Digital Impulses

Ford Explorer Eddie Bauer: 1st 500 miles

This morning on the way to work the odometer on our new Explorer reached the 500 mile tick on the odometer.  Having had the car for 1 week, we can extrapolate the following:

Average miles driven per day: 71.437
Projected miles driven per month: 2,172.62
Projected miles driven per year: 26,071.43
Projected miles driven at the end of 5 years: 130,357.14

Of course, these first 500 miles include 1.5 trips to Galpin Ford during Wednesday and Thursday of last week that accounted for 77.1 of those miles, so if we take away those 77.1, we arrive at:

Average miles driven per day: 60.41
Projected miles driven per month: 1,837.60
Projected miles driven per year: 22,051.21
Projected miles driven at the end of 5 years: 110,256.07.

It will be interesting to see how these driven miles totals normalize in the next 6, 12, 18 and 24 months.  I plan to dutifully record all of that mindlessly boring minutia right here.

Because regardless of the fact that this is really boring, this is MY blog and I can write anything on it I like.  So there.  Get your own if you don't like it. 

Just kidding.

Doc Searls on Walled Gardens and Cushy Jail Cells

Doc Searls has a new column over at Linux Journal on the importance of Walled Gardens and Cushy Jail Cells in reference to "vendor lock-in" and "consumer choice".

As usual, it is a brilliant piece that clearly illustrates the dangers of becoming locked into the confines of a single vendor, in this case that of a car manufacturer that offers no way out but theirs when you need a key or a radio replaced.

Must Read.   Access it here:  http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000272

Minor computer repair work in Marina Del Rey

This evening I took some time to visit a client in Marina Del Rey who runs a Beauty Salon/Spa. He needed a mass of cables under his front desk untangled and tidied up and also wanted me to ensure that his PC's are networked together properly.

Arriving there right at 8:00 P.M., I surprised the pregnant young lady behind the desk who seemed surprised to see me.  She got the owner on the phone who asked me to stay there while he drove over a little while later.

After the girl left, I got to work unplugging everything and generally cleaning up.  After that was done, I located a broom somewhere in the back and swept out the underside of the desk.  I then plugged everything back in and brought both machines back up to ensure that everything was working. 

Everything came back up and so it was time to do a little Windows XP maintenance. By that time the owner had arrived and we spoke at length about backup solutions, remote control, Internet access restrictions and remote surveillance options.

Before leaving, I made arrangements with him to stop by his jewelry store to check on the health of his PC network at that store.

A short visit with Julia, Reyna's friend
On the way home from Marina Del Rey, I stopped by Julia's house where my wife was visiting to pay a visit to Julia who had surgery a day earlier to take care of a minor health issue.  By now it was near 10:00 P.M., so I scooted on home to call it a night after a rather tiresome and hectic Monday.

New Ford Explorer for the wife: A visit to Galpin Ford - Part II (Completing the purchase)

So this evening we drove back to Galpin Ford in the 2007 Oxford White Ford Explorer Eddie Bauer and met with Stewart Sank again after having dinner at the Horseless Carriage once again. (Incidentally, the Prime Rib at the Horseless Carriage was excellent).

Once we sat down in Stewart's office, we hammered out a deal in about 40 minutes that had terms that we could live with.

I have to say, the car shopping experience at Galpin was very pleasant and Stewart Sank was very nice to deal with as far as salespeople go.  For the duration of the time that I dealt with Mr. Sank, I felt like he was being as forthright as possible.

So, at around 8:30 P.M. we drove away from Galpin in our new Explorer, to be paid over the next 59 months.  This is a purchase, so the next time we come to Galpin we intend to be in a much better negotiating position without the $5,000 albatross of lease overage miles that caused this current purchase to be more expensive than we wanted.

An expensive, but well-learned lesson, one hopes.

New Ford Explorer for the wife: A visit in person to Galpin Ford - Part I

Having made an appointment with Barry Eget to be at Galpin Ford at 5:30 P.M., we (the wife, son, his girlfriend and I) arrived at the usual for any transaction involving my son and wife: 80 minutes late.

As late as it was, we were attended to by an older gentleman by the name of Stewart Sank.  He was referred to us by Barry.  Before anything, we sat at the Galpin Ford restaurant called the Horseless Carriage and had dinner.  After having dinner, we spoke with Stewart for a little while and looked at some cars.

Once Stewart got a good idea for what we were looking for, he drove us over to a huge auxiliary car lot owned by Galpin that had some 3,000 cars on it according to Stewart.  We spent about an hour there looking for the SUV that we wanted and finally decided on a "White Suede" 2007 Eddie Bauer Explorer with a "Camel" interior that had all of the options on it that we wanted.

Having located an SUV we liked and with it being nearly 10:00 P.M. by now, we drove back to the Galpin showroom to do the "numbers song and dance" with the Finance people.  To make a long story short, we ended up leaving well after 11:00 P.M. without having arrived at any final figures.

We were loaned the truck for 24 hours so we could "get a feel for it and really love it" and were told that he would have "some figures worked out in the morning" because it was too late, Finance was closed, the banks were closed and he needed to get "a human being" on the phone.

So, tomorrow we return to Galpin Ford with this truck to either take back our 2004 Limited Explorer or arrive at some numbers we can live with and sign our name a million times and drive the new Explorer back home.  I predict lots of futher angst and turmoil over the next 24 hours trying to get this deal done.

New Ford Explorer for the wife: Initial contact with Galpin Ford

I just got off the phone with Barry Eget from Galpin Ford in North Hills, CA. He is the same guy that leased me my 1999 Ford Explorer XLT back in May of 1999.

We have tentatively set up an initial visit for the lease negotiations on Wednesday, August 22, 2007. As far as sales people go, Barry Eget seems nice enough and he is someone that my wife is comfortable in dealing with.

I just hope we are lucky enough to find the truck that we are looking for with the options that we want already installed, because after-market installs of the DVD Entertainment system, Navigation system or satellite radio is going to be a big PITA with my Luddite wife, who has less than 0 interest in any of these technological doo-dads.

It will be interesting to see where this leads and who we end up doing business with

New Home Alarm system installed

This evening the a guy named Jason from FirstLine Security showed up around 4:00 P.M. to install our new upgraded security system that I referred to yesterday. He completed the install in about 90 minutes  and was pleasant enough.

At the completion of the install, he completed the paperwork, cleaned up after himself and then gave me a quick run-through of the alarm system.  After that, he placed a call to the sales office, I spoke with a girl there who verified some information with me and that was that.

Jason the Alarm installer installed the alarm sign in the garden before leaving and wished me a good evening.  Now to log on to the alarm.com web site and play with the system.

Pete's European Honeymoon pictures

After about three postponements, this evening we finally gathered at my mom's house for my brother to share with us the over 1,000 pictures he took when his new bride went on a cruise to Europe in early July.

My sister, mom and I were treated almost 2 hours worth of some pretty great pictures of Spain, Monte Carlo and Rome, Italy.  My brother seems to have a real knack for taking pictures and having them available on the web for viewing at any time is really convenient.

Alarm system upgrade

This evening, a sales guy for an alarm company stopped by the house offering to upgrade our home alarm system for the privilege of a 36 month display of their alarm monitoring system sign in our front yard.

The sales guy, a tall, blond haired, blue eyed very slow speaking 20-something explained that they were in the process of promoting their service in local neighborhoods and that they had 2 options available. Upgrade the current alarm system in the house to a current, satellite and cellular network based system or lower the monthly monitoring fee.

After speaking at length with Adam, we opted to have the alarm system upgraded to a new system that will include:

• A new Smoke detector
• (2) individual keyfobs that allow remote arming and disarming of the system from a distance
• Access to all of the functions of the alarm system from a web-based control system, giving me access to the alarm system from any Internet connected computer in the world, or from my cell phone for that matter.

Now, the monthly monitoring fee will rrise, from our current $35 a month to $44.  For all of the added functionality and the fact that the alarm system will no longer be phone-line based (all connections use the cellular network, and thus are not subject to disabling by would-be thieves cutting the phone line outside the house), I thought paying an additional $9 a month was well worth it.

It turns out that notifying my Home Insurance company of the upgraded alarm system will reduce my insurance premiums enough to cover the added monthly cost.

The alarm is scheduled to be installed tomorrow, I am looking forward to being able to monitor the house alarm system from anywhere I am.

Dinner in P.V.

Fixing Outlook 2003 and Dinner
This afternoon after work and getting new tires for my wife's Ford Explorer (that we are about to return on an end of lease), I drove up to Palos Verdes to see about an issue with Outlook 2003 that Patty was having.

Outlook 2003 was crashing at launch and nothing they could do would fix it.  I sat down at the PC and after poking around for a while with some of the different start-up switches, Outlook was still crashing.  Now, obviously, there was something poison about Patty's profile, because Outlook would launch perfectly fine when started from anywhere else.

In the end, after dinner, what ended up fixing the issue was:

1. A fresh export of her Data into a new PST file
2. Creating a NEW WINDOWS PROFILE for her
3. Launching Outlook 2003 under the new profile
4. IMPORTING the NEW PST file into this fresh version of Outlook

Now, the only side effect if this workaround is that in order for her to check her email, she has to log in to her new profile in order for her to work in Outlook.  The trade-off is a small one, considering she was afraid she had lost all of her Outlook data.

A beautiful 2. 5 mile walk along the coast in Palos Verdes
After dinner, Bert and I decided to go for a walk so we drove about a mile away from his house to a nearby trail that goes right along the cliffs in Palos Verdes, hugging the coast line and ends right near the Point Vicente Lighthouse, at the southern end of Hawthorne Blvd. (Route 107).

Here is a picture of the Lighthouse:

The walk took just over 52 minutes and afterwards, I dropped off Bert at home and drove home myself.  All in all it was a somewhat tiring but ultimately satisfying Tuesday afternoon.