Kate's Space

Today I had an appointment with an auto shop to get a 60k check-up for my car.  I love my car.  She's a 2002 Infiniti G20, she's midnight blue, and her name is Trinity.  I may have blogged about her in the past.  Anyway, I once got roped into an unnecessary and expensive "engine flush" at the Infinity of Kirland dealership, so ever since then I have been very wary of auto shops.  You never know when you're getting screwed.  Luckily, my dad is a mechanic with over 40 years of experience, so whenever they tell me I need any "extra" service, I always call my dad and check with him first.  (During the engine flush incident, my dad wasn't answering his phone.  He called me back to tell me I was getting screwed about 5 minutes after I had authorized the service.  Doh!)

 

I was getting dressed today and was about to put on a Red Sox t-shirt since they're in town, but I hesitated.  What if the guys at the shop hate the Red Sox?  Then they'd for sure want to screw me.  I also didn't want to wear anything that looked too expensive because then I'd look like a good target - someone they could screw over without feeling too bad about it.  So I "dressed down" a little with a hooded sweatshirt.  But I did put on a little make-up because I think you can get better service if you look attractive and have a winning smile.  I think I play up the "I'm poor and cute, like a daughter or niece to you, so please don't screw me over" card.  Don't get me wrong, I assume the guys at this shop are decent, fair, people, but just in case I'd rather cover my bases.

 

I believe there is strategy in almost everything we do.  We make our own luck.  A while back I wrote about this in my entry about the book The Luck Factor.

 

So far they've called and said I needed new brakes.  I checked with pops and it sounds legit.  Hoping it's nothing else.  For the 60k service, Infiniti of Kirkland was charging $1100 and this place was charging $260.  Have I mentioned how much Infiniti of Kirkland price gouges?  Infiniti dealership in Brighton, MA was awesome and very fair, just FYI, so they're not all evil.

 

Back to the strategy thing, I also do my hair before a haircut, so they can see that I care about my hair looking good and they'll do a better job.  And I brush my teeth before the dentist.  If you are making a purchase that involves negotiations and decide to dress down, you have to speak intelligently so you don't get pegged as a dumb kid.  It's tricky stuff... 

I've been on a little bit of a Spring cleaning kick.  Got rid of a ton of books, now I'm moving on to clothes.  Fascinating, I know.  I can't believe you're reading this.

Stolen from Fil's Blog where I'm guessing he found the article on digg.  This is a moving account of what life is actually like for a morbidly obese woman.  I hate it when I hear people making fun of fat people.  It's even worse when my friends do it - luckily a rare occurrence, but it makes me lose respect for them.  Anyway I had no idea just how bad it was until I read this article:

http://thesugarmonster.livejournal.com/114631.html 

My work laptop was really sluggish this morning, so I decided to reboot.  24 minutes later it's finally back to normal.  I decided to install some updates during the reboot.  Then when those finally were installed, the network adapter wasn't working, so I had to reset that.  Adding up the time when your computer is completely unusable during updates and restarts (let's say about 24 minutes every update that requires a reboot), multiplying by all the employees of Microsoft, times the average salary per minute.  That's about $300,000 per update, and way more if you account for all the other companies in the world who have employees running Vista.  My math might be off but still, it's such a waste of time.  Sitting around waiting.  There's gotta be a better way.

 

On a positive note, Microsoft finally got rid of the orange styrofoam cups (which were not pleasant to drink water out of) and they've replaced them with paper green cups.  I think they should have thinner disposable cups for water.  I get why they need to be so thick and sturdy for coffee, but why not have smaller water cups.  It kills me to huge such a huge cup when I just want a little water.  I could carry around a Nalgene but those have issues too, and I'm totally anti-mug.  Lots of issues this morning. :-)

Amsterdam airport is funny.  If anybody doesn't show up in time for boarding they call them out really loud over the loudspeaker and reprimand them.  "Passenger X Y travelling to Z, you are delaying the flight."  Makes me laugh.  I'm off to Florence in an hour.  Will add more travel observations soon.  Internet access about to expire...