22 January 2001 CE 10:52 PST
An Exercise in Stupidity (and other misc stuff)
So the bank doesn't pre-approve people for car loans. You should all be familiar with my experiences with the bank by now. So allow me to explain to you just what happens. To get approval for a loan you have to have signed a purchase agreement with the dealer. For the dealer to sign a purchase agreement with you you have to have been approved for a loan. Do we see where this goes? For A to be true, B must be true. For B to be true, A must be true. They have to happen at the same time. I feel like I'm in a bad time travel episode of a sci-fi show.
For those of you who weren't around for my bouncing around beeing cheerful, I got a dealer to accept my offer on a car. It is a blue car. It will be my car within a week.
And now for something completely different...
Last night I had a really weird dream. I think it was influenced by a number of things, largely the Fangirl Plot Against Dom (you know, if they were really organized they'd have a webpage and a secret handshake, and a code book). Basically it was a Star Wars dream. But Dom was Princess Leia. He was pissed about it too. At least it was somewhat true to life.
21 January 2001 CE 22:52 PST
Politics. (rant session #2)
Yay. One of the forbidden conversation topics in polite company. (I bet most of you didn't know that. Another one is religion.) One of the things that I spent some time doing this weekend was watching the inaugural parade. Apparently there has never been an inauguration like this. I sure don't remember one (but I'm only 20, haven't been around very long). A LOT of people don't like Bush much. And they made a point of exercising their first ammendment right to let him know. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that he's a bad guy, I just don't think he's the type of person I really want in a position of power (such as it may be). One of the things that worries me most about him is how generally uneducated he seems. This may not be true, but he tends to invent a lot of words when he's addressing the public. It gives the impression that he never passed high school level english. Given that basic worry, I'm now switching over to more controversial things. His values worry me. His values seem to be very WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant). He doesn't like minorities, he doesn't like women, he doesn't like other religions. Given that that makes up over 75% of the voting base I wonder how he managed to get elected. The election itself was fishy. Old and faulty voting machines were set up in poorer and immigrant communities. It makes me wonder if he really would have been elected had everyone had to vote under identical conditions. The next four years will be interesting. People have already made it known that they disapprove of him. One of the things that will probably happen is the legislative branch will swing towards the left in the next election (if you're saying "how can you know that?" historically the legislative branch is controlled by the opposite party than the executive branch, it makes it hard to pass laws, which explains a lot about this country). Another thing which has already started happening because of Bush is that the economy has gone into a decline. How can I blame him? Simple, he was in a position of influence and said that the economy was in a decline. Investors listen to things like that and start pulling their money out, and then the economy does in fact go into a decline (the dot com decline was going to happen sooner or later, that was not his fault, it was inevitable). Fortunately for us, everything is doing fairly well. We're not facing another Hoover, but on the same point we're not facing another FDR. Unless the situation changes fairly drastically I'm inclined to say Bush won't be re-elected.
21 January 2001 CE 02:35 PST
And the Beat goes on.
So once again I took a trip to the bank, this time with my dad, they were still damn useless. Stupid bank. Won't tell you anything useful until you've already agreed to buy the car.
Good news on the car buying front. My mother reminded my dad that they'd started a savings account for me in Canada and somehow convinced him to give me the money in it (I think it was intended for college, but not gonna do that, at least not at this point in my life). It comes out to nearly $3000 US, so now I have about $5000 for a downpayment.
Just to drive those of you plotting against Dom nuts, I have a pic of him shirtless and YOU CAN'T SEE IT! WAHAHAHA!
The End.
19 January 2001 CE 13:21 PST
Things that are annoying me. (Rant Session 1)
If this cuts off randomly, it's because here in lovely California we are having serious power shortages. We could get a blackout almost any time. ( o/~ Feel the blackout, blackout o/~ ) I'll be saving this often though, so you'll get SOMETHING at least (for those of you who actually care enough to read about my life)
As stated earlier, I am going to rant. I know that technically this should be like, session 3 or something, but I don't give a damn!
Rant #1: Suddenly I have been faced with a resurgance of people telling me how much better Linux is that Windows. These people annoy me. 99% of them don't know jack about how to run an OS, the only reason Linux is better is because it isn't from Microsoft (known to these people as "The Evil Empire"). I'm not saying that Linux is a bad OS, when you get right down to it all major operating systems are about as stable as each other. There are other factors. In theory there should only be one universal operating system. It should come with the computer, free of charge. An operating system is as necessary to a computer as a CPU. However there isn't only *one* operating system. The two most common operating systems are Windows and MacOS. Because these are the most common, nearly every program that you have used or will use is designed to run in these operating systems. Using these operating systems causes less software compatability problems. Now of course someone is going to say something about Unix and how it's a wonderful OS and Linux is just like it. Unix is used for large networks and servers that take a heavy traffic load and have to be up all the time. I'm sure over 99% of home computers really don't need this. As for people telling me how stable it is, at home I use Windows98, generally I'm running 9 or more programs at once (Eudora, connection manager, windows explorer, 2 copies of IRC, AIM, telnet, IE, Netscape, and an mp3 player) and I crash less than once a month.
Rant #2: My. Dad. Is. Being. A. Dork. That I think sums it up pretty well. Unless you haven't spoken to me for the last few months or read this, I am intending to get a new car. I'm trying to get insurance quotes. To do this I have to know what my current insurance plan is. Instead of stopping playing minesweeper of 5 minutes to give me this information, my father sits there and either ignores me or tells me to look it up in the file cabinet (which is organized without labels on anything). And now he's told me I'm responisible for selling the car I currently drive (which belongs to him). And I'm supposed to find a car loan too. I'm not asking for him to castrate himself with a rusty knife, I just need a little HELP GODDAMNIT.
On a happier note, I'm going to feed myself.
17 January 2001 CE 14:58 PST
vroom. and stuff.
For the record, yesterday did get better. I crushed Eric's soul, he crushed my soul, I tickled Michi, terrorized the cat, ate food that was bad for my health. You know, good things. I am going to have REVENGE on Eric though. He paid for my meal at Carrow's on the grounds that I can't afford to because I'm buying a car or something silly like that. I'll get him. I'll pay for his food sometime. Somewhere NICE. Or I'll let him drive my car or something. On a side note about Eric and cars, when I get a new car, we're supposed to race. He's decided I'll win, largely because he drives a fairly new Civic EX (the EX is the top of the line civic) and I can keep up with him racing in my current car, which is a 1988 VW Fox. The cheap model. Don't get me wrong, it's a sweet car, but it's not technically mine, and I want something better anyways. Since people keep bugging me about how I liked the cars I drove, here's my impressions of them, from least liked to most liked:
5. Honda Civic EX Sedan: It's a nice car. I found the steering to be too loose and the clutch has a lot of play at the top. Overall I didn't like the handling, but it's cheap.
4. Volkswagon Jetta GLX Sedan: I didn't want to drive this, but my dad likes volkswagons, says that he's had really good reliability with them (almost every car he's owned has been a VW so it's not like he's comparing against much). It was okay. The steering was really tight, a little harder than the other cars I drove. The GLX has a V-6 engine, so it has lots of power, but you have to start it from a stop without too much gas otherwise you leave big black marks on the road. I bashed my knee on the wheel when I let the clutch out in this car.
3. Acura Integra GS-R Sedan: This was a really nice car to drive, it handles very nicely. The steering is nicely tight, and it handles hard acceleration BEAUTIFULLY. As far as actually driving it though, it feels big. It's also quite an expensive car. I bash my knee letting the clutch out in this car also.
2. Toyota Celica GT: They didn't have a GTS for me to drive. This was the only 2-door car that I test drove. It corners really nicely, accelerates really nicely and over all I was more comfortable driving it than the Integra or Jetta. I liked this car a lot. I know a lot of people (d-sempai) really like Integras, but I seriously recommend at least test driving one of these if you think you want an Integra. The only Integra that a Celica GTS might not compare to is the Type-R. The downside to this car is that it is smaller than I really want.
1. Subaru Impreza 2.5 RS: I love this car. I really do. And it's not just beacuse Kourin is obsessed with it. The steering on it is nice and tight, without it being hard to steer, I'm comfortable sitting in it, And it goes vroom. I felt it handled as nicely as the Celica, but it's a larger car.
Yay. Now I don't have to type this out any more. Probably nobody will ask about it though. There's supposed to be a rolling blackout, so I shall depart and add links and junk later.
16 January 2001 CE 19:11 PST
...and on top of all that...
So I get to the bart station and get on the escalator and start waling down and there's some guy just STANDING on the left side (quick lesson in bart ettiquitte: when riding an escalator, if you just want to stand you stay to the right so people can walk past on the leff). Thanks to this idiot, I got to the bottom of the escalator and the doors closed on the Fremont train and it left the station. I have a desire to maim this person.
16 January 2001 CE 15:56 PST
GRAR
Today is not a good day. It needs to get better, I have a headache. This weekend wasn't much fun either. On Saturday I had to catch up on sleep or I would not have felt good. On Sunday I had to go furniture shopping, which is good, but long and tedious work. The next time most of you see my room, I will have different furniture. Monday was cool, but long and stressful. I went test driving different cars. I decided I really don't want a civic. The other cars I drover were all quite nice, but the once I liked driving most were the Toyota Celica and the Subaru Impreza. So now I know which car I want (the impreza - it's a larger car) but I had to deal with salesmen all day. Today has sucked! There was nowhere to sit on BART! I made hotel reservations for Fanime but they won't let me check-in because I'm not 21. And the BANK! THE BANK IS EVIL! I went to the bank to get info on a car loan. I just need to know how much is the minimum I need for a downpayment on a $20000 car. Simple, no? HAHAHAHAHA. The lady kept telling me about all the different loan plans and how they couldn't give me a loan until I'd actually signed an agreement with the dealer. So I asked her again, how much I needed for a downpayment, and she said it didn't matter. So I took $5 out of my pocket and said to here "Here's my down payment, will you give me a loan on a $20000 car?" and she said no and went back to talking about interest rates and credit history and junk. So I walked out of there. I just wanted to know the minimum amount I needed in cash, and the idiot wouldn't tell me. I am displeased, I have a headache, and I can't get into the single user file I need on the network. Today needs to get better. I shall call Eric tonight and crush souls I think.
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