Saturday, July 21 2007, 11:53 PM

As of today, I'm now the proud owner of a new 2008 Pontiac G6 GT.

I've been passively looking around for new cars for a while now, since the lease on the Grand Prix would have been up towards the end of August. I was considering buying the Grand Prix outright, but I didn't really want to deal with the payments for as long as it would take to get a decent monthly payment. The G6 is a sharp looking car, and the sticker price is a lot less than a Grand Prix, so I thought it would be a good candidate.

I was procrastinating pretty hard over the whole car situation, but I was spurred on by a letter I got in the mail from a local dealership. They were offering a decent incentive, around $1800 off the sticker price, and the promotion also had some prizes up for grabs. That was a good enough incentive to head up there this morning and take a look.

I didn't win the $10,000 or the home theater system, but I did win a weekend resort getaway, and a couple of scratch-and-win type tickets which could total $3,500 if I were to get lucky. I doubt I'll be that lucky, but who knows.

I test drove a few of the new G6s, and I really liked the way it handled. The car has a lot of spunk! Lots of pick-up, and it takes the corners really tight. The one I ended up getting has a lot of the same goodies that my Grand Prix had - 6 disc CD changer, XM radio, sunroof, etc. The only thing i'm really going to miss is the heads-up display. I got completely used to it, so going without it will be an adjustment.

g6 grandprix

Monday, June 11 2007, 3:10 PM

The past few weeks have been a lot of the same old same old. A few noteworthy events have happened though.

About two weeks ago, I noticed a strange smell in my car. I couldn't place it, and it wasn't very strong, so I ignored it and went to work. A few hours later, when I went to grab something out of my car, I noticed the smell again. I looked around, and found the source. I had left a gallon of milk in the trunk. It sat there for two or three days I figure, plenty long enough to go bad in the hot summer sun. It had leaked about a quarter to a third of its fluid components out into the trunk lining, and it smelled pretty bad. I immediately threw it away, and used a hose at work to wash the trunk lining out the best I could. The crappy thing is that it leaked down into the piece of fiberboard that seperates the trunk from the spare tire compartment. It soaked in there, and I couldn't really clean it. I gave it a good dousing with febreeze, and that seemed to do the trick for a few days, but I've been noticing that the smell is returning. It's not really bad, and can be easily subdued by opening a window or turning on the HVAC fans. It still stinks though (pun intended). Hopefully the bacteria will run out of raw materials soon, and the smell will go away on its own.

Last week, my brand new TV decided to die. I was attempting to plug my laptop into the VGA connector to see how things looked, but the TV shut itself off before I could enable the external VGA out on the laptop. This is normal behavior when a VGA signal can't be found. What isn't normal behavior is that the TV won't power on now. I called Polariod tech support, and the customer service rep seemed genuinely surprised about it. I can't blame him, because it makes no sense. It has to be some sort of buggy firmware or something similar, becuase there's no reason why a TV should power itself off, and then refuse to power on again, unless it's expressing a hatred of Star Trek or something. The customer support guy got in contact with a local repair company, and they'll be out tomorrow to have a look at it. With my recent luck with home theater components, it'll be broken, and the repair people will have it for a few months. Grand. It's less than two months old.

I also really need to stop browsing eBay. It's a really bad idea. The purchases I made last month had more of an effect on my bank account that I realized at the time. Lesson learned I suppose.

ebay frustrations grandprix polaroid-3211-tlxb

Sunday, August 28 2005, 9:21 AM

Good news. I picked up a new car on wednesday. I turned in my Grand Am and upgraded to a 2005 Grand Prix. It's got all sorts of fun stuff like heated leather seats, remote start, heads-up display, dual-zone climate control, and a 9 speaker Monsoon speaker system with 6 disc CD changer. It's a sweet ride. It costs a bit more per month than the Grand Am did, but my yearly insurance bill is about $700 less than it was with the Grand Am, so it will balance out somewhat.

Good news. My midnight shifts are over. It wasn't a bad tour of duty for the most part, but it did seem that things always got pretty busy once Gregg left every night. It was like he pressed a button as he left that alerted everyone to call or put in tickets. Oh well. It's looking like getting reacclimated to days might not be so tough this time around. I slept from about noon to 7pm yesterday, and then went back to sleep around midnight and slept until 6am. Hopefully the batteries are charged enough to keep me awake all day.

No-so-good news. My eye is still bothering me pretty regularly. I had a checkup the week before last, and Dr. Saxe said that things are still stable and not getting worse, but I'm noticing my inability to focus more and more each day it seems. It's really been bothering me lately. All of the muscles connected to it just seemed to be strained, enough so that it gives me mild headaches on occasion. This might be caused by being at work for 13 days straight staring at computer screens though. I'm considering picking up some reading glasses to try to bring things into better focus, but who knows if it'll work. Pretty soon I might remind you of that old person you know that has their display settings on their monitor set to 640x480 because they can't see any finer resolution than that... Lets hope not.

Not-so-good news. It would seem that I've fucked up somehow. The girl I met at Annie's wedding won't return my calls. The thing is that I don't know what I did (or didn't do) to bring this about. She is quite attractive, and I was looking forward to getting to know her better, but now she won't talk to me. I think it's pretty safe to say that I'm cursed, and that I'm going to be single for the rest of my life. When I combine that with my eye difficulties, moving to Tibet and becoming a monk doesn't seem like that bad of an idea...

frustrations grandam grandprix righteye work

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