Digital Impulses

Corvette released from Champion: "The dome lights were left on"

So this afternoon around 1530 I drove over to Champion Chevrolet to pick up my Corvette from its 2nd visit to the dealer in 2008. Earlier in the afternoon I had gotten a voicemail on my cellphone, telling me that they had checked the car for power draws and had found nothing  drawing power or any electrical shorts.

Vanessa stated that they found that the battery had no cold cranking amps in it when tested so they replaced it (under warranty, of course) and said the car was fine after that.  Also, they found that the left and right turn signals were burned out and they replaced those (also under warranty).

Vanessa stated that the tech was postulating that the likely reason for the dead battery was that "The dome lights were left on".  Below is a copy of the invoice:

So, as I predicted, they kept the car for 48 hours and replaced the battery and bulbs, without diagnosing or finding the source of the electrical issues with the car.

And the beat goes on with this infernal car. Double *sigh*.

The Firstline Security / SAI alarm company is a fucking RIPOFF

I am currently on the phone (ON HOLD) with SAI (Security Associates International) trying to get them to answer the phone.

These sleazy bastards came around my neighborhood back in August of 2007 and sold us an Alarm System which I blogged about in full detail here and here.  Their crappy equipment stopped working in late November or early December of 2007 and I have not had a single moment's rest since then.

The alarm control panel in our home beeps 5 times incessantly every few minutes notifying us that one of our smoke detectors is malfunctioning.  Mind you, this is a smoke detector that started malfunctioning on December 14, 2007.  I detailed what happened here. 

in the 140 days since 12/14/07, I have placed multiple calls to SAI customer service, waited over an hour on hold on the phone each time and have been repeatedly LIED TO BY SAI.  On every occasion that I have managed to get through, they have promised me service, or a visit by a technician or something of that nature and nothing ever happens.  I have come to the conclusion that SAI and or FrontLine are operating some kind of a front, bogus scam company that has no intention of honoring the terms of service of the contract we signed with them.

Unfortunately for us, we agreed to let these fuckers do a direct debit for the monthly service fee from our checking account.  I think the only way I can get their attention is to STOP PAYING THEM.  For this I have to go to my bank and tell them that I want to cancel the direct debit access they have to our account. 

I foresee a fight to do this, because late last year or earlier this year I stopped by the branch of our bank and tried to get them to stop the direct debit payments to Firstline/SAI but the bank employee stated to me that in order to do that, they would have to receive an order from FirstLine/SAI.

I guess my only recourse then would be to CLOSE my account at this bank in order to stop paying FirstLine / SAI for a monthly service that I have NOT BEEN RECEIVING SINCE NOVEMBER of 2007.

Right now, as I type this, I have been on hold for the last 38 minutes, listening to crappy hold music that is interrupted by a recording asking telling me "We appreciate your business, we are working as fast as we can, someone will be with you shortly, all agents are busy, etc".

Well.  A "Mike" from "Technical Services" at SAI has finally picked up the phone and is starting to fed me the same line of BULLSHIT about the fact that "he's going to send a technician to fix the problem, blah, blah".

I told Mike that I just wanted to cancel the service and he stated to me that I would need to talk to someone in Customer Service to process the request to cancel the service.  Eventually I was connected to a "Makesha" who stated to me that I need to fax a letter to them stating my intent to cancel the service and the reason WHY I want to cancel the service.

What she told me also is that since we signed a 36 month contract, the monies owed, a total of $1,259.72 is still due to them.  I am, regardless of the fact that my alarm service has been out of service for the last 5 months, supposed to pay the balance on the contract or I can expect them to come after me via a collection agency and or dings to my credit report.

"Makesha" game me the following information to send the letter to:

Attention "Makesha" (she wouldn't give me her last name) in Customer Service
Address: 2101 S. Arlington Heights Road
Arlington Heights, IL 60005
Fax #: (877) 724-7719

So to sum it up, I will FAX and mail them a certified letter, stating that i want to cancel my service with FirstLine/SAI because they didn't honor their service commitment.  That does not in any way free me from the obligation of having to pay them the balance on the contract.

It seems like the only way I will be able to avoid paying the $1,259.72 is to sue them for breech of contract and that is likely to cost much, much more than the money I owe them to begin with.

What a lesson learned.  I will never, ever again buy ANYTHING from anyone who knocks on my door offering me any kind of service.

Stay far, far away from Firstline/SAI/Alarm.com.  It is a scam, a swindle, a cheat and a ripoff. 

You have been warned.

Shopping with A.J for Havana by Aramis

So this evening after work, my son and I drove over to Radio Shack, looking for replacement iPod connector cables to connect my iPhone and his iPod to the MP3 connector in his mom's Ford Explorer.  Since we were in his car and forgot to get the cables from his mom's truck, we were unsure which ones to get so we will be coming back later this week.

After that, we drove over to the South Bay Galleria so my son could pick up some protein from the GNC store.  We were then going to walk over to Macy's to look at some shoes that I wanted to buy, but we ended up stopping by Tic Time first so that I could look at the watches they had for sale.

After some perusing, I ended up buying a Casio G-Shock for $130 that finally gives me a replacement for the Microsoft spot watch that I bought in Seattle at the Microsoft Employee store in August of 2007.

After buying the watch, we went down to Luxury Perfumes to look for some cologne for my son.  When we walked in, I decided to ask, on a lark, if they had any "Havana by Aramis" men's cologne.  The Indian people behind the counter searched and searched and could not find it.  It was only after I pulled out my incredible iPhone and Googled the cologne that I was able to pull up a picture and show them what it looked like.

As soon as they saw the picture, they knew immediately where in the store it was.  They pulled out four bottles of it at $49.50 a piece and I bought all four of them.  Now I have cologne for at least the next year, I think.

Having completed our shopping for the evening, we walked back to the car, stopping in at Starbucks on the way to get a hot chocolate to take home with me.

Nice quiet Sunday

Spent most of the day sitting in my office blogging after walking over to Piggie's for breakfast.  Breakfast was good, although I was a little disappointed at the fact that the L.A. Times newspaper that I paid $1.50 for this morning was almost an EXACT REPLICA of the one I bought yesterday, with just a few different stories on the front.

All of the sections of the Newspaper were the same as were the inserts that carried the sales form all of the local department stores and such.

Later in the evening my son and his girlfriend came to the house and the wife and I took them to dinner. We attempted to eat at the Olive Garden restaurant in Manhattan Beach but that proved to be a 45-minute wait.  I have never seen a restaurant so crowded with people.

So we ended up crossing the parking lot and having dinner at Coco's  the service was for shit and the food was only so-so, but the conversation was good. After dinner, we drove home and I retired back in to my office to work for a little while until it was time ot call it a night.

Bert fights FunLove.4099

Bert has spent the last 48 hours fighting the FunLove.4099 virus at the factory.  He showed up at the factory on Friday and found a notice from Windows Live OneCare saying that it had stopped the FunLove virus from executing on his computer.

This morning he bought and installed Windows Live OneCare on all four of the computers at the factory and scanned them all.  All four scans turned up clear and so he feels like he has dodged a bullet for now.  I have tried and tried to get him to get a Windows Home Server to backup his computers but so far he has resisted it.

I sometimes feel like Bert is purposely avoiding being fully responsible about the state of his data so that if the day ever comes where he has some kind of catastrophic computer failure, he can just throw up his hands and rail at the gods for his misfortunes.  Maybe he subconsciously craves this day of Armageddon so that he can rid himslef of the albatross that is the factory.

I hope he finds a way of working things  out without having a complete emotional breakdown.

More Corvette trouble: Dead Battery (AGAIN)

Just came back from dropping the Corvette off at Champion Chevrolet for them to look at.  It has been sitting in my driveway for the past week, dead as a doornail, with a DEAD BATTERY.  Below is a scan of the work order that I got this morning:


My sister Isa was kind enough to bring me to the dealership and she just dropped me off a few moments ago.  I havr no hope whatsoever that they are actually going to fix the problem with the battery drain in the car.

No, the best that I can hope for is that they will keep it for a few days to make it seem like they are really troubleshooting it (meanwhile, they will replace the the turn signal light bulbs YET AGAIN) and then call me Wednesday or Thursday and tell me that they traced the drain to an electrical short of some kind.

I am DOOMED to a never-ending series of problems with this car until the glorious day when I can actually rid myself of it.  That day can never get here soon enough.

Angst-filled Friday night: Borrowing Sis's car to get to PV

So this evening, just as I am ready to leave for Palos Verdes to play Scrabble, the one car available to me for transportation (my son's) is suddenly in a dispute with the wife because she feels like she want to go out later in the evening.

So there I am, all of a sudden, without transportation to Palos Verdes to play Scrabble.  Feeling extremely frustrated, I call my sister and ask her to stop by my house in the morning so that I can go rent a car. She agrees and then calls me back a few minutes later to offer to let me borrow her car.

That was very cool and offered an immediate solution to my problem.  My sister came to my house, I took her home and borrowed her car for the evening.  We agreed I would come and pick her up in the morning around 0900.

Scrabble in Palos Verdes was pretty nice although the results were terrible for me, as I lost all 3 games.  I played well enough, I just never got the tiles I needed at the opportune time. Such is Scrabble some times.

Sigh.

Crappy lunch at Denny's in Hawthorne, CA

Just returned a little while ago from a pleasant  enough lunch with my sister at the local Denny's.  The conversation topics were good and the atmosphere was fine.

The food and service were sub-par, as usual.  I don't know why I insist on returning time and time again to this restaurant when I know that it has lots and lots of issues.  Today, for example, they claimed not to have Clam Chowder, even though it is Friday and the menu lists Friday as "Clam Chowder" day.

On countless other occasions, I have gone to that Denny's and found that the hot chocolate machine is out of order or something like that.  It just amazes me that a place like that stays in business without addressing the multitude of issues that they have.

If you ever visit Hawthorne, California, stay well away from the Denny's at the corner of Inglewood and Rosecrans avenues. The place sucks.

You have been warned.

Subscribing to the blogs of Robert Bruce Thompson & Jerry Pournelle

Just finished signing up as a Patron Subscriber to Dr. Jerry Pournelle's web site, Chaos Manor and also as a basic subscriber to Robert Bruce Thompson's on-line journal at ttgnet.com.

I have been reading the blogs of these two exceptional writers since 1998 when I was working at Toyota and I figured it's high time that I give them back a little for all of the excellent information they have provided me with over the last 10 years.

Paying it Back, as they say.  Cool.

2002 Corvette: DEAD AGAIN

Oh yeah. 

DId i mention that my piece of shit Corvette has been completely disabled this week with a DEAD BATTERY??!??

AGAIN!!

The day can't come soon enough when I can rid myself of that  albatross.  I truly, truly hate that car.