The End of a New Beginning

Well fuck me … that was quick.  Drove the 348 miles from Santa Monica to Fremont a couple days ago.  Was planning on making my new home up in the Silicon Valley – somewhere not too far from the job that I got in Santa Clara.  I had my concerns – mainly about the cost of living and the fact that I needed to somehow find an apartment after not having any provable steady income for the last damn near five years – but I was determined.  Sure, I let myself get low-balled on the salary aspect for this new job (side note here:  NEVER, EVER discount your self-worth … NEVER!) and I knew this was going to make things, in general, a bit more difficult.  Just how much more didn’t really sink in until I began my stay at the “extended stay” hotel where I am currently sitting and writing up this blog post.  You need to be getting paid very well around here if you ever want to feel any sense of security.  I so desperately miss the sense of security that I once had…

Showed up yesterday to my new job.  Arrived at the building at 10:21am – the recruiter that I was working with to land this job had informed me earlier that I was “scheduled” to begin work at 10:30am.  Nobody was there to meet me.  The glass doors to the office were locked and the reception area was completely empty as far as any human lifeforms were concerned.  There was a note taped to one door instructing somebody (I forget the name, but it wasn’t me…) to ring the doorbell if their card didn’t work so that someone could come let them in.  Sure enough, I discovered what appeared to be a doorbell just above one of those magnetic card readers over to the right of these main doors.  I rang it.

Not too long after, some guy showed up in the reception area.  He looked at me standing there with an expression that demonstrated he was most definitely not expecting to have been seeing me.  He did, however, open the doors and I introduced myself and said that I was scheduled to be beginning work there today (well, yesterday, but you get the gist…).  I mentioned the name of the recruiter that told me to be there and was instructed to have a seat whilst he attempted to call her.  Don’t think he ever spoke with anyone on the phone – if memory serves me correctly … I was in a bit of a state of bewilderment at what was happening and hadn’t really had any decent sleep for the last couple of nights prior to this – however he then escorted me into the main office area and asked me what kind of work I did.  Told him I was there to do Digital Place and Route, Physical Design work and I believe I mentioned the names of the engineers that I interviewed with – well, an engineer and a VP of Engineering that I interviewed with.  Figured this would help as this guy was also claiming to be a VP of Engineering – not the same one I interviewed with, however.  He then began leading me toward the cube-farm area of the physical design engineers and told me to take a seat in any cube.  He would try to get ahold of the recruiter I mentioned and send her over.

So, here’s where I really started questioning exactly what I’ve gone and gotten myself into.  We walked through the office – aisle after aisle and row after row of empty cubicles containing a vast assortment of random shelving structural pieces, “parts” of computers (mainly monitors, cables and keyboards that all appeared to not have been used in years) and extremely worn office furniture – leather on chairs that, for large swaths, was no longer leather.  I walked through this junk yard and settled down on one of the better-looking chairs in one of the many, many available empty cubicles.  It was then that this other VP of Engineering gave me the general direction to where I could find coffee or tea while I waited and pretty much disappeared.  I found my way to the break room, got myself some tea (would have been coffee, but none was made and I wasn’t about to be so presumptuous as to brew an entire urn of coffee just for me…) and headed back to the cube I claimed to wait.  Wasn’t sure exactly what I was waiting for, but my selection of “things to do” seemed to be limited to one – wait…

There was a guy sitting in the cube across from the one I selected.  He appeared to be busy with something on his laptop computer.  He was obviously not the least bit interested in why I was there and did a great job of just ignoring me completely.  Not sure what he was doing – none of my business, I suppose – although I decided to do the “neighborly thing” and introduce myself.  I got his name.  Don’t remember what it was.  It was, as they almost always are in my industry, very very Indian in nature – not that there’s anything wrong with that; I just have a lot of difficulty remembering names in general … Indian names, no chance.  Found out that he, too, was there to do Digital PnR work and that was that.  He went back to what he was doing on his laptop and we never spoke again.  I went back to my doing nothing but waiting … slowly growing more and more concerned about the situation…

I believe I spent approximately a half hour sitting there sipping on my tea, waiting for what’s to come next and sending out an update to my friends on Facebook as sort of a desperate cry for help before I overheard my name being mentioned in a conversation occurring a few cube rows away.  I decided to head in that direction to see if maybe somebody involved in it might have a clue as to why I was there.  The recruiter I was expecting to meet was part of this conversation as well as a couple other guys.  One presented me with a laptop and we all headed back to the cube I was now living in.  They asked me if I had been able to access my work email account and I informed them that I had.  They then dropped a couple IP addresses which I took note of (having absolutely no idea why I was being told these) and mentioned something about sending an email to a specific address that I also took note of.  It was all very cryptic and absolutely nothing was making any sense to me.  What were they expecting me to do?  I wasn’t given any direction whatsoever.  I was then asked if I had read “the” email.  What email?  The only email I had received prior to starting work was informing me of my work email account.  I received no email at my new account as of then.

This was going nowhere.  Figured the best thing I could do at this point was to switch on the laptop they gave me (a piece of shit 2012 model with a Windows 7 and an Intel CORE i5 sticker on the palm rest) and basically show them the email I received.  This I did.  Apparently “the” email was never sent.  Hell, I still do not know what “the” email was … perhaps I read it later that day – I really don’t know.  It was then that one of the guys (the engineer I had interviewed with about a week earlier) mentioned something about me setting up my VNC and reading emails to get up to speed on where the project was and they all left.  Okay … what now…?

Figured I might as well begin by configuring this laptop to my likings.  Creating bookmarks for my work email account, maybe doing some interface customization … you know, the standard shit you do when you receive a new computer.  I started doing that.  That’s when I discovered just how out-of-date this machine actually was.  It was originally running Windows 7 as clearly shown by the sticker on the palm rest, however it had been upgraded to Windows 10 at some point.  It was actually in mid-update mode as the “Shut down” and “Restart” selections had the familiar “Update and” text appended to both.  (Oh yeah, and as a side note, I mentioned to the guy that appeared to be the IT-guy that I was trying to update this machine and got the gut-wrenching response about him basically not liking updates.  It always bothers me when IT departments ignore updates to computer equipment … just seems lazy.  These updates are usually released for valid reasons.  Granted they sometimes cause issues to current procedures in IT, however that doesn’t mean they should just be ignored.  But I digress…)  I selected the “Update and Restart” followed by checking for the existence of any more updates to the operating system (it was now fully updated) and then ran DELL’s “Support Assist” tool to see if I could fix the driver issue that was being reported and discovered that this machine was actually two firmware versions behind in its BIOS.

I was able to flash one update to the firmware successfully although the driver issue was not resolved.  Couldn’t update the BIOS to the later firmware version, though.  Something about the computer not having the correct specs – whatever, I left it where it was.  I do believe that this was exactly why the machine was reporting the driver issue but didn’t want to waste too much time on my first day at the new job basically doing what should have been done by their IT department years ago.  No, I needed to start figuring out how to do some real work.  Nobody seemed to want to tell me anything, though.  I did receive a few emails related to PuTTY and VNC settings which were not much help other than giving me an initial password and saying I needed to change it.  I did accomplish this and figured out how to login to a server (exactly what server it was is anyone’s guess) and start a VNC session that I was able to view on my laptop.  Yippee … who cares?  Nobody was giving me anything to do…

That was basically the way my entire day went.  I was giving myself bullshit, busy-work tasks to complete to be prepared for when I might need to actual do such tasks and basically trying to make heads or tails out of the several group emails that I obtained access to at some point in the day.  In time, it became clear to me what this project actually was.  It’s an older project that they’re trying to resurrect.  That’s never good.  Projects die for a reason – often times several reasons.  Why did this project die?  Why are they trying to restart it?  Why does this office look like a freaking junk yard?  Why did they give me a six-year-old computer to use?  Why didn’t they even supply me with a mouse?  Why, on Earth, are they using Office 365 through web browsers rather than installing the “Office apps” on the laptops like all other professional businesses do?  What the hell is going on here?!?!?

The final straw came for me when I decided to ask the engineer I interviewed with where I might be able to get a mouse to use.  His response was to basically look for one in all the junk lying around and started going through random drawers in various cubicles looking for a mouse that might be there.  Seriously???  This is a professional business???  I think not.  He then mentioned that I could ask that IT guy and we both headed over to do this.  His response, after looking through the junk on his desk and not finding one – he could put a req. in for a mouse although all purchase requests needed to be okayed and signed off for by this company’s CEO.  Holy fucking shit!  Really?!?  The CEO needs to sign-off on the purchase of a mouse for an engineer?  This company IS screwed.  That’s when I quit.

No … they weren’t paying me nearly enough to get on that sinking ship.  Pathetically enough, I now get to fall back to my original, pre-Santa Clara plan.  I’m moving back in with my parents … at least for a little while.  Exactly how I’m getting home is still an open issue.  Nothing in my world plays out as expected.  I am planning to check out of this hotel much earlier than I booked it for – most likely tomorrow.  Luckily the manager here is taking pity on me and only charging me for one week (for the three nights I was here) as opposed to the 30-days that is the usual charge for early check-out on a booking scheduled for longer than a month – I had this room booked through the 20^th of October (some 32 days from today).  It’s still not cheap and basically just more to add to what this fiasco ended up costing me.  Any way you look at it, this latest adventure is nothing more than another huge mistake.  I sure hope my luck is better for this long drive I have coming up…

bis später,

Coriolis

A New Beginning

Looks like the ‘Route 66’ trip is officially off.  The one-way ticket from Detroit to Los Angeles that I purchased about a week and a half ago for my buddy won’t be used (I suppose I need to investigate possibly getting a refund on that…).  No … I won’t be driving some 2500 miles east, north-east to move back in with my parents in a bit over a week as I have been planning.  I will, however, be loading up my car and driving some 300 miles north on Sunday – four days from today.  I’ll be heading for a hotel in Santa Clara where I have booked an “extended stay” for a month.  For you see, I appear to have landed a job today…

It’s a bit strange.  I’ve been trying quite hard to find a job once again doing what I was basically training to do for the first 23 years of my life … been damn near an entire year now.  As I mentioned in earlier posts to this blog that nobody reads, I wasn’t having much luck.  Primarily due to the four-year hole that I put in my resume – mid-life crisis delusion of grandeur … you know, same-ole same-ole…  In fact, just two days ago I was still waiting to receive an email scheduling an initial phone interview with a company down in San Diego.  Never received that email and, in fact, never had the phone interview that was scheduled to have happened by no later than yesterday (“3-5 business days” from when I got the initial email notification…).  I did, however, receive a phone call yesterday morning from a different company – one of the other 90 or so companies that I had sent applications to.  A couple calls yesterday, a few calls today and “Viola!” I got a job.

Now, to be completely honest here, what I currently have is a one-month contract (1099 work) that, if I am able to demonstrate my usefulness, will turn into a full-time job with benefits.  Their VP of Engineering just wasn’t sold on hiring me directly full-time because of that damn resume hole; however, I somehow convinced him to let me prove myself.  I’m not too worried though, with some 20-years’ experience doing this work prior to my hiatus, I believe it’ll come back to me in no time.  I had no problem completing the small contract job I picked up earlier this summer.  No, I know what I’m doing.  I’m sure I’ll be able to pitch-in…

Why then am I feeling such malaise?  That is the question that I am currently trying to figure out.  I suppose it’s most likely a combination of things.  For starters, I was actually beginning to look forward to doing the ‘Route 66’ trip with my buddy.  Spoke to him on the phone today and found out that he, as well, was looking quite forward to the adventure – said he’s been working long hours at a side-job in an effort to get more money for the trip.  Made me feel bad to tell him that it was no longer scheduled to be happening.

I was also looking quite forward to moving back to the old stomping grounds.  Sure, I would have been moving back in with my parents for some unknown amount of time and, truth be told, that’s actually somewhat pathetic for a man my age; however, it would have given me the opportunity to spend some more time with them while they’re still around – nobody lives forever…  That and I would have been able to hang out with many of my old friends on a more frequent basis than I get to when it’s only during trips back home around holidays.

I don’t know, seems to me that what I am doing here is once again letting money become more important than life.  We all (well, most of us at least…) seem to do this for a large portion of our lives.  For most, though, the choice is a necessity.  It costs quite a bit to raise a family these days.  I have no family to raise … never even been married.  My choice is far more selfish – it’s merely to make sure that I can take care of myself financially after retirement.  From all the stories I’ve read in the news, seems to me one can never have enough put aside to survive retirement these days.  We’re all just rats in cages destined to be running on our hamster wheels until we drop dead.  Jobs of the olden days used to provide people with pensions after they retired – those are, for the most part, gone now … merely ideas that seem to only have been myths to today’s working class.  Sure, there’s Social Security – for now – but what’s that get you?  Will it be enough to continually let you pay the consistently increasing rent for as long as you need?  I doubt it – that’s kind of why IRAs and 401k’s exist – you’re most likely going to need more.  And just exactly how much more is anyone’s guess.  That pretty much depends on how long you end up living.  Usually that’s an unknown…

Oh well, que sera, sera … I emailed the signed contract back for this job.  Decision made.  Right or wrong, I’m going to be starting work Monday morning.  I actually do think it’s most likely what is best.

bis später,

Coriolis

My 2010 W.S.O.P. Story

I’m back in California; touched down Saturday afternoon; woke up early that morning in my suite at the Rio. I finished my first trip to the World Series of Poker a bit lighter in my net worth however quite a bit more experienced with this game called poker… It was an interesting trip…

Now don’t get me wrong – I did not play the “Main Event” … that doesn’t even begin until early next month. I did, however – as mentioned in my last blog – enter into the WSOP #30 Tournament – a $1500 buy-in, no-limit Hold’em tournament scheduled to run for three days (last Wednesday through Friday). Unfortunately for me, it was over in about 3 hours and 15 minutes. I was eliminated not long after the first break…

I was a bit bummed out; mainly because I had nobody to blame but myself. I’ll be the first to admit that I played my cards (as horrible as they were) poorly and basically bust out of the tournament on some very questionable maneuvers. I ended up losing it all attempting to avoid becoming a rather early short-stack forgetting the well-known adage, “It’s a marathon, not a sprint.” I doubt I’ll be making that mistake again anytime soon…

I arrived in Vegas early Tuesday evening – flew jetBlue from Burbank to Vegas. This was a great idea as flying out of Burbank ended up being so much nicer than flying from LAX. First off, the 45 minute flight only ran me $125 round-trip. Now that’s a bargain! The best part of it, however, was the lack of crowd at the Bob Hope Airport. I’m sure the fact that it was a Tuesday afternoon had a lot to do with the smaller crowds; however every time I’ve flown out of LAX has been a madhouse. Flying out of Burbank actually felt like air travel used to be – simple and easy…

Upon arrival I contacted Sam and let him know I was in town. You see, Sam was there basically for the same reason I was – event #30. He was also staying at the Rio and I figured we could hang out together during this trip – whilst not busy with the tournament that is… He was out having dinner when I arrived so we made plans to meet up a bit later and I hopped on a shuttle for the Rio.

The first thing I did upon arriving at the Rio was get signed-in for the #30 tournament. I needed to get a tournament receipt from one of the official 57 events in order to get the WSOP discount on my suite – brought the price down to $69/night Tuesday through Thursday and $169 for Friday night. I’m actually not sure how much of a savings this is compared to the standard room rates however I do know that it’s $80 less than the pre-entrant rates I was quoted when I booked the room. Whatever the case, I figured it couldn’t hurt. Of course signing up for the tournament required a Harrah’s Total Rewards card … so I guess signing up for the tournament was the second thing I did after obtaining my Total Rewards card (I got the WSOP version).

One thing I’ve got to make perfectly clear to anybody who hasn’t been there – the WSOP is a huge event at the Rio! The entire Convention Way section of the hotel is completely devoted to the World Series. They’ve got tons of tables set up in both the Rio Pavilion and Amazon rooms for the myriad of games always underway, a WSOP store to buy your trinkets and memorabilia, a not-so-spectacular cafeteria for the players to get their much needed nourishment during the oft-time short breaks for food, a “Bad Beat Bar” to help numb the pain when your opponent sucks out on the river and lots of displays of the former year winners and current all-star players. It’s actually quite interesting when you realize that anybody willing to front the buy-in cash can partake in this madness. It’s like being at the Hall of Fame with a ticket to play. Of course I still hadn’t got my ticket … now where, exactly, would one sign up for these games…?

It didn’t take long before I was directed to the registration room. This, of course, is where I paid my $1500 for a buy-in to the no-limit Hold’em tournament scheduled to begin the next day at noon. I then took the small hike back to the hotel registration and checked into my room with the proper receipt for the price reduction, stopped by my room to unpack – of course unpacking my one little duffle-bag didn’t take long – purchased some needed essentials from the gift shop and headed down to Rio’s standard poker room. I figured it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get some practice in the night before my expensive (for me, anyway … the Main Event’s buy-in is ten grand!) tournament started…

Things went pretty well that first night. I sat down at a $1-$3 no-limit Hold’em table with $300. A little while later, Sam arrived and joined me at the same table. It was your standard small-blind, no-limit ring game – a couple “calling stations” that were getting hit in the face with the deck long enough for them to become large stacked, a number of rocks that basically lived there (talking with the dealers like they were long-time buddies…) and Sam and I – patiently waiting to put a hurt on the calling stations… I ended that roller-coaster ride of a night up $225. My patience paid off as I was able to get large sums from both our targets…

Now to briefly diverge from my story, one more bad aspect about me going to Vegas is the urge it gives me to smoke. You see, I quit smoking “cold turkey” last August. And if you know me well enough, you’re well aware of exactly how difficult an accomplishment that actually was. Suffice it to say that last August was NOT a good month for me (nor have been pretty much every month since, but that’s a whole different rant…). The one good thing that came from then was that I actually did quit smoking. Sure, I’ve had this completely unexplainable issue with sporadic claudication since then (very interesting as smoking is listed as a main cause for that … and I had just recently quit…) and my life has become nothing more than an ever-agonizing struggle to pry my pathetic ass out of bed every morning; but at least I quit smoking! I think I burned through a pack a day in Vegas. I gave what I had left (about ¾ of a pack) to some dude that was smoking outside the airport upon leaving and haven’t smoked any since; however the time spent in Vegas was definitely not healthy for me. It’s just so hard to ignore the cute “cigar, cigarette” girls… Now I get to experience the excitement of going “cold turkey” again … nothing like a good challenge, huh…? Anyway, back to what I was originally talking about…

So that first night was a positive sign of good things to come, right…? Well, not exactly. You see, that was the only time I left that poker room in the black. I ended up playing there quite a bit – basically due to the fact that I wasn’t spending nearly as much time as I had hoped in the main tournament I came to play – but, apart from that first night, it always ended up costing me. I will say this: If you go to Vegas, don’t go alone. Being alone in Vegas with nothing to do can become quite expensive. Heck, being in Vegas at all can become quite expensive; but not having someone else there to be a voice of reason can really cost you. Sure, I suppose if I were a normal functioning male of our species, I could spend my free-time (and what I’m sure would end up being some of my money as well…) hitting on the throngs of beautiful women that seem to flock there basically looking to be bad; but, as anyone who knows me knows, I do not possess the required skills. No … what I end up doing is primarily playing poker; and when I’m done with that (usually signaled by losing all the money I sat down with – sometimes a bit more…) perhaps sitting at a penny-slot smoking a cigarette (and I don’t even smoke…) and partaking of as much free booze as I can. Don’t worry … I tip the beer maids…

The next morning I met up with Sam and his roommates for breakfast before the tourney. I believe, if memory serves me correctly, it was somewhere around 10:30 in the morning when we stopped off at the São Paulo Cafe. We got some breakfast, played a couple rounds of pick-20 Keno (Sam and I), paid our bill and picked up our Keno winnings (easily done as there weren’t any…), then headed out for a smoke prior to the start of the tournament. Sam and I parted ways here as I needed to take a leak (I didn’t need to go into the tournament with yet another distraction…) which was fine – I’d see him at the tournament. He was seated at table #70. I was assigned seat 4 on table #64.

I believe it was something like 20 minutes prior to the tournament start when I headed into the Rio Pavilion. Finding my table was easily accomplished and I was quite eager to get this thing started. I took my seat as soon as the announcement for my tournament was aired and chatted it up a bit with my table’s dealer and the dealer of the table directly next to mine (which just so happened to be table #70 – Sam’s table). Upon speaking with these guys, I quickly realized that the quality of dealers found at the WSOP is pretty much a crap-shoot. From what I was told, somewhere around 1000 dealers are brought in from all across the country for this event although that number steadily declines as the event goes forward. Apparently (now this is from the dealers I was speaking with) the pay basically sucks and Harrah’s has a bad habit of cheating the dealers out of the full 70% of the tips that they’re due. This makes it difficult for out-of-town dealers to justify being there as they need to pay for their stay with a large portion of the income received making any profit earned miniscule. Now I have absolutely no way to verify these claims; however this was basically from the horse’s mouth – although I can’t really say how “gruntled” these guys were… I would, however, experience the divergence of quality that such a system creates, first hand, soon enough…

As I mentioned at the beginning of this story, I didn’t last very long in this tournament. I lost all of my 4500 starting chips (please excuse the photos … I only had my phone with me and the camera on my phone sucks…) in a bit over 3 hours. In this short period of time, however, two rather major dealer errors were made on our table – and not too surprisingly, I was involved in both hands… The first faux pas happened very early. Position 1 went “all in” and I called. I don’t remember what the hands were, and it really doesn’t matter – if you’ve heard one “poker story” you’ve heard ‘em all – but the end result was that I won the pot. The error occurred after the hand when the dealer informed the poor guy in position 1 that my chip-stack had him covered. It didn’t – he actually had 200 chips left after the official count however he was never informed of this. He was already up from the table and out the door long before the floor was called over and an announcement was made for “position 1 on table #64” to “please return to your seat”. Not that it mattered too much as he was seriously short-stacked at that point. It was, however, “a chip and a chair” and we all know how that goes, right…?

Now the second blunder came shortly after the first break in play. I was having my usual luck (and admittedly not playing my “A” game) and was quickly becoming quite short. I needed to make a move soon if I wanted any chance to survive the marathon so I pushed “all in” with top-pair and a king kicker. I was called (interestingly enough by position 1 again … different guy, same seat…) and lost – outkicked by an ace – however this guy’s stack didn’t quite have me covered. Now the blunder occurred when the dealer was counting off the chip differential to see exactly how bad off I was. At the end, he sent 150 chips my way and was about to sweep the rest toward position 1 when the guy sitting at seat 2 said that he thought the dealer miscounted. The dealer ignored his plea and swept the pile. I, on the other hand, did not ignore his claim – I was very interested in discovering whether or not this statement was true. It was then that the guy sitting to my left (position 5) also said that he had doubts about the dealer’s count and I was getting less and less happy.

A strange thing occurred then. Position 1 had no problem with attempting to rectify the situation quickly – fair play is fair play, after all… Since nobody was exactly sure how much the count was off, position 1 offered me 300 chips. Position 2 was saying that he thought the dealer was off by somewhere around 500; however I was more than happy to take the 300 and let the game continue – either way I was very short in the tournament and had little hope of surviving much longer. Position 1 offering 300 as a quick solution seemed fair enough for me. However the dude in position 10 basically had a hissy-fit when I accepted the 300 chips offered. He slammed the table with his fist and made some sort of statement that what we were doing somehow was unfair for him. Bear in mind that this guy wasn’t in the hand, his chip stack wasn’t going to be affected in any way and the only thing that was happening was that I was going from 150 in chips to 450 – still very short at this point in the tournament. He, however, wasn’t going to allow this! The end result was that we wasted more of position 10’s time by calling over the floor and “re-playing” the hand. The result of this was that I ended up coming out of this with 750 chips. I’m sure this made position 10 feel much better about his stupidity…

He didn’t need to worry about me for long though; our table was broken down shortly after that fiasco and we were dispersed to separate tables. I still don’t know why that dude was so adamant about my chip-stack size – and I guess I never will – but he was safely away from me and free to get upset with somebody else from that point. I was moved to my final table and, within minutes, eliminated from the tournament.

So I guess I didn’t need the four nights I booked at the Rio. I could have easily flown in the morning of the tournament, dropped $1500 and made it back home in time for supper; but who knew? Ends up I needed to kill two and a half more days in Vegas. It’s a shame there weren’t any poker games to play. Oh wait, what am I talking about – it was the middle of the World Series of Poker – there are constantly games to be played…

One of the best games they had running was this daily Deep-Stack tournament that started at 1:00pm. It was only $200 to buy-in and started you off with 15,000 chips. Other than the large stating chips, the structure was identical to the main event I played with all of the time periods cut in half. It was, at the time, not being capped on number of players and was running through to the wee hours of the next day’s morn. There were over 400 in the Deep-Stack game on the day I played my main event. I would probably have played it after getting knocked out if I hadn’t lasted long enough to miss the buy-in window; however I would now need to wait until Thursday to give the Deep-Stack a shot. I headed back to the regular Rio poker room to waste away the rest of that day…

And waste it away is exactly what I did. I dropped something like $500 playing the $1-$3 no-limit ring game for quite a few hours and then signed up for the nightly turbo tournament that they were running on this set of four or five tables they had set up directly outside of the poker room. The tourney began at 9:00 and, being a turbo tournament, finished something like 3 or 4 hours afterward. It was only $80 to play and I survived to the final two tables. Didn’t make the money, but it was a decent way to eat up the remaining time before hitting the sack. After all, I was planning on playing the Deep-Stack the next day…

I woke the next morning quite early. I believe it was prior to 9:00 when I headed back to the São Paulo Cafe for some breakfast … alone this time. Oh yeah, and if you’re wondering how Sam came out in the tournament, he didn’t make the money either. He did last longer than me – I think it was an hour or two after my elimination when I received his call – but neither of us succeeded in our goal of getting filthy rich by playing a silly game … perhaps next year…? At breakfast, however, my luck seemed to be changing. Since I had time to kill, I picked up a Keno card, marked off three numbers (5,10 and 25) and put $20 down as four $5 rounds. As I was eating my breakfast, I hit all three numbers on the first round; two numbers on rounds 2 and 3; and only hit one on the last draw – I collected $220 for my $20 bet! Not a bad start to the day as I had successfully won my buy-in to the Deep-Stack tournament!

That, unfortunately – apart from the $10 I won at a “Crazy-4 Card Poker” table and the $1.25 I pocketed at the airport playing video poker before my flight home – was the last winnings I would see on this trip. I did decent in the Deep-Stack – lasted 8½ hours getting knocked out just before racing off the black (100’s) chips – but missed the money by less than 70 people – not bad considering 717 people started that tournament… I tried it (the Deep-Stack) again on Friday where they capped the entrants at 200 but only made it 2 hours before being unlucky enough to flop a boat. (Yes, you read that correctly – “unlucky” enough to flop a boat…)

All in all, it was a rather expensive trip for me. I think I’m going to be heading back next year!

bis später,

Coriolis

A Bit of a Funk

So … a bit of an update on that ever-exciting world of online dating. In one word – useless.

I posted a blog article a few weeks ago that basically outlined my initial attempts at using Chemistry.com to perhaps find a date. I have since tried my best to remain positive and hopeful that the procedure outlined would, in time, produce positive results. Unfortunately, I am now realizing that “positive” results was far too optimistic of an expectation. I have basically been getting somewhat sporadic results in general and the number that I would consider “positive” stills remains zero.

Here’s a warning for anybody that thinks these dating sites are packed with honest-to-goodness real people, like yourself, that are interested in meeting someone new – they’re not. What they are filled with is countless fake identities set up as Internet-fishing schemes. Of course I only have my experience on Chemistry.com to go by; however I’m prone to think that things would be similar at the other sites as well.

Although it took quite a while for the scam responses to start arriving – I had been implementing my routine for over a month prior to the onslaught – they are now hitting my account at a rate of several per day. And they all look pretty much the same. It’s always a “lady” giving some sort of extremely general compliment about my profile followed by some seriously stupid explanation as to why she never logs onto the site and that I should email her at her personal email address (which, by the way is always a {random.crap.name}@yahoo.com). Without fail, these accounts end up becoming “no longer available” in a few days as the scams get reported to Chemistry.com which gets me to wondering why they were sent to me as possible matches to begin with…? Perhaps because I was stupid enough to pay the fee required for a six-month membership at Chemistry.com and they want it to appear that I didn’t waste my money. But I’m not fooled – that money was most definitely wasted.

And speaking of wasting money, I headed back to the Commerce Casino yesterday. On Sundays they have this decent little $65 buy-in tournament (with a $50 re-buy option) that I had played once before. I figured that, if nothing else, it would be a nice little warm up for the WSOP tourney that I’m going to be playing later this week at the Rio in Vegas. Now, granted, the scale of these two tournaments has a large delta (WSOP tourney #30 has 60-minute blind levels, is expecting to be seating over 2000 players and is scheduled as a 3-day tournament whereas the Commerce tournament has 20-minute blind levels, far less than 100 players and will easily finish in one afternoon) however my frequency of playing tournaments has gone down quite a bit since leaving Colorado where I used to waste quite a bit of time at the Denver Poker Tour games. Now the one thing I do know is that playing poker tournaments is like most skills where the finer details can fade with extended down-times. Of course the flip-side of that is also true where too much playing can hurt your play (especially in these low-buy-in tournaments – aka “free-rolls”) but I have no worries about that – I needed the practice as a refresher…

Unfortunately I didn’t get too much practice as flopping two-pair got me knocked out of the tournament right at the end of the first round. I thought the other guy was power-betting a flush draw with the two hearts that hit but was a bit shocked to find out that he was on the flush draw with an already made straight – bad play by me… The flush didn’t hit; unfortunately a straight usually beats two pair in most respectable casinos… Oh well, que sera sera … that’s poker. Unfortunately paying that $115 for the tournament (I did the re-buy right away so was unable to continue after my stupid play) ended up being a complete waste. Not only that, but the money I foolishly spent in a couple ring games before made the day a bit more expensive than I was hoping … but I’m just gonna rack all that crap up as the horrible ending of the horrible weekend I had.

I’m not a big fan of life right now. I sure hope things go a bit better in Vegas…

bis später,

Coriolis

Once Bitten, Twice Shy

I’ve decided to find a bit more appropriate housing for myself next month. Not that I haven’t been enjoying the ability I’ve had of late to easily increase my overall net worth; I think, however, it’s due time for me to start living like the soon to be 40 year old man that I am. And what that means is that I really need to be moving out of the room I currently reside in and moving into an apartment – a place of my own. I’ve already found the place and am scheduled to be moving to the valley (the San Fernando Valley, that is … like, totally…) on the 10th of April.

I know, “big deal,” right? Well I guess it isn’t. It’s just the next adventure that this rather dull, increasingly lonely life that I lead has in store for me. As for the myriad of details associated with this move go, I’m beginning to wonder if I can cope. It all just seems like way too much hassle for yet one more thing that, to be completely honest, I really don’t “want” to do. But I’ve learned that life – at least my life – really doesn’t give a shit whether the tasks it throws at me are things I want, it’s going to bombard me with ‘em anyway. I suppose that feeling of control over my life that I once had after returning from Germany a few years back was only an illusion. I guess this next move could be seen as a desperate attempt to once again rein in my out of control life; to regain control and return to creating my life rather than just living it. I just hope I can survive…

The funny, somewhat interesting, rather pathetic and quite sad thing is that this is far from the first time I’ve traveled down this road. Hell, since becoming a college grad, I’ve “lived” (for a minimum of seven months) at 12 different “permanent” addresses in 9 different cities, 5 separate states and 2 unique countries. Granted there are many out there that these figures seem somewhat minuscule; however, for a guy who’s initial plan was to get married and live somewhere (perhaps with a family, perhaps just as a couple) happily ever after, it’s approximately 11 addresses too many. For god’s sake, I OWN a house in Colorado! I own a house and have once again begun the process of moving. Will it ever end…?

Oh well … as it currently stands, I’ve got quite a bit that I need to do in order to successfully accomplish this latest move. That’s the worst part about all these moves – they seem to be getting more and more complicated as time goes by. My first half-dozen or so moves were actually pretty simple – I didn’t own much and all that was required was to get my small amount of possessions transported to my new address then arrange for television and internet service to be furnished. It doesn’t get much simpler than that. All my moves were repeats of this same process until I finally bit the bullet and bought a house in ’01. That was, theoretically, supposed to be my last move. I’ve already moved three times since…

My plan has been to keep the house in Colorado, live on the cheap wherever I end up needing to go and, after the stars finally re-align themselves making it possible for me to live in Colorado again, move back into my house. Seemed like a good plan to me when I first decided to implement it some three and a half years ago; however I am now realizing that this plan is flawed in some very fundamental ways.

I attempted to address one of these weaknesses – the problem of property upkeep – by fool heartedly letting my buddy Todd live in my house (rent-free, mind you…) whilst I was living and working in California. The mess that is property upkeep of a house that one is not living in had become evident to me upon my return from Germany. For some reason (ignorance, I suppose) I was under the impression that leaving my house empty during the time I was away in Germany (and subsequently the time I spent with the family afterword – a total of about one full year) would not be an issue. I was wrong about this (check out my earlier post, Smoking Marathon, for more) and actually feel a bit silly about my initial naivety. The obviousness of the stupidity of such an impression is very clear to me now…

But I digress … having Todd actually living in my house would avoid this problem – or so I thought. I figured that we could help each other out – Todd needed a place to live and I could use somebody to take care of my house. This, of course, ended badly as anybody who’s ever been foolish enough to believe a living situation similar to this wouldn’t end badly has assuredly learned. Never, and I do mean never, let anybody live in your house rent free. All it’s going to do is give said person a false feeling of entitlement and, once this has set in, you can forget about your wishes having any import. Once Todd started taking advantage of his side of our deal with little to no concern for the upkeep of my house, I was forced to kick him out. It’s a long story involving alcohol, misguided machismo, some extremely poorly rationalized statements and the Longmont Police; however the end result was that I was forced to kick Todd out. This of course meant that my house was once again abandoned. I needed to do something about that…

So now I own a rental property in Colorado (okay … I actually own a mortgage to a rental property in Colorado to be more precise). My former abode of dwelling is still sitting atop this property however somebody else’s family is living in it. PML (Property Management of Longmont) has been tasked with this property’s maintenance and upkeep and any and all repair costs are passed on for me to pay as well as a small percentage of the rent that goes to PML as a maintenance fee. It’s a pretty good arraignment so far even though I am, at best, only able to recoup approximately 2/3 of my mortgage payment each month – sometimes much less depending on repair costs… Bottom line is that I am dropping a decent amount of money each month already – long before I factor in the cost of housing for me out here in California. If the housing market ever gets back on its feet again, I should however be able to make back the difference (and then some, hopefully…) with the equity I am retaining. I suppose only time will tell on this gambit…

Getting back to the main point of this article, this mortgage ownership that I have has thrown a bit of a monkey-wrench into my usual new rental procedure. It’s actually simplified some things quite a bit as I ended up basically tossing out a large majority of my possessions after asking Todd to leave. And by a “large portion”, I do in fact mean a large portion. Of all my possessions that I had in my house, exactly one 5’x9’ storage unit of stuff is left – my home entertainment system (sans television set), a half-stack, my guitar, a few boxes of clothing and a file cabinet of primarily financial documents. This storage unit (located in a Public Storage in Longmont), along with the stuff I am living with here in California, is everything I now own. In other words, I am now going to need to do some shopping just to furnish the new, two-bedroom, two-bath apartment I am moving to next month. I am also going to need to arrange shipment of the stuff I have stored in Longmont. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s worth the hassle…

I don’t know, perhaps I’m just suffering your standard buyer’s remorse. It wasn’t until rather recent that I was finally able to get myself out from under a substantial amount of credit card debt. I’m very proud to now be able to announce that I am completely, 100% credit-card debt free! Getting here has taught me what I would consider a very valuable lesson – live within your means and do not, under any circumstances, buy shit on credit. I’ve made a complete U-turn when it comes to spending and now only buy things AFTER I have saved up enough money to purchase them. The absolute best way to use credit cards is actually to NOT use them. It almost seems too simple now – why would I want to pay more for something than it actually costs? That is exactly what you are doing when you charge something and keep any balance on your card at the end of the month. Now I realize that my readers are smart people and I’m not telling you anything you did not already know; however it was shocking to see the financial condition that the younger me was able to get myself into. I’m trying my best not to let history repeat itself here…

Now my current situation is great for me, financially. Living where I do (basically a room in a boarding house) is cheap. Very cheap when you consider it’s located in Thousand Oaks. So whipty-doo, I can increase my net worth. However in doing so, I have basically put my life (admittedly dull as it is…) on hold. I wake up, spend a rather large portion of my day at work, spend the remainder of the day in my little room, go to bed and repeat. Weekends are very similar except that, often times, the work portion can be removed. And yeah, I know what you’re thinking, “What’s stopping me from doing more?” You obviously have never lived in Thousand Oaks…

There’s this site name Walk Score where you can enter any address and see how walkable it would be to live there. It basically gives you listings of nearby attractions and how close they are to the address entered. It also gives you a score from 1-100 that rates your address. My boarding house rates 29 out of 100 – “Car-Dependent”. By contrast, the apartment complex I am moving to in Woodland Hills gets a score of 80 – “Very Walkablke”. The way I see it, having the ability to walk places might get me out more. Not to mention that the walking would give me some exercise – something that I have let slip seriously since moving to T.O. Will this pan out in the end? I don’t know, but I’m willing to try…

Apart from the location of my new place, there’s also the much more prudent aspect that it will be MY place. I will once again be able to go grocery shopping. Not that I can’t buy groceries now; however I’m basically limited to one shelf in the fridge to store my groceries. I have been told that I could use the kitchen for cooking; but the whole communal-living aspect of it all is very uncomfortable for me. I’ve done the “living in a frat house” thing long ago; I think I’m past that now…

Also, assuming I am able to get the place furnished correctly, I will no longer feel that I should be spending all of my time at home cramped up in my bedroom. No, far from it, I will be able to watch television in my living room, hang out on one of the two balconies that look out at the pool and communal area of the complex, heck … I can even head down to the gym and get a decent workout. Anyway you look at it, having a place of my own again should make me feel a bit more normal.

But it all comes at a cost and that’s what I’m having a hard time justifying to myself. Don’t get me wrong, I currently can afford it – rather easily, actually. That being said, this apartment will be costing me 3.5-4 times what I am currently paying for room and board. It’s not chicken feed… Even if the unforeseen happens (say I lose my job before the 12-month lease is done), I currently have enough cash in the bank to cover the rent; but then all that work I did at obtaining this savings would have been for naught. It wouldn’t be good, but I just need to consider that it would be survivable. After all, what’s the use of earning this money if you’re going to sacrifice your life in order to keep it, right? I think my attempt at shocking my life back into existence is long overdue. Here goes nothing…

bis später,

Coriolis

To tip, or not to tip: Why isn’t that the question?

Is it just me or does anybody else out there think that tipping needs to finally be done away with??? I just don’t get it. You go out to a nice restaurant, enjoy an already rather expensive meal, receive the check and are automatically expected to add somewhere around 15-20% more than the actual meal cost. Doesn’t this seem a bit silly? I mean why don’t they just charge us the 15-20% more to begin with and cut out the unneeded hassle…?

I realize, of course, that the “idea” behind the tip makes sense. It’s supposed to be an additional reward for the wait staff on a job well done. Note that – “a job well done.” I’m wondering when it was decided that this apparently unnecessary causality was removed from this equation. Was there a meeting that I wasn’t invited to…? Why am I now expected to leave a tip regardless of service quality? Aren’t we just taking one more step toward mediocrity being expected in this society … not only expected but rewarded?

“But these waiters and waitresses rely on receiving tips for their livelihood” … “their pay is insignificant for survival without the added income from the tips” … “the tip is actually taken as a given when the wages for these positions are decided” … “you’re a complete asshole if you don’t tip regardless of the quality of service you received” … “the wait staff needs the tips to survive.”

I’ve heard it all before although I’m really beginning to wonder why I should care. I’ve worked very hard to earn the income I currently receive and nobody is expected to be throwing any more money my way regardless of my performance. The only thing that I can guarantee is that my income, in complete, will cease to exist if I don’t do my job well enough. As a matter of fact, my income always has the possibility of vanishing completely due to a myriad of scenarios in which I have absolutely no control over – it’s called life. Am I supposed to feel sorry for the people that serve me at restaurants? Is this a pity thing???

You see I’m of the opinion that the people that wait on me in restaurants are just that – people. I have no ill-founded sense of superiority over them nor do I believe that they are any better than I. They are getting paid to do their job which just so happens to be serving me and my guests food and drink. That’s all. Why is it my responsibility to cover the inadequacy in income that their employers have agreed to pay? They took the job. If the pay scale agreed to was insufficient, they had every right to ask for more or look elsewhere.

Over in Germany they’ve already addressed this. Gratuity (as well as taxes, for that matter) is already included in the prices on the menu. It sure as hell makes things quite a bit simpler. Yeah, the prices seem a bit steep at first, but that’s all that is expected to be paid. When you receive your bill at the end of the meal, the total amount due is precisely the amount shown – nothing extra is expected. Not that you couldn’t add on a tip if you felt the service worthy enough, it just isn’t expected. I guess over there they pay their wait staffs sufficiently for survival. And as a bonus, there are quite a few Americans visiting…

The reason I say this is because we Americans have been so well programmed to automatically add on a tip that the whole idea of not doing so seems so wrong to us that, even in places where tips actually are optional, not leaving one just feels a bit dirty – so much so that Jon was constantly giving me shit for not leaving tips when I was over there. Even after pointing out to him on several menus where it clearly stated (in German, of course) that gratuity was included, he always added approximately 15% to his bills. Maybe that’s why the German waiters were always so glad to see Americans…?

What I propose is that we adopt the same system here that they use in Germany. And you might think I’m a bit silly proposing that the prices for meals be raised in restaurants, but I’m not. I’m proposing that the “actual” prices for meals be displayed on the menus. We could then do away with this whole nonsense of tipping. The extra income to the restaurants can be used to pay the wait staffs fairly and the whole unnecessary tipping routine can go the way of the dodos…

Just a thought…

bis später,

Coriolis

He Who Wears the Crown

About a month ago I received a letter from my former dental care provider. I figured it would be a statement showing finalized payment for the crown that I had recently obtained – you know … a statement showing that my insurance had paid what they covered and, taking into account the five hundred bucks that I had already paid on the day of the procedure, that my account was now paid in full and clean. But it wasn’t.

What it actually ended up being was a bill. Not only that, but it was a bill demanding full payment – by me – for the remainder of the cost after my initial $500 was subtracted. It was stating that I owed them $475. It clearly stated that the amount covered by insurance was nothing and that no money was expected from my insurance as well. This got me to thinking…

I clearly remembered inquiring with the dental office on whether or not my insurance (United Health Care) would cover this procedure and remember their response. They said that 50% would be covered by my insurance and that I would be responsible for the remaining $500. This was back when I had the procedure done and, although I was a bit shocked to discover that a covered procedure would still be costing me $500, I wrote them a check for this amount. I then got the crown and proceeded on with my life thinking that this unexpectedly costly procedure was complete. A month ago, I got this bill clearly stating otherwise.

For completeness on this story, this actually was not the first correspondence with regards to this same procedure – the crown. For some reason that I still don’t understand, just a few weeks after the crown had been obtained; UHC sent me a letter requesting more information on the necessity of said procedure. It was the standard documentation about what they considered “fair and usual” charges versus what my health professional was charging complete with extremely unclear explanations – written in authentic legalese – for anything they decided they wouldn’t be paying for. The crown was one such item. For some reason they sent “me” the document requesting further proof of need for said crown – they wanted further documentation and X-rays.

Since I had neither any further documentation nor X-rays to send them, I decided to give my dentist’s office a call and see if they might be of some assistance. Hell, they were the ones that filed the insurance claim. Turned out that this was “news to them” and they requested I FAX over the document. This I did.

A couple weeks go by and I get another document from UHC – same thing as before with a request for some new information that I most definitely did not have access to. This one I decided to ignore. The way I figured it was that it really wasn’t my responsibility to get payment to my dentist from my dental insurance company. The dental office filed the claim and they can jump through the required hoops to get UHC to pay. After all, they’re the ones trying to get paid for services rendered. I already gave them my $500…

As I pointed out at the beginning of this article, I was mistaken. I called my dentist’s office (my former dentist’s office that is…) in an effort to discover why they believed I owed them another $475 and was basically informed that no payment had been received from UHC; and that therefore I was responsible for the outstanding balance. I then informed the nice lady I was speaking with that I disagreed. I explained how I distinctly remembered inquiring about the coverage of this crown prior to paying my initial $500. I also mentioned that I distinctly remembered being told that it would be covered. It was then when I informed this kind woman, if they were mistaken in their affirmation of insurance coverage, that it really wasn’t my problem. I basically wished them good luck at getting UHC to pay and informed her that no more money would be coming directly from me for this crown. She then suggested that I contact UHC and attempt to convince them to make this payment.

Maybe this is just a “pet peeve” of mine, but wasting my time and energy to basically go after an insurance company for not providing the services they are selling seems silly. I covered my ass by inquiring with the dental office about coverage prior to receiving service. I would have asked for it in writing but that seemed a bit excessive at the time. The verbal acknowledgement was enough for me. After that, the problem belonged to my dentist. Or so I thought…

You see that’s just the way health care is in this country (the USA if you were wondering). A large number of people can’t even get health insurance which – due to the outrageous prices for any medical procedure – means that they can’t get any health care. That’s just the way this game’s played these days. For those that are fortunate enough to have health insurance, the game changes a bit; however it’s still a game. Sure, you can get the health procedures done but, if your health insurance company decides you didn’t need it; you are going to be forced to pay the bill yourself. And don’t kid yourself into believing that your health insurance company cares – in any way whatsoever – about your well being; they’re only in this game for the money.

But I digress … I didn’t come here to point out the lamentable state of health care in this country. Michael Moore did an excellent job of that in his “Sicko” film. I came here to explain to you, the reader, why my former dentist has decided that he will no longer stoop to providing dental care for me. That was the letter I received last week. It appears that the nice discussion I had with the kind lady at my dentist’s office about being asked to pay for what UHC was not paying was enough for my dentist to drop me as a patient. So I guess the bottom line in all this is that I’m the “bad guy”…

Funny thing is that I logged-in to the UHC website shortly after my call to the dentist’s office and discovered that the payment had already been sent. I guess it had not reached the office prior to their demanding of payment from me; however it was on its way. I was even nice enough to call them back and let them know this; spoke with the same lady whose feathers I had apparently ruffled earlier. I thought they would be glad to hear this – they were getting their money after all. Heck, UHC was paying the full $500 which meant that I was only responsible for $475 of the $500 I had paid earlier – they were ahead by $25!

The denial of service letter that I received also contained a check for $25. So, financially at least, we (my former dentist and I) are now even. I need to locate a new dentist for any future dental work, but at least the financial audit trail is clean. I’m just a bit confused as to how I’m being labeled as the “bad guy” in this situation. Perhaps I should send my ex-dentist a bill for $475 and see how he likes it…

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