Entries this day: -futurama car-cost car-current car-status wow

futurama

11:27pm CST Tuesday 4 January 3000

Today on the way home I saw the big KRIV FOX 26 tv station. I was immediately reminded that Futurama (my new favorite show) seemed to be conspicuously missing at 7:30 after The Simpsons on Sunday. So I stopped by to ask what was up.

They were closed, and the lights were off in the office thing, but the front doors were unlocked. In the lobby I found a small sign

                     After Hours
                     Dial 7215

I picked up the phone and dialed.

"Security."

"What happened to Futurama?"

"Excuse me?"

"Futurama! It used to play on Sunday night, and last Sunday it wasn't on. I saw the TV station and figured that if anyone knew, you would know."

"Hang on for just a minute."

While on hold, I noticed the lights come on in the office and a man walked in. He slid open the glass window and presented the Schedule For 01-03-00.

No Futurama.

Bluh! I asked if he could give me the office phone number, which he did, so I will maybe call them tomorrow. Maybe not though; I can't seem to find the number already.

I really loved Futurama!!!!!

It's FREEZING tonight!! It's like 42 degrees outside now, and it's predicted to freeze. I guess I'll wear pants tomorrow.

Picked up Scott from the Toyota place, and the guy suggested that of all the repairs, the radiator was most critical. He gave me a phone number for a place that he said would do a good inexpensive job replacing it. Nice.

Drove home with no problems. I'm going to get some second and maybe third opinions on it; we'll see how it goes!

With Love
- Rob permalink

car cost

7:30am 04 January 2000

• power steering rack for main steering is leaking fluid - $840
• valve cover gasket leaking oil- $110
• distributor mounting seal leaking oil - $118
• front engine oil pump seal - $395
• motor mounts are bad - $624
• radiator top tank cracked and leaking - $365
• lower control arms (A-frame ball joint bushings) - $690
• alignment - $76.50
• leak in rear main seal (maybe; can't tell because of other leaks) - $675
• Total cost: $3893.50 + tax

When I bought Scott, he cost $5300. I love my little car. I want to get him fixed correctly. Last night, Wende has suggested that I take him to a different (not car dealership) place that we trust to get a second opinion.

I had one other idea this morning: call Sam Malone. Sam is an wildly popular radio personality in Houston who often does ads for the car place where Scott is. He often will help people with monetary situations such as this.

I called and talked to Psycho Robbie who suggested that I contact Sam after the show through the main desk of the station. I will let you know how it goes!

With Love
- Rob permalink

car current

10:30am 04 January 2000

I called Sam Malone and left a voicemail. He called me back!

(Just to hear our office manager, "Rob, Sam Malone is on line 2 for you," was pretty awesome!)

He said he didn't want to step in immediately; he wasn't there; hasn't seen the car; etc, but to call Mike or Randy directly, and to call him (Sam) back; he would be in the office until 11:30-ish.

I called Mike, left a voicemail.

I called Randy, talked to him directly, and he said he would look and either Stuart or Randy would call me back!

I am so happily optimistic!

With Love
- Rob permalink

car status

3:44pm Tuesday 4 January 1900

Optimism is good, though I'm not optimistic about getting a free fix. I'm soon going to go get Scott and take him to a different shop to see what they say.

Here at work, we just bought a .nu domain! www.fsd.nu now points to our machines. Amazing! I looked for rob.nu, but it's been taken. Today I've mostly been messing with configuring machines and increasing our DSL speed, debating spellings for on-line, off-line, web site, e-mail (vs online, offline, website, email), and sending back the router from our old ISP.

I love this job: such great variety!

With Love
- Rob

PS: a note on dates: above, you may notice that I used 1900. Here is my technique: If I remember in time, I put 2000. If I totally forget, I put 1999 (I think I've done this once on my site). If I remember midway, I'll put 1900.

Makes sense to me! :-) permalink

wow

8:12pm CST Tuesday 4 January 2000

This is pretty cool. At least it's cool to me, an emacs computer nerd.

First, a tiny bit of background: I'm using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to format these pages. The date above (which should be blue and bigger than this text (unless I change how the date is formatted)) is formatted using the following tags:

<p class=date>date goes here</p>

CSS enabled browsers find a class called date in the header and determines it should be blue and bigger.

I'm using emacs to write journal entries. Emacs rules.

- - - - - - end of background info - - - - - -

With Fred's help, I wrote a macro in emacs that will write the CSS-html code and put the date in there automagically! So I can just load a file, call the macro and bing the date line is done for me!!

Note: this only works at home, where I have emacs. At work I have to use the dumb Wordpad editor which can't do much more than cut-n-paste. So here at home I will probably always have the correct date! (including 2000 instead of 1999 or 1900 :-)

With Love
- Rob permalink