So here you have it: the blue backlit gauges are actually red. Red is the new blue.

In contrast I hated the Team Volkswagen of Daly City. I didn't like the way the guy handled the quotation, he was clearly trying to maximize his margin at every corner using the classic 4-part calculation sheet and literally laughed at me when I asked for a better deal. Not to mention that we didn't want a quotation in the first place back then because we were just trying some car and we were not decided on what we wanted.

Update 2009/01: 2 years later I hate Honda of Serramonte as they managed to damage the roof and the windshield of my car when doing as simple as replacing a wheel -- and they managed to take two more than 2 weeks to do so, didn't even put the right tire model and tried to hide the damage hoping I wouldn't notice. Bastards.

Overall I had a nice experience purchasing this car. I compared two other models I didn't like for various reasons, and visited two dealerships for the same car.

I first went to Honda of Serramonte and test drove it on Saturday. The sales guy was nice and not pushy; I did let him know I was going to test drive another car and would only take a decision the next day. He and his boss didn't insist and just said OK. We didn't even sit down to go through the useless quote process. Overall I though that was a nice attitude and I liked it.

I then when to Grace Honda in San Bruno. The second dealership I went was more classic. The sales guy was younger. After we test drove it, he had me sit down to give me a quote, and lowered the price a bit compared to the sticker but that was not even close to what I had in mind.

Amusingly I used Edmunds' web site to request a quote over the net and when I came back home later I got a very good price directly from the second dealership, well below the MSRP, i.e. exactly at the suggested bottom line price with a 4%. So I'd say their "internet" guy is right on the spot.

In any case I did some research online during the night. For some reason Edmunds' didn't have the invoice price for this car online, so I ordered the Consumer Reports' report for this car, which gave me the bottom line price I needed. I added 4% on that, the base price for the options I wanted and some room for installation fees and that gave me a good price to match.

Next morning I went to the first dealership with Tg and the babies -- I watched them whilst Tg was test driving the car. She liked it, which is nice.

I then sat down with the sales guy. Or more exactly the two sales guys, since the one doing the quote was the sales assistant.

We first discussed the trade-in value. They would give me a little bit less than the blue book value, which I think was fair given the condition on the car. IMHO they can still service the engine and get some profit out of it since the rest of the car is in really good shape.

As for the new car, he offered the dealers' price, minus something he could shave off up-front -- obviously they just add this into the dealer price so they can remove it in front of the customer and claim they'll do it just for you. Anyhow that was way off the figure I wanted (although it was already better than the other sales guy had given me.) I asked him if that's the best he could do and gave him the figure I had in mind. He went to see his boss and came back with something closer. I told him the other dealership could do it for less and it's funny how he replied "oh please help me here" and we found a common ground in the middle. So that was about it, it took 5-10 minutes and everybody was fine with the result. In the end I got something close to the ideal price I wanted with the options on the car. Overall I think I got a good price and they won't starve either, especially since they get a bit of extra margin from the anti-theft installation. Same here the price they quoted me was better than at the other dealership and still they lowered it a bit. I'm sure they still make a descent margin on it, everyone gets a "+1" on their sales quota and I don't feel like they tried to take advantage of me.

Don't get me wrong. They run a business, not a charity. If they can shove everything full price on you, they'll do it. But they were also very polite and reasonable when I fimrly said no and we quickly got a fair deal. So yes, it pays to do some research on Edmunds or Consumer Reports.

Note that I didn't try to go see the second dealership again. The Internet quote was a tad bit lower but I liked the first dealership and the people there better. In the end that matters too.

I test drove an 2007 Honda Civic: Si 4dr Sedan (2.0L 4cyl 6M, 197 hp, FWD). Twice.

OTOH I was nicely surprised by the Civic Si. I like the overall shape, the rear seats are rather descent and there's definitely enough power for what I need (i.e. not much.) I felt comfortable with the controls, clutch, stick and everything. I test drove it on some highway, under the rain and dry, a little bit of hills, a bit in traffic, on the bad cement roads we have here and overall I was satisfied. The ride is a bit bumpy but not as much as the 350Z and definitely much better than my aging 240SX.

The two tier display is not too bad, although the digital speed-o-meter will always remind me of the cheap Renault Twingo design -- just kidding, it's not that bad and seemed to be rather efficient in fact. So all in all I don't see any major thing I hate in there, so that will probably be my choice if I get a descent quote on it.

The place is a real warehouse, with pallets stacked on metallic frames as you'd expect in a warehouse. Registers were simply placed one foldable tables in front of the entrance. So it's quite simple but it's good enough.

I got some petits suisses, the original kind and also some fruit-kind for the babies, as well as some fromage blanc -- at first they were out but I asked and some guy went out of his way to find some, which was nice. I got some merguez and harissa for MM. Finally I got some Mamie Nova Chocolat Gourmant for Tg; I think she'll like that.

Surprisingly I didn't see any Vache qui rit but you easily find that at Trader Joes or Albertsons anyway.

It's a bit pricey, I'd say twice what you'd expect to pay for it in a supermarket in France. But then it's less expensive than having to fly there and the quality will be better than having it thaw in your luggage on the way back ;-)

I went to the dealership in SF; they had the 2.0T automatic/DSG on the lot and I did use that to go to their warehouse where the manual version was, the one I really wanted to try. It was only a few blocks away so it was too short of a drive. I drove the manual back to the dealership. Same, it was too short of a drive. Unfortunately this was also at rush hour so there was lots of slow traffic and it meant that getting on the highway was totally pointless. Driving 4 blocks in SF at 25 mph with a few dozen lights in the mix is not my idea of a test drive. Take the hint, dude!

At first I thought I'd come back the next day in the morning to get a real test drive, without so much traffic. However thinking about it again, I'm not so sure.

I originally liked this model because it's compact, it has a hatchback and 4 doors, the last one being that it's more practical to stick babies in there. Overall I like the shape and I liked driving it. The controls were nice and intuitive.

What didn't I like? The rear seats are not very roomy and the ceiling is kinda low over the rear seats -- when I sat there literally there was only one inch or so between my head and the roof, and I'm not even really tall. Also I hate this trend they have now of having a high trunk, which really reduces rear visibility. Oh and the clutch felt a bit weird, almost too soft.

As a side note, for 27 grands you can't even have a MP3-capable CD player with an aux input; however the 6-CD in-dash option provides that.

Sounds like I need to do some more reading and maybe in a totally different direction.

Anyway I thought maybe it could be the battery and a quick trip to Kragen to get a new one didn't solve it. Same symptoms. Crank but not fire.

The bottom line is that I called AAA to get it towed to the Nissan service center today. Never mind that AAA said the tow truck would be there within the hour yet it is only an hour and a half later the tow truck company called to confirm they were coming.

I'm not too found of Nissan's service fees yet I somehow trust them better than a random garage. It's not like a know of any other great one so this will have to do. I'll give them another chance.

What's missing is the almost full day I spent yesterday fixing "minor" issues like configuring the wifi PCI card under Linux and fixing the compatibility issue between the two conflicting version of the nVidia drivers. None of these are MythTV-related issues per se yet they clearly show me why Linux won't be the "mainstream desktop" OS some want it to be.

Also missing is my "semi-initial" thoughts on MythTV as a PVR. So far I have mixed feelings about it. It suffers the usual open-source syndrome: powerful with a poor interface usability and needs too many tweaks to be usable out-of-the-box.

When it comes to being "mainstream", less is sometimes better (i.e. less features but more integrated) and both the Linux and open source models fail to deliver.

One thing I realized is that I need to clean my pending todo list items for RIG 1 in PHP. I have a couple of things pending and they are not sexy but I want them and at least Sum wants them too. So I think I'll just go ahead and do this and then call it quits.

During the party, MM mentionned there's a Knoppix-based distro that contains everything for MythTV. On the way back from the party, this got me thinking. I have a lot of work to do at home for a little while.

I had been thinking about building my own PVR at home using MythTV for a while but the MythTV install didn't sound that exciting. OTOH having a distro with everything all setup sounds like the way to go.

The idea if it works would be to use my desktop PC has a MythTV box, which would also replace the laptop that I currently use as a music server. Later I'll transform this laptop in a DSL router and firewall.

So I looked around a bit and found KnoppMyth. Reading the pamphlet was all I needed to get started. I burned the ISO on a CD and performed the manual installation steps on a SATA drive I had lying around. At first it didn't work, but I eventually realized the CD-RW didn't burn clean so after burning it a second time on another CD-RW, this time it installed just fine and I was contemplating a fresh install of MythTV in minutes. After toying with it for most of the day I still had some issues, namely no TV output and nothing happened when trying to watch live TV but overall I was pleased with the software and decided it was the way to go.