Most of the day Sunday Sibylle and I searched for the errant Jimmy title in vain. In order to use the Jimmy for the CARS program we need to show proof of insurance for the past 12 months, produce registration for the past two years (current plus previous is fine), and have a free and clear title. The first two were easy, but finding the title after several moves was impossible.
Living only an hour’s drive from the state capital we could have driven over there Monday to get a duplicate title issued, however, in a recurring clerical error the registration shows an out-of-date lien on the vehicle. The bank in question is an hour’s drive in the opposite direction from Topeka. Jumping through the bureaucratic hoops necessary to contact the bank, travel there to get a lien release, and then travel to Topeka to wait in line for a title was possible, but we weren’t sure it was worth it.
The CARS program stipulates that the dealer give you an estimate of the cars salvage or scrap value, and that you get that money in addition to the CARS allowance. Our dealer said their arrangement with the salvage yard included no exchange of money. In fact, the way it was described to us, the dealer would end up paying a fee to have the car transported to the yard and destroyed. It bothered both of us that no effort to salvage anything from the Jimmy was being made. While it qualifies for the CARS program, it is in no way a bad car. Imagine a elderly organ donor whose organs aren’t harvested simply because there’s too much paperwork. Simply destroying the Jimmy didn’t sit well with us. So we decided to get the new car with just the Lexus in trade. We’ll hang on to the Jimmy, for now, as a utility second car.
After reaching the decision to not participate in the CARS program we visited the dealer to see if the trade-in allowance for the Lexus would still be good. It was, and, after a hour or so of waiting for financing paperwork to be completed, we drove off the lot in our new 2010 Honda Insight EX.
We are both thrilled with the Insight. I’m sure our impressions will continue to evolve and deepen over time but here are some initial thoughts and reactions.
Today I spent roughly six hours opening every box in the garage and sifting through its contents. Along the way I found several items of interest to both Sibylle and I, and managed to repack several half empty larger boxes into smaller ones. However, I did not find the missing car title we need.
Two years ago in July we were preparing to vacation in Germany and I need a passport. We spent hours and hours searching through boxes in my storage lockers trying in vain to find it. One night, just after arriving at the storage facility, I managed to shut my right forefinger in the passenger door of the Jimmy, which was locked. The nail on that finger has grown back, although it is (and probably always will be) partially detached. In the end I reported my passport stolen (as I had been robbed the previous year) and was issued a new one in time for our trip.
Today, while searching one of the boxes I found my missing passports. My original one, filled with franks from the Caribbean, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy, and its replacement - the one I had reported stolen.
Both of these experiences, the passport search two years ago, and the title search this weekend, raise a question in my mind - are we storing or hanging on to too much? We have books and pictures, and children’s art work and tools and electronics and more pictures and so on, all in boxes in the garage. Before moving from Illinois to Kansas I donated lots of old sporting equipment (skis, golf clubs, et cetera) as well as nearly 1,000 pounds of books. I’ve always sort of regretted donating those books. While we still don’t have room to properly display all the books we have, I would like to have all my books.
Having lots of memories stored away feels good, for the most part. It’s only when there is something in storage that I want or need and can’t find that I begin to question the value of keeping all of this stuff. It is valuable - to me and to Sibylle - and we are going to keep it. I just wish I had the determination to go through it all and repack it in an organized fashion, and then label each box or container appropriately.
Tomorrow we’ll visit the county registrar’s office to see about getting a replacement title for the Jimmy. Hopefully there aren’t too many hoops to jump through, and ideally we can go to the state capital (only an hour away) and pick up the new one in a day or two at the most.
As I sat down this evening to start a posting about the CARS program, I discovered that the last posting I made was the 1600th on zanshin.net. I no longer have a word count on the site, so I’ve lost track of the words I’ve written here, but I believe it was well north of 300,000 a couple of years ago.
If you had told me ten years ago that the little web site I played around with would become a place for me to write about my greatest triumphs, and deepest sorrows, I would not have believed you. It has been an amazing ten years since I started blogging here; I can hardly wait to see what the next ten years, and beyond, holds.
After reading about it this week, Sibylle researched the Car Allowance Rebate System, or CARS program that the US government is sponsoring. In a nutshell: if your car qualifies you can get up to $4,500 when trading it in for a new car that gets better gas milage.
Her research showed that the 1998 GMC Jimmy she owns qualifies. Its combined milage is within the range allowed, she has owned it for more than a year and it has been insured and registered for at least a year prior to today. Both of us would like to have a vehicle that gets at least 30 MPG, as we feel it is criminal in 2009 to buy a new car that gets poorer overall milage than that. Continuing with some online research we started making a list of cars that meet our requirements. The Toyota Prius, Honda Fit, Ford Escape Hybrid, and the Honda Insight were all on the list.
Friday evening we visited a couple of lots here in town, after hours, and surveyed the available vehicles. Priuses weren’t in evidence at the Toyota dealer, nor could we find an Escape hybrid. The Honda dealer had several Fits on the lot, and several Insights as well.
As we had cleaned out the Jimmy and washed it earlier in the week, we took this morning to empty, clean and wax the Lexus. The Kelly Blue Book value for the Lexus was between $6,000 and $7,200. The car has a few dings here and there, and the automatic washer sensor no longer works. (It also no longer sticks to the windshield like its supposed to, either.) On our way out of the house we agreed that we’d take $6000 for the Lexus, but no less.
At the Honda dealer we drove the Fit. It’s a cute little car that doesn’t feel little on the inside. It is rated to get a combined city/highway 30 miles per gallon. I think both of us were surprised at how nice a car it was, especially for a sticker price of about $17,000. After spending 15 minutes or so driving it, we swapped to a 2010 Insight EX. Several months ago I had seen a very caustic and derogatory review of the Insight, but we found nothing to dislike about except maybe the rear visibility in the inside mirror. After driving it for 15 minutes or so we were sold. That the Insight gets a combined 40 MPG rating only made it all the better.
Now all we had to do was find out what the dealer would offer us for the Lexus. Thanks to our research on the CARS site we knew that getting a car with a combined rating more than 10 MPG higher than the CARS trade-in, we’d qualify for the highest allowance of $4,500. After a test drive and some looking at the Lexus the salesman came back and offered us $6,500 for it. Well above our desired $6,000 valuation.
In order to qualify the Jimmy for the CARS allowance we are required to show proof of insurance for the past 12 months, and proof of registration for the past two years. In our case, since we just registered the car in July we have the July 2009-2010 registration, and the just expired July 2008-2009 registration. We also have to produce the title to the vehicle. Sibylle moved from Manhattan to Olathe in June 2007, and we moved from there back to Manhattan in January. Some of Sibylle’s belongings actually moved from Manhattan to our apartment in Overland Park for a few months before settling in the Olathe townhouse. The title is in one of the boxes we moved two or three times in the past two years.
After dinner this evening we stated sifting through those boxes and papers we have in our office, and closets in the house. The high temperature this afternoon was about 102º, so spending any time at all in the garage looking through boxes would have been miserable. Our indoor search didn’t turn up the title, so in the morning we’ll be in the garage hoping to find “the” box sooner rather than later.
Monday morning at 9:00 we’ll hand in all the paperwork to the Honda dealer, who will then submit it to the CARS people. The CARS program, as you may have read, has been wildly popular, and there has been a huge backlog of requests. The dealer wants to wait until we get approval from CARS before completing the paperwork on our new car. He assured us that he had been assured the backlog would be resolved this week and the new submissions should be approved in a day or two.
Hopefully tomorrow will be a short day of searching, and hopefully the backlog of requests is quickly handled by the CARS people.
According to last.fm my favorite musical artists are, in order:
The university here has been offering free hearing screenings this summer. I signed up and had one a month or so ago and the results confirmed what I had long suspected: I have a slight hearing loss in the higher frequencies. In addition to an audio test, the compliance of my ear drum was tested (measuring the pressure difference between my inner and outer ear), and a visual examination of my ear canal and ear drum was made. The visual inspection was done, in part, via a camera, so I got to see my ear on a small screen. Very cool.
The result of my test was “failed,” since I wasn’t able to hear the 4000 MHz range at normal speaking volume. The volume had to be increased from 25 decibels, to 35 before I could hear the highest pitched tones. The doctor recommended that I schedule a complete hearing test to determine what the underlying cause of this loss, and to establish a baseline for future hearing tests.
Since the screening was open to dependents and spouses, I signed Sibylle up for one too. She also has some hearing issues, primarily in her right ear. The result of her test was “passed.” Which wasn’t at all satisfying as she has real difficulty hearing with her right ear. On our way home from the exam we talked about the discrepancy between the test and her experience. In the end we figured out that the test was designed to measure only one axis of hearing. The truth is that Sibylle can hear the normal range of spoken frequencies at the normal volume of 25 decibels. However, the clarity of those sounds is muddy or muffled due to calcified fluid behind her ear drum.
The test produced a false positive, and a sense of frustration, since it only tested volume and range. Without a follow on test of clarity there is no way to draw a complete, or accurate, picture of her hearing. As an adult, who has lived with the hearing deficiency in her right year for most of her live, Sibylle has learned to compensate and adapt to her hearing perceptions. She can articulate what it is like, and could, I believe, successfully describe it to a doctor so that they could understand what she experiences.
But what if she were a child who was experiencing difficulty with the clarity of hearing? The screening as conducted would say to the child, and their parent or care-giver, that their hearing was perfectly normal when in fact it wasn’t. Imagine being that child, who knows that things sound funny, who can’t always understand what is said in a classroom, who complains that, “my ears feel like there’s cotton stuffed in them” - all to no avail because some 10 minute hearing screening showed that they could hear the normal frequencies at normal volumes.
I’m not saying that hearing screenings like the one that Sibylle and I participated in are without value, but I am saying that great care has to be taken in how they are framed. They should be described as a test of only hearing range, and not a test of clarity or comprehension. In a case like Sibylle’s, where the patient describes a long term situation that the test doesn’t provide corroboration for, additional tests or examinations should be undertaken. Looking at the results of a simple 5 minute test and saying that “your hearing is perfect” and discounting the patient’s described experience is a disservice.
Six, almost seven, years ago, I purchased two Apple computers using an “Apple Loan.” Originally this was backed by MBNA, but they’ve long since been purchased by Bank of America. B of A implemented a number of security measures for their online banking, including a visual “site pass” image that I got to select and that should always be present when I sign in. I often times chafe at the security measures employed in the name of account security, but I recognize they are a necessary evil.
Today, it seems, those security measures at B of A protected my account. At around 11 pm last night I was sent an email with an “account unlock” code for my account. Perfectly legitimate email, except that I hadn’t done anything to that account in months. While I was home for lunch today, Sibylle and I logged on to the account and discovered it was locked due to “repeated unsuccessful attempts to log in.” Someone had been trying to access our account. It’s the virtual equivalent of being at home and hearing someone try to open your front door.
As the unlock code only last for 30 minutes, we requested a new one and accessed the account. Everything thing there is fine, as far as we can tell. The password used there is a decent one, capitalization, numbers, not a dictionary word, et cetera. And even though I feel it is a relatively good password, knowing that someone was (or is) actively trying to guess it, makes me a bit nervous. If I get another, unlock code email from Bank of America, I will probably change the password to something really complex, just to give myself piece of mind. And I’ll suffer the indignities of calling customer support to let the B of A folks know that it isn’t me rattling the doors and testing the windows looking for a way in.
I was riveted to the television.
Richard Feynman explains how trains stay on their tracks. Hint: it’s not the flanges.
From kottke.org