Monday, February 28, 2011

My next car


I'm currently driving my grandfather's 2001 Buick LeSabre and it gets me from here to there. For a car that cost me nothing, I can't complain. I've only had to change the spark plugs, brakes and gas cap aside from the regular maintenance which isn't bad for a car over 100,000 miles.
Lately it's had me frustrated and ready for my next car, which of course I'm not ready to purchase but I secretly hoped researching a new car would scare the old girl into behaving a little while longer... and so far it's worked.

I've been plagued by a check engine light and for me it's just something I can't ignore. A new gas cap stopped that for a while but a couple weeks ago that stupid light came back. I couldn't figure out what it was and finally took it to get the code diagnosed. The results came back to do with a temperature sensor...great...just what I needed. After going over everything with a fine tooth comb, I thought it wouldn't hurt to top off the antifreeze. Well apparently those few ounces make a difference to that car. So the light is off and I've only had to top it off once since then.

I'm the type of guy who wants to have a plan in place for just about everything I can. I used to think this was a great personality trait but have since learned otherwise. Planning is good, just don't get carried away...

I like researching and wanted to a plan that if and when my car has taken me from A to B for the last time, I'm ready for it. So I started researching and learned I had some expensive tastes... well as nice as German cars are, particularly the Audi A4, it really didn't make sense for day to day life. After brainstorming what I needed versus what would be nice (commonly referred to as the likes, as in not the must haves) I came up with a Honda Accord. The problem being I'm not too fond of the looks although it's a great car. Until I found the newer Accords still come with an optional manual transmission (one of my must haves) and I like the look of the redesigned body style for 2008 and newer. It sounds silly but I had been agonizing over this problem for weeks and the answer brought great peace.

Edit*
I forgot to mention that this decision was mostly arrived through a piece of advice from a good friend. Buy only the car you need, they'll be time later in life to buy the car you want.

So when the Buick is ready to retire, this will be it's replacement.
*Photo from Google Images

Sunday, February 20, 2011

So here goes nothing...

I've been challenged by probably the only reader of this blog to keep it up to date by making a post each week. It seems like a challenge I can at least take a good crack at....

As for me, a while I go I updated my personal website, www.matthew-brandy.com. Nothing special just a little facelift. My wife is in her last semester of dental hygiene school and studying like crazy for her boards exam. We are both eager for her to be done with school and hope for a closer to normal commute as she is currently driving about 90 minutes each way.

In other news, the owner of my company is returning from a 3 week mission trip to the Congo on Wednesday. He's seem to have a good trip so far and we are ready to have him back. I'm sure his family is even more anxious than we are. Regardless, in his absence the VP and myself have been running the show and doing rather well. It's been a good experience in management as I've had to step it up in areas of project management, leadership and discipline/encouraging fellow employees.

My latest achievement was setting a mobile version of a website for one of our customers. She was very specific about her Flash site working on her Blackberry. I designed a mobile homepage that closely resembled the Flash site, setup a Blackberry emulator, and setup the code to auto detect the correct version to display. Getting everything buttoned up and working was a great way to end the work week, total sense of accomplishment. If you're looking for some help on how to setup the auto detect code, I can help you out, just let me know.

Okay, that's enough for now, stay tuned to see if I can meet the challenge of keeping the blog updated. Take care.