searching

I must comment on how to find a car. Last weekend we needed to drive different cars and SUVs so we could feel how they drove and to see how much room each had. Looking at a photo on a web site just is not good enough for us. We have to physically touch it and hit the accelerator to feel the power. Having said all that, the two best web site designs for searching for vehicles are Ebay Motors and Carmax. A more traditional approach can be found at Auction Direct.

Looking at the later one, you see many dropdown menus populated with tons of choices. This is nice to see all of the choices but the dropdowns are totally disconnected. The result is information overload, but since we are all well trained internet monkeys, we do not seem to notice. Until we see a usable interface that actually helps us find our way through the huge forest of unlimited choices of vehicles. This is not a new revelation, just tried and true usability design principles applied to real life situations. Of course if we only had a couple of choices then we wouldn't need this creative thinking. A couple of choices, a couple of dropdowns and we are done.

I must say that I really enjoy using the Carmax site. It always tells me how many cars in each category even before I filter down my choices. As I refine what I am looking for, I can easy remove the filters to increase the choices. Very nice and worth seeing and using even if not in the hunt for a used car. I am so happy when I find usable software!

And the winner is...

South Korea. I should have expected that decision all along. Since my wife was born in South Korea and grew up her whole life there, what other choice could there be? My wife's father has a Hyundai, her sister has a Hyundai and now so do we. It is not like we have plenty of other choices! It really came down to what vehicle cost the least and had the most features and drive the best. We found three different used Hyundai Santa Fe vehicles. I want to saw cars but they are not cars. Some people say they are SUVs, but they are not the typical SUV in size. For now it will have to be vehicle. The nicest thing is they don't drive like an SUV, but more like a car so my wife will enjoy that after having driven our huge Ford custom van for almost 10 years now. I am happy we only buy a vehicle every ten years as the whole process wore me out. I dislike shopping in general but car shopping and messing with car dealers is right at the bottom of my fun list. One last thing I have to comment about. It sure is strange how a Korea vehicle would be named after a city in New Mexico and the similar yet smaller model named after the city where my mother lives in Arizona. Pure intelligent marketing I think.

car dealers

On top of everything else last weekend, we sold our Ford custom van. At a wonderful 14 mpg and the quick rise of gas prices, I just could not take it any more. It a momentary lapse of judgement I told me wife we should take the van to the Wal-Mart parking lot and leave it with a For Sale sign in the window. We sold the van within a couple of hours and so we were down to a single vehicle between us. Not a bad thing, unless you consider the fact that I have to drive to work which is 20 miles away in one direction every day of the week. Since it was late Sunday, we had a couple of choices and decided to try Enterprise Rental cars since they are just down the road a couple of miles. All week long my wife searched the internet for the best car for us. We did not consider a brand new car because of the high price and we do not want to have monthly payments for 5-6 years as that is no fun. Yesterday we checked all of the local small-time dealers in the huge metropolis of Fuquay Varina. One sells high end cars, one sells perfect cars for teenagers which you don't mind if they trash or crash them, one struck me as not very honest, one was from the county of Jordan. Quite a mixture for such a small town. We then ventured outside the town limits to a couple of new car dealers right outside town, as they sell what are called "program cars". These are cars that are owned and driven by dealerships and then sold as used cars. We ended up driving just about every reasonably priced SUV on the market for sale: Ford Escape, Jeep Liberty, Jeep Grand Cherokee, Honda CRV, Nissan Xterra, Mazda Tribute, Toyota Rav4, Hyundai Tucson, and Suzuki Reno. Like my wife said yesterday, there are just too many vehicles to choose from and that makes it even harder. We ventured to the Cary Auto Park in the evening, where there are just about every vehicle brand for sale in the USA can be found. The final place we visited illustrates what I think of dealerships. We drove around most of the dealers looking for the used cars on display in the lots. As we were leaving the final dealer, we saw a nice Mazda Tribute displayed nicely as it was parked on the sidewalk. We went back, which was our first mistake, and asked to drive it. At the big dealerships,someone rides with you from the dealership while you take a test drive. Since the price was too high as said we were not interested. The salesman went inside and said the owner would do something silly to get rid of it as it had been on the lot longer than any other vehicle. I told him I would buy it for $3000 under the price listed right then. He made me sign a paper saying that and ran off to talk to the owner. He came back and told me that was too low. So much for doing anything to sell it!

no water

It was definitely an interesting day yesterday. Another sunny day meant all of the kids were outside by 11 in the morning. In itself that was already a different and unusual start for the day. We played Frisbee and the older picked up their tennis rackets to play a game they made up two summers ago in our present backyard. That is worth a digression for a couple of sentences.

Since we have a fairly large backyard on our one acre lot, when we first moved into this house, the kids went crazy in the lawn. We had never had a big backyard like this. They just had to find a way to use it for fun. Somehow, I don't remember all of the details as it was during my pre-blogging age, one of the boys picked up a tennis racket and started hitting the ball in the backyard. Then another one of the boys did the same. Before you know it they were at each end of the yard hitting the ball to each other. All summer long they enjoyed this super lawn tennis without a net. Yesterday was the first day this summer they got back into this custom family sport.



While the boys were being boys and having fun, my daughter jumped on her motorized scooter and raced around the house. As I was pulling weeds in the backyard, she came up to me and said the front yard was saturated in water. That sounded strange as it had not rained in a couple of days and we never have standing water in the front yard. As I went around to inspect, I found water all over the yard at the end where our water well was located. I crawled under the house to see where the water main came into the house. Then I traced the line to the well. I could actually see the water bubbling up out of the ground. That certainly was not normal. As I dug around the well with my hands the normal rock hard red clay was like soup. I could hear the water pump turning on and off constantly, so I quickly turned off the water pump at the main fuse box. I started digging a hole around the well and was amazed at how easy it was to dig down two feet in solid clay.



I then got the boys involved to help me dig. What an adult would consider a disaster, my son took as a challenge for yet another fun adventure. He jumped into the trench and as it was mid-day the sun was starting to roast our white skin, he started covering himself in mud. He was having fun doing hard labor, which is a great lesson to learn from energetic teenagers. He was building up muscles, getting a valuable skin treatment and helping me all at the same time. If you have ever seen Arnold Schwarzeneggar in the original Predator movie, then this is what he claimed to look like. When we got over half way to the house the water line was getting deeper and deeper, so we decided to turn the water pump back on and see is the leak was visible. It was right back at the pump, so all of the digging was not needed, but we certainly had some dirty and entertained teenagers in the meantime. I drove the the local hardware store and for $15 had the repair kit and pip I needed to repair the PVC pipe. We fixed the pipe and waited the required two hours before turning the pump back on and all is back to normal on the water front.


The completed job. You just never know what you have until you have to do without water, if only for a single day.

past ... present ... future

I constantly have this dilemma of living in the present moment and enjoying it for everything it is worth. Like last weekend my middle son wanted to throw Frisbee with me. We have a cheap $1 one from the local store which broke when he banged his knee with it on Friday. I bought the real version which we threw around most of Saturday and Sunday. He is such a natural with it and just enjoys be outside, which is not his normal behavior. I had to soak up each moment as you just never know with teenagers when it will happen again.

Then there is the past which just went by me. This blog is record of my past. Some days I think about things to write in my blog. Other days events just occur that I have to write about. When I think of the past, I want to learn from history or other people's mistakes. That is one of the reasons I like to write a blog so I don't forget lessons I have learned as I live them. I want my teenagers to learn from each other. When I got back from the county courthouse with my oldest son, I just had to yell out loud when I got in the house that no one should ever "drink and drive".

Then there is the future. I sure hope all of kids don't repeat the same mistakes their siblings made or else I will not make it. I feel old every time a major drama occurs in our family that I have to deal with these days. It seemed easier to take when I was younger. Now every time I feel older. I sure can hope for a bright future where the same mistakes are not repeated in our family. Maybe that is another reason I have read the books on drug and alcohol addictions. I have lived it once and I don't want to live it again, so I want to be better informed of the root problem. A quick fix does not work. If you ignore a problem it does not go away.

Beautiful Boy vs. Tweak

Last month I reviewed Beautiful Boy by David Sheff and this week I finished his son's book Tweak: Growing up on Methamphetamines by Nic Sheff. I must say that drug or alcohol addiction when in the family is not fun. I only read these books because we have lived it, maybe not to the extreme mentioned in these books, but that does not make it in any way less painful. For me, they are both hard to deal with as they transform a person from who they really are to someone else, who I don't want to see or get to know. I think it is interesting to read how the father became addicted to his son's addiction to the cost of neglecting his wife and other children. I have been there and no that feeling. I also like this pair of books as it also shows the son's side where he talks a little about his family, but he is so self consumed that while on drugs that totally consumes him as he must get high again and again. For me, it is very difficult to know what is true or not in such a book as how can someone know what happened when they are stoned out of their mind and without normal senses? Reading this book just gives you an idea of how someone who is an addict thinks and lives to really understand how addiction grips someone and does not let go easily.

In the tradition of my blog I will refer to some of the comments from Nik's book:

• I felt like everyone else had gotten this instruction manual that explained life to them, but somehow I'd missed it. pg 17


• I always thought once I was an adult, independent, whatever, these feelings of hopelessness and despair would go away. I could be like those characters in the movies. Drugs and alcohol gave me that feeling. pg 63


• It is like someone came in and with a vacuum cleaner and sucked out my brain - removing any trace of joy and excitement, leaving me with nothing but his overpowering hopelessness. pg 132


• Staying sober right after coming back from a relapse is no struggle... I always seem to forget why I needed to get sober in the first place... And, each time, I get a little closer to being dead. Things fall apart more quickly. I hurt more and more people. pg 142


• But there's also this part of me that is so dissatisfied with everything. pg 150


• I also have incredible anxiety socializing with people. I mean, if I'm at work, or I'm high, then that's okay. But sober, going out with people my age, I am just really uncomfortable. pg 161


• As long as you look for someone else to validate who you are by seeking their approval, you are setting yourself up for disaster. You have to be whole and comlete in yourself. No one can give you that. You have to know who you are - what others say is irrelevant. pg 195-196


• I guess I'm just selfish. My needs always come first - that need I have to escape or something. pg 202


• Suddenly I can't wait to leave - get back on my own - not have to deal with this cutesy, overprotected, sugarcoated world of my dad's family. They're keeping their children so naive, so unable to cope with hardships of the REAL world. pg 203

Don't drink & drive

It is such a simple logical statement yet seems impossible for most teenagers to follow. To be totally fair it appears difficult for some adults to adhere to as well. This week I took my oldest son to court for his third alcohol related driving offense. I have to hope that it is finally sinking in that there are consequences of breaking this important law. This is the third trip to the court that is three hours away for us on this same matter. I thought the third time would be the end of it, but turns out that we have to return yet one more time with proof of his attendance in a local alcohol driving school. Not that they teach to you how to drive and drink but what happens when you do! Apparently you can take this class several times and it does not help as my son can attest. I think the hardest think to convey to teenagers is that their actions have consequences. What they do affects others. What they do can hurt themselves for a long time to come. When a teenager can hardly think about next week let along next year this is a problem. On the other hand, it sure is nice to be around them when their energy and enthusiasm it is used for good. Which brings me back to the current discussion. I am so thankful that I have yet to live through a tragedy related to my kids, so the offenses although bad indeed, have yet to cause physical injury to themselves or others. For this I am truly thankful. Weekly I see in the local newspaper teenagers who drive when drunk and kill someone. This is a tragedy that doesn't have to happen and yet does. So sad. For now my son has to live a whole year without a driver's license, so maybe it will sink in for him even though he is well beyond being a teenager. Better late than never.