SG Cordray Pondering the Universe

Lately, I’ve been receiving a spam email through my ISP called Imagine Who Surprised. The email directs you to a link to view a web site… what the web site is about is still a mystery at this point. When the page loads you are asked for your FULL NAME and MAIDEN NAME (although they say that’s optional). Don’t fill this junk out… LOOK at their terms… LOOK at the url in the browser.

A section of the Terms reads as follows:

You grant Opobox a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, transferable, royalty-free right to (a) use, copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, modify, translate and reformat Your Information in any media now known or not currently known, and (b) sublicense these rights, to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law. Opobox will not pay you for Your Information. Opobox reserves the right (but not the obligation) to remove or edit Your Information, but does not regularly review Your Information.

When I bought this domain, I had no thought of developing it any time soon. I bought it to prevent anyone else buying it. There is a service that likes to buy up domain names using surnames then offering services such as yourname@surname.com plus other services at a what I consider a steep price for subdomain services. All things considered, if I ever become a published writer, S.G. Cordray will be the closest I come to a pen name. I like my name as is. Why would I want to use another? So… I bought it while the buying was good… for future purposes.

There is just one problem with leaving the site undeveloped. People tend to think it’s okay to hijack it for their own nefarious purposes, whether it be to attack me personally or stupid spam. I won’t have that.

I’ve written posts here and there about TheSims2, a very addictive people simulating game. I realized some time ago that playing the Sims is much like writing a novel. You play God by creating these characters and bringing them through conception to death, but you also learn so much and realize the characters are really creating their own lives while making it seem as if you are in control. It’s a great writing tool in its way. Better than another one I have here that was created specifically for helping with writing. I’ve gotten some great ideas for novels working with this game.

Many of those ideas, I’ll likely keep to myself but there are ideas for books that I have no wish to write, the main reason being I don’t think I could do the genre justice. One of those would be the romance genre. Traditional romances don’t thrill me at all. I like strong women characters on equal footing with male characters rather than the get by on their looks type. I’m not a man hater so don’t get the wrong idea. I just don’t think women should be relegated to a lesser role dependent on a man for happiness or self esteem, which is what most traditional romances sell.

Of course the reality of the Sims nowhere resembles true reality but it’s a great starting point when looking at different personalities and asking what ifs. Let’s face it, it takes a Sim 5 minutes on their clock to walk from the kitchen to the mailbox yet they can cook a turkey dinner in the same amount of time? I also think the game creators spent an inordinate amount of time watching soap operas while programming… grin. All in all it’s still the best game I’ve ever seen.

With that view in mind, I’ll likely spend a good bit of time here talking about my Sims2 characters. I can’t think of any better use for this blog than that for the time being.

I am trying to fix the comments counting. Some few posts here actually do have comments but you have to click on the posts to be able to see them… very frustrating, you know. So far, research has pointed to SpamKarma2 as the culprit but every fix I’ve tried so far hasn’t helped. I’ll keep researching.

I’ll also be adding a new links category for my favorite Sims2 resource sites. I’ve dabbled in object creation but I’d much rather spend my time developing characters than creating objects. There are some quite good resources out there for objects to add to your game.

And I’m wondering how this year is going to end already. First there was the car issue, then health issues that almost took an act of Congress to get addressed, then getting scammed by a customer, and now we’re back to car issues.

I know I’m a simple person and straight up honest but that doesn’t mean I’m stupid. I always wonder why people couple honesty with stupidity but it seems the way of it these days. Being a jeans and t-shirt kind of “girl” I look simple, too. People try to take advantage but let me tell ya, it doesn’t always work out that way. I really have to wonder about other people who operate by trying to take advantage of people whom they consider inferior in some way. The list of such people is getting longer every day. It’s a sad day when honesty is considered an inferior quality.

Now that the rant is over, let me explain. Our make do car we bought in December last year developed a major transmission problem. It’s probably fixable but fixing it is going to take some time. Every day it would take to fix it would mean a day my husband wouldn’t be working and if it took too long he could possibly lose his job. We knew we had to bite the bullet and make a bill to get him in a reliable vehicle. Neither of us were happy about it… we like having extra for whatever and spoiling our grandchildren. I picked a payment range we’d be comfortable with… certainly cutting into our monthly mad money but not totally financially strapping us. However, we had to have a car in one day, no wheels to get around to shop a lot of different lots, either. After yesterday, I think we would have been better off renting a car for a week or two and would advise that for anyone in such a situation. Sure, it will mean a little less cash for a down payment but given enough time to shop well, you will be less likely to be scammed as we were.

We arrive at the car lot roughly 10:30 am. We had already had contact with the lot over the internet and phone. They already had preapproval and knew what we were looking for in the payment range. We are not connoisseurs of cars… if it’s reliable and gets us from point A to point B consistently, we are happy. Remember, we are simple people. We don’t go for the status symbol, fast moving, or looks kind of thing.

We sign off on the preapproval papers and a few other papers. This particular fact will be crucial to the whole story in a minute or two… One of those papers said our monthly payments could not exceed 20% of our monthly income. To me, at the time, that was no problem because the payment range I stipulated was nowhere near 20%. It wasn’t even near 10%.  

The salesman put us in a car that he said was in our price range and we loved it. It handled extremely well, the seats were comfortable, the mileage was great, everything we could possibly want in a vehicle…which we aren’t hard to please considering our simple philosophy… then the turn for the worse. We wanted that car and the salesman starting rubbing his hands. It had taken roughly 2 hours just to get to that point of choosing that car even with all the preliminaries done before we ever arrived at the dealership. There was another long wait afterwards before the salesman finally came to us with the payment price… almost twice what we had stipulated… by this time it was getting close to time for my daughter to go to work… she was our chauffeur for this experience.

Naturally, James was extremely upset and let me tell you, you don’t want to upset a Leo. I won’t describe what happened then because it’s too harsh for delicate eyes. Trust me, it was ugly. So, here I am, with an irate husband, two rambunctious grandsons who were totally bored with the car lot thing, and a daughter who needed to go to work. We were basically stuck. James needed a vehicle yesterday, the salesman dragged out the process because he knew that, and no way to go anywhere else barring James miss yet another day’s work… James missing work is not a good thing… 2 1/2 days’ pay would have paid the monthly car payment we wanted. We wound up staying there with the two boys and choosing a different car but there’s more to this trial.

The cars they showed us next were in a price range to fit the payment range we wanted. However, the car the salesman tried to push on us (supposedly still under warranty) was listed as having 35k miles on the odometer. We decided to test drive it but low and behold, when the key turned the ignition and the odometer lit up, the car had 69k miles on it. The warranty on the car expired at 60k.  At this point, James turned to me and asked me which car. That is another story so I won’t bore you with the details but I pointed out the car I would have chosen if the salesman had just left us to it. We took it for a test drive and wound up purchasing it.

By this time it’s 1:30pm. The salesman takes us from one building to another saying it would be only a few more minutes. We waited… and waited… and waited…

Finally, James found a manager to make a complaint. The salesman reappears and has us sign a paper to drive off in the car and return later to sign the loan papers. They were supposed to call us when the papers were ready. We had the boys who had missed lunch and dinner time was fast approaching. We were hot and tired as well as they were. We told our daughter to go on to work and we’d handle the boys. We finally left the dealership at 2:30pm. In the time between leaving then and coming back to sign the papers I could add the car to our insurance and grab a couple of paystubs which they said would be needed.

We waited… and waited… and waited. I had called twice, once at 3:30pm to find out who the leinholder would be for the insurance and again, 3 hours later, to find out who the leinholder would be for the insurance. Both times I was assured they would call me back with that information. It wasn’t until the second time that they did call back and that was to inform us that our papers were ready… at 7PM! in the evening. So, we pile back into the car with the boys who are more tired and more bored with the whole thing… we’re talking about 4 years old and a 2 1/2 years old here, you know?

We get back to the dealership. We waited… and waited… and waited. Finally, the loan officer comes out of hiding to greet James. The boys and I were sitting a table flipping through brochures to keep them happy with the pictures. We go back to the office for the paper signing and the loan officers hits us with a monthly payment that was not what we agreed upon. It was in fact well beyond what we had stipulated. In my head I did calculations and they were trying to take roughly 10% of our income for a monthly payment. James hit the roof and had two little boys repeating every word he said. He threatened them with newspapers, radio stations… the works… and he will do it, too. In the end, we got the car for what we had agreed upon but it took a lot of doing to get it.

As we left, James, being as rude as he possibly could be, told anyone in the salesroom filling out papers to be careful because they will get scammed if they don’t… well, they wanted us out of there quick and there was no salesperson anywhere close to us as we headed out the door.

Let me give you some advice which I wish I had thought of before we went to this dealership. If you are suddenly without transportation, although it may seem like it’s not worth it, rent a car so you can take your time and find an honest deal. Car dealerships are one of the worst businesses for dishonesty to begin with so don’t make more pressure for yourself than necessary. If we hadn’t been so strapped for time, we would not have bought the car we eventually ended up with. I believe the car is going to be a good one but I don’t like rewarding dishonest businesses with money out of my pocket and they got that. Considering what they tried to pull I also wonder if they get kickbacks from the finance companies for selling cars at higher interest rates or if they fudged the amount to be financed to stick more money in their pockets while making it look like the finance company or bank was at fault.

The car dealership we were forced to deal with? BILL HEARD CHEVROLET. I understand they have dealerships in several states so, please, do not give this company your business because they’ll take everything they can swindle out of you and they don’t care how they do it. It’s the worst of the worst in my opinion. They are worse than the “tote the note” car lots. If there is anybody reading this that knows what I mean about those type car lots you know I have to be saying something to call an authorized dealership worse than they are. 

I have to qualify that “tote the note” thing. There is one lot in Nashville that I would recommend if you really must go that route. We did for our first vehicle purchase as a couple… It’s called The Used Car Company around the 3900 block of Nolensville road, across from the Paragon Mills/Kroger shopping center. The car we purchased from them lasted us 5 years but was paid off in 2. When we opted for that purchase we weren’t sure what kind of financing we could get being newly married and James still establishing a work record here. It was a good choice at that time but the payments were steep and more than I wanted to spend monthly on a used car.

 

If I keep this up, I’m going to have to start a consumer warning category, aren’t I?

Okay, lurkers, I’m opening up two more project sites. Should I be looking over my shoulder for the web dev community to come unglued? Should I contact my long time net friend Ian or my other web dev friends to make sure there’s absolutely nothing competitive about it so that it meets their approval? Should I wait for them to googlebomb with outright lies and half truths? Should I look for perfect strangers to hijack my blog with nasty comments and threats?

I doubt it will happen because I have a similar project site now that is getting ready to expire. The web dev community never batted an eyelash over it, then or now. In fact, I’m sure several friends would be willing to contribute if I should ask them although they operate their own web development communities. I never liked the domain name for the existing one but all the ones that were close to what I wanted were taken at the time. As with most domain names, eventually a decent one becomes available again, so I’ve found new domain names.