today is the first day of spring, which is naturally why the forecast is calling for 6-8 inches more snow.
sigh.
this sucks.
so i’ve been stalking teh intarwebs lately for cars. specifically: car. a 1973 Ford Mach 1 Mustang fastback, preferably with a 351-Windsor, preferably a manual transmission, preferably driveable, preferences in that order. i want to replace the mustang that burned, but if i got one in a better condition than the old one (and/or with a manual, which i prefer driving; dad’s was an automatic), that wouldn’t be too bad.
last week i had a decent lead on one down around st. louis, a project car that was startable but not drivable (at least, not until it got a thorough checking-over and possibly a new fuel tank), in good shape, for like three grand, but the ebay auction got pulled with like 12 hours to go, as the seller sold it locally. i was bummed, but, you know, them’s the breaks — besides, it had a 302 anyways. pfffft, weeaaaaaaak.
today i idly browsed back over to ebay and imagine my shock when i found one that was almost a replica of dad’s — 351-Cleveland instead of Windsor (2-barrel carb vs. 4, stock, but this one had been retrofitted with a 4-barrel), and with a rear spoiler, and inexplicably blue vinyl upholstery on the seats in an otherwise black interior, but otherwise, dad’s car, down to the exterior color and the decal Mach 1 details. 89,291 miles on the odometer (but since it couldn’t roll over to six-figures, the seller said “let’s call it 189,291″). not just running, not just in good shape — showable. not a collector’s car because of the modifications (the blue and silver scheme was also not original; it was originally green), but nonetheless, in great shape — even the underbody was basically rust-free. oh, it was beautiful. and the high bid was $8,000, with an hour and 45 minutes left on the clock.
enter: me.
i have a small stash of cash on hand, what i’ve been putting aside since paying off my credit cards. it’s mostly my tax refund, which went straight into savings. and my mastercard is more than happy to offer me 0% promo checks all the damn time — as a matter of fact, i just shredded the latest batch yesterday (i have opted out repeatedly; they don’t seem to have noticed). and i thought… i could totally buy that car.
so i examined the listing. i went over all the photos (did i mention how fantastic the underbody was??? they had photos of it up on the lift, and dude, my passat probably doesn’t look that rust-free.). i looked for gotchas. i thought up questions to ask the seller. i made sure the title was clear. i checked the driving distance between chicago and south carolina, where the car was, and priced amtrak tickets. i called d. and m. for advice. i reloaded the page obsessively. i decided what my maximum bid was — $10k. i thought that for The (replacement) Car, i was okay with taking on the credit card debt again.
i imagined the triumphant unveiling — i had it all planned out — i would drive to peoria, and stash it in the parking lot of the bar around the corner from my dad’s place, then go up there and get him to come out for “a beer,” and surprise him. i was completely and totally prepared to be The Best Daughter EVER. i pulled up quicken just to look, and ponder how a “1973 Ford Mach 1 Mustang” asset would look, listed up there next to “2001.5 Volkswagen Passat.”
and then, with 7 minutes left to go on the auction, and without having bid anything yet so as not to tip my hand, i realized that i really didn’t want to have credit card debt again. maybe if it had been a couple of grand, and i could have gotten it paid off in relatively short order… but even at a 0% APR, the thought of seven grand of credit card debt again… all those accounts that i have that are zeros now, i mean… i worked so hard, and seven thousand dollars is a lot of money. even for a car. even for a car i have wanted to drive since i was old enough to know what a car was. so it turns out that even though i was willing to pay ten grand, seven grand was too high a price.
in the end, it wasn’t a decision i had to make. bidding picked up the pace in the last few minutes, and — although i was just *waiting* for it to sell, in the end, for less than i was originally prepared to pay — it leapfrogged my would-be max bid, from $9200 to $12500 in one bid. the final selling price was $13,655, which is still a damn good price — for the condition in which it was described, $15-$17k wouldn’t necessarily be out of line.
i guess it was a valuable life lesson. i know now that when it comes down to it, although i might think i am cool with using my credit for the car, i am actually not. i don’t want to amass a big chunk of debt again. it’s a surprisingly bitter pill to swallow, for some reason. i’m a little sad i’m not sitting here gleefully contemplating my trip to south carolina right now, but … someday my savings will be able to afford me that car. and if it’s not exactly the right shade of blue with silver decals when i get it, why, then, i’ll just paint that sucker myself.
sometimes the circumstances of poor customer service can save you from yourself.
so i got my Digital TV converter box coupons in the mail yesterday — the two $40 coupons to use to buy a box to convert ATSC (digital over-the-air antenna) signals into NTSC (analogue ota signal, what all equipment used prior to this whole pesky digital revolution thingie). then i started googling looking for reviews and advice for using them with my tivos. i thought it would be as simple as using my tivos’ external IR blasters (faux remote controls; they let the tivo change the channel on the converter box, so the tivo can still change the channel on cable boxes and stuff without manual intervention, v. important for recording shows when you are not actually watching tv, which i am generally not doing while it records them). and then i checked the tivo community forums and discovered that tivo hasn’t even decided yet if they’re going to support the converter boxes — which is important, because tivo has to add support for the spectrum of digital channels (which have weird numbers, like 5.5 instead of 5), in addition to adding drivers to support using the IR blaster to understand which remote controls it’s supposed to be emulating per converter device. to boot, i could find precious few reviews at all for the converter boxes — in fact, only one, and that because it was the only one i could find on amazon.
well, fuck.
yes, this is very early on into the process, and no doubt things will become clearer later in the year, as we progress to the february 2009 deadline for conversion to ATSC. however, i do not want to spend 1000 hours tied up in quibbling over which gadget i want best. i pretty much just want to get it dealt with and move on with my life. so i thought about it, and thought about adding more boxes and more clutter, plus wires of IR blasters for two boxes, plus new HD antennas to replace my beloved rabbit ears, plus oy what a pain in my ass this is… and decided fuck it, i’m just going to buy a new tivo with an ATSC tuner.
now, i’m an existing tivo customer. i love my tivo. my tivos love me. i have two — i had one series2 DVR, which is about 5 years old or so. about 3 or 4 years ago it lost the ability to output sound: it would record just fine, but no sound ever comes out of the box. i was totally broke, but i found identical tivos at target for $99 and bought one, and i just use the second one for recording, then transfer the shows over the wireless to the first one when i want to watch them. it works out fine, for the most part. i pay $20/mo for the two service plans, which is not too bad, especially when you consider the fact that tivo is the thing that makes tv worth watching. (I LOVE TIVO! TIVO RULES, VCRS DROOL!) so anyways, i decided that since i cannot possibly be the only tivo customer in this situation i should call them up and see if they have any special retention or other offers for existing customers to buy new ATSC equipment.
my first call got disconnected when the customer service agent was mid-sentence. (probably not her fault, the line just went dead and about 20 seconds later it started beeping the beep of disconnecty death.) my second call got me to Regina, the Agent of Cluelessness. i explained that i was an existing customer, i wanted to replace my two series2 tivos with a single new dual-tuner ATSC-capable box (in fact, after browsing the boxes on the tivo web site, i had my eye on a TiVO HD DVR already), and what could she do for me?
she explained that there was in fact nothing she could do for me. she said there were no dual-tuner over-the-air capable boxes. i brought up the HD DVR and she said it could only do cable. ohhhh-kaay then. so i said, okay, well, i’ll just order from the web site then, thanks. i went back to the web site and dropped a TiVO HD DVR into my shopping cart, and was then confronted by its request that i choose a service plan, all of which were discounted because i have a multiple-tivo discount. but then, if i bought it with a multiple-tivo discount, and got rid of the other tivos, what would happen to the cost? i decided to call back. i got regina again, who obviously didn’t recognize me (how many ATSC dual-tuner-wanting existing customers wanting to upgrade do you get in a 20-minute time span, Regina?), and she said that in order to deal with the service plan issue, i should go to a store, because tivo only sells direct with service plans bundled, but if i get a tivo at a store i have to activate it separately, and i can deal with the two-into-one issue then. well okay then! if you guys don’t want to sell me a tivo, i can take a hint…
so i started googling around and found the HD DVR at amazon for $250, $50 off tivo.com’s price anyways. woo! and it was amazon prime, so free two day shipping, yay for me. i placed my order, threw in a shiny new HD antenna (bye bye rabbit ears, i’ll miss you. i probably won’t miss your shitty CBS2 reception with the vertical roll, though.), and a copy of the Twin Peaks DVD box set just to celebrate. (hey, i hadn’t spent any of my $2700 tax refund, cut me a break. i can have a $72 DVD set if i want!) i went to bed with the order in pre-processing, satisfied that by friday all this digital conversion bullshit could pretty much idly pass me by.
so after a couple hours’ drama yesterday, this morning i get up at oh-god-thirty in the morning, and check my rss reader, and what is today’s woot? a (refurbished) TiVO HD DVR, for $179 (plus five bucks for shipping)! i shit you not. i clicked “i want one!” and ordered, planning to cancel the amazon order. well, i checked on it and it’s pre-shipping so they won’t let me cancel it; i’ll have to do a return. so at the moment i’ve spent (on visa) $435 on my shiny new tivo, but at least $250 will be refunded probably next week, if i turn the amazon one around promptly. the woot tivo will ship in 5 days, with probably another couple days to arrive — my amazon tivo is supposed to arrive on friday — but, srsly. $185 instead $300?
go, go gadget coincidence!
The weather was in the 50s today, for a change, and so it lured us out to Brookfield Zoo for the day.
seriously. i don’t think i can take any more snow. we’re like 20 inches over our average annual snowfall already…and…
Tonight
Snow developing during the evening. Snow accumulation of 2 to 4 inches. Lows in the mid 20s…then temperatures slowly rising overnight. South winds 10 to 15 mph. Chance of precipitation 90 percent.
let’s hear it for the unsung 10% chance of NO precipitation! C’MOOOONNNN, TEN PERCENT!!!!!
