Wrecks and Owning a Ten Year Old Car

We had a wreck. More correctly; we had two wrecks. One was in Washington D.C. where someone rear-ended our rental, so it was not really an issue. However, the one the week we got back was kind of a "big deal". For one, it caused an injury to my wife's thumb which required surgery, and secondly, it totaled the Honda.... our much beloved, 40mpg, 2008 Civic Hybrid. May it rest in peace. 

I've come to the conclusion that I hate car shopping!!! That's weird for me since I used to love it. That should be obvious for a person who's owned a VW GTI, a Honda CRX, an Audi 90 and even a BMW M5, but now...... I absolutely detested the experience! It's not that I've lost the touch, I haven't. I was able to identify a good price, good mileage, on a good car.... That wasn't the issue. It's the circumstances, that's the problem. 

I'm a man with a ball and chain! Let me start from the beginning:

• We got the insurance part squared away and they paid out about what we were expecting, $4400.
• It was decided that we'd just spend that amount on a car and no more since we're paying on the "new" Tahoe still for 3 more years. So the logical thing is to get something that'll bridge the gap, then get another vehicle after the truck is paid off, at which time, my son will be about driving age and will need a car. So we were really shopping for him.... 3 years ahead of time!
• We liked the Civic and the kind of gas mileage that it got. It makes a good pairing with the rather large SUV, that's the other vehicle. 
• We're still a family of four, with rapidly growing kids, so 2-door cars or trucks were "out".
• It needed to fit my wife's list of needs and avoid her dislikes (read prejudices). That would include anything boxy, wagon, minivan, weird brands (sorry Subaru or anything European), or "cheap", which leaves Honda and Toyota. Neither one of us are Nissan fans and the rental, which was a Nissan Versa reinforced our opinions.

So, a Honda or Toyota of similar year as our '08 Civic with less than 150,000 miles was on my list. Oh yeah, we both dislike my father-in-law's Camry, so....... Accord, or Civic. She decided the Accord was too big, which...... led us right back to where we were 6 years ago when we bought the Civic. A Civic!

You know; Craigslist is a wonderful thing, and I've been able to find all manner of useful stuff on it over the years. And this occasion was no different. I was able to find 2006 to 2010 Civics by the dozen. I will have to say that "Salvage Titled" cars and the "Coupe" version were a pain in my behind, but overall, it wasn't too bad. 

The problem was that, although I could find cars I wanted..... at a good price, they'd sell before I could get off of work to go and look at them! This happened with about 5 different vehicles, and DFW is a big place, so just getting over to them was a problem as well. 

...... but yesterday, we scored! We finally got a a 2006 Civic with 94,000 miles on it before it sold. So we bought it. Does it have warts? Ah..... it's a 10+ year old car..... enough said. But it will work. Pretty much everything important works on it. It has the regular gas engine, which is something that I liked. Not that I was unhappy with the Hybrid (the gas mileage was great), but there's a reason they only warranty those batteries for 100 to 150K miles. The replacements for them run between $2000 and 4000. We already ran across a 2006 Prius with a bad one. Research showed replacements from Toyota was a cool $3960..... ouch! They were asking $4000 for that car so the battery replacement would have doubled the price. We paid $3950 for the Civic with less than 100,000 miles on it. Those engines routinely run to well over 200K. There should be enough life left in this car for 3 years with mom and then more with the boy. Good thing I listened to my wife and saved the expensive Weathertech mats out of the old Civic. Maybe she was telling me something.....

The Computer/Computing "To-Do" List

The first thing on my computer related list for this summer is to rip a "good" number of our movies on DVD into a universal portable format. From where I stand, "universal" video format would mean MP4. Please understand, that when I mean "rip", I don't mean to download! I mean to take DVDs that we've bought, own, and convert them to a different format for our personal use. I'm going to bet that, that fits in the vast majority of peoples' definition of "Fair Use". I'm going to leave the how part of it up to you to find out in the wilds of the internet. There are plenty of sites that describe the process in detail. The fact is that we are going to be spending a fair number of hours in vehicles, cabins, and hotel rooms this summer and the obvious use of movies in some computer file format will be advantageous.

The need for this comes from our family's conversion to the common use of tablets; iPads to be specific with the exception of myself (Android). You know of course that the iPad has no facility to physically connect to external storage. So an intermediary needed to be found. Earlier this spring, I came across the HooToo Tripmate as a wireless means of getting files to my students in the classroom. In the midst of that, I realized that it could just as well stream media to various platforms as long as they had the Tripmate App. About a month ago, I tested it with my ThinkPad Tablet (Android) while my friend Pat did the same thing on his iPad Air. I put a movie converted to MP4 on a flashdrive which was plugged into the HooToo Tripmate Elite (Newegg special, about $20). We both streamed the movie to our respective machines without issue. All that needs to be done is for each device to log onto the Tripmate's access point, open the App, navigate to the folder/file that the user wants and voila', INSTANT STREAMING MEDIA. Unfortunately, there is the "Teddy Roosevelt" digging the Panama Canal part, which is to laboriously rip and convert the a decent library of movies for the kids to access!

Item #2? Yeah, a power supply replacement. I recently came across a very nice Seasonic M12 II, 80 Plus Bronze semi-modular PS unit for about half of what the normally sell for.....so...... at some point, when I'm really ready to pull the giant Cosmos II back out from under the desk, then I'm going to switch it out from the Cooler Master 600w PS that's in there. So I needed this? No! But I'm a big Seasonic PS believer and they are quiet and run cool. I'm all about that. Plus; the price was right. About $45, after shipping. 

My garage isn't exactly an e-waste dump, but I've really got to get in there and do some cleaning out. Most of what I'm going to get rid of will go to the new computer club but there are some items that need to be sold....

....which of course, leads to this sub-list. Items to sell off! This is very difficult for a border-line hoarders like me, but I've gotta do it. 

Unfortunately, all this good planning to get things done isn't completely contingent on my motivation alone. I really need for my wife to figure out where she's going and get all the stuff in the garage into her new classroom! When that's been taken care of, then I'll be free to get my cache of computer parts out of the garage. Till then, the main trick to to NOT add to the pile!

Mining Craigs List

Another year, another Super Bowl. They go by so fast, and in the modern league created by the salary cap, it's no longer interesting to me. So, what did I do on Super Bowl weekend?

I played my game....... but I play on a bigger field. It looks like this! If you live in the vicinity of a metropolitan area, Craigslist is a wonderful thing. For computing equipment, it's especially fruitful. In the last few decades, many corporations have moved their headquarters to the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, and that means, lots and lots of computing equipment of all kinds. And of course, quite often, this stuff makes it's way onto Craigslist, or our famed "1st Saturday" flea market, although that's not what it once was due to the Internet. However, you can't just go running around willy-nilly all over the place. That's counterproductive in both time and gas ($$$) expended. It takes strategy. Sometimes, the planning takes the better part of a week! Here's how this latest effort went......

It started with a ThinkPad T500. I had a client who wanted something of this type and spec, after searching for several days on Craigslist, I was able to find one for $100. This price was excellent, and would give me the ability to put in a small SSD in it as well, then sell it for the $200 price that they typically sell for "retail". The seller of the machine was in the far northern part of Plano, which is the far northern part of the Dallas suburbs. 

I'm also constantly on the look out for SSDs in good shape, for a good price. Where do you think I get the 64Gb one that I put in the T500? Anyway, a guy had an OCZ Vertex 2, 120Gb model for $60. But it's a 3.5" form-factor drive you say. It is. So it's going into my HTPC machine which has a nice 64Gb Mushkin Callista in it and I'll move that into the T500. Instant upgrade for the HTPC and a SSD for the T500! 

In the middle of all that searching, I came across a Dell Latitude E6400, complete with dock, and 2 power adapters for $85. Since I sell these on a regular basis for $150-200 (depending on the size drive I put in it), it was a no-brainer. I don't want to belabor a topic I've written on before, but these laptops are just excellent deals right now and can be found anywhere if you pay attention. Plus they are way easy to work on, even when compared to the ThinkPads. Virtually all of the typical parts that need to be replaced, such as RAM, WiFi cards, etc. and be access by pulling one screw which secures a plate that cover the entire bottom. And they are darn-near as rugged as a ThinkPad as well!

The last item that needed to be secured was a pair of Corsair XMS3 RAM for my Ivy Bridge new-build. I had talked to the seller earlier this week about getting them this weekend from him since he lives in Arlington well west of Dallas. These are good, not great sticks of RAM that would fit into the concept of what I wanted to do with this new machine. First of all it was $60, and in today's world, that's a very good price for a pair of 1600, 8Gb x 2 DDR3 RAM. Although, not high-end gaming RAM, these could be tweaked a little bit if i want at some point in the future. As it turned out, I got a bonus when he had all kinds of trouble getting out to meet me and took $10 off for making me wait. So yeah, $50...... I can live with that!

Many of you who are older will recognize this from the Family Circus comic. It's known as the "Billy Path" which would periodically appear to show the circuitous route by which their son Billy would take to do some particular thing. By now, many of you might be thinking that my Saturday of picking up parts all over the DFW area looked about like this. In fact though, this is the art of Craigslist mining. 

Here's how it worked. We live about 10 minutes east of Mesquite which is one of the far eastern suburbs of Dallas. So I arranged to meet the first guy who was in far northern Plano first. This allowed me to make the best time by taking our very own PGBT (President George Bush Tollway) almost right up to the doorstep of his location, and pick up the T500. This was followed by a 25 minute run down Central Expressway (U.S. 75) to the 2nd guy who was basically due south. I had to wait for this very sleepy seller to wake up and bring me out the SSD, but by 9:30 I was a few miles to the south at a Target to meet the IT guy selling off the surplus Dell E6400. This put me right next to downtown Dallas and allowed me to run over to the 1st Saturday computer flea market to pick up a few odd-and-ends. From there, I picked up I-30 west head to Arlington by 11:00am. I was at my favorite "store", Electronic Discount in less than 30 minutes. In the meantime, I contacted the seller who had the RAM. Although he had problems and couldn't meet me at the store as planned, I spend an hour in that place perusing all manner of old electronics, go across the street the a favorite Vietnamese Pho place for lunch, then meet the guy on the way home. 

In the end, I was able to get all of the above done, and get home by 2:30 at which point, I grabbed my son and took him to his basketball game! I was gone a total of 7 hours. I spent $305, and about 3 gallons of gas (I drive a Honda Civic Hybrid). I sold the T500 for $200 while at the same time upgrading my HTPC's SSD from 64Gb to 128Gb. I sold one of the 2 Dell power adapters for $20. This all leaves me with $85 of expenditures not yet recouped, but I still have the E6400 which will bring at least another $150. Also, this whole escaped was funded by a sale of another E6400 from the night before, for $200. So, I had a great time, playing, will make somewhere between $70-100, after getting RAM for the new-build and upgrading my HTPC. 

That is now we mine Craigslist!