So, my car's Check Engine light came on Thursday night as I was driving home from work. I looked in my car's owner's manual (pausing briefly to marvel at how bad the index was - I looked for "check engine", "indicator light", and then, in some desperation, "idiot light" and didn't find anything. I then turned to the table of contents and immediately found an entry for "Indicator Lights". No cookie for you, Acura indexer!) and it explained that if you had recently fuelled your car, the most likely cause of a check engine light was a loose gas cap, and explained that the light should go off after you had tightened the gas cap and driven the car three or four times.

I had indeed put gas in the car on Wednesday, so I tightened the cap, and drove around all Friday eagerly anticipating the winking out of the little light.

No such luck. The check engine light is still on.

So, I poked around on the net, and found out a little bit more about what the check engine light means. Basically, the check engine light is hooked up to your car's diagnostic computer. The car's diagnostic computer monitors all kinds of things in the engine, and the check engine light can be triggered by everything from a misfiring spark plug to a burned out oxygen sensor. When you take the car to the mechanic, the mechanic hooks up some kind of reader device to your diagnostic computer and reads a code from the diagnostic computer that helps diagnose the problem more specifically. I found a page listing all the codes for the 2001 Acura Integra, though it's not all that enlightening, since I don't know what many of the acronyms mean.

Most sources agree that if the car isn't idling roughly or having trouble starting, and otherwise seems to drive normally, the problem is probably in the emissions system, which means that the car can be driven without damage to the engine, although it might generate more pollution or get lower gas mileage. So, I went to my car dealer's web page, and made a service appointment for Wednesday afternoon. (I love these guys - they let you make service appointments via the web.) Depending on what's wrong, it may be a cheap repair or a moderately expensive one, but it should be covered under warranty.

I spent most of yesterday at the first half of a two-day Advanced FrameMaker class that I'm taking at SJSU Professional Development. I was a little dubious about the class, but my managers have been pushing me to get some official training in FrameMaker ever since they decided that I'd be the one to take over maintaining our FrameMaker templates when our current template maintainer left. (She left Friday. We'll miss her. She did a lot for our department. Honestly, I was more freaked out about her leaving than our manager leaving. Probably because now I've got a bunch of her job responsibilities.)

The class turned out to be pretty good, though. Not everything we covered was new to me, but the instructor let us ask lots and lots of questions. Also, all the students in the class are tech writers who are currently using FrameMaker at least some of the time on the job, so I got to learn some stuff about how other companies do things. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday.

Today, I slept in late, had brunch with Daniel, and made a Target run, a bank run, and a car wash run. (No, washing the car did not make the Check Engine light go off, but it did make me happy to see my car all shiny. Shiny car. Happy car.)

I've also decided to try to learn how to knit. I keep seeing people knitting at science fiction conventions, and it looks very relaxing. Also, I'd like to be able to make socks. I picked up the book Stitch-N-Bitch a few days ago. Frankly, I'm a little intimidated. I suppose I'll just have to go get some needles and yarn, and just give it a shot.