minutes of trying to yank the blades off the assembly, looking online for a how-to and eventually digging out the manual, I was finally able to replace the blades.

Here are the manual pages on how to change a wiper blade. This is mostly as a reference for myself, but figured it may help anyone else attempting the herculean task of replacing the wiper blades on a Honda Civic.

These instructions are for a 2009 Honda Civic Si Sedan. While the basic installation steps should be the same for multiple years/models, specifics may vary. I think Sedans and Coupes use different blades. Also saw that the type of blade and wiper arm assembly was changed frequently since 2006.

You may also consider buying your wiper blades from your local Honda dealer, who may install them free of charge.

This little piece of magic I posted the other day is getting quite popular. 11,000+ views thus far. And why wouldn’t it with genius like SACK! and slow clap it out?

Only on the Internet can such a piece of crap find a home.

The St. Louis Rams play their home games  in the Edward Jones Dome. The facility leaves much to be desired.

The building was completed in 1995 and there is already talk of replacing it with what should have been built in the first place; an outdoor stadium with plenty of space for tailgating.

When the Rams were under the benevolent rule of Warner the Magnificent in the time of the Greatest Show on Turf, no one seemed to notice the crappy dome as winning covers a lot of faults.

Such winning has gone missing in the last few years. Gone with it is the deafening roar of the crowd throughout the game that was prevalent during the GSOT.

With the lease on the dome requiring it to be in the top 25% of NFL stadiums in 2015, there is an out for Rams ownership if they wanted to terminate the lease and move elsewhere. And off the top of my head, 8 stadiums better than the Edward Jones Dome are: Lucas Oil Stadium, Cowboy Stadium, MetLife Stadium, Reliant Stadium, University of Phoenix Stadium, Ford Field and Soldier Field. This is a problem.

The Rams were poised to make a comeback this season. The injury bug has already hit and it seems the 4th stringers will be taking the bulk of the snaps before long. And I doubt they will guide the Rams back to a winning record, even in a dreadful NFC West division.

Better find a way to whip the masses into a frenzy so no one notices the awfulness of the dome.

The Solution?

So to improve a horrid game experience, the marketing mavens with the Rams have come up with this gem. I believe it played during the loss to the Eagles on Sunday.

I hope that it is a joke, but I fear that is not the case. It originally came from the Rams’ website. Let’s slow clap it out.

The Toyboata segment will be coming shortly.

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This is of course the real Top Gear on BBC, not the crappy American version on History channel.

Of course the best line of the segment was used in the introduction and is not in these videos. Jeremy Clarkson states, “Whenever you turn on the news, what is it that’s bogging down the enormous American military machine? Yeah, doesn’t matter whether it’s Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, wherever. You’ve always got a bunch of guys who rock up in their home clothes with a half-timbered machine gun and look all of them in a flatbed Toyota.”

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Ever since my first viewing of Back to the Future, I have wanted a Toyota pickup. The movie comes to a close with Marty McFly openinig up the garage to find a gleaming black Toyota truck.

From then on as a child, when I would draw, I would doodle pickup trucks that all resembled a mid-80′s Toyota Truck. A truck that has disappeared from the truck landscape.

Side Note: There are a lot of continuity issues across all 3 Back to the Future episodes. See a few minor differences between the truck and garage in I, II and III here.

Since 2001, I owned this 1998 Toyota Tacoma 4×4 extended cab. I LOVED this truck. It was the perfect size. It was built like a tank and would go anywhere. It got decent gas mileage for a truck (just under 20 mpg). It had over 208,000 miles when I recently sold it.  Yet I can’t replace it with a new truck of comparable size. Tacoma pickups are now classified as a mid-size pickup.

I had planned to keep this truck for at least 350,000 miles. I sold it when I found a small hole in the frame shown above. (Here’s an example of significantly worse Tacoma Frame Rot). Toyota made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. They offered to repurchase my truck for $2,500 less than I paid for it 10 years ago.

Where has the compact truck gone?

Every pickup in America has been on steroids for the past decade and what used to be a compact is now mid-size. What used to be mid-size is now full-size. What used to be full-size is now almost qualified to pull a fifty-three foot trailer. The trucks these days keep getting bigger and bigger. As each truck graduates to the next larger class, the compact truck has been left behind.

To my knowledge, the smallest truck available in the US is the Ford Ranger, which is a good truck, but even it has grown in size the past few years. And Ford recently announced they will be stopping production on the final small truck.

Hello? McFly!

In this day and age of environmental concern and expensive gas, why have all of the major manufacturers chosen to eliminate the most fuel efficient truck models from their lineups? All manufacturers should be building more compact trucks and touting their size and fuel efficiency until marketing budgets are exhausted.

Our benevolent government is behind the death of the compact pickup. Blame them for this vehicular homocide using the weapon of unintended consequence.

From the (very) little I understand about CAFE standards, it appears that the framework of this edict is that the smaller the footprint of the vehicle, the higher the bar for fuel economy. See this site for more gibberish about CAFE mandates.

Rather than engineer their vehicles to meet these progressively more impossible targets, the manufacturer’s killed the small truck. From a business perspective, this makes sense. Compact trucks are a relatively small market and if it required an unknown capital investment to continue to sell them, the shortest distance between two points is to shut down production on small trucks or expand their size until a larger classification with lower fuel goals is reached. Looks like the manufacturers chose the latter.

Government is the problem.

As with anything our government touches, the road to unintended consequences is paved with good intentions. Good fuel economy is a laudable goal. When the end result of a mandate is to accomplish the exact opposite of what its authors intended, then the system is broken. I know this is not news. Reagan had it right, “Government is not the answer to the problem. Government is the problem”.

I don’t work in a job where I HAVE to have a small pickup. I don’t really NEED a truck. There are a lot of companies who REQUIRE a small pickup. Their higher fuel bills and expenses related to these bigger trucks will no doubt be passed on in the form of higher prices.

Even though I don’t have to have a compact truck, I loved my truck. I recently purchased a Honda Civic. I would have rather purchased a new truck, but there wasn’t one available in the size that I wanted. I do imagine getting a sheet of plywood for projects around the house is going to be much more tricky in the future.

Wal-Mart corporate lore says that the idea for the greeter was born in Louisana, when none other than Sam Walton himself walked into a store with a shoplifing problem and was welcomed by an “associate” put there by the store manager. His charge? To welcome customers and make sure merchandise was paid for. Eventually, this idea was deemed to be so great that it has been instituted in every other store across the country.

The Wal-Mart greeter was born.

Thirty plus years later and this grand plan has not been re-evaluated. I’d like to suggest it is high time to take a look at whether these greeters are necessary, effective or capable of accomplishing their relatively basic jobs.

Greeters don’t actually greet.

Rarely do I walk into a Wal-Mart where a greeter actually says “Hello” or “Hi” or even acknowledge that I am indeed entering their store. I’ll often greet them and often times get a startled response.

Though as a greeter, based on some of the clientele entering a Wal-Mart, I wouldn’t speak to them either. For a lot more examples go to: www.peopleofwalmart.com

Want to return something? Not without a sticker.

Usually, the employees posted up front are wrangling carts, talking with other associates, lazy or trying to figure out how to print out a label so a customer can return something.

Greeters are integral to the return system, which also sucks.

Wal-Mart, I realize that people steal a lot of stuff from your stores. I realize that measures need to be in place to protect against shoplifing. It used to be that you would use an old price gun and put a pink sticker on the return to prove that it had been brought in and not taken off the shelf. Low tech and relatively fast.

The system now? These older and slower individuals are using handheld computers with tiny buttons. They scan every item. They print out labels out for every item.

Here’s a recent example of this wonderfully efficient system: I was returning 3 items that were less than $10. First, Mr. Greeter was unable to find the barcode. Once he did, he scanned the entire length of all three items to make sure he hit the UPC code. After fumbling around with the handheld computer, the labels printed, but he didn’t have the dexterity to tear them off; he had to cut them off with scissors. The total amount of time this took? Over 5 minutes.

What is the point of this insanity? Low-tech and funtional has been replaced with high-tech, pointless and downright stupid. Will the return desk take anything back without a greeter-printed sticker? No, the system collapse, and I’m left wondering why I didn’t just go to Target in the first place.

I would also wager that the amount of shrinkage from incompetence and employee theft far outweighs that which is prevented by this greeter-based checkpoint in the return process.

Greeters don’t check receipts on exit either

Besides welcoming shoppers, the greeter is also supposed to make sure merchandise is not leaving the store when it hasn’t been paid for. As every Wal-Mart I’ve been too recently has an electronic inventory control system, it would seem this job has been effectively outsourced. Though, even when the bells and whistles sound, no associate stops the shopper to check what piece of merchandise is leaving the store.

So why don’t greeters greet?

30 years ago, there were 2-4 doors to cover the store as people entered, it was easier for shoppers to be greeted. Now, there’s a good 50 feet of entryway to cover. These folks aren’t up to the task.

More likely someone in middle management in Bentonville, Arkansas decided that they could utilize an existing paradigm to synergize the merchandise re-entry system  and customer acknowledgement initiative and by doing so would save zillions of dollars. In the process they distracted the greeter from doing the one thing that it is clear they should be doing when someone enters the store; say, “Hello”.

Next cost savings initiative? Get rid of the blue smocks and replace them with the cheaper bag uniform scene here:

To sum up, most greeters should not be employed. They should be retired. They should be playing shuffleboard and catching the early bird special at 4pm. I understand that such picturesque retirement is not an option for all. But if they must work as greeters, then for the love of all that is holy, please fulfill the title.

This car is a blast to drive and doesn’t have too many annoyances that I needed to address. I figured I’d share a couple of them as others out there might also encounter the same issues.

Daytime Running Lights

I’ve never been a fan of daytime running lights. To me they just make the driver of a car with them look as if he or she forgot to turn off his or her lights. As more people drive cars with DRL, the less effective they are as a supposed safety mechanism.

This is the first car I’ve had where turning off the DRL was not an option on the headlight on/off switch.

To disable your daytime running lights: remove fuse 37 from the interior fuse box.

Seatbelt Chime

The United States has turned into a very safety conscious nation. It seems that every police and governmental agency wants to ensure that every person in a vehicle is firmly strapped to any wreckage. Except, of course, if you are a young skull full of mush riding on a school bus. In this case, be prepared to turn into a missile should your crotchety driver hit anyone whilst turning around to yell at you.

While I believe it prudent to wear your seat belt, I find these seat belt laws and “Click It or Ticket” campaigns to be revenue-generating wastes of time. A government cannot ticket a society to safety, but they sure can bring in a lot of revenue in doing so.

The auto makers engineer seat belt nag systems that are  horribly annoying and persistent. Can you turn them off? Of course not.

That said, if someone has a reason to not wear their seat belt, that is their call in my opinion.

After searching high and low for a solution to disable the Civic seat belt nag, I found these: Ebay – Seat Belt Nag Disablers. They work well and for $4 shipped, they were well worth it.

Enjoy.