Friday, January 6, 2006
Breakfast: yogurt, banana. Returned the rental car to Hertz. Lunch 1: small turkey and cheddar sandwich. Ran into a problem with Firefox 1.5 upon launch on one computer: "...failure in Chrome Registration..."—I was temporarily able to work around the problem by uninstalling all extensions. However reinstalling any extension caused the error message to return. I logged in as admin, started Firefox 1.5—this appeared to be the first time I had done so as admin—closed it, then logged back in as a normal user, and now the "failure in Chrome Registration" error message no longer appears—weird! I learned a couple of days ago that you cannot install Google Safe Browsing for Firefox as admin and expect it to be installed for the normal users of the same computer—it must be installed on a per user basis while logged in as that user. Started sweeps of Spy Sweeper sweeps and defrag. Installed QT7/Fx1.5/GSB for more computers. Verified that Spy Sweeper was installed on some computers—it had disappeared on some computers during my vacation. Lunch 2: small turkey and cheddar sandwich. Picked up the car from the auto body shop. The place I used was Stan Carlsen Body Shop (415-221-0100, 522 Frederick Street), and I'm very happy with the work and price Aaron Deo and his staff provided. I had to do a lot of shopping around to find the right place, and I'm now glad to say I've found a body shop I can trust which is saying a lot because I have had a bad repair shop experience in the past. I had gone to the "official" BMW body shop at 1140 Harrison and it was the only place where I was not given a written estimate. They verbally said the repair would cost $2000—"$3000 tops"—and I knew I needed to look elsewhere. Their web site was also out of date with some details. I also went to Autobody Garage (415-371-8822, 565 Bryant Street). This place gave a quote which turned out to be pretty low but when I asked if the repairs were guaranteed in writing Karry hemmed and hawed and gave me the impression that the answer was no, so I went elsewhere. I was recommended to Marta at Colma Auto Body Shop (650-756-7110, 7252 Mission) by a friend. Ironically, when we met, she told me, "This will be the lowest quote you get" and instead it turned out to be the highest—$500 more than the lowest quote. Marta was the first person to tell me how long the repair might take: 4 days. I then went to 19th Autobody Center (415-334-5050, 3950 19th Avenue) where I almost got the repair done. I was happy with everything we discussed during the estimate, but Cliff never called me back to set up an appointment for me to bring the car in. I had called twice and received one callback but it seemed he didn't really want my business. At Stan Carlsen Body Shop, their website says you get a free car rental with repairs over $1000. This turned out to be a really great benefit. They called Hertz to pick us up and take us to the rental car. My car was repaired in 3 days, right on schedule, and everything was fixed to my satisfaction. I believe we were treated honestly because upon picking up the car I was told that one portion of the repair wasn't necessary and why (paint blending—the door panel matched without requiring blending). Consequently, they deducted several hundred dollars from my total when they could have easily pocketed the difference. To top it all off, they gave me the lowest quote of all the places I visited. After I picked up the car I returned to Hertz because I left a bag of stuff in the rental car, then I went home where I realized I couldn't get into the house. I had forgotten my house keys this morning when I left home, and Patrick had alreadly left to spend the evening with his friend Wei. I drove to the Castro for dinner at Osaka Restaurant. Did a little shopping and stopped at Cliff's for some hardware. Briefly ran in to Bill L on the street. Later ran in to Danny, Phil, Drew, and Antoine and we chatted a bit. Some of them were going to Club Dragon and I told them I was a definite maybe depending on when I could get back in the house. I drove home and ended up waiting for Patrick for several hours—he had forgotten all about me! Consequently, I didn't go to Dragon, but showered, then went to bed.