Carnival of Madness

Well I’m set for this month. Set aside the cash to make the first car payment and will probably pay a bunch more with the next check. This month will be tight, as far as money goes. Basically, there’s this party we’re having Sunday and so far it’s cost me a lot of money, about $70. Then there’s the huge new car insurance bill; which has gone up a couple hundred bucks. Oh yeah and I got a notice from the health insurance guys that they’re raising my premiums another $22. It’s really unbelievable, they raise the rate well beyond the rate of inflation. It started out at $130 in 2004 and it’s now up to $195 a month. I think 2004 was $130, then $148 in 2005, $168 in 2006, $172 in 2007 and now $195 in 2008. They also say that if I got myself down to 183 lbs, I could get a “normal rate”. So I guess drop 100 lbs.Oh yeah, seat belts. Basically so far, two people have sat in the back seat of my car and neither of them could get the seat belt to work right. Basically they took the belt and tried to get it to click in. It never worked. I looked at it for a while today and then decided after I left to go to the dealership and see what they could do about it. Well, it turns out that the receiver end was stuck under the seat and that the middle receiver was the one being used and it never works with the side belt. Also while at the dealership, I was talking to the sales person, pointed out how much I miss having a rear windshield whipper (especially this winter) and she said she’ll find out how much it cost to get a rear windshield whipper installed. I have been very annoyed with how hard it is to see out of a dirty window back there. If it’s less than, say $125, I’ll just pay up on it and get it done. But if it’s like $400, fuck it, just get the windshield cleaned at the gas station when I buy gas, I guess. At first I thought I’d just live without it, but it’s getting really annoying.

I guess for a while now, I haven’t had anything to get me excited about work. This new car is just a huge motivator. The fact that I have a goal in mind for this year, pay off the car, is just helping me get to work every day and making me wanna work more. And even better, I have a new toy. Oh yeah, saw the old car on internetautoguide.com and they actually want $3995 for it. Ha! Good luck with that one. I saw it on the internet and they made a huge mistake, they said it’s a manual. Um, nope. But yeah, i can’t imagine they’d get anything close to $4000 for it. I mean think about it, why bother with an 8 year old car for $4000 when they could probably get a new Hyundai Accent for $13,000 or a Chevy Aveo for $9000?

The Pirates are back at it in Spring Training and so far they’re 1-2. Thursday’s win was awesome. 11-6 with a LaRoche home run. I hope that’s an indication of things to come this season. I mean, he was terrible last spring and up until late May, I think. Then he finally got back to form for him. Overall, I like the attitude around camp (as much as I can see thanks to the P-G’s Peter Diana video clips), they seem to be ready to go play some baseball. First thing, though, they need to melt all of the snow that the Northern states have accumulated this winter. Should be plenty of time though, since this year they’re starting the season in domes, retractable domes and southern states. Which is really the way they should go. I mean last spring was just crazy because the guys who made the schedule screwed up big time. Then try to avoid the Southern states during July and August, unless they have domes or retractable domes.

Well, the Priates start on March 31st with a visit to Atlanta. I hate starting the season there. They started the whole Pirates losing thing for 15 seasons. Sid Bream and Francisco Cabrera are truly, very, very evil men who probably are members of PETA or ALF or Focus on the Family or some other group of evil people.

Well I’m falling asleep now. Good night and do something I wouldn’t do….

Whoo! Let’s hear it for Leap Day. I totally forgot to put an entry on here four years ago about Leap Day. Did ya know that Leap Day will not be around in 2100? Yep. Generally there’s this rule. I’m not sure how they figured it out, but the year 2000 and 2400 and 2800 would be a leap year and every four hundred years after that will be a leap year, but all the rest of the years ending with 00 will not be a leap year. So the years 2100, 2200 and 2300 will not be a leap year, but the year 2400 will be.The reason for that is because the year isn’t exactly 365.25 days. It’s a bit shorter than that so they have to correct it again. I suppose it’s the easiest way to do things around here…

I guess that’s all for now…

So here’s a photo of me hanging out with the new car yesterday: 

So yeah, it rocks in all.

So, apparently, Ralph Nader is gonna run for president again. He wants to fight “corporate greed, corporate power and corporate control”. In an age when the US government spends more money and exerts more control over our lives than ever before, he’s worried about corporations. Really, shouldn’t he be worried about “government greed, government power and government control”? That’s where most of the trouble has been the last eight years. Not corporations. Government has a much larger negative effect on our lives than all those “evil corporations” that he bitches about do.Yeah, those evil corporations, that umm…let me think here. Oh yeah, my computer and iPod, made by a corporation. My printer, made by another corporation. The beer I drink, made by a corporation. The car I drive, yet another corporation made that. My cell phone, there’s another corporation. My clothes, my bed sheets and pillow cases, all made by corporations. The TV shows I watch, made by corporations. My favorite movies, most all made by corporations. My digital camera, made by a corporation. Some of the websites I go to are run by corporations. Ralph is probably a corporation of his own. I mean he’d have to be with his kind of ego. As some people on the CNN website have suggested, Ralph’s running to get another Republican elected. Can’t say I agree with that. I think he runs because he doesn’t have a life or friends or relatives or anything else to do, so why not run for president? I’d recommend he calm down and watch something good on TV with an ice cold beer. Oh wait, those are both made by corporations….can’t have that.

Wow, the new car is so awesome. It’s just a good feeling driving it as opposed to the old car which pretty much sucked. The defroster works right and it handles so smoothly. I suppose those are things new cars should do regardless of make or model. But just getting in it and driving it around feels so good. And I love the feeling that I will never see the old car again. It’s awesome. The gas mileage is clearly better. It’s been almost 130 miles and it’s just past the 3/4 full mark. Still not a master with the shifting and all that, but it takes a long time to get used to a new car that has manual.The coolest part is that this was totally my choice. Unlike in 2001, I wasn’t under the pressure of having to get another car after an accident, which was difficult enough. Then not having any money to make a significant down payment on it, just $1000. And eventually the car became a real curse as far as money goes because in late 2002, the head gasket blew out at about 26,000 miles. It took them from November until February to fix it because for some dumb reason they couldn’t find parts for it. Suddenly, I didn’t have a car to drive to work. And to top it off, they wouldn’t give me one to drive while they fixed it. I lost that job and then couldn’t make payments on it. Eventually it almost got towed. I then spent the next three years paying it off until the stupid payment was gone. The length of time it took to get a simple repair done on it was just terrible. That really scared me about the car. I mean, right now neither Bird nor Runde could find parts to fix the defroster on a car that’s only 8 years old.

I guess in a big way, the reason was fear of having a car that couldn’t be fixed if something major broke on it. I was able to get $1000 on the trade-in and get a car that’s completely covered for the next five years. And get a car that’s gonna be all paid off by this time next year. Thanks to the 10 year/100,000 mile power train warranty, I can pay for it this year and enjoy it for 9 years after this year, I hope. I hope that the insurance turns out to be completely unused.

In other news, I’ve been bowling lately. Yesterday was terrible. I was unable to get strikes. I was on my 3rd game of the day and after 9 frames, I was bowling a 91. Yeah, that’s pretty bad. For the final frame, I went up and got three strikes in a row and ended the game with a final score of 121. Awesome. But kinda sucked because if I had gotten those three strikes in a row earlier in the game, I would have finished with a much higher score. Ah, well.

The weather around here has finally gotten to the point of being less violently annoying. I’m so glad to see that March is only 8 days away. We’re having an absolutely smashing day with all sorts of sun and melting of snow, even though it was only around 30-ish this afternoon. It’ll probably dip back down to like 6 tonight. But after that it should be an awesome weekend. Then Monday and Tuesday should be nasty, but from the looks of it, not as nasty as a the rest of the month was. I feel like a marathon runner who can see the finish line of this winter and it’s not too far away. About a month left, but probably the best month of winter…the last one.

I guess that’s all for now…

CNN has an excellent story about what kind of car to drive on a first date. For some reason neither a 2000 Daewoo Lanos nor a 2008 Hyundai Accent is on the list. Bummer. That means that any date I’ve had must not have turned out well because my car sucks. Hmmm, makes sense.

But most women these days are rather picky when it comes to a guy’s ride. Your car really does send her all the right or wrong messages about how much money you make and what gets your engine running. Let’s be honest, some girls just like a flashy ride too.

Yeah, because generally if a guy’s driving a new fancy car it probably means he’s in debt up to his eye balls, right? Deciding that a person is wealthy or not based on his car is kinda silly, I mean, Ed drives an old pick up that’s falling apart. But he does extremely well. Oh yeah, what gets my engine running? Gasoline…

On the first date with my husband, he drove me around in an old Volvo sedan with very squeaky brakes. Derick is an actor and his car reflected his lifestyle as a struggling artist dedicated to his talent. I was obviously more impressed by his intelligence, reliability and determination rather than his status or style.

So even you admit that a really awesome sports car wouldn’t have helped him any. He was cool already, he just had a shitty car and you were ok with that. So why even write this article?

To help you get to dating paradise, or just to woo the lady in your life, we road tested five great sport cars. Each one should put you on the road to finding that perfect someone … or someone who likes your car better than you.

Oh sure, you did it just to help out single guys every where. Something any guy making more than $100,000 can do to get some action, based entirely on his car. You had no interest in playing with an Audi or a Porsche, am I right? And why would any single guy be interested in a girl who only loves his car and by extension, his money or the perception that he has money?My favorite car on the list was a Mercedes-Benz CL550. They have the MSRP from $103,000 to $295,000. So if you really wanna impress a girl, just go out and buy a car that cost more than a house. That better have a 20 year/200,000 mile bumper to bumper warranty for that kind of money.

And now to completely change subjects. Ugh, worst winter ever. I mean, really, all it does is snow and then when it’s not snowing it drops to about -5 F out and freezes everything for a week. It doesn’t get back up to the 30′s again until it’s snowing another foot…

I’m just waiting for that week when it’s about 30 out all week and doesn’t snow. We have mountains of snow around here.

I’m always amazed when I meet people my age who are not computer literate and/or don’t type the right way. It almost just makes me crazy. That happened twice with the car dealers. On Saturday, the lady who was there took my cell phone number and name, typed it in. She didn’t use the normal typing method and instead did the two index fingers, one key at a time method. That just annoys the shit out of me. And she seemed to have trouble using a rather simple computer layout. Well, simple in the sense that it wasn’t Mac OS X, but it worked. I mean, if people use a keyboard they really should use it the right way so that they can save time. And if your job entails using a computer, you really should learn how to use it so that you don’t waste other peoples’ time.Then on Wednesday it was the same thing. The sales person slowly typed everything with the two index fingers. That took up a lot of time. As much as I didn’t like the financial guy, at least he could type right. He had to fix a few things, like when I told him my car was already registered up until 2009. He had to go in and change a bunch of stuff, because he assumed that I wasn’t paid up for this year yet.

So I went back to the dealer today and returned the extra Daewoo key that I never used…ever. They were surprised that I would turn that in with the car, he said that most people don’t, that they don’t really think of that. Well, I suppose that I could have left it in the drawer, but really, I didn’t need it and I’m sure the poor sucka who buys that car might like an extra key.

I also went to Wal-Mart to get a replacement set of razor heads for my electric shaver thing. They were sold out. Total suck, the shaver is missing spots and seems to be pulling the hair out sometimes. Also tonight, discovered that Norelco’s website sucks.

Had to take Jesse for a ride in the car tonight. Finally got above 100 miles. We went to the library to drop off books and then went to Culver’s for fish. Stupid Lent. Then he insisted that we take Asbury all the way over to University to get on Grandview and then get back on the highway to get home. Ugh, stupid pot holes. This winter has just been brutal to the roads around here. Now we’re supposed to get like two more feet of snow by Tuesday morning or something crazy like that. Worst Winter Ever. I’ve had enough already, still could be 45 days of this shit left…

Oh yeah, Arlen Specter is an asshole. Oh, so the Eagles were never good enough to win a Super Bowl against the Patriots and that means he gets to grandstand about how it’s terrible that the NFL destroyed a bunch of tapes that the Patriots made of the opposing teams signals. To me, this was never a big deal because you still need talent to win a freaking Super Bowl. You need drive, ambition and training too. I’m sure in high school, our coach could have cheated like this but I don’t think it would have helped us to win games. You still have to go out there and play the fucking game. And let’s face it, in the Patriots-Rams Super Bowl from 2002, the Rams plain did not show up to play. They can’t possibly steal the offense signals because they’re sent to the QB by a set of head phones. The best offense in football that season just couldn’t do anything that game. That’s the reason the Rams lost that game. The offense shows up and does the same thing as it did all season that year and the Rams go home champions again.

Of course Specter is threatening the league with the whole gonna take away the Anti-Trust Exemption thing. To me that makes even less sense, there’s 32 NFL teams. That’s pretty damn competitive. Each of them are their own business, with different owners and different management. Except Los Angeles, San Antonio Columbus, Memphis and Austin, most of the nations biggest cities have NFL teams. And Columbus has Ohio State football to make up for the lack of an NFL team. True, Los Angeles should have an NFL team, but the point is that the NFL is pretty damn competitive.. At this point, Specter is throwing a fit and is trying to make the NFL bow down and worship the great government masters. The same way that the government has MLB on it’s knees over the whole steroid thing. Attempting to make sports even more dependent on government largesse and, of course, mindlessly follow government edicts.

Really, though, Specter seems to just love to throw his weight around and being powerful. Nothing like threatening people to behave the way he wants, just because he’s a fucking senator. I hope he gets voted out…

Well I’m getting almost $100 back, after I pay the state about $560. It kinda sucks because I could really use the full $660 for other stuff like the insurance and all that. I have to say though, that this insurance will be cheaper than what I was paying for the Daewoo back when it had full coverage the first few years. The Daewoo was down to about $20 a month, or about $120 every six months. Now it’ll be slightly less than $90 a month. Ugh. I forgot all about the insurance thing. People usually do when they’re buying cars…I’ll have to remember to set aside about $100 every month for insurance until I get it all paid off. Which by my calculations should be around Thanksgiving. It’d be hella sweet to have it done by then. The extra $10 every month can be used to pay for the registration next year. The Credit Union gave me a .15% discount because I used automatic payments and have checking and savings accounts. Cool. And they have it set up so that I can pay extra online whenever the hell I feel like it.

So far I’m doing well with the car. I mean I’m still figuring out the manual transmission, but otherwise it’s pretty cool in all. It’s been almost 7 and a half years since I had a car with manual so it’s really just relearning how to drive a manual that isn’t a diesel pick up truck or a grain truck. Grain truck was fun, but way too hard to figure out. Yeah, that thing is a real road hog, unlike the new-ish car…

Well, I did it. I bought a new car. Maybe not the smartest thing I’ve ever done, but it feels so good. A 2008 Hyundai Accent. The Egg is now the property of Kruse-Wortham. After nearly 7 years, it just felt like the right time for this. I’m older, more mature and I was able to convince the guy that the Egg was worth $1000 in trade in value (ha!). I was able to get an additional $750 off from the dealer as well. So yeah, it’s not like I broke the bank with this car.I was really nervous about this sort of deal. I mean, I’m not a car guy, but I would feel a lot better about taking this car to Milwaukee than the Daewoo. And as soon as I got in it and started driving around town….oh yeah. Nothing like the Daewoo at all. So much better and nicer.

Of course buying a car is not without headaches. Specifically, the idea of having to deal with the financial person. Ugh, I went in there and he started telling me that because of my awesome credit, he would add on to the cost of the car all these neat things. Of course he was saying that they would “give” me these things, ya know extended warranty, undercoating, free tire replacement, etc.. So at first I was under the impression that I was getting all this cool stuff for free. Of course I asked for the calculator and added it up to the small loan I got to cover it. Turns out, it would have doubled the loan amount. Holy shit. Yeah, I don’t think so. I told him to take that stuff off and eventually got it back to where it was. He complained that my credit would look bad with a $5000 loan. Bah, like I care and besides he said it looked good because I had payed everything else off a few minutes earlier. Aggressive as hell too. Ugh. The salespeople are ok. The financial guy was not.

The funny thing is that I have the same exact feeling as the day I bought the Daewoo. If nothing else about January 9, 2001, I remember that feeling. Kinda nervous and a feeling of “Did I just do that?” I’ve never traded in a car before, which was really new. I just left it there, to sit and be someone else’s problem. They think the alignment is bad, it pulls to the right. I never noticed that before. I guess it’s the whole if you slowly change things, people won’t even notice a change. I’m guessing that if they start digging, they’ll find all sorts of problems. I was starting to think that it had been a long time and that it’s probably time for a several thousand dollar problem to spring up on it. Not to mention the defrosting system just being impossible to fix, apparently. Gonna update the miles page.

I suppose that’s it for now.

Shortly after posting that thing yesterday about undercoating, I happened to find a more satisfactory answer on the Snopes.com message boardwhere a person was asking about undercoating, scotch guarding and paint sealant:

Scotch guard is a spray that they apply to the seat fabric and carpets that helps to repel stains. This works well and is probably worth a minimal charge. Keep in mind that you can do this yourself so if the dealer is trying to charge more than about $100 it would save you money to do it yourself. All that the dealer does is take a spray bottle similar to the ones your everyday cleaners come in that has the scotch guard chemical in it and pulls the trigger and coats the fabric in your car. You should also keep in mind that this procedure may have already been done at the factory as is the case with GM vehicles during the 1990’s. Read the FACTORY window sticker, FACTORY product brochure, and the FACTORY owners manual for detailsPaint sealant is a huge scam. The cars come from the factory with a clear coat finish that gives your car that glossy shine and helps to protect the paint and keep it from fading. The paint sealant is nothing more than a liquid that comes in a four oz bottle and goes on and comes off just like a wax. The paint sealant costs about $18 a bottle. The person applying it makes minimum wage. The dealer will tell you that you need this and will charge you several hundred dollars for nothing more than a wax job that you do not need.

Undercoating is the same as paint sealant. In fact it is worse. During the 1990’s it clearly stated in the GM owners manual from the factory that undercoating was not necessary and in fact, if undercoating was applied it could void the manufacturers 10year/100,000 mile rust through warranty. It may still say that I don’t know.

Yep, no need for any of that crap as far as I can see…..