Writing Wrongs

Replacement Replacement Car FTW

2013-05-21T08:08:27Z

I slept well last night, I think. But I was up before the alarm, and somewhen before I went to work I was online looking up Corolla inventory at Toyota of Sunnyvale's site. I had decided I did not like/want the Yaris. The ride was like it had no shocks at all, and the reason I didn't notice that on the test drive is I test drove the LE, which has a less "sporty" suspension that the SE I actually bought. And the hatchback space was almost non-existent, way too small for the music stand and the baritone to co-exist. And it almost felt like it would roll over when I came across some speed bumps.

One thing they emphasized when I bought the car is they have a no-questions-asked 3-day return policy, and a 7-day exchange policy. I doubted they get much action on that, but I was ready to test it.

And then when I found the Corolla inventory, there was a pop-up which said there was a $4500 discount on the Corollas. The prices on the web site were now about the same as for the Yaris.

So when I got to work, and it was reasonable to send a text, I sent one to Celine, my sales rep, telling her I wanted to do the swap, and could she please have Lee (her manager) and Ali (Finance Guy) let me know the pricing.

She replied that Lee was not in till noon. Fine.

At 3 she texted that the swap was all ready, and asked if I could come in right away. Yup, I could do that, nothing pressing at work. I had to stop off at home and drop off the music stand and get the second set of keys from the kitchen drawer. Also good I went home because the exercycle was in a box in front of the apartment.

Got there a little after 3:30 on account of long red lights and missing the entrance because people were parked in the red zones either side. It's a long pair of U-turns to recover.

So, Celine asked if I would like to pick one out, I showed her the two VIN numbers on the site which were in the color I wanted. She found the second one, and we drove to the gas station where she filled it up, then to the detailing center, where she dropped it off. Then back to the showroom, where she punched in the new info. Ali came by to tell me it would be a bit of a wait, but then Rebecca found me and went over the prices to get the nav system and backup camera I wanted, and the remote trunk release. Another lovely friendly person. The prices were about the same as doing it elsewhere, but the fact that they had that nav system in stock told me they would probably do a better job.

Finally Celine got the call to take me upstairs to Ali's office. I still had not been told how much I was going to owe on the exchange.

As Ali handed me form after form to sign, it became clear that not only didn't I owe them anything, they owed me. The Corolla comes with ding coverage which is not available on the Yaris, so that's a $500 value right there. All said and done, they will be sending me a check for $100.

Celine got tied up with a customer, so it was a 15-minute wait to get the car to the main parking area, and she needed to get the Yaris' keys because I had left the iPod and my water bottle in there (on purpose - didn't want to carry them around in the office). And then she needed to get the Corolla book package. That gave me time to plug in the iPod and discover there was a covered slot for it. The stock radio shows the playlists and albums and such, it just doesn't show the album art. Nice unit for a standard feature. Also paired the phone to its bluetooth.

Finally got out of there at about 5:40, and back to work at 6:05. Just as Boss was leaving, so at least he saw I got back.

I don't love the Corolla's ride, but it is far better than the Yaris, and I do love the trunk space and the much more comfortable seats. The Yaris seats are black with navy trim, and it was 93° when I drove there, the aircon was not keeping up. Corolla has a beige interior, much brighter/cooler. There are a couple of WTFs in the 2013 - they made the storage console between the front seats smaller, and 1-ply instead of 2-, and took away the power outlet which was in there. And the rear passenger head rests are too tall, I will be removing them. I also need to get blind spot mirrors, but they never had those.

Enough already. Bottom line is Toyota of Sunnyvale not only lived up to their no-questions-asked return/exchange policy, they did it in a friendly, professional way with total "please the customer" attitude. I have scattered glowing reviews across the Interwebs, and will be sending Lee and Celine a Lovely Parting Gift™.

Went to BASFA after writing the review, and retold the short version of my story there. I was unaware that johnnyeponymous was unaware I played baritone horn. mentioned on FB and will repeat here that it was great to see johno and his lovely and talented Chris there - they have had some nasty medical surprises in the last few weeks, which have all apparently been resolved in a good way.

Boss approved my PTO for June to join up with my oldest and youngest sisters in Poulsbo. Oldest is coming from Israel. Booked flights this morning from work, spent some time after BASFA to book the rental car and lodgings. Younger sister's birthday is the 19th, older's is the 22nd, and I would have stayed for that, but it's Saturday and she's extremely Orthodox, so she'll be spending that at Temple and with people who share her superstitions.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
???

Narrowed it Down. Test Drive Surprises were surprising

2013-05-19T08:46:48Z

Plan A actually happened, I went to all three dealerships at the appointed times, test drove several cars, got usable prices for everything I was interested in, and made a decision. It was not the decision I had expected to make.

10 am Toyota
Celine was on the phone talking Chinese. She said a friend had referred someone to her and the someone was on the phone. First we test drove a Yaris, and it was surprisingly peppy, great brakes, smooth acceleration. We took the "short freeway" route, it had no problem getting onto 85's uphill ramp at Fremont St. and we were at 65mph in about the same amount of time as with my Corolla. And a somewhat smoother ride.

She told me the Prius C had some big discounts, and was no longer $10k more than the Yaris, but only about $3k more. So I test drove it. It was not as peppy as the Yaris, the sight lines were poor out the back (half blocked by the rear seat head rests which are removable). We took the same route, it was sluggish on the 85 onramp and took longer to get to 65 mph. It is silent when stopped, but there is an annoying whirring sound as it speeds up and slows down from and to a stop. It comes in some more festive colors than the Yaris, I loved the orange one in the showroom. I also liked the digital speedometer.

The manager came over with numbers for both cars, which I thought was a bit premature because he had not asked which model of the two cars I was really interested in. I told him I would install an after-market GPS/radio/CD and he said he might be able to get me a good deal and install it there.

They don't do trade-ins as such. The new car and used car units are separate, but Celine said she would take me over to see about selling my car to their used side when the time comes.

11:00 - Trader Joe's, got natural peanut butter (chunky) and hummus. Diabetes doc said those were good for snacking, and I like them. They were out of almond butter (there's a shortage, he said) and no sign of their killer fondue mix (seasonal, coming back in October, he said). This is a new store, in the space formerly occupied by Borders Books. It is a really great space, but a craptastic location on account of the parking lot being designed by the same folks who do bumper cars. To their credit, TJ's had two or three "security" midgets in reflective jackets helping direct traffic and pretending to make it safer for pedestrians.

11:30 - lunch at PF Chang's. I had the Mongolian Beef, which was superb, but the steamed rice was short grain and dry, and the cucumber salad was soggy. Egg flower soup was hot & sour base with a little bit of egg. However, the service was lightning fast, and they got my order right, so I left a big tip.

1 pm Honda
Max was somewhere on the premisis, they found him after 5 minutes. Max is from Gabon, his English sucks and his enunciation sucks even more. Most English-speaking Africans I know who are from Francophone countries are very careful about their enunciation, but not Max. I wanted to test drive a Fit, and there was one right up front which it took him about 10 minutes to get the keys for. All the other dealers have keys in a lock box on the vehicle, Honda has a bizarre system where the rep looks up the stock # of the car, punches his code and that number into a keypad,a drawer opens up, and he needs to find the right key from about 100.

He gets the key, we go to the car, the battery is dead. This also happened at the Palo Alto Honda place. Dead batteries on brand new cars is a show-stopper. He had pretty much lost the sale right there.

But there was another Fit right behind it, and he thought there was just enough room between the car and the wooden post for the carport to its right that he could extract it. I didn't think so. I was right. He was about an inch too far to the right, and the post nearly ripped off the trim, and made a nasty dent in it. Flimsy material, lost me again.

Drove the car, pretty much the same route as the Toyota, but without the freeway part. Soft brakes, okay acceleration, okay sight lines except the back window is smaller than the view in the rear view mirror.

Back to the dealership, I asked for some ballpark numbers. He brought out a loan application., I told him I was paying cash. He still wanted me to fill in the name/address/phone number part. He already had that - I gave him my card last time I was there. I told him to just give me some numbers. He asked what I expected for my trade-in, I said $7k-$8k. He put down $6k. With the trade-in, his number was just over $10k. That's pretty low. Tempting, if the car wasn't a piece of junk.

2:15 - Starbucks, used my free drink credit on a frapuccino, set up the laptop and played on FB. While I was there, Tim from Ford called to confirm my 3 pm appointment.

3 pm Ford
Tim is not there. He doesn't answer his page, no one has any idea where he is. I use the restroom, he's not in there and he isn't in the showroom when I return. Ken volunteers to help me. We take a Fiesta out, a similar freeway route to Toyota, except Ford is a couple of miles closer to 280, so we do the Wolf Road uphill ramp. Good enough acceleration, but not as good as the Yaris. Off the freeway, a couple of times the transmission seemed to stutter. The car was sluggish responding to the gas pedal. Braking was a little soft. I loved the lime green color. I ask about navigation, and contrary to what it says on the Ford web site, they can't/won't put the high-end GPS into a Fiesta.

Next we tried the Focus. Almost decapitated myself getting in. The seats are not very comfortable, and sight lines are only so-so. The moron who put the sticker on the driver's side right where one checks for blind spot traffic is a moron. We didn't do the freeway this time, it was clear that the 160 hp in this car was not being taken advantage of.

Back at the office, Ken tag teams with finance guy David. I give Ken my keys so he can get an allegedly real trade-in estimate. KBB says a 2008 Corolla in one notch worse condition than mine should trade in for $7k. David offers $4200. Insultingly low. He makes the usual excuses, but I know they don't stay unsold long, and the ones on Toyota lots are selling for $12k-$14k. With the trade-in he prices the Fiesta at $18,500. He comes down to $17,300. Gag me. He says he really wants to sell this car Right Now!!! Not gonna happen.

Home, did a spreadsheet with the Toyota numbers, and at $5/gal, 10,000 miles a year (I have 52,000 after 6 years) it would take 5 years (50,000 miles) to make up the price difference between the Prius C and the Yaris. And I enjoyed driving the Yaris more.

That done, it was time to go to the Storytelling meetup in Campbell. A very nice woman named Lori hosted it in her little art studio, and 7 others showed up. All but the last latecomer told a story, the theme was travel. The meetup organizer started with an intro, and then people got up to sit in the tall chair in front of the semi-circle. Most of the folks have no idea how to tell a story, but they all said interesting things. I pulled an old story out from the 70s, and it was well-received. If they have another when I am free, I'll go.

Home at about 9:30, printed up some checks in case I have to write one tomorrow. Got the title from my Corolla out in case I'm selling it tomorrow. Went online to the Toyota dealership and found three Yarises which were a color I could live with and the features I want. All of them list for $1k more than the one I got the quote on, but that's okay. I figure I can suck that much out of them. Even without the trade-in I can still pay cash.

Plans for tomorrow:

Call Celine, tell her I'm coming in at about 11.
Buy a car
Sell car
Coffee with Janice at 5:30

Somehow it is still Friday

2013-05-18T05:27:20Z

Slept almost an hour past the alarm this morning, which is good for the uninterrupted sleep but meant I had to rush to get ready for work. I did manage to wander in at a reasonable time.

Spent the morning exploring another tcl command and at least got the thing to run, just without any useful information returned.

Lunchtime was car time. Got the car washed (I expect to have trade-in people looking at it tomorrow), then went to Honda and Ford and made appointments to test drive tomorrow. Larry Hopkins Honda makes me nervous - every time I go there the salesclowns are different, and very tentative, and speak less English than one needs for this job. At Sunnyvale Ford, on the other hand, there is always someone greeting me within seconds. Toyota is almost as good that way.

Next on the way back to the salt mines was a stop at UPS to pick up a package. 15-lb bag of cat food, it came in a box large enough to hold body parts.

Work, MOS.

Home. Had 3/4 of the remaining rack of Costco beef ribs and some cole slaw. Yummy. Domino liked the beef too.

Watched an episode of Elementary and do not like where they are going with it. The mystery is how long Lucy Liu will be in the cast. They have already gone beyond two natural bye-bye points. Also watched an ep of The Mentalist, IMHO a vastly superior show, which is also going somewhat away from its strengths into the realm of soap opera.

Plans for tomorrow:

So the schedule is:
10 am Toyota, Celine is the rep and I'll be test driving a Yaris and a Corolla.
Lunch next
1 pm Honda, if "Max" Koumba from Gabon is there, he may get the honor of having me drive a Fit and a Civic
3 pm Ford, Tim and a Fiesta then Focus.

There's a storyteller meetup at 7 or so I also want to go to.

Music Man

2013-05-17T06:52:25Z

Quiet day at work, except they were re-programming the keycard access and somehow managed to set off the very loud "a door is open somewhere in the building" siren. It was on for most of the afternoon, with short periods of off. Email explaining what was going on would have been nice, the alarm sounds a lot like the fire alarm.

Continued looking at the tcl docs. Not much else.

Lunchtime I gave a ride to a co-worker to pick up her car from the shop, and stopped at a shopping center which had a Starbucks, a pizza/pasta place and a Japanese place. Japanese place was closed, pizza place was empty except for two employees eating their lunch at the bar. So, Starbucks it was. Love their criossant hot dog.

Home for a bit after work, loaded the baritone into the car and went to band rehearsals. Cruel conductor picked piece after piece with lots of high notes. My lip gave out after an hour. Maybe by the end of the season it will be able to handle the set.

Some of the rehearsing is for the 4th of July, which I won't be at this year on account of

We have a concert on the last Sunday of each month May-September.

Got a call from the rep I saw at Sunnyvale Toyota and made an appointment to test drive a corolla and maybe a Yaris on Saturday morning. I'll also make appointments for ford and maybe honda. There is now enough cash n the bank to buy something if I want to.

Plans for tomorrow:
work
car wash
???

It Rains, It Pours

2013-05-16T04:56:48Z

Which reminds me, I need to buy some iodized salt. Or does sea salt contain enough iodine?

After many days of BORING! at work, today two emergency major projects needed my attention. Yesterday I had shown Automation Guy that the syntax in his tcl docs was wrong, and by the time I arrived this morning he had found the fix, which turned out to not be about the tcl syntax but SNMP syntax which there is no way to document correctly. You just have to know to add that ".0" to the end of certain commands.

He then made a syntax error which kept the program in an infinite loop. Well, not infinite, just 2,000 minutes.

Before I could fix that, one of my favorite engineers came by and told me I could use his two linked machines to run a test I wanted to do last Friday and yesterday but didn't have a pair of my own machines with the right stuff to link them. It took 20 minutes to update their firmware, then 10 to run the test. And another 15 to write it up.

When I told boss, he reminded me that the results of the test justified a bug I had filed which Engineering zapped as "works as designed".

Lunchtime was Sizzler. They had a special on Steak & Lobster, I decided to splurge. I asked for the steak done medium, they made it well done. It was so small a piece it was not worth sending back.Tasted okay. The lobster was lobster tail, a small-ish one, but cooked to perfection.

Back to work, there was much to be done to the tcl program to make it part of the official automation run, that took the rest of the day.

Straight home, decided I needed to lie down, so I did. And slept for 2 hours, much to my surprise. And almost stayed there.

But I had a Project to do, which needed clothing on my body. First I put the small microwave which smells like smoke into the big box which had housed the replacement replacement unit, taped it shut, put it on a dolly and motivated it to the dumpster. Next, I dollied out the replacement unit, which only smelled a little bit of smoke, and left it in the recycle section where someone will grab it and have a free almost-working microwave. Or the apartment minions will dispose of it.

Kaan and Domino had been parking on the boxes and the replacement unit (they were in the livingroom). Now I have space for an exercise bike. The apartment has a couple of those in the main building, but that's a block away, and it requires changing clothes and stuff. Now I just need to find an exercise bike.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
YOTB

M-T

2013-05-15T07:00:13Z

The plan for Monday was to try to get to Tina's Nail Salon on the other side of town, have a much-overdue manicure (I had lost one acrylic overlay already) and get back to the motel, check out by noon and make the 12:40 train which was about a 20-minute walk away.

Part of this was based on the shuttles - I thought they ran every 15 minutes at 10 am, but that turned out to only apply to the one going up State Street, perpendicular to where I wanted to go. The one I wanted was every 30 minutes, and it needed changing shuttles at the wharf. I walked (slowly) to the warf before a single shuttle went by, and was about 1/3 of the rest of the way before it got too hot and my legs said "no mas". So I wandered along the trail, thought I would get some shots at the skateboard park, but no, that was being hosed down by a guy with a very noisy water pumper truck.

I did get a pretty good chair photo:

Backing up, I was up by 7:30, had the continental breakfast by 8:30. Packed about 90% of the way before stepping out.

Tried out the 270mm zoom on distant bikinis, it was quite nice, though the focus was a little soft. Wish I'd brought the Nikon 55-300. It's soft in the mid range but sharp as a tack at 300.

Got back to the motel, checked out at 11:30, walked slowly to the train station, was there about noon. Checked Amtrak's app, and it had not data on the train status. Train is scheduled for 12:40, but it didn't even know that. By 12:20 it was saying the train was going to be 20-25 minutes late. SBA Amtrak is totally lame - the readerboard never mentioned the Coast Starlight, it was stuck on "Welcome to the Pacific Surfliner" and they made no announcement that the train was delayed. At about 12:45, there was an automated announcement of "first call" for boarding the Coast Starlight, which was amusing because it was not going to be there for another 20 minutes. 10 minutes later the first call was repeated. The train finally arrived at 1:05.

I got a window seat on the opposite side from the trip down, which meant the same view. :-( Someone going to OAK was put in the aisle seat, but after the assignment I never saw him, I think he had friends in another car. The train was packed, including the sightseeing car, so there was no escaping the two people behind me who had just met (they both boarded in SBA), had nothing in common, and yet managed to never shut up for 8 hours. Inane stuff. She is a real estate salescreature, he said he is a retired Boeing assembly worker, but reading between the lines he was laid off at 55, is now 56, and can't find another job. They traded recipes, misinformation about Amtrack (he insisted they don't have a west coast to Florida auto train because he knew there was one from the northeast). After a couple of hours she started to try to sell him stuff that she got commissions on as a real estate mogul. She also fancies herself as a wine gourmet, he knows nothing about wine except it's red or yellow. She said they should go to the club car and get a bottle of Zinfandel to split, he agreed. But in their jabbering they missed the announcement that the club car person was on break. They had a little disagreement about the Zin - she insisted it was a red wine, he said he saw a pink in. The guy who knows nothing about wine was right, of course. Much later they tried again, and came back with a small bottle of Chablis.

I could go on, but it was so inane. She is married, he didn't say if he was, but I'd bet he is. She lives in Portland, he in south Seattle. When he ducked out for a nature call, she phoned her daughter and said she would invite him visit them and see Multnomah Falls.

Shadow's End by Sheri S. Tepper is on my Kindle, but it is a very complicated novel which weaves between three or four plots, so the chatter behind me was not escapable through that. Besides, the scenery is amazing for most of that ride, I didn't want to be buried in a book.

We continued to be late as Union Pacific continued to play games with the signals. To add to the fun, the minions were unable to turn the heaters off, so the air conditioning was losing the battle against that plus the 99° heat outside. It was about 78° in the cab most of the trip. Maybe more - the string cheese I'd brought was softened, and the American singles slices were melted.

We got to SJC at about 9 pm, I was home before 10. In the mail was the check from my stock cash-out from the previous company, which went into the CU today.

Today - Tuesday - was wasted in trying to set up for the test which I was working on at the end of the day Friday. After a lot of juggling it was clear we do not have the combination of equipment in our QA lab to run this test. Project manager sent an engineer to help me, he saw that there was no way to do it and offered me the use of his setup tomorrow for an hour. I figure it will take about that long.

Lunchtime I went to the highest-rated nail parlor in town, Michelle's, 5 stars from 29 reviewers. Many of them recent. Weird location across from a high school, behind a Shell station, between a BBQ place which had zero customers and no staff in sight at 12:30, and a bulgar wheat crepes place. I showed them my nails, they told me come back at 1, Michelle needed to see.

I went and had a bulgar crepe - they are all named for soccer teams - I had the Arsenal which was the opposite of its name - plain cheese. It was very good.

Back next door, showed Michelle my nails, we decided the old acrylic was yellow and ugly and needed to come off. Usually when they do this they use a press-on nail as a shiv, work it under the acrylic and it's usually painful because they score the nail underneath. But Michelle is an artist, and managed to pop them all off with no pain.

She used a high quality acrylic powder, after putting a press-on nail on each finger with superglue, and then trimming it short. This is also a popular way to build a base when there is no nail past the finger. The only nail which didn't need this was on my left thumb.

After the usual buffing, gel and UV curing she did a hand and lower arm massage with some kind of heated lotion. Nice touch. The nails look beautiful now. And feel a lot better too. I will be going back there next time.

Back at work, Automation Guy challenged me to show him one of the tcl scripts which did not work. So I did, and he was stumped. I also showed him how the commands worked correctly manually. He says he can fix it, tomorrow. It was nice to be vindicated.

After work I headed for Lucky's for a short list of stuff and then the Starbucks next door. Then home. Kaan is now very agressively trying to get Domino to play with him. He seems to be making progress. He was able to get right next to her a couple of times without being hissed at.

Plans for tomorrow:

Work
Maybe make appontments to test drive some cars on Saturday.

Objects on The Map May Be Miles Further Away Than They Appear

2013-05-13T04:13:42Z

Good continental breakfast at the motel, apple turnovers and fresh bagel made up for no waffles.

I left in plenty of time for the whale watching tour, which is good because I misread the directions and walked all the way to the far side of the harbor where my last trip took off from, only to be told it was right in front of the street my motel is on (across a parking lot, but close). I still managed to be way early.

There was a full boat for the trip, lots of children and almost as many stupid parents. From the side the boat looked perfect, a huge catamaran. I parked myself aft where there was both a hard seat and something to lean against. Most everyone else went to the front of the boat.

The whole harbor was socked in with fog, so we took off very slowly. The captain managed to run over a green channel marker while we were navigating past a red buoy with a lot of seals hanging out on it. The one we ran over was only about 3' tall, the red one about 6 '.

We saw a whale about 100 yards away after 45 minutes, sort of in the mist. We followed that one for a long time then lost it. Captain headed for port but on the way back we saw another. I think it was the same one which I saw last time, which hangs out in channel close to shore.

Between being far away and having people popping up in front of me, and the captain trying to keep th whale in front of us instead of alongside, I don't think I got any calendar-quality shots. It's the wrong time of year, anyway.

Back to the motel to drop off my day pack (I had brought along a jacket, which was never needed), then caught the shuttle (50 cents, used to be 10) to the pier, and then walked toward where Yelp said there was a good nail place. Google maps made it look like it was 4 blocks away, but it was more like 10. TLC Nails is a bare bones setup with four nail stations and a section off to the side which looks like a pedicure area, but without the foot baths. I ask the manager for an acrylic with gel top. "We don't do acrylic here. would you like just gel?" Sure. Not as long lasting but my nails are a mess. She finds a manicurist, who sees my nails and convinces me i am in the wrong salon, so I leave.

Okay, 2nd nail place is way up the main drag, I take the shuttle. Another 12 blocks. The address is 1221. It is an empty store front with a for lease sign. I cross the street to read the notice on the door, maybe they have moved. Well, someone has moved, but not the nails place. Yelp is way out of date on this one.

By now I am starving, there is a Thai place called Galanga, I have their house duck, which is delicious, but hereticly served with a knife because they did not cut the duck pieces small enough. Had a nice chat with the bus boy, whose English is not a good as my Thai. :-) He said my accent is like a Thai person's. Yay!

3rd nails place is 6 blocks away, past the end of the shuttle line, and is only open for another hour, so I took the shuttle back to the pier, and hung out in the shade of a palm tree while sitting on the little wall by the bike/jogging/walking/pedal car trail. Lots of eye candy on this warm, sunny day at the beach. I took some pictured but mostly just enjoyed the view.

walked slowly back to the motel, posted some photos on FB for my sister (one of the yachts in the harbor had her name on it:

It is not a common name...

I wanted to get it online early enough Baltimore time for her to see it, but later found out she was in Pennsylvania looking for apple pie and ice cream. This is her first mother's day as a grandmother, I kind of expected her to be with her daughter in law.

Grabbed the Kindle, left the camera, headed up the block for a highly recommended place called The Brewhouse. The map said 2 blocks, th legs said 6. Beef Stroganoff was superb, but I didn't realize when they listed mashed potatoes, it was a side, but it turned out to be what they poured the Stroganoff on top of. Yummy, but I should have ordered the risotto.

Dessert was amusing. The menu said the peanut butter cream pie was rated a top 10 dessert by the LA Times. It was different, and very yummy.

Service was super-slow, I was out on the patio (my choice) where they let people light up cigarettes despite the no smoking signs and laws. :-(

Waddled back to the motel, washed my face and saw the SPF4 which I had applied this morning did not work. My face is very red but my arms have a nice deep tan.

Plans for tomorrow:
Breakfast
Pack
Try to find the place I had my nails done 3 years ago.
Coast Starlight to SJC leaves SBA at 12:40 pm

It seemed longer this time

2013-05-12T04:49:57Z

The trip on Amtrak to Santa Barbara was on time or early at every stop, but somehow it felt longer then the last three times, which weren't. I guess when you have seen the same scenery so many times, there isn't much left to hold your interest. One thing which surprised me is there is a huge hangar at Edwards AFB which has what may be the world's largest American flag painted on the side. Last time I passed by it had a NASA logo, no it sports a SpaceX insignia. weird that an allegedly commercial endeavor is given a building at government facility.

There were way too many small children on the train, but they didn't cry or scream, and mostly kept close to parental units.

I brought plenty of snacks, only made one run to the snack bar for a soda. I had a bulkhead seat, no tray, so I stayed in the lounge car until I was done. Should have also picked up a bottle of water. There was a water dispenser near my seat, but no cups. :-(

Oh wait, I know why it was boring. This is National Train Day, but there was almost nothing on board or at any of the stations. The first year, there were exhibits and live music at SLO and gifts for kids at SBA, but this year nothing at SBA (in the morning there was a free ride on one of the short spurs, but that ended by noon) and at SLO there was a lemonade stand, hidden in a corner.

It was a long slog from the train to the motel with a backpack and a carry bag with leftover snacks and my jacket, in the hot sun. The street which i usually take which cuts a couple of blocks off the trip is all dug up at State Street so I had to go the long way. Several jerks riding bikes on the sidewalk despite clearly marked bike lanes. Lots of smokers here too.

without the baggage and after it cooled down some, it was an easy enough walk back to State Street for dinner. There is a place on the corner with the. Perfect. Location, and it was almost empty. On a Saturday night! The prices are somewhat elevated, but reasonable for the location. I had th grilled salmon hollandaise with steamed spinach, and it was great. So was the house salad and the coffee ice cream sundae. $38 after tax.

Plans for tomorrow:
10 am whale watching cruise
Wing it, staying overnight, returning Monday

Friday I'm in Love

2013-05-11T06:04:03Z

Lust, really. More on that later.

Work was boring until 4:45 pm, when boss asked me to replicate a possible bug which one of the engineers found in his code but had not tested on actual machines. Long story short, I did not have the right machines to replicate this, and by the time I was sure of that I had already missed the best train to SF for the Giants' game.

Made the next train, which got me to SF at 7 for a game which started at that time 4 blocks away. It took long time to climb to the top of the ramps where my seat was. The fog had rolled in, in was cold and windy. I bought a hot dog and then headed for "View Reserved Row 13". It was 13 more steep steps up. I got there, and discovered the seat I was looking for was on the other side. Back down, and vertigo kicked in. I was VERY high up, and the stairs are very steep. Instead of going up the other side I bailed. Walked down to the promenade and around to the SRO spaces by the splash section. By now tis the bottom of the 4th inning, and many Giants are hitting the ball. I left the stadium after the 4th run, I think. They scored 6 that inning.

Walked back to the train station, got the 8:40 back south, home by 10. Which is good because I have to pack for my Train Day trip in the morning - be at the station at 9 for a 10 o'clock Coast Starlight (padding because I need to park, get my tickets and a parking pass, put the pass in the car and walk back to the station again).

Oh, about lust. There are more beautiful women at the Giants' game, and in the surrounding neighborhood. The area which was once a shady, dangerous dump is now Yuppie Delight. There's even an upscale bowling alley.

Day of Thunder

2013-05-10T07:54:19Z

Well, only in the Sierras today, Day of Thor. I miss thunderstorms. I miss counting the seconds between the light and the sound.

The usual boring day at work, except I did help one of my team figure out how to tell if the lab video network adapter was working on his new Win7 computer.

Follow-up call from an admin at Sunnyvale Ford. Told her it'll be a week or two.

Subscribed for a month to online Consumer Reports, and looked at their car write-ups. It is clear they have a whole different set of priorities than me. They gave Ford Focus the worst marks for reliability, based on their psychic hotline prediction of probable malfunctions in the first year, disregarding the next 5 years which appear to be trouble-free or close to it. They may be right, but another WTF is the report is based on about 12 different combinations of Focus models and options. Their review did make me think twice about the hatchback. But I'll leave that for the test drive.

In lieu of lunch I went to the nearby park again. It was deserted. Heard a woodpecker.

Home for an hour, then off to Ye Olde Town Band rehearsals, my first of the year, only the 2nd for the band after 2 cancellations. Concert on the last Sunday of each month. There is a pet parade they will be part of in a couple of weekends. I'll miss the 4th of July concert 'cause Westercon.

Changed the litterboxes (wanted to do this before rehearsals, but the kitties were using them), because a big box with 6 more refills arrived, and it was getting to the point on one of them that Kaan would be thinking outside the box when I'm away this weekend.

Just dumped the last 60 days of readings out of my Hgl meter, and it looks like a bad roller coaster design. Meeting with the diabetes specialist tomorrow.

Plans for tomorrow:
Diabetes appt at 11 in MV
Work
Catch the train to SF, BASFA night at the Giants game.
Pack for Santa Barbara

Teacher/Nurse Appreciation Days

2013-05-10T06:08:12Z

lisa_marli re-posted on FB a graphic purporting to show a teacher doing school work on hs own time, and a diatribe caption about how teachers do that. And she commented that she used to help grade his class' work because he taught accounting, and she is good at accounting. I will tease her here instead of there and mention that my father once taught Werner von Braun's undergrad classes as a TA, and graded those class papers, but I never learned any astrophysics or orbital/celestial mechanics. But that's just a tease because by the time I was old enough to learn that stuff, he was an engineer and all his work was top secret, so even if he wanted to he couldn't teach it to me. And he didn't want to.

But it got to thinking about my grade school teachers. I am going to try to remember them and say a smidge about each one.

Kindergarten: Name??? Blonde, young, was insulted that I could recite the alphabet before she taught it to us.
1st Grade: Miss Moshey. She had taught German to US soldiers during WWII. Her favorite phrase was "mach schnell, bitte". She was horribly strict for a 1st grade teacher, but eminently fair. Here is an example:

2nd Grade: No idea.
3rd Grade: Another blonde. She tried to reason with me that the baby Mom was pregnant with might not be a girl. I was certain it would be. My sister was born two weeks after school ended for the Summer, and I had to wait for months to nyah nyah nyah the teacher.
4th Grade: no idea
5th Grade: Mr. Costa. Science teacher at heart, he had the best field trips, and supported my science fair entry. His tests were easy for me, I kept getting 110% (there was always a bonus q). He also change my life for the worse by assigning me to a different 6th grade class from all the others just because I hit a bully with a rock while we were filing back to class from recess.
6th Grade: Mr. Egger. Total jerk. Did not deserve to be teaching. When I corrected him in class for his WRONG definition of vapor, by reading it out of the big dictionary, he took my report card, slapped an overlay strip and made all my grades D or worse. My parents complained to the principal, and he did not get re-hired the next year. Irony, he went to a high school elsewhere in the district, where he taught science. The next time I saw him was in 8th grade, he was judging the science fair. :-(

It was also Nurse Appreciation day/week/eon. My appreciation for nurses started in college when I shared a house with a bunch of fellow folkdancers, and one of them was dating a nursing student who was living in a houseful of nursing students, and I dated one of them and hung out with all of them. They all had stories about how a nurse had saved their lives, and inspired them to become nurses.

I have never been sick or wounded enough for nurses to have done that for me, but I saw them in action when my folks were in hospice care at a nursing home. There were two kinds of nurses - the basic RN, who saw his/her job as helping and old person live; and the hospice nurse, who saw his/her job as helping the old person die. Mom's hospice nurse was a total drag. Mom and Dad both had two or three basic RNs who were wonderful.

Humps Optional

2013-05-09T06:27:03Z

Went to bed at the very early hour of 11, but did not actually get to sleep until about 1:30. And woke up briefly to look up something on the smartphone. Finally changed the radio to Portland's classical station, which helped. I had been doing a good job lately of falling asleep to WNEW in DC, but before midnight they have some reedy voices. Or maybe it was just last night.

And that raised a question which I must look up sometime. I coulda sworn that I grew up listening to WNEW in New York. What's it doing in DC? It's all-news, so I see the hook, but...

Work was more head-banging with tcl language. There was a nice long lunch break, farewell lunch for the (so far) only casualty of the company sale. He was also one of the last people hired, and AFAIK the only sale engineer based in the home office. I had mixed feelings, because he is a nice guy, very experienced and pretty technical, but he did Something Stupid with a customer which impacted me because I had to do the lab test for it. The layoff made sense because the company which bought us no doubt has an SE in place for that region. We went way far away to Milpitas and something Macaroni's, excellent service, somewhat inflated prices, noisier than Chili's, food quality about a 7 out of 10. Italian.

Costco after work to get some staple foods: Payday bars, Kraft Singles, Precious string cheese, croissants, mixed nuts. And a new staple, cashew clusters. It took a long time to find stuff because they had rearranged 3/4 of the store. There's a new dairy room, the whole room is refrigerated. I saw lactose-free milk, so I bought a 3-pack. This meant walking all the way to the other side of the warehouse to grab a 2-pack of Hershey's syrup. I will probably make egg creams soon.

Home, put everything away, got the mail and headed for the Keypoint CU branch which Google Maps claims is next to the new Pinkberry across the street from Trader Joe's. I park, and walk all around that new mall-ette, and the closest I see to a CU is a closed shop which says a barber is moving in soon. Walked out to Toys 'r' Us, and there was the CU, all the way on the other side of the parking lot. It looks new. Deposited the check from the IRS and got some cash back for my trip this weekend.

Home, cooked up some Green Giant sweet corn in butter and a box of clam strips. Safeway's house tartar sauce is a FAIL. No relish.

Busy next few days coming up:
Tomorrow -Ye Olde Towne Band rehearsal
Friday night - BASFA night at the Giants game
Saturday morning - train to Santa Barbara for National Train Day.
Sunday whale watching cruise
Monday - return train trip to San Jose

Very Short because almost nothing happened today

2013-05-08T05:31:04Z

Got to work around 9, by 10 I was falling asleep. I tried to wake myself up by doing some tcl programming, but once again the person whose work I was hacking up did not understand it any better than I did, and I found a big showstopper error in the automation suite. We have something called a "streamer". It takes pre-recorded video files and streams them onto the lab network. The files are usually 5 minutes long or less, the streamer keeps looping till you tell it to stop.

The suite has the wrong IP address for the streamer. It is hard-coded in, I can't change it. :-(

By noon I was so falling asleep I made a big cup of coffee to bolster the effects of the diet Coke. No change. Drove home and took a nap for ab out an hour. That helped.

Back at work more of the same. Took a break to look online at the Mazda3, and saw it was not worth the slog through San Thomas Expressway to see one in person. The nav screen is small and in an awkward location and there is no factory-installed backup camera.

Also looked online at the Ford Fiesta, but it appears to be just a bit too under-powered.

Looks like the Ford Focus is it.

In the mailbox was a check from the IRS for my re-calculated Moto stock losses. It was equal to my first refund, and will go into the New Car Fund. My Google shares sold for slightly more than the estimate from 2 days ago, and that will be a check from a brokerage in a few days. 1/3 of that will go into savings for next year's taxes.

Along those lines, I had been liquidating stock holdings in my IRA, thinking of taking some of that out for the car, but the taxes would be way more than interest on a loan, so I invested most of it into tax-free mutual funds. I'll take the car $$ from my regular brokerage account. That fund is from the losses I took which got me the IRS check.

Dinner was Safeway lasagna with extra Swiss cheese. After, watched Anna May Wong: In Her Own Words from Tivo - very well done. I had donated to the kickstarter.

I was leaning back in the recliner, Kaan ran up my chest and draped himself across the back and started grooming hi,self. And then he stared licking my head. He wouldn't stop till I got up.

Going to bed early tonight.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work (1-on-1 with the boss)
Nails? Need to find a new place. The one I've been going to uses cheap acrylic which chips too soon.

A Note About Mother's Day

2013-05-07T07:11:27Z

My mom died in March 2010. I have never been married, never had children, so when that first Mother's Day came around I was very annoyed by all the hype. Her birthday is a couple of weeks later, but that was easier to handle because it was her birthday, which she shared with JFK. She always told us it was better to celebrate birthdays than death days.

Three years later, the Mother's Day crap is still annoying, but easier to deal with. Easier to ignore, actually. But there is still infuriating spam.

Amtrak has chosen the day before Mother's Day to be National Train Day. So far they have not noticed this. That's a major marketing FAIL on their part.

Just when I thought I was done

2013-05-07T06:46:16Z

KBB.com said to look at the Mazda3. I did, and it has Tom Tom nav with voice commands. I had a previous entanglement tonight, so I'll bug them after work tomorrow. Nearest one is Stevens Creek, PIA to get to during rush hour.

Work was another scriptfailfest. Team meeting was short because we're done with our projects, and the next one is a few months away. So the word is to hone automation skills. :-(

Yesterday I found a command which did not work, today I found a command which errors out, telling me I am missing a variable, but the syntax dictionary doesn't list another variable. Automation Guy is out till humpday, I'll have to ask his backup. She's fun -she grew up in a town in Malaysia which I visited often when I lived in southern Thailand. It was basically the next major town on the train line south of where I lived. I amused her once with the number system in malay being one off from Fijian. Well, not really, just that "dua" is 2 in Malay and 1 in Fijian. And 5 is "lima" in both.

Lunch was split between waiting in a SLOW but not all that long line at Costco for gas. It was apparently National Drop Your Credit Card Under Your Car Day. Coupled with Oh, I Have To Swipe My Costco Card First? Day. That gave me just enough time for a Western Bacon Cheeseburger and a shake at Carl's Jr.

After work I headed for one of my old haunts, Cupertino's Oaks shopping center, which has the cheapest (in every way imaginable) cinema in the Bay Area, now aptly named Bluelight. It was Oaks for the longest time, then went under, and is now reborn. I got there early enough for dinner at Togo's, but not early enough to hang out at Coffee Society.

At the cinema was the world premier showing of an indie movie (which had, I am told, and $3k budget) called Black Cat Whiskey. My long-time theater buddy Jeremy Koerner stars as the creeptastic gangster. The plot is basically: Vulnerable Southern woman is married to a moonshiner, but she doesn't know it until he gets killed by his gangster customer, who comes around to collect the 300 cases of prime whiskey he thinks her husband had hidden in their house. Tired of being slimed, she goes to the FBI where one agent pretends to help her, but really just wants One Thing™. No spoilers version, much violence ensues, orchestrated by FBI guy. And then by her. The opening scene is what happens at the end, but not quite. I would bet real cash dollars there were other endings written.

Very well acted and directed, photography was very good throughout, as was audio. It screams for a higher effects budget, but they did well for what they could afford. There is one scene which I thought was far more violent and long then it needed to be, in part because it is way over the top compared to the rest of the film.

Worth missing BASFA for. Well worth missing car shopping for.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Mazda

Happy birthday

2013-05-07T06:10:07Z

wolfen_dancer, wherever you are!

Weather Break

2013-05-06T05:59:12Z

I wasn't wrong to disbelieve the forecasts of rain today, but the heat wave broke and it was mostly cloudy when I went out at about 1 pm. Headed across the Bay to Ardenwood Farm hoping to get pictures of the new baby sheep. The clouds were high enough that shooting conditions were excellent. I've been there a few times before, so already had pix of most everything else, so I didn't take many.

Got to the animal pens, and saw the baby sheep were no longer newborns, a news article about their birth was dated February. Merino sheep, fluffy and round and cute, but not babies. However, there were baby goats. They were pretty cute. And a baby turkey vulture, who wasn't.

I didn't get any outstanding pictures, nothing worth sharing.

At 3 I headed for Fremont Auto Mall Parkway, stopped off at the el-huge shopping center for lunch, and was still early for my appointment at Chevy so I stopped by Honda to refresh my memory of the console of the Fit. It has the speedometer in the center, which is Good.

On the Chevy, the internet salesguy was great, but it was clear the available packages for the Cruze didn't fit what I was looking for. We also tried the voice control, and it was a total joke. It didn't follow its own syntax, and mostly just misheard me. And the rep. It kept asking me if I wanted to switch languages to French.

We did, however, solve the in and out problem - position the driver's seat low and back.

I'm closer to a decision, now. Not much, but some:

If I get a Honda or Chevy, it will be without Nav, I'll put in an after-market unit.
For Ford, I would get their nav system.

No hybrid - the price tag and amount of space the battery eats up are not worth the emotional spike.

Honda Fit
Ford Focus
Chevy Cruze

are the finalists. Toyota Corolla is sort of in the running, but Toyota's prices may knock it out of contention.

Back home by way of the bridge, I had chance to test my FasTrack unit. Have had it for almost 3 months, but did not make any bridge trips or rush hour commuter lane runs. No cops chased me, I figure it worked.

Dinner was baked beans and a slab of Costco beef ribs, which were scrumptious. After dinner as I was watching something on PBS, Kaan hopped up on the recliner, and spread himself along the left arm, and was happy to stay there till I got up.

Got a notice that my Google bonus shares, which normally would have been doled out over 4 years, had all vested. I sold them all, which means paying income tax on the gross and capital gains on the net. It wasn't many shares, but Obama will get about 1/3. :-(

Plans for tomorrow:
Work (10 am team meeting)
Black Cat Whiskey world premiere at a cinema in Cupertino, an indie movie starring a long time theater pal Jeremy Koerner.

Beauty Sleep

2013-05-05T08:48:01Z

Got lots of sleep last night. Yay!
Did nothing useful until about 3, when I headed for PA to be early enough at Starbucks to buy Janice a half price frappuccino, since she might not get there before 5. She got there at 4. That gave us a lot of time to chat.

From there to Lucie Stern Theater, way early, which let me sit in the shade on a park bench far from the screaming children, and read A Box of Oxen, Alan Dean Foster. I always enjoy his writing, and this one starts quickly and is keeping up the pace.

Picked up my ticket and sat in the garden in front of the theater with the others, they did not open the front doors until after 7:30 - odd, because they usually open for concessions at 7, and open the house for seating at 7:30. The show started about 10 minutes late, too.

Miss Saigon by Palo Alto Players was a mixed bag for me, but 90% of the mix was excellent. Teeny tiny Katherine Dela Cruz as Kim was out of this world, a total rock star. Strong voice, all the acting skills a director could want, and she did okay impersonating a Vietnamese. Brain Palac as The Engineer was given many completely over the top assignments, and he was world class in performing those. I did not like those numbers, they were too long, too insane and did not move the show along, but he didn't let that keep him from nailing them.

John was played by Adrien Gleason, who was one of the stars of my last SBMT show, and he was very good, with a stunning solo to lead off Act II. They did the show as a 2-act, but it looks like it was written to be 3. The audience could have used a break before the "3 years later" section.

Ed Hunter's lighting was great, impressive right from the start. There was a lot of scrim work, flys, spotlights and cyc effects in the show and the action was usually weighted to favor stage left.

Costumes were a mess. The People's Republic army uniforms were too ornate, way too much insignia & piping. The bar girls were wearing all the wrong kinds of outfits in both the Saigon and Bangkok bars, but that wasn't nearly as bad as dressing the female Bangkok street vendors in formal Vietnamese gowns. Speaking of women, only two of the bar girls had figures which would be seen in a SE Asian bar. Most were too fat and too tall. I understand more than 200 people auditioned for this show, I bet a lot of women who looked the part were turned away. In some shows, the reason is they need to also be strong singers, but not in this one.

One of the PR things they did early on was hint that they might have a helicopter on stage. They made a mock-up of a cockpit and front door which was "flown" in from stage right, way upstage. It was tacky and fake, but it would have worked for me if they had not put a stuffed dummy's torso & head in the pilot's seat. Hueys in the Saigon evacuation had heavily tinted windows, you probably would not have seen the pilot.

Danny Gould, playing Chris, had some issues with articulation and staying on key. It's a tough part to play, and I don't think he go enough guidance from the director. Lindsay Stark, playing Ellen, Chris' American wife, was unconvincing in both her acting and looks. This is supposed to be a woman attractive enough to make Chris forget his fantasy wife. She sang well, though.

Enough already. It was a good show, I'm glad I saw it, and am recommending it to others. One more weekend to run.

Plans for tomorrow:

Fremont: Take the camera to Ardenwood Farms in south Fremont, then up to Fremont auto mall to see car dealerships there, starting with an appointment at Chevy.

Another OCD day of car hunting

2013-05-04T07:11:26Z

Why am I still awake at 11:30 pm? I don't know. I had a dream last night that I had insomnia, and found myself awake at 4:30 am looking up Dodge Dart info on my cell phone. :-(

Never did get back to sleep, thanks, and this may seem ironic or something worse but it isn't meant to be anything except honest, to Kaan hogging 3/4 of the bed and then both cats deserting me.

My PC powers up automatically at 6:30 every morning. When I heard the tune which says Windows has started, I headed for the computer room. No, wait, I only thought about doing that, I actually waited until all the apartment lights automatically power on at 7 am. The tune, by the way, is the first few bars of Go The Distance from Hercules (a French Horn fanfare of great majesty and pomp).

Went to KBB.com (Kelly Bluebook) and then Edmunds.com and punched in for info on the Dodge Dart. What got me to the Dart is I realized this search for The Best Nav System In Cars was being done backwards. My favorite map system is Garmin, so I searched for car companies partnered with Garmin. Chrysler showed up first, but they really still are your grandfather's car, so I looked at Dodge, and even the lowly Dart can be equipped with Garmin nav with voice recognition. Voice recog extends to all the controls in the in-dash unit, including the phone, radio, iPod, CD/DVD, air conditioning and midwifery.

I sent in a "give me a quote" request, and as has happened almost every time so far, the Internet Salescreature responded later that morning with "when can I call you?" as if I had not spent half an hour selecting what stuff I wanted in the car. I replied with what I wanted, and said I would drop by after work.

Skip to after work, walked into a dealership with all the staff sitting around a table chatting with each other, no customers in sight. This is the only dealership in Silicon Valley, they represent Dodge, Chrysler, Jeep and Ram. It's also the oldest building, which was once a fast food place. They found the internet guy for me, he only remembered I wanted a blue car. I had to tell him I wanted mostly to demo the voice/nav system. It took a while for him to find one, and when he did, it was broken (it kept showing "loading voice recognition....please wait"). Another 5 minutes and he found one which worked, sort of. It had the very pretty Garmin maps, and he wanted to punch everything into the touch screen, but I hit the voice switch and tried some commands. They display the 12 possible commands and syntax on the screen, so it should be easy.

It wasn't.

It rarely understood what I said. Even when I was saying line numbers as in "please choose the line number of the item you want". The biggest WTF was when I said "Tune 88.5 FM" and it gave me a list of the 5 nearest pizza places.

The car itself is a heavy beastie, even with a 6-speed automatic it only gets 19 MPG city. Horrible for a compact. It's just barely easy enough to get into and out of. Sight lines are okay. Rear camera has color-coded zone lines. It probably would be clearer if they took the protective plastic off the lens. Price tag with all the features I wanted was about the same as a hybrid. Stupid design - the odometer is analog, tiny, and off to the right behind the wheel.

During the demo the rep took a personal call, switched to a dialect of Spanish which I actually was able to understand some of. Not good form, dude. In San Jose you can't expect a customer, even a Gringo, to not know Spanish. He did have the sense to step outside before completing the drug deal.

Anyway, the Dart is a non-starter.

Back to my day. Got to work at about 9, played some more with the automation scripting language and discovered some stuff which did not work as advertised. And some that did. Corp sent us email pointing to the PTO entry screen, but it would not let me log in.

Lunch was at Sizzler. I love the wings they have at the salad bar. And the clam chowder.

Got email from Fremont Chevy's Internet guy, inviting me to take a test drive of the Cruze. I replied with "How about Sunday?" because there is no way to get to Fremont before they close at 8. I figure I can spend some time at Ardenwood Farm with my camera, and head up to Chevy after the farm closes at 4.

Which reminds me, I need to figure out a way to get my Giants' ticket from dave_gallaher, since I will be going to a friend's indie movie premiere instead of BASFA Monday night. The game is Friday night.

Stopped by Safeway on the way home from Dodge, lots of people from foreign lands with more children than they had hands to keep from wandering off. Nearly ran 3 of them over with my cart. Darwin would have approved.

Dinner was microwave frozen stuff, and sensor-reheated garlic/cheese bread. I am liking this replacement replacement microwave.

Plans for tomorrow:

Get some sleep
Research which cars I could buy which the Kenwood will fit into. Corolla seems like a good bet.
Maybe take one more look at the Ford Focus/ C-Max?
Coffee in PA with Janice
Miss Saigon at PA Players

I Need A Hybrid

2013-05-03T05:41:45Z

None of the cars I have looked at have all the features I want. I thought the 2013 Corolla might, but they have done the same stupid thing with the speedometer as Ford & Chevy. My 2008 has it done right.

Today I checked out the Prius C, model 3 out of 4 which has everything except power seats (their pump-action height adjustment is stoopid. Chevy Cruze also has that). The sight lines are very limited, almost no rear view, and the side mirrors only show half the next lane. The nav system has all the street names, but they are pretty small, even zoomed in, and the color scheme is not contrasty enough. While the voice system recognized most of that I said, there are just too many menus, and the system keeps going back to the main menu in between commands, no matter how deep into the menu you are. Annoying. Let me clarify:

Say "navigation"
and it brings up the map
Say "chinese food"
and it brings up the list of possible POI categories
Say "restaurant"
and it goes back to the base menu, and asks what category, and after 5 seconds brings up a list of the categories
say a category
and it goes back to the base menu and after 5 seconds brings up the list of restaurants in that category

And so on

With Ford, say "find chinese food" and it gives a list of the nearest 5 chinese restaurants.

It was not too hard to get into the car, but tricky to get out of. Chalk some of that up to being parked too close to the next car.

Cup holders are near the floor under the dash - awkward. Center console is too far back, awkward.

I looked at a Corolla through the windows, the saleswoman was not too keen on selling me a car for $12k less. But seeing the speedometer had been placed off to the side was a leveler. If all the cars in the <20k range have that FAIL, I may as well get a Ford.

I think I should give this a rest for a while, not knowing if I'm going to be laid off soon.

Speaking of which, we got official email that all out Google bonus shares will vest in a couple of days, which would give me about 8 shares, big whoop. After taxes that may be a month's take-home. I suppose I could use it as a downpayment.

Work today was mostly trying by trial and error to hack up one of the tcl scripts from the class to make it do something useful for me. I managed to lock up the automation system. Automation Guy fixed it right away. I did manage to do what I set out to do.

Lunch was at Starbucks, I am in love with the new hot dog croissant. That and iced green tea and I'm a happy camper.

After work I picked up a package at the apartment office, something I have not done since getting the UPS box and finding out about the amazon lockers. It was a repaired in-dash navi/entertainment system which had been in the car previously, but it kept resetting to factory defaults, and locked up when I tried to update the maps. Turns out it had a defective CPU. $185 to repair a $1200 system, well worth it. If it had voice commands I'd put it into the next car I buy, but now that it's fixed I will probably sell it on eBay. I'm pretty sure Kenwood has a system with voice recognition, maybe that's the route I should go. Buy a car without a radio and have that installed after.

Walked in the front door and one of the kitties had left a small pile of mostly liquid poop in the foyer. Yuck. Cleaned it up. Both of them looked guilty, I couldn't tell whodunnit.

Next was the aforementioned trip to Toyota of Sunnyvale, where a young Chinese woman named Celine helped me. It took a few minutes to get the hang of her accent, but she knew her stuff, and did a good job.

Home by way of 7-11 and amazon locker, where there was a pair of NewBalance shoes to try, now that the similar Brooks ones have put blisters on my left foot.

Dinner was a Marie Callendar turkey plate. Following the timing directions on the box, the new microwave undercooked the first pass and overcooked the second. Not by much, though. No smoke, no flames, no Cajun blackened anything.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work - more tcl
San Jose art walk? Not sure.

Weird Dream Channel x 2

2013-05-02T16:50:53Z

Two days ago I noticed a blister on my left foot, just below the big toe. There were also tiny blood blisters on the side of foot parallel to the blister. All night I tossed and turned, dreaming about the USB implant in that side spot, and how I could not reach it to plug in my iPod.

Yesterday my trip to a Honda dealer was a FAIL when the rep did not know how to activate the voice command system. I went onto Youtube and found the answer later. All night I tossed and turned, dreaming about variations on voice commands. "I need Chinese food" and "Find me pizza" were the most over-use. Regardless of what I said, the nav system would find it, and then display a map with no street names on it. Just like IRL. :-(

Day Two of Not In Class

2013-05-02T06:33:24Z

Happy May Fools' Day! dot dot dot dash dash dash dot dot dot

One of my favorite team mates came by to try to drag me to class, but I said today's class was on something I could teach better than Automation Guy. Team member said you always learn new things, so I went. Once again, 10 am class did nothing useful till 11, then teacher goes all random through code he has not looked at recently, because most of the snippets he showed said "under construction". When he finally got to the first lab exercise, it was something I had done a 1,000x more complicated version of for him a month ago. So I left.

I kept following the class by monitoring the directory the others were putting their work in, but by the end of the day they had not progressed at all.

Meanwhile I kept trying to make my scripts from yesterday work, but they refused to show up. After the class I showed Automation Guy the problem, and it turned out he had forgotten to build a couple of files in my folder. Turns out a few others had the same issue.

I also took advantage of the quiet to look at a piece of hardware which IT had not gotten around to repairing. It was munged worse than I thought, and it needs a new board. Talked to boss, he had some ideas.

Lunchtime I went to UPS and picked up the replacement for the replacement microwave, but went back to work instead of home with it.

After work, hauled it home, parked the broken replacement into the livingroom, unboxed and set up the new one. It did the sensor reheat thing perfectly. It was packed box-in-a-box, and while the outer box was gently kissed by the business end of a forklift, the inner box was fine and the machine was unscathed.

Went to the Honda place in Palo Alto, they are only open till 8, so it took some time for them to find a salesperson, and she was brand new. We looked at a Fit, and it was very nice except for that crappy navigation system which does not show any street names on the map. It has voice command, but she did not know how to make it work, and I saw nothing obvious.

We were done at 7:47, but they had locked us in already. She had to call on her cell to get someone to open the lot gate.

I really like the car, but that nav system is a show-stopper.

I like the Ford's nav system and voice command system, but the position of the speedometer is a show-stopper. Chevy too.

So I guess I will look at Toyota after all. :-(

Not that I *have* to buy a new car, but I have the $$ and the current car has a decent trade-in amount, which will offset the expense a bit.

May 1, turned over most of my calendars. The Resdkins' cheerleaders, which started out as the finest 15-month one, cheated and put April and May on the same page. Dallas, NY Jets really outdid themselves, Miami went for someone whose main claim to fame is height. And their photog is 2nd rate.

didjiman's panoramic calendar is another winner, this time it's a B&W with very subtle shadow detail hiding a very amusing surprise.

My own calendar has one of my favorites, a tray of oranges and plastic wrapped offerings for the monks at a Thai temple, on a Starbucks napkin.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Maybe picnic for lunch. It was 90° today.
Look into Toyotas

Foreign language fail

2013-05-01T06:14:01Z

Today at work we were supposed to have a long-awaited class by Automation Guy to teach us the basic syntax of the tcl programming language. It took him almost an hour to get the projector and slide show set up, and when he did, instead of it being about learning the language, it was about learning how to find and implement the commands he has written, for people who already know the language. Half of us have no background in this language at all. It was like taking a kid out into the middle of the lake in a rowboat and tossing him overboard and saying "you know that I can swim, now you try it!" He may as well have been giving the class in Urdu.
When it was clear he was not prepared to start from zero, I left. I downloaded the nutshell tcl book, and browsed through it, but unlike most nutshell books it had no examples. It was mostly an intro into the history followed by a glossary.

He had set up a directory in a share folder for us to put our scripts, and I looked at several of them, but all of them were bound to fail because right at the top it gathered six variables from the command line, then tested to see how many variables there were. If it was <5 the whole script would stop. I also tried to run them on my machine, but they all failed to start. Something wrong with the way I was calling the scripts, but no clue what.

So it was a FAIL day for me, I was so looking forward to learning enough tcl to write my own automation scripts.

Lunch was at Starbucks, it was 90° out so I ate my hot dog croissant in their outdoor seating area.

Back at work, kept trying and failing. Two of the team tried inviting me back in, but no thanks, that's not the way I'm going to learn. And now that I've seen how convoluted tcl is, I don't want to. Most languages I can figure out from the examples, but not this one.

After work I went home to wait for traffic to die down, then headed back to Ford. The guy I was talking to Sunday was starting to sell a car to someone, so he found another guy to help. Other guy was pretty good too. We looked at the Focus, and I torture tested the voice recognition system. It had trouble with recognizing words which were displayed on the screen (neither of us could get it to respond to "burgers" when it was displayed on a "type of food" list). But whe I said "find me Chinese food it listed 5 nearby places and mapped out the route to #5 when I told it to.

One thing I don't like about the Focus which I also didn't like about the Chevy Cruze is the speedometer is not centered. In the Cruze nothing is in the center above the steering wheel, but in the Focus they have a readout mini-screen for nav directions. Inconvenient.

Maybe I need to re-think Toyota.

Nah.

After that I went to Palo Alto and Piazzi's, got frozen matzo balls, Scharffen-Berger chocolate was on sale, also got some sheep and goat cheeses, and Ivar's clam chowder. And paid too much for olives.

Plans for tomorrow:
Not sure about work. We'll see if Day 2 of the class is worth going to.
Replacement replacement microwave is due at UPS
Take the whites out of the dryer and put them away

Rough Start

2013-04-30T06:39:44Z

Two nights ago I shot up 1/3 more long-term insulin than usual and in the morning my Hgl level was 112. Very close to Howard-normal. Last night I did it again, this morning it was 101. Nice. So I shot up my usual morning dose (half what I did at night) and took my meds, then went online for a bit. Opened the patio shades and saw Kaan had pooped next to the cat tree. Boo, hiss. Transferred that to one of the litterboxes and decided it was a hint - they needed changing. So I changed them.

The exertion met the morning insulin and threw me into mild insulin shock. That's actually kind of good news because it has been agens since my Hgl was uner control enough for that to happen. A piece of Scottish whiskey fudge brought me most of the way back, enough to drive to work. Early meeting this morning, no time for breakfast, but I survived. After the meeting I had a cup of noodles and was fine.

Last night also was night 2 of back twisty pain, one vicodin helped me sleep but did not dull the pain much. This morning there was still some pain left, and it let me know when I manipulated the litterboxes.

It has now faded, was gone by mid-afternoon.

After the meeting I looked for work to do, which took a lot of time because most of the bugs which are left require special setups which I don't have access to. 11:30 my alarm reminded me that CHM was having a brown bag talk by von Neumann's daughter which I did not want to miss. So hopped in the car and drove to MV for that, and was flabbergasted that the cafe was closed. So no lunch for me.

It was a pretty good interview, what I heard of it. The speakers in the back kept clipping.

Back to work, where I had a PB&J sandwich in the cooler, and chocolate milk. And mounds (the dark chocolate ones). And walnuts.

Found some work to do, also took a browser break to look at non-hybrid cars. Then Automation Guy invited me to the breakroom to chat while he had lunch. Mondays are wall to wall meetings for him.

Left at 6, drove to Courtesy Chevrolet through the insane San Thomas Expy traffic. What cretin decided the diamond lane should be the right-hand lane? And how many lobotomies were done to keep it that way?

"Mac" whose real name is Amir, had sent me info on internet prices for the Cruze. They don't have a hybrid but they have an "eco" high-MPG version which is close enough. He showed me the nav system, which is almost as good as Ford's, but the voice recognition sucked, was slow, and did not recognize anything I said. Good headroom for getting in and out of the car, and comfortable. But the instrument panel is a joke. All analog, the speedometer is on the right, behind the steering wheel, and the tachy is on the left behind the steering wheel. Odometer is tiny, bottom center behind the steering wheel. And all are labeled very small, like 8 pt. fonts.

I asked Amir about paying cash, and he told me those days are gone - it's better to get a loan and just pay it off to get the title. There are usually price breaks to get it financed.

I took a quick look at the Sonic, which has an electronic speedometer, same nav system, but it's ugly, especially the tiny headlight pairs.

Home, decided to blow off BASFA and have dolmathes and clam strips for dinner, watch some TiVo and play online. Part of that was looking at the Ford Focus, which can be tricked out with all the toys of the Fusion & C-max, without the inflated hybrid surcharge. I'll probably go back there tomorrow to check it out.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work - Automation Guy is teaching a 2-day class on tcl scripting
Ford - focus

Carz

2013-04-29T07:33:01Z

Nothing to do today, no coffee klatch because it's klatchee's bridge weekend with the gals by the sea. I tried to learn bridge, but found the bidding conventions anti-intuitive. I understand suit hierarchy and trump cards (those are like wild cards in poker), but not bridge's Secret Handshake.

I tried to sleep in, but somehow my body wanted me to wake up by 9. I did stuff online, then got showered and drugged and dressed. Had a headache, took some non-aspirin. Banana for breakfast, plus a handful or three of pistachios.

Somehow the big splotch of dirt next to the recliner looked nastier than usual, so I took the steamer to it. Also vacuumed the bare minimum of cat-shredded Payday wrapper near the kitchen.

Decided today was massage day, but not till afternoon. To kill time and assuage my curiosity, I went to my local Ford dealership to see what their navigation system looked like. As soon as I walked in, Tim greeted me, I told him what I wanted to see (Fusion Navi) and he took me to a car in the lot which was equipped with one. The "Sync" system is impressive, lots of voice-activated stuff, good voice recognition (it understood me). The navigation system maps are outstanding - better than Garmin, even. All the street names are readable, even in half-screen mode (the other half can have play-by-play directions). Bright enough to see in direct sunlight. The screen is a fingerprint collector, but microfiber solves that. There were lots of customers, and lots of salespeople. Busy place.

I had a lot of trouble getting into and out of the Fusion, it is low to the ground and the roof line is not high enough to comfortably get inside from a standing upright position, and getting out has the added challenge of not enough leverage. I asked about the C-Max, and he showed me one, same Sync system, much easier to get in and out of. I liked that car a lot more, and it was less expensive. Both cars priced out at significantly higher than Kelly Bluebook, like about $5k more. I'll be paying cash, I think that still helps lower the price. But who knows? It may cost less on a credit union deal, and just pay off the loan as soon as I get it.

Next stop was Honda. Acres of cars, but horrible layout - customer parking was not where the signs pointed. I walked the whole length of the showroom to the reception desk without a salesperson noticing me. Receptionist went on the loudspeaker to get someone, when there were two guys within normal speaking distance. One of them took on the task, his name is Terhan Terhan. I told him I wanted to see the navigation system in a civic hybrid, and he fumbled with the touchscreen system looking for a car which his printout said had that. Out at the lot, he didn't know how to read the row/slot numbers, and used the remote to make the car beep. The car did not have a navigation unit. He went back and got the right key.

Like the Fusion, I had trouble getting in and out of the Civic. Unlike the Fusion, the maps were crap. Illegible, most of the streets were not labeled, it looked like it was drawn by grade schoolers. So that's off my list.

Forgot to get the info on Chevy, but that's okay because the nearest one is closer to work, none in Sunnyvale. I may go at lunchtime, and check out the Cruz.

Looking at hybrids first, but after all these years the prices are still way too high to justify the gas savings. I just like the idea of silent idling.

Home, as I was taking off my shoes I twisted something in my back right side, it felt like a kidney punch. Ow! Massage time for sure, but first play with the cats and get in some LayZBoy time. Went to the Chinese place, this time got someone who was definitely not a CMT, spoke no English, and had no idea what I was trying to tell her about working on my kidneys. So a pleasant hour of relaxation, but when I got up my back still hurt like hell.

The microwave was still on my mind, impulse drove me to Target, where there were Sharp and Panasonic ones which have sensor reheat, but my back was not going to let me get one into the cart. But before calling for help, I inspected the boxes, and they all had major rips and pokes and tears. I didn't think what was inside would be any better than what I had. So I went home empty-handed.

By now the pain was unbearable, so I found the pain killer from my last operation (expiry date 12/13) and took one. Half an hour later it still hurt, but I was sleepy enough to take a nap for an hour.

Decided to RTFM on the microwave, and lo and behold, sensor reheat needs water added to the item for the sensor to work. So I fed it some chicken soup. And set the kitchen timer for 3 minutes Just In Case. Microwave turned off at 2:55. The soup was not hot enough, so I gave it another shot. This time it quit at a little over a minute. Nuked it for 2 more on manual. That worked.

Then I got brave and cut up some pot roast I'd already cooked once from a Costco package, added water to the gravy, and sensor reheated it. Worked fine. I guess I'll keep the darned thing.

Watched the latest Mentalist and was disappointed that they have gone back to the soap opera subplot.

Plans for tomorrow:
Early team meeting this week
Chevy