Casi me mato

Since Roxy's taken a leave of absence, I figure I might as well post something. Actually, my dear fiance is in Monterrey at her dad's house and the internet connection isn't working. I can also say that I finally have something worth posting.

As to the title of the post, yep I almost killed myself today. You see, for Christmas I bought myself a new car stereo (yes I bought myself a Christmas present, pretty bad, huh?)

Skip the next two paragraphs if you could care less about car stereos

I wanted a stereo that had an auxiliary input so I could plug in my Sirius stereo. And well sometimes I can't resist gadgets so I took the plunge and ordered it online from Crutchfield. My brothers Enrique and Jesse helped me install it while I was home for Christmas. The setup was pretty nice - an aux input for the Sirius radio and a free iPod adapter that lets me control it from the head unit. We took a couple hours to install it and it all worked perfect.

But once I took it on the road I heard a high pitched noise through the radio that increased as I accelerated. It's one of those noises that you can ignore sometimes, but other times it bothers the heck out of you. I suspected a grounding issue with the aux input and sure enough I searched some discussion forums online and found a lot of other people experiencing the same issue. The solution is a ground loop isolator, which you can find at your local electronics store. So I found one at the local Fry's and got around to installing it tonight.

So I go to my truck in the garage and pry off the instrumentation panel to install the isolator. Of course I have to turn on the truck to test whether the isolator eliminated the alternator noise. So there I am accelerating the truck inside my garage trying to listen for the interference.

All of a sudden something felt very wrong. In a few seconds it dawned on me that my garage door was CLOSED! (hat tip to my guardian angel) I can't remember how long it was since I had turned on the truck, but it had been at least a couple of minutes. And it doesn't take long for carbon monoxide to kill you. I reached up immediately to the garage door opener and pushed the button, then I ran out to the fresh cold air outside.

"Praise be to God", I muttered in shock. I put my head down on top of the fence post and pondered how close I was to killing myself. I imagined someone finding me the next morning dead in my truck because of a stupid car stereo.

Now I sit here in my living room only a half hour removed from the incident. The phone just rang, and it's Roxy so I need to get it. Blessed be God.

By the way, Roxy thinks my stereo looks "naco", which translates to thuggish. Since it almost killed me, I have to agree.