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That’s what you’ll see now if you look at the rear bumper of Amber’s Aura. I went to Subway to pick up some food for dinner. I ordered and paid then walked out the door just in time to see the guy who had been in front of me in line backing his SUV straight into the car. I swear if I hadn’t been there yelling at him he would have just driven away.

I called the police and basically learned it would be worthless for them to come out unless there was more significant damage. So we swapped insurance information and I drove home wishing Quizno’s had been open (the first choice for dinner). Obviously this was totally his fault since our car was stationary in a parking space and I wasn’t even in it. Looking back on it, though, I realized I really should have checked around to see if anyone saw what happened so they could be listed as a witness for the claim. Even though it was clearly his fault, I don’t want to get stuck paying the $500 deductible. I already called State Farm and gave them all the info for our claim, so now I get to sit back and wait for our rep to call to figure out what happens next.

My God, you’d think the world is coming to an end. I realize he is a living legend. He is one of the greatest football players of my lifetime and in the entire history of the game. He’s set almost every record possible. Of course, “he” is Brett Favre.

I don’t know how I managed to make it through most of the afternoon on Tuesday before I heard that he was retiring because I definitely haven’t heard much of anything else since then. He got at least the first two pages of the paper and has had at least one main story and a sports story in pretty much every local newscast for the past two days. The NFL Network is running a special on him called “Brett Favre 4-Ever” - how clever. Several local networks are doing their own tributes.

Of course he couldn’t just make the announcement and be done. In fact, there’s a good possibility that it’s been in the works for a few days, since the Packers site slipped up last Thursday and put up a breaking news post that he was retiring. The word came out officially on Tuesday, but he waited until today to hold a press conference so everyone would have time to reflect and speculate about what he’d say in his final goodbye. Then everyone got together to have a big cry-fest and talk about how they can’t believe he won’t be leading The Pack next year. C’mon guys - how is an old quarterback making the logical decision to retire after a phenomenal season such a big deal? Why is it that Packers fans and the media are shocked by this? I’ve heard in more than one place that some people actually believe he may have been forced to retire - what?

Let’s be realistic here. Brett Favre had a phenomenal season, even by his standards. How could he ever top that? If he didn’t retire now he would risk becoming that guy who can’t let go until he really is forced out because he can’t hack it any more. The only way he can say he didn’t go out on top is that his last NFL pass was an interception that ended his chance at another Super Bowl ring. As ironic as that may be, the timing was right. Get over it.

Kansas got incredibly lucky - #8 and they’re in the Orange Bowl despite not even playing for the Big XII championship. Missouri got totally screwed - #6 that beat Kansas head to head and no BCS bowl at all. The only unbeaten is Hawaii and they’re all the way down at #10. Yep, the BCS still doesn’t work. Go Hawaii.

Update: A better recap.

So I haven’t really been paying too much attention to this writers’ strike thing up to this point, but I guess I really should be. For one, a bunch of shows I like to watch are affected. The premiere of 24 has been indefinitely delayed because FOX wants the season to air uninterrupted. Family Guy has one finished episode, and a whole bunch of unfinished ones; since Seth MacFarlane is walking a picket line in LA, there’s a good chance they’ll stay that way for a while. The next season of Lost is only half finished. Jon Stewart announced on last Thursday’s Daily Show that they wouldn’t be on the air this week. I’m sure the list goes on.

Now the second reason I should care. A big part of why the writers are striking has to do with “new media” a.k.a. the internet. With all kinds of content showing up on line (paid and free) there’s some money involved. The writers don’t feel like they’re getting any benefit from this new stuff and they want their share. This is the kind of discussion I find interesting.

The problem is I don’t know which side I come down on. On the one hand, I understand why the writers might want a piece of the new media pie, and I would even say they are probably entitled to their cut. However, I think they may be grossly overestimating how much money studios and producers are actually making, especially with many networks now offering shows online for free with minimal to no commercials. At the same time, NBC was one instance of a network seemingly doing well selling the shows you can watch for free on TV. Then they go get greedy and pull away from what seemed to be a successful partnership with Apple selling shows on iTunes and what are they making now? C’mon people - get it figured out and stop punishing your audience by keeping their favorite shows off the air.

I don’t care how you look at it, this man is just sad. Granted a lot of what I know about him comes from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, but it sounds like they really didn’t have to do much to make him look like a total douchebag. I find it extremely ironic that if you begin a Google search for Albert Gonzales and look at the suggested searches, “Alberto Gonzales Resignation” has 1,230,000 results, “Alberto Gonzales should resign” has 837,000, and “Alberto Gonzales should be fired” has 731,000 results. His Wikipedia article has an entire section devoted to Calls for resignation or firing. It’s obvious to pretty much everybody that the guy is lying through his teeth. How does he still have job? An even better question, how can the president still be supporting him?

President Bush said today that the Congressional testimony of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales last week, roundly panned by members of both parties, “in a way increased my confidence in his ability to do the job.”

Oh. Dear. God.

We’re finally here in Jamaica, but the trip here wasn’t exactly smooth. After waking up at 3:30 to head to the airport, our flight finally left Chicago around 7AM. So in just over 3 hours we should have been landing in Montego Bay.

Now it’s Tuesday morning, and we’ve slept for 11 hours and just finished our room service breakfast. We’re about to head down to orientation and figure out what to do with the rest of our day.

I really enjoyed this article about DRM:

Here is the problem, every DRM infection is unique, patented, copyrighted, copywronged, and DMCAd ad nauseum, They protect their code in every way possible, and make it so you have to get their approval to use it. This is all done under the guise of protecting content, but that is a lie. If you are going to steal content, do you think violating another copyright on the DRM mechanism will make you lose more sleep? Not a chance.

If you are a rival company though, you can’t really violate such things and get away with it for long, Sony, MS and most people swiping GPLd code are proof of that. So, you have to license it to play ball, or at least play music and movies. That is the true nature of DRM infections, to keep other big greedy companies out.

This guy gets it. It’s not about the content and it’s not about consumers. It’s about competition, and in this case more competition is not better for us.

Maybe it’s just because I’m not in school anymore, but I notice people doing stupid stuff in public a lot more than I ever used to (and I always have to a certain extent).

Look, the world is not your personal playground. Do not share with us your musical tastes; do not share with us your latest wheelings and dealings. In public places, you have an obligation to hold up your end of the implied social contract by not imposing yourself on those around you. This is crucial to a civilized society and just because technology allows you to act like a braying ass in public doesn’t mean you should do it.

Just today I was in Arby’s for lunch and someone behind the counter started singing along with the song playing in the restaurant. Was she in tune? Was she in synch? No. Did anyone want to hear it? No. I’m sick of going bowling (non-league) and having the alley overrun by stupid kids with no parents around doing whatever they want. So read this article on how to squelch your inner jackass and pay attention. And the next time you’re in a public place, ask yourself, “Does someone else think I’m a jackass?”

• Don’t misspeak when giving the customer an estimate of the work to be done to his car leaving him to speculate if the estimate was even for the correct vehicle or price.
• Don’t continue to give estimates of when the work will be done when it becomes clear that you will be wrong.
• Don’t get “too busy” to call the customer and tell him why his car isn’t ready.
• Don’t believe you shouldn’t call the customer to tell him about his car because if he wants a status update he will call and ask.
• Don’t run around all over the city for a day and half looking for a part that no one carries and not tell your customer it’s a big cause of the delay.
• Don’t tell your customer it is OK for him to be angry if you don’t mean it.
• Don’t imply that you don’t care if your customer is angry because your shop is already busier than it can handle. You’re not helping your case.
• Don’t assume your customer will be satisfied when the total price tag comes in under the estimate when you have given him absolutely no details along the way about why the work is taking so long.
• And for God’s sake, DON’T get angry and start cussing when the customer still isn’t happy just because you came in under the estimate (which was already in question) and then start a debate about what is considered cussing. (For the record, I would not consider “going to hell and back” to be cussing, however dropping the F-Bomb in front of a customer is never appropriate no matter how angry you or he may be.)

I’d like to clarify a few things without getting too lengthy. All of these guidelines were broken by McDermott’s Service and Repair when I took my car to them to replace my head gasket and fix an oil leak. Once I was finally able to talk to the mechanic actually doing the work (Troy), I was given most of the answers I was looking for and I felt mildly better. He told me that once he opened up my engine he found a lot of little oddities from previous work that required a lot of tweaking and extra parts to fix. One rubber fitting was mashed back into place and horribly deformed, etc. While unfortunate, those things are not unreasonable. I understand that these things happen. I realize it takes time to get parts from other vendors. These things are all acceptable to me.

However, the lack of information from Debbie who answers the phones and makes the estimates was maddening. I finally went to pick up my car this evening. When I started to convey my dissatisfaction to Paul, another guy who works there, he was mildly sympathetic, but tones quickly changed and he proceeded to piss me off even more. I was told that they had been spending a lot of time looking for a part that no one seemed to carry. They were finally able to find one and got the work done fairly quickly from there. Still, Paul didn’t seem to mind that I was pissed off and even got angry with me when I wasn’t overjoyed when the price was less than the estimate.

It’s probably too early to tell, but I believe they probably did some very fine work. Troy seemed very knowledgeable in the 10 minutes or so that I talked to him and this place was recommended by someone at Epic. I’m not even mad about the price, I think it was probably very fair for all the extra work they had to do but weren’t expecting. However, the complete lack of customer service gives me a great reason to never go back. You can get quality automotive work done at lots of places; the things that set one apart from others are the customer service and a fair deal. Paul getting angry enough to cuss in front of me is just ridiculous and Debbie’s apologies and assurances that she really does know what she’s doing are not enough to salvage this experience for me. I believe it was an honest mistake on her part, but her apologies just weren’t worth much when stacked up with all the rest. I won’t be back, and I assured them I would be sharing my story (both good parts and bad) with the rest of Epic (at 2,000+ strong with lots of friends and family) before the week is over.

It’s been a strange day. It started out with me getting a ride to work from Chris again (more on this in a minute), followed by 4 long boring hours of Prelude Administration. I ate a quick lunch then walked 10 minutes back to my office. We’re moving to a new building on Monday and since I’m taking Friday off, I needed to pack up my stuff. I got everything organized and onto my moving cart and ended up leaving around 3PM because Chris decided he was ready to duck out early. All in all, not too bad for a work day, but that’s not the annoying part.

About 3 weeks ago I took my car to Jiffy Lube for an oil change. I already knew I had an oil leak that was getting progressively worse and they confirmed it was something they could not fix. I started trying to figure out where I could take it and got some recommendations via the Classifieds at work. A few calls and my options ranged from estimates of $600 to just under $1,000 to fix the problem. I ended up going with the cheapest place, although it wasn’t my first choice simply because of the strong recommendations for a one-man shop not far from here that wasn’t much more.

I think I made a huge mistake. First, the cost was doubled because the problem was worse than originally thought. I was told it should be done Monday or possibly Tuesday. Tuesday came and went and I was informed that it wasn’t done yet. So I called again today during a break from class and was informed they were waiting on a part. They were expecting it anytime and my car should be ready today. Ok, not so bad. But there’s more…

I’d been home for about 15 minutes when I get a call.

I’m calling to let you know that we just got your parts from the shop. I’ve got some bad news for you. It’ll take three more hours to get it done. It won’t be done today.

Keep in mind that tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I asked when they were open next, already knowing the answer was going to be Monday. I responded by saying that was pretty much unacceptable, that my family was coming into town and I needed my car. She offered to “hook me up with a rental” which I considered for about thirty seconds before she said they would only pay for half. Half of $25 bucks a day for five days? I don’t think so. Not when I’m already paying out the nose for this repair.

So lets recap. I’ve been given an estimate on the cost; it’s doubled. I’ve been given two estimates on when it would be done and both have come and gone. I’ll have been without the car for a week and a half. Not to mention the costs involved make less and less sense the more I think about it. One part plus installation = $600. Two parts doubles the cost. Wait a minute…I can understand doubling the cost of the part, but once they take the engine apart to install the first one, they don’t have to take it apart again. Why should the cost of labor double as well? That makes no sense. Let’s just say they’ll have a hard time convincing me to pay their full price when I go to pick it up on Monday (assuming it’s even ready). I wonder how they’ll react when I let them know that I work in a company of over 2000 employees, the majority of which will read the story of my experience with McDermott’s Service and Repair.

The day wasn’t all bad. My family got here before bowling and it was good to see them, although it was a little tainted from the events with the car. League also went pretty well tonight. Although my first and third games were nothing special, my second was a 196, my new high score and the best so far for our team. Only 2 open frames and 7 strikes (4 of them consecutive). Let’s just say I was shocked.

Lost was also pretty good tonight. I finally understand where Ana Lucia is coming from, but I still don’t think her past gives her an excuse to be such a bitch. They’ve got a long ways to go before they get me to like her.