Ah what a wonderful day today. Today I am the proud owner of a brand new 2005 Nissan Altima 2.5S. After the fiasco on Tuesday with Nissan of Orange, I went to costcoauto.com and asked them to find me the best deal. They came up with Garden Grove Nissan (Brookhurst & Trask off the 22fwy). My parents and I went down there and it was the best experience I've ever seen from a car dealership. Because we went directly to the fleet dealer, there was no haggling for prices. She quoted us $200 over the invoice price, which is pretty damn good. After about 2 hours of filling out paperwork and waiting, I had my new car. And seriously, out of those 2 hours, there was never any negotiating, never any yelling or anything like that. It was the most peaceful deal ever. The way we figure it, unless we were to get one of those "one at this price" special weekend deals, we probably couldn't have beaten $200 over invoice. I put up some pictures for you guys to drool over :)

P.S. I recommend getting your Nissan at Garden Grove Nissan.

P.S.S. Dont forget my sale items! Click HERE!

Well, I've narrowed my car selection down to the 2005 Nissan Altima 2.5s. Very nice car. My dad has a 2002 Altima 3.5 SL and it kicks ass. So we took a trip down to Nissan of Orange hoping to get a good deal. What we got instead was a very large headache and a new hatred for car salesmen. Have a seat as I tell you a story...

We get to the dealership and this guy comes out who by first impressions looks quite shady. Something about the grease-slicked hair and oddly shaved sideburns that makes you uneasy. Anyways, we told him exactly what we wanted and would accept nothing else. So he says that the exact color was not in stock at their store, but it could be delivered tommorrow... not a huge deal, but it means I would have to buy it before I actually SAW it. So he asks what I want to pay a month and I say "350 a month for 60 months". He says, "let me see what I can do" and leaves for 15 minutes. Keep in mind these 15 minute breaks become standard for the rest of the night. I think he took 15 minute breaks like 6 times. I'm not kidding.

So he comes back with his "deal"... 425/mo for 60 months. I laugh and say no way. His response, "what if I could do 350/mo for 72 months". This was after I specifically said I didn't want a 6 year loan. So he tries to spin the facts around, all the while he hasn't actually said what the car costs. At one point my dad says "but I don't even know what the car costs". My favorite line of the whole night, and I kid you not, the car dealer replied "when we shake on a deal, you'll know the cost of the car". No lie. Those were his exact words. So after many more attempts at dealing, he never actually told us what the car costs.

I gave him 2 requirements (besides color); none of that $1200 paint/pinstripes that they put on, and anti-lock brakes. That's all he had to deal with. On the first requirement, his first attempt was to "forget" to take it off. After calling him on that, he went back to his manager and 15 minutes later he said "ok, we can take that off". So logically I said ok. Later I realized he just meant they'll take off the pinstripes, but not the cost to put them on in the first place. So he finally takes the cost off, but just for the pinstripes ($100) not the entire extra clear coat of paint ($1200). Then we got to the deal of ABS. He didn't have any cars that had ABS installed in the color I wanted, but he assured us he would get that. Despite the fact that everywhere I read says you can add JUST abs, he insisted on packaging it up with some other stuff I didn't want. Then he pulls a car up that didn't have ABS and he claimed that it did. We looked at the dashboard which lights up when ABS is active and of course this model didn't have it. He claimed that the ABS was installed, just not activated and that it was standard on all models. Which of course is a crock of shit. At this point my dad and I left, each with a giant headache.

Moral of the story, don't ever go to Nissan of Orange.

This is the end of my venting for now, I'll fill in some more great details later after I've calmed down a bit.

PS. Oh yeah, and they denied me not only my student rebate but also 1.9% financing because ... apparently my credit was ... too good? I have a credit rating in low-mid 700's (which is A+ credit). Go figure.

I'm having a sale on two items. First item up for bidding is my camera. It's a Kodak DC4800. 3.1 megapixel, 3x optical zoom. You'll see by the pictures that quite a few accessories are included. This includes 2 batteries, a 64mb and 16mb compact flash card, and a 3x optical zoom attachment to bring the optical zoom on the camera up to 6x. Asking price is $200 OBO.

Next item up for bid is my 15" LCD. It's an Envision EN5200e. I'm selling it because I want to get a 17" LCD to match my current 17". It's in great shape and there's no ghosting in games. Max res is 1024x768. Asking price is $200 OBO.

Sigh. Cars can be so troublesome sometimes. Yesterday afternoon my '97 Ford Taurus finally kicked the bucket. As I was getting off the freeway, my car started to make noise and sputter. Right as I turned onto Heather's street, my car totally died and wouldn't start. Come to find out a water seal burst and my car lost all it's water. It'll cost like $600-$800 to fix. With that in mind, I've gone searching for a new car. The thing is, I'm 6'5" and I don't fit in most cars. So searching for cars is quite a trying experience. So far, the only two cars that I fit into that I liked are the Mazda6i and the Nissan Altima 2.5s. (I also fit in the Chevy Impala but I didn't like it). Other than those, I didn't fit into any cars. Some of the cars I was really looking forward to such as the Subaru Impreza, VW Jetta/Passat, and the Scion tC. Oh well, such is the pain of being tall. I'm sure I'll find a car within the next few days and I'll update here with pictures.

Heather and I went to the Orange County Fair today. It was quite a lot of fun, but it was exactly like I remembered it. Nothing really changed in the past few years. There's still the giant horse and giant steer. Same old, same old. We did go on this one ride that felt like it was going to fall apart at any minute. Luckily, we went on a Friday so all rides were $1, instead of the normal $2-5 per ride. Also, we watched the VitaMix demonstration for a while, and I've come to the conclusion that I really want one.

The LAN party last night went really well. No power outtages for the first time ever. We were almost short on tables, but we ended up using our ping pong table and it worked really well. We had some awesome games of Quake3: Threewave, Quake3: Urban Terror, and Counter Strike Beta5.2 (The best version ever). The CS was really fun and it brought back a lot of good memories. Ah LANs, they're so much fun. We started at like 5:30-6:00pm and I didn't get to bed until 5:30am. I think it was the longest LAN party we've had. Here's some pictures I took with my new Pentax Optio S4.

Man, it's been so long since I last updated. I got my new camera in the mail the other day. I got a Pentax Optio S4. It's a pretty sweet little camera. It literally fits inside of an altoids tin can. And it's 4 megapixels. Anyways, I'll take some pictures with it (or of it) and post them later. Maybe I'll even writeup a little review of it when I get back home and get my hands on it again. Anyways, for those who have forgotten... THERE IS A LAN PARTY THIS FRIDAY. Please sign the roster/list so I can plan accordingly. The list is currently at www.krystalogik.net/lan. GO SIGN UP.

Heather and I went to the Warped Tour on Friday. It was held on the CSU Fullerton campus. At first I thought it was gonna be a good idea, seeing as college campuses are usually well layed out with plenty of parking. Come to find out, whoever was in charge of planning and logitics was a fucking retard. Seriously. We stood in line for ALMOST 2 hours and we only got in at 12:30, after 3 bands had already played. And that was after we cut in line because everyone else was already cutting. Oh well. So we got in and the first band up was Alkaline Trio. They were pretty good, and I've been listening to them lately so I recognized almost all of their songs. They sounded good, but it wasn't very energetic seeing as 2/3 of the crowds were still in line outside. Next up was Flogging Molly and I think they were the best show there. Nofx was good and so was Bad Religion. Other than that, it was a pretty typical Warped Tour. It did seem quite political with almost every band making SOME sort of anti-Bush statement. And that's always good :)

LAN PARTY! Repeat after me... lan party at pens house. That's right folks, it's that time of the year again. Time for the LAN to end all LANs. This time there's no excuse not to come. I fully intend on breaking the 20 person barrier this time. For some of us it will be the 'end of school' celebration that we so desperately need. Anyways. Onwards to the information. It will be July 16th at 6ish (as usual) It's a Friday and everyone should be there! /me looks in ashandarei's direction. logikal will soon have a signup page. I'll repost here once that happens. Until then, keep dreaming about LANs. woo

I'm using this new design now. If you've been paying attention, this is the same design from joe.teamslack.net that I "made" for him. Of course I didn't actually write/design this. I just saw it one day somewhere and thought it was very nice. So after getting frustrated at my website, I've changed over the design to this one. What do you guys think? I still have to fix a few random pages to conform to the new design, but that will PROBABLY happen tonight, if I get some time.