Abandon Nest

Recently, my car has been acting a little funny. The engine has been getting hot and it looks like I’m leaking coolant. Tonight, I’m taking it to Midas to get looked at, but in the mean time I figured I’d go through a few points regarding why you should get your car serviced.

Nobody likes taking their car to the mechanic and everybody has their own reason. Some people think they’re getting ripped off every time they get work done. Others just don’t like how much time it takes. Finally, some abhor the prospect of sitting in a greasy auto shop while their car is being fixed. Whatever your reason, you need to get over it. Otherwise, you could do irreparable damage to your vehicle. Now let’s go through some reasons you should get your car serviced when something seems suspect.

1. You’ll save money in the long run – Really, you will! A few years ago I was an irresponsible teenager. I drove a 1990 Chevy Corsica. Now, this wasn’t the nicest car in the world, but it got me around. However, for the longest time the check engine light would flicker on and off. Because I didn’t have any money to pay for repairs anyways, I figured it wasn’t a problem. I mean, it only came on every once in a while. One day, the check engine light came on and decided to stay on. I decided then and there to take it to a mechanic. Unfortunately, as I was finishing my ride to school, my car pretty much self-destructed. As coolant flew all over the hot engine, I started to trail a long cloud of white smoke. It was like something right out of a spy-thriller (probably cooler because it was real.) Anyways, to sum it all up, I had to get a new car. It probably would have been much less expensive to just go to the mechanic when problems started occurring.
2. They know what they’re doing – Unless you’re a total gearhead, you probably don’t know your differential from a ball-joint, and this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. They say you can’t know everything, and I have to second that. It is not in my interest to know what is going on in my car as long as it works and gets me from place to place. Your mechanic, however, has a fairly good understanding of what is going on underneath the hood. Because he does, he’ll be able to diagnose your problem fairly quickly and accurately. This will save you time and effort if you were considering doing the work yourself. The only serious car work I’ve ever done involved replacing my alternator in a ‘84 Chrysler Laser. That was a heck of an experience, and something I really don’t ever want to go through again. From now on, I leave the complicated work to the mechanics.

Read the rest of this entry »

Blockbuster Online is a movie rental service that ships DVDs to your door for a flat monthly rate. There are no late fees, no drives to the store, and a seemingly endless selection.

When I got rid of my cable service, I knew I was sacrificing entertainment. I just didn’t think that continuing to pay that $54 bill every month would my life any better or make me any happier. As such, I was happy to cancel. Lately I’ve found myself in somewhat of a media void, though. Sure, YouTube.com is great for independent stuff sometimes, and blogs always make for good reads, but I wanted something more mainstream. I wanted something with high production values that shined through. As such, I decided to sign up for Blockbuster Online.

The whole process was very simple. I went to the web site and clicked on the big sign up button. I filled out all the information necessary, including my credit card number, and I was enrolled. I immediately began to select DVDs to fill up my queue. Within a day, my first three movies were shipped and I had them in my possession a day after that. Overall, a very quick process.

After viewing my first two DVDs, I stuck them in the return envelope, and sent them on their way. Blockbuster received them the next day and my new DVDs were immediately sent out. Overall, the turn around time was 3 days. Great!

From my experience so far, I can say this is a great service that is well worth the money if you have time to watch a couple of movies a week. I anticipate having 25-30 movies every month at my current rate, so I’ll be renting at the rate of $0.40 a movie. Excellent deal and something that I highly recommend.

Yesterday I was pleased to find an email in my inbox from Kira over at Penny Foolish. The content of the email intrigued me quite a bit. She was asking me to join a community of sorts for people under 30 who write about life and how to live it.

Now, generally I’m not really a fan of huge networks of sites, but this was different. Kira was assembling a how-to guide for life, based on the experiences of many bloggers. It was something that was refreshing to see and quite interesting. Based on these observations, I decided to join.

So here’s how it works. You can visit the website Under 30 Honor Roll and read excerpts of articles from the many bloggers that have contributed content (including me). Usually there is a little teaser (a paragraph or two) and then a link back to the main article. The best thing about this is that all these articles came with consent. There was no scraping and spamming. These aren’t RSS feeds imported into the database. These posts are hand selected for quality and
practicability.

So I encourage you, if you’ve got some extra time today, to go ahead and check out Under 30 Honor Roll. It’s a great little site, and one that I’ll be visiting more and more often.