Bill Roper's Journal

Gretchen hopped in the car with me and we headed out to get lunch and after that to the La-Z-boy store out in Schaumburg. This required driving past Woodfield Mall which was closer than I wanted to be today. Traffic trying to get in was fantastically backed up. The furniture store, on the other hand, had fairly light traffic. Gretchen had done research on-line looking for a suitable chair and had narrowed it down to two models. Since the chair was for Gretchen, this seemed fair.

We were looking for a chair that was correctly sized and built for Gretchen to be able to sit comfortably and get in and out of without difficulty. One of the two models turned out to be the correct one, so it is now on order and will show up eventually in a fabric that should suit our needs.

Once we got home, I ran out to Sam's Club to pick up hamburger for meat loaf tomorrow. Then Gretchen and I went to Home Depot where I picked out a suitable Christmas tree. It is reasonably tall, but narrow, which seems to be how they are coming lately. This may be advantageous. We'll see. :)

And that was quite *enough* shopping for Black Friday.

Tomorrow, Snowmageddon is supposed to occur. We'll see how it goes. If nothing else, I have two teenagers here to help shovel...

I cannot find any of the cache of double-sticky mirror tape that I use for medicine cabinet repair. Since I still have a *lot* of cabinets to work on, I decided to just order another roll from Amazon so I can deal with the current moderately urgent problem.

It is, of course, arriving a day late...

I am not currently in the market for a new car. Let's start by saying that.

(Yes, I know that I said the other day that I was not buying a new computer and I am waiting for one last part to show up to be able to assemble my new computer. A car is not a computer. The criteria for buying one are completely different. Shush.)

Anyway, I like to know what car I would go out and buy if I needed to replace my car today. I have only had that happen once in my life (so far) and that was over 30 years ago, but it is good to keep up on my research so that I'm ready just in case.

I have a 2016 Ford Edge with about 42K miles on it, because I don't drive nearly as much now that I work from home. I can drive this car for a long time if nothing catastrophic happens. Or if one of the kids needs a car (*needs*, not *wants*), I could give the Edge to them and buy a new car for Dad.

I like my Edge a lot. I wish it were a hybrid, but that wasn't an option. I could replace it with another new Edge, except Ford has discontinued the Edge, except in China. Since I am not in China, that is not extremely helpful. The Lincoln twin of the Edge, the Lincoln Nautilus, is still available, but is decked out in 42 frufru ways and priced to match. The "choice of smell" dispenser is particularly choice.

There is no other Ford that suits me, which means that it is time to investigate other manufacturers.

Now, part of the problem in buying a car is that -- aside from being fat -- most of my height is in my torso, which means that I do not generally fit in cars that have a moon roof, because my head is now meeting the roof in an unpleasant way. In most models of car, there is no space to give for a moon roof. Heck, in a lot of models of car, there's just no space for my head. I remember trying to get in and out of a Chevy Impala a few years back. That was an experience. A Tesla would be cool, but getting in under that roof line on a regular basis is simply not going to happen, as I discovered once when I had a chance to test drive one.

One of the leading candidates has been the Toyota Highlander. I'd probably fit pretty well in that and although the third row would spend most of its life folded down, there are occasions when it would be useful. And there's a hybrid model.

Highlanders, however, are in ludicrously short supply. You pretty much have to buy one sight unseen to get it. The pricing is right in line with the supply. I have stock in Toyota, so I suppose I should congratulate management on their supply chain management, but it's sort of annoying when you're looking at buying one. And if I needed one *today*, getting one would be a crap shoot.

Also, I would have to check if I can drive one with a moon roof. I can't manage it in a Sienna, which is a bad sign. And no moon roof means that you are buying at the bottom of the line, which is better for price, but not as good for features. As I get older, I discover that there are upgraded features that I like to have in a car that don't show up in the base models.

I went to Texas Roadhouse for lunch over the weekend and as I was pulling out of the lot, I noticed an unusual looking car, which meant it was time to find out what it was. It turns out that it is a new Hyundai Santa Fe, which they redesigned last year, copying pretty much everything they could from a Range Rover. I got to ride in my brother's Range Rover when I was visiting down in Texas this year. It is a nice car. It is also an *expensive* car.

(I enjoy visiting Mitch, but it is *amazing* how I head home with an urge to spend money because of the various cool things I've seen. :) )

Anyway, I checked the specs last night on line and found that the headroom with a moon roof was supposed to be the same as the headroom in my Edge. That looked promising. And the Santa Fe is a hybrid, gets good mileage, and is a good bit cheaper than either a Range Rover or a Nautilus. Or even the hard-to-get Highlander.

I saw that our local Hyundai dealer had a good supply of Santa Fes in stock and was about five minutes away from where I had lunch, so I drove over today and got a chance to sit in one of them.

I fit.

And the cabin is pretty well outfitted. I'd have to see how it drives.

But it's a good target car.

I am, however, only shopping, because I like my Ford Edge.

Stop snickering.

I spent too much time shopping today. First, it was off to Jewel to pick up a prescription that is much cheaper there than at Walgreens along with Jewel-specific food items as long as I was there. I dropped things off at home, because there were frozens and then headed to Walgreens to pick up the three more prescriptions, one of which was heat-sensitive, so they needed to be dropped off at home next.

I went off to Mug's Grill for lunch, then back to Home Depot where I picked up a small chisel to work on the masonry around the dryer vent pipe and some flowers for Gretchen. I picked up lunch for Julie and Gretchen on the way home and decided to collapse in a heap for a bit.

It was not long after that when the guys showed up to clean the dryer vent. They got a remarkable amount of lint out from the outside (although no sign of bird nests or other critter stuff) which caused me to wonder if the previous vent cleaner had actually done anything effective or not. I will run a load of laundry tomorrow and we'll see how it goes. In any case, the vent cap is on well enough to prevent things from getting in.

Then it was off to Mariano's where I found some lovely steaks (on sale!) for dinner and picked up a few other items that we needed from there. Dinner was steak, baked potato, and fresh sweet corn, all of which were quite good.

There are a number of things that I should do tomorrow, but I think the shopping is done for a bit.

Unless I buy something on-line...

I ordered way too much stuff from Amazon on Prime Day, although all of it *should* be useful. We'll see exactly *how* useful as it all trickles in.

Today, we got a new rechargeable Bluetooth speaker that was smaller than I had expected. It sounded good when I hooked it up to my phone though, so we'll call that one a win.

Also, Gretchen's new phone arrived today and is now set up and in use. Her old phone was ricketing down towards failure and I had stalled for a week until the (small) discounts arrived. The new phone should be much nicer than the old one.

Sadly, it is *also* just *slightly* larger than the old phone. Gretchen would like a smaller phone, but smaller phones seem to be inordinately expensive at the moment.

This is, of course, subject to change.

Sometime during our vacation, Julie started complaining that the cable on her headphones was going bad and wanted to know if I could fix it. I was extremely skeptical about this, because fixing a headphone cable is usually a nightmare. On the other hand, replacing an inexpensive pair of headphones is usually a breeze. Just call Amazon.

In fact, if I had ordered these headphones through Amazon, I could maybe find the exact make that I'd ordered for Julie before. This would be good, because Julie hates it when things get changed on her. I looked and found a set of likely looking headphones in my order history and called her over to take a look at them.

Nope. Wrong headphones. Well, heck.

Then she pointed further up on the screen to a set of Bluetooth headphones. "Those are the ones."

"What? Those are Bluetooth headphones. They don't have a cable."

And she brought me the headphones and showed me that -- although the headphones can certainly connect via Bluetooth! -- there is a mini-stereo plug that will accept a cable so you can plug them in.

Oh. That's very different. Never mind.

So I have now ordered a new eight-foot mini-stereo cable for the headphones. It should arrive tomorrow and all will be right with the world.

Meanwhile, the two new hard drives that I plugged into the NAS? The NAS is still valiantly working to incorporate them into the RAID array.

Maybe it will finish tomorrow before the new headphone cable arrives.

But I would not bet on it.

Today, we will explain why Bill and Gretchen failed in their attempt to buy a new minivan this evening.

The current minivan contenders are the Toyota Sienna and the Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid. Both of these are hybrids, but the latter is a plug-in hybrid, which qualifies it for a $7500 Federal tax credit. In what is almost certainly not a coincidence, that is almost exactly the price difference between the hybrid and non-hybrid models.

Aside from the Sienna not qualifying for a tax credit and not being able to soak up electrons from a wall socket, there is also the problem that everything except the base trim line is ordered with a sunroof. There are some options on the mid-line trim that I would be willing to pay for, but since I do not actually fit in a van with a sunroof (all of my height being in my torso), I cannot get them in a minivan that I can drive in any sensible fashion.

This is not totally disqualifying when looking for a Sienna. The fact that none are actually available, however, is more of a problem.

The Pacifica Hybrid's lowest trim line is actually one trim line up from the bottom for the Pacifica line, so it has the features that I generally want and it is possible to find these without a sunroof. Also, dealers have Pacifica Hybrids in stock.

There is a dealer not too far from our home whose name rhymes with "Stapleton" that has, in the past, advertised some decent discounts on minivans. That's where I went for a test drive two years ago, early in pandemic season. Sadly, Gretchen was not ready to buy a new minivan then, so we didn't. But I periodically poke their website to see what's happening there.

When I poked their website a few days ago, they were advertising new Pacifica Hybrid minivans at an "ePrice" that was a bit less than 10% off MSRP. In the current environment, that's a good looking price, as the best I've seen anywhere else is about 5% off MSRP. A lot of the dealers aren't discounting at all or are discounting by the amount of the $750 Chrysler financing rebate.

After discussing this with Gretchen this afternoon and doing some research, we decided to see if it was time to buy a new minivan. TLDR; no, apparently not.

I sent a request for today's price to the dealership and got a call back from a nice young woman who confirmed that the only rebate included in the quoted price was the $750 Chrysler financing rebate. Having determined that, I made an appointment for Gretchen and I to go in for a test drive this evening.

The fellow who was helping us at the dealership was not the person who we'd booked an appointment with, but he was a nice enough guy. It turned out that they had at least one more Pacifica Hybrid that was available in a different color at $300 / $600 more than the gray and black vans on the website. We did a test drive around the lot with the gray van, which handled well. (We could have driven further, but Gretchen did not want to leave the lot in an unfamiliar neighborhood at night, which I sympathize with.)

Back in we went to discuss terms. I explained that if the third minivan cost $300 more than the other, I would be willing to pay that for the color that we liked better, but otherwise, we could just get one of the others. He said that shouldn't be a problem.

And then he came back with paperwork which instead of including a discount -- or even the $750 Chrysler financing rebate -- had a market adjustment upward of $10,000 in price. We were also getting slightly low-balled on the trade-in of the old van, although maybe not by a lot.

I then pulled out the piece of paper from my pocket with the information that I had carefully copied from the website that indicated that they were discounting these vans, not marking them up. Fun and games followed.

I signed a more-or-less offer to buy a minivan for the advertised price. He took it in and the next "manager" came out and started explaining about market scarcity and such.

I asked for my key back and we left to get dinner.

When we got home, there was a message on my answering machine asking me to call back. I got a fellow who explained how we didn't qualify for the ePrice on line, even though the woman that I had spoken to when making the appointment had said that we did. And these vans are in short supply.

I suggested that he should sell the van to someone who needed to buy a van today. I also noted that this made me feel better about not buying the van two years ago for the excellent on-line price, because I apparently wouldn't have gotten it at that price then either.

And that was that.

So Bill and Gretchen have yet to buy a new van.

On the other hand, since we cleaned out the van before going to the dealership, the interior is now in much better shape. :)

This afternoon's festivities included 2.5 hours of grocery shopping at three different places. It would have been two, but there were no uncooked turkey breasts at Sam's Club (expected) or Mariano's (not expected), which meant an additional side trip to Jewel where first inspection found no turkey breasts, but a trip to the far side of the store found the freezer full of assorted turkeys, including the much-desired turkey breast.

This is good, because while rib roast is absolutely delicious, it is not what we had planned to have for Thanksgiving. :)

Also worthy of note: Children's Claritin is roughly half as expensive at Sam's Club as it is at Walgreens.

In other notes: large bags of dog food are heavy.

So it's like this. Having bought both girls Minecraft signons, we discovered that Gretchen's computer (which is the one that Julie would be using) would no longer connect to the Internet, because the Wi-fi dongle is dead. It was being flaky yesterday, but was revived by plugging it back in. No such luck today. This is what I get for putting it in a relatively exposed USB port on the front of the machine. (And I think I found the extender cable that will allow me to plug it into the back of the machine except, of course, the dongle is already dead.)

I explained to Gretchen that we could either be without Wi-fi on her machine until Monday or we could go pile in the van tomorrow and go down to MicroCenter and pick up a new dongle and a webcam for the other computer, which will make both machines functionally equivalent. We agreed that going to MicroCenter would be a good idea under the circumstances.

Except it turns out that I can order both a Wi-fi dongle and a webcam from Amazon. With free next-day shipping. (Having already paid for Amazon Prime.) And they will arrive on Sunday. (With two-day shipping, they wouldn't arrive until Wed.)

Oh, and it's cheaper than MicroCenter. A lot cheaper by the time you factor in the webcam.

Amazon is busy eating everyone's lunch. And this is why. Eek!