It's a Trap!

Okay, let’s not get into this “Oh no! California’s taken control of Cori!!” bullshit … however yesterday, at my yoga class, I began to really see some of the benefits with living here in southern California. I think it was whilst transitioning from “cobra” to “downward staring dog” for the fifth or sixth time that my spiritual and emotional energy forces teamed up and pulverized my common sense into submission. I guess it’s time for me to get to work on selling my house in Colorado – which, in today’s market, I’ll be lucky to break-even with – purchasing one of these apartments or townhomes (real houses are far too expensive) here in Cali – for the low low rate of “way too much” per month – loading up my truck and moving to Beverly … Hills, that is…

Of course this will quickly be followed by my waking up – all covered in sweat and screaming! Although at one time (high school…) I believed that California was the “place to be”, I have since realized that the propaganda shoveled into our brains via the multitude of mass media outlets available today is composed primarily of crap. Hold on … let me rephrase that a bit… For me, most of this popular hoopla is crap. That’s just me… I’ve got this bad habit (I guess the “badness” of it is open for debate) of automatically avoiding things (experiences, items, TV shows, music … your basic “things”) with direct proportion to their popularity. Following the latest fad just seems like such a waste of time to me – heck, if I’m not careful I might need to blog about it and who knows how much time I’d be wasting with that…

Funny thing is … my social calendar – for the next few weeks at least – has become rather full and I’m not exactly sure why this is. Yesterday, as I mentioned, I actually did attend a yoga class. A yoga class! Me! Now how weird is that?! Granted I won’t be attending any more … it was pretty much what I thought it would be … however yesterday I went. For full disclosure, it was actually a teaser class that Naoko – our HR executive extraordinaire – was able to set up at the request of Roberto (who, by the way, didn’t even go…) for the employees of AltaSens. This, of course, meant that it was free…

Tonight I will be heading down to Beverly Hills with Nini to attend what is being billed as “Lewis Black in conversation with Joel Stein” at the Writers Guild Theater. I’m not sure what to expect at this event – it was listed as a stop on Lewis’ publicity appearances for his Me of Little Faith book release – however I should at least be able to pick up a copy of the book and even get it signed by Lewis. Whatever else happens will just be a bonus…

Eddie Money is playing a concert Saturday at Constitution Park in Camarillo. It’s free (I think they expect a “donation” but that’s cool…) and, since I currently live in Camarillo, very convenient. I’m pretty sure that Nini and I will be making an appearance there – I saw Eddie Money years ago when he was opening for Journey in Detroit – a little classic 80’s rock could be interesting…

On Sunday we’re heading over to Hollywood to attend a couple tapings of The Gong Show hosted by Dave Attell. Since Dave is a MySpace “friend” of mine, I saw his bulletin posting on free tickets to The Gong Show tapings and – being that Hollywood’s not very far from where I am currently living – I jumped at the chance. I got tickets to both tapings on Sunday…

And to wrap up this latest flurry of activity, the big “Vegas / Colorado / possibly more Vegas” trip begins in just over a week. We’re currently booked for three nights at Paris and have reservations for Cirque du Soleil’s Mystère next Sunday. After that we will be heading back to Colorado so I can renew the registration on Precious, head to the doctor for a physical and enjoy a little quality time at my actual home – somewhere around four to five days… Then we retrace our path on the road trip back to California with another possible (completely unplanned as of yet) stint in Vegas. Should be an interesting trip – a lot of miles for Precious but that’s what cars are for, right? … driving…

Now you may have noticed something rather interesting in all of those plans – I’ve lately been replacing my formerly numerous I’s with we’s. I suppose that’s the reason behind my much more eventful social calendar – I now have somebody to do stuff with. In the past I’ve complained time and time again about the difficulty in finding things to do alone – heck, I’m pretty sure it’s the key topic on several of my previous blog postings – and finally finding someone that is willing to put up with my strange idiosyncrasies long enough to actually spend time with me has definitely expanded my options when it comes to free time. Not to mention that Nini’s always a pleasure to hang out with (which, by the way, is a good thing since she has officially been living with me since June 1st…) and life for me is looking pretty good…

So I’m beginning to wonder – perhaps my distaste for all things California is a bit unfounded. Maybe this thin slice of land just prior to the Pacific is the Promised Land so seemingly believed by a rather large multitude. Perhaps the pluses actually do outnumber the minuses in this state…

Oh Hell no! I’m not falling for that trap! I’ll do my time here for as long as need be; but damn it, I’m a Coloradoan! It’s only a matter of time before I return home … with Nini by my side…

bis später,

Coriolis

The High Cost of Materialism

As some of you are already aware, I am the proud owner of a “Last of the Breed”, 2002 Pontiac Trans-Am Firehawk. A bright red one! Not only do I own this vehicle (I’ve named her Precious although I must admit that it’s not a very good name…) but I have recently come to the rather unexpected decision of actually driving her not too long ago. And by that I mean driving her as my daily vehicle whilst living here in southern California. As some of you may have already read (back in my Vegas, Baby… post), I drove Precious back to California after my latest trip home.

Okay, so what? I’ve decided to drive a car that I bought a bit over five years ago – what’s the big deal…? I’ll tell you what the big deal is – this car is my baby! I purchased her back in April of ’03 brand spanking new. As a matter of fact, I still don’t completely own her as I still owe a bit over a grand on my loan. So basically I guess I will soon actually own her; but that’s just semantics. I adopted her (and yes, I have the birth certificate to prove it) with the intention of taking very good care of her. I’ve always been a fan of the F-body line of cars (GM’s Camaro/Firebird line) and Precious is actually the 3rd F-body that I’ve owned. (A rather in-depth history of my vehicle ownership is available on a much earlier post, A Man and His Cars.) Being that she is one of the rare Firehawk editions (approximately 1500 Firehawks where created by SLP in 2002 – at least twice the number than any previous years…), I’m hoping to keep her as close to pristine as I can … hoping…

Lately, however, I’m beginning to wonder how anybody can keep a car pristine and actually drive it. Heck, I’ll go as far as to say it just can’t be done. Don’t get me wrong – I am planning on taking the best possible care of Precious that I can; unfortunately a few issues have already arisen that have caused me to worry quite a bit. The first problem popped up just after taking Precious in for an oil change. I decided to take her to Bunnin Buick Pontiac GMC Cadillac in Oxnard, CA. I’ve always taken this vehicle to a dealer for any service (every time before Bunnin was to Fisher Chevrolet & Honda in Boulder, CO) to guarantee authentic GM parts would be used as well as to keep the audit-trail on service records clean. It’s also the only place that I have been able to find that would use Mobil 1 and I’m a bit (perhaps misguidedly…) picky when it comes to the oil I put in my vehicle. And, since it states “Mobil 1 factory fill” on my engine oil cap (granted this was not the original oil cap but a replacement for a ’95 Vette – if memory serves me correctly – that I ordered from GM online) I always use Mobil 1.

Now my insistence on Mobil 1 synthetic ends up costing a bit more. Back in ’03 I was paying somewhere around $50 for an oil change and tire rotation. I believe the last visit to Fisher (must have been last October prior to my initial flight to California) cost me somewhere around $70 … inflation, I guess… Bunnin, however, set a new record – $117 and change! For an oil change, mind you!! Oh well, whatever … I’m willing to pay what I need to pay for Precious; and at those prices I would expect nothing less than high quality service. Funny thing is that I noticed a rather interesting new sound from Precious after leaving Bunnin – it was this rather faint yet very noticeable thumping that increased and decreased with respect to the car’s velocity. Like an idiot, I decided to ignore it…

It was somewhere around 2 ½ weeks later that I finally came to the realization that ignoring this new sound was not a good choice. The sound got progressively louder with time and I decided to call back Bunnin and inquire about it. One of the features on my Firehawk that distinguishes it from the standard Trans-Am is its rear differential. SLP replaced the standard Trans-Am differential with a high-torque, performance model from Auburn Gear. What this does is, “enhance traction and help reduce differential operating temperatures under certain driving conditions by detecting variance in the gripping force of each rear tire and redistributing the engine load as road conditions change, thereby enhancing vehicle performance and stability.” What it also does is drastically change the standard service schedule and routine on the Auburn diff as opposed to the standard diff – one major difference being the required lubrication. I called Bunnin to inquire whether they may have changed the differential fluid without informing me (I really doubted it, but with a $117 oil change, you never know…) and possibly used a synthetic differential fluid. They claim that they didn’t and I do actually believe them about this…

Of course the reason I asked about the differential was because I had a pretty good hunch that the noise I was now hearing quite loudly and clearly was coming from the differential. I was instructed to head back to Bunnin and take one of the service techs out for a ride for their expert opinion. I did this. It was a very short ride. The service tech instantly knew the problem – the noise was coming from the front bearing on my differential. He asked me how many miles I had on the car (a bit over 14,500 at the time) and seemed to be shocked that the front bearing was going with such low mileage. We set up an appointment a couple days later for the differential to be inspected and repaired. I asked the technician for a ballpark figure at what this would be coasting me and was told $1400-$1500 worst-case. I never showed up for that appointment.

The thing is, I have absolutely no evidence of foul-play at that dealer; however, the differential was making absolutely no inappropriate noise prior to taking Precious for her very expensive oil change. I spoke with Todd (who, by the way, has worked at several dealerships) about this little incident and he suggested that my car might have been taken for a joyride by someone at the dealer. How this would mess up my differential is still a question; however I guess anything’s possible when a car is driven by someone with no concern for its well-being… As I said though, I have no proof whatsoever – just circumstantial evidence of something gone wrong.

Heck, it might have been the initial differential work I had done at Fisher in Boulder. I know for a fact that, at 6,000 miles – the first scheduled maintenance on the Auburn diff – synthetic differential fluid was used. This was done even after I took the initiative of showing the guy that wrote up my work ticket what was written in the Firehawk addendum to the owner’s manual about the correct fluid to use (GM part # and everything) and how it states NOT to use synthetic on the differential. Luckily for me, the work receipt I received when picking up my car clearly stated “Synthetic Differential Fluid” which I quickly showed to the tech I was speaking with earlier. He tried to claim that the synthetic was standard for my vehicle and I needed to remind him that my vehicle isn’t standard for my vehicle. After once again showing him the clearly written instructions in the Firehawk addendum, he gave in and told me that they would re-do the flush with the correct fluid. Something now tells me that they might not have…

Whatever the case, I wasn’t very impressed with Bunnin’s service department (for more reasons than the possible foul-play on my vehicle) and decided to go elsewhere to get this differential issue fixed. I figured the best solution would be to find a dealer (yeah, I know … but it’s Precious…) nearby that both sold and serviced Corvettes. After all, the Firehawk is pretty much the closest thing you’re going to find to basically a Corvette disguised as an F-body. I then gave Courtesy Chevrolet (in Thousand Oaks) a call. They sold and serviced Corvettes regularly. Not only that, but after explaining my situation, they were able to squeeze me in the next day at 7:00 in the morning. As I said, I never showed up for my appointment at Bunnin…

The next morning I dropped Precious off at Courtesy Chevrolet, explained the differential problem and ordered a new set of tires. My original Firestone Firehawk tires were in pretty bad shape (not to mention the left rear tire had a nail in it) and, as it always is with these cars, needed to be replaced much earlier than most people are used to. Heck, 14.5k miles isn’t bad when you consider my Z-28 needed new shoes at slightly over 12k… It was decided that I would get a set of Goodyear Eagle F1 GS tires for the low-low cost of somewhere around $1600 (yeah, I know, dealership prices…) as well as the required differential work. This was turning out to be rather expensive…

Upon reaching work (I was able to get a ride with Naoko – our outstanding HR rep at AltaSens) I decided to do a bit of research into the new tires that I had ordered. I discovered, quickly enough, that I really didn’t want the Eagle F1 GS tires. Although these are actually original equipment tires on Corvettes and Mustangs, I found nothing but bad reviews for them on the web. They are apparently rather loud, decent performance tires that wear very poorly. The tires that I actually wanted were the Eagle F1 GS-D3’s. It’s amazing how much of a difference that little added “D3” has on the quality of the tire – they’re both from Goodyear however they appear to be anything but related to each other where customer reviews are concerned. As opposed to the standard GS’s, I wasn’t able to find any bad reviews on the GS-D3’s. Unfortunately, upon checking my service order from Courtesy, it appeared that I had ordered the standard GS tires. I quickly called Bryon (my service consultant), verified that the standard GS tires where ordered and changed the order to the GS-D3’s. It was going to cost something like $100 more but I’ve got my standards…

A few hours later I received a call from Bryon to inform me that it was, in fact, the front bearing on my differential making the noise. I was told that the bearing was basically pulverized and in desperate need of replacement. He said that the gears in the diff were still fine and, after cleaning out the metal shreddings, the differential could be saved. All this for a mere $1200… I really had no choice, so I asked him to take the new set of tires that I was also purchasing into consideration and see if he could maybe make a bit of a deal on the costs for this repair. It ended up coming to a little over $2400 for everything. Not cheap, but actually a good deal less than the estimates (they ended up taking somewhere between $400 and $500 off the price of the tires…).

So everything was looking positive. I was out quite a bit of money that was completely unplanned; but Precious was once again back to pristine (well, as close to pristine as could be expected) condition. She had a new set of shoes (very nice tires, by the way), the differential problem was resolved and I was able to park her in the garage where I was living. This lasted all of one evening as I noticed something very disturbing the next morning – a crack on the passenger-side door panel. I hadn’t seen it there before (at least I didn’t remember seeing it before) and it appeared to be fresh. I didn’t know it at the time, but this is actually a rather well-known problem with the late model F-body’s. I found out about this after taking the car back to Courtesy Chevrolet and basically accusing them of cracking my door panel. They didn’t, of course, but I was completely unaware of the “door-panel cracking” pandemic associated with these vehicles. A few days later, Bryon left me a voice message explaining how this was a known issue that he was able to verify on the web. Sure enough, it was…

There’s even a rather detailed, completely unofficial, step by step repair for this problem that can be found on the High Performance Pontiac website. It’s my opinion that General Motors should bite the bullet on this – issue a recall and fix these door panels; however, since this is happening on vehicles that are no longer in production, I’m doubting that will ever happen. As for me, I ended up doing the repair myself (a bit late on the passenger side) in an effort to minimize the damage. It only took a bit over four hours for both doors (and believe me, I’m not what one would refer to as a “grease monkey”…) but I am hoping that this will avoid any further cracking. (Oh, and a bit of a side note here: If you decide to do this repair to your late model F-Body, you might want to consider leaving the staple nearest the back untouched. I replaced it with the screw / nut combo and noticed that the spacing between the weather stripping on both sides of my window now seems a bit excessive. I don’t think that this is going to be an issue, but for pure aesthetics, it looks a bit strange if you see the door open with the window down…)

Another issue that began the weekend after getting the differential fixed is that, for a couple weeks so far, I haven’t been able to park in the garage. This is because Chris needed to do some work on his boat and has therefore parked it in the garage. The result of this is that he and I both need to park our vehicles on the street for a while. I’m not happy about this. The main reason is that I was under the impression that, if I chose to drive the Firehawk out to California, I would be able to park it in the garage. It seems to me that I had made it very clear that I did not want to drive Precious out here unless I was able to park her in the garage. I was completely willing and able to drive back Betsy, my ’92 Lumina, should I not have a garage to use; however I was assured that this wouldn’t be the case. Here I am now parking Precious on the street…

And it’s not so much the dirty sprinkler water that gets sprayed on her night after night leaving water spots that appear to have the staying power of acrylic paint; nor is it the fact that I’m parking my car out in public where anything “could” happen to it (accidents do happen – sometimes even maliciously…). No, to be honest, the thing that upsets me the most about this is the fact that I was assured that I would be able to park in the garage by someone that I was considering a friend. I do realize that it is Chris’ house and he can do whatever he wants as long as nothing to the contrary was written up in the rental paperwork that I signed; however I guess I was mistaken in thinking that I could perhaps count on my landlord as a friend. Oh well, whatever … I’ll park my car on the street…

Oh … and get this … somehow three of my chrome tire-valve covers magically turned into standard plastic covers. I noticed this while walking back to the car after eating dinner a few nights ago with my girlfriend. I was pointing out the missing lug-nut cap (one of the black, plastic lug-nut caps has been missing for a couple years now on the right front tire) when I noticed that the chrome tire-valve cap was a standard plastic cap. Strangely enough, this was the case on every tire except for the driver’s side rear tire – it still had the original chrome valve cap. I mean, come on people, what the hell….? It’s pretty obvious that this was done when they replaced the tires; however I can’t prove anything. It’s been a couple weeks already although I doubt anybody stealing my chrome valve caps would bother to replace them with plastic caps … and why only three…? Oh well, I’ve ordered a set of lug-nuts with the black, plastic caps to finally replace the missing cap (SLP only sells sets…) and a set of, get this, “lockable” chrome tire-valve caps from this place called Avani. Have I mentioned that keeping a car pristine seems like an impossibility?

bis später,

Coriolis

Don't Sweat the Stuff (regardless of size...)

“Life is what you make it.” As anybody who’s been reading my blog is already aware, this is basically the mantra that I have chosen to live by. I recently got a request from an old friend to further explain this ideology and am now caught in a bit of a conundrum. The problem (well, not actually a “problem” … more of a “concern”) is that I honestly feel that I cannot logically explain this reasoning – I can only tell stories… It’s within the details of these stories that this viewpoint should become evident…

However – since the request was made – I’m going to do my best to explain my reasoning. First, and foremost, I just want to clarify that I am not trying to tell anybody how they should be living their life. I am not, in any way whatsoever, qualified to be telling others what to do (hell, I’m hardly qualified to be telling myself what to do…) so, if you mistakenly take this post for my insisting that I am right and everyone should be thinking like me, then you’ve missed the point. I was asked to elaborate and elaborate I shall…

For me, the realization came when I got the opportunity to spend nine months working a contract job in Germany. I call it an “opportunity” now; at the time I wasn’t so sure. I had been rather recently put into a position where I was one of the far-too-many people in this country that are forced to take on the somewhat odious appellative – unemployed… And being “Coriolis the Unemployed” was most definitely something that I could NOT be doing for long. Like most working-class Americans, I had bills to pay. I most definitely needed to find a way to get some income!

Now the reason for my jaunt back to the world of the unemployed was no fault of my own. The company I was working for (Flextronics Semiconductor) got sold which basically meant that the entity that had been providing my much needed income ceased to exist. Sure, as is usually the case with these corporate shenanigans (Can I call the sale of an un-needed subsidiary a “shenanigan”? Sure … why not…?) I had the fortuity to basically re-interview with the purchasing company in an attempt to keep my job. There were some other negatives associated with this (apart from having to re-interview for a job I had been doing for the last five years) and I think I covered all this in a much earlier posting; however I basically chose not to attempt to keep the job. I was really getting sick of living my life as nothing more than a number to be bought and sold by the whims of some rich dudes that didn’t have any concern for “my” well being whatsoever…

So I guess my mindset began changing then, really. Up to this point in my life I had always just done what I believed was expected of me – which basically consisted of becoming yet another cog in the capitalistic machine that America runs on. I wasn’t really living my life so much as letting my life control me. Sure, I was actually making decisions that had effects on my life (this is unavoidable); however all of my actions were basically decided for me by my attempt at living the life I felt I was “supposed” to. For me, this insanity was about to change…

After deciding that I wasn’t really enjoying my job enough to justify re-interviewing for it and choosing rather to be unemployed – putting me in the position of needing to get money somewhere – the job in Germany popped up as a possible solution to my monetary woes. But it was a job in Germany … I didn’t speak German and, with my wonderful American public school education, had absolutely no knowledge of what would be required (both legally and personally) to work independently in Germany … could I even consider this? Fortunately, I didn’t need to “consider” it – due to my quickly dwindling monetary resources, the “consideration” was revoked – I had no choice. With slightly more than two weeks to prepare, I was off to live in Germany (on my own, mind you…) for a bit…

Now how all this relates to the “life is what you make it” mantra is buried in the details. The bottom line is that everything ended up just fine. I was basically forced to do something that intimidated me (Who am I kidding? It scared the shit out of me…) but I was able to pull it off. And not only did I pull it off, but the final result is that my life (personally and monetarily) is the best it has ever been! This kind of got me to wondering … perhaps I should take these risks more often…? Perhaps taking these risks is me “creating” my life? Perhaps the “stuck in a rut”, “doing what’s expected” life I had been living until then wasn’t really “living” at all? Perhaps choosing to become that cog is tantamount to death…

I have since then had some very interesting situations arise. I was – upon returning from Germany – once again unemployed; however it never really bothered me. I knew that I would find something somewhere … in time. Heck, maybe I’d head back to Europe and find another contract job … maybe somewhere else – Asia, perhaps? Maybe I’d be able to get a job in Colorado and actually have an opportunity to live in the house I’m currently paying for…? Maybe I’d get that chance to throw away the engineering world for good and become the professional poker player that I long so much to be? I was thinking, “anything but California…”

And here I am now … in California… I’ve got the best paying job I’ve ever had, I’ve once again got medical – and dental – insurance (been a while since I’ve had those…) and I’ve finally met a woman that loves me for who I am. I think I’m doing a decent job “making my life” so far…

bis später,

Coriolis