Car Trouble

I hate cars. I hate how they look, how they smell, their maintenance, their upkeep, their little quirks, their painful annoying habits such as lights on the dash coming on, going off, and you wondering what those lights stand for. I mean, when's the last time a Check Engine light came on, and you checked the engine?

Okay, the smell is all right. But really, cars represent how to get from A to B for me. That's all I need to do. If they're comfortable or roomy or good on gas, that's just gravy. I've driven some real pieces of shit in my day, and did it bother me? Nope.

So now me and my family are in a dilemma. There's a funny thing that happens once kids come around: Everything that happens to you happens to your family as well. The lines that once seperated boyfriend and girlfriend, husband and wife, they are gone, replaced only by a scant grey haze that now serves as your existence. Each event in your life enters this fog and either does great things or fucks it up. This is what I talk about when I say everything that happens to me happens to my family.

So we have two cars. Two cars that we cannot afford. One car, in fact, that is such dead weight it is astoundingly bad. It is a 1998 Mitsubishi Eclipse with 106,000 miles on it. That alone tells you that no one, no one will be buying this car anytime soon. Not only is it a plasticy, scratched up, burning-oil piece of crap, we owe about double its current value.

But on the other side of the coin, we have my Camry, the 1999 Camry LE with just 77,000 miles on it, runs great, and only has a little quirk--the driver's side window doesn't roll up, it gets hung on the liner. This is easily fixed with an afternoon at my father's.

Ah, but there's a catch. You see, the Camry has been reconstructed from a 'totaled' state. This means that it was bought by an insurance company, sold at a dealer auction to my father, fixed up like new, and sold to me at cost (the benefits of being his son and all). When I got said Camry, I wasn't quite aware of its trade-in value at typical car lots. My father tried all he could to not get me to go to a car lot when I told him I had an intention of doing so. Why? You'll find out in a second, and those who know cars will already see this coming.

The reason for this mixup is that one, we can't all ride in the Mitsubishi. The thing redefines tiny, especially for my big ass, and trying to put a toddler, an infant, me and Ericka in the same car would be a disaster to say the least. Also, the insurance is atrocious. To compound that, the interest rate on Ericka's car is just nasty in today's loan environment, where no loan really needs to be over 7% unless you've done something horribly, horribly wrong. Or haven't refinanced like you should.

Let's take all these factors, all these variables, and throw in a letter I got from the state of Tennessee. Here is the summation of said letter:

Dear Evan, you have had 4 traffic violations in the last year. Another one and you lose your license. If you don't take a driving course within 90 days you lose your license. Love, The State

Don't you just love politics?

So let's take my godawful driving skills, my terrible luck at said driving violations, the shitty Mitsubishi and my Camry that has a reconstructed title and figure out how to solve this mess.

Here's a quick formula for figuring out the value of a car with a reconstructed title: Take the trade-in value of the car and divide it in half. There ya go.

Did I know this when I bought it? Hell no. Had I known it was that detremental I wouldn't have bothered as I got my car paid off in full when I totaled my last Camry last June (May?). I knew it would hurt the value, but never to this degree.

So the we went to a few car lots. The first was Herb Newton Nissan and the second was Carmax. Let me draw up an analogy: The first is like cheap Mexican wine. The latter is like a fine French Merlot. Get my drift?

Carmax is fuckin awesome. Their people are friendly, a little money hungry, but that goes with the territory. You should see the absolute wolves that reside at the Nissan place. It is freakish. This one guy there, he was such a stereotype I thought I was in a bad movie. We're talking late forties white guy, too skinny and too tanned. Very little hair, but what was there is slicked back and oiled. Squirrelly and strangely menacing. The only thing he was missing was a gold tooth. These guys are creeps, sharks, and should be abandoned as quickly as possible.

Carmax on the other hand is a great little shop, and they don't hide anything from you, such as the dreaded "Finance Manager" at every other car lot, also known as "The richest motherfucker in the place" who, even in East TN, pulls in over $200,000 a year. Yeah, that's no typo.

So after all this rigamarole I found out one term that I hope to never hear again: Negative Equity. What is Negative Equity? It's when you owe too much on your shit. The loan can't hold the value of the lein. You're upside down. You're basically at the mercy of fuckwads like Herb Newton Nissan to offer you shit for your existing cars, pile up a huge bunch of money on a new car, and let you deal with this vicious cycle a few years down the road, and not save a dime, which I know I haven't mentioned, but was really the reason why this whole thing was started.

So now I know what negative equity is, I know how much I have (read: too much), and I know I need to fix it.

However, to do that I'll need a little luck, some help from family, and then we have to actually choose a new vehicle.

What happens? What saved the day? Why is there not doom and gloom here? Well, I've written quite a bit so far, so I'll cut this one short. Let me work out some details on what I'm going to do next, and I'll post the latter half of this story.

Oh, and if you're still reading this, may I commend you. That's a lot of drivel I tell ya. Stop a geek from blogging for a few months, see what happens?

Lex, The Wonder Kid

Congratulations to my best bud Jeremy and his wife Lesley! Yes, they proved me wrong in the fact that the due date came around and into labor she went.

Around 6AM this morning 8lb, 2oz Alexander David Roberts was born, aka Lex (which is fuckin cool, and yes I will call him Lex Luthor unless Jeremy hates it...but maybe that makes it more fun). I should be going to visit this evening, and that will be supah-neat.

Man, kids rule.

Where I Don't Belong

I tell ya what, one of the most important things about CoH is knowing what you can and what you cannot handle. Part of leveling up and getting into the more advanced (read: hard as hell) parts of the game is knowing when to hold them and when to run like a scalded bitch.

See the latter for what I tried to do tonight, and lost terribly.

You see, there's a little mechanic in the game called debt. This means that whenever you get 'killed' (of course, in MMORPG's you never actually die--you just go to the hospital), on your magical blue experience bar there's some black on the end of it. That's your debt. So when you're gaining experience by fighting enemies afterwards, you're also paying off that debt from dying.

This does two things: one, it teaches you to know your limits. Two, it teaches frustration when realizing you can't defeat a group of enemies, and that leveling up will now take that much longer. Because really, all you want to do is get stronger, faster, better. Yes, the game is based on AOL commercials. Yes, that was a joke. Let's move on.

Anyway, as I was saying, one of the ways to not incur debt is by teaming up with other superheroes to help out. Each hero has different abilities, and mine is the Ass Kicker (read: Blaster). This means that not only do I do a lot of damage, I'm also the first that gets picked on when you engage a group of bad guys.

This brings me to a crossroads in the game: Now that I'm at level 9, I can't surf the old spots and get a ton of experience. Since each level requires more and more of it to move on, you have to find bigger enemies to get more experience per kill. So you're basically forced to team up, or suffer. And teaming up is nice, but I like the solo thing. It's nice to have backup, but I like the free-roaming aspect myself, not having to wait on anyone.

If you want to get more in-depth, there are Super Groups. These guys are the hardcores, the 'guilds' of City of Heroes, even though I said that the game doesn't have guilds. They set schedules and work on missions from non-player characters to get max XP for their time. Of course they can roam around and whip ass like anyone else, but remember what I said about the debt thing.

Right now, I'm playing CoH until I die, then I quit and rethink my position. At this point I'm having fun, but see the path I must now walk down: team up or lose. I don't know if I like those options. While the guys at work are on the same supergroup, Liberty Force (yes, that is their official website), I can't handle that type of commitment while I'm still digging and working on Star Chamber. It's the same reason I've been so damn absent from IRC lately: with kids and friends and responsibilities, there's just not enough time in the day to commit to such an endeavor.

On a different, lighter note, Jeremy's wife Lesley is having their little boy sometime very soon now. The due date was today, but oh how nutty those things are. They anxiously await each day, hoping that their child will arrive then. But no, alas, the god of all things birthy fools them again, and so they head home, with days filled with walking and wondering 'when its time.' The funny part is, it's never when you think it is, and it is never, ever convenient.

Here's to hoping the birthy gods (yes, birthy) prove me wrong. I know they're excited and kids are fuckin cool. I got two to prove it.

Lastly Tone laments about his rainy woes, and suddenly I begin to rethink my plans to take residence on his couch for Origins. Just kiddin. I'd not stay there only if it were ankle-deep, because that's the magical Fuck It line. You cross that line, and you just say Fuck It. I hope that line is never crossed.

He laments about me wanting a GMail account. You damn right I want a GMail account! See my left nut down there? Yeah, trade ya for a GMail account ;)

City of Bloggers

Well, here I am, writing once again. I need to get used to blogging again, becuase it's been awhile and the habit has almost been lost on me.

However, I do get in plenty of writing thanks to starchamber.net, where I work for Nayantara Studios as their community manager.

I don't like to speak too much Star Chamber here because for one I'm under a Non-Disclosure Agreement, and another I say enough already on the main site and scwatch.net, my old stomping grounds.

So, let's speak a little about City of Heroes. I picked this up because Mike at work just won't stop raving about it. Within 10 minutes of meeting him he's going to let you know how great it is, what powers he has, and why you should be playing it too. He's got his wife in on the act, so he keeps it all in the family.

What can I say? I really dig it. So does Stephen here in the office, who has done very well himself. As for me, I'm a level 9 Magical Blaster. What does that mean? It means I'm a bad fire-throwing motherfucker, that's what it means. Fighting crime and gaining new powers is very intoxicating, even if there isn't anything else to do in the game.

Yes, it's called combat. No, that's all. No guilds, no trades, no shops, nothing. Just combat. If you liked Diablo (and who didn't?), you will fall head over heels for City of Heroes.

And if you never played Diablo, you should. It's the bomb diggoty. However, since you've missed out on that, just pick up City of Heroes and find me on the Liberty server (they're all named stuff like Justice, Virtue, etc). I wonder what my hero's name is? :P (misterorange)

As for the family, Annie is just...incredible. Amazing. She is so smart and funny and sweet and beautiful...I get a little emotional just thinking about it. She's learning everything she can get her hands on, she loves to read, she loves to swim, she's a handful but you simply can't stay mad at someone that amazing. I miss her as I write this :(

Super-Cute Moment #24345: Yesterday Annie was in the living room when the Burger King commercial came on where the guy says "I'm spicy!"

Annie immediately perked up and said to Ericka "I picy!"

Spicy, indeed.

Back In Action

That's right I'm back! Fuck you hackers, I'm here to stay. I don't know if I'll ever fully recover those posts from the dick who used an SQL insert (ie, lame script-kiddie) bullshit hack to get into my database and change my password, etc, but it's nice to have an outlet again!

Yes, even if this is a blogger blog, it's upgraded for you to comment, and it's here to hold my words, the only thing I really want it to do.

Now that I've got an outlet, I'll be sure to drop a line on stuff I'm working on, have done, and will do in the future. I also need to get links up to the picture gallery and my music.

Anyway, here I am, and I'm glad for it. Yes, this is probably the easiest and quickest solution to the problem at hand, and that's not necessarily a terrible thing...