Trying to lose my business?

Posted by | Filed under Life, Rants

Back in April, we bought a new car from Carousel Motors. And until yes­ter­day, it’s been great. I let me explain…

Yes­ter­day, I went home for my lunch hour. When my time was up, I went down to the car to get back to work. The car unlocked and started up with­out any prob­lems. What was a prob­lem is the ASL light turned on and stayed on. Nor­mally, this light turns off once you press down on the brake pedal. It’s there to pre­vent you from shift­ing into gear with­out hav­ing the brake pressed to avoid acci­dents. Except now, my foot was on the brake and I was still stuck in park. I fid­dled around with it for a bit, but couldn’t get aything to hap­pen1. I rushed back inside, called by boss and worked the rest of the from home via the cor­po­rate VPN.

After work, I called the deal­er­ship but found out the ser­vice depart­ment closed an hour before I called. I talked to the sales­man who sold us the car and he sug­gested call­ing the VW road­side assis­tance 800# to have them tow the car out. I called them up, wait­ing on hold for sev­eral min­utes and then got to talk to *mum­ble, mum­ble #1*. He had me go out ot my car and try sev­eral things to get the car out of park. I was just near­ing the end of his instruc­tions when the bat­tery in my phone died. *grumpf*

I tromped back up into the apart­ment and called back on a wired phone. Again I had to wait sev­eral min­utes and then I got to talk to *mum­ble, mum­ble #2*. I explained what was wrong and what I’d done so far. He gave me the com­plete instruc­tions and I wrote them down. Then I set down my phone and ran out­side to try them. Suc­cess! I could now get my car out of park! Before I ran back inside to relate my suc­cess, I turned off the car and tried starting/shifting nor­mally. No luck, that was still screwy. I went back inside, picked up the phone and… And noth­ing, all I got was dead air. *dou­ble grumf*

I called the road­side assis­tance a third time and once again had to wait sev­eral min­utes for the priv­i­lege of talk­ing to *uniden­ti­fied pissy man*. This guy never gave me his name. I told him every­thing that I’d been through and the resuylts of their pro­ce­dure for get­ting the car out of park. I asked if I was sup­posed to be ok now, or if I still needed to get it to the deal­er­ship? He grumpily answered that “of course I needed to get it to the deal­er­ship.” All this around, though not entirely their fault, was not exactly mak­ing my evening any better.

Today, I called the deal­er­ship and their recep­tion­ist was waaaaaaay to gor­ram happy for 7:45 AM. For­tu­nately, she quickly trans­fered me to their ser­vice depart­ment. And they answered the phone with a “Good After­noon”. While time is rel­a­tive and there was a period in my youth where I always used “Good Morn­ing” as a greet­ing that was high school for cry­ing out loud. Still, she could have just been tired by the early hour of the day, so I didn’t go off on her. I explained my prob­lem and that the road­side assis­tance peo­ple had given me a pro­ce­dure to get the car out of park. She said since I could tech­ni­cally drive it; their first open­ing to have some­body look at the car is next Mon­day. I made the appoint­ment, but it left me feel­ing very dis­ap­pointed. I think if this is the aver­age level of cus­tomer ser­vice I get from them then when we replace our other car, it’s not going to be another Volk­swa­gen. As much as I like dri­ving the car and as good as their sales depart­ment is; if the rest of their team is lack­ing in cus­tomer ser­vice then it’s not worth it.

Or I could just be grumpy from hav­ing to han­dle all this so flip­pin’ early in the morning.

1 Actu­ally, that’s not entirely accu­rate. All I did appeared to make things worse. After my fid­dling with it, the EPC light came on. Though after fol­low­ing the instruc­tions from road­side assis­tance that light went back out.

Father’s Day

Posted by | Filed under Life

Amer­i­cans have set aside today as the spe­cific day of the year we honor the fathers among us. Though my own father passed away a cou­ple of years ago, I thought I’d take a moment to share some of the things he taught me.

  • No mat­ter how hard you want it to, money does not grow on trees.
  • Respect is never given away, only earned. And the eas­i­est way to earn it, is to give it.
  • Chang­ing the oil & fil­ter in your car can be a reward­ing and bond­ing expe­ri­ence between a father and his child. And when it’s not, at least all the yelling and swear­ing should enter­tain the neighbors.
  • Plumb­ing is a noble art, best left to the pro­fes­sion­als. As what you can destroy in min­utes fix over sev­eral hours, they can fix in one (though they’ll prob­a­bly charge you for more).
  • He really wasn’t kid­ding about that money/tree thing.

Oh and to my faith­ful read­ers out there, feel free to add some­thing your dad taught you in the comments.

Jury Duty

Posted by | Filed under Life

This week I had the priv­i­lege of serv­ing as a jury mem­ber. I took a small note­book with me and recorded my thoughts through both days, as time allowed1. Below you will find a copy of those notes I took to read or ignore as you choose. No real attempt has been made to make the notes any bet­ter than they were orig­i­nally written.

~~~~~~~~~~

Slept poorly, slow to awaken.
Rush to cour­t­house for jury duty. Hall­ways packed and warm.
Waited in court­room in chairs of oak & iron. Old, lovely and totally uncom­fort­able.
Sur­rounded by young pups to old farts. By ladies of brown hair to blue.

Ate a gra­nola bar on the drive in, car­ry­ing a sec­ond one in my pocket.
Drank some tea, but left bot­tle in the car.
Still we wait…

Hats removed from heads upon request. Peo­ple go quiet.
A sense of begin­ning flows over the room. But is lost as the court assis­tant leaves.
A man, look­ing grumpy, leaves for sec­ond time. A cell­phone rings when it should be turned off.
The doors close and the mur­mur­ing gets louder. Peo­ple start to quiet again.
Expec­ta­tion, bore­dom, sleepi­ness & muf­fled laugh­ter sweep the room.
And still we wait…

I look around the room and won­der what kind of per­son would have all these peo­ple as their peers?
What could they be accused of?
And still we wait…

House­keep­ing is done.
To clerk of court must report to get proof of atten­dance.
Edu­ca­tional video is watched.
The video’s attempts at humor failed.
Brains leaked from ears as video bored us to tears.
Some slack­ers walked in late.
And still we wait…

The video com­pleted.
A break was announced.
And still we wait…

Break con­cluded.
Lawyers at their desk.
Per­haps now we will progress.

In truth the break runs long.
And still we wait…

A man with white hair sets a lap­top on the judge’s bench.
Is he the decider of fates or an IT flunky like me?
A pool of poten­tial jurors gets taken across the hall.
And still we wait…

The lawyers get called behind closed doors.
Yet a man waits across the fence where they say.
Casu­ally dressed, I like his shirt.
Defen­dant, plain­tiff, which is he?
I know not.
And still we wait…

Pages rus­tle, lap­tops beep, peo­ple bab­ble.
And still we wait…

More names get called and the herd thins.
But still we wait…

Both lawyers finally return
But still we wait…

A book of haiku
waits at home wish­ing
it were here.

But still we wait…

Glasses removed for clean­ing
Room all a blur
From poor eye­sight & action not
And still we wait…

Lawyers con­fer­ring
whis­pers unheard
Doors a clos­ing
And still we wait…

White haired man returns
In robes, a judge he is.
Wait­ing is done for now.

Into jury box, I go.
Ques­tions are asked and answered.
Rec­om­mended Wood­chuck Hard Cider I do.
Ques­tions on alco­hol use are fre­quent, as the case deals with OWI2.
Then a break we take.
And still we wait…

Back in we go.
Strike one, strike two.… strike eight.
Into the the final 13 for me.

Open­ing state­ments are made.
Prosecutor’s are long and dry.
Defender’s are short and sweet.

Now it’s time to eat!

Quizno’s my lunch did cook.
Then I bought some comic books.

And now we have to wait
Till we return to decide
One man’s fate.

Pros­e­cu­tor shows videos and ques­tions wit­ness.
Defender tries to dis­credit both.
State rests and court adjourns.

~~~~~~~~~~

Day 2

Defender calls defen­dant to the stand.
Claims it’s all lies and the videos were faked.

Pros­e­cu­tor calls the actor from the videos to the stand.
Voices were not a match, though their builds were vaguely sim­i­lar.
Both sides done pre­sent­ing.
Now with the judge they are blath­er­ing.
And we wait…

~~~~~~~~~~

There was more to tell, but that’s all I recorded in my note­book. In the end, well… that’s all a mat­ter of pub­lic record. Go look it up. I will only admit to the follow:

  • I got a nice lunch on the court’s dime the sec­ond day
  • Now I don’t have to serve at the county cour­t­house for a cou­ple of years.
  • It was nice to be out my office.

1 I used the offi­cial notepad for tak­ing notes on the case, which the court kept to be destroyed after my ser­vice was com­pleted.
2 As in oper­at­ing a motor vehi­cle while under the influ­ence of alcohol.

Wooosh!

Posted by | Filed under Links

Just so some other poor slob doesn’t have to be the last per­son on the Inter­net to post a link to it.…

Those crazy cats at EepyBird.com took 101 liters of Diet Coke & 523 Men­tos and rather than throw­ing some sort of god-awful party with it; they came up with a much more orig­i­nal idea. With those hum­ble ingre­di­ents, they recre­ated the famous Bel­la­gio Foun­tains in Las Vegas, NV. Oh and as a quick warn­ing to any­body tempted to drink the left­overs of such an exper­ment; DON’T. From the reac­tions of the Eep­y­Bird guys, I’d say it makes motor oil taste good. :)

Bigots and Marriage

Posted by | Filed under Politics, Rants

I had been con­sid­er­ing right­ing up my feel­ing regard­ing this insane pro­posal to amend the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion to steal the rights of a sub­set of Amer­i­can cit­i­zens. How­ever I was catch­ing up on the news in the blog­sphere when I stum­bled upon Mr. Scalzi’s dis­cus­sion of the sub­ject:

Why aren’t peo­ple ask­ing the mar­riage big­ots flat out what they have against mar­riage? Against mar­ried cou­ples? And by what right are they able to say that cou­ples who are already legally mar­ried should have their mar­riages declared null and void? This pro­posed amend­ment breaks up mar­riages. God damn it, peo­ple should be hol­ler­ing this at the top their lungs every time one of those mar­riage big­ots gets all sanc­ti­mo­nious about what mar­riage means. Peo­ple ought to be get­ting these mar­riage big­ots into a cor­ner and get­ting them to admit that they need to destroy legal, lov­ing mar­riages in order to accom­plish their goals. We ought to be get­ting these mar­riage big­ots admit­ting that they have to strip away rights these Amer­i­cans already have to do what they want to do.

I highly rec­om­mend you read Mr. Scalzi’s post in full.

Update: The com­ment thread on Mr. Scalzi’s post is rather long. I hadn’t com­pleted read­ing it yet, when I posted this arti­cle. Heck, I’m still work­ing my way through it. How­ever the rea­son for this update is one of Mr. Scalzi’s replies to a com­ment was so dead on that I sim­ply must quote him again.

As I’ve said a num­ber of times in the past, the most “activist” judi­cial rul­ing I can think of in recent times was Bush v. Gore, and I think it was wildly poorly decided. How­ever, you don’t see me hop­ping up and down like a frog on a plate, bitch­ing about that damned activist Judge Scalia, because in my opin­ion, regard­less of whether I like the rul­ing or not, the judi­ciary was doing its proper role. So, basi­cally, if I have to live with a piece of crap rul­ing like Bush v. Gore, my sym­pa­thy for boo-hoo con­ser­vates bitch­ing about “activist judges” is around about zero.

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