Today was the day when my boss calls me and everything he asks me about, I get to say "That's completed." Boy, what a great day! I'm totally justified in spending 2 hours playing video games. It had an annoying start, as the Volvo dealer I had called last week about a CD changer installation appointment today completely lost any record of my existance. In addition, the CD changer I had arranged to get installed was out of stock, discontinued, and would I like to have a different model installed for THREE TIMES AS MUCH? MAYBE NEXT WEEK? In short, no. "What were you going to do when I got down there and you didn't have any?" I asked the parts manager. "Well, you don't have an appointment scheduled today," he mewled, as he tried to sell me on a trunk-mounted, way-overpriced alternate model. I asked to speak to scheduling to see if anybody at all had some record of my existance and if I hadn't imagined or dreamt the whole call in which I asked if they had the part in stock and would they sell it to me? Nobody knew anything (Except for Helen, who was sitting next to me during the call and confirmed that no, that time wasn't a hallucination.) So. Then the guy told me he was certain this OTHER dealer had them in stock, and if not them, this other one, 30 miles away. Well, the first one told me they had been out of stock for months, and good luck finding any more. Finally I got ahold of someone at Tacoma Volvo. "Oh yeah, we've got piles of those things in stock," the woman who answered the phone assured me, with schoolbus driver-like authority. She couldn't understand why I was all hot to prepay and make sure my appointment was written really clearly, in pen, on the right day. "You don't need to prepay! We've got tons of em!" So, I explained my morning to her. Let that be a lesson to me. Barrier Volvo may have friendly, even courteous, staff, but when it comes to action (such as the act of writing a name in an appointment book) they are efficiency-inhibited. Go to Bob Byers Volvo in Ravenna instead. Thanks, self.

What I REALLY want is to learn all about my car so I can fix everything myself, once I've got parts and tools in hand. There are technical manuals available, but there's a college course's worth of specialized and secret knowledge that one can get only from an experienced mechanic (or the Volvo college course). I dunno, I wish I had a garage so I could leave things like a turbo cover lying around and not have it get stolen by curious neighbors.

The VERY beginning of the day was an 8 AM conference call. One disadvantage of working for a worldwide corporation with offices in New York is that you wind up catering to multiple time zones. Today's teleconf with New York people was at a reasonable 11 AM their time. I wonder what they'd say if I had a mandatory meeting at 4 PM my time. Oh, they have to spend time with their wives and children? How odd. They sure don't care about MY wives and children! I can't wait until next week, when I'll probably have to talk to some of our customers in Belgium. If they have 11 AM meetings, that's 2 AM for me. Heck, that's not so bad. I'd probably still be awake.

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