Okay, so Saturday, I get up early so that I can head out and get an interlock device installed on my car. I call the installation place to confirm my appointment, and I get the address. Looking up the street address, I discover that the car shop is located just outside of Compton.

Yup. South Central. So I'm driving along. It's a hot day, and I decide to pull into a Starbucks to gets a frozen coffee drink of some form along with double checking the address. It turns out that I had searched the wrong street name (the actual car installation place is on S Hoover St, not Hoover St, and that makes a big difference.)

So I got it installed; it requires me to blow for 3 seconds and then hum for 3 seconds. It requires this to be done upon ignition and then randomly every 0-30 minutes or so. It really sucks, but it's nice to be in full compliance of my probation terms.

I'm stuck in bumper to bumper to traffic, though, on the way back, and the engine just bites it. My lame ass car, the cheapie car that I got specifically so that I wouldn't feel bad about having an interlock device installed on it, overheated, blowing the head gasket, and me pulled over in a puff of white smoke. I hadn't had this car for one week. I normally drive it under more temperate conditions, and it usually stays covered either by a tree or in my garage. But today, it was out in the hot sun being serviced, and the driving conditions were already a recipe for disasters. Well, disaster struck. My brother and I spent all of last night and most of today tearing apart the engine to try and diagnose the problem (the easiest solution is to just replace the head gasket, provided, of course, that the pistons weren't damaged). Barring that, I'm looking at a whole new engine swap.