GM provides free seat belt extenders!

A few months back we got a new car and being the big guy that I am the seat belt doesn’t fit. For the most part, I don’t bother with the seat belt when it doesn’t fit as most cops are decent enough to let me go without a ticket when I show them it legitimately doesn’t fit. For my part, I really would rather wear the seat beat. If for any other reason than not giving cops a reason to pull me over and bust my chops.

Over the summer, I hit a checkpoint by the local cops. The constable was nice enough to let me go but told me to get an extender. Figuring that one from the dealer would be ridiculously expensive as the dealer wanted $80 for a 6″ extension on one of my previous cars. I went online and found a universal seat belt extender from Amazon, for $15 how could I go wrong? It bolted on to the post and would be hidden from view, no big deal. I took the car for inspection and asked the mechanic to throw it on. He tried but said there will be wires on the floor if he installed the bolt on extender. Newer cars and their computerized BS. The only reason the seat belt would need a wire is for that stupid bell that reminds you to put on the belt. So knowing myself, I’d rip the wire out with my feet in no time I told him not to worry about it. He offered to call his GM dealer and find out a price.

Long story short, I was pleasantly surprised to find out GM provides seat belt extenders as a courtesy to their customers but the dealer would have to charge my mechanic a penny to generate an invoice and order the part, it would be in following week. What a pleasant surprise! My buddy was heading up to the garage for his inspection and I asked him to pick it up for me and told him to make sure you pay the guy his $0.01, lol. The mechanic said tell Dan it’s a gift from us. :D

Thank you General Motors for not gouging your customers on a much needed accessory. Kudos to you for doing it as a courtesy and not even charging.

This Week In Dan

This week has been pretty good. Spring is the in air and it cannot come fast enough. This winter was one of the worst I can remember.  I’m getting out to exercise more and more with the nice weather.

I started logging my daily eating and exercise. Mainly just to have a record and see trends. Sure, I could write it down but posting it publicly keeps me honest and sort of forces me to get out for my walk. I feel like an idiot posting ‘nothing’ under exercise. Yay for public shame! :p To keep it simple I installed an email to post plugin for WordPress. Since I’m always in my email I start a draft in the morning and add to it as the day goes on. After my shower in the evening I finish it up and don’t eat after that.

Earlier in the week I got ‘5 Very Good Reasons to Punch a Dolphin in the Mouth‘ by The Oatmeal. Silly title I know but The Oatmeal is awesome. He does all sorts of web comics over on his site. They always give me a good laugh so when the book came out and even though I’ve seen most of the material I thought I gotta support this guy. Also on order are 2 posters of his comics which I cannot wait to get.

This week I also received my NetTalk Jack from Wal-Mart. The NetTalk is just like MagicJack except it doesn’t need a computer to work. Setup was a breeze and so far it works great. I’ll have a review within the next week or two. We have another new phone number. :eek: Mom’s not to happy but I did get a local exchange and easy to remember number. For now I have Magic Jack setup to forward to the new number until it expires in July.

I closed one hosting account on a server that was always having issues and opened a hosting account with 1and1. I’ve had my problems with 1and1 but their hosting is okay for non mission critical sites. I bought a few new domains too. Not sure exactly what I’ll be doing with them but I’ll figure it out.

Yesterday, my landlord’s handyman showed up to put down new linoleum in the kitchen. The landlord gave me a roll of linoleum almost 2 years ago expecting either me to put it down or hire someone to do it. It’s been sitting in the hallway ever since, lol.  I don’t know how to put down a floor and I know if I put it down wrong he would expect me to pay for it. On top of that, I’ll be damned if I’ll pay someone to fix something that is the landlord’s problem. If I ruined the floor I would’ve paid for it. The tiles were already cracked when we moved in. They got worse because we had no heat in the kitchen for 4 years! If the landlord was otherwise decent I’d eat the c-note but since he’s a cheap mofo and tries to blame me for all kinds of crap in the building so I won’t lift a finger for the clown. Anywho the linoleum looks nice. He’ll be back next week to tack the molding down.

My new desk chair turned out to be small for my big ass. I gave the chair to the handyman as a tip. That chair was $50 bucks.  Ziggy, the handyman is a hard working dude and always goes the extra mile for us so I was happy to give it to him.

Our oven is out again. The burners work but the pilot on the oven won’t stay lit again. Every couple of month the pilot just decides to go out. We call the technician to the tune of $80 a pop. The technician makes all kinds of adjustments and eventually gets it lit. One time the poor guy was here 2 hours. To the landlord’s credit he did put a brand new stove in here 3 years ago. Only after we went without a stove for a year! The stove has been nothing but problems since we got it, probably because the landlord installed the natural gas to propane conversion kit on his own. He’s the jack of all trades/screw up everything type.  For my .02 you don’t mess around with gas appliances unless you know what you’re doing. We burn in the neighborhood of $95/month in propane just for the stove which shouldn’t be as we don’t even cook every day.

The Flinstone-mobile is on the fritz again. I had an appointment scheduled today (Saturday) with the mechanic to check out a tire with a slow leak and put in a new headlight bulb. I’ll be damned if I can figure out  how to get the new bulb in. D’Oh! On Thursday, I left to do laundry and stopped to adjust the wiper blade only to notice smoke coming from under the hood. I popped the hood and see it was coming from near the radiator. Got back in the car and seen the temperature gauge was in the red zone. I guess laundry was out. It’s too bad because I was looking forward to getting Chinese. Thank God it happened where it happened as I was just about to lose cell service and there’s no cell service the rest of the way. Got ‘er home and parked her.

Luckily, my neighbor lent me her car to follow mom over to the garage this morning. Our mechanic hasn’t had a chance to look at it yet. I’m hoping it’s nothing more then a bad hose and praying it’s nothing more then a water pump as if it’s anything more than a $200 job it’s going to the junk yard.  I’m guessing it’s a head gasket only because I smelled antifreeze burning. The car is just not worth it. We’ve had it just under a year and for what we paid we more than got our money out of it. The rear end is in need of about a $1000 worth of work. It needs new struts and a cross spring that costs $500 alone. For a 16 year old car with a 150,000 miles on it’s just not worth it. Heck, I’m not even sure it’s with a new water pump but where I live you need a car to do anything.

If it’s the head gasket and we have to junk the Flinstone-mobile it may be a blessing in disguise as with the rear end the way it is I’m risking a blow out and possible accident every time I drive it.

On a positive note I had to use the building’s laundry room and the dryer worked this time instead of eating my money. Hopefully it will continue to work. If we have no wheels for a while that’s the only place I can do laundry.

Overall aside from the car screwing up this was a good week. :)