From Snooty Central

And with lightening speed the speed of a dying snail, my car light is, hopefully, getting fixed. I got here at 6:45. Their 7 am opening time is actually 7:05. Then it took an hour to find out that some emissions thing is broken and will cost an hour and a half plus $500 to fix. Lucky me! At least they have wifi. It's following the same pace as the service but at least they have it. The only decently comfortable chairs are in front of the too loud TV but, happily, My ears are plugged up with earbuds.

Also on the up side, I didn't have anything in particular planned for today. Lots of ways this could be worse. And they will give the car a good cleaning inside and out.

But, seriously, October is turning out to be expensive. I think my financial advisor and I are going to have to have a little chat about turning some of those investments into hard, cold, cash.

Then I can start worrying about living too long. I'll be 70 years old in 18 months. Half the time I think Holy, Crap, I can't believe I am so old. Then I'll read about someone dying at the age of somewhere in the 60s and immediately think, awww so young,

When I was 64, my financial advisor asked me how long I expected to live and I told him 7 years. We were talking about when to start collecting social security. I think I may have undershot. And I think it really doesn't matter. Yet.

Eons ago - like in the 70's, I used to watch the Today's Show every morning while I got ready to go to work. It was a totally exceptional way to get the news. This was after the Dave Garroway and the chimpanzee and before they dumped Jane Pauley. Hearing it via the muffledness of the earbuds, it's hard to imagine a more irratating way to start the day. Turing on some music now... That's better.

I picked "Contemporary Musical Hits" and it's quite pleasant. I should listen to music more often. I mean music that is different from the music I own. This new swim music player that I ordered (and should be here in a couple of weeks) seems to think that's going to be possible... to load up music from the service of my choice (without having to purchase it) to play while I'm swimming. I can't quite see how it's going to work, but I'd sure be happy if it did.

colesdragon just gave me the greatest idea. I always get a case for my phone - the thinnest, clear case I can find. Then I buy a skin, usually with a photograph I provide. Here's what's on their now.



But, changing skins is non trivial. Now, however, I have a cool color laser printer. I can make a template and create a new 'skin' any time I want. Plus I can do that now while I'm waiting for the phone. Cool!

The car should be ready by now which probably means only another hour. Sigh,

Left handed compliment?

John, the head mechanic guy, told me it would be $500. When he was done, he handed me the bill... $499.81. He wins on estimates.

The car is all fixed and really really really clean. They fixed the tire air and topped off the fluids. "I don't expect to see you again til check up time," John told me.

And he also told me that his tech guy told him that mine was the nicest smelling Smart Car he'd ever worked on.

They really do hate Smart Cars there, I think. But I'm done and still have a lot of the day left so moving on with my life.

My tweets

• Thu, 11:41: @acrobathelp is there any way to hide layers of a PDF using a chromebook or android? Printing out sewing pattern & only want one size layer.
• Thu, 11:43: @Acrobat is there any way to hide layers of a PDF using a chromebook or android? Printing out sewing pattern & only want one size layer.

Seattle City Light... a twist!

Seattle City Light provides my electricity. The first 20 years I lived here, they were fine. Better than fine. I never lost power and it was cheap. I had moved up here in 1992 from northern California. My electric bill there was $150. When I got here and called Seattle City Light to get service, I asked for budget billing (same amount every month) and the lady was very apologetic that it was going to be so high for the first year. $13. I shit you not. Every month. $13.

It has gone up and up and up and, to be fair, I have a lot more things to plug in. (However, many of those are now very much more efficient - I'm looking at you LED potlights!)

In the last 5 or so years, they have had a number of really annoying planned power outages. They are currently being very pissy with our condo home owners association over some light poles that they installed too close to our building.

But today when I got a letter from them in the snail mail, that my $74 monthly budget bill would be raised to $176 starting next month, I was instantly interested in hearing how they were going to explain that piece of shit. The idea of calling them was not appealing but there was no other way. Their online billing is a piece of 1970s software with no connection to email or messaging of any kind. So I got a drink and plugged in my earbuds and sat down for a long, involved, frustrating convo.

They did give me a number for budget billing so I started there. 2 rings. "Seattle City Light, this is Andy." I seriously paused to make sure it wasn't a recording. But it was really Andy.

And he was great. Turns out their system thought I was getting billed twice a month instead of once a month and fucked up the formula. He looked at my year and commented on how unusually high my summer use is and how unusually low my winter use is. I explained that it wasn't unusual at all. I have an air conditioner that I run in the Summer and I live in a condo so steal heat from my neighbors and don't run any myself. He allowed as how that was fiscally smart. "Winter heat is way more expensive than Summer cooling."

He said that the new rate should be $88 but he could make it $84 if I wanted. I said nope. $88 was fine. He said that if, for any reason, it does not come through as $88 next bill to call back and "Ask for Andy." I will!!

So many of my interactions with companies are frustrating. It's such a rush when one isn't!