See car, buy car

Last week, I found one in the paper and had it checked out at my mechanic. They found $5,000 of stuff wrong with it -- $3,000 of which would have to happen immediately. It was down a quart of oil. I made a low-ball offer last Saturday. I haven't heard back. I hereby rescind the offer.

Near the start of my search, I called the dealership where we bought our last car and asked about a car they had advertised on the net. It wasn't what I wanted, but I told friendly Ali exactly what I wanted. He called yesterday evening and described the car to me. I didn't feel a tremendous need to move immediately, but he seemed understandably excited for me to come and take a look at this car. Today. OK. Before our hair cut, Milo and I would take a look.

And so we did. Year, model, body style, trim line, transmission: check, check, check, check, check. Color: check. Price: Ick! I drove it a couple of miles, flipped some switches, glanced under the hood, and told Ali that it was the car I wanted but that I needed to get it for the right price and I needed my mechanic to bless it. I prepared to wait until the end of the month if necessary. And if it sold, then it wasn't meant to be.

He strongly encouraged me to make him an offer very quickly. I'd done my research, so knew the parameters. I gave him a low-ball number: more in the private-party price range than the dealer. I expected him to laugh. He immediately counter-offered, but only $400 higher. Under my bottom-line price. I stalled. I told him I needed to talk with my manager. We huddled. Sondra assented. I called to clarify that I could get the car inspected. He said that would no problem and offered that if they found any problems over $500 that they'd fix it or void the deal. OK. We ate a quick dinner and trundled -- kids and all -- down to the dealership.

Milo and Ella had a great time collecting new car brochures and crawling in and out of showroom models, while we waited for the paperwork. Sondra took it for a quick spin around the block. I would have let Sondra go home, but I wanted to be able to walk away from the deal if they pulled any funny business. Didn't happen. Took a long time, but I drove it home.

In theory, I prefer to buy privately, but I've bought two used cars at Honda of Seattle, and had good experiences both times. We'll see how they react if the inspection finds anything dodgy. More later! Hell, start to finish, this took two hours. Not bad.

And now, I have a grown-up car. Imagine that.

For sale: 1982 Accord 5-speed hatchback, 176K, clean, reliable, lovingly maintained. $1,000.   

11:57:23 PM  comment []    

NPR: Free Books in Public Places

As Neda Ulaby reports [on] an online trend that has people committing "random acts of kindness" and then tracking the results on the Net. The site BookCrossing.com, for instance, links a loosely organized collection of people who share books. It works like this: someone who wants to share a book registers it on the Web site, prints out a label and puts it in the book. The book is then placed (members call it "released") in some public place, and the winds of fate take over. Theoretically, whoever finds the book will go to the site and record where they found it, and what they thought of it. Then they'll pass it on.

So what books would you release?

My list:

• Patrick O'Brian: Master and Commander
• David Brin: Startide Rising
• Martha Beck: Expecting Adam

Listen  

4:48:07 PM  comment []    

Ken Layne: Official Terror Blogs

And I've got a simple solution: all those agencies should create a Terror Blog. A group blog would be an easy way for any office of any agency to post the information and get it to everybody else. The blog would be read each morning in the Oval Office, during Bush's intelligence briefing, as well as at all the agencies and offices that contribute. Put stuff in one place and it's very difficult for information to fall through the cracks.

I don't know. The people, they can't be trusted with anything but pre-digested pap.  

4:39:31 PM  comment []