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Jessica and I just finished a fairly fast-paced trip to the UK, where we saw U2 play at Wembley Stadium (two shows) and a show in Glasgow, Scotland. I'll write up a report soon, but some pics for now.

Wembley























Glasgow

Several weeks ago, I picked up a Garmin Edge 305 bicycle computer. It's one of the coolest toys, and I've been logging all my ride data with it. It tracks things like heart rate, speed, cadence, elevation, grade, and the averages of most of those things.

I plotted yesterday's ride, and it's interesting to see how things look.



There's a bit of a climb just before the halfway point, but other than that it's just rollers.

Curiously, max grade (around 15%) was toward the end of the ride.



I could also plot things like speed and cadence, but they tend to be tough to read (especially cadence) so they're only really useful as averages.

The 305 has a feature called "Virtual Partner" where you can race against yourself on a given course. Haven't figured out how to use that yet.

Btw, if you're a Costco member, they occasionally have the Edge 305 on sale for $179.99 with the heart rate monitor included. The cadence sensor is usually under $30 on Amazon.

Definitely a cool toy.

It's funny how quickly time flies when summer rolls around.

Jess and I have been doing pretty well. We're finally managing to get some riding in, and we've also done a bit of camping as well. Over the July 4th weekend, we took a drive up to Maine (state motto: Sorry about the traffic ticket, but we're really broke) for some camping. This ended up not being the best choice, because it was 12 hrs up and 14 hrs back. A lot of driving for one day of camping!

In order to bypass the heavy traffic areas of Baltimore, Philly, NYC, and Boston, we avoided I-95 and instead went up through Harrisburg PA to I-81, then across I-84 to Connecticut. It was a nice drive, until we got to CT, where I had to bump the cruise control up around 10mph to avoid becoming a hood ornament on another car. It seems that CT is full of ex race car drivers or something. Average speed of CT drivers: 83mph.

The rest of the drive was calm, until we got to Maine. Many years ago, I had to take a drive across Ohio on I-70 (talk about boring! The road was so straight, if you had a coronary behind the wheel, you wouldn't crash until you got to Indianapolis, assuming your alignment was good) and I never thought I would see that many speed traps per mile again anywhere else in the world.

Well, Ohio ain't got nuthin on Maine! While there weren't quite as many speed traps as Ohio, the intensity of them was much higher. We're talking several cops per trap, and boy were they adamant. There were cops dressed as construction workers, cops in plain white vans, cops on overpasses, and cops in SUVs on the wrong side of the road. It was mayhem, but we managed to get through the state (in both directions) without getting nabbed, despite Jessica's lead paw.

The camping was fun. It rained, of course. It always rains when I go camping. But the tent held up pretty well. I took Jess to the top of Cadillac Mountain (named after the same guy the car was named after) and we got plenty of cool pics. We ate a lot of food (too much food in fact) and we both tried Lobster for the first time (yes, after all these years I'd never had lobster!). It was fun having lobster the proper way - in Maine, on the water.

Other than the Maine trip, we've basically been hanging around the house, watching the Tour de France, and counting the days until we leave for England to see U2. We have tickets to Wembley, and also to Glasgow. Should be a blast.

I'll end with a couple of Maine pics. It's a nice place to visit, even if I only make it back every 20 years.

Ok, I haven't made any tech geeky posts in a while, so I thought I'd go ahead and throw this in. If nothing else, it'll give me an easy place to find it when I forget it myself.

Even though using tables for web page layout is pretty much considered a no-no these days, we still need tables when presenting tabular data. The problem is, if you're using an XHTML strict doctype, attributes like border="1" are no longer valid mark-up. So, how do we handle tables in CSS? Here's a quick reference list to most of the common table attributes.[table=HTML/CSS comparison][tr][th]HTML[/th][th]CSS[/th][/tr][tr][td]cellpadding="0"[/td][td]td { padding: 0;}[/td][/tr][tr][td]cellspacing="1"[/td][td]table { border-spacing: 1px; }[/td][/tr][tr][td]border="1"[/td][td]td { border: 1px solid #000; }[/td][/tr][tr][td]valign="top"[/td][td]td { vertical-align: top; }[/td][/tr][tr][td]align="right"[/td][td]td { text-align: right; }[/td][/tr][/table]

So this:

[codebox]<table cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" border="1" width="600">
<tr>
<td align="center" valign="top">
[/codebox]
Can be be written as:

[codebox]<table>
<tr>
<td>[/codebox]
With the following CSS:

[codebox]table { border-spacing: 0; width: 600px; }
td { padding: 5px; text-align: center; vertical-align: top; }[/codebox]

Other useful tidbits:

border-collapse (collapse|separate|inherit): When using the border property on both the table and the td, you'll get a double border between cells. Use border-collapse to compress it into a single border.

empty-cells (show|hide|inherit): Specifies whether to show empty cells or not. No more non-breaking spaces required!

Also remember that you can set top, bottom, left, and right padding to different values.

There are advantages to using CSS over the old method.

• Different padding values for all sides of the cell.
  With cellpadding you can only have a single value, but with CSS, you can have different values for each side.
  
• Different border thicknesses
  With the old border= method, you had a single value. CSS borders can not only be thinner, but they can be dashed, dotted, or a number of different things. Plus, you can have different borders for each side, or no border for some sides. And the table itself can have a different border than the cells.
  
• Table margins
  You can also use CSS to add margins around the outside of your table. This is not possible with attributes at all. If you have two tables on top of each other, you would normally need to use a space between them to separate them. With CSS, you don't.

The sky is pretty much the limit when using CSS. Experiment and see what you can come up with.

A few weeks ago, a foul smell appeared in our home office. It was a bit of a stench of burning electronics, or plastic, or both. I finally traced it to the root cause, which was the power supply on Jessica's PC. It seems that the PSU died and dumped a good bit of voltage into the rest of the system. The machine had been acting a bit flaky, losing USB devices and things like that, so it was probably time to retire it anyway.

Both of our computers were getting a bit long in the tooth anyway. Hers was a P4 2.4 with a gig of ram and onboard video, and mine was an Athlon XP 3200+, also with a gig of ram, and an NVidia 6200 LE video card. The drives on both machines were ancient IDE dinosaurs, and moved about as fast as one. I used the blown PSU excuse to get new machines for both of us.

I decided that Jess would be better off with a nice Laptop that she could take with her on business trips. We looked at a bunch of really speedy (and pricey) laptops before settling on an HP G60-230 which has 3GB of ram and a 2GHz dual core processor. It also has a nice 16" display, and it came in below $600, not counting the $60 rebate. I also picked up a copy of MS Office 2007 Professional for her, so that she would have the same software at home and at work. Unfortunately, the laptop came with Vista (yuck) which has yet to officially break. It's proving to be a bit of a pain with wireless networking though. Maybe once Windows 7 is mainstream, we can upgrade the laptop and be rid of Vista.

As for my machine, I kept my excellent Cooler Master case, and only replaced what I wanted to upgrade. This consisted of an Asus P5Q Pro motherboard, an Intel (first Intel chip in around 12 years!) E8400 Core2 Duo (3GHz per core), 4MB of G.Skill DDR2 1066 ram, an NVidia GeForce 9500 GT video card (512mb), and a Corsair 650TX power supply. For storage I picked a Western Digital Caviar Black 640gb SATA hard drive. The drive has dual processors and a beefed up platter arrangement. Very nice piece of hardware!



For my OS, I stuck with Ubuntu Linux, moving to the latest release (9.04) in the 64-bit version. I also went with the EXT4 file system, which is supposed to provide a slight performance improvement over EXT3. They're really getting good at the Ubuntu setup program, as I was able to install the OS in no time at all, with no major tweaks. Not even any minor tweaks. The only things I had to tweak in fact were optional programs that I run, like conky and my desktop manager.

This new release of Ubuntu was supposed to focus on quick boot times, and I have to say, they really hit the mark. I can boot from dead cold to the desktop in around 12 seconds. This is especially amazing considering that 3 seconds are lost in the grub menu (a short countdown to give you a chance to change boot options) and another short delay before my desktop manager launches. It's unbelievably fast. I can boot my Linux machine up, shut it down, and boot it up again before my old Win2k machine would be booted the first time.

The speed of the new machine is quite impressive too. I realize that moving from what I had before to what I have now will exaggerate the experience, but it really, really is quite speedy. Firefox opens faster than it used to maximize, and the machine is not phased at all by running multiple instances of pretty much anything and everything.

This machine should last me for another 4-5 years, which was sort of the point of me building it. My needs are pretty simple, so I'd rather pick some decent parts and forget about it for a while than buy cheap stuff and have to constantly upgrade.



Pretty packed in, but runs pretty cool nonetheless (34 deg C).

Ha Ha

I'm sure the greedy bastards will appeal now that their Cashcam bill was defeated in the MD Senate.

Here's a letter I just wrote to Gov O'Malley (who never fails to disappoint).


I'm sure he'll send me back some horseshit form letter telling me how all our children will be killed if we don't allow him to put Cashcams at every street corner. Sort of like how Bush told us that we'll all be killed by terra-ists if we don't let him steal all Iraq's oil.

Whether it has a D or an R suffix, greed is greed and authoritarianism is authoritarianism.

The new U2 album came out last week, and I've been listening to it during my morning commute. It's not bad, and the more I listen, the more I mentally process the works. So far my favorite songs are "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight", "Unknown Caller", and "Fez - Being Born". "Magnificent" is also pretty nice.

Tour dates are already starting to come out, and I expect it to be a year-long affair. Jess and I will probably head to the UK this time around, and see them in Glasgow and maybe London, we'll see. Fortunately we got a decent tax return (for once) so that'll help offset tour costs.

We'll probably also do Toronto and (of course) DC. If we do the whole GA line thing again, it'll probably be one of those two.

I'm wondering what song on the new album will be their opening song. Lots of possibilities. I guess we'll see once opening night happens.

I seriously love my Mini dealer. I just got my car back after getting a new clutch and transmission put in it, and I can safely say that the car has never, ever been this good, even when it was new.

I always hated the original shifter because whenever I would make and "pull back" shift (like 1-2, 3-4, or 5-6) the shifter would get caught whenever it passed neutral, especially when it was cold. The 2-3 and 4-5 shifts were fine, so I was always perplexed.

Well the new trans has none of that nonsense. All shifts are smooth as silk, and the car is so much nicer to drive. It's like getting a new Mini all over again!

Did I mention I love my dealer?

Back in 1995, I purchased my second new car; a 1995 Chevy Camaro Z28. It was a great driving car, and well designed, but not well built. Over the course of my 5 year warranty, the car was in the shop over a dozen times. Well over a dozen. In fact, the car was usually back to the dealer 3-4 times per year.

Every time I brought the car in for warranty service, a bill would be waiting for me when I went to pick it up. Since the car was still well within the original warranty period (not to mention the extended warranty I purchased), I was understandably miffed about having a bill for repairs that were clearly warranty items. Each visit would inevitably lead to a shouting match between me and the service manager before I would finally get my car back without paying for something that I shouldn't have been paying for.

That's GM quality, and GM service.

Fast forward to 2006. I finally gave up the American V8 muscle cars and purchased a Mini Cooper Sport. The service and treatment by the dealership have been second to none. On top of the three years of free maintenance that's included with the car, you also get a free loaner whenever you leave your car in for service (and a Mini to boot). But that's not what this post is about.

The summer before last, I started hearing a noise from the transmission in 4th gear. Nothing horrible, and it would go away once the car warmed up, but I still noticed it. This past summer, I started noticing a random noise from the clutch when starting off in damp weather. Again, nothing that affected how the car ran, and it would vanish once the car was warm.

Just to be safe, I dropped the car off over the weekend to have it checked out. Today I got a call from the dealer. Imagine how nice the following was after being accustomed to fighting with my old Chevy dealer about a gushing oil leak not being covered under the drivetrain warranty, or after Chevy telling me that I needed to pay $287 for a new strut for my hatchback that failed when the car was 6 weeks old, sending the 150+ lb lid crashing down onto the back of my neck.

Here's Mini's response:
- They could not reproduce the clutch noise, so they're going to just go ahead and give me a brand new clutch, flywheel, and all related parts.
- They heard the transmission noise, but rather than try to repair it, they're going to go ahead and give me a brand new transmission instead.
- Oh, and they fixed the dashboard rattle that used to bug the hell out of me.

This is all on their dime, and being done while I drive their loaner car.

A few months ago I took the car to a local shop to have it aligned. They could not perform the alignment because the tie rod ends were seized. They wanted $150 ea plus labor to replace them. I called the dealer, and they told me to bring it in. They replaced both tie rod ends, then did the alignment. For free.

This is all on top of the fact that this is one of the best driving cars I've ever driven, and probably the best car I've ever owned. It's comfortable, fun to drive, and gets 30-something mileage even under the worse of conditions.

Why would I ever go back?

A few months ago my wife decided that we should have a new flatscreen TV to go in our newly remodeled basement. We're not huge AV aficionados, so I wasn't after the biggest and best thing on the block. I ended up getting a killer deal on a Panasonic 50" plasma TV that can do 720p. Since our receiver (circa 1991) had a busted volume control (you had to get up and walk over to it and turn it up/down manually) I also picked up a decent Sony receiver, which I also got a pretty good deal on.

The back of the receiver is mess of wires, because however the signal comes into the thing, it has to go out the same way (so if we do component video in for the DVD, it has to be component out to the TV). So we had a mix of HDMI, optical audio, RCA, etc.

We always had a crappy DVD player. It's a "Shinsonic", which is a cheapo Canadian brand that my wife bought years ago. It has problems playing DVDs that aren't perfect, and the remote for it is pretty horrid. A few days ago, I picked up a nice new Oppo 980H, and it arrived on my B-day (what timing!). You'd thing a simple DVD player would be easy to hook up, right? Hah!

Since all the components we use now have HDMI, I stripped the mess of wires off the back of the receiver and just went HDMI for everything, since it can handle video and audio. Once done, I was surprised to have no audio. After 30 minutes of pouring through all the manuals, I finally got online. Guess what. Our receiver only does "pass through", meaning that it'll carry the HDMI signal from one device to another, but it won't process it. So we need to feed it audio in some other way.

This leads to another problem. On the back of the receiver, we have HDMI for "DVD" and "BD" (BlueRay Disc). We have optical audio for "SAT" and "BD". So, I can use the "BD connection for our Oppo DVD player, no problem. But what about the DVR? If I want to use the "SAT" optical audio connection for that, I'm reduced to component video, which is analog and not digital. A better way is probably to use the "DVD" HDMI connection for the DVR, which leaves me with something called "coaxial digital audio". I've never heard of this, but it sounds better than RCA jacks. I'd need to get a cable for that.

The only other option I thought of was to bypass the receiver altogether. The TV has 2 HDMI inputs, and an optical audio output. If I ran both the DRV and the Oppo to HDMI 1 and 2 on the TV, that would get the audio and video to the TV. I could then run a single optical audio cable back down to the receiver for sound, and just never change the device the receiver is set to. Then to switch between devices, I would use the "input" button on the TV remote instead of the receiver.

Oy vey!!

Maybe by tonight I'll figure something out and have sound.

Today after lunch I got a bit of a chocolate craving. I have a thing for Goldenberg's Peanut Chews, and they sell them in a 3-pack for 25 cents downstairs at Idiot Central (a.k.a. our in-building convenience store). Since I can never decide between the milk or dark variety, I usually just get a pack of each and save one for tomorrow.

So I walk up to the register, and one of the two girls is leaning back. She looks really bored, and she's actually too lazy to even shut the register drawer from the last sale. It's toward the end of their business day, so the drawer is stuffed with cash and coins. I hold up my two packs of peanut chews, and she lethargically rings me up at a snail's pace.

"Fiddy cen"

I hand her a $10 bill, which is all I have, other than the dime in my pocket.

"Awww, you ain't got fiddy cen?"

"No, all I have is this ten, and..." rummaging around in my pocket... "this dime"

"Ok then, I'll take that" she says, holding out her hand for the dime.

So I got 50 cents worth of chocolate for ten cents. I guess she must not have to reconcile her drawer.

Hi, it's me. One of the languishing masses trapped in the parade behind you. Now, I know that all those Cashcam speed cameras that the county has been installing have got you scared senseless (don't worry, we all hate them too), but I couldn't help but notice that you don't seem to get how the whole system works. So, I thought I'd offer some pointers that will help you get through your drive a bit easier, and let the rest of us get to work before the next Presidential election. Please read carefully.

1. There is no extra credit.

The county has clearly stated that there is a 9mph grace area built into the cameras. This helps account for speedometer errors, camera calibration errors, etc. What this means to you is that in a 30mph zone for example, you can actually drive up to 39mph and be fine. That said, you do not get extra credit for going below the speed limit, nor is the county going to mail you a check for every mph that you drive below it. All you're really doing by driving 22mph is pissing off the 15 people trapped behind you. The people at the back of the line will start to accordion, and the chances of a rear-end collision increase considerably. So even if you're not going to slip past the camera at 35 like the rest of us, please at least drive the speed limit, ok?

2. The cameras do not have an infinite range

Once you've passed the camera, it's ok to relax a little. You don't have to keep crawling along at 22mph (see "no extra credit", item 1 above) for the next several miles. The camera cannot "see" you 5 miles away, over hill and dale (not to mention through the 20 people bunched up behind you). No one is saying you should "floor it", but it's probably ok to just drive a normal speed again. Not too fast though, because it's probably only a matter of time before the police realize that they can probably set up a trap right after the cam and nab all the people who take off like the space shuttle after passing it. After all, there's really no crime around here, so they don't really have anything else to do. But 38 or so in the 30 will be fine, and even the bored police man will ignore you.

3. The speed in the camera zone only applies to the camera zone

This is a tough one, I know, but I'll try my best to explain it, because it seems to be the one you have the most trouble with. Once you leave the camera zone, and the speed limit sign says 40, 45, or sometimes even 50, it really is ok to drive at that speed. No, I am not kidding. You can really drive at that speed. Driving 22 in any of those places is not helping anything (see "no extra credit", item 1 above), and can be downright dangerous, especially when there is a passing zone and the 25 people who are jammed up behind you all try to pass at once. No, that horn honking is not them just being friendly. See that thing stuck on the windshield? Yes, the mirror. That's not for picking caraway seeds out of your teeth at red lights, it's for seeing what's behind you. If you look closely, you will see all those people stuck back there. Notice the scowls and clenched teeth? Now just imagine how they're going to look if they have to, say, go to the bathroom while you're going 22 when the sign says 50.

Just sayin'.

4. When the camera on the opposite side of the road flashes, you not have to stop dead in your tracks

So you're driving, and there's a camera on the other side of the road that's spying on the people in the oncoming lane. Occasionally, one of them may be from out of town, or yakking on the cell phone, or for whatever reason do not notice the camera. Since people usually elevate to a safe and comfortable speed in the absence of any external factors, a few of those people might be going over 39mph. So the camera will take a picture of them. Of THEM. You, especially at 22mph, have NOTHING to worry about, so there is no need to slam on your brakes and stop dead in your tracks. In fact this may cause you, or one of the 30 people trapped behind you to have a rear-end collision. So lay off the brakes. The camera is worried about the people in the opposite lane, not you.


I know that's a lot to digest, but read it carefully and try to take at least some of the advice. The 35 people stuck behind you will thank you.

A lot of people who are not from the DC area assume that being the nation's capitol means we must have a great public transportation system. Between the Metro (subway), the bus system, and commuter rail (VRE in Virginia and MARC in Maryland), we sure have the infrastructure to get people around. Unfortunately, the devil is in the details. Or in this case, the management.

The DC Metro is likely one of the worst subway systems in the country, and maybe even the world. It just takes one trip to Toronto to see how a proper subway system is run, and then you start to realize just how bad it is in DC. The Metro is not only very costly (close to $5 per trip, each way, plus almost $5 to park your car at the subway station), it also has a dismal reliability record. Unlike the subway systems of other cities, Metro only has two tracks (one in each direction) available to subway trains. A track problem, broken down train, or anything like that causes massive delays as trains have to be single-tracked around the problem. There are no pull-off spots for disabled trains. You are also not allowed to eat or drink on Metro, which is supposed to keep the place clean, but it's no cleaner than the Toronto subway, which allows you to eat or drink anything you like. The trains never run on time, and there are always track problems (including floods and fires) to screw up your commute.

And I might as well mention that if you get to the subway station any later than 8:30, there are no spaces left. But you still have to pay to get out of the lot.

The commuter trains aren't much better. The MARC service in Maryland, while better than Metro, isn't THAT much better. At the beginning of 2009 they implemented a 25% fare increase by eliminating the 10-trip discount ticket. With ridership at an all-time high, you think they would be happy, but greed is greed and they couldn't resist squeezing every last drop of blood out of its customers. As if the 25% fare increase wasn't enough, they've also started wasting 10x the amount of paper, because each single-trip ticket is the exact same size as the old 10-trip, so you waste 10x more paper. Multiply this by the MARC ridership and you get a significant amount of waste.

And you can forget taking the bus too. Most of the Montgomery County Ride-On buses stop running at 7:30. Since it takes an hour to even get to the bus (with no Metro delays, which is rare), you are easily put in the position of having no way home if you work late.

I don't understand why DC doesn't just bite the bullet and run a proper public transportation system, rather than a 100% for-profit system. Actually, I do understand why. It's all about the bottom line.

Like many people, I prefer the Firefox web browser to the other options offered. It's fast, customizable, free, and comes standard with Linux, my operating system of choice.

One of the things I love about Firefox is the ability to add extensions. Extensions are like plug-ins that let Firefox do different things. Like block ads, play music, help save files, or even tell you the weather.

I've decided to compile a list of my favorite Firefox extensions, along with the reasons I like them.

1-Click Weather
1-Click Weather puts the weather on your status bar. You tell it your zip code and how many days in advance you want to see. It does the rest. You have options for weather radar, satellite maps, and severe weather alerts. It pulls the weather from weather.com, which I find to be a bit better than accuguess.

Add Block Plus
Add Block Plus does just what it says. It blocks ads on websites. This not only makes sites less annoying, it also saves a lot of bandwidth and speeds up browsing. No more hideous flashing banners. If something you don't want to see does manage to show up, you can add it to your block list. It really makes web browsing much, much nicer.

Customize Google
This little gem removes ads from Google searches. It also has options to link straight to images on Google Image search. Very handy.

Download Statusbar
Normally Firefox opens a window for downloads. This moves them to the status bar. Much cleaner. Lots of options too.

Web Developer Toolbar
This is my #1 extension, and you don't have to be a web developer to find it useful. It's very good for showing you direct links to images on a page where someone is trying to prevent you from finding the direct link. For web developers, it's indispensable. There are tons of tools that I use every day, and even more that I haven't gotten around to using. It even has links to validate your HTML and CSS code.


There are tons of other extensions, and everyone has their favorites. The NoScript extension is another one that I use, but it's not for everyone, as it blocks Javascript, sometimes causing unexpected results. But the ones I listed above are extensions that most people would find useful, especially the first four.

Someone recently pointed me to this HuffPost article, in which the author's dad kinda sorts blames the current state of General Motors on the UAW.

Funny how all right-wingers instantly blame the Unions for the fact that GM isn't building cars that people want to buy. I'll tell you what. When someone decides to buy a Toyota, they don't do it because of what their workers make per hour. They buy it because Toyota makes a product that appeals to them.

Last time I went to the Mini dealer for service, guess how many Minis they had on the new car lot. ZERO. Guess how many they had on the used car lot. ZERO. I asked one of the salespersons, and he said, "Yeah, with the gas prices like this, it's crazy. Our next three shipments (i.e. freighters from England) are completely spoken for. All we have right now are five cars - one copy of each version - for test-drives that we're not allowed to sell."

The BMW half of the dealership however, was facing tough times and I guarantee you that BMW doesn't have any different of a union arrangement than Mini. Mini just has the products that people want, and BMW doesn't.

Paying workers less will not fix anything if no one is buying your product. It just makes the hole in the side of the ship a bit smaller, so the ship takes longer to sink. But it'll still sink. Companies like GM are always quick to blame the unions, because if they didn't have to pay workers a fair wage, all those corporate CEOs would have more money to siphon. What's worse, a company that goes under after taking care of its employees, or a company that goes under and screws its employees but gives it's corporate brass billion-dollar golden parachutes? We've seen the latter quite a bit lately, eh?


On a side-note, I used to be a GM person. I bought GM cars even though they were for the most part garbage. But my last GM car was my LAST GM car, forever. They screwed me over by not honoring the warranty on my car. For the entire warranty period, things would break (things that were clearly warranty items) and I would bring the car in, the dealer would fix it, I'd go pick it up, and they'd try to bill me. And every time I would have to argue with the service manager and threaten legal action to get them to honor the warranty. Later one of the service techs admitted to me that GM gave the dealer "financial incentive" to keep the number of warranty claims low. Sorry, but if the cars break, they break, and the warranty needs to be honored.

One of my major problems with the car was oil somehow migrating into the antifreeze. This was a huge problem because over time motor oil destroys things like radiator hoses. So I would be sitting at a traffic light and WHOOSH! Split hose. And I'd have to get a tow (on my dime). Several times they said they fixed it, but it kept coming back. Each time it was supposedly something different - a seal, a gasket, but they were never really sure exactly what caused the oil problem.

Eventually, my extended warranty ran out, and the next time I brought the car in to have the pre-existing problem fixed, they said, "Well, we know exactly what's causing that. It's a crack in the block..." Funny how they didn't know the exact cause of the problem until the warranty was over and they were able to quote me a $6000 price to repair the car.

I tried to claim that since the problem started 20,000 miles ago, during the warranty period, that it should be covered. I called GMPP (the warranty division) but they refused to cover it. I told them that if the warranty wasn't honored, I'd never but another GM again. The response: "Your future purchasing decisions are not relevant to this case". Translation: "We don't care if you ever buy another GM again."

So I flushed the antifreeze, put new hoses on it, and traded it on another car. Problem solved. But I'm taking that rep's advice, and not ever buying another GM again, ever. And I'm supposed to believe it's the union's fault for their failure? Yeah, right.