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I took the Kia in for it's 30000 mile service last week. I had also been noticing some vibrations at high speeds, coming through the foot-well and more worryingly, the steering column, and hoped to get that fixed. Unfortunately the nearest dealership is in Salinas, the exact opposite direction of work. They thought the vibrations may be due to some imbalance in the tires and said they'd look at it.
The dealership offered to pay for a rental car for the day so I took them up on it. In the line next to me at the on-site Enterprise counter was one Christina Sinatra. When asked, she said she was in fact related to Frank Sinatra. I don't know if that's true or not, but I did discover she was a total flake. Because she was only 18, Enterprise needed to confirm that she had insurance that would cover a rental, and she not only was unable to produce the insurance card, but did not know what her provider was . OK, at 18, she's probably still on her parents' policy, but to not know what it is? What happens if you need to use it at some point? Oy. Anyway, they had given out they're last car to the couple in front of me, so they had to take me to the main branch in town, where they ALSO had no cars available. So they gave me the behemoth they hauled me over there in, a Nissan Armada. This is well named, for it is the size of a fleet. The Kia Rio that I usually drive is about one tenth the size. But I managed. However when returning it the next day, the Enterprise counter was unmanned and had a sign directing me to leave the key with the receptionist of the dealership the counter was in. She said they wouldn't be in until noon. WTF? I left the key with her and she called them at the main branch. It still makes me uneasy. What if they "decide" I never returned it? Do they just charge me the deposit or report it stolen? I'm assuming everything's ok since they haven't called and inquired about its whereabouts. Maybe I ought to phone them up and ask.
My car was ready, though I'll have to take it on faith that they actually did everything that was on the list. It's all preventative maintenance, so I'd be surprised to see much evidence. The oil change mileage sticker was changed and the vents were shifted around so they obviously did something. The vibrations are not gone, but much reduced. I don't notice anything until about 60 mph, and they're not coming through the steering wheel anymore. I'm sure it didn't used to vibrate at all. Not sure how worried I should be about this. The handling has not been affected at all, but I'd prefer to fix any problems before that happens. Anyone knows anything, I'd love to hear about it.
In other news, I finished the conversion of my tidal heating program. So now it's time to go to the 3D vesion, which is a parallelized code. I know my convection code works, but it means setting it up on a cluster I've never used before. I know there's going to be some learning curve getting that to work, so I've been putting that off. But I've done everything useful I can do without this, so I'll have to suck it up and work it out. Once it's set up, making the modifications I want shouldn't be difficult, since I already worked out how to do that. My boss thinks I'm moving quite quickly. I think I'm ploddingly slow.
The Icarus paper was revised and sent back to them last week, and was sent out for a second round of review. I was hoping that wouldn't be necessary, but it's not a total surprise.
Also, when filling up your mug with the morning coffee, it's advisiable to first remove the teabag from the day before. That was not a good thing to overlook.
The dealership offered to pay for a rental car for the day so I took them up on it. In the line next to me at the on-site Enterprise counter was one Christina Sinatra. When asked, she said she was in fact related to Frank Sinatra. I don't know if that's true or not, but I did discover she was a total flake. Because she was only 18, Enterprise needed to confirm that she had insurance that would cover a rental, and she not only was unable to produce the insurance card, but did not know what her provider was . OK, at 18, she's probably still on her parents' policy, but to not know what it is? What happens if you need to use it at some point? Oy. Anyway, they had given out they're last car to the couple in front of me, so they had to take me to the main branch in town, where they ALSO had no cars available. So they gave me the behemoth they hauled me over there in, a Nissan Armada. This is well named, for it is the size of a fleet. The Kia Rio that I usually drive is about one tenth the size. But I managed. However when returning it the next day, the Enterprise counter was unmanned and had a sign directing me to leave the key with the receptionist of the dealership the counter was in. She said they wouldn't be in until noon. WTF? I left the key with her and she called them at the main branch. It still makes me uneasy. What if they "decide" I never returned it? Do they just charge me the deposit or report it stolen? I'm assuming everything's ok since they haven't called and inquired about its whereabouts. Maybe I ought to phone them up and ask.
My car was ready, though I'll have to take it on faith that they actually did everything that was on the list. It's all preventative maintenance, so I'd be surprised to see much evidence. The oil change mileage sticker was changed and the vents were shifted around so they obviously did something. The vibrations are not gone, but much reduced. I don't notice anything until about 60 mph, and they're not coming through the steering wheel anymore. I'm sure it didn't used to vibrate at all. Not sure how worried I should be about this. The handling has not been affected at all, but I'd prefer to fix any problems before that happens. Anyone knows anything, I'd love to hear about it.
In other news, I finished the conversion of my tidal heating program. So now it's time to go to the 3D vesion, which is a parallelized code. I know my convection code works, but it means setting it up on a cluster I've never used before. I know there's going to be some learning curve getting that to work, so I've been putting that off. But I've done everything useful I can do without this, so I'll have to suck it up and work it out. Once it's set up, making the modifications I want shouldn't be difficult, since I already worked out how to do that. My boss thinks I'm moving quite quickly. I think I'm ploddingly slow.
The Icarus paper was revised and sent back to them last week, and was sent out for a second round of review. I was hoping that wouldn't be necessary, but it's not a total surprise.
Also, when filling up your mug with the morning coffee, it's advisiable to first remove the teabag from the day before. That was not a good thing to overlook.
