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This Week: The Mitchell report, CompUSA closes shop forever, KITT is back

Sports News

Was it any surprise that so many baseball players are named in the Mitchell report of using steroids? But I was definitely surprised that Roger Clemens and Andy Petite was named.

Tech News

CompUSA announced they will close all stores by 2008.  I have to admit, I used to go to them a lot, but between competition from Circuit City and Best Buy offline and Newegg.com online, CompUSA saw its market eaten by these retail juggernauts.

Microsoft offered Windows Vista Ultimate edition for free, well for a couple of hours anyway. All you had to agree to do was let them monitor your actions (aka spy on you) for 3 months. The thing is, when they felt that too many ppl signed up, they decided to pull the offer but kept the site open for suckers to let them continue to monitor them for nada.

Entertainment News

The talking car is back! NBC will show the 2 hour movie in Feb 08. The new KITT is a Ford Mustang Shelby GT500KR. I kinda miss the sharp front of the old Trans-AM, but supposedly this new KITT has the same shape shifting capabilities seen in Transformers.

Web Videos

Check out this parody of the players named in the Mitchell Report.

Blogged with Flock

Mazda Zoom Zoom Live event

So I went to the Mazda Zoom Zoom Live event this past Saturday. This is only the second test drive event that I went to, the first being the GM test drive. So to compare the two on a scale of 1 to 10, the GM event was a 8 and the Mazda was closer to a 5. Here are the reasons why:

a. There were not enough cars.

GM went out and got cars from their competition. Mazda didn't do that. So there were only the Mazda Miata MX-5, the RX-8, the Mazda 3, and the Mazda 6 available. That's like 1/3 the amount of the GM event.

b. The lines were outrageously/deceptively long.

There are 3 skills test at the Mazda event. The first one is the Jinba Ittai, which roughly translates to "man and horse as one" in Japanese (Actually, works for chinese as well, since the t-shirts have the Chinese/Japanese words written on the back. I just didn't understand it and I had to look it up). The line for that was some what long, about 15 yds and then wrapped around 3 times. But it only took a little over 1/2 hr to get in the car for that event. The reason was they have like 5 cars for that event. Whereas on the Match the Time test, where you have to match the exact time, they only have 2 cars. The result was we ended up waiting over an hr for that skill test.

c. The food was horrible. (uh, what food?)

I was actually fed in the GM event. Each person can get 1 burger and 1 hot dog. They also gave you a bag of potato chips and a can of soda. They also have cookies and you can get as many of those as you want. In the Mazda event. That one blue ticket for food got you one lousy hot dog on a bun. There was no drinks, no chips, nada. I was practially dining on condiments by loading up the hot dog w/ massive amounts of ketchup, followed by a dollop of mustard and 2 packets of relishes. But guess what, that hot dog made me even more hungry cuz that was more like appetizer than a real meal.

I mean, I still had fun w/ at the event. I guess, like my friends' Nelson and John, who went w/ me to the event said, "You get spoiled after going to the Lexus event". I personally didn't go to that one. But for me, even the GM event spoiled me for the Mazda event.

P.S.

Some other interesting stuff:

The RX-8 has the smallest trunk I ever seen. You can fit maybe 1 big duffel bag in there, but that's about it. That's the price you pay for owning a sports car...

The Mazda 3s hatchback doesn't seem to have as much truck space as the Mazda 3 sedan. The sedan seems to have a longer trunk space. I imagine I can easily fit an MJ table in the back of the sedan w/ the back seats folded down, and still have tons of space in the back for other stuff.

The Jinba Ittai challenge was to keep the 3 golf balls in the center bowl of a 2 bowl setup (a small bowl within a larger bowl). There are 2 small conduits that let the balls roll out to the outer bowl if there is too much movement or rapid changes in direction. The object of the challenge is to keep the golf balls in the inner bowl while completing the course. The additional challenge is the bowl is plopped right on top of the hood and it partially obstructs your view of course. This challenge reminds of the anime/movie Initial D, where the main character's dad puts a cup of water filled nearly to the top in the car, and told his son not to spill a single drop of it as he makes his pre-dawn tofu deliveries.

Car journal

Yeah, I wanted to start this like, since I got the car. But I haven't had time. Anyway, here's a list of what happened so far, listed by mileage by the trip meter (which holds up to 999 miles, I will think of something after that).

000 mile - Yea! So happy I got the car.

016 miles - Drove to/Return from the movies in Sheepshead Bay.

032 miles - Broke my front right signal light cover pulling out of the driveway. I mentioned it in more detailed in another post, but I really didn't realize the damage until after I dropped off my sister at her house.

040 miles - Brought to mechanic to fix signal light cover, cost $100 for a pair since he didn't have the cover in clear color, which was what originally came w/ my car. I was also there for an inspection, which cost $37. From the inspection, I found that I needed a port injection cleaning, which cost $150. The total of all this is $287. Ouch.

053 miles - Pathmark Shopping

067 miles - movies again

080 miles - drove to 8 ave for lunch

097 miles - Let my mom drive the car to show her that she's being overcritcal of my driving, when she can't drive herself. Good thing nothing happened.

113 miles - weekly pathmark shopping, also got the service manual for the car. Wow, it's only 700 pages long. A lot of the stuff gets a little too detail for me to do, I think. Since it's a scanned copy, the quality wasn't very good.

125 miles - Nelson drove my car to my sister's house. I could of drove myself, but since my mom's in the car, I rather not.

145 miles - drove to Jimmy's house, I didn't know his block has plenty of parking otherwise I would have parked a lot closer. Apparently, his block doesn't have many driveways like mines. Anyway, when I left, he said I was driving too fast. LOL. Maybe I was, but I didn't feel like it.

149 miles - drove to Nelson's house to pick up Initial D movie. I wonder where I got the notion of driving fast...

157 miles - drove to golf driving range in Marine park. I never been on a driving range before so I was really sore the next day and even the day afterwards. I also got the original owner's manual from eBay. They actually cover a lot more details that are more useful than the service manual. The print quality is also much better. I don't have to read crooked pages because of the bad scans like the service manual.

178 miles - drove to Chinatown. I was warned by Nelson that there is no parking out in Chinatown, ever. But I didn't feel like taking the train because the N train was skipping my stop. I still remember that time when it took 2 1/2 hours to get home because both the D train and the N train had major problems.

199 miles - drove Yu Hong and his co-workers home. I missed the prospect expressway exit and ended up taking a nice scenic route to belt parkway. I normally take the belt to get home, so It's not like I know by experience. At least now I do. I bet you I won't forget to get on the prospect expressway next time. Retrospectively, I should have got off on the next exit (39th St) instead of going all the way to 4th ave on the belt and getting off over there. That was Yu Hong's idea. So we ended up getting off on 4th ave and 101st street. I didn't even know there was a 101st street in Brooklyn. If you mention 101st street in NYC, I would think manhattan and maybe queens, but not brooklyn. I basically crossed 1/2 way thru Brooklyn. My idea was to get off on 65th Street, which is the entrance where I usually get on the belt from. It took an extra hr and certainly more gas money to travel the "scenic" route, but I didn't care. I had no work the next day (Sunday) so I wasn't in a rush.

245 miles- driving my sister again so that she can do her laundry. Such a chore. She should get her own car. But she decided an apartment over a car cuz she can't stand living w/ our mom. I did the other way around cuz a car is more useful. Besides, I don't have to share it w/ anybody, which she has to w/ her apartment and 2 other room mates.

It's currently at 264 miles. I recently found out one of the bulbs for the hi-beam went out. I saw that they were selling a set on eBay for $12 including shipping. But I ended up getting it from Autozone for $7. At least I know for sure it is the bulb cuz I swapped it w/ the working one and the reverse happen. Good thing it was only the bulb, and not the whole part. If I had to replace the whole front light set, it would have cost $150 for each side. Ouch! I also found that I don't have any coolant in the reserve tank. So that makes me wonder how much coolant is left in main reservoir. I brought some Prestone as well, just in case. But now I am wondering if that coolant is the right formula. It's good to double check. I have to drain out the existing coolant to get the best performance from the coolant and also to minimize the problems of mixing different coolants in the car. I could get that done by a mechanice, but why? I am not made of money. Besides, I think this is fun, as long as I don't mess up my car.

Acura Integra Owner's manual

Like I said b4, the service manual is useless to me cuz it's too advance. So I just brought the owner's manual from eBay. I just won the auction not too long ago, just paid the guy today, hope to get it by this week. This is the dead tree version right from Honda (used), so the quality should be much better than the service manual. I hope it's not the opposite of the service manual (too simple).

Damn, I scratched my car already....

Yeah, it started out as a nice weekend. I finally got my car registered, ready for some driving. In fact, Saturday was a pretty good day. I picked up my cousin Anthony and my friend Rob for lunch at the Vietnamese restaurant on 86th St. Then we were suppose to go play some MJ, but my cousin didn't have much money so we ended up watching the Fantastic Four instead. It was OK, but nowhere near Spiderman or Batman Begins to compare recent superhero movies.

Sunday was a sad day. I was suppose to get my car inspected. So I thought I might as well do some errands. So I was going to drop my sister off and goto pathmark to pick up groceries as well. My mom normally goes to church on Sundays. For some reason, she didn't this past Sunday. So she decided to watch every single step as I pulled out of the driveway.

Having my mom around m. My sister says she gets nervous around my mom. Well, that's cuz my mom is such a nervous wreck. She makes everybody around her nervous. I had no problem pulling out of my driveway on Saturday. But on Sunday, it was totally different. First off, my mom insisted I put a seat cushion in the back of my seat because she says the seat is too low. I don't know why I didn't fight her on it cuz she is absolutely stupid. Yeah, the seat is low, but that's cuz the car is low. I ain't driving a SUV. I'm sure she can find problems with a SUV if I was driving one. Anyway, the cushion made it very unfortable. The are, afterall, seat cushion. They are meant to support your butt, not your back.

So being in the state of condition that I was in (stressed out by my mom, uncomfortable by the seat cushion, and hot cuz the AC was only starting to come on), I made a stupid judgement call. I thought the car was too close to the left side of the driveway. So I wanted to correct it before I pulled out. My sister wasn't much of a help. She agreed with me. Retrospectively, if I pulled in on Saturday w/o scratching anything on the left side of the driveway, why would I scratch anything if I pulled out in straight reverse? The answer is I wouldn't have hit anything. But being dumb in that moment, I tried to correct things which made things worse. When I reach the end of my driveway, I scratched the most of the right side of the front bumper. I also broke the cover for the front signal light. I'm glad that my headlights are scooped into the front and not part of the front like most cars. Otherwise, I am sure I would have damaged those too.

You know what's weird though? I didn't realized I scratched up my car until after I drove my sister home. I thought I heard a huge scratch when I was pulling out. But I mistaken that for the undercarriage being scratched up cuz I was pulling out too far to the right and my rear wheels miss the onramp and just hit the curb. It wasn't until when I drove my sister home and my mom called me that I found out that I had messed up the front right side of my car. She said there was quite a few of broken glass on the floor. That's when I walked around my car to find those ugly scratches and the broken cover.

After driving my sister home (I'm sure she enjoys her precious freedom that she gets for being able to live by herself, away from my mom),  I went to the mechanic for the inspection and the repair. Guess what, he didn't have the signal light cover and he told me to come back on Monday to get both the light cover and the inspection done. I was kinda frustrated cuz I wanted the scratches fixed right away. I knew I would eventually put scratches on the car but I didn't think it was this soon.

Anyway, I went back to the mechanic on Monday. He called up his parts guy and found out that they only sell the light cover in pairs. They didn't even have my car's color. The original cover were clear and the light bulbs were orange. The replacements was suppose to orange too. He gave me a quote of $100. $100??? For 2 cheap plastic covers. Man, that's a rip. But I was desperate. I could have waited or even shopped around. But I wanted to get my inspection done and he said I wouldn't pass inspection w/o the light covers. So he gave a quote of $137 w/ $37 for inspection (pass or fail). So I drop the call off to him and went to work.

I get a call from him around 4PM. He said that my car failed inspection cuz my injection ports were dirty. He said it would cost me $150 to fix that. Again, I just wanted to get this over with, so now my total is up to $287. The good thing was he had things to do and he stayed late on Monday. Normally his shop closes at 6PM, but since he stayed late, I was able to pick up my car after work. He didn't charge me for the 2nd inspection to get the pass (the stupid sticker next to my vehicle registration). Man, now I know how brutal it is on the wallet to own a car.

I definitely have a lot more practicing to do. It's been over a year and half since I got my license. I haven't driven on the road since that time (the autoshow in Nassau Colliseum doesn't count, since there was virtually no traffic to contend with). I definitely feel like I forgot a lot of things. I used to be able to parallel park w/o a problem. Now It takes me a long time to just to do that. I also have to learn the size of my car. It is a small car, but I haven't quite figure out where the corners are. I really have no idea how to use the side mirrors to judge that. Well, I'm beginning to learn how. When I pulled my car out to drive it to the mechanic on Monday, I realized that I can used the side mirrors to judge the alignment of my car base on the garbage cans on both sides (my house and my neighbors). I can also use them to see how much room I have so I shouldn't get any more scratches from them. Finally, I also learn not to turn until most of my car is completely out of the driveway. Being that my car is short, I can pull out of most of the way and my car still isn't sticking out in the middle of the road. But I still got a lot more to learn before I get use to driving my car....

I brought the Integra

Yeah, I finally decided to buy the Integra. I was really impressed by the lack of rust in the wheel well. There was a ton of rust on the Altima. In fact, there was hardly any rust at all on the Integra. After that, I just pull a quick quote from Geico and Progressive for the insurance. Guess what? The integra is cheaper to insure. Not by whole lot, but it was a real surprise considering it's a 2 door compare to the Altima's 4. I always been told that coupes are more exp to insure. I guess whoever told me that is totally wrong or at least it doesn't apply to this case. Anyway, here are a couple of pics of my new car from my Treo 650. I still have to get it register. Hope to get it done soon.

Integra is nice, so hard to decide

I test drove the Integra today, and I like it. For a 95 model year, the car is kept pretty good. There are no dents except for minor ones on the bumper. The ride is smooth and nice. The engine has a little more kick to it than the Altima. But both cars are really nice. I don't know which one to get...

My friend Danny told me MSN Auto's have some details on a car's reliability. Guess what, they have a lot more info overall then Edmunds or Autotrader. There are detail specs of the car. They also have the NHTSA crash test rating.

Here are some info between the 2:

Nissan Altima
3 Star driver front protection
3 Star passenger front protection
Moderate problem with engine (Intake Manifold Gasket and Canister Vent Control Valve failure)

Acura Integra
4 Star driver front protection
3 Star passenger front protection
All parts - Infrequent problems reported, all with low repair costs.

So I don't know which to get. I have asked around and so far the tally is 3 to 1 for the Acura over the Nissan. I guess ppl like the Integra more even though it is older. I can't decide. I still have to get a carfax report on both, get a basic checkup on both cars, and get a quote on both cars to really decide on which one to get.

Checked out 2 cars over the weekend

So I have been looking to buy a 2nd hand car for a while now. But I have been busy with various crap. I finally got time last week to check out 2 cars. One was a Altima, the other was an Eclipse. The Altima is pretty nice. Other than a dent on the front of the driver side and a broken eject button on the sound system, there was no other mechanical problem that I see from it. The car drove pretty nicely, even though it had 80,000 miles on it.

After being relatively impressed with the Altima, I though I would be equally impressed by the Eclipse. How wrong. First off, the car don't have AC. And Sunday was freaking hot in NYC. Definitely in the 90s. I felt like I was melting in the car when I was test driving it. It really needs that to be fixed. There are also a few other problems too. The front bumper is messed up. There is a hole in it. Also, the passenger side airbag released when the owner bumped into a wall in the parking lot. There was just more and more problems as I was driving it. My friend Nelson, who I brought a long cuz I don't know much about cars (yet), spotted a crack on the left side of the windshield. I don't think that's gonna pass inspection. Also, there is a badly patched up crack on the back bumper that I didn't notice until Nelson told me after the test drive. Oh, I forgot to mention that the hood doesn't close properly. The only way to close it is to drop it. Should I even go on?

Anyway, I have one more car to look at tonight, a 95 Acura Integra. But unless I get the heck impressed by it, I will probably go w/ the Altima.

Hummer H2

Overrated. The Hummer looks really aggressive and powerful. But it really doesn't have all that much power. The track is just to really test the offroad capabilities of the hummer. Most of the track is little bumps and ditches. Stuff that regular SUVs should be able to handle (except for those wannabes). The only one that might be a little of trouble for the SUVs was a 10 Ft hill at about 40 degree angle. Guess what, the Hummer cannot handle it at the lower powerband. You actually have to step on the pedal for it to get on over the hill. How strange.

Corvette

Outta Control. That's all I can say. There is some real nice speed to the car, but for a newbie like me, I need at least a couple of laps to get a hang of it. Unfortunately, u only get one. Also, unlike other cars, they actually have someone sitting next to you in the corvette. They really want to make sure u don't crash or something. The guy next to me have to pull the hand brake cuz I sped up on the opening straighaway too soon. I was suppose to wait til the car before complete the turn. LOL. Oh well. Anyway, after I made the turn, I must of ran over the half a dozen cones cuz it was hard to straighten out the car. Wish I had a couple of more laps to practice, but that was a lot of fun.