Helpful Hawaiian Rental Yard

This photo is priceless

Thanks to my friend Tim for this one. Very Presidential, as he said.

My first time

Something everyone should know

Liam at Pleasant Green Splashpad

Taking it to the next level

I just edited my first video and posted it on YouTube.

Visit My New Virtual Location

My wife made me a new header and moved me to a new location. I suppose that I should write something related to my new online identity. I don't really participate heavily in copyright violation like I used to. I have a gigantic digital music collection, but it seems silly now because I haven't even listened to a third of it and I probably never will. It felt like an accomplishment in some way to amass this collection and I still add to it periodically, but I try to add stuff that I like, and will listen to, now. Otherwise it is just a waste of space. I thought that 800GB would be enough, but my video collection is rapidly encroaching on my music collection.

These days I try to stay in the gray areas of copyright violation like broadcast television shows. I also like to complain about the DMCA, but I'll save that for another post, if there ever is another post.

Seth's Married

My brother got married this weekend and this is how exicted he was.

And this is how cute my son was.

I'm Joost

I've been playing with this cool new iptv program called joost and I really like it. Yesterday they gave me a lot of invites and I don't really know who likes this kind of stuff. It reminded me of the old days when I used to write about things that I liked and I thought other people would like on my blog. It seems like they are adding content every day now. None of it is new and as far as I can tell little or none of it was produced specifically for Joost. For me it is a great way to watch what I want when I want and it keeps getting better as they add content. I thought it was a waste of time when I started using it and I had watched everything that interested me, but now I always run out of time before I get through the things that I want to watch and then there are even more interesting things every time I log on. I recommend Stella, The World's Strongest Man, and the National Geographic documentary on avalanches. If you like tv like I do you should check this out. Let me know and I'll send you an invite.

Unwritten Law

I get my hopes up so high for things because I remember how great they were the last time. UL almost reached my expectations.


As Fast As...


Fenix TX



Unwritten Law


Bad picture of great reverse mullet. Long in front and short in back.

Fun with Pierre, Alejandro and Raul

Up until last night I thought that my stereotype of car salesmen was wrong. I had only dealt with two salesmen, but they were both low pressure. I felt like the car buying experience was going to be enjoyable. Not the nightmare that I had heard about from some people. My favorite salesman never even asked me if I wanted to buy the car. I had to ask him if we could look at some numbers. (He might have thought that I wasn’t serious about the Audi A4 3.0.)

Last night I went to Larry H Miller Used Car Supermarket. I got this flyer in the mail that said I could win $5,000. I have gotten them before, but never at the same time that I was looking for a car. I pulled up their inventory on car soup and saw that they had four Jettas and 2 Passats. So I called to see if the online inventory was right. It was so I headed down. On a side note: the flyer was for a one day deal the day after I called and when I called they said they would honor it anyway even though it was only supposed to be the one day. When I got there I found out that they actually mail out thousands of flyers a week and have the “one day” deals two days a week. It is a ploy to get people in the door. I suspected all along, but I was sucked in by the prospect of winning $5,000.

Back to the story. I got to the lot and met Pierre. I told Pierre that I had called and talked to Alejandro so he took me in to meet Alejandro but he was the floor manager so Pierre was my salesman du jour. There was a black Jetta right out front. I had told them that I wanted a black Jetta, so I test drove it around the block. I understand that silence is awkward, but I don’t feel really comfortable about a guy pretending that we are old buddies either. The Jetta drove nicely. It was a 1.8T with a lot of options. So we went inside to talk about numbers and it was a lot higher than I wanted to go. Talking numbers involved Pierre and Alejandro. In retrospect I think that Pierre might be relatively new and Alejandro was helping him out. They kept asking me how much I was willing to pay. I can’t say, “I am willing to pay the least amount that you are willing to part with the car for,” so this puts me in an uncomfortable position. I know that if I say a number and it is within their acceptable range then I am pretty much done. I want to pay just a little bit less than their lowest possible offer, but there is no way to get their lowest offer out of them. At least that is what I thought. Alejandro went to the counter where the guy who comes up with the numbers sits, we’ll call him Raul. He came back with a list which he described as super secret, but I am special so I got to see the magic list. This is the list of how much they are into all of these cars. Basically their bottom line if they are going to make any money. For the car that I drove the list said about $15,500. They had already come down from the “list” price of about $17,500 to about 16,500. Alejandro asked me if there was somewhere in between where we could meet so that I could be happy and he could make a little money. I was wishy washy so Alejandro and Pierre let me take the car home to show my wife. I liked the car but it wasn’t an Audi, and that magical Audi is still floating around in my head. I started to think that it drove nicely. When I stomped on the gas in first it came right off the line and then the tires broke loose when the turbo kicked in. That was fun. But, I don’t need leather seats or heated seats or anything like that. I started thinking that all I need is a car that is fun to drive without all that expensive crap. I think I would like this car better without the extras and for about $12,000.

So, I had already made up my mind not to buy the car before I got home to show my wife. I took her around the block in it just for fun and then headed back to break the bad news to Pierre and Alejandro. Maybe they could tell what I was thinking by the look on my face, but my recollection is that Alejandro said that he could give me the car for $14,500 before I even said anything. I want to point out at this point that $14,500 is $1,000 less than the number from the magical list that we couldn’t go below previously. I was already late for something else that I was supposed to be doing in Bountiful so I told Pierre and Alejandro that it was still too much and I was looking for something more in the $12,000 range and they could call me if anything came up. Before I even got to Bountiful Pierre had called my house to tell me that he had found a black Jetta in my price range. Then today he called again to tell me that now he had two black Jettas in my price range. It was as if it was meant to be.

I have a full time job and a family so I can’t just go to the used car lot any time. The earliest that I could go was about 7:00pm. I didn’t think that was a big deal. Pierre said that he would make sure someone was there to let me test drive it. I thought that meant he wasn’t going to be there and I didn’t think that was a big deal. When I got there Pierre was there. Nice surprise, I didn’t have to deal with someone new. So I took out the newly arrived Jetta. It was basically the same without any frills. It was the nicer of the two that came in today. It wasn’t fun to drive like most of the other cars that I had driven. No turbo. I think that’s what was missing.

I think that I should have started with cheap cars and then worked my way up rather than the other way around. I was trying to be frugal so I decided to give Pierre a chance to make it worth my while. I think that the first number he showed me was more than the $14,500 that he offered the loaded one to me for. That seems illogical so I might be wrong about that. Anyway he gave me another offer right around $13,000 with taxes, title, etc. I still didn’t think that was worth it.

Remember Raul? At this point Pierre took me over to talk to Raul who I had never talked to before. In fact, I had only seen other salesmen talk to Raul. Not regular folks like me. He sat behind a glass wall. I guess that is so he doesn’t have to talk quietly to keep customers from hearing him. He seemed like a nice guy. He had me come around the counter to see the computer screen that he was looking at so I would be sure that he was being straight with me. He showed me a number and described it the same way Alejandro described the number on the magic list from the night before. He couldn’t possibly go below this number because he would lose money. I was of course skeptical and I began to tell Raul about the epiphany I had on the way home the previous night about how I had only driven German cars in my search for a new vehicle for myself and I thought that maybe I should give some other engineers a chance to impress me before I go with a German car. Either Raul didn’t buy my story or he didn’t care. He started to talk about how he was going to get me into a car tonight no matter what it takes. He said that even if he loses money he wants my business because he knows that I know people that are going to buy cars and I am going to send them his way. No matter how much I insisted that tonight might not be the night for me he insisted that it was. I gave up on convincing him.

Pierre took me over to another computer and we looked at the carfax vehicle history report, which had no problems. Then Raul sent out a sheet with his new offer. It had the number from the magic list to compare to his offer and it showed that the dealership was only going to make $27 if he sold it to me at this price. I asked for the book values and headed home to show Kim. When I got home I thought that it would be a good idea to verify the N.A.D.A. and Kelley book values that they gave me. They told me $12,650 for N.A.D.A. and $12,295 for Kelley.

When I ran the N.A.D.A. number myself I came up with $10,925. For those of you that aren’t good at arithmetic like me I used Excel to find out that is a difference of $1,370. I thought that couldn’t possibly be right and I must have missed some option or something.

At that point I noticed that the Kelley book value that they gave me had the options listed. It said that an automatic transmission added $535 to the value, a multi compact disk player added $300, power seats $35, rear spoiler $100 and Premium wheels $135. The problem is that the car that I drove home didn’t have any of those things. When I used the trusty spread sheet to add up the new value without all of the fake options it was $11,090. That is a difference of $1,205. When I ran the car through Kelley blue book myself, I got $11,055. At this point I was pissed. I felt like they had deceived me. They had used these numbers to show me that what they were offering me was a good price when in reality they were off by 10%.

Unfortunately I am not good at confrontation. I say unfortunately because I was really excited about confronting them about it but I knew that it would never go the way I would act it out in my mind on the way back to the dealership and I would probably leave with no satisfaction whatsoever.

I got back and Pierre met me at the door. I told him that I thought that the price was too high still and then I started to tell him how I had run the book numbers on my own and the ones he gave me were way off. I showed him all of the things on the list that were not on the car. In Pierre’s defense he didn’t put the numbers together. He went over to talk to Raul about what had happened. Raul had put the numbers together. Pierre came back and acted like it was no big deal and then he asked me how much I was willing to pay for the car. That was exactly what I didn’t want to hear at that point. I told him that I would have to think about it overnight. When I said that, he became visibly upset and said that he had been there since 8:30 in the morning and that he had stayed around because I was coming in. I thought that was ridiculous. I didn’t care how long he had been there and I couldn’t believe that he had blown it off like it was no big deal. I told him that I felt like I had been deceived and I wasn’t going to make a deal like that. Then he got up and walked away. No hand shake, not another word.

On my way home I went through the things that I would have said if I were quicker on my feet. Something about the whole thing being B.S. and how could he get upset with me when the numbers that he was using to convince me that it was a great deal were 10% high? I was fired up.

I look forward to more car shopping on Saturday. It is a lot more fun to be in situations like this when I hold all of the cards.

2002 Audi A4 3.0 Quattro Sedan AWD

Last night I went and test drove this car. I found it on Autotrader. I was really excited because it has a six cylinder engine and a six-speed manual transmission. I have always wanted a six speed transmission. They let me take it over night so that I could show my wife. It was a lot of fun to drive. The most fun yet. I can't even think of any complaints. Just the price.

2002 Audi A4 1.8 Turbo Quattro Sedan AWD

They had a nice Jetta that I test drove next. It was chipped and it had low profile tires. It was also fun to drive but pretty rough with the low profile tires. I can't find any pictures of it. After that we went over to the dealers other lot where they had this one:


I liked this one. It had the transmission that can be automatic or manual and in manual there is no clutch and there are buttons on the steering wheel to shift. Some genius thought of that. In automatic it was more sluggish than I liked and the transmission seemed to hang up a little when I was braking. I wondered if that was an issue with switching between maual and automatic. Close but no cigar.

2002 Audi A4 1.8 Turbo Quattro Sedan AWD Grey

I am looking for a new car and I want to document my search here. This is the fist car that I test drove.


I liked the car but I didn't love the color.

Thou Shalt Not Park Here

I was working at the Logan Utah Temple last week and they had this sign. I thought that it was funny, maybe a little presumptuous.

I Finally Feel Like an Adult

After approximately six months without flossing I have flossed six out of the last seven days.

New York Doll

Last weekend I went and saw a great movie with my wife. It was one of the best movies that I have seen for a while. It was a documentary about Arthur "Killer" Kane of the New York Dolls. The documentary was screened at the Sundance Film Festival and this week it is playing at the Broadway Theater in Salt Lake City. I understand that it is beginning a wider distribution this week. I would highly recommend it.

On Friday the films director, Greg Whiteley, was at the Broadway to answer questions after each showing. I always enjoy that. There is one part in the movie where the lead singer of the New York Dolls, David Johansen, and Killer were talking about the ten commandments and David says that he is in good shape because he keeps all but one of them and he is working on that one. In the Q&A session after the movie Greg said that for a long time David wanted to see a cut of the film. Finally when he saw it he said that he just wanted Greg to change one thing. He wanted Greg to make him seem like less of an asshole. Greg said that there were three scenes that really made the movie and they all involved David being an asshole. One of them was the commandments scene. In the cut that David saw originally David went on to say the commandment that he doesn't keep. David said that it would be better if that were left out because people would think that it was murder.

A Special Treat at the Trans Jordan Landfill

This is a sign at the landfill that we go to occasionally. I remembered to take my camera this time.

Dodge Ram 2500

I have been meaning to post a picture of my truck for my brother. Here you go bro.

Memorial Day 2005

This was the view from our window.