Day In The Life of Baz

Since I’ve moved into my new apartment for my new job, I’ve been relying on Lava’s car. That was the best idea we could come up with at the time. She loaned me the car for a few months until I could get on my feet. How long that’s supposed to take, who knows? She’s in school right now and doesn’t really need a car right now. She is living in the same apartment complex as many of her friends, all of whom have cars; so she can get to the store if she needs to. There is also a shuttle that takes students to school so she’s covered all around. It is, at best, a bit of an inconvenience for her because she has to rely on people to get stuff done. And, of course, she can’t go to her favorite place in the world (Walmart) and walk aimlessly through the isles while looking for nothing in particular. But this time has come to an end. She going to be taking a class where she will need to get to different places around to different places and she needs her car.

I’ve gotten quite attached to her car actually, I mean I did pick it out last year when she was in desperate need of one. I even got the car payment in my automatic bill pay on my credit card. But all good things come to an end sometime. So, I needed to find a car and relatively quickly. Step number one was to go online. I had a budget in mind, so I decided to work with that. The problem is I didn’t really see anything very appealing in the budget. There were tons of Kias, a few Chevy Malibus, Nissan Sentras, a million Chevy Cavaliers, Hyundai Elantras, of course Accents, and one or two Mitsubishi Lancers.

First off, I have a predjusdice when it comes to American cars. They just don’t last as long, bottom line. This has been debated again and again, but out of all the cars that I’ve seen exceeding 100,000 miles, most of them are Japanese cars. And the few American cars I’ve seen in this category aren’t in good condition. Some may argue that it all depends on how you take care of the car, etc, etc. Some may argue that American cars have come a long way since then and that right now they are on par and may even exceed the quality of Japanese cars. I don’t really have time for arguing and I just have a preference.

Honda and Toyota

Based on this preference, I would have really wanted a Honda. A nice lil’ Honda Civic. Great on gas, very reliable, but also costs an arm and a leg. Although I would have loved a Honda, I’m not one of those Honda By Any Means guys. Who would pick up a ten year old Honda, because it’s a Honda. After Honda, Toyota would of course be the next one on my list, but this comes down the the same thing, they just cost too damn much.

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I know it’s been a while, but a new post is coming. Over the weekend. And I’ll even queue up a couple for the rest of next week.

For the past week+, I’ve been going through a lot of stress and trying not to pull my hair out from the roots. There’s some good news, there’s some bad news, and there’s a whole lot of no news (well waiting).

So, bare with me for a while. I’ll be back.

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First of all we need to pick a car wash. There are drive throughs with brushes, there are drive throughs without brushes, and there are the self service car washes. I’ve tried all three and I’ll have to go with the last one. When I was in the drive through with the brushes, it sounded so violent when I was in there. It seems that even the soft touch car washes are hard on the car. The brushless wash or laser was as they called it was interesting. First of all, it was ridiculously expensive. Also, when I got done my windows and mirrors were still dirty.

This leaves me with the self service hand washes. I love these, except for the foaming brush, but I’ll touch on that later.

1. BYOS - Bring Your Own Supplies

Don’t rely on engine degreaser and tire cleaner from the hose. First of all, they shoot mass quantities of it out from a hose, how effective can it be? You’re much better off grabbing some supplies over the counter at your local Auto Zone or my personal favorite, Walmart.

I really hate stories like this:

BLACKSBURG, Va. - A gunman opened fire in a Virginia Tech dorm and then, two hours later, in a classroom across campus Monday, killing at least 30 people in the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history, government officials told The Associated Press. The gunman was killed, bringing the death toll to 31.

It’s becoming a hazard to go to class now. This has to stop people. Check out the latest updates of this story:

Source:

• Yahoo News
• Bloomberg

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Sigh, I don’t even really know where to begin. I finally got a hold of this new phone of mine and I’m having a problems with it. If you don’t know this phone, it’s the Silver Plum as I like to call it. It’s supposed to be Samsung’s answer to Motorola’s SLVR L7.

The Good

There are a few things that I like about this phone: it’s thin, it’s slick, it’s stylish, and the display looks good. I also like the navigation they got on this phone. The main menu has nine (9) items on it. When you pull up one, the nice thing is that you can move to the other menus by hitting left and right. This means you can go from the Phonebook to Messages without having to exit Phonebook and hunting for Messages. This premise also works for submenus; in messages you can go from the Inbox to Sent messages just like that.

While we’re on the subject of messages. There is something that I experienced with my old phone, the Nokia 6101. You couldn’t go from one message to the next. I mean, what gives? You wake up one morning and have 5 new messages. You read the first one, then have to exit, scroll, THEN go to the next message. That really sucked. So I’m glad that Samsung has made things a little bit easier in this respect.