Month: March 2004

Painting The Town Garnet Red

I bought a new car in November. They sent me a survey to fill out rating my experience with the purchase. I thought about throwing it out, I now swear that thought is true, but Mazda thinks I filled it out. As a way of thanking me they sent me a bottle of touch-up paint. That was the end of January. About a week later I got a second bottle, it was packaged differently and included a couple of other items, but the main contents was a bottle of touch-up paint. This last Saturday, a familiar envelope arrived in the mail, that’s right, another bottle of touch-up paint. So Sunday I emailed them:

From: “Brian Bogardus” <bogardus@geeforcecable.com>
To: <customerassistance@mazdausa.com>
Sent: Sunday, March 28, 2004 10:35 AM
Subject: Stop it. You are creeping me out.

Dear Mr. Customer Assistance,

November 24, 2003 – Purchase a new 2003 Garnet Red Miata

January 28, 2004 – Receive a bottle touch-up paint as a thank you for filling out a survey I swear I threw in the trash, but must have completed.

February 7, 2004 – Receive a second bottle of touch-up paint inside a miniature steering wheel replica along with some other things, including a letter that welcomes me to the “Emotion of Motion.”

March 27, 2004 – Receive a third bottle of touch-up paint with what looks like the exact same letter as accompanied the first bottle.

Thanks for the first bottle as I already have had a use for it, but stop already, one more bottle and I’ll be able to paint my wife’s Civic Garnet Red to match the Miata. If you feel a further need to thank me for buying your product a $10 gas card or similar would be nice to offset the cost of the required premium fuel.

Sincerely,
Brian Bogardus

Today I got a reply:

From: “CustomerAssistance” <CustomerAssistance@mazdausa.com>
To: “Brian Bogardus” <bogardus@geeforcecable.com>
Sent: Monday, March 29, 2004 04:33 PM
Subject: Re: Stop it. You are creeping me out. (KMM203077V95587L0KM)

Dear Brian,

Thank you for contacting Mazda North American Operations. I appreciate the opportunity to respond to you.

Thanks for alerting us to the additional, unintentional mailings that you received. I have forwarded your comments to our Marketing contacts to ensure that no further welcome packages are sent.

Again, thank you for contacting Mazda. It has been my pleasure to assist you. Please feel free to reply to this message with any further questions or comments.

Please take a moment to give us your opinion about our e-mail service. Click the link below to complete a brief, online survey.

http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?T8SY3YKAT109GH3CPK39V6

Regards,

William Zdan
Specialist, Customer Assistance E-Business

Oh no you don’t, filling out a survey is what got me nto this mess to begin with…

DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME!

Last night on the test drive of my new mod, fog lights as DRLs, I got as far as the back wheels out of the garage before I smelled burning. (I used to be an Aviation Electronics Technician in Uncle Sam’s Yacht Club, so I’m intimately familiar with the smell of burnt electrical bits.) Instantly turned off the car and snipped my new +12v wire to the fog light relay. I don’t think I ruined anything, all the background lights on the cluster still work, all the normal lights came on when starting…

Funny, I didn’t smell anything on my initial test, the only difference this time was the car was running.

So it’s back to the drawing board. I guess my next step will be to make my own ground to the relay, so current won’t be going willy-nilly through out the car.

Fog Light DRLs

I managed to get my hands on a copy of the wiring diagram for the fog lights and as a bonus the headlight circuits.* I’ve had it for a while, but today I decided to attempt the mod again (my first ended in failure.)

With careful study of the circuit wiring diagrams it looked like for the fog light relay to trip, turning on the fogs, it needed +12v coming from the headlight relay and a ground available when the headlight switch is in low. My ideal situation would be to have an ignition on twelve volts applied to one end of the relay and a ground applied to the other whenever the lights are off. This would disable the fog lights as fog lights, but make them daytime running lights – always on when the car is running and off at night.

First thing I decided to do was cut the red/yellow wire. I really didn’t want to, but I could never get the relay loose from the connector, so snip I did. Hooked up the barrel splice to the +12v wire I found in my original attempt and the red/yellow wire running into the relay connector. Figuring that this would not change any operation as the ground from the headlight switch was still missing, I tested the setup. Much to my surprise when the key was turned to IGN the fogs came on. Not only were they on, but the light in the switch was on, even though the switch was not depressed. I tried turning the lights on, another surprise awaited, as when they came on, the fogs went off (along with the light in the switch.) So I pushed in the fog light switch and the fogs came on, they also went out when I turned on the high beams, just like they are supposed to.

Following the diagram out, I must be getting a ground from somewhere I’m not supposed to be, through either the left front low beam or somewhere in the instrument cluster. Seeing as my +12v is only applied when the ignition is on I won’t be running down the battery or anything. The current draw to trip that relay is probably small enough that I won’t do any damage to anything, but I would still like to know where it is coming from. When we go for a drive tonight I’ll see if I can figure out which one by looking at the headlight and the instrument cluster in the dark.

Where Did The Pictures Go?

Just back from a Master’s Miata Club function. I took a bunch of pictures, but when I stuck the card in the reader, Windows Explorer showed no files. The root directory pie chart thingie showed that the drive was nearly full, yet there were no files to be found. Crap! Google searched for smart media file recovery. The seventh one down on the page led me to PC Inspector Smart Recovery 4.44. Not only did it work like a charm, it was FREE.

The day was saved, too bad not many of the pictures were worth saving. A couple did go into the Picture Pile (a folder kept on my desktop) and might show up if they fit a theme from an upcoming photo meme.

Finally, Portable Sunscreen

Saw a display in the supermarket tonight that proclaimed, “NEW! Portable Sunscreen!” Thank god, I was tired of having to schlep back to the car to dispense more sunscreen from the 50 gallon drum the stuff usually comes in.

Hello G Force Cable

On the night I had cable internet installed I had to call the tech support phone number to set up an email address. Some one helped me nearly right away. The next two times I called, I gave up after waiting 5 or so minutes. The paranoid side of me figured that they know when somebody is being installed so the first call get answered. After that they’ve got you, so you can be safely ignored. The other 2 times were evenings, which I figured were peak times, so I thought I might try in the day. This call would be the proof or dis-proof of my theory. I guess I’m just paranoid, I got a quick answer today.

As if I must always have set amount of email addresses, to replace the recently departed Brian_the_Red@bigfoot.com address, I almost signed up for one of these, world’s longest alphabetical email address. Instead I opted for Brian_the_Red [at] gforcecable [dot] com.

Bye-Bye Bigfoot

Way back since whenever I’ve had a bigfoot.com email address. It was a thing of beauty whilst ISP hopping in the beginnings of the internet revolution. It was free and I could forward and distribute and all kinds of other helpful stuff. Over the last decade bigfoot?s free services have dwindled, a victim of their own success. For about a year or so now I have been limited to 25 pieces of email a day. Trouble with that is, with the increase in spam a person had to be lucky to be in the top 25 to get a message to me. I stopped using the address, but kept checking for old times sake. Today I terminated my account. The end of an era.

While following the steps to end my association with bigfoot, not once, but twice I had to click OK on a screen that warned: “By terminating your Bigfoot For Life account, you will no longer receive offers from Bigfoot’s Promotional partners. However, you will also have to forego the benefits of using any of Bigfoot’s services which are available only to those with active Bigfoot for Life accounts.” Did they ever think that maybe it was those promotional partners junk mail that made the service unusable?