Flunky

My stupid car flunked its emissions test. Because the on-board computer was "not ready" to report on its pollution whatsits, or whatever. Even though I haven't had any work done recently and have not recently disconnected the battery. Well happy birthday to me. I am so thrilled to have to take my car to the shop tomorrow to discuss resetting the computer, or whateverthehell.

They tell me summer's over...

I don't believe it.

The picture shows the thermometer reading in my car on Saturday evening. Granted, my car was parked in the sun at the time. Once I hit the road it cooled down to a mere 101F.

Even though it is still summer on the calender, and we are in the dog days of August having the second heat wave in as many weeks, for most of the kids around here summer is over. They went back to school this week. It happens absurdly early these days. It wasn't like this when I was a kid, which doesn't seem like so long ago - at least not to me. I feel a little sorry for today's kids. School doesn't end until near the end of June and then they get hauled back in right smack in the middle of August. Do they care? Do they know what they're missing? Or is summer break just one long spell of playing video games broken up by occasional trips to soccer camp or whatnot?

The Last Thing Your Car Needs Is More Windows.

Remember those old jokes about what would happen if cars ran like Microsoft Windows (TM)? If not, let me refresh your memory:

1. For no reason whatsoever your car would crash twice a day.

2. Every time they repainted the lines on the road you would have to buy a new car.

3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull over to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.

4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn, would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

5. Only one person at a time could use the car, unless you bought "Car95" or "CarNT." But then you would have to buy more seats.

6. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would only run on five per cent of the roads.

7. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single "This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation" warning light.

8. New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.

9. The airbag system would say "Are you sure?" before going off.

10. Occasionally for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key, and grab hold of the radio antenna.

11. GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand McNally road maps (now a GM subsidiary), even though they neither need them nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car's performance to diminish by 50% or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Department.

12. Everytime GM introduced a new model car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

13. You'd press the "start" button to shut off the engine.

Today, Bill Gates announced that Microsoft has partnered with Ford to offer a dashboard operating system for some 2008 vehicles. Aside from the easy jokes (see above), this seems like a bad idea. The OS will drive all kinds of personal computing devices, such as cell phones and MP3 players. Aren't drivers distracted enough? Isn't this just a spate of accidents waiting to happen? I have very little faith that it will all be so easy to use that drivers will be able to answer their email in traffic. How can they operate their vehicles when they'll need both hands to press control-alt-delete?

I miss my Camry :-(

I finally took my car to the bodyshop to get the bumper damage repaired. It was rear-ended more than a month ago. [See, I'm trying to whittle down my list of stuff I procrastinated on.] I hope they can fix it quickly, because my rental car completely sucks. It is a Ford Taurus, and if this is the kind of crap they're churning out to compete with Camrys and Altimas, it is no wonder they are losing market share. In Ford's defense, their trucks are pretty good. PDM has a Ford truck and is happy with it. But their mid-sized passenger cars need some work.

First of all, the gas pedal is so far back that I had to pull the seat nearly all the way up to reach it. So now the steering wheel is almost in my lap and I am way too close to the dashboard. I don't think it has an airbag, which is a good thing because if it went off at that distance the bag would probably kill me itself. The brake pedal is way higher than the gas, so switching my foot between them is awkward and I keep hitting the side of my foot on the side of the brake pedal. Sure hope I don't need to brake fast, because in addition to not being able to get to the pedal quickly, the brakes have much more resistance than I am used to and I feel like I have to really stomp on them to make the car slow down. And another thing... the seat is too hard. And the steering wheel material is kind of rubbery/sticky, which makes me want to break out a can of lysol seeing how this is a rental car and god-knows-who has had their mitts on it.

It is a real shame that Ford didn't update the Taurus design to keep it competitive. I remember when it was a very popular car and people seemed to like it. I rented one on a business trip years ago and didn't have any problems with it. The Ford plant in Hapeville (just south of Atlanta) used to make the Taurus. Now it is shut down and the Taurus has been discontinued. Ford should try making a comfortable car with good gas mileage and better ergonomics. I bet it wouldn't suck.