I hate vehicle shopping.  I hate haggling.  I hate the “car buying experience”.  Nothing about it appeals to me.  Nothing about it is enjoyable for me (not even the “new car” smell).  The only time I ever really enjoyed buying a car was in 1977 when I bought a 1972 Ford Galaxie 500 (my first car) for $900 cash, free and clear.

It remains, in my opinion, the single most endearing quality of online shopping, that you can find something you want or need, look at the price, decide if you are willing to pay it or not, and then buy the thing or not.  Nice.  Neat.  Clean.  Add people (especially people who are working on commission) to the equation and it gets all messy.

But, I do appreciate art, and car salesmen (the good ones, at least) are artists.  I’ll give the guy today credit; his patter was good, the pace was good, he didn’t do anything illegal and to the best of my knowledge and/or recollection, never actually lied about anything.  Still, when all was said and done, I figure the deal cost me about a thousand dollars and one junk truck more than it could have if I had been on my game.

It is, however, a nice truck.  The Head Rat likes it (even though it is the same color as our next door neighbor’s truck and similar to the color of the other next door neighbor’s car).  It rides good (ok, it doesn’t ride good, it rides like a truck, but it rides better that the one I traded in).  It doesn’t have the rear bench seat like the old Ratmobile did (the Head Rat sees that as a feature, not a bug, since it means we don’t have the room to cart various and sundry neighbors and acquaintances around with us) but there is a storage area behind the seats accessible by doors about half the size of the ones on an extended cab with a back seat.  It also has extremely low mileage.  And, as near as I can tell, given the fancy names they give things so as to be able to list them as features, I still paid below Blue Book.

In the end, the only criteria that matters is whether I’m satisfied with the value for my money.  (OK, that’s not true.  The only criteria that matters is whether the Head Rat is satisfied with the value for my money.)  Do I think I could have gotten it for less?  Probably.  Do I think the salesman tried to maximize his commission on the deal?   Absolutely.  Do I think I got a great deal?  No.  Do I think I got ripped off?  No.  Am I going to lose sleep fussing about it?  Nope.  (Not at least until the first payment comes due, since it’s been a while since I’ve had a car payment.)

If I get around to it, I may post a picture tomorrow, mostly for Rat Jr.’s benefit.  I figure she might like to see what a truck that hasn’t been run into a post at the ATM, twice, at the same ATM, looks like.  (Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more.)

*********

On the purely positive side, the speedloaders for my .357 AND my boxed set of the Excel Saga anime both came in the mail today.

Is this internet thingy cool, or what?

Nothing random this week. I’ve been listening to the new Nine Inch Nails album to the exclusion of all else. The Slip has, coincidentally*, ten songs, so here it is:

1. 999,999

2. 1,000,000

3. Letting You

4. Discipline

5. Echoplex

6. Head Down

7. Lights in the Sky

8. Corona Radiata

9. The Four of Us are Dying…

10. Demon Seed

My favorite at the moment is Echoplex, followed by Discipline, but that may change after I have time to digest the album a bit more.

*as long as we’re talking about random, meaningless coincidences, if you take such things as omens, bet on the Red Wings to win the Stanley Cup. They won it the last time we painted our living room red. As we’ve just done it again, I figure it’s a sure bet, right? And there you sit with your economic stimulus check burning a hole in your pocket…

I’ve said before (although I don’t think it was on this web site) that my job/life is sort of like herding squirrels:

1. I’m never completely successful

2. I’m never completely finished

3. On a good day no one gets run over by a car

That said, the past couple of days haven’t been all that bad, even though one of my staff did get hit by a car this evening.  (No serious injuries)  I didn’t say anything really stupid or offensive to the inspectors who showed up at work yesterday.  The side-effects of my latest medication are diminishing.  We’re on the final leg of our re-painting project here at the Ratlands.  Rat Jr. tells me she may have found someone who will do the artwork for my Global Warming Wear T-shirts.  And, my concealed carry holster, extra magazines and some other assorted goodies I ordered arrived about 42 hours after I ordered them.

All in all, not a bad couple of days.

I was getting my thoughts together over the weekend to write about drastic increases in food costs vs. increases in gasoline costs.

As is usually the case, the subject is covered at Coyote Blog:

1. Before I could get to it
2. More eloquently than I could have done it.

(you really should be reading Warren regularly)

Although not my favorite band, I’ve quite enjoyed Nine Inch Nails over the years. So it is with some relish that I pass on the news that Trent Reznor is giving away (via download) the new NIN album, The Slip. (via Samizdata)

…and finds the results disturbing.

According to my doctor, I am now hovering just above the threshold at which one gets labeled Type II diabetic.  So, I’m back to the regular blood testing routine, being more careful about what I eat, and this time, he prescribed metformin to help with the process.

I started taking it a week and a half ago.  To make a rather long, ugly story short(er), apparently I’m one of the fraction of a percent of people who just can’t take the stuff.  Over the course of a week, I got weak, short of breath, dizzy, light-headed almost to the point of fainting when I stood up.  Oh yeah, then there was the disorientation thing.  I actually don’t really remember last Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.  I know I went to work.  I know I did training for some new staff.  I don’t remember what I talked about.

This set of side effects is apparently related to lactic acidosis which is, in turn, a side effect of metformin for some of us “special” people.

I’m now on something else, and in comparison, the current set of side effects (nausea, headache, and other delightful gastro-intestinal goodies) are liveable.

The part that disturbs me isn’t that I don’t remember a good chunk of last week, it is that I apparently functioned well enough to get by while effectively on autopilot.

As mentioned previously, I’ve been flirting with wireless internet for my computer.  Unfortunately, after I installed it, my Firefox browser quit working.  I guess it didn’t like the USB wireless setup.  Anyway, for the past 3 days (when not painting or making my daily trip to Wal-Mart for more supplies) I’ve been trying to get Firefox back.

If you aren’t a Firefox user (and if not, why not?) it might be hard to fathom why I would get really upset by not being able to use it.  It is all the add-ons that do all the cool little things that IE can’t that make it worth the trouble of completely uninstalling it, deleting profiles and then completely re-installing it.  So, I’m a much happier person now that I’ve got it working.

As to the Wal-Mart thing, the Head Rat (who is probably OCD) sometimes gets fixated on things.  Things like “I know it’s 1:00 AM, but we need more paintbrushes NOW!”  Since we’ve been working on completely repainting the place, I have been at Wal-Mart at least once every day.  This is now 10 days straight.

Being on a first name basis with the greeters at the front door is just wrong.  My favorite greeter (yes, I have a favorite greeter) is a guy named Al.  That fact that I know what Al’s days off are is even more wrong than knowing all of their names.

Again today, I managed to see the local news. The big story today was something about how the station is doing a piece designed to help people with their resumes and job applications because it is so hard to find a job around here. You know how tough times are and how there just aren’t any jobs to be had.

Meanwhile, out in the real world, I was out at the local Wal-Mart today buying paint. While I was waiting for the shaker thing to mix it up, I got into a conversation with the department manager. He was telling me how short-handed his department is, how he is constantly interviewing, and how he just can’t find enough people to fill all his positions. Perhaps that’s because the unemployment rate here is about 4%.

Now I remember very little from the Econ 101 class I took in college 30 years ago, but I do remember that 4% unemployment is considered full employment because at any given time 4 out of 100 workers will have quit or been fired; normal job movement. Telling the local citizenry that jobs are hard to find without actually checking out the job market is either incredibly lazy or (gasp) politically motivated.

You know, apparently I am qualified to be a professional journalist. I am fully capable of just making stuff up without bothering to do any research or investigation or being bothered to find any sources.

Being home this week has afforded me the opportunity to watch the news.  I suppose I should do it more often, but I really don’t have the patience.  I kid the Head Rat about talking to the TV like they can really hear her, but I find  myself unable to refrain from yelling at the idiots who pass for journalists.

Today the talking heads were yapping about rising prices.  Apparently some congresscritters were having very public hearing so as to be seen being concerned about our well being.  The topic was, of course, rising oil and gas prices.  Some idiot had this great idea where we would stop buying oil to fill the National Reserve.  He seemed genuinely impressed by his claim that the lowering of demand that this would cause could lower the price of gas by two whole cents a gallon.

Weren’t we talking about ways to get people to use less gas a few months ago?  Weren’t all of our righteously environmentally and politically correct  bretheren whining about how we should find ways to force people  to reduce gasoline consumption?  Things like increasing  the price a dollar a gallon (when it was still below $3) through taxation?

Well, I’m pretty sure market forces are influencing people to use less gas.  Having the price close to $4 per gallon tends to do that.  Of course, like this, it’s no  good, because the government (as directed by the winning NGO’s and lobbyists) isn’t collecting a bunch of new tax money to spend on “appropriate” things.

You want to know how to lower the price of gas by over 18 cents per gallon, Mr. I’m So Concerned About the Plight of the Little People?  Repeal all Federal taxes on gasoline.  Simple.

But, no.  That would never occur to a congresscritter.  Interfering with the revenue stream just ain’t ever going  to even be a possibility.  Better to talk big about helping those who are suffering by 2 cents per gallon and then go after “Big Oil”.  Because making a profit is a bad thing.

Yeah, I know, Oil company profits are HUGE!   Yup.  And Oil company sales are huger.  Last time I checked, the profit margin for Big Oil was significantly less than the profit margin for the major players in the newspaper industry.  But, you don’t hear anyone talking about price gouging by Big News.  Nor do you hear about those other evil entities like Big Wheat, Big Rice, Big Corn, etc.

I think  I had a point to make when I started this, but I’ve forgotten what it was.  Maybe it was just a reminder to myself of why I shouldn’t watch the news.

We’re doing a major batch of painting and spring housecleaning this week.  My office has been a special kind of hell-hole.  I tend to accumulate a lot of “potentially useful” electronic stuff.  For example, In my office right now are two VCR’s, a DVR, two stereo receivers, three sets of computer speakers and enough cables, wires and connectors to completely re-stock a Radio Shack.  In order to clear most of that stuff out, I’ve moved the computer to the living room and am using the HD TV as a monitor.

Surfing the net from the couch is kind of cool, but it has been a pain getting it all set up, as the ‘puter doesn’t seem to like the combination of wireless keyboard, wireless mouse, and wireless internet connection, all done via USB.  I don’t know how long this is going to last, but I’ll probably be posting from the couch for a week or so.

Or not.  I may get tired of all of this and move it back to the office and just try to work around it.  (Probably not a good idea, since I have some patching of sheetrock to do, which will entail quite a bit of sanding.)

I am looking forward to the nice dark green walls I will have when we’re done, however.  I just couldn’t resist choosing a paint color called “Tea Leaf Green”.