J.P.

Earl and I are at his step-brother Rick’s house enjoying a lovely Sunday morning. I’m surfing the internet courtesy of the neighbors’ internet connection. Silly fools. I’ve already browsed their Windows XP machine. It was quite easy to do. I could lock them out of their internet connection if I wanted to. But I won’t. Again, I stress the importance of reading the manual of your wireless router that your cable or telephone company gave you as part of a promotion. There’s crackers out there that are not as nice as me that can do some serious damage to your computer and network.

Last night Rick and Helen has a little get together at their house. We joined in the fun, playing Pictionary and Trivial Pursuit. Earl and I spanked the crowd playing the 90’s version of Trivial Pursuit. They were all teenagers during the 90s. We were living it. It made me feel kind of old, but only for a moment. But overall, great food and great fun.

I’m leaving Earl here when I head home. He has business meetings in Wilmington, Del. Monday and Tuesday and there’s no sense in him going home just to fly back down, so he’s going to hang out with his family and I’ll be driving home alone in the Acura. I’ll be a little lonely on the drive, but driving the new car will sort of make up for it.

Today I took a bit of the afternoon off to get to know my Acura better. I made a couple of important discoveries.

1. My new car is sweet. It has a confident feel on the road. It’s fast. I love it.
2. There’s a fraternity among Jeep Wrangler drivers. You wave at each other. Among Acura RSX drivers, you race each other.
3. I can still bang through all six like an 18-year old. I’m talking about the gears of course.
4. My patience for other driver ignorance has dwindled considerably in 24 hours. Considering it was about zero to begin with, let’s just say that I’m discovering all new facets of ‘road irritability’.
5. Every chipmunk, bird, duck and rock within a 1/2 mile radius of my position is trying to pound, poop on or get run over by my new car.
6. The old rule of “If the driver wears a hat, they’re an idiot” still pretty much applies.
7. Patching a chip in a windshield does not erase a mark completely. It leaves a perma-bug in your field of vision.
8. 100 MPH while doing 69 is fun. (And of course I’m referring to NY Route 69 here in Upstate N.Y. you silly fools.

Earl and I welcomed the newest member to our family today. We picked up my 2005 Acura RSX Type-S. She is fast, she is sporty, she’s hot looking and she is fun to drive. We got to Crest Acura in Syracuse shortly before 6:00, and there she was, sitting by the door to the showroom, our salesman polishing her up.

Absolutely gorgeous!

We exchanged pleasantries with our salesman Chad and then Earl waded through the paperwork while I sat by watching the ritual and drooling slightly. We sailed through the paperwork and then Chad introduced us to our new car.

Unbelievably gorgeous!

The intercom pages booming in and out of the showroom were a constant reminder that my mom works next store at Crest Cadillac. Now I know where I got my radio tendencies from. After Chad showed us the ins and outs of the car, we decided to take her for a little welcome ride before coming back to the dealership to pick up Mom for supper. While riding around the streets of Syracuse, I decided that I needed to do a little fast driving so I took the Acura up on I-690, looped around the north side of the city on I-481 and the came back downtown via I-81. Just before the Thruway on I-81 (one of my favorite stretches of highway to drive when I was a teen, by the way, mostly because it was constantly under construction), a tractor trailer several car lengths in front of us decided to throw a rock at my new car.

I ducked. I then yelled a “holy fscking shit” and felt my heart sink into my stomach. The rock took a small chunk out of the windshield.

Pissed beyond belief, Earl and I headed back to Acura. Actually, Earl laughed and said the car was officially christened (I was hoping for something a little more pleasant to christen it, if you know what I mean. You see, the day after we bought the Impala in ’01, a wayward duck decided to head for the car, hit the hood and left a small dent. The duck did a somersault and continued his trek. I wanted to make him into a soup.

Anyways, Earl headed into the showroom to tell the salesman about our ‘fun’, while I headed into the Cadillac showroom to talk to Mom and the sales manager, and her friend, Jamie. The fine folks at Crest bent over backwards to help us arrange a windshield repair, setting up the guy to come out tomorrow around 2:30. I made a quick call to my boss to get tomorrow afternoon off, so I’m headed off to Syracuse tomorrow afternoon to get the windshield fixed.

The car is a beauty. She drives just like I dreamed she would. I’ll be sharing pictures, repaired windshield and all, tomorrow.

Here’s a haiku I lifted from Thom’s blog. It’s from the book Gay Haiku by Joel Derfner. It makes me giggle.

How is it you knew
I wasn’t faithful? Oh, yeah:
Bite marks on my ass.

Earl and I have eaten our way through this fine Wednesday. I’ve done such a spectacular job losing weight over the past couple of days that it was only fitting to celebrate by eating as much as possible. Plus, since there was drama involved with the new car, I felt I needed to calm down by loading my arteries up with as much fat as possible. If I wasn’t happy about the car situation, then I might as well just be jolly.

I started the day normally, a bowl of Life cereal, a glass of orange juice (Anita Bryant be damned) and then off to work. I took a moment to call Partners Trust Bank to find out where the Lien Release for the Impala was, since the car had been paid off almost three years ago. They suck. We originally had a loan with Herkimer County Trust, which was bought by The Savings Bank of Utica, which changed their name to SBU Bank who then joined forces with BSB Bank to become Partners Trust Bank. We made the idiotic gesture of paying off the loan during one of the transitions, the first one I think. Herkimer County Trust was your typical local bank, with a teller named Maude who still used a crank calculator and handwritten deposit receipts. SBU Bank and its various incarnations, on the other hand, laughed at the face of human interaction and charged a huge fee to use a teller while making all electronic transactions free. So of course these two banks were perfect candidates for a merge. Anyways, our lien release was lost somewhere in a stack of papers that seemed to be destined for Peoria, Illinois and it would take some hefty research to even think about retrieving the documents. I don’t think I’ve slammed the phone down that hard in a long while.

So I stewed, which made me hungry.

At lunch we joined my friend Susan and her daughter, Courtney, for a popular buffet at the local Radisson Hotel. It was as good as a casino without the gambling at twice the price. It was great to catch up with Susan, as we used to work together before I switched jobs last year.

Around 3:00 p.m. Earl informed me via e-mail that the Acura dealer had threatened Partners Trust Bank with doing their loan stuff with someone else, someone more deserving, and viola! Lien Release found. So now we’re scheduled to pick up the Acura tomorrow night at 6:00 p.m. I’m counting the minutes.

To celebrate, we went to the local China Buffet where there’s lots of Chinese Food (wontons and such) and American Food (something called ‘Frieds’, I think they meant ‘Fries’). The food was exceedingly bland and not worth the calories but it was interesting. Especially since a guy two tables away saw me using chopsticks to eat my food (not the frieds though) and asked me, yelling across the restaurant, why the Chinese used chopsticks. Before I had a chance to suggest a theory, he answered his own question by letting me know they must have run out of metal and started using bamboo instead. I said “that must be it.”, and went back to eating. I did take a moment to notice that Earl and I had more teeth amongst the two of us than the rest of the patrons put together.

So now my stomach is complaining and I’m hungry. I’m not going to eat again since I’ve gone way over my caloric intake limit. I think I’ll hit the sauce instead.

Partners Trust Bank = Evil. Pure Evil. Too big for their britches. How I hate corporate America.

More later.

I read an interesting quote today while browsing through the usenet groups.

He who angers you, controls you.

Wow. When you think about it, how very true that is! Something for me to keep in my mind when I’m ready to lose my temper.

Last week I was working on an IT project at work which involved going around to different workstations through the building to do some reconfiguring. What I do is basically shove user X out of the way, let them know I’ll only be a few minutes while I click around on their desktop, do my magic and then move on to the next computer. This leaves the user little to do so they watch me do my voodoo, undoubtedly trying to learn my secrets. (“I shall never tell, NEVER!”)

While I was working on one user’s computer, we made the usual small talk. She then asked me why I shave my head.

I gave her my standard answer, “Because I don’t like being bald.” Her response was “Huh?”

Now I let me explain. When I have hair, I have very light fuzz left on top of my head, with a dark covering of fuzz around the sides and back. My days of a fierce red flattop are over. I don’t like the look of going bald. It makes me look old and makes me feel old. By shaving my head, I’m telling the world, I choose to be bald. I thumb my nose at the regression of my hair line. When the hairs started leaving, I evicted the rest of them. So there!

She then asked me the standard questions about maintenance and such. Do you have to shave your head every day (yes), does it take a long time (no), how do you do it (in the shower, without a mirror), have you ever cut yourself (never, and I’ve been shaving my head since ’97), what do you use (shaving cream and a Mach III), no electric razor? (in the shower?).

“Well, why do you have a beard? Especially since you have a shaved head.”, she then inquired.

“Because I hate shaving.”

Earl and I stopped by his office today to pick up his laptop, as he is headed out of town tomorrow morning and wanted to avoid a trip to the office on his way out. When we arrived, we noticed there was quite a bit of smoke behind the plant. So we investigated and found the heat treat chamber, which heat treats the pallets his manufacturing plant makes, was on fire.

We pulled around out front of the building and got inside. Earl then when into action. He pulled the fire alarm, just in case someone was in the building even though no one should have been. This also notified the alarm monitoring company. He then went to his office and dialed 911 and calmly explained the situation. We then went into the plant and assessed the situation. There was smoke pouring out of places of the chamber that should be emiting smoke, so Earl cut the power to the unit then went inside to disconnect the gas line that fires up the furnaces. By then, the firefighters arrived and put out the fire.

A fire at any manufacturing facility, let alone a wood-based manufacturing plant, is a dangerous and scary thing. I am very impressed by the calm, cool, collected manner in which Earl dealt with the situation. I would have never thought to pull the local alarm, I would have skipped that step. I also very impressed by the Utica Fire Department. It was a small fire. But they handled it very well and very thoroughly. Gage and Desoto would be very proud.

So Earl’s team will do some investigating tomorrow to find out what happened. What systems failed and what things worked well. They’re all very thorough like that. And the chamber wasn’t a loss, a little refurb and it’ll be up and running.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been doing some online research on a new car. I’ve narrowed my choice down to exactly what I want… an Acura RSX Type-S loaded.

We’ve had our 2001 Impala for over four years and at nearly 118,000 miles, it’s beginning to show signs of wear. Actually, truth be told, the car has been a money pit. It had a 36,000 mile warranty on it. At 900 miles the radio crapped out and had to be replaced. At 3,000 miles (during the first oil change), the “Service Engine Soon” light came on and wouldn’t go out. Come to find out, they wanted to replace the entire fuel system. This went on and on until we put $2K for transmission work January 2004 and then another $2,000 the past October for brakes (the fifth set) and various sensors and relays. While I was very excited when Chevy announced the return of the Impala back in 1999, I can’t say that I’m very happy with the whole American car thing. I know, it’s anti-American but we can’t afford to fund another American made car.

Anywyas, I let Earl know that I had decided on the Acura RSX Type-S loaded and gave him the details right down to the finest detail. Then I said that we had to start saving up some money so that we could buy it in a year or so. I figured he tell me that I’d have to settle for a Yugo, because quite honestly, the Acura was a “pie in the sky for me”, the bees knees of what I want at this stage of my life.

When I got home from work on Friday, he told me that he had been to the dealer, had worked it all out and we pick up the new car this coming week, probably on Wednesday. My mom works for a Cadillac/Acura dealer, and apparently Earl had spent the day with his mother-in-law.

I think I said something like “Holy shit”.

Wednesday can’t get here soon enough. I’ve found the track I want to bless the Acura with. Here’s a sample of for you to listen to.. Major points if you can name the artist and title, as it’s a relatively obscure dance track from 1996. It’s typical J.P. music.