Good Morning!!!! 42F @ 5:00AM. Partly cloudy. High 57F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph.
We'll round out the week being dry, but rain once again returns for the weekend. That's been the case for most of the year so far, and it continues in the 10-day as well. Is that strange or what?
Today's vehicles are being influenced by far more factors than just how well they go down the road or even how long they last, Kyle, and for those of us with some perspective, the resulting vehicles are not that desirable. They may get great mileage like a Prius, but when something goes wrong you better be made of money to get them fixed. They may have great capacity like an F-series pickup truck, but the engines that power them are so overburdened with sensors and computers that nobody really understands them and again, they're hard to fix. And there are so many parts made in so many different places all over the world, you better hope you get a good one because you might be waiting months for a replacement if you get a bad one. And on top of all that, people insist on things like cell phone integration, big flat screen infotainment displays, and automatic this and that, and now sticker prices are approaching what I paid for my first house. And all that tech just means more things to break. These might be ravings of an old man, but to me it doesn't seem very sustainable.
Apparently my complaints on Ford's customer survey struck a nerve because I finally heard back from a salesman at that dealership yesterday. And he wasn't very friendly or cooperative. He couldn't find the custom order I'd placed, and when I provided him with a copy and how I'd like to structure the deal (work up from dealer invoice instead of MSRP), he promptly blew me off and wished me well finding a dealership that would work like that. So I sent the custom order off to another half dozen Ford dealers, two of which came back saying they couldn't even place a custom order now because Ford isn't even accepting them. I know Ford is still giving allocations to dealers, and they can use them against custom orders. I also know that there's no sense even starting a negotiation with someone that I know is lying to me. So the search goes on. Another thing I found is that between Google and Yelp!, it's pretty easy to find the shysters out there and steer clear of them. And that there are far more shysters than Good Joes.
The trouble is, it's difficult to get anything done with the frequent interruptions all these inquiries have started. I went out into the garage to check the valve adjustment on the touring bike, a fifteen minute procedure, and didn't even have the first screw loose before that salesman tried to call. So he had already gotten off on the wrong foot, as I'd specified that I preferred to be contacted via email, and conduct the transaction via email. So I finished the job and called the idiot back, and I was pretty pointed about how I would be willing to go forward with things. He kept shooting off his own foot, and I can't wait for the next Ford customer survey...
That does sound like a great car, Paul. Things are a lot different in the car world than they were 12 years ago, though. Supply lines are screwed up (the '23 Prius is still not on dealer's lots), and quality is suffering among those parts that are available. I'm reading rumblings from know-it-alls in the car industry to just not buy anything made in the '21, '22, and '23 model years. And I'm also reading horror stories of people that did, then saw their new vehicle sit on the dealer's lot for months waiting on parts to fix a recall. There's also an extreme shortage of new vehicles due to the parts shortages, so dealers are adding markups beyond MSRP, so if you're unwilling to pony up, you can just keep walkin'.
During all this, five new real estate listings popped up, some of them possibly workable, but none of them just right. But I can now pretty quickly pull up a plot map, find the dimensions of the lot, bring up a satellite view of the property, and scale out the size of the backyard. And from that determine if there's room for a shop building, or if the one already there is large enough. See, some modern technology is pretty useful, but it's not often obvious how it can be used.
We're still arguing, the insurance adjuster and I, about the roof tiles. I'll take an old one down to the supply house that says they have samples of the new ones of the same thing today, get some photos, and maybe have enough evidence to get the insurance company to pay for a whole new roof. I've already inquired of my contractor about steel roofs, but he thinks they'd be more expensive than reroofing with the concrete tiles. And apparently there aren't enough roofers that can do a steel roof, and they charge accordingly. So it'll be interesting to see how all this turns out. And with all this rain, I can't help but think of all the additional water damage that's happening under the torn up areas of the roof, which will probably result in more costs I'll have to argue with the adjuster about.
I was also doctoring the batch of InstaPot chili I had going, adding beans and adjusting the spices. By dinner time it had turned into one of my better batches. Might even have some for breakfast before I package it all up and stash it in the freezer.
Hang in there, gang, Friday's comin'!
