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| On Monday, I made a call to Cottman Transmissions. The man I talked to said that based on my description, the problem could possibly be something fairly minor. I dropped the car off after work and got a call back later that afternoon. I was told that the computer code they got when they ran a check on the car said that the speed sensor wasn't working properly. The man said that fixing that part could fix the whole problem and that doing so would cost about $180 in parts and labor. He also said that if replacing the part didn't fix the problem, they wouldn't charge me for it. I told him to go ahead.
I got another call a couple hours later. The man told me that he had removed the speed sensor and found it gummed up with metal shavings, indicating that something was coming apart inside the transmission. He said that the labor charge for taking about the transmission, diagnosing the problem, installing replacement parts, and, ultimately, putting it all back together would be $450. Cost of parts would be on top of that.
Karin and I made the decision to forgo repairs. We've been pouring money into this car for a couple years now. Since Ben was born, we've had a desire for a newer, bigger, safer car. This development gives us the excuse to start looking for something new (for us; we'll get a used car). Also, we'll hopefully successfully make the trip to the Carrs' this Sunday. | | |
| I realized while I was trying to fall asleep last night that I never posted yesterday. I did upload a bunch of pictures to Flickr. I'm not saying that counts; I'm just saying, it's something.
I don't know that I've ever posted here about all the great spots you can go to see my photos. Of course most of the photos are of Ben, but he's all you really want to see anyway, right? There are two spots to see the latest photos of Ben, and both of them have nice, easy to remember URLs, thanks to Bit.ly. The place to go for the earliest photos of Ben and all the pictures I take of him with my iPhone is the "Benjamin Timothy" moblie me gallery at http://bit.ly/Ben. And for the Flickr set "Ben," which features all of the new Ben pictures taken with my DSLR, head to http://bit.ly/BenTR. Note the capitalization; it does matter.
For photos that aren't of ben, watch that first Flickr link up there, the URL of which is, for the record, http://flickr.com/photos/trezendes. You can also keep an eye on Twitpic (http://twitpic.com/photos/trezendes), or just on my Twitter feed. | | |
| We were supposed to go to the Carrs' today. We got about halfway there when the car started to shudder and the speedometer dropped to 0. We got off the highway, decided to find a nearby Pep Boys (sine we figured they'd be open on a Sunday), then drove carefully into Harrisburg. Pep Boys apparently doesn't do transmissions (and for what little I know about cars, I'm pretty sure it's a transmission problem), but the very unhelpful lady there pointed us to a transmission place down the road. It was closed. After lunch at McDonalds, we drove slowly home. I'll call tomorrow to make an appointment for the car so we can decide if we're going to sink more money into it, or just be done with it. Needless to say, it wasn't a very good day. | | |
| Another one from The Joshua Tree. How could I think of anything, when I hear this song, but the rendition by Mark Tebben and Daniel Klotz?
EDIT 4/18/09 14:09: Changed the "object" tag to an "embed" tag since it didn't seem to be working properly. | | |
| I'm not even sure if U2's I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For is on the current rotation, but it pops up frequently, so I'm including it.
I think spontaneous a cappella renditions of this song occurred among my friends with some regularity while I was in college, but whenever I hear it, I remember the night of our end of first year banquet, on the steps of The Union League, singing it with the guys. | | |
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