I can sympathize - ill-located greasy oil filters are a pain to get off. A few tips.


use the FRAM filters that have the grippy/rubberized surface designed to give your fingers some purchase upon removal. 
try a combination of oil filter wrenches (the ones designed to go into a 3/8" drive ratchet) and extensions, u-joints, etc if space permits.
get one of those rubber non-slip mats designed to line drawers and wrap it around the oil filter one or more times. This will give you a decent bit of grip to power the filter off. 
if you're so inclined, get a remote oil filter relocation kit.  This is an adapter with some oil lines that will let you mount the oil filter some place more convenient.  As an added bonus, a lot of these kits will let you mount a much larger oil filter as well.


Removing oil filter from Lincoln Mark VIII
In TNG "Who Watches the Watchers" we learn about the Mintakans, who are described as "proto-Vulcan humanoids".  Does this mean that the Mintakans come from a common ancestor to the Vulcans, or does it mean that the two species have evolved coincidentally to share many of the same features? (Or not so coincidentally if you take into account that genetic-seeding by the super ancient humanoids.)

We have been shown many species that look completely like humans, and even entire planets that mirror Earth (TOS "Miri") and maybe some of those species could be considered "proto-human humanoids".

I don't think it has been defined how long Vulcans have had space travel, or if it's even possible the Vulcans evolved from some other species that had space travel earlier, and the Mintakans are some off-shoot of that species.  This could possibly be justified from what Spock says in TOS "Return to Tomorrow" where he seems to suggest in response to Sargon and the astrobiology doctor that there are unexplained issues with Vulcans evolving on the planet Vulcan, that they might have been colonized by Sargon's people instead.

Interesting reading:
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Vulcan_history
