Funny Ha Ha

The Pitch made me laugh out loud today. There was a picture of Tom Cruise in War of the Worlds with the caption “Science fiction expert Tom Cruise stars in War of the Worlds”

That was hilarious!

Zoom Zoom

So, I got my car back today, finally.

The body work is perfect. The wheels are perfect. It’s just that pesky engine and transmission that’s not working right.

When I bought the car I immediatly noticed a problem with the transmission. If I was driving hard, during the shift between 3rd and 4th if I had the engine at about 6500 RPM I would grind the gears a little bit. I talked to Mazda about it immediatly and they said to bring it in and it would be fixed under warranty. No problem. Except I needed to take their tech for a ride and do about 80 MPH and it rained for like a month straight and then I crashed.

So while it was in the shop for the crash they talked to Mazda about the transmission and Mazda recommended different transmission fluid. They put that in and now it’s even worse. Happens at about 4500 RPM and at 38 MPH and above.

Additionally, now there is a vibration throughout the car at about 1.5k unloaded and 2.5 loaded. Joy!

So I went back to Mazda and took the service guy and the body shop guy for rides and had them acknowledge the problems. It’ll get fixed, eventually, I know that but in the mean time I have to be without it again next week and find something to drive and annoy my friends and waste piles of money.

My recommendations? Don’t buy used cars. I thought I would be all awesome and save a ton of money buying a year old car but a new one wouldn’t have this transmission problem.
Also: Don’t crash your new (used) car. It’s a real bummer.

Odor?

Why do I always fucking stink after eating mexican food? Is it the smell of the food lingering on my clothes? Or is it cause I eat spicy food which makes me sweat and stink? Or is it the smell coming through my pores while I digest? Or do I always just stink and none of you fuckers have told me about it?

Assholes.

Auld Sk00l

So, I am starting this little project that will involve sending some SMS text messages from a web site. In investigating how one would do this I found three options:
1) Use a free, or commercial SMS gateway
2) Use one or more cell phones hooked up to the computer
3) Get a leased line from a cellular provider for major money

Using my cell phone from my computer sounded like a neat thing to screw around with so I started reading. This fit in nicely with the past weekend when I was using my phone for Internet access while driving across Missouri. Anyway, turns out that Sprint phones (and most phones) speak regular old Hayes AT commands just like a normal modem and that some phones even support a superset of Hayes that includes SMS commands.

I hooked up my handy, dandy USB cable to my phone, fired up ZTerm and lo and behold:

atz
OK

You all recognize that, of course!

So, I know that to get a Internet connection over Sprint Vision the number I have to dial is #777

atdt#777
CONNECT
~}#@!}!K} }4}"}&} } } } }%}&~:Ux}'}"}(}"%~~}#@!}!L} }4}"}&} } } } }%}&~:Ux}'}"}

And that, my friends, is Sprint’s server sending me PPP welcome packets. That’s completely hot and it really awes me that such new tech is using such old tech. The other cool thing is that when I run that command the phone totally shifts into data mode, showing send and receive bars and all. It’s really pretty cool.

Takes me back, it does.

Car Update

So, I figured you are just dying to hear what is going on with my car. Me too!
The damage:
Bent rear right control bars.
Possibly bent or destroyed subframe assembly.
Scratched up both right wheels.
Destroyed front air dam.
Destroyed front lower “spoiler”.
Destroyed front fender.
Destroyed front wheel well cover.

That’s all I know of so far, but it’s only been to the body shop, not to the mechanic. Body work should be done tomorrow and then it’ll head for the mechanical shop.

Progressive has paid $1900 so far and my guess is they’ll be looking at another $2000 at least. I should be getting it back either Friday (unlikely) or next week “sometime”.

I’ve been completely stressed out about this whole car thing. It makes me sick to my stomach thinking it won’t be as “good” as when I bought it. Probably just something I need to accept but it sure sucks to know I fucked up my badass car before I made the first payment. Luckily there are only 937 payments to go!

Borst

Best… I mean… Worst… wait, no. BEST, WORST night evar!
Boy did I fuck up.

Update:
Well, best because Dick Dale was absolutely fucking incredible. He completely rocked. The show was even better than the last one. I can’t hear a damn thing even today. Seriously, he was awesome.

And worst because I smacked my new car into a curb and busted it up pretty bad. One the way home we took a road that was supposed to lead us to the ramp to I35. It turned out to be closed so we decided to turn around. I was following Charles. He turned around and went off and then I turned around. As I was coming out of the U turn and as I started to accelerate, the back end of the car broke completely loose. When it started to slide I turned into the slide to correct it and it shot the other way. I corrected that and then it just went completely around. The front right wheel bounced up onto the curb and the back wheel hit the curb at a slight angle.

The damage? Some plastic on the front end of the car got busted up and will have to be replaced. The bad part is that the back right wheel is bent in. Looks like either the axle or a control rod got bent. There’s no body damage, no wheel damage but it still looks pretty scary.

I went back to the scene a few minutes ago to take some pictures and it looks like right where I started to accelerate out of my turn there was a huge mud slick from the dirt hill next to the road. Combined with all the rain I think it was probably about as slick as ice. Felt like it at least. I’ve never had a car just whip around like that thing did. I’ll post the pictures when I can bear to look at them 🙂

Update:
<rwg> He wankeled right into the curb.

That’s some funny shit right there.

Update:
Pictures of the damage