Rant – Noise Ave.

Your Water Pump is Going Bad

“Your water pump is leaking!,” he said interrupting my thoughts as I intently listened to Obama and McCain on the TV saying the other was a liar. Yeah, right! Politicians? Liars? Can’t be!

But I digress. 28K miles on a 2 year old mustang. It was just there for an oil change and tire rotation. But they do more inspection as well. It’s “The Works” package, after all! Back to the story, first there was an issue with the transmission 8K miles into it or so. Don’t remeber the exact mileage.

Anyway, it’s under warranty. They’ll fix it for free. But a thought occurred to me last night. That’s right folks, I do all the important thinking at night. Anyhoo, the thought was that maybe they see people with cars under warranty and tell them to replace stuff. What does the owner care! They are happy it will be fixed for free. And maybe the dealership tags on other things and presents back to Ford to get more money. At home, I know the sales people and feel better trusting them. Out here, on the road any random dealership sounds like a vulture. So I drove to another dealership to have them do the water pump test (for free since it’s under warranty). They’d take 3-4 hours just to run the test and didn’t have a shuttle to drive customers back. Neither a loaner. Only a Hertz desk. Sure it’s under warranty but you don’t really wanna get things done for free!

Drove back to the first dealer and gave the car to them for replacing the water pump. Even if it does need replacing better to replace it now than wait. “The motor could blow,” he said, if it wasn’t fixed. Ok Mr., sign me up for this water pump change program!

I Really Really Don’t Like Mooching

I really don’t like mooching at all. It’s such a different existence. You don’t have a say in anything. Living with relatives is absolutely a difficult task. It’s a project. You must learn to ignore all the oddities that drive you insane. You must ignore things you would not put up with for a second. Most of all you are in a different home, and living with their rules. You don’t have a personal restreat. When the day has you down, you can’t do anything.

Well, you could always take to the streets. Just drive around. Just part in random parking lots and kill stime. And that is just what I did today. I was having a down day. After one too many unmet expectations from family, I needed time and space to sort things out. To let the feeling air out. To let the emotions breathe a little and to just let off some steam doing anything that would help. At home, this means close the door and play guitar, listen to some bands, watch some show, watch some movie, sutf the web, sleep or anything else…. But here, there’s not such freedom.

So I just drove around for a while. Then went to Jack in the Box. Then went to Barnes and Noble. Browsed thru books. Then thru the Music section. Then thru DVDs. Saw the boxsets of all the “I Love Lucy” seasons. Then went to the financial section. Found an investing book. Sat down and read the book. Kept the phone on silent. Expected more calls from some, but didn’t get those. It’s definitely a good feeling to not have anyone want to look for you when you go AWOL. Oh, well, we don’t all need support.

Looking at the last few posts, and judging by my own feeling the last few days, it’s just been a long rant. That’s to say, I gotta jet. Leave this place. It’s not the cool fun, I had expected it to be. Santa Monica has apartments for $1400 for studios and higher. Most studios are starting at $2000 and go to $5000 or higher. I don’t make that much per month! The $1400 sounded reasonable for one month, but they don’t do less than a 12 month lease. And they don’t have any vacancies. Los Angeles, is also it’s little world. I don’t know what to do. Maybe need to look for families renting rooms….

Most probably will bail on this entire area. Probably even Cali. The time… she will tell

New Haircut – Oh Sharon Where Are You?

So Sharon, the lady that did my hair last time did such a wonderful job that she has raised the bar. Every new hairperson just scares me. However, since I’m 1000 miles away from Sharon, I had to get a haircut. Enter one Ashley. Cute. Really cute girl. Worked on my hair. Treated me real well and the place was pretty cool. They offer a drink. Water, coffee, beer, whatever! Obviously, who would drink beer while getting their hair worked on. That’s just gonna make the person drunk and like any ole hairstyle. So I opted for water. Never got to drink it, ‘coz of the all the talking and secondly, too much hair flying around.

Back to hair, Ashley did a pretty good job, not like Sharon, but it came out ok. The layers are very visible so instead of looking like a well kept guy-mane, it looks somewhat like hair little past the shoulder with different lengths here and there. But it could be that I’m doing something wrong. Or maybe Sharon really did set the bar so high, anyone else just seems like not doing enough. Overall the look is fine. In the back tho, this lady just totally used a trimmer and almost shaved the neck hair off. Which looks very 80s when pulling the hair back. Sharon, did very nice and professional looking trimming that it looked nice and natural.

Oh well, hopefully two months later in time for the next haircut, I’ll be within 10 miles of Sharon. God willing.

Will be posting Santa Monica pictures soon. Picked out the pictures, editted them, and will post them soon.

I’m a Fool!

Just an emotional rant. I guess I can’t really complain here in public. Just some days you wake up to a different reality of friends and family than other days.

Why Would You Do That?

On Friday when I starting driving around town I noticed the gas cap warning light came on. That was a little unsettling. At the next gas station when I stopped to check the cap was completely unscrewed. Mustangs don’t have a lock on the gas door or the cap. So anyone can open the cap.

Well, I always screw the cap in tightly after filling so the only other options is that someone on the street opened the cap. But gas was still at the level that it should have been. No gas missing. So why would someone do that? I guess there’s a small possibility that I may have left it undone. But that’s just so uncharacteristically me that I have a big issue believing that.

Anyway, took it to Ford. They said after tightening the gas cap, it would take 60-80 miles and 3-5 restarts before the light goes away. Today driving back from the Church, the light finally went away. It was a relief, but still a somewhat troubling thought that possibly someone might be opening the gas cap….

Sony w120 so Disappointing

The Sony W120 had good reviews. Went to a store. Played with it. It has fast shooting time between pictures. For someone who wants to snap snap, it’s pretty good speed. The slideshow plays music while showing it. The camera shoots picture using smile detector. That’s a great little toy.

With all those features they forgot to put in some image quality. Squares on images show up and ruin a real nice image. To make matter a tad more interesting, the image looks like it’s painted by hand. Up close, it doesn’t look grainy. That would be still fine. It just looks like smudged colors. If you considered this camera, don’t buy this.

Would be returning it. But now the issue is that I won’t have anything to use on the trip. Plus I can’t stay until the store opens and then return and buy something else and leave. That would just take a lot of time.

Maybe another microcenter will let me return it. Hopefully. Otherwise, this will be listed on craigslist soon enough.