Andy's Blog

My new car

After a long search, a long deliberation process, a lot of procrastination, and finally a wait for the car to be assembled, it is finally here:

I was forced to buy it after work, because I was out of town last weekend. So, by the time I finally got it, the sun had been down for a very long time (it took about 3.5 hours at the dealer in order to seal the deal). So I took some pictures this morning before work. This turned out to be a pretty smart thing to do -- because it was raining this evening up in San Mateo, so just like that, my new car is already dirty. :)

So far, I am pleased with my purchase. But I'm sure I'll have a lot more to say once I drive it more. Right now, I'm just in that stage of super-paranoia, waiting for that first scratch and/or ding. ;)

-Andy.

Depreciation

As a companion to my last post, here is a picture of my new car's instrument panel, taken before I drove it off of the lot:

That "20" on the lower right of the bottom display is the odometer. So, factoring the immediate depreciation of driving a brand new car off of the lot, combined with the money that I paid for it, made yesterday a very expensive day! :)

-Andy.

My Saturn's last hurrah

Yesterday, I parted ways with my car of the last 9.5 years, my 1997 Saturn SL2. I snapped a picture right before I turned it off for the final time:

As you can see, I almost made it to 98k miles in those nine and one half years. The other thing that you might notice (if you are crazy-astute), is that the gas needle is tending towards empty. Last week, in a fit of Mike Hunterness, instead of filling my car all the way up when I went to the gas station, I only put in enough gas so that it was three quarters full. I figured that it would be enough gas to cover the few trips to work that I had left in the Saturn. As it turns out, I ended up driving to the data center in South San Francisco yesterday, so I just barely had enough gas to make it to the Volvo dealer. But hey, I saved like, $5, right?

But, this was supposed to be a eulogy to my Saturn. My Saturn was a great first car. It got me where I needed to go, I knew it inside and out, and despite a few crazy maintenance issues (I'm looking in that "failed transmission in Napa"'s direction), it never left me stranded anywhere. And in an attempt to curry my favor, my Saturn was really kicking ass in the gas mileage department with the new commute. The last time I made the computation, I got around 33.5 miles per gallon. That isn't too shabby for a nearly ten year old car, and the fact that my wallet isn't going to see gas milage that good for the next decade (or so), pains me greatly.

-Andy.