When I bought my super-truck, I bought an extended warranty to go with it. I liked having the peace of mind that goes with a warranty and I knew I would be driving the snot out of that truck.

When the head gasket failed last April, I thought those problems had been fixed. So, when I started to smell burning oil, I thought that something else was broken. Perhaps the transmission was leaking or the fluid was burning out. This time I took it to Leif Johnson Ford instead of Mack Haik Ford. It is interesting how different these two dealerships are. Leif did not charge me investigatory fees. And they drove me to work in a huge F-250 diesel.

Imagine my surprise when I found out that the head gasket failed again. Apparently, there are two sides to this engine and they only replaced one of the sides. What a coincidence! I wonder if it is anything like the analogy of when two new lights have been on for ages — when one fails, the other is surely near its end of life. It is strange that, when they had the engine apart, why couldn’t they replace both gaskets? I don’t think that the gasket price is that expensive.

Another difference between the dealerships is that they did not talk about the deductible on the rental. Although, this time, the charge to fill up the gas themselves was a ridiculous 7 dollars per gallon.

So it seems that my warranty has saved me around five thousand dollars so far I imagine. That is, if I would have fixed this on my own dime.

I had an interesting experience at the pump today. With gas at all-time highs, I finally hit a limit. The pump stopped at exactly $75.00. But the tank was not full yet. When I inquired within, I was told that my credit card must have a limit on it. So I swiped the card again and put the last couple of dollars in to top it off.

Sigh. What a stupid security measure! The company does not want me to spend more than 75 dollars on gas at one time. But they do not mind if it do it immediately again.

I should figure out what car I want to drive next. I would love to get a 2008 Corvette ZR1. 638 horse power! Mmmm. But I can’t really justify spending 65 thousand dollars (assuming that I can find one at that price). A Volkswagen Jetta Blue TDI diesel would be interesting. At least in theory (making your own bio-diesel ). But diesel, which was once cheap, is now more expensive than super-unleaded. Plus, I would want to cut down on weight and get a two seater version. And it would be nice if it was a plug in hybrid as well.

I took my car in for service today. Last August, I received mail that there was a factory recall for my F-150. Well, it seems that the engineers screwed up and they had to recall the recall and redesign the parts. Luckily, I procrastinated and missed that whole fiasco. But it took them forever to get the new parts in.

I bundled up a bunch of problems for the one trip. And right off the bat, the dealership was annoying me. I had an outside oil leak and an inside water leak. My service adviser said that to investigate those problems I would have to pay $60 fee for each. My car is still under and extended warranty. And I consider both of those issues to be warranty issues.

While I don’t usually buy extended warranties, I did for my vehicle. I drive the snot out of it. “Drive it like you stole it is my motto.” So I wanted to make sure that what ever broke would be fixed.

Well, around 1:30, I get a call from Shaun (paraphrased, of course).

“We haven’t found the leak yet. But my mechanic suspects that it is in the cylinder heads.”
“Okay. How long is that going to take?”
“Well, that’s a complicated process and it is about a 14 hour job. We can’t finish this today and we don’t work over the weekend. How is this going to affect you?”>
“That is my only vehicle. I live in an non-commuter city and I need to use it over the weekend. Is this covered under warranty repair?”
“Well, I don’t know what part needs to be replaced. Before I know it, I can’t tell you if it is covered or not.”
“Surely, the list of parts is finite! Why don’t you go through the possible parts and tell me which ones are covered!!”
“I’ll call you back…”

“Okay, it seems that all of the possible parts are covered. Since this is covered under warranty, we will pay you $30 a day for a rental vehicle.”
“See, this is what I wanted to hear in the first place. That everything is taken care of and I don’t have to worry about a thing.”

Conveniently enough, they rent a Ford Escort for $30 a day. The only problem was that I would have to pay for taxes. Sigh. But that should amount to a dollar or so a day. I did luck out when they were out of Escorts and upgraded me to a Ford Fusion.

Grr! UPS left my package out on the front porch. Normally, there is nothing wrong with that. But, today, it was pouring out. Its not like the rain was a surprise or anything. Why can’t they wrap it in plastic in these cases? Like newspaper carriers do.

On a new RHEL5.1 installation, I want to install screen. yum is borked. So, my next step is to figure out which cd it is on. At least you can use the file image of a cd as a virtual cd drive.

[root@hamzy2 mnt]# mount -t iso /home/tmp/RHEL5.1-Server-20070822.1-i386-disc1-ftp.iso /mnt/tmp/
mount: unknown filesystem type ‘iso’
mount: maybe you meant ‘iso9660’?

Okay, it prints out an error. But it seems to be a popular error and has a suggestion.

[root@hamzy2 mnt]# mount -t iso9660 /home/tmp/RHEL5.1-Server-20070822.1-i386-disc1-ftp.iso /mnt/tmp/
mount: /home/tmp/RHEL5.1-Server-20070822.1-i386-disc1-ftp.iso is not a block device (maybe try `-o loop’?)

Grrr! Okay, there are two popular mistakes that it recognizes enough to give you an alternative but not enough to actually do it for you. And you do not actually have to specify the file system type because it magically auto-detects it. So why can’t it do some more auto-detection?

I have lived in Round Rock for more than 4 years now and am surprised by how many phone books that are delivered to me. Well, on Friday, another one has been delivered to me.

It is “The Greater Round Rock Phone Book”. I would have thought that this would be the only book that I would own. Remember the days when you had one or, at most, two phone books? Well, my total is now 8! What is sad is that I do all of my searches online since it is so difficult to look anything up in the phone book.

P.S.:
See that quaint old bridge with no saftey rail? Well, infront of that bridge is the rock that this town is named after. Yes. I live in a town named after a round rock.

I have lost count of the number of times that manufacturers stop producing my favorite products. I hate the churn of new products when it means the products that I rely on disappear. Sigh.

This is my last loaf of Jalapeno Cheese Bread by H-E-B. Fortunately, I found out about it a couple of weeks before they stopped making it and was able to stock some extra loaves in my freezer. The manager that I talked to told me that they tried ordering extra cases to no avail. They usually make only a couple of loaves at a time. Why can’t they continue this model of small loaf production?!

Oh well… It will be a challenge to reproduce it myself.

During my commute home, I experienced the worst driver that I have ever seen! I was on Parmer in the right lane approaching Lamar. The light just turned red. In my rear-view mirror, I see an SUV travelling in the emergency lane. I watch as this vehicle cuts in just behind me and then force its way across two other lanes of stopped cars into the left hand turn lane. Then while the light is still red, it goes straight through the intersection. I finally make my way on to the IH-35 onramp and notice the vehicle again. I watch as it turns into the right hand lane, and then go to the middle lane, and then back to the right hand lane, and then back to the offramp. I am finally approaching her in the right lane as the offramp begins to turn into the frontage road. I watch as she decides to cut in front of me just before the road disappears. This is when I take the picture and back off to give her some more room. As she approaches 1825, she swerves a couple of times like she is tempted to use the emergency lane. And just as it is possible to turn onto the offramp, she does (way before it is legal to do so). Thankfully, that is the last I see of her.

I wonder what the emergency was. I hope that is not how she normally drives in rush hour.

But that is not all! I see a WRX doing 90 mph and someone else cuts in front of me to avoid having to slow down in the lane that they were in.

Today I had two incidents where I lost computer data. The first time, my Linksys box lost all of its settings. I had to reconstruct that information. The second time, I lost my bookmarks when Windows XP crashed. This was most annoying!

I wish people would make the code more bullet-proof rather than adding new features…

Every Monday and Wednesday, I go to a chiropracter at 8:30 am. I usually arrive around 8:25, park my truck, and enter the building. This morning was different. The door was locked. They must be in a meeting that was running late. So, I decide to wait out side for them to unlock the door. While I was waiting, I notice that there are four other patients waiting outside as well. However, they are all sitting inside of their cars while they were waiting. Unfortunately, every engine was running.

The temperature was not oppresive so they did not need to run their air conditioners. Listening to the radio for a couple of minutes does not drain the battery. The problem was that there was no breeze. So, as I was waiting, I could hardly breathe. It was like standing at a major intersection at a red light. Why did everyone feel the need to waste gas while they wait???