Rick: “Dude, have you played XBOX 360?!”
Me: “Nope.”
Rick: “Man, there’s this really awesome game called Geometry Wars!”
…
Me: “Go on.”
Rick: “If you played this game on LSD, your head would explode.”

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I just got the following e-mail from Amazon.com:

Dear Amazon.com Customer,

We’ve noticed that customers who have purchased books by David Sedaris often purchased books by Nora Ephron. For this reason you might like to know that Nora Ephron’s newest book, I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman, is now available . You can order your copy at a savings of 40% by following the link below.

Sincerely,

Amazon.com

I think I’m gonna’ pass on that one.

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Tired adventures

Where to begin? I guess I’ll begin in the middle (beginning at the beginning is worn out and beginning at the end is feaux ironic). Saturday afternoon, I took my car to Discount Tire to have the tires rotated. I had been holding out because the dealer wants $20 to do it and Discount does it for free. So, I was in there for about a half hour when the guy came over and told me everything was done and “You know there were scratches on your wheels before you brought it in, right?” “Sure”, I said, thinking he was talking about some curb rash I likely incurred as I bumped a curb taking a turn the other day.

I went home and decided I better have a look at the wheels, just to make sure we were talking about the same damage. It didn’t take long for me to see what he was talking about: there were gouges in three or four places on each wheel, usually between lug holes on the spokes. I did not recall that damage, so I called to talk to the manager who requested I bring it back in. I did and he had a look at it. He said he wasn’t sure how that could’ve happened, but that it looked pretty fresh because the spots had no “oxidation” yet. I agreed that it looked fresh and asked him what was to be done. He said he wasn’t sure what equipment could’ve done that, but if it was new and I couldn’t think of any other cause, then they would have my wheels refinished. During our inspection, we also found some damage to the sidewall on one of the tires. That damage I could explain.

Now back to the beginning. A few days before, I had been driving to the gym when, in an attempt to play air drums with a double-bass pedal and drive, I accidentally clipped a curb on my way into the parking lot. At the time, I didn’t think much of it, but I did look at my driver’s side wheels to make sure I hadn’t done any serious damage. I didn’t see anything on either wheel, so I assumed that only the tire had made contact with the curb and that the wheels had been spared. So, I had inspected at least two of the wheels only three days before my visit to Discount, and that’s why I was so confident that the gouges on the spokes weren’t there before said visit.

Back to the middle. So, I left Discount feeling pretty good and thinking that, even if they did mess up my wheels, at least they were taking responsibility and having them refinished on their dime. It wasn’t half an hour before my phone rang and another manager wanted to talk to me. He said he was there when they noticed the damage before they started the work and that it was definitely already there. I asked, “Well, if there was damage and you noticed it before you started the work, why didn’t you come in and ask me if I had seen that damage? If I was in that situation, I’d ask the customer first to avoid this kind of confusion.” He did some side-stepping and then continued to insist that those marks looked like “balance marks” and that, since they hadn’t balanced the wheels, they couldn’t have done that damage. He asked if the tires had been balanced before and I told him I thought they had not, but that I would call my dealer to be sure.

I phoned my dealer who informed me that the tires had been balanced in November, eight months earlier, during a regular service visit. He said that it was unlikely they had damaged the wheels and that if the guy at Discount said the damage looked fresh, then it probably was. I agreed. He also said that there was nothing they could do to help me out since someone else had handled the wheels and it’d been so long since the dealer had worked on them anyway. I told him I understood.

So, I called Discount back and talked to the first manager again and told him what the dealer said. He said that when he committed to pay for the refinished, he was under the impression that Discount had also balanced the tires and not just rotated them. I said I understood, but that I was still confident that the damage hadn’t been there before I brought the car in. I began to get frustrated as I felt he was backing off from their commitment and that, even worse, they may take no responsibility for the damage. Trying to at least get some assistance, I offered to go halfsies on the refinish and he reluctantly agreed. We set an appointment for Monday morning so I could swap wheels with some loaners and my wheels could be sent to be refinished.

Now to the end (yes, finally). On my way to Discount this morning, I noticed that my “low tire pressure” indicator was lit, and I immediately wondered whether the sidewall damage had caused a leak. I asked the Discount guy to take a look since he’d be taking the tires off to put them on the loaner wheels anyway. Sure enough, the tire had a slow leak and had to be replaced. Lucky for me, he had one in stock. He was kind enough to charge me half price for the tire and recommended I get Discount’s lifetime replacement warranty on my tires. I had considered this before since the dealership did not guarantee the tires when they sold me the car. I decided to take the warranty at $23 per tire and I wish I’d done it sooner (since it would’ve already paid for itself).

So, after going to have a tire rotation, I ended up getting all four wheels refinished, a new tire and a replacement warranty on all four tires for a total cost of $455.

Lessons learned (for those too lazy, or too smart, to read this whole stupid post):

• Avoid air drums and other air instruments when driving around corners
• Inspect personal property before allowing someone else to work on it (this goes for cars, houses, shoes and anything else that may or may not be damaged before or after having the work done)
• Once a company has committed to something, don’t allow them to back down from it (like I did, which cost me about $250)
• When buying new tires (or when buying a vehicle with new tires), get a replacement warranty on them in case you catch a nail or, I dunno’, clip a curb or something–it will be well worth it or, at worst, a small investment in your peace of mind

EDIT: I was driving to lunch on Saturday afternoon (almost three days after the tire was replaced and the wheels were re-installed) when my “low tire pressure” light came on. Of course I wasn’t too happy about this, but I thought it could be that the Texas heat had caused my tires to become over-inflated. So, I went out and bought a little tire pressure gauge and checked everything out. Turns out my front driver’s side tire was down to 16.5 psi, which is about half what it should be. I inspected the tire and saw that there was a mark on the sidewall and I suspected it could be another slow-leaking tire. I put some air in it and the light went off, so I was convinced that this was indeed the troublesome tire.

This morning (Monday), the light came on as I left for work, so I decided to swing by Discount to have them look at it. Turns out they never replaced the tire before, so they put a new one on (for real this time). Hopefully this whole tire hassle is over.

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Today, as on many other boring Sunday afternoons, I turned to ESPN to keep me entertained. Sure enough, there was some Women’s 9-Ball Championship action, and it couldn’t have been more hilarious. Before you can experience the hilarity, it’s necessary to invest a little time watching a match, but it’s completely worth it.

After each match, ESPN will show the obligatory close-up shot of the loser. This moment must be savored as it is ever so brief, but jam-packed with unintentional comedy. In all of television, there may not be so much venom, ill-will and implied nastiness in such a short time as is consistently shown in this moment. One can only imagine the loser’s evil, evil thoughts as she eyeballs daggers directly into her opponent’s soul.

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Back to the… Office?

I passed a Delorean on my way to work this morning. I think I’ve only seen one other Delorean on the street, and that was eight or nine years ago. I was just humming the Back to the Future theme song and thinking, “Hey! A Delorean! That’s pretty freakin’ cool!” when I saw the Delorean’s driver and did a double-take. She was in her early forties, shoulder-length blond hair, probably a mother of two. I started to doubt myself–maybe it wasn’t a Delorean, but just some car that reminded me of a Delorean–so I slowed down to have another look. It was a Delorean all right, a Delorean being driven as a daily beater by a soccer mom. What is this world coming to?

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Thoughts from Florida

NOTE: I wrote most of this late one night as I sat awake at Dad’s house, just sitting and thinking. I don’t really remember what I wrote…

I’ve been in Florida for about 48 hours and I’ve only sneezed three times. I’m not sure what’s going on, but I should be completely overwhelmed by my allergies by now. A few minutes ago, I thought, “Hey! I’m breathing through my nose!” I am very sophisticated.

So far, I’ve seen almost everyone in my family, my friends’ nine-week-old baby and three people I hadn’t seen in several years. I hadn’t seen one guy since the late 90s. Technically, it’s now the late 2000s.

I have a job interview some time this week, but I don’t know when. The deal is that I’ll call some guy on Monday morning, then the guy will talk to me for a bit and maybe decide he wants to do a face-to-face interview some time this week. That’s super except I’m planning on going to Orlando this week, so I’ll need to change my plans. Of course, it’d be a lot easier to change my plans if I knew how I’d be changing my plans.

Lucky for me, I decided to rent a car, so I can make last-minute changes to my schedule. Unlucky for everyone else on the road, I got a Chevy Impala. Compared to the car I own, the Impala drives much like I imagine a tugboat drives. The blind spot might as well just be a posterboard that says “Watch out!” and I often imagine I’m trying to hug an oak tree when I grab the steering wheel. I think a lot of my impressions of the car are heavily influenced by the noxious smell that National included. I get the distinct impression that the dude who cleaned my car just opened the door, splashed a bottle of Clorox around and then sealed everything up.

My youngest brother is almost 10 months old. He’s always happy. I actually met him about seven months ago, just after he was born. Then, he just looked like every other baby I’d ever seen. But when I saw him yesterday, the first thing I thought was, “Holy cow… he looks just like I did at his age.” It’s almost creepy how similar we look. For his sake, I hope the trend doesn’t continue.

I’m being forced to consider the possibility that I could be offered a job here in Jacksonville. Since I left for college, I have consistently been opposed to living in Jacksonville, but I’ve never really been sure why. I think the main reason is that I was getting really bored with the city before I graduated high school. Maybe I think I’ll be bored if I move back here. That may be true, but I ain’t exactly livin’ la vida loca in Dallas either.

As I’ve grown up, I’ve been through phases defined by the stages of others’ lives. For instance, I remember when I entered the stage where everyone I knew started getting married. One after another, it seemed like everyone else was tying the knot. Then the babies started coming. A lot of the couples I know are on their second child. Now, some of the earliest to get married are beginning to consider divorce. What’s sad is that many of those couples were previously the couples having babies.

I don’t understand why people don’t take a little more time when deciding to get married. What they don’t realize is that divorce is rough on parents, but it’s their children who are really affected. They get married for a few years, have a kid, get divorced and they’ve moved on within a few years. But the kids won’t be moving on in a few years; it could be 10 or 20 years before the kids can move on.

A lot of people think I’m a pretty funny guy, and a lot of people think I’m an idiot who says stupid things. I know who’s who, and it doesn’t usually take me long to figure out what people think is funny. I met a couple friends for breakfast yesterday and I realized that, although I hadn’t seen either of them in a few years, I still knew exactly what kinda’ stuff would make them laugh. There’s no such thing as something that is empirically funny. Funny is nothing but a perception, and funny people can identify what other people perceive as funny, then use those things to make people laugh. If you don’t think I’m funny, you might consider that I simply don’t want to make you laugh.

My little sister talked me into playing Candy Land with her today. I think she may have hustled me. She kept saying stuff like, “Oh wow! You might win this game!” and “If you just land on that bridge, you’ll be in the lead!” But she just kept beating the crap out of me. We played like three games and I never had a chance in any of them. On its face, Candy Land appears to be totally based on luck, but I think she might have figured out a way to get an edge. After she killed me in Candy Land, we switched to “Gold Fish”, which I later realized was her own version of Go Fish. We each started with only four cards and I later found out that we were playing with a 47-card deck. Neither of us ever won, but after we finished each game, she’d say, “I don’t know why they didn’t put very many Aces in there… do you wanna’ play again?” I think she was playing some kind of mind game with me.

My big-little brother is a black belt in Karate. He was telling me how there’s one student in his class that consistently beats up on all the other kids. He told me this kid once beat every student in sparring, one at a time, in a class of 25 students who ranged from rank beginners to experienced black belts. When I went to observe his class today, he pointed her out to me: she was the 95-pound, thirteen-year-old, second-degree black belt instructing his class. I imagine she’s going to have a hard time finding dudes to date since she probably considers most boys to be pansies or sissies.

My cell phone doesn’t work in my Dad’s house, so I have to go drive around the neighborhood looking for a signal. Earlier this evening, I took a drive to check my messages and I had a couple voicemails and text messages. I realized I wouldn’t be able to return any of my messages if I went back to the house, so I decided to keep driving around while I got in touch with everyone. My plan was working out pretty well until I realized how dangerous it was to be driving around at night, in a rental car, in an unfamiliar part of town while thumbing out text messages on my phone. Did I stop? No. I just kept driving and texting while occasionally saying, “This is stupid.”

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Same company, new job, new building

A couple weeks ago, I interviewed for a new internal job with my company. I got the job, but it’ll require me to commute with traffic both to and from work. I became increasingly concerned about this since every time I mentioned that I was moving to this new building, the conversation was always similar:

“Yeah, I’m moving down to the Dallas building.”
“Oh really? Where are you coming from?”
“North Plano.”
“Oh. Ah. EEEEEeeeewwwwwwww… That’s rough man [you should just kill yourself and be done with it].”

It was like I’d just punched the other person in the face, their portentous*, vicarious pain was off the charts. Yesterday I left at 4:30, which is about when rush hour starts getting nasty, and I was home in about 20 minutes. Today, I left my apartment at 7:45 and I was at work by 8:00. I’m pretty sure that’s a shorter drive than I was making to the old building, against traffic. I’m not getting too excited yet because this is a short workweek in the middle of vacation season, so traffic could just be unusually light.

One big perk to my new assignment is that I have a “one-man cube”. At my old building, one-man cubes were difficult tough to come by. The unwritten rule is that you have to be an E03 (read: “E-three”) or higher to get a one-man. E01 (new hire) and E02 (that’s me!) employees share a two-man cube. Obviously, the major driver for this “rule” is a lack of space in my old building. If they had the space, I’m sure everyone would at least have a one-man cube and maybe even a prestigious “high wall” appropriation, but because space is short, they’ve created these rules where the new people get to have cube-mates. The other day, I joked that they were going to have to start assigning co-ops and interns to bathroom stalls if the space problem isn’t dealt with. Anyway, there’s plenty of space in my new building, so I have a very spacious one-man cube.

* I wanted to use “portenful”, but dictionary.com says that ain’t a word, which is odd because I’m pretty sure Romeo screams out “I am portentful!” in Romeo & Juliet and “Shakespeare” repeats the word several times in Shakespeare in Love. Actually, I just checked Drew’s Script-O-Rama and neither movie script has the word “portentful” in it. Am I just imagining that I heard that word? I can totally see Joseph Fiennes saying it! I was kind of hoping it was one of those words that Shakespeare just made up, but that maybe it hadn’t survived to modern English. If that were true, maybe I would’ve looked smart or something. Now? Now, I just look like a doofus who’s written more about how he can’t remember stuff than about the topic of his post. Of course, that’s not even entirely true since I’ve clearly written more in the body of this post than in this asterisk (Is this an asterisk, footnote, aside? I have no idea). What’s my problem?

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I am a Benevolent Leader (?)

I think this thing may be giving me too much credit in the “benevolence” department, but I guess that’s not really for me to decide. It is what it is:

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One too many mimosas?

I may’ve driven to work behind Drinky McDrunkerson this morning. The driver in front of me couldn’t seem to keep between the lines despite the unusually wide lanes here (everything is bigger in Texas!). He would center it up, then expertly glide his way over to the rumble strip, then ease back into the roadway. This went on for about 15 minutes before he swayed across the centerline, into the right lane and just decided to stay there for a while. He was kind enough to get off at my exit, then stop a “Yield to ramp” sign, although we were the ramp and there was no other traffic. To his credit, he did have out-of-state tags, but I’m pretty sure it’s customary to drive between the lines in most other states.

I also had the pleasure of driving behind an “over-braker” for a while. These are my favorite. They swoop in from another lane, barely sneaking in between me and the car ahead of me. Then, once they’ve filled that little gap, they hit the brakes because, uh oh!, they’re too close to the car in front of them. Once they’ve made a little space for themselves, they realize that, “Wait a second… the only reason I’m in this spot is that I cut that dude off because he was following by exactly a car length! What if someone else cuts me off? I better fill that gap in front of me!” So, they speed up until, uh oh!, they’re too close to the car in front of them. Rinse, repeat.

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I didn’t officially get the memo, but I’m pretty sure it’s National bring your kids to Chick-Fil-A and let them do whatever they please Day.  My frequent lunch stop is a Chick-Fil-A just down the street from my office.  Generally, the kids and parents congregate near the play area, which is conveniently located on the opposite end of the restaurant from where I sit.  The manager has explained to me that he tried to segregate the place to keep the kiddies from aggravating everyone else (yes, I know the manager guy and no, I don’t care how much of a loser I am).  Today, all the parents must’ve gotten together, given their kids copious amounts of caffeine and decided that the tables near the play area were off limits.  It all began innocently enough, but by the time I finished eating, there were about 4,200 kids sitting within three feet of me, and each of them was screaming, crying, jumping, banging, kicking or just generally being annoying.  Curiously, I could only count about three parents among the crowd, and all of them seemed more interested in just sitting there than keeping their kids away from my table.  Not surprisingly, it was very difficult to read my book, eat, and not want to smash a butterfly.   

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