Another Day, Another Alternator
Yes, I took my car back to the garage this morning, and by the afternoon learned that they'd replaced the alternator again (for free, again). I wonder if they're just not very good, or if I just got a couple of bum alternators, or if it's a problem intrinsic to the car? Considering that they seemed slightly perplexed and frustrated by the thing, and that they'd been recommended to me as pretty decent by multiple people at work, I'd bet on #3, with a chance of #2.
Anyway, the car is working again, and the @#$%ing battery light is off, finally. So hopefully it will get me through the next few weeks as I see about getting a new car.
I've been getting lots of advice on looking for a car. My friend Rob actually called me up at work today and said he and his wife had been looking at new Saabs recently, and were a bit appalled at the slimy attitudes of the salesmen, and that he didn't want me to pay what I called the "passivity tax". He said he mainly doesn't want to line the pockets of the salesmen, not that paying a little more is necessarily a bad thing.
I will start by doing what I did when I got this car: Going through Consumer Reports (unsurprisingly, what my Mom recommended). This weekend I might see about going to a dealership or two, although this weekend is already remarkably booked up already. Yikes!
Oh, and I also ran myself and my car through the Car Talk "Car-O-Scope". Although it said, "Boy oh boy, Michael, you picked a vehicle which is just about perfect for you," it did make some rather off recommendations for alternate cars I might like:
A Mercedes Benz? Uh, well, that's a much less ridiculous suggestion than a Daihatsu. (Or a Datsun. How long ago did they change their name to Nissan?)
And what the heck is an "Acura Vigor" anyway? Sounds like some sort of protein drink.
I'm doing something that John calls "pyramids". Basically, rather than doing two or three sets of ten repetitions each all at the same weight, I do ten reps at one weight, then bump the weight 5, 10 or 20 pounds (depending on the exercise) and do 8 reps, and then bump it again and do as many reps as I can, the goal being to do 6. I'm doing this on most of the non-abdominal/back exercises now.
I'm finding that some of the exercises are easier this way, even at higher weights than before, like the rear delts exercise, or the leg curls. Some are the same, like the lat pulldown. Then there's the leg press; today I started at 250 lbs and did 10, then 270 lbs and did 8, and then 280 lbs and did 18! John says that I'm at much too low a weight and should start at 300 lbs the next time I do my weights workout.
I can really feel this workout more than I could before the pyramids.
Working out has revealed something to me that I never really understood before: In baseball, players often do serious weight programs to build up strength for hitting. But sometimes this backfires: They build up so much muscle that their reaction time slows down. I never got this. But now that I'm doing these exercises, I can feel my arms becoming a little less flexible as I build muscle on them (and they were pretty muscle-less before I started working out, so they're building up fast). I don't quite grok why this is (I presume that muscle is just not very flexible, relatively speaking), but the experience makes me appreciate why bulking up might not be the best thing for a guy whose career rests large on reflexes and bat speed.
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