RossHarmes.net

Some interesting things have been happening here this month. In reverse chronological order:

I’m going to be moving to San Francisco in the next few months. Sunnyvale is really convenient for commuting to work, but insanely boring in all other respects. I’ve decided that it’s time to take the plunge and dive head first into one of the most expensive rental markets in the country. If you don’t hear from me in a while, it’s because I’ve had to give up the internet and sell all of my computers in order make rent.

Tristan visited Sunnyvale last week for a little vacation. See his full account of the trip for more details and photos, including some shots of me next to a ridiculous red car. That last bit deserves a full explanation. Two weeks ago, I was driving up to Tahoe to ski the last day of the season. The friends I normally go skiing with were all out of town or busy, so I ended up driving up by myself. It’s a really easy drive, usually three hours without traffic. In order to get to the slopes right when they open (8:30-9:00am) I leave Sunnyvale at 5:00am. I wasn’t feeling great that morning, so I skipped the coffee; this turned out to be a serious mistake. A few hours later, at 7:30, I nod off for a few seconds; since the alignment in my car is a bit off, the car immediately pulls to the right, directly into the large, commercial F-250 flatbed next to me. The truck has no damage whatsoever, mostly because the bed is surrounded by large, cast iron tie-down hooks, spaced about eight inches apart. These hooks shredded the right side of my car like it was made of cheese, hitting every single important and expensive control element in the process: front door handle, rear door handle, front door lock, side-view mirror. I had a funny moment when I tried to open the rear door, only to have the handle come off in my hand; I stared at it for a while, not really that meant. At this point, I am fully awake. I finish the rest of the drive, have a nice day skiing, and drive back, stopping every hour to get coffee. I must have had at least three of the large Starbucks coffees (venti? grande?).

When I get home, I give Geico a call and make an appointment to bring my car in to the shop. Tristan flew in the day before I took it in. Since neither the front nor rear right side door opened at this point, every time we got in the car, he had to make a decision: sit in the back, behind me (which made conversation difficult at best), or climb in (and later out) through the window, Dukes of Hazzard style. He usually opted for the window for longer trips, and the back seat for shorter ones. At the body shop, they give me a choice of rental cars: a bright red Chevy HHR or a giant Silverado Extended Cab (for $5 a day more). I take the HHR, thinking to myself, “How bad can it be?”. This turns out to be the absolute worst car I’ve ever driven for any extended period of time. Let me list its myriad faults:

• It’s huge on the outside and tiny on the inside. Mike and Tristan couldn’t both be in the car at the same time without one being folded up into the back seat. The trunk area was barely big enough for a single suitcase.
• The controls are completely unintuitive. The window controls are hidden, the cruise control has twice as many buttons as needed, and the dash is littered with unlabeled buttons, most of which I still have no idea what they do.
• Gas mileage is horrendous.
• The handling is god awful. It oversteers like a maniac at high speeds, which makes a simple maneuver like taking an overpass from one interstate to another into a terrifying near-death experience. Tristan and I had a few close calls, where I would turn the wheel to follow the gently curving ramp, only to have the car continue in a straight line as if I had done nothing.

I have no idea why anyone would ever buy this car; there is no upside here. The fact that it was bright red didn’t help either. I can’t even describe the joy I felt when I drove my car out of the parking lot of the body shop on Friday. Despite it’s faults (poor alignment, failing power-steering, high-strung engine, temperamental clutch), it’s so much better to drive. There is something deeply unsatisfying about driving an automatic, even if it did have more power than my car.

A few weeks before this, I had a horrible series of flights to and from Austin. Without going into too much detail, every single flight I touched was late at least two hours, which means I spent most of a Thursday trapped in the Pheonix airport and all of the single-digit morning hours of Monday in Vegas, waiting in lines for hours to get a hotel room (in a smoke-filled casino called Arizona Charlies 45 minutes away in a very shady part of East Vegas) where I was only able to sleep four hours before turning around and waiting for another flight (which was also delayed two hours). The lobby of this hotel looked like it was populated solely with meth addicts and people actively in the process of collecting various hepatitis strains. I would say that I will never step on another US Airways flight, but it turns out that my flights to and from Europe at the end of this month are on US.

My “Interesting Links” sidebar has not been updating automatically this month. As such, I would like to call attention to some particularly good ones:

• 2008 Brewers Association World Beer Cup Winners: From Nick. Be sure to check out the winner of the gold medal in category 35, “American-Style Specialty Lager”.
• I am RICH and I want to spend it on YOU tonight: Hilarious craigslist posting: “I am so rich. Goodness, gracious. My, my, my. I am so, very, very wealthy. How many dollars do I have? That’s a question only my team of ten fat accountants can answer, because they have golden calculators which I bought for them with my money. And what is on those golden calculators? Numbers. And those numbers equal the dollars in my bank accounts, which are huge.”
• The Daily Show - Gaffe-In: “Barack Obama’s claims about western Pennsylvania, God and guns puts Hillary Clinton and FOX News into overdrive.” Unbelievably funny, I’ve watched this several times now.
• Interview with DMX: Skip to the middle; it seems that not only has DMX never heard of Barack Obama, but that he finds his name personally offensive. Seriously funny.