I still like the G.O.B. version better.

I spent the evening playing Band Hero with my English doppelgängers, Suze from hereinmyhead.ca and her hubby Mike.

The evening was a great success: Wine was drunk, cheese was eaten and drumsticks were broken.

We rocked hard.

Funny how things work. Have you heard of the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon? Just tonight, I was discussing the funniness of Delmer’s comment on a recent post of mine. In fact, LW was sitting on the couch chuckling to her laptop. I asked her what she was chuckling about, and she replied “a funny comment on your blog”. My reply was then “It’s Delmer’s comment, right?” and it was. Delmer is a funny man.

Now thanks to the already mentionned Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, it’s no wonder that Delmer was going to come up again today…

I already did a post about how I thought Delmer, from the famous “What’s a Delmer look like?“, looked like Bruce Spence. Well tonight I watched Sideways (2004).

That’s Delmer. On the right.

The guy on the left is called Thomas Haden Church apparently. I think it’s one of Delmer’s covers. I think Delmer is really a spy, and that we’ll never know exactly what he looks like.

One of these things is not just like the others…

So, where do you stand on the Delmer Continuum?

Look how happy the kids are!

Now that Christmas is officially over, I turn my attention to next year’s Christmas.

What do I really want for Christmas?

Everything.

Not as in “All the frakkin’ stuff I could get”. More like I want everything to be fun, easy, awesome, simple, cool, joyous, relaxing, peaceful, sweet, merry.

Not that these Christmases were not all that. They were. Seriously.

But wait! (That’s for Becky)

I would absolutely love for all the Christmases to combine all those qualities all the time. I know, I know… But I can dream, can’t I?

I would love to have one giant Christmas party with all the families together instead of the 3 Christmas dinners over 4 days, followed by the 4 post Christmas lunches, followed by the afternoon visit, etc. So in order to make this possible (well, in order to put it out there) I already started proposing that for next Christmas, we rent a cottage and have a giant 2-3 day long party there with everyone from LovelyWife’s side and my side of the family. Will it work? I don’t know but I hope so.

How awesome would it be really? A nice fire in the fireplace, some hot cocoa for the kids / great wine for the adults, cooking an awesome meal all together, listening to music, relaxing…

Who’s with me?

Situation Normal, All Falalalala-lalalala’d Up.

Kids watched that movie for the fisrt time yesterday. They loved it.

Christmas lives on.

That is all.

From this Polar Bear to you.

Hugs and Kisses,

Mike

You get the idea.

Where are those frakkin’ giant birds when you need them?

Trying to patch the “Schedule Post Problem”. If this publish automatically it means the following solution works.

http://core.trac.wordpress.org/attachment/ticket/11505/ticket-11505-full.patch

Edit: And it does!

Arnold Schwarzenegger as Douglas Quaid
a.k.a. my face whenever I have to deal with Nissan.

I seriously don’t get how car dealerships can get away with this kind of crap. Oh, where to begin?

I guess it all started when one of LovelyWife’s colleague brought her a magazine. In this magazine, there was a brief mention that Nissan was recalling a plethora of 2008 Rogues because of some defective screw in the steering gear housing. LovelyWife then emailed me, I called her back and I ended up calling my local Nissan dealership to get what the story was on that recall thing.

Turns out there’s not one, but three recalls on my 2008 Rogue. Sigh. They’ll fix them free of charge, but I get to drop the car there for a whole day. I scheduled this for yesterday, because LW and the Zadorables are not in town, so they don’t need to be picked up or use the car for anything. I figures as long as I’m there, might as well get an early oil change. My car has exactly 22,002 kms (as of Wednesday morning 7:02), and the next oil change is scheduled for 24,000 kms. The guy on the phone tells me that the  24K scheduled maintenance is “maintenance package #2″ and that it costs around 200$. I say fine, let’s make it happen – car is leased, I don’t skip maintenance – as long as the car is already there.

Funny thing is  that this recall was issued in November. It’s only funny because Nissan calls me almost every other week to ask me about their service, to remind me I have an oil change coming up, to update their database with my current information. In the 3-4 times they called me since the recall was issued they never mentioned anything. In the 8-10 times they called since the first of the three recalls was issued, they never mentioned anything. Weird.

So right off the bat they’re getting 200$ more that I expected to pay, but it was either pay now or pay in a month or so. No biggie. I can live with that.

I get to the dealership around 7:00, and I’m the first customer there. The clerk takes my info, takes my key and I get to sit in the waiting area to wait for the shuttle. About 20 minutes later, the mechanic steps out of the back and asks the clerk what is the deal with the Rogue with the recalls. He asks the guy why he was doing only three out of the four recalls. Of course I look over there and the clerk gives the mechanic some lame excuse basically saying that the fourth recall might not be there if the customer scheduled the maintenance before the recall was issued. Well, since I scheduled the maintenance Friday, I highly doubt that a recall was issued Monday or Tuesday that I don’t know about. The clerk just said to do the fourth recall at the same time and printed another work order.

No biggie. One more free thing, the car is already in the garage, what do I care, right?

The shuttle gets there and I get to work. About an hour after I get to work, I get a phone call from the clerk. Apparently Nissan recommends that the air filter be changed every 12K, and the clerk recommends that a brake maintenance be performed on the car. We’re talking 200$ for this. Plus taxes.

So I asked the guy why the air filter change was not included in the “maintenance package #2″, since it’s a every 12k thing and well, 24k is twice 12k. It’s apparently not part of the package. I then asked why he didn’t tell me that this needed to be done when I booked the appointment last Friday. I then asked what was the brake maintenance recommendation. If you guessed every 12k you win. Again I asked why this maintenance wasn’t part of the “maintenance package #2″, and I couldn’t get a decent answer from him on any of those questions.

Oh and get this: when I picked up the car, the fourth mysterious recall had disappeared. The clerk swore that he never heard of a fourth recall for my car. I told him I heard the mechanic ask about it this morning, and he said: “we must’ve been talking about something else… there’s so many recalls on so many models! This one has 2, this one has 5, this one 4 and so on.” Way to inspire confidence in the Nissan brand buddy!

So now Nissan will be getting about 500$ (446$) from me for initially doing a recall. A recall that I phoned to inquire about. A recall that morphed into three and then four recalls.

I seriously don’t get how car dealerships can get away with this kind of crap.

On an unrelated note, my next car might be a BMW or a VW. Because I already had enough of GM and Toyota…

See all the Nissan Rogue 2008 recalls after the jump…

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