carpediemracing 

I rented an SUV from Enterprise one year, before I had a van for the spring series. Before the race I used it to drive my ex-gf and her stuff back to Canada. When I returned into the states they asked why the SUV was empty. It was packed to the gills on the way in. Apparently they track this stuff? I told them the truth, I was moving my ex-gf back to Canada.

(She actually had a friend drive into the US, meet us, pick her up, and drive her back, friend said at the border that they went to the US to go shopping which apparently Canadians do regularly, no ID check on the ex, so my ex never had a round trip record of her many months long "trip").

Anyway, the person typing in the plate mumbled something about a stolen vehicle, require back up or something. I was pretty impressed that she could spot a stolen vehicle while dealing with me.

Then two guys came sprinting out of a nearby building, ran up to my (rented) SUV, and asked to see all sorts of stuff. Rental so it was hard to prove it was mine because, frankly, it wasn't. One guy asked if he could trust me to drive to their building (20? yards away) without trying to escape "because then I'd have to get in my car and pursue you and then I'd be really mad at you". I assured them that I wasn't a flight risk.

I drove, at about 3 mph, to the building, literally with just a couple fingers at the top of the steering wheel. Sat in their waiting area while they discussed things.

Ends up the SUV was reported stolen 18 months earlier, probably because someone didn't return it. The border guys let me go but cautioned me from getting pulled over as the SUV would still come up "stolen" if someone ran the plates and I might get arrested.

Believe it or not Enterprise didn't do anything for me other than rent me a different SUV the following week. It was a nicer one, okay, fine, but no discount or anything.

TheKillerPenguin

I am presuming this was pre 9/11, you lucky bastd.

happybday29475

Pretty sure that's incorrect.

TheKillerPenguin

Someone just rode by riding a mountain bike with aero bars. No punchline needed.

Spoonrobot 

Training for the Tour Divide?

Dolamite02

Sounds like an exciting venture, CDR, I hope it comes out well for you, congrats.

carpediemracing 

You know, I don't know. I'll have to find a picture of me with the SUV, maybe it has a date on it. It was either March 2001 (pre-9/11) or March 2002 (not pre-). Now that I think of it it had to be 2001. No passport required at the time.

carpediemracing 

Thanks. Under no illusions, it'll be interesting, that's for sure.

wens

I went Canada in 2007 and didn't need a passport, if that's what you're basing the timing on.

big john

Just curious, ever thought about being a service advisor?

carpediemracing 

I did, pretty seriously. The dealer where we got our two cars posted a service advisor position recently, like two weeks ago now. They're closer to the house, significantly less chance of rush hour problems (all local roads, multiple paths to get there), I have some history as a customer. On the other hand the dealer seems to be struggling.

My auto dealer friend said that in their dealership the service advisor made steadier money but was capped based on the amount of bonuses the friend saw go through the system. Auto sales was more volatile but overall better. Service advisor bonuses were less frequent (annual?), larger, and affected by some things out of their control (survey based but mechanic errors really kills the survey numbers). For example when I had some factory-paid maintenance done the mechanic didn't put the o-ring in properly in the fuel filter. This resulted in the filter spewing diesel onto my right front tire, which I didn't realize until I pulled out onto a 4 lane road and the car did some massive anti-skidding stuff, forcing the car to creep into the road at 5 mph or so. Not the service advisor's fault (right? I don't know actually) but it reflected on the survey and probably on their bonus. It was scary for me, I wasn't happy (but was very calm when I managed to get back to the dealer), blah blah blah.

More importantly, at least for me, the new car sales aspect is what appeals to me. Not sure that the service advisor would be as intriguing to me. It seems a more limited thing, less flexibility in execution.

Of course I'm saying this as a total newbie to the industry.

shovelhd

You're doing to do just fine. Best of luck to you.

big john

Good luck, I think you'll be fine, whatever you do. I was just thinking you might enjoy the advisor thing. Like sales, there are some good advisors, as well as some slimeballs.

furiousferret

I'm not happy about cdr working. On his workdays we could see a 80% drop in total word output on the 33.

carpediemracing 

I figure post count will only drop by 1 or 2 though, so take heart

carpediemracing 

Hm that's part of it. I know I didn't need one to leave but at some point it got strict about coming back into the US.

spdntrxi

Went to Canada a couple years ago .. Passport was needed to get back in to the us

echappist

perhaps this belongs in the geek thread, but i just took delivery of my first computer purchase (Dell Inspiron 13 7000) in 4 years. it's a 2-in-1 where the screen can fold back so that the unit becomes a tablet. the screen also has a gyroscope (like modern smart phones) so that it will rotate from landscape to portrait and vice versa. Best part is that i think i will be able to comment and highlight journal articles (in portrait mode) without ever having to print them out. Quite a game changer, really, and i'm pleasantly surprised.

himespau 

I've been looking for something like that for teaching so that I could use some sort of stylus to write on my powerpoint slides if I ever want to do a pseudo chalk talk (or I guess a chalk slide). Sometimes just drawing out pathways/reactions/structures works better than showing them to the students, but switching between computer and chalkboard can be awkward in some classrooms, my bigger classes sometimes have a hard time seeing the board from the back, and it'd be nice to have a record of what I wrote.

topflightpro

One of the toilets in the women's restroom at work overflowed this morning. At one point, I had a river flowing past my office. It also started raining on the first and second floors.

Now they are outside my office with shop vacs trying to suck up as much water as possible. And since it flowed into my office, I have to leave the door open for them to get in here.

echappist

yeah, i wish i had this back in grad school. Would have saved a lot of trees, and I would have better organized files and documents. this would have allowed me to "draw" structures on chemdraw and then paste the structure onto a NMR spectrum and assign the peaks. Actually the chemdraw support for the stylus isn't that good, at least with the passive stylus that I have; perhaps the active stylus might produce better results...

I first heard about tablets 12 years ago when deciding to purchase a notebook for college. My allowance was capped by my SAT score, so unlike @globecanvas, who has a perfect 1600, I was limited to something in the $1500 range. I could have bought a Toshiba tablet, but those things were quite cumbersome back then, not to mention that the technology was still half baked.

I bought mine from Microsoft for $600, and it comes out to $730 after the extended warranties (include spill and drop coverage). it has 8gb of RAM and a 5th generation Core i5 processor, which make it fast enough to do anything i need. If you are in the market for a TV, dell has the same unit for $925, plus $60 for the spill and drop warranty. If you have discover card, you earn 5% cash back from MS and 10% from Dell. I don't really need a TV and just had a whole bunch of bike parts that need to be replaced, so spending $180 more for a $270 TV didn't seem particularly shrewd.

Some of the other models have separable screen displays, etc, which make them even more useful in certain applications. Most important thing is to look for a screen that supports active digitizer/stylus as it really improves the stuff that you draw.

edit: for you breaking bad fans

grolby

I didn't realize they still made those kinds of tablets. I have to admit, they don't appeal to me that much. I did grad school with a MacBook Pro and, later, an iPad as well. That went more or less okay. Sadly the really high-DPI screens weren't out yet for screens that large, reading was definitely not as nice as it would be now. I just ordered a refurb iPad Mini 2 for reading and other things, that should be a nice upgrade. It was a bit of a splurge for me right now, but I haven't had a new computer type device apart from cell phones since 2011 (the iPad). I'm using the same laptop for over five years now with no upgrade really in sight. But since I'm out of school and don't use the computer for work I've been able to live with it. All my money goes to bikes. Heh.

mike868y

speaking of laptops...i think my trust 7+ year old macbook has finally bit the dust. thing's been a trooper. hopefully we get bonuses next week as expected so I can justify buying a new one.

mattm

going to the horse track today, a work thing.

what's the criteria for betting on a horse anyway??

gsteinb

4 legs and a cool name