Those who know me, know that I'm not a car person. I accept that some people need them for their day-to-day lives, and that, in our current situation, TBWITWW is one of those people. But I also think that a car is merely a tool to get yourself, your passengers and your cargo from point A to point B. I don't understand the kind of people (like my brother) who think of cars as fun. But then, he doesn't understand my facination with other stuff.

I've owned one car in my life. It was given to me by my parents when they replaced it with something newer. I drove it, but didn't maintain it well. And then, when it died. I left it by the side of the road. Dumb? Yes. But not something that really bothered me all that much. When we got married, TBWITWW brought her car into the family. I accepted that it was useful to have. Now that her commute is insane, it's good that we have it. But it's 11 years old and has almost 175,000 miles on it. Most of them city miles. The AC is leaky, the horn doesn't work, the windows don't all go down... All of which we'e be willing to put up with if it weren't for the baby. Somehow I don't think it's a good idea to have a baby in a car that won't be easily cooled to below 90 degrees. So, we're going to replace the car. (Anyone want to buy a '97 Buick Skylark? It runs great.)

After talking to people and doing some research we concluded that given our lack of general car knowledge, and complete inability to negotiate, we were best off going somewhere like CarMax. So, we went to CarMax yesterday. We liked the idea of knowing up-front what the cost of the car was. We expected some level of pressure to buy "extras" or to "upgrade" but were pleasantly surprised. When we walked in the door we were greeted by a salesperson (Greg) who told us how CarMax does things and explained the process. They would appraise our car for trade in while we looked at the cars they had available. The appraisal was handled by a completely different department that they said does no selling, only purchasing. Meanwhile Greg asked us what we were looking for in a car. We said we wanted an 4-door import sedan, less than 40,000 miles and under $20,000. We wanted good gas mileage, and nothing older than 2004-2005. We mentioned some specific cars that we'd checked on the website. and he took us right to them. He was knowledgeable about the cars, but (as they apparently work on a flat commission) put no pressure on us to choose any car over any other. He answered all the questions we had, and sat quietly in the back seat on the test drives. 4 drives later we'd narrowed it down to a 2005 Honda Accord and a 2007 Hyundai Sonata. Both had pros and cons. The Honda was older, but had only about 3000 more miles on it. It cost a little more, but was more comfortable. Also, the long-term reliability of the Accord is a known quantity, and it's known to be fantastic. The Hyundai was less expensive and had a V6 engine, but Hyundai has undergone some major changes for the better lately, so it's long-term performance is an unknown.

We decided to have them run an application for financing. We chose to have them run the numbers in a "worst-case" scenario. No trade-in (they only offered $250 for our car, which is about what we expected), the older and more expensive car, and using only one of our incomes. After we filled out the application (the hardest part was listing a reference, as we don't know the addresses of anyone and it took 4 phone calls to find someone who answered), they took us on a short tour of their facility while we waited for the application to process. They have a very nice shop area. We got two offers for loans. Not at great rates, but not terrible either. At this point we decided that we wanted to explore some other options in terms of financing and doing further research on the cars, as well as the warranty options they presented.

We've decided that the Sonata is a better choice, so this afternoon TBWITWW is headed to the bank to see what we can get in terms of financing there. So, by the end of the week, we'll likely have a new car. This experience was quite a bit less painful than I expected. The people at CarMax were great, and although the newly-financially-aware part of me is twitchy at taking on new debt, I'm not nearly as twitchy as I thought I'd be at this stage. Once we have the car, I'll post a recap of the financing process, an overview of our plans for paying it off, and some pictures. We're also planning to keep meticulous records for this car to see what it's really costing us in the long run.

A quote from Owen:

…Habari is object-oriented. Habari supports database independence. Habari uses an MVC model to separate templates from logic. Habari supports multiple template engines. Habari has a database schema that was designed for efficiency from day 1. Habari has a different kind of community supporting it, one where people who show the ability, willingness, and responsibility to act within the community get the power to do so. This is the iceberg tip.

via Chris J Davis

TBWITWW and I each have separate Netflix queues. Because our tastes are fairly different, this allows us to have different recommendations. Also, because I watch movies as background, I have a much more lowest-common-denominator selection. Action movies and the like. However TBWITWW uses TV that way, so when she watches a movie, she tends to choose movies that require a bit move brain power to enjoy. This has led to some great discoveries. One of those was Rabbit-Proof Fence. A movie that we would have likely never heard of, let alone watched, without the recommendation on Netflix. The latest was Zelary.

While this movie tells the story of a member of the Czech resistance in WWII who is forced to relocate to the countryside to avoid the Gestapo. The only way she can integrate herself into the rural community is by marrying a local who was a patient at the hospital she worked at in the city.

All of that is really quite incidental to the real story of this movie. The story is really about how people become part of a community. The transition from outsider to insider is the underlying theme as we watch Eliska become not only accepted by the community, but also how she learns for herself what it means to be part of that community.

The best way to describe the emotional effect of this movie is by way of a fairly tortured analogy. Imagine you're going to visit a friend you haven't seen in a long time, and you've driven a long way to get there. At the end of Zelary, you feel like you've just settled down on the couch to go to sleep after that drive. You're a little bit drained and a little bit uncomfortable, but relaxed, satisfied and optimistic for tomorrow.

It's been a couple weeks since I posted my Friday Roundup (bad Sean!). So here goes.
I haven't explored ChaCha yet, but it looks like it could be very interesting. (via GapersBlock)

I like lists, and these cought my eye: 25 Ways to Jump Start Photography Inspiration, 18 Five-Minute Decluttering Tips to Start Conquering Your Mess, and 7 Insanely Simple Ways to Ensure Your Project Gets Done.

I found Thinking Rock and it seems to be a great way to organize projects in a GTD format. So far getting rolling is slow, but that just because I've got a lot of crap I need to do.

And this is just plain awesome. DIY flash triggers for taking pictures of things breaking! Expect some pictures before too long.

There might have been an 5.4 earthquake at the other end of the state. Actually, there was. About 273 miles south of here, but it was enough to wake me up at 4:30 this morning. So I'm a little tired now, but it sounds like there were no injuries, and very little damage. Whew.I'd much rather have a 5ish Earthquake every 10 years then be around for the 8ish one every 100.

A few months ago I opened an Electric Orange checking account from ING Direct. Part of my reasoning was that they pay a decent interest rate on the checking account (not great, but better than nothing), and to start to seperate some of our bill paying. The problem has been the transition from one to the other has been a bit arduous. Thankfully, this month we had some extra income, so we had enough of a buffer to start making the transition without worrying about a bill coming out of the wrong account and us not having enough money to cover that bill in that account.
Most of our accounts have online access, and those were easy to reset. However, a few require actual paper to be sent. These are the ones that are most concerning, because I don't have a confirmation about which account this month's payment will come from. If the paperwork goes through in time, it'll come out of the new account, but if not, it will come out of the old account. So I have to make sure there's enough money in both accounts to cover them. It's kind of a pain. On the other hand, I'm down to about 5 bills that I don't have automated (either though my end or the bank's) which greatly reduces the risk of missing a payment.
All of this means, my savings numbers won't go up much this month, but should jump significantly once I'm satisfied that all of the bills are directed properly and reduce the buffers in the checking accounts. We still have the car and job situations to work out, but progress is definitely being made. We're actually looking seriously at the possibility of me not having to go back to work once my job ends in September. At least not full time. If we can come up with a way to make this internet thing pay a bit, we may be able to pull it off.

Today is the big day. HabariCon 2008 is happening in a few hours (I should get to bed!) in at the lovely iPony facility. I'm even giving one of the presentations later this morning. It's very exciting, but I'm quite nervous having never given this sort of presentation before. Mostly I'm looking forward to meeting more of the community face to face. I think that this conference will be a big step forward for Habari.
Solidifying roles of members of the Habari Community and mapping the road forward is high on the list of goals we hope to accomplish. I'd like to thank everyone who's been putting this together for making the first HabariCon a major success already.