3001 The lemon got squeezed

Saturday, June 26, 2010

"Between friends there will always be disputes.
It is not in the disputes themselves that we know our true friends,
it is in the way we address them."

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Last evening I went to dinner at a Lebanese restaurant in Troy. At about 6 pm, I was heading west on route 23, and exited 23 to 23B on the ramp leading to the Thruway. I stopped at the stop sign on the ramp where it met 23B, planning to turn right to go to the Thruway entrance. There was a lot of traffic coming from the left, so I waited a bit. To the left is a slight curve and an overpass where route 23 crosses 23B. (Map here.) There was a break in the traffic, so I started forward, crept forward, really, and then saw another car coming under the overpass, so I stopped.

The guy behind me didn't.

It wasn't a very big bump. I had my left foot on the clutch, pressed all the way down, and it jarred enough that I knocked the block on the clutch pedal loose, but my head didn't even hit the headrest. No injuries, no airbags deployed. Other couple are ok, too.

We pulled over to the side to look, and I didn't see anything wrong with Hal at first. The guy's front license plate was held on with big hex-headed screws - and Hal now has two very neat hexagonal holes punched into the rear bumper. And the faint imprint of the guy's plate number in scrapes and plate-paint smears between the holes.

Sigh. Hal's only six weeks old!

The guy readily admitted it was his fault. He looked very green when he realized what he'd hit. We traded info and I called my insurance company when I got home after dinner. I guess Hal's gonna get a new bumper. I wonder how much a new BMW bumper costs. Given that a new bumper for Suzie the seven-year-old Suzuki is over $700, I suspect his insurance company is going to have a fit.

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I picked Hal up at the service center yesterday morning. They admit there's a computer program problem and they're working on a fix, but they found no problem at all with the trunk opening, and the anti-theft system. It worked fine for them.

The trunk is now working fine for me, too. Maybe all the test sequences they ran inadvertently fixed it. The antitheft thing is so random that I can't test it, so I don't know if that's fixed. I stopped for lunch on the way back from the service center, took "the book" in with me, and reread the section on antitheft. Well, more than reread. I studied it, analyzed it, and took notes, and then compared what I read to what I'd seen happen.

The alarm system is turned on when you lock the doors. But since you might leave a person or animal in the car and don't want the motion detectors freaking out (yes, there are motion detectors in the cabin), if you press lock a second time, it turns the alarm off.

I'm pretty sure I didn't press lock twice those times when the alarm should have worked and didn't, and I'm certain I didn't lock the car at all on those times when the alarm went off when it shouldn't have.

HOWEVER!

I am famous for static electricity. I generate power. I have caused '70s-era mainframes to program check simply by walking past them. Before battery watches, back when you had to wind them, a watch wouldn't last more than a week on my wrist before it got magnetized or something. Once the heat goes on in the fall, I get really jumpy.

I wonder if Hal's remote key is simply too sensitive, and it's picking up a static pass over a button and interpreting it as my having pressed the button? That would explain why the alarm was off although I actually pressed the button only once, and why the door was locked although I didn't press the button at all. And it was very humid yesterday, which might explain why the trunk is working - less static when it's humid.

The similarities to 2001's Hal are increasing. He very well might lock me out someday.

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After lunch yesterday I discovered something else interesting.

I've given up searching for the van key. I copied the VIN from the dashboard, went to the Dodge parts guy, and he cut a key for me while I stood there. Very quick.

Now, what was odd is that he didn't ask for any kind of proof that I actually owned the vehicle. It could have been any random car that I saw on the street, decided I liked, and wanted to drive, or at least get into.

The Hairless Hunk said it was because it is older and therefore not valuable. If it were a newer car they'd have asked for proof.

Hmmmm. Like a less valuable car won't have anything valuable in it? And there are lots of older vehicles some people might like to "borrow".

I wonder if it's illegal to cover the dashboard VIN plate.
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