I haven been wanting to attend Essen — the board gaming convention Mecca. And I finally found someone willing to go with me. Since the flight is so long, I decided to visit another city and settled on Amsterdam. Marty, my traveling companion, was able to get work to pay for him to visit London afterward and I crashed at his hotel for an extra 10 pounds a night. You cannot beat that price for downtown London!
More, after the cut…
Here is yet another loaner car. Which I have had my fill of recently. What with the two separate replace the header gasket incidents recently.
This time I am driving a BMW X-5. When I bought the car, part of the deal was replacing the car’s chip with a performance upgrade. Apparently, they couldn’t just install it before I bought it. I had to first buy the car, then drive it off the lot, and then come back in to have it upgraded. Whatever. Bureaucracy or State Laws at their finest, I guess.
Last Thursday, I drop the car off and here I am with the car. Almost a week later. Not the speediest upgrade. But, I can’t complain with a free rental. However, when I get the bill, I notice that part of the bill is $130 in freight! That is crazy! Like almost plane travel transportation crazy. That part of the bill I can complain about…
Back to the car, or SUV. Sesh, it is a pig. Big, heavy, extremely slow. I don’t know why people would buy cars like these. Sure, its roomy. But it is underpowered and a gas guzzler.
I saw this car parked at the Monument Cafe this morning with a huge Teddy Bear sitting in the driver’s seat. The colors matched as well. How cute!
On somewhat of a spur of the moment, I purchased a new car. I have been thinking about getting something different for a while now. So, when I realized that I needed to replace all four of my tires and brakes, I decided that it was time. If I bought a car now, I could avoid having to spend around two grand for new tires and brakes.
I took a BMW 335i for a test drive. I liked the car. It was fun to drive: well balanced, responsive, and it telegraphed the road feel nicely. So I asked how much my trade in would be. They initially told me 12K. Which was disappointing. The blue book value for a trade in was 16K. But I eventually talked him into using 14K as the value.
I also looked at Corvettes. There is some serious deals going on there. For a 2008 Black Corvette with the Z51 package, the MSRP was 62,140. They were offering employee pricing of 53,029. Nine grand off! They too offered me 14K for the trade in. There was only one car in stock with that type of deal, though. It was black and an automatic.
While I have wanted a Corvette for a while now, I just don’t like their profile and how I fit inside them. The car is really low to the ground and relatively big. And I barely fit inside one. My head feels like it is dangerously close to the pillar and ceiling. Which is not a good thing since, in an accident, you are likely to go up and forward.
The BMW has a lot of refinements to it. It is very polished and civilized for a car. I like the fact that the radio was made for the iPhone. It connects via an accessory cable to it. You can charge it and it will transfer the phone book contacts and music play list to the radio. And the radio also acts as a blue-tooth headset as well. The car key acts like a fob. You only need to carry it in your pocket to lock/unlock or start the car. The car also comes with free maintenance for four years. All costs are covered.
I also learned that BMW offers an upgrade to the chip which controls the car’s computer. This upgrades the car’s horsepower rating from 332 to 384 and the torque from 325 to 421 lb/ft. Even better, the warranty is not invalidated. It is fully supported by BMW. When I asked that they throw in the chip for free (a 2500 value), the salesman immediately agreed. Damn. That was too easy. I wonder else I could have got. But it was enough to tip the scale towards buying the vehicle. It also helped that BMW was offering 0.9% financing.
Looking back in time, I paid $19075.72 in October 2003 for my F-150 Lightning which included TT&L. The MSRP was $33,310.00. I traded it in today for $14,000. Which meant that I only lost 5 grand? But the cost to me included my previous trade in. So I don’t think that would be a good way to remember my truck’s value. But it is better than the 19 thousand dollar loss (33K-14K). While my vehicle is a limited edition version (only 2500 were made), Ford makes a billion F-150s. And it probably hurts that my truck is only a two seater.
My total gas cost over the lifetime of the Lightning was $9126.50. My total maintenance cost was $3060.77. And the insurance cost was $6957.00. Over the 59 months of ownership, that makes it $324.48 a month to operate. Which seems like a lot of money.
Well, it looks like Hurricane Ike’s path is currently projected to head right over Austin! But I should know better. Even though they have a projection, it is completely worthless this far out in the future…
According to this article, The Monument Cafe is moving. So I went to see if it was true or not. And it is. They are moving North 11 or so blocks. The owners will keep the old location. And there is no definitive word on what will replace it. I do hope they repair that old parking lot. It is rather bad.
You certainly cannot miss this vehicle. The paint scheme is rather intense. I bet that the yellow is the reflective type as well. And that is ignoring all of the lights all over the vehicle. I wonder if you could paint your car this scheme without getting in trouble…
I haven’t even heard of Fayette County before this. Only to find out as I write this that it is located 60 miles away. I wonder what they were doing in downtown Austin.
Marty suggested a Brazilian restaurant named Sampaio’s. He had really liked the coffee crusted pork tenderloin. I couldn’t make the dinner that he was setting up. So I went there for lunch. Unfortunately, they had a different menu for lunch.
I did have the special which was Garlic shrimp served in a spicy coconut sauce. It was served on rice cakes with collard greens. It was pretty good. I think that this was the first time that I have eaten collard greens raw. Their strong taste balanced out the dish and was mellowed out by the sauce. The only negative thing was that the shrimp were not that garlicly at all.
The one odd thing that I noticed was that the chef loves collard greens. Many menu items contain them.
I was tempted to play around with Microsoft’s Photosynth. It looked really interesting when it first made the news. Recently, they allowed the public to access it to add their own pictures.
This was my first attempt.
My first complaint is that you cannot modify an existing photosynth by adding pictures to it.
My next try will be a game in progress. Perhaps Formula De? Or Heroscape (which I would have to borrow since I don’t own). I am thinking that the EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM and EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM lenses will come in handy for this.
Apparently an eighteen-wheeler truck crashed into a median at 4:30 in the morning. The truck caught fire and burnt to a cinder. They had to close both North and Southbound lanes of IH-35. Unfortunately, this is just South of where I live and I have no real alternate routes. At 10:45, the roads were still shut (and in fact would not open up until after lunch). I worked my way South over surface roads. But I still had to travel East along 620. Thankfully, it was not that long of a wait to pass.
I drove down to Volente Beach and Beach Front Boats. The LTC rented a part barge for the afternoon. The directions were horrible. Jon found me at 620. And we both missed the turn off for 2769 and continued along Anderson Mill road to 1431. At which point we said, WTF?! Thankfully, as we were backtracking, we noticed the sign for 2769 and Volente Beach.
The weather was perfect. The water was great. And we had much fun floating in the water and drinking beer.