ferrousland.com - diary archives
Tuesday, July 18, 2000
dodgy car - 07:50 AM
my friend fiona, who lives in sydney, came to visit me the other day. she said something interesting. she's not a web-head, doesn't surf much, so i was showing her some sites. one of the sites i showed her was a webcam site, mandycam in fact. she was shocked that somebody could live like that. her main concern was that people could figure out where she lived & stalk her or cause her some bodily harm, that sort of thing.
i've been thinking about this & my opinion is that a webcammer with a decent sized following would actually be safer than the average person. if anyone did come to her house to cause her harm, there would be, at any given time, hundreds of people watching. now what i've gleaned from the lives of these webcammers is that the people who like to watch them (okay, the men who like to watch them) seem to get quite attached to them & feel as though they know them personally. some may feel a romantic attraction or perhaps only think of them as a sister. either way, these devoted watchers would never let anything bad happen to this person whose life they are so involved in. they would immediately notify someone if anything bad was to happen. it would be kind of like having security cameras in your house, except with more security guards.
later the same day ..
we have all the luck .. not! just over a week ago we bought a car from a guy that lives just down the road. it's a holden calais vn '98 if any of you reading this are motor-heads. anyway, we've been able to drive the damn thing about twice since we got it & it's had to be repaired or looked at about four times.
the guy who sold it to us totally jipped us. he told us about a couple of problems: one of the back windows didn't work (they're electric) & the dash board was a bit loose. so we thought, "cool, the guy's honest enough to let us know about these things." uh uh. as soon as my darling drove the thing up the street & into our driveway after signing the papers, the head lights wouldn't switch off properly & the knob fell off. finally we got them to turn off but then they wouldn't turn back on again. not only that, but neither of the back windows work, the front passenger side window only just works, the proper battery had been replaced with an old, crappy one that was an incorrect type for the car, there was a hole in the window washer water receptacle, a cracked fan belt, a major oil leak, & the stereo was just sitting in place without being screwed onto the bracket.
friday night my honey had to leave it at a friend's house after a lan party because it wouldn't damn well start & even the racq guy & our regular mechanic couldn't get it to start. so anyway, about $800 later we've finally got the car back today & everything seems to be working okay. we still have to get the immobiliser fixed though. hopefully that'll be the last thing.
always, always get an indendent vehicle inspection no matter how trustworthy the seller seems to be. we learned our lesson, that's for sure.
gmail
com
