I completed my headlight quest yesterday and as a final step took the newly purchased bulb to the local Oil Can Henry’s to get it put into the car. They did it last time, too, and cost me $10 for the job. I figure, it’s $10 worth of headache they’re saving me, and it’s worth every penny.

They serviced the car right there in the parking lot - I didn’t even have to drive into the garage. That said, it did take about half an hour to finish. (Which I expected; it’s a real pain to get into my headlights. You have to take, like, half the engine out to get there.)

When all was said and done, the guy went in to run my debit card and came back, saying all of the registers were being used and to just forget it - it was on the house. He just said, “Come in for your next oil change, eh?”

I actually felt bad - the guy had worked his ass off for that $10 and he didn’t even take it. He just wanted the repeat business for later.

That’s customer service. Sort of the way Les Schwab will fix flat tires for free. I’ll definitely be hitting Oil Can Henry’s in the future, and if you get the opportunity, I recommend it (at least, the one in Tanasbourne, Hillsboro, OR). They’re good people.

Three months ago I went on this ridiculous mission to replace my headlights. The driver’s side had gone out.

Well, it’s out again.

I considered that this is pretty quick to lose a headlight, but if you think of the law of averages, I gotta chalk this one up to bad luck. So, I’m after another new headlight. This time I won’t be replacing both, though.

That said, I’ve been to almost every auto parts store in the area and none of them have the kind of headlight I want in stock (Sylvania H1ST). I was going to go out searching some more today (the quest started last night) but the roads are all iced over, so I’m staying home, watching movies.

I will return to the quest on the morrow. And rest well knowing that I will prevail.

I got the Bose Acoustimass 16 setup running and let me tell you:

It is absolutely fucking amazing.

I had the Acoustimass 6 series running before - passive subwoofer, five single-cube satellite speakers. Loved it. This new set has an active sub and six double-cube satellite speakers.

I thought my old system was great, but this blows it out of the water. It’s like gold plating the gold I already had. I’ve been watching movies and stuff all day and I don’t think I’m going to leave the living room ever again.

The only downside is that my amp doesn’t do 6.1 surround, only 5.1, so the center-rear channel isn’t hooked up. Guess it’s time to upgrade that amplifier, eh?

While waiting for CSI to come on last night, Jenn and I were flipping channels and came across The Surreal Life. I’d never watched the show before so I didn’t know what to expect, other than folks said it was pretty funny. This was the season four opener, so I figured it’d be a good intro to what’s what.

Holy

Shit.

Honestly, I could not stop laughing. The ridiculousness of the whole thing was overwhelming. See, they’ve got a couple of halfway normal folks on there (Christopher Knight and Da Brat seem to have things reasonably together), and then you’ve got Verne Troyer and Joanie Laurer on the other side of that logic boundary.

Let’s just say this: The show ended with Verne Troyer - Mini-Me - drunk, naked, sitting on a scooter peeing in the corner of the living room. Seriously. There’s video of it on VH1’s site. Check it out.

My driver’s side headlight is out again, so that’s some more car maintenance I didn’t want to deal with. I’m kind of irritated about it, but what are you going to do?

Jenn handed me a yogurt for breakfast this morning. I got to work and saw it was way expired. That and the headlight are shaping my day up nicely.

My Bose Acoustimass 16’s are going to be in at the store tonight, so I’ve got to go pick those up. I have to look at that as the bright spot in my day, even if it is costing me a bit.

My M4P Backup script has problems now that iTunes 4.7.1 has come out (because hymn, which I use for automated unlocking of the protected files, doesn’t support stripping of individual tags), but I don’t see any releases of hymn approaching to fix the issue, so that may mean switching to JHymn and just using a proper combination of options there to get the job done. I kinda wish there was a command-line interface to JHymn, or that hymn itself would be updated with some additional switches, but I’m not prepared to put in the work myself to get that to happen.

Anyone looking for a gift for me can hook me up with the new Star Wars Mr. Potato Head, “Darth Tater,” or the Jawa sandcrawler-esque JL421 Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank.