So I took my mate to work today, then had a pleasant drive down the road for a bit while I gathered my thoughts. As I was going down an exit ramp, my father called and asked if I could run him around for a bit, since the only vehicle he had was in the shop, and that would actually be the next to last errand we'd run. I hastily agreed, since he also offered gas money, and knowing I had enough gas to be fine for a while, I thought I'd be able to at least get some new jeans or something. A couple of hours in morning traffic, followed by the occasionally smooth sections of highway left me feeling a little frazzled by eight thirty the same morning, but I decided it was well worth it. Until the squeaking started. It's been off and on for a while, but now it was like some loud, obnoxious rat had crawled under the hood and decided he needed to make his presence known. I went back to see my mate for a bit while she was at work and possibly steal a kiss, when on the way there I decided to consult her on spending a bit of my newly appropriated funds on oil, and some belt conditioner as I was sure it was just the drive/serpentine belt. One brief discussion, no kiss, and twenty dollars later, I was happily spraying the stuff on. Five minutes after I started the van back up, I was furious. It had gone on to full-fledged screaming, and nothing I knew of could have possibly caused that. So I go back into the O'Reilly's, and the employees there happened to have a naturally lazy and unhelpful disposition. The knowledge I accumulated there consisted of "We aren't allowed to go outside" as well as the jewel "We aren't technicians. We just sell the parts." What that tells me is that they have shut-ins who have no idea what they're dealing with. Just moving chunks of metal with serial numbers attached. Or, they were lazy. Either way, Autozone was great about it, and the guys there were willing to help me after a little bit of persuading. Once we got the problem pinned, being the cheap skate I am, I crawled in and to the best of my abilities switched out the faulty tensioner pulley, which really wasn't that hard, and put in the new one! Voila! It didn't work! Wait...what? No, seriously. It still wasn't the right part. Sometime around five in the afternoon, I gave up trying to figure it out, and took it to a mechanic who just sort of laughed at me as I hadn't decided to wash after crawling around under the hood. Screw it, I'll pay if it's done right.