Merry/Happy Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanza!

I won't be around much for the next few days... Well less than I have been for the last few weeks, hopefully Ill have more to post after the new year.

Anyway I hope everyone has a great new year!

For the first time in years I actually decorated for Christmas, Kristen and I bought a tree, and I bought Lights and decorated the outside of the house. Too bad ther is no snow.. it still does not feel much like xmas yet..

Heres some pictures for ya!

Screw country proves their worth...

So I bitched about Screw Country Auto a few days ago. So here is the outcome...

So I went in on saturday for the work that I had to force them to do.. They had 2 tasks, (well 3 but I had already assumed they would forget about the other complaint I had)

1. Fix the squeeks and bangs that come from the rear suspension
2. Perform the recall on a loose parking brake nut.

I KNOW I told them about the recall when I scheduled the appointment. (I should not have to because when they get the truck thats the first thing they should check...)

Anyway, I Arrive @ 9AM on Saturday to get it done, first words out of their mouth "Oh, I dont see anything on the schedule for that..." I told them that I had scheduled the appointment on Monday and gave them the name of the MANAGER that scheduled it. He quickly agreed to work on it.

So I went off an started annoying some salesmen for a test drive of the fastest cars I could find on the lot. I only got to drive one, but it was fun.

Dodge Charger R/T Daytona 350HP 390Lb/ft torque.. fun fun fun...

Anyway I get called from the service dept saying that my truck is done and I go check it out, No squeek, no rattles, looks good, I am happy.

2 days later I am driving home from work and I feel something hit my foot. It is the screw from the parking brake that was recalled! so now I have to go back there again to have them to the recall that they obvously forgot to do!!!

Fine job you guys...

FINALLY!!!!

It is snowing!!!!! even had to use 4WD on the way to work! only 1.5" maybe.. but thats still something! First snow of the year on Dec 13th... seems just a little late to me..

Bad Night...

OK, so Ill make this quick because it is 2AM

I went out for the usual Tuesday trivia tonight. Afterward I decided to go hit on three girls that were sitting at the other end of the bar. So I make progress and chat with them for an hour or so before they decided to leave and go to the Summit. As I was leaving I decided that I wanted to try again, so I met them at the Summit, we chatted for awhile longer and I ended up talking to one of them by herself (good sign for me). About 1 we walked out of the bar and I walker her to her car, I offered to take her home, she refused with the fact she wanted to get her car home. We chatted at her car for a bit and she stated that the only reason she was worried about the 6 blocks she had to drive home was her taillight was burnt out. Again I offered to drive her home, she refused again but re-stated her anxiety about driving home because of the light. So I offered to follow her so that it would me harder to spot the failed taillight. As we are pulling away, about a block later I see red and blue lights behind me, so I pull over and the cop flies past me (speeding in a residential area I might add) and grabs her after she is already home and parked. I parked about a block away so that I could make sure she was Ok when they left. About half an hour goes by while I am hiding in the shadows watching, freezing cold, and I watch them arrest her. What crap, there was no reason for them to pull her over than the broken light.. She was home, she was safe, she wasn't swerving, she followed every traffic rule, but still she got taken away..

I watched the whole thing.. I feel like shit right now...

Screw you Screw Country Auto…

How do you piss off a service department? Make their life easy by providing exactly the problem and exactly the solution and ask them to fix it.

Let me preface this by saying I HATE the service center at New Country Auto, so I may have had a grudge against them before I went in.

Anyway, the whole story begins with a brand new 2003 Saab 9-3 Arc. I purchased this car in September of 03 and had it for just over a year. That car was in the shop a total of 17 times in 14 months of ownership. That is how I came to know and hate the service department. Rarely if ever would the problem I took it in for get fixed, the parts were not in stock, couldn’t find a problem, “it worked just fine for me,” “Oh, I forgot to look at that.” All kinds of excuses. So when I finally caved and traded in the Snaab (that is not a typo) for my brand new 2005 Toyota Tacoma, I vowed NEVER to go in there for anything if I could avoid it. This truck is perfect, only minor noises and such that are completely normal for new model year cars. Toyota knows about these issues and releases what are called Technical Service Bulletins (TSB’s) so dealers know what to do when someone brings in a vehicle exhibiting these problems. Thanks to the Toyota forums that I subscribe to I have access to these TSB’s and when the ones for the problems I am having were released I decided to get them fixed.

Now I know the drill at that place and it is always: take it in for a day, have them do nothing because they don’t have the parts, wait another week, bring it in again, fix the problem. The problem with this is that I work about 25 miles out of town and it is a huge hassle for me to get back and forth to work. So in order to avoid the initial unnecessary day I came in and said "here are the problems I have and I know there are TSB’s on the issue could you please fix them." Without even looking he says "I know nothing about that and we will need to schedule an appointment to check it out." I said ok nevermind and left. I decided to take all the guess work out of it and found and printed the official Toyota released TSB documents.

Yesterday I went in with these documents in hand and asked them to fix them. The service guy comes out and looks at the documents and says “yea I’ve seen these before.” I’m thinking, great this is going to work out nicely. Lets schedule an appointment so I can look at the truck. “No” I said and explained that these are this issues and I want you to order the parts so that I can bring it in on Saturday and have it fixed avoiding the delay and hassle of leaving the truck there multiple times.

“Where did you get these?”
I payed online for access to the TSB database”

He full on laughed at me! This pissed me off something fierce.

“Look, these are official TSB’s from Toyota, I guarantee if you look them up in your computer they are there. Please just fix them.”

“I’m sorry sir I cannot do that, I have to look at the truck.”
I said “OK, let’s go look at the truck and Ill show you the problems.”
“Sorry sir I can’t do that it is against policy.”
“Fine, then just trust me that these are the problems and I want them fixed.”
“I cant do that, I had a customer come in and say his CD player was broke, I ordered and installed the part only to find out that the CD he was using was scratched, I was out $400.”
“OK, number 1, that’s BS the employee is not responsible for that, number 2, I’m not that stupid, I’ve spend the 10 months I’ve owned this vehicle meticulously going though every detail narrowing down the problem, these TSB’s have very specific symptoms, the same symptoms exactly that I have. I have saved you the work of going to the computer with what I say and looking them up yourself.” (If the computer is not the first place they go to see if this is a reported problem and look for TSB’s they are too dumb to be working on my car. I didn’t say that but I wanted too.) “and 3, If I am wrong I will pay for the $5 plastic part that you ordered! Just come outside for 30 seconds and I will prove to you the problem!”

He reluctantly agrees, you can tell he is super pissed, as am I.

22 seconds later...

“yup that’s the problem, that’s all I had to do, now Ill order the parts for this one, but not the other one.”
“Why not?”
“Because I have to look at it”

The other problem is a rare loud rattle and bang from the rear end, that only occurs when the truck is full of people and very cold outside. So I could not prove it there for him. But the TSB again is very descriptive and is the problem (I’m 98% sure.) I am not as concerned about this one and am sick of dealing with these people so I leave it at that.

“Fine, I’ll be in on Saturday to get this one fixed.”

Now I know that they will either completely ignore the other problem, or will not find anything because it happens so rarely, or if by chance they actually remember an look into it, guess what? It will be exactly the problem I described, the parts will not be ordered and I will have to come in AGAIN to get them to fix the problem I told them I had in the first place!

So why is it that the customer is always dumb as a post to these people? Trust me sir, I respect that you probably know way more about working on cars that I do, but don’t assume I know nothing and treat me like dirt.

Screw you Screw Country Auto!

MLB 1252K5

Went running yesterday because it was nice and warm (42 Degrees warm...) outside my house. Well as soon as I got up the hill a little bit, it was WAY colder. So cold that the water in my Camelback tube was freezing within five or ten minutes. Anyway since I ran into a small amount of snow up there I decided it was a good Leg Blog subject.

I actually took this picture while I was running, that is why it is blurry and out of focus...


Others:
Kate
DaveT

Here is just another picture from the top of Animas Mountain (my back yard) that shows that the snow is getting closer!

Media 2010

I think TV as we know it is dead. The internet is at a breaking point to be THE media delivery mechanism of the future.

This has already begun both legally and illegally, and I much prefer this method of getting TV. (of course the downside is that I am watching more TV. BUT, no commercials and at whatever time I want.) iTunes inked a deal with ABC that put episodes up for download to the iPod for $1.99. I call that a good start, and the 20 Million downloads in the first 2 weeks that there is HUGE potential. The problem with that is I can get the same show for free and in HDTV using a bit-torrent client. Here are the things that need to happen to make it work.

1. Embrace bittorrent. This fixed the only bottleneck for releasing all this content to everyone. Currently the main expense is the bandwidth. Every bit you download from a server has to be paid for, and this expense can get huge. When you start talking about 300 - 700 MB files and millions of downloads that cost can become prohibitive. Bittorrent is a Peer to Peer sharing protocol that works very well and efficiently. Using this technology, the cost of bandwidth would be exponentially reduced due to all of the users sharing the cost.

2. Make it easy access. Right now it is only fairly savvy geeks are truly capable of taking full advantage of the internet. Yahoo and Tivo have made a deal recently that can fix all that. Tivo, a box that is already installed in millions of homes and is already connected to your television, and Yahoo one of the largest providers of internet content out there. If they put their shared recourses together and build a bittorrent client into the box and offer $1-2 downloads of a show, I think that will be the end of cable companies as we know it. Either that or they will become who we all pay for our internet connections. (which allot of us already do.)

If that all happened I would be the first to sign up.. Think about it, Cable already cost $50-80 a month, so I say ditch that, pay $45 for a high speed connection and say $1 for each show you want to watch. OK, here is an example for me, there are maybe 5 TV shows that I want to watch, and most of them come out once a week. That’s $5 a week, $20 a month, that brings the total to $65 a month. I am totally willing to pay that and I would not feel it is wasted because I am paying for what I want and only what I want. The Networks should not feel bad because if you have 60-70 Million watchers a week, they all pay their dollar, suddenly that’s $60-70 Million an episode. That has to be a healthy chunk of profit.

Now I know that there are probably a million things that I ignored to make this work but this is the way I think things should be, and if all goes well it will.

I’m going to keep watching what Yahoo an Tivo do, and the moment I hear something like this down the pipeline and am buying all sorts of Tivo stock... (well that and their stock is super cheap right now.)

UPDATE 12-5-05: I told you... times are changin, now you can get a live stream of the news... CNN: Pipeline

UPDATE 12-6-05: iTunes just added a bunch more shows to their store. all they need is better resolution and Im sold..

I just realized..

Today is the 1 year anniversary of my blog! A whole year! 192 Posts, thats 3.6 posts per week, I know Ive been slow lately but my original goal was 3 posts a week. Lets see if I can hit 4 for next year!

One year ago today...

I was actually planning on redesigning my blog and converting to Wordpress, or Movable Type for this event, but as you can see, I didnt make it.. soon enought though..

I am a Harry Potter Convert..

I have never really understood the fuss over Harry Potter. I have never read the books and never felt the need to either. A few years ago I watched the first movie and wasn’t really impressed, I didn’t quite understand, and it didn’t strike me as the masterpiece in storytelling that people seemed to think it was. Until recently...

Last week I saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and again I wasn't impressed. Everything just seemed to happen, no explanation, the movie seemed rushed, and it looked like a bunch of cool scenes ideas put together. I did however see it with some of my friends that are HP fans and they explained that the books are WAY better, ALOT more stuff happens, and this movie just did highlights and main plot points. It was a clear attempt to stuff 700 some-odd pages into a movie short enough to keep interest. I am not about to sit down and read the books (not a skill I have ever acquired), so I found myself the audio versions. I listened to the first one and now I’m hooked. There is so mush more going on in the books than the movies. Knowing the story makes the movies SO much better too. I re-watched the first movie the other night and actually enjoyed it much more that the previous time, it all made sense. So now I am about 3 hours into the second book (only 89 more hours to complete the series) and I can admit I am a convert. I look forward to my half hour drive to work and back so that I can learn little bit more about the adventures of the boy who lived and his Hogwarts companions.