Update for the last week or so...
It's been several days since my last post. I've kept myself busy with my Django for Professionals book, which I'm about 2/3 of the way through. One criticism of the book I have so far is that the author doesn't use environment variables from the beginning, to keep sensitive information like passwords safe. I've been pushing my code to GitHub periodically, and I accidentally uploaded a few files that had the Django secret key and the database password in them. So I had to go back and change those after the fact, because of the lack of security in the earlier lessons in the book. Live and learn, I guess. He also doesn't use a .gitignore file. If he had used one, I wouldn't have made that mistake. Overall I'm happy with the book, I just wish the author would've used better security in his code. My truck is on the fritz. This is the other thing that's been keeping me busy these last 6 days, dealing with that. I took it to a Midas shop near my apartment because the check-engine light came on last weekend. I thought it just needed a tune-up, but after I got it in the shop they discovered that there were bigger problems. 3 of the 6 cylinders were misfiring because of a leak in the exhaust gas recirculation system, plus the spark plugs and plug wires needed to be replaced, plus a tune-up, plus some other stuff I can't recall at the moment. So far I've spent about $2500.00 on repairs, and that fixed the misfiring on the left side of the engine, but the number 6 cylinder on the right side is still misfiring even after installing a new fuel injector. So now it looks like we're going to have to replace the engine entirely. I'll find out on Monday what that will cost. The truck is 20 years old and has almost a quarter of a million miles on it, so I'm not surprised that it needed a lot of work done, I just wish I was in a better position to fix some of it myself. I don't have a garage so I can't really do any work on it by myself, even if I did know exactly what to do. So I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place, between paying thousands to get this truck fixed, or pay more thousands to buy another, newer truck. I checked online and saw a few trucks I liked, but they were either way too expensive or way too old. If I were to buy a truck, I'd want something that's less than 10 years old, and trucks in that age range still cost anywhere from $15000 to $30000. Meanwhile my poor Dakota isn't worth $2000 at this point. Getting it fixed will be cheaper than getting a replacement, so I'm stuck with that I guess. It's a good thing I've saved my pennies these last few years, because I'm going to need them now.