A busy day: Deaths and Cars and such

First, RIP to Karl Malden a fine veteran actor who died today at 97. RIP to another from one of my all-time favourite shows, Mollie Sugden — the legendary Mrs Slocombe – also died today at 87: she was one of the highlights of the legendary Britcom Are You Being Served. A sad day and the number of celebrities dying in the past few weeks is phenomenal.

My car is back. I cannot say if they fixed the mechanical stuff, but they did find some major computer errors. It was set in ‘transportation mode’ — something that was supposed to be fixed before it left the dealer, apparently. This isn’t something an owner can turn on or off. They claim it is responsible for my long litany of problems with the car. The basic premise that iDrive still sucks donkey balls even when it works remains unchanged. My car has 12007 miles on it and they feel the brakes (under warranty) will need to be replaced at 13671 miles. Um…. Why not just do it while it was there? So I have to come back. I am not impressed with South Motors.

Every car I’ve ever owned that was serviced by a dealer is cleaned thoroughly inside before being returned to its owner. Apparently, BMW doesn’t do this — though they did offer to drive it through the car wash for me to clean the outside (as it was pouring rain, I declined politely.) Oh, and BTW, BMW corporate has never called me back. They suck too. [BTW, South Motors didn’t open the repair ticket until 26 June 09 at 1026 am — that’s how long my car was “lost” while I was paying rental fees. I’ve not been in my car since around 9 June or thereabouts.]

The body work appears to be fine, and everything seems to work well. Though it would have been nice if they body shop cleaned the blood stains from the inside of the rear tailgate where someone obviously cut himself while installing it. I cleaned it myself.

My XM on Sirius package never worked right. Still didn’t when I got the car back. I thought it was one of the problems with the car. I called Sirius for the fifth time and got someone smart and we managed to get the damned thing working. She had to call her technical department to get a special reset code which we had to send while the car was running. Yes, smart people in foreign call centres do exist. Yay. Do I get a refund for the one month of missed extra channels? As if.

Eventually, I will send Enterprise a very nasty letter — not sure if I complained about the rental from hell (two flat tires, faulty transmission, broken key, filthy car with lipstick all over the rear view mirror, and smelling like twin packs of cigarettes). Probably BMW too.

Oh, and my right knee is killing me and am wondering if it’s accident related or not. It was hurting a bit before but now one spot is sore to the touch. ::mutter:: And the two teeth the dentist fixed have started hurting again. He warned me he wasn’t sure if replacing the fillings was going to work and if it didn’t I might need some root canals. Damn it all to hell. I am trying to find fun stuff to do this weekend but so far Sunday AM skating is all that’s up. Am looking to see Ice Age 3D. Maybe visit with some people. Etc. Fireworks don’t interest me so much though.

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