Regular maintenance is important to the life of your car. There are three types of such: preventative, emergency, and fun.

"Fun" maintenance is just what it sounds like. It's installing new side steps, or taking the Jeep to the wash. It's getting it detailed, or putting on new seat covers, or perhaps putting in a new sound system.

"Preventative" maintenance is what you do to make sure it keeps running well. This includes getting your tires rotated every 7k miles, going to JiffyLube for fluid changes every 3k, and making sure the car is in good working order. This is why my car is in the shop now. At 60k, it's time to get a lot of stuff done: just about every fluid has to be changed, the spark plugs have to be replaced, and in my case, the serpantine belt also needs to be changed, the alignment needs to be adjusted, and the brakes have to be fixed.

"Emergency" maintenance is what Triple-A is for. If you don't know what Triple-A is, or what its for, you most likely do not own a car. Or, perhaps, Triple-A is another "American" only thing, so: Triple-A is a roadside service. Blow a tire, the car blows up, etc., Triple-A'll bail you out and tow the vehicle to a repair station. That's essentially what "emergency" maintenance is: anything doing with much needed repairs to the car that ceases functioning when you are not at a repair facility.

Now, since I do work pizza delivery, I am often engaging in "preventative" maintenance. More so then most, I would imagine, since I clock about 500 miles a week on that vehicle. Which is why my car sounds like its always in the shop. Rest assured, it isn't always in the shop. Usually just a few hours a day, one day a month. This month is a bit different from that.

Going by that, I need to rotate my tires once every 5 years. (What on Earth is getting your tires rotated anyway? Surely it can't be just turning the tires around, as they tend to do that anyway.)

I'm surprised you actually pay someone to do all that stuff, Jeff. I'm by no means a car junkie, certainly less so than you, but even I change my own oil and rotate my own tires.

[ August 07, 2001: Message edited by: TSN ]

Say, for instance, that your vehicle's tire arrangement is as follows:

1--2

3--4

When you finish rotating the tires, it would look like this:

4--3

2--1

[ August 07, 2001: Message edited by: Mr. Christopher ]

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Did Apes Steal Ending?

Director Kevin Smith told fans on his official View Askew Web site message board that he considered suing Planet of the Apes director Tim Burton for allegedly appropriating Apes' surprise ending from one of Smith's comics. The image in question appeared on page 7 of Jay and Silent Bob No. 3 and mirrors the ending of Burton's Apes remake.

"Believe me, I contemplated legal action," Smith wrote to fans, who first made the connection. The image gives away the controversial ending of Burton's movie.

But Burton denied he stole the idea from Smith. "I have not seen the image, and anybody that knows me knows I do not read comic books," Burton told the New York Post. "And I especially wouldn't read anything that was created by Kevin Smith."

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