Since the last ‘personal’ entry I have is really back in the summer there’s a lot to fill in. First off, I got a new kitten on October 11th, 2006. I’ve named him Spot after the various spots of white fur that are in his coat. He’s a very good natured cat and gets along very well with Mocha.

I started letting him out on my balcony after a week or two, and not but about 3 weeks after I got him, he got stung by a wasp right above his left eye. He developed a little foam at the mouth and his eye was watering like mad, but after less than a minute the foam was gone and once I wiped out his eye he seemed fine. I took him to the vet anyway since he was so young and I was a little worried about long-term effects. The vet gave him a shot for the sting and a couple of his baby shots all at the same time. He’s doing great these days with absolutely no apparent ill effects.

I’ve had a birthday and we all celebrated Christmas, Thanksgiving, and a New Year since the last entry here. It was good all around. Erica bought me a bunch of DVDs to add to my collection and the family as a whole bought a new TV (very nice). Too bad I’m not around to use it.

I’ve been eying up the Nintendo Wii for some time, but I’m inclined to let it come down in price some first. That probably means a couple of years, so I may not hold off that long, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t going to happen in the very near future. It sounds more promising every day as I read reviews and see new games appear. Play over the Internet will be nice as games begin supporting it.

Speaking of game consoles, I’ve been using my Gamecube a lot lately playing the Splinter Cell series of games. I’ve played, and beaten, all four at this point (including all the co-op missions in the last two). I even went back in Splinter Cell: Double Agent and played it on Elite level (the highest, no ammo, insane AI, etc) all the way through with not too much in the way of difficulty. It turns out that my general strategy, and that of a coworker and friend David Smeeton, is to use the gun very little anyways, so not having it available wasn’t that big of a crutch. Now it’s time to find similar games in the Stealth Action genre.

It’s getting a little lonely around here since Jimbo and Colin both have moved on to greener pastures. Jimbo’s back in Chicago for a while with his parents and Colin is at Rockwell Collins in Iowa. We all still call or chat online a fair bit, but it’s not quite the same.

I’m working on some very cool stuff for TJOC this year. We are going to try to do the bulk of the Diagnostic O written test before camp starts this year by pushing the test out onto the web. I’m currently building all the infrastructure for that right now. It’s taking a while due to the fact that we have such a diverse set of question types. Once we get past the rush to use it for camp this year, we plan to add some tests to the pool for instructors or students to practice with. The plan also includes getting a few real study/training resources avilable on the TJOC website.

My car turned a year old about three weeks ago and I did my first real damage to it at about that point. It’s not really bad or even noticible if you don’t know what you are looking for, but I backed into a pole and scratched the bumper a little as well as indenting it ever so slightly in one spot. Like I said, not bad, but still rather annoying since I’ve really tried to be careful.

Well, I need to run for now. If anyone can think of some area I skipped (other than work for now) that you’d like to hear about or hear more on something I did hit on, just leave me a note here or drop me an email.

For those of you new to the discussion, I’ve been ‘looking’ for a new car for over a year, but only got serious about it (finding the money, etc) about Thanksgiving 2005. I settled on a 2006 Ford Fusion fairly early in the process. It’s a nice looking car and the price was really reasonable for the size of the car. After looking at the available options and upgrades I decided the basic package that I would like. I described those choices in some detail in a previous blog entry, but the basics are as follows: Blue exterior, Black interior (charcoal black), and ABS.

Little did I know that it was going to be such a pain to find a car that matched those specs. I’ve written in the past about the difficulties that I had early in the process finding a match, but the short of it is that ABS is a very rare option on the Fusions. So, I dropped ABS as a requirement and several Fusions showed up in the ‘area’ (where area is defined as about a 300 mile radius). There was one that was in Houston (or would be shortly at that point) that matched very well. It is the vehicle that at the time I last wrote I thought I would be buying. The car was due to hit Houston sometime during the week after Christmas, at which time it would be sent to Longview where I could pick it up.

I was a bit disappointed that I would be unable to drive myself to Houston, but if it only meant a few days delay in getting the car I could deal with it. Since I was in the Houston area (La Porte in actuality) during that time, I wanted to know the moment it got to Houston, so I could head back to Longview and be ready to take delivery of the car. This translated into me calling the dealer in Longview every day starting Monday the 26th. I kept telling him to keep me updated, but I was always the one that ended up doing the calling.

By Wednesday we were still being told that the car had not arrived in Houston. Dad had some work scheduled near Longview on Thursday, so we decided that would be a good time for someone to take me home. The work he had scheduled ended up being canceled, but we decided to continue with our plans so that I could be in the Longview area. When we got to Longview on Thursday I called in to see what the status was at that point (we had anticipated Thursday or Friday as the absolute latest the car would appear). The dealer here (in Longview) still had not been notified that the car was in Houston, but he had several calls in to the dealer in Houston to check on the status that he had not heard back on yet.

Friday, the 30th, I got a call from the dealer … and it was not a happy call. Apparently the Houston dealership sold the car to someone else before it even hit their lot. This was after they had been notified that the dealership here in Longview had a buyer (me!). Let’s just say that I wasn’t happy. So the dealer and I spoke for a few minutes about different options that were available and where I might compromise. He called me back a few minutes later and told me that there was a car in Louisiana somewhere that was black ext, black int, and NO options at all (We hadn’t seen a Fusion without the Sport Package yet). I agreed that it would work if he could get it, so he hung up and pursued that car with the hope that he could get back to me before the end of the day.

I didn’t hear back on Friday, which honestly didn’t surprise me too much. Nothing on Saturday or Sunday either. Come Monday I decided to check in again. This is a perfect example of what frustrated me the most during the whole process: when I called, I was told that he had been unable to secure the LA car, and had tried two others since … all without letting me know anything. Just tell me what is going on, please! He was still waiting on a call back from the last place he had tried (some dealer in Tulsa, OK) and promised that he would call as soon as he knew what was going to happen.

At about 4:30 PM Monday I called him back because I hadn’t heard from him yet and wanted to make sure I knew something before the end of the day. My typical opening statement of “It’s Chase. Talk to me.” generated a quick response. He told me that he had just finished working out a trade with them and that the car would be heading down first thing the next day (Tuesday). That made me smile. I told him to let me know as soon as he knew what time I could pick it up and sign all the paperwork.

I decided to take Tuesday (our first day back to work) off so that I could get Flo (my old van) ready for a trade-in and run a few other errands. I got a call Tuesday morning from Mike (the guy at the dealership) letting me know that it would be ready for me at 5:00 – 5:30. Oh ya! I knew at that point that the car was actually en route! I took care of my errands and took Flo down the the car wash place to vacuum out the carpet, etc. Unfortunately I ended up unable to completely avoid work for the day. I needed to stop by the office to pick up a few things, but before I could even get there I got a call from one of the other programmers. Cindy called to let me know about some email that had been flying back and forth that day (most of which I’d already seen) that probably needed my attention.

I got into the office, gathered up what I needed, then handled the email stuff … which turned out to be fairly important stuff related to web registration that was ongoing and my responsibility. While in the office I made use of the fact that I can call the Houston area for free from my desk because we have a campus in Houston that the calls can be routed through without paying long distance charges. I called dad to verify that the insurance company was aware of what was happening. That triggered another long process since apparently the way our car insurance had been set up for a number of years (but only a month ir so at this new company) was illegal. Apparently my van was never supposed to be on the family policy because the title was in my name. Similarly, the new car could not be on that policy for the same reasons, so we began getting a new policy set up.

When I was finally able to leave the office, I headed back to my apartment to gather up a couple of things, and to meet Jimbo who decided to tag along with me to the dealership. I called Mike at about 4:30 PM to verify that everything was still on schedule. He told me the car was indeed there and being cleaned up right then, so yes, things were still on time. So, as soon as Jimbo showed up we headed that direction.

The rest was fairly painless. I thought that they would take a look at Flo and then give me a trade-in value, but it turns out that he gave me the $500 that we discussed sight-unseen. However, when he did see Flo for the first time, that was classic … just ask Jimbo. I will not repeat verbatim what Mike said when he came back into the office, but it was really funny and boiled down to something like it only being worth $0.30 a pound (scrap prices). Signing the financing paperwork was less fun, but a neccesary step. I was mistaken in the methods available to make the down payment, so I had to get a cashiers check the following day (and that’s a whole different story), but they still let me drive off Tuesday night with the car.

Jimbo was kind of funny when we walked out to the car the first time. I unlocked the doors and then proceeded to put some stuff in the back seat, all the while Jimbo stood outside his door. I told him it was unlocked and that he could get in, but he responded by saying that he wanted me to be the first person to sit in it. :)

Let’s just say that I’ve put about 50 miles on it in the last 2 or 3 days. No more for now, I’m tired of typing.

Last time I wrote here I talked briefly about an application called NetworkManager. I finally got it installed and working properly on my laptop about a week ago. In all fairness, I didn’t really work too hard on it for a few weeks, so the apparent difficulty is overblown. Most of my problems came as a result of me already having applications, namely ifplugd, already running that were trying to handle my wired connection. Once I removed it from the default runlevel, things went pretty smooth. I thought I was having trouble with connecting to my wireless AP, but it turned out the be the APs problem (it needed to be reset). The NM guys are currently working on wpa_supplicant functionality, which should enable LEAP for me, but there is currently no support in NM for LEAP/EAP stuff. There is also support in place for Cisco VPN connections (via vpnc), but it is currently broken due to a ton of work being done in HEAD.

Now, the important announcement. Yes, I could have listed it higher, but I had to have some catch to get you to read the stuff above this, didn’t I? Some of you know by now that I am purchasing a new car. I know I’ve said that in the past, but now it is official. I am buying a 2006 Ford Fusion (V6 SE).

It has been a bit of an ordeal finding a Fusion in the U.S. that matched my specifications. I wanted:

• Exterior Color: Dark Blue Pearl Clearcoat
• Interior Color: Charcoal Black
• Cloth Interior
• Option: Anti-Lock Braking System

That’s all I wanted, one option and what seemed to me a fairly normal color selection. When we (the dealer and I) sat down on Friday to try and locate one for me, what we found absolutely astounded me: the nearest vehicle that matched was in Illinois, and it had the optional Sport Package ($395) on it as well. Apparently there are no Fusions without the Sport Package available. The dealer put in a call to that dealership to see if they still had the vehicle and were willing to trade for it. He didn’t expect a call back on Friday, so it basically boiled down to waiting until Monday.

Late Monday morning I called to check in and see what the status was on that vehicle. “No word yet, but I’ve left 4 messages.” A few hours later I got a call from him telling me that the one in Illinois was unavailable. So, plan B was a vehicle in Mississippi that had a black exterior, which I was willing to settle for (it does look slick). It turns out that it is unavailable as well, so it became time to rethink our approach to this. The nearest vehicle that matched my specs anywhere near close was far enough away that it would have cost over $1,000 (or so I’m told) to get it here.

So, there was a Fusion in Houston that had leather interior, which, I figured, if I’m going to spend money I might as well get an upgrade out of it. The shipping would have been less obviously, but the upgrade would have pretty much made it all a wash. The dealer here called the dealer in Houston and found out that the Fusion there was a demo and had been driven by the General Manager of that location for about 8,000 miles. That one is out of the picture …

Then, we realized that the reason we were having so much trouble finding matches was … the ABS option. When we removed the ABS as a requirement, several dozen Fusions showed up in a 300 mile radius. This left me with 3 or 4 that had the right color scheme, etc. So, it turns out that another Ford dealer in Houston (Mac Haik Ford) is due to receive a Fusion that matches pretty well on the 26th. It is set-up as follows:

• Exterior Color: Dark Blue Pearl Clearcoat
• Interior Color: Charcoal Black
• Cloth Interior
• Option: Sports Package
• Option: Safety and Security Package

The bad news is that I will not be able to take delivery of it until after Jan 1. Oh well, if that’s the worst, I’ll take it.