Yesterday was the happiest day of my life. Why? Well, let me tell you a story, friends. For the past couple of years, I would occasionally hear a buzzing noise in my car when I drove. I thought it was coming from the steering column, but sometimes it would also sound like it was coming from the center console. Strangely enough, it also only seemed to happen when the weather was warm. It was just infrequent enough to be completely annoying, and it basically drove me crazy. But despite all of my efforts, I couldn’t locate the source of the noise. Well, yesterday as I was driving back to work after getting a headlight replaced, the noise started buzzing again, and I suddenly realized it was coming from my cruise control lever. I touched it, and the buzzing stopped. If I wasn’t driving, I would have done the dance of joy. This gives me a disproportionate amount of happiness.
Posts Tagged ‘car’
The happiest day of my life
Friday, March 13th, 2009Posted in General | 
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50,000 Miles!
Sunday, May 27th, 2007
Uploaded to Flickr on 27th May, 2007.
Hit 50,000 miles today. Not too bad for a car that’s just under 3 years old!
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My Baby’s Back
Tuesday, June 21st, 20054 tires, 1 rim, and nearly a month’s rent later, my car is back and kicking. Ah, it’s wonderful to be driving in the left lane again. The new Yokohama Avid V4S tires feel a bit…softer? than the old RE92s, so they are noticably quieter on the freeway. This is nice because I don’t have to further damage my already fragile hearing just to hear crappy songs on the radio. Reading the reviews on Tire Rack, I’m really glad I decided to go with the Yokohama tires; not only are they much cheaper, they are rated #1 in the High Performance All-Season category. w00t!
Other randomness:
- I’ve decided another one of my minor life goals is to use the phrase: “Come with me if you want to live.” I suppose that this first requires me to become some sort of freedom fighter, though.
- I recently realized that there is a Taco Bell drive-through right behind my apartment complex. Sometimes late at night I would hear the sounds of people speaking really loudly filtering in through my window. At first I thought it was someone on their cell phone in the courtyard, but unless my neighbors have an unhealthy fascination with tacos and burritos, I don’t think that’s it.
- Gmail seems to have quietly changed its URL to http://mail.google.com/
- Everyone should read the following books:
The Cricket in Times Square ,The Great Brain , andD’aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths . The greek myths book was, and continues to be, one of my favorite books of all time. My dad gave me a copy when I was a kid and I read it so much that it literally fell apart.
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Off
Monday, June 13th, 2005I had an off weekend. Last Friday was the aforementioned tire ‘splosion, which, the more I think about it, was completely and utterly my fault. And I’m pretty sure I just butchered every rule of grammar in the preceding sentence. Anyway, it turns out that not only will I have to replace all 4 tires (the remaining 3 were too worn), I also have to replace the rim (which won’t be in until Thursday), and they won’t know if there’s suspension damage until they get the new tire on Thursday. I’m an idiot.
On Saturday the cable guy came to install my cable, but he couldn’t get it working. He kept saying it was my TV, but I kept arguing with him that it wasn’t my TV, and played some stuff from the VCR to prove the cable coax input was working. He said someone would call on Sunday to come back and try to get it working, but nobody called. I had to call them this morning and reschedule for Thursday morning.
On Sunday I exchanged my TV, and fortunately this one seems to be working fine.
Throughout the weekend I was having strange dreams which left me feeling really uneasy. I don’t even remember what they were about, but I awoke feeling disturbed every morning. Strange.
Besides those things, I actually did have a pretty good weekend. Friday night I saw Star Wars again with Peter (at a DLP theater! It’s pretty neat; you can actually see the difference with digital projection. Although Peter pointed out that the added clarity also makes it possible to count the pores on Natalie Portman’s face.)
Saturday I went on our weekly run, and then went to Ikea with Peter where I picked up some stuff for my new place. Saturday evening I saw Saving Face with Babs, Florence, and May Ling. It was good. Joan Chen was a really good Chinese Mom.
Sunday I went to the Farmer’s Market, did some cleaning, and then went to Costco and Target to get yet more stuff for my apartment. Later that night I saw Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which was entertaining. Beautiful people and guns. It’s a winning combination.
This morning I attempted to sign up for DSL service (ironically, I have to do it online) and discovered that I had to either sign up for automatic bill pay or make a $200 advance payment on my account to do so. So I signed up for automatic bill pay and I still couldn’t order DSL, so I called back and it apparently takes 48-72 hours for the information to propogate through the system, so I’ll have to wait until later in the week to sign up.
Work is and will be stressful for a while. I hope I don’t explode.
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‘Sploded
Friday, June 10th, 2005This afternoon I had to go home to meet the Best Buy technician to take a look at my TV (picture was tilted; going to exchange it; new one coming Sunday.) On the way home, when I was a couple minutes from work, all of the sudden BANG! I hit the curb in my car.
I was in disbelief — did I just space out and run into the curb? Since I was so close to work I kept driving, and noticed that my tire was making that “thwup thwup” sound that made me realize it had gone flat. I parked my car on the roof of our garage (so I had room) and took a look at my tire.
There was a 1-cm hole in the tire (you could see the entry path of whatever it was that punctured the tire), and basically all the air was out. My rim was also scraped up from hitting the curb.
I’m pretty sure I didn’t just space and hit the curb, so I think what happened was that the tire blowing out caused the car to swerve and hit the curb. I’m not really sure — it happened so fast.
Fortunately, one of the QA guys offered to help me put on the spare. I’m getting a new tire (or possibly set of tires…with AWD the tire wear has to be balanced) on Monday, so until then I sit here, fuming and confused.
Poo.
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This or That
Thursday, May 5th, 2005My car was in the shop yesterday. I brought it in for its 15,000 mile maintenence, but I asked them to check about whirring noise I’ve been hearing lately. It turns out an idler pulley was worn down, so they replaced the part, and my engine is sounding good as new.
Since I was sans auto for a day, they hooked me up with a rental car from Enterprise. While there, when I was filling out the paperwork, the agent there asked me about insurance coverage. He said, “Would you like the Basic or the Full coverage?” Since “Basic” sounded cheaper, I chose that one. It was only later in the day, when I had signed all the paperwork that I realized that I could have declined the supplemental insurance altogether. Under normal circumstances, I would gladly pay the extra $$ for the insurance, but seeing as I was only going to be using the car for exactly 2 drives, it didn’t make much sense to me. Granted it is technically my fault for not examing the paperwork more carefully, but generally the word “or” implies that you have two, and only two choices. It reminded me of the time I was in San Antonio for SIGGRAPH. My professors took us all out to dinner at a fancy restaurant. When we were ordering, after each person stated their order, the waiter said, “Would you like a house salad or a caesar’s salad?” And sure enough, when we got the bill afterwards, all of us were charged extra for our salads.
- It’s looking like another 65 or 70-hour week.
My day consists of: get up, walk Enzo, go to work, come home from work, walk Enzo, go to sleep. Whee. - My harddrive at work died on Tuesday, so I spent the day reinstalling everything on my new drive. Such a waste of time. It was depressing.
- The fam is coming into town this weekend. Will be nice to see everyone.
- You know you’re in Silicon Valley when the traffic at 9:30 a.m. is heavier than the traffic at 8:45 a.m.
- I know I had more stuff to say, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was. I am so very very tired….
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A New Arrival
Sunday, August 29th, 2004I am proud to announce a new arrival to the household as of this afternoon. See a picture here!
Edit: In all the excitement, I neglected to mention the passing of my old Honda Accord (dubbed “Beastie Boyz” by Becky). That poor car has been through so much. For those of you unfamiliar with The Little Accord That Could, here is a brief list of some important moments in its life:
1) Purchased in Albuquerque
2) Shipped to Boston
3) Shipped back to Albuquerque
4) Driven for a couple years around New Mexico during all seasons
5) Rear-ended on Christmas Eve
6) Stolen for a week
7) Recovered and repaired
8) Shipped to California
9) Scratched by shipping company
10) Driven for 4 years to various places in and around California, including a particularly crappy drive to Tahoe
11) Scraped against a concrete pillar in EA garage
12) Traded in to dealer
That car served me very well over the years, and I hope whoever it goes to next will be just as pleased with it as I was. And when the time comes, may it rest in peace in that big parking lot in the sky.
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