Not at all a happy camper, or, the Matrix saga continues!

To recap: transmission had to be replaced. Insurance adjuster found a low mileage used tranny and ordered it as there was no way that I was going to cough up an add'l $2500 for a new tranny. The adjuster finding the used tranny is an important point. Spoke with the Toyota service rep last Friday, he said the tranny came in Thursday (the 27th) but the mechanic wouldn't get to it until Tuesday (the 2nd). He says it should be ready Wednesday.

Call the rep back Wednesday afternoon. Turns out that my mechanic had to go to Albuquerque for some Toyota training, should be ready Thursday. No big deal, I figure we can pick it up Friday. And I should point out that replacing a tranny in an all-wheel drive Matrix is a two day ordeal because the entire drive train has to be dropped out.

So I'm driving into work this morning and the dealership calls. The mechanic had everything to the point where he uncrates the replacement tranny and starts installation and reassembly.

The adjuster got a good deal on a two-wheel drive tranny.

Needless to say, that won't work too well in a 4WD car.

So the dealership guy has to call back the insurance adjuster, then they'll have to order a new tranny, which will take a week to get delivered. They'll probably have to reassemble my car to get it out of the bay so that they can service other cars.


I'm just hoping that my car is back before the semester starts on the 18th.

New Year's Resolutions for Programmers

http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/01/new_years_resol.html

Here's a special presentation from the Wired Blogs team: our list of New Year's resolutions. Feel free to apply these to your daily life whether you're a coder or not. And now, our plans for the future...

I will realize that design patterns are a guide, not a religion.

I will bother to research the security issues relevant to my work.

I will spend an hour teaching a child the rudiments of programming, even if it's just "Hello World" in JavaScript.

I will learn how to use Unicode.

I will not respond to requests for help by informing the questioner that they are not only asking the wrong question, but should change the language they program in and/or their Linux distribution.

I will not contribute to lists that anthropomorphize or analogize languages. The lists are funny only in their original incarnations.

I will create one bona-fide playable game, even if it's Tic-Tac-Toe 2007.

I will recognize that not all programs are self documenting, and that this is why comments were invented.

I will contribute to an open-source project because they need my skills, not because I like the project.

I will explain my grep patterns in comments.

I will be nice to the people who pay me.

I will stop procrastinating by cyberstalking my ex-lovers.

I will go back and do something interesting with all my failed, half-finished projects.

I will not use the term "Alpha" when what I really mean is buggy, untested, crap-tastic software.

I will always write Ajax that degrades gracefully (or I will realize that Ajax site navigation is the new "skip intro" of internet design).

I will not try to learn a new language. Instead I will surprise everyone by programming something completely unexpected in one I already know.

I will write ten lines of code everyday for someone I love.

I will continue to pretend Perl 6 is more than myth.

I will stop writing apps that are just giant, nested loops and releasing them as popular software packages. (Here's looking at you, Wordpress theloop.php.)

I will stop making crontab entries to scripts I end up deleting.

I will stop making rsync backup scripts to network devices I end up removing.

I will learn how to write a script that emails me errors instead of sending everything to /dev/null.

I will finally pay for all of the shareware apps that I use daily. No, really.

Compiled by Rob Beschizza, Mike Calore, Scott Gilbertson and Joel Johnson. Photo by Augie Schwer via Flickr.