10:31 PM, Aug 15, 2006
Tales and Rentals
I stayed in all weekend, except for a crazy six-bar love-in in Friday, in which Erp and I talked politics until everybody else was falling asleep in their chairs. It was awesome. I spent Saturday and Sunday doing more programming than I have done in a long while, as I had something of a breakthrough on Saturday afternoon. In the rest of the time, I have reacquainted myself with one of the greatest RPGs of all time:
Tales of Phantasia, which is now over eleven years old. As far as geeky Super Nintendo RPGs played on a
PC are concerned, it is pretty much the pinnacle of achievement in graphics, sound, and in my opinion, gameplay.
My sister turned 21 yesterday, and celebrated by waking me up with a drunken text message at 2am. Good times.
I took my car in last week for repairs. The lady that cut me off in June will get the bill. Rather, State Farm will get the bill, and will adjust the lady's rates to reflect the bill. When I dropped off the car, the folks from Enterprise picked me up and set me up with a Chevy Cobalt. I had seen the commercials about this compact American-made sedan, and was actually kind of looking forward to driving it. I was wrong. I despise my rental car.
It has no power windows, no power locks, no power mirrors, no remote entry, no back locks that lock when you lock the driver door, and the coup de grace is that it has no cruise control. This is maddening beyond belief. My commute is over 35 miles of highways, so I have to hold onto the gas pedal the whole way with this car. Understandable, but still frustrating is that it has poor suspension, low quality tires, and an automatic transmission: all the marks of a cheap car that i probably should have seen when I picked it up.
But here's the thing: Car rental companies seem to equate "small" with "shoddy." Their position is that if I want a small car, it's because I am trying to save money, and not because I actually
like small cars. But because of their line of thinking, every American rental agency I have dealt with has given me a piece of shit with no features, and I never learn.
I called the body shop today, and they said that the last part needed to fix the car has arrived in town and is allegedly on the delivery van to the shop right now. This means that either at the end of the day today, or some time tomorrow, I will have my beloved car back.