Such is our luck
Especially today, I believe that everyone is cursed one way or another. Have you ever screamed in frustration, “this ALWAYS happens to me!”? Yup, that’s what I’m talking about. We all have stuff that always goes wrong, and the history repeats itself within our own lives. Lovely, huh?
So, today’s story… My car broke down yesterday. Gary’s work PC broken down today. And… yup, we both have had these problems numerous times within the 3 years I’ve worked here.
Whenever Gary, my fellow programmer at my work, gets a new PC, we always hope that it would survive longer than last time. Sometimes it works. Hell, once, he fried his PC in 3 weeks. If the next PC doesn’t outlast that one, he’s really got issues with bad karma with new PCs at work. This time around, it wasn’t as severe. He received this PC in February of 2003, so it lasted whooping 13 months. Now, either harddrive had a really bad crash, or the BIOS can’t recognize the harddrive, and the PC just won’t boot. Ironically, he just brought his 512MB compact flash card today, so he can make some back ups of important files on his harddrive. Yup, he was 1 day too late. So, his lesson of the day: make back ups more frequently.
My problem with cars… it runs just as bad as his luck with the work PCs. Since I started working at Cessna, I’ve had Dodge Omni, Ford Aspire, Ford Tempo, and Saturn SL1. Yup, that’s way too many cars in 3 years. They just die one way or the other. I mean… This time around, I bought a 3-year-old used Saturn from a local Saturn dealer. The car only had less than 8000 miles on it! I thought I finally got a dependable car. Yes, it has been running dependablly until the day before yesterday. Now the transmission problem… it just won’t engage. I revv it up to 4000RPM, and it’d be running at 25 MPH. Damn automatic transmission. Damn General Motors. I swear, the next car I buy will be Japanese made. And if my bad-car luck still lingers, then I might just give up, and never get a new car, or sell the car before the warrenty expires. Thank goodness, I have a warrenty with this car, it should cover this repair.
At least I’ve learned the lesson a while back: some form of insurance is a good idea. In my case, it’s not the actual auto insurance. It’s things like buying extended warrenty with this car, and having AAA membership. Man, if I were to tow this car from my house to my dealer at the regular cost, it would have costed… who knows. I wouldn’t be surprised to see bills of over $100. But with AAA, tows up to 5 miles is free, and after that, it’s $1.50 per mile. I just gave the tow truck driver $6, and called it good. That’s cheap compared to $100. Yup, I love having this kind of insurance. And I’ve used these free towing service, etc, that AAA offers so many times that it more than made up for the membership fees I’ve been paying.