i just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance…

…because i’m going to be taking the element off of my car insurance, and it was full coverage (due to the fact i had a lien on the vehicle). of course, that full coverage with $100 deductible came in handy since i hit that antelope. but i just feel like it helped justify the 20 years of me paying car insurance with almost no claims. (like maybe 3 total including this one, both of the others being less than $1000.)
man, i hate most drivers when the ground gets wet. they go way, way below any reasonably cautious speed. plus, tuesday evening one slow guy decided he didn’t want me passing him in the contraflow lane on alabama so he split lanes as i started to go around. then he slowed down until he was able to cut through a yellow turning red and i had to stop at the red. of course, i watched him, and 4 blocks up he made an illegal left turn out of the contra lane. sonofab!tch. of course, i did have the pleasure of pressing my brakes down and having the rear of my pickup slide into a fishtail while i worked at keeping my front tires straight. that kind of stuff is fun if you don’t get in a wreck. so that was enjoyable. i guess something decent came out of the whole ordeal.
when i got home and checked my mail, it turns out all kinds of people who don’t live here got more mail than me. owners, renters, past renters…and somehow, tamara got three pieces of junkmail. i’ve probably seen 6 pieces for her since i’ve been here. what’s up with that? why is she getting junk here all of the sudden? it’s like her craziness (or the universe’s) is trying to cause me problems when it realized maybe i’m mostly over it. i wonder how many more moves her mail will follow my trail on?
tuesday night i watched the weatherman. it was pretty good, but not great. it’s one of those movies i doubt i’ll remember the details of in a few months, other than cage gets food thrown at him numerous times.
how about the macworld keynote? i’m not too excited about the itunes movie rental crap — even though the interface looks pretty nice — but the $70 price drop on the apple tv is nice. i’m still not sure coverflow on my tv is worth $230 though, as that’s about the only value i see in the device. but i have netflix, and i can rent dvds for $1/day at numerous kiosks around town. i also don’t have a hdtv, so i don’t care about hd video at this point. and i don’t watch or download video over the net. so i don’t think i’m really their target market. still, the first apple tv didn’t appear to have a market really, and i’m not sure their current rental prices are worth it. (although being able to switch from tv to laptop to ipod to whatever is slick.) i don’t have an iphone so i don’t really care about the iphone software updates. it’s cool they added the apps to the touch, but the $20 upgrade price is kind of lame. and the wireless access point with built-in drive (which can be used as nas i’ve been told) is pretty nice. it’s possible i might consider that for central nas storage and an automated backup solution.
which leaves the new laptop. now that’s pretty slick. we were discussing price at lunch since i left before he’d detailed all the specs or the price and we figured between $2500 and $3k. i was pretty interested to see it starts at $1800. with a 10% edu discount, that could be a pretty nice replacement for my old 12″ ibook. people are complaining about the lack of an optical drive, ethernet port, firewire ports, etc. my opinion is it’s a laptop not a desktop — and an ultrathin, ultralight, slick one at that — so judge it as such. you don’t need all those stupid connectors to use a laptop. if you do, get the macbook or macbook pro and quit whining — you’re not the target of this product. the fact is, i don’t see most people using the ports on their laptops very often, other than for a usb thumb drive (which it has a port for) or a video connection for projectors (which is a much smaller group than the thumb drive folk, but it also has a port for…if you use a connector, of course). but even these uses aren’t all that common. i see people sitting at tables using their laptops with no wires…in meetings, in coffee houses, etc. having an rj-45 port might be nice, but if it’s a concern get an adapter. i’m not crying because i’ve needed a serial port from time to time and they’re getting scarce on laptops. i can’t say for sure, but my guess is apple did market research and built a forward-looking product that attempts to take advantage of trends that are just now starting to grow. i guess we’ll see how things pan out.
i left my pickup lights on when i got to work yesterday. my boss called me at lunch and told me. when i went out there to turn them off, some ignorant public servant had put a ticket on my vehicle. i’ve been parking there for months, and as far as i know the parking on that street hasn’t changed — so he must have misunderstood the sign for the other street as including the one i was parked on. i’m so glad i hadn’t gone to take care of my other ticket yet, as i’d be miffed to have to go back for their mistake. i guess i’ll have to verify that the street isn’t zoned as no parking…not sure how. otherwise i’ll just be taking pictures and pleading my case to a judge that is ignorant of whether it is really zoned as no parking or not. and i’m going to be insanely pissed if they try to make me pay one penny of it.

2 comments on “i just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance…”

  1. Did you know that in Houston, you have to move your vehicle every 48 hours (72 hrs here) or they can ticket it? Not that it applies when you are at work, but I never knew it until I saw a motorcycle I thought was well parked that had a ticket on it. I always read the tickets on motorcycles if I have the time so I can learn why they were cited.

  2. The AppleTV is worth it. I converted all the movies I have to that format and stream them off the NAS. I don’t watch TV all that much and commercials piss me off so I get a season pass to the things that I actually watch. They don’t have a big selection of movies though, but its getting there. I am going to upgrade to the 160GB one so I can keep some stuff on there permanently like my favorite Stargate episodes o.O
    Although, I have an eye on that laptop also.

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