Now I know some kid is going to google the title of this blog post and read this post instead of seeing the actual movie. But I warn you, this is only a review and not a plot summary of the movie. Still, if you want to find spoilers on the harry potter 3 movie on the internet, be my guest!
Since Colin is too much of a wuss to write the spoiler (and he almost jumped out of his seat in the scene where Prof. Trelawney goes all psychotic on Potter) , I guess I will :D
Well, first off, the movie was half good, half bad. As Katan points out, the cinematography was the BEST out of all the previous HP's. Alfonso Cuarón is an AWESOME director! But due to the length and detail of the book, they had to cut out LOTS of bits and pieces from the book. But I'll explain that part later. Rants first:
Observation 1. Dumbledore
OMG Who is *that* new old guy and what happened to the old Dumbledore?? Oh yeah, he died. But still, this new Dumbledore, played by Michael Gambon, will NEVER fill the old Dumbledore's shoes! Ever! Where the old Dumbledore was kind, all-powerful, and grandfatherly, the new Dumbledore was too sharp, too quick, and dresses like a retired hippie painter. Overall, I don't like him, but I guess I'll have to put up with him throughout the next 4 HP movies.
Secondly, I'd like to discuss the book/movie discrepancies (something that colin could not possibly write about because he never read the book!)
Dude, Prof. Lupin's class was supposed to be *awesome*. From what I remember of the book, they fought a lot more evil monsters and what not in Lupin's class. And their final exam was to go through some sort of obstacle course fighting monsters right? To me, it seems as though they just glossed over the book, picking out only the most crucial parts of the story to maintain a logical plot. I mean, the Harry Potter books are not just all about Harry going to school, Harry fighting evil Voldemort, Harry triumphing and moving on to the next book. Rowling actually creates a whole wizarding world. I think we as the movie-going audience should get to see what it's like to go to a school of witchcraft and wizardry. I know you get to see Prof. Trelawney's class some and Lupin's class, but come on, they had more classes than that!
And their clothes. The first two HP movies were more traditional in the fact that they pretty much stick to the book. All the students wore their little Hogwarts uniforms. But how much uniform did you see in this movie besides the bit they wore on the train?
Speaking of clothes, what's up with Hermione and wearing these bust-enhancing, butt-hugging clothes? We know she's growing up and becoming more "feminine" but there's no need to market her body to the general public. She's too young for that. Another thing she's too young for is all this hitting on Harry the second Ron's back is turned. I don't recall Hermione's character being all lovey-dovey towards Harry in the books. In fact, if any of you have read Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix, ***SPOILER AHEAD*** you would know that Ron and Hermione had relationship issues in GoF and she ends up going out with that Viktor Krum guy while Harry goes for miss priss Cho Chang as evidenced in the 4th and 5th books. ***END SPOILER***
Also, WHAT WAS UP WITH MALFOY??? He's the big boss of Slytherin! He's Mr. Tough Stuff #1 Bully of the whole series! He's not some wimpy pansy-pants okay? So why was he backed up against the tree being beaten up by a girl? I could understand his running away after Harry uses the invisibility cloak and starts throwing snowballs at Malfoy and his two stooges, but his wimping out to Hermione is either really bad, fake acting, or else it demands some justification!
Lastly, they never explained how Lupin knew that the Maurader's Map (sp?) was a map! I guess they cut that scene out and are putting it in the DVD. ***SPOILER*** Lupin = Mooney, Sirius = Padfoot, Harry's Dad = Prongs, Peter Pettigrew = Wormtail ***END SPOILER***
Don't you love how all traitors have the word 'worm' in their name? (Grima Wormtongue from LOTR)
Okay I do have some good things to say about the movie, I promise.
Like how the dementors in this movie could be distinguished from ring wraiths. Dementors have a very round, oval-shaped head, which makes me wonder if their heads are just really one large rubber balloon filled with helium and covered with black cloth. The movie really gives you the sense that these black hooded phantoms sends darkness and despair into everyone's hearts. Whereas the ring wraiths from LOTR just sat on their various beasts-of-transportation and looked scary.
I don't know if it's just me, but Ron is starting to look like the big Pete from that old Nickelodeon show, The Adventures of Pete and Pete.
The songs in this movie are wonderful! I definetly want a copy of this movie's sountrack.
Finally, there's Buckbeak the hypogriff.
The hypogriff is an AMAZING creature! And I didn't mean to steal that line from the nightelf in warcraft. They did a great job in the CG of that hypogriff. It looked much more realistic than the incredibly fake unicorn in the first book. You could actually *see* the blue feathers rustling in the wind during the flight scenes.
And that concludes Cindy's movie review of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban!
Monday, July 26, 2004
*Kicks Blogger*
This place is getting some serious trouble, perhaps to do with the worm attacking Google though, but it definately isn't going nearly as smooth as it should. Always a bad sign when I have to load a page at least twice to get it to actually take hold.
And the answer to the $10,000,000 for this week was, the ED to FMP:F. If you didn't know the question, and anyone not reading my mind shouldn't have been able to, it was: What anime song do I know that reminds me of the song they play on the radio where the voice goes really high in the vocal range (I think it's a Michelle Branch song, but I can't swear by that, cause I'm usually working when I hear it and don't have the focus to devote to listening for the artist, or even really to the song).
I've found the inhibitor paradox of my life. I don't want to read any literature because I want to get my own ideas out and do some writing of my own, but the issue therein is that I don't really want to write, because I'd never be serious about it, it's mostly action/humor snippets as are most of my stories, that and I'm not much a writer, as seen by my frequency, or lack thereof with this.
Current musical addiction: The Melody of Oblivion OST - The spirit of FRAMENCO. An anime also getting my vote for my favorite of the season.
I'd post my opinions of the third Harry Potter movie, but I'm not certain that I can do it without spoilers, so I'll suffice it to say that it was a very good movie, and I hope I find the spirit to do some reading so I can finally read them, as well as the LotR series that I've yet to manage reading.
This place is getting some serious trouble, perhaps to do with the worm attacking Google though, but it definately isn't going nearly as smooth as it should. Always a bad sign when I have to load a page at least twice to get it to actually take hold.
And the answer to the $10,000,000 for this week was, the ED to FMP:F. If you didn't know the question, and anyone not reading my mind shouldn't have been able to, it was: What anime song do I know that reminds me of the song they play on the radio where the voice goes really high in the vocal range (I think it's a Michelle Branch song, but I can't swear by that, cause I'm usually working when I hear it and don't have the focus to devote to listening for the artist, or even really to the song).
I've found the inhibitor paradox of my life. I don't want to read any literature because I want to get my own ideas out and do some writing of my own, but the issue therein is that I don't really want to write, because I'd never be serious about it, it's mostly action/humor snippets as are most of my stories, that and I'm not much a writer, as seen by my frequency, or lack thereof with this.
Current musical addiction: The Melody of Oblivion OST - The spirit of FRAMENCO. An anime also getting my vote for my favorite of the season.
I'd post my opinions of the third Harry Potter movie, but I'm not certain that I can do it without spoilers, so I'll suffice it to say that it was a very good movie, and I hope I find the spirit to do some reading so I can finally read them, as well as the LotR series that I've yet to manage reading.
Saturday, July 17, 2004
Friday, July 16, 2004
It would appear that Blogger has gone and changed their interface once again. Hey, messing with fonts is amusing.
But, we'll still to normal sized Georgia font, cause it's a good font to use. And hopefully, damn this new interface is annoying. Keeps reverting to Tiny when I turn away for a moment.
So, as everyone can see. As soon as I get nice and post links to Jiaz's lovely pictures, he goes and one-ups me by actually blogging, and making all the photo links individual with descriptions. He's just mean sometimes.
Lesson for the week. If you've created a Note-keeping place inside your Java application that saves and retrieves intself from a SQL database table, it's probably not a good idea to recreate the database from null values if you had important notes. My uncle and I knew there was a reason we didn't want to have to null-state the database, we just couldn't remember the specifics offhand. Now we know, and of course we left a reminder in the Note program, just in case we should try it again.
In other news, I've apparently got a package at Tech. But between 2 jobs and a lack of care, I'm not about to take the trip down there just for my package, plus, they probably close the office on weekends, I'll have to check. Now if only I had some clue as to why I'd be getting packages at Tech in the middle of Summer (well, not really the middle any longer).
So, I need to warn the world about a PS2 game that David borrowed from his manager for all of a day before giving it back, it's called "The Getaway".
I describe it as: GTA3 + Winback, with the drawbacks of Resident Evil and Valkerie Profile.
But, that description is kinda lacking in the details. So I'll break it down. Take a lovely GTA3-esce City, ie: Mostly unenterable buildings, abruptly terminating streets, yelling pedestrians. Now take all that and make it British. Yes, British. Driving on the other side of the street, profanity in every cutscene with speech. As for Winback, which I hope none of my readers have had the displeasure of playing. It's like a poor man's Metal Gear Solid. You can hide against barrels and boxes, peek around corners, roll, and that's about where the similarities end. You, and your team of similarly colored, soon to be dead allies, go about through the FPS campaign with no inventory whatsoever. You get one gun at a time, a few flashbangs, and go about fighting less and less innovative battles. But enough about Winback. The Getaway is a real piece of work. You don't have a radar, or even a HUD for that matter. You figure out which direction to go while driving by your turn signals. As if that weren't bad enough, when I say no HUD, I mean it. You cannot see the status of your ammo, the condition of your health. But you can, and must, reload, and you can and will die. The only reasonable way to judge your current status is how badly your character is gimping around. You have the ability to do all the standard FPS maneuvers: Rolls, duck behind low objects, take hostages, etc. but the controls are so horrid that you'll have extreme difficulty getting any real benefit out of them. Moreover, you have to lock on to someone to be able to fire, that or manually aim (Which happens via a diesembodied over the should kind of camera angle that makes hitting buildings difficult). The vehicle damage system works like GTA, white smoke turns to black smoke, then the car ignites and you burn to death if you don't bail really fast. Windows can get shot out by gunfire, and I'm not sure about tires but a damaged car performs really substandard, as it should. Also, the hero cannot run. There is no run button, there is not speed other than moronic shuffle. Even better, despite having a whole City, perhaps more, to explore, you don't have the option. All the missions chain onto one another, and you have to do them, or gameover, no exploring allowed until the end. I only got through the first mission before losing the thrill but here's how genius your character is. The game opens with 4 thugs plotting to, and then moving to kidnap a woman and her son. They screw up when she struggles and shoot her. You are awakened by this (turns out it's your wife and son), so you run outside, pick up the murder weapon and then put it back down complete with your fingerprints. Then you carchase the guilty party, shoot a bunch of guys, get clubbed over the head, and wake up faced with the old leader of a rival mob who has a bunch of jobs you have to do or your son dies. Now David's play Enter the Matrix, I figure he'll have beaten it by tomorrow.
I leave you with this quote that I see outside a church I pass coming back from Java. Is it just me, or does this seem to be the wrong message to be sending to parishoners?
"Salvation is a gift for the guilty not a reward for the righteous."
Hmm, I wonder what happens if I change the post date ahead 2 years for fun?
But, we'll still to normal sized Georgia font, cause it's a good font to use. And hopefully, damn this new interface is annoying. Keeps reverting to Tiny when I turn away for a moment.
So, as everyone can see. As soon as I get nice and post links to Jiaz's lovely pictures, he goes and one-ups me by actually blogging, and making all the photo links individual with descriptions. He's just mean sometimes.
Lesson for the week. If you've created a Note-keeping place inside your Java application that saves and retrieves intself from a SQL database table, it's probably not a good idea to recreate the database from null values if you had important notes. My uncle and I knew there was a reason we didn't want to have to null-state the database, we just couldn't remember the specifics offhand. Now we know, and of course we left a reminder in the Note program, just in case we should try it again.
In other news, I've apparently got a package at Tech. But between 2 jobs and a lack of care, I'm not about to take the trip down there just for my package, plus, they probably close the office on weekends, I'll have to check. Now if only I had some clue as to why I'd be getting packages at Tech in the middle of Summer (well, not really the middle any longer).
So, I need to warn the world about a PS2 game that David borrowed from his manager for all of a day before giving it back, it's called "The Getaway".
I describe it as: GTA3 + Winback, with the drawbacks of Resident Evil and Valkerie Profile.
But, that description is kinda lacking in the details. So I'll break it down. Take a lovely GTA3-esce City, ie: Mostly unenterable buildings, abruptly terminating streets, yelling pedestrians. Now take all that and make it British. Yes, British. Driving on the other side of the street, profanity in every cutscene with speech. As for Winback, which I hope none of my readers have had the displeasure of playing. It's like a poor man's Metal Gear Solid. You can hide against barrels and boxes, peek around corners, roll, and that's about where the similarities end. You, and your team of similarly colored, soon to be dead allies, go about through the FPS campaign with no inventory whatsoever. You get one gun at a time, a few flashbangs, and go about fighting less and less innovative battles. But enough about Winback. The Getaway is a real piece of work. You don't have a radar, or even a HUD for that matter. You figure out which direction to go while driving by your turn signals. As if that weren't bad enough, when I say no HUD, I mean it. You cannot see the status of your ammo, the condition of your health. But you can, and must, reload, and you can and will die. The only reasonable way to judge your current status is how badly your character is gimping around. You have the ability to do all the standard FPS maneuvers: Rolls, duck behind low objects, take hostages, etc. but the controls are so horrid that you'll have extreme difficulty getting any real benefit out of them. Moreover, you have to lock on to someone to be able to fire, that or manually aim (Which happens via a diesembodied over the should kind of camera angle that makes hitting buildings difficult). The vehicle damage system works like GTA, white smoke turns to black smoke, then the car ignites and you burn to death if you don't bail really fast. Windows can get shot out by gunfire, and I'm not sure about tires but a damaged car performs really substandard, as it should. Also, the hero cannot run. There is no run button, there is not speed other than moronic shuffle. Even better, despite having a whole City, perhaps more, to explore, you don't have the option. All the missions chain onto one another, and you have to do them, or gameover, no exploring allowed until the end. I only got through the first mission before losing the thrill but here's how genius your character is. The game opens with 4 thugs plotting to, and then moving to kidnap a woman and her son. They screw up when she struggles and shoot her. You are awakened by this (turns out it's your wife and son), so you run outside, pick up the murder weapon and then put it back down complete with your fingerprints. Then you carchase the guilty party, shoot a bunch of guys, get clubbed over the head, and wake up faced with the old leader of a rival mob who has a bunch of jobs you have to do or your son dies. Now David's play Enter the Matrix, I figure he'll have beaten it by tomorrow.
I leave you with this quote that I see outside a church I pass coming back from Java. Is it just me, or does this seem to be the wrong message to be sending to parishoners?
"Salvation is a gift for the guilty not a reward for the righteous."
Hmm, I wonder what happens if I change the post date ahead 2 years for fun?
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
China pics for everyone to see. These are Jiaz's not Cindy's though, which means less cute animals and more vivid portrayals as to why as to why American capitalism needs to be destroyed before it causes any more trouble.
Take this web address:
http://www.swiftpublications.com/ChinaPhotos/DSC0###.JPG
and replace the ### with:
021
037
049
057
066
073
120
126
160
239
251
556
736
This concludes your China pictures for the moment.
Take this web address:
http://www.swiftpublications.com/ChinaPhotos/DSC0###.JPG
and replace the ### with:
021
037
049
057
066
073
120
126
160
239
251
556
736
This concludes your China pictures for the moment.
Friday, July 09, 2004
Hmm...one might very well wonder why I'm around blogging at 2am when I have work in less than 7 hours, but the answer to that lies in wondering why Lunar had to release a second version of their Torrent, I won't where the flaw lies in the first, and curiosity killed the cat and whatnot.
The CRV is fun, even some nice oh-shit handles for the passengers, just something to point out considering that the old van didn't have them and there was much discussion of this in the past. I've got to admit though, it's a bit odd having the lock/unlock directions for the rear hatch be the reverse of the rest of the doors, but I'm not one to question engineers anymore, it doesn't get you anywhere. The only serious annoyance with my precious (mostly in the costly sense here) vehicle is that the CD player, when a song ends and it moves on to another, doesn't inform you of it. It just dilligantly displays the time, while the CD moves on, and if you're on random, with a CD like They Might be Giants or Dave Matthews (note, specifically chosen for having a good 10-20 5-75 second songs) you'll end up having no clue where you are at on the CD. Fortunately, I buy CD's where there's only 1 or 2 songs I don't really like, so it's alright.
Well, GSpot give the Torrents results a clear prognosis, perhaps I'll never know.
Wow, I get the greatest stories giving blood, perhaps I should answer the questions normally. Anyways, as goes, when I was asked if I had, since 1980, given money or drugs to someone in exchange for sex, I replied that I was far too broke for such a venture, which I had indicated earlier when I got my donor card out by inverting my lovely duct tape wallet and having nothing fall out. Either way, I got a parable from my nurse about a story she got from a teacher in medical school about a boy whose friends. Actually, hold up, This is a warning, the following isn't exactly what one would consider to be a pleasant mental image, you have been warned . Anyways, about a boy whose friends got him a hooker for his 18th birthday. Not very long story short, she bit him, he got gangrene 'there' and they had to amputate an area which my nurse indicated with self-directed gestures, but I'll say was roughly, everything between his hips. Yeah perhaps I'll answer the questions more simple yes/no from now on, save myself the increased bile levels.
Oh, and D'Oraz, they changed the out of country prohibition time from 1980 up to 1996, interesting, no?
The CRV is fun, even some nice oh-shit handles for the passengers, just something to point out considering that the old van didn't have them and there was much discussion of this in the past. I've got to admit though, it's a bit odd having the lock/unlock directions for the rear hatch be the reverse of the rest of the doors, but I'm not one to question engineers anymore, it doesn't get you anywhere. The only serious annoyance with my precious (mostly in the costly sense here) vehicle is that the CD player, when a song ends and it moves on to another, doesn't inform you of it. It just dilligantly displays the time, while the CD moves on, and if you're on random, with a CD like They Might be Giants or Dave Matthews (note, specifically chosen for having a good 10-20 5-75 second songs) you'll end up having no clue where you are at on the CD. Fortunately, I buy CD's where there's only 1 or 2 songs I don't really like, so it's alright.
Well, GSpot give the Torrents results a clear prognosis, perhaps I'll never know.
Wow, I get the greatest stories giving blood, perhaps I should answer the questions normally. Anyways, as goes, when I was asked if I had, since 1980, given money or drugs to someone in exchange for sex, I replied that I was far too broke for such a venture, which I had indicated earlier when I got my donor card out by inverting my lovely duct tape wallet and having nothing fall out. Either way, I got a parable from my nurse about a story she got from a teacher in medical school about a boy whose friends. Actually, hold up, This is a warning, the following isn't exactly what one would consider to be a pleasant mental image, you have been warned . Anyways, about a boy whose friends got him a hooker for his 18th birthday. Not very long story short, she bit him, he got gangrene 'there' and they had to amputate an area which my nurse indicated with self-directed gestures, but I'll say was roughly, everything between his hips. Yeah perhaps I'll answer the questions more simple yes/no from now on, save myself the increased bile levels.
Oh, and D'Oraz, they changed the out of country prohibition time from 1980 up to 1996, interesting, no?
Wednesday, July 07, 2004
Monday, July 05, 2004
So, David on one of his whims borrowed some gamecube games from his girlfriend, so we've had Pikmin, Wind Waker, and Starfox Adventurers in the house for a few days now. So, unlike all those games I've owned for forever and been meaning to talk about, these get a quick blog before I go to bed.
Anyways. I've refused to play Pikmin on "whatever" grounds but I've watched David and Ian in their respective playings. It looks alot like a user directed form of lemmings as near as I can tell. You use your troops to secure ship parts and sources of food which in turn produce more forces. I mean, there's only 3 kinds of pikmin to begin with, so I don't see permutations being too terribly difficult past a certain point, but then again, getting the little seedlings to do your bidding seems like it would eventually drive me insane. Eventual being a term roughly equal to about an hour of time.
Wind Waker is of course pure gold. Cel Shaded fire is one of the best things ever. Of course, much to Jefe's dismay I play things my way, which means loads of offensive grappling hookage. Otherwise things are going rather well. I'm actually getting a good portion of the map as I go, which is something new. To make things worse, Ian's doing it my way as well, so Jefe, you may squirm in dismay.
Starfox Adventures is just play terrible. Total crap. I'll elaborate later.
Anyways. I've refused to play Pikmin on "whatever" grounds but I've watched David and Ian in their respective playings. It looks alot like a user directed form of lemmings as near as I can tell. You use your troops to secure ship parts and sources of food which in turn produce more forces. I mean, there's only 3 kinds of pikmin to begin with, so I don't see permutations being too terribly difficult past a certain point, but then again, getting the little seedlings to do your bidding seems like it would eventually drive me insane. Eventual being a term roughly equal to about an hour of time.
Wind Waker is of course pure gold. Cel Shaded fire is one of the best things ever. Of course, much to Jefe's dismay I play things my way, which means loads of offensive grappling hookage. Otherwise things are going rather well. I'm actually getting a good portion of the map as I go, which is something new. To make things worse, Ian's doing it my way as well, so Jefe, you may squirm in dismay.
Starfox Adventures is just play terrible. Total crap. I'll elaborate later.
Sunday, July 04, 2004
Yay, Blogger's actually letting me post and not being down.
Well, it's been an impressive past couple of days in the world of Webcomics, the concept of a MMO Fallout RPG notwithstanding, just look:
Ctrl Alt Del has discovered Sam and Fuzzy .
Applegeeks has found out about Apple Seed.
Real Life has a snazzy, if slightly buggy new look.
ClanBob, home of Life of Riley is still in turmoil.
KittyHawk, poor dear, is still injured.
Yeah, so I best no hear anyone complaining about boredum, comprende?
Well, it's been an impressive past couple of days in the world of Webcomics, the concept of a MMO Fallout RPG notwithstanding, just look:
Ctrl Alt Del has discovered Sam and Fuzzy .
Applegeeks has found out about Apple Seed.
Real Life has a snazzy, if slightly buggy new look.
ClanBob, home of Life of Riley is still in turmoil.
KittyHawk, poor dear, is still injured.
Yeah, so I best no hear anyone complaining about boredum, comprende?
Friday, July 02, 2004
So yeah, as the last post kinda enunciated, I spent a good six to seven hours at the car dealership, which was why the rant didn't materialize, because after Java I was completely spent. Either way, since I'm not quite so dead, here's the story:
As one might be aware, ever since the van's engine was pronounced doomed, I knew that I'd be needing to buy a car. My mother and I had gone looking, as well as David, and my specs are damned annoying, especially since my top priority was ABS, followed by air bags, since as a 1989 vehicle, the Van didn't possess either of these.
So, after some Toyota and Honda searching of used cars, we'd come to the realization that. Rav4's are costly, the Matrix doesn't come ABS standard and finding a used ABS'd one at a price that wasn't mortifying hadn't happened. Then there's the CRV, the paragon of antithetical existence. Because you see, Honda, in their infinate wisdom, has 2 variants on the CRV, the LX and the EX (the luxury). The differences being, the EX has a 6 disc CD changer, rather than the LX's 1, Alloy Wheels, Tinted Windows, a sunroom, and ABS. The cost for these 5 trinkets is approximately a mere six thousand different, roughly speaking. So, I want ABS, but nothing seems to have it. And no, the EX wasn't an option even if I did win the lottery. Go back and underline the word Sunroom and I think you'll see why, but in case you're still clueless, when you add a sunroom to a vehicle, you do so by making the entire room of the car lower to make room for the sunroom panel. How much lower you ask? Well, my semi-spacious headroom in the LX becomes a cramped, head touching the roof while slouching, nightmare. Anyways, a few days ago, we got a call from our friendly Honda dealship lackey saying that we could get a new Honda CRV with anti-lock brakes. So we went to check it out, and thus begins the 6-7 hours of mind numbing boredom. We arrive, wait around for our lackey, and go take the vehile that was suggested out for a test drive. The entire time an orange, engine-shaped light, is glowing at me from the dash. So, while it was a nice ride, there is the warning light. I ask about it, he says it's probably that the gas tank wasn't sealed well enough. So we close it tighter, but the light doesn't go away. I later consulted the manual on the issue: Apparently the orange engine picture means that you are running a sub-optimal performance and causing more exhaust, very bad over the long term. It continues to say that, yes indeed, it can be caused by a lose gas cap, however you should wait 3 days after tightening the cap to see the light disappear (Collective WTF for me folks? I mean, what kind of crap is that. It can sense the problem, but not sense the resolution for approximately 3 days? Yay, I just know that wonderful piece of hardware will have to be replaced some day. It was so nice having a van with no onboard electronics to go Fubar on me). Either way, lackey goes to find us another car. Mother asks if we could get one with side-airbags as well, he says sure. We wait a good hour until lackey comes back to tell us they have one, but apparently it's not in the back. So he tells us he's going to look out front. After about another hour (okay, a bit more time out back, a bit less out front) he brings us another CRV, Silver with Black interior (note, CRV's only come in either Black interior or Beige (the horrible horrible Honda beige I talked about previously)) and side airbags. So, we decide that this seems good, but say that we need to go collect our check, and the Title and have some lunch. I mention that I don't recall seeing an ABS light when I test drove the car, and that the Vehicle safety features only mention 4 wheel disc brakes, but lackey assures us he could open the hood and show it to us, so we go our merry way. We withdraw my money (I'm so totally broke, less that $100 in checkings + savings right now), get the title, grab some lunch, and come back. Lackey's got another person he's helping, so we wait some more, and some more. Then lackey shows us around service department, talks about all the info he's supposed to (owners manual, lemon law, etc). Then we wait while the guy who'll take the money and make us sign forms to free up. Then we finally pay, walk out to the car. Turn it on, see no ABS, open the hood see no ABS, and lackey realizes that he was thinking of LX Accords, which do have front ABS, but of course, Honda doesn't keep anything standardized across its vehicles. So, we're at a moment of crisis. Lackey is visibly shaken, offers to undo everything if we want. But at this point mother and I decide that it's not worth having to go through all this again when we find another car. Ask for aftermarket keyless entry system, lackey agrees that seems fair (not totally in my opinion, but hopefully I won't die for lack of ABS *knocks on wood*, or any injury for said reason). Now, for those who think that I'm perhaps exaggerating times because of anger, spite, and whatnot, I'd like to point out that I not only read every pamphlet that they had in the display area of the building (including both the large cardboard and small little tri-folded bills (many duplicates), especially the ones listing every possible accessory), but my mother and I played no less than 12 games of Gin, 3 rounds of King's Corners, and a full, long, game of Crazy Eights. Either way, I now have a brand new, 2004 Silver Honda CRV, black interior, 5DR 2WD SSRS. SSRS being the Honda code for side airbags. I'm told it stands for Supplimental Side Retraint System. $19,500 , but it'll be lasting me a good long time.
Meh, that much waiting sucks, poor deluded lackeys suck, great guy, just got confused. Oh well, that's life, live it and move on.
As one might be aware, ever since the van's engine was pronounced doomed, I knew that I'd be needing to buy a car. My mother and I had gone looking, as well as David, and my specs are damned annoying, especially since my top priority was ABS, followed by air bags, since as a 1989 vehicle, the Van didn't possess either of these.
So, after some Toyota and Honda searching of used cars, we'd come to the realization that. Rav4's are costly, the Matrix doesn't come ABS standard and finding a used ABS'd one at a price that wasn't mortifying hadn't happened. Then there's the CRV, the paragon of antithetical existence. Because you see, Honda, in their infinate wisdom, has 2 variants on the CRV, the LX and the EX (the luxury). The differences being, the EX has a 6 disc CD changer, rather than the LX's 1, Alloy Wheels, Tinted Windows, a sunroom, and ABS. The cost for these 5 trinkets is approximately a mere six thousand different, roughly speaking. So, I want ABS, but nothing seems to have it. And no, the EX wasn't an option even if I did win the lottery. Go back and underline the word Sunroom and I think you'll see why, but in case you're still clueless, when you add a sunroom to a vehicle, you do so by making the entire room of the car lower to make room for the sunroom panel. How much lower you ask? Well, my semi-spacious headroom in the LX becomes a cramped, head touching the roof while slouching, nightmare. Anyways, a few days ago, we got a call from our friendly Honda dealship lackey saying that we could get a new Honda CRV with anti-lock brakes. So we went to check it out, and thus begins the 6-7 hours of mind numbing boredom. We arrive, wait around for our lackey, and go take the vehile that was suggested out for a test drive. The entire time an orange, engine-shaped light, is glowing at me from the dash. So, while it was a nice ride, there is the warning light. I ask about it, he says it's probably that the gas tank wasn't sealed well enough. So we close it tighter, but the light doesn't go away. I later consulted the manual on the issue: Apparently the orange engine picture means that you are running a sub-optimal performance and causing more exhaust, very bad over the long term. It continues to say that, yes indeed, it can be caused by a lose gas cap, however you should wait 3 days after tightening the cap to see the light disappear (Collective WTF for me folks? I mean, what kind of crap is that. It can sense the problem, but not sense the resolution for approximately 3 days? Yay, I just know that wonderful piece of hardware will have to be replaced some day. It was so nice having a van with no onboard electronics to go Fubar on me). Either way, lackey goes to find us another car. Mother asks if we could get one with side-airbags as well, he says sure. We wait a good hour until lackey comes back to tell us they have one, but apparently it's not in the back. So he tells us he's going to look out front. After about another hour (okay, a bit more time out back, a bit less out front) he brings us another CRV, Silver with Black interior (note, CRV's only come in either Black interior or Beige (the horrible horrible Honda beige I talked about previously)) and side airbags. So, we decide that this seems good, but say that we need to go collect our check, and the Title and have some lunch. I mention that I don't recall seeing an ABS light when I test drove the car, and that the Vehicle safety features only mention 4 wheel disc brakes, but lackey assures us he could open the hood and show it to us, so we go our merry way. We withdraw my money (I'm so totally broke, less that $100 in checkings + savings right now), get the title, grab some lunch, and come back. Lackey's got another person he's helping, so we wait some more, and some more. Then lackey shows us around service department, talks about all the info he's supposed to (owners manual, lemon law, etc). Then we wait while the guy who'll take the money and make us sign forms to free up. Then we finally pay, walk out to the car. Turn it on, see no ABS, open the hood see no ABS, and lackey realizes that he was thinking of LX Accords, which do have front ABS, but of course, Honda doesn't keep anything standardized across its vehicles. So, we're at a moment of crisis. Lackey is visibly shaken, offers to undo everything if we want. But at this point mother and I decide that it's not worth having to go through all this again when we find another car. Ask for aftermarket keyless entry system, lackey agrees that seems fair (not totally in my opinion, but hopefully I won't die for lack of ABS *knocks on wood*, or any injury for said reason). Now, for those who think that I'm perhaps exaggerating times because of anger, spite, and whatnot, I'd like to point out that I not only read every pamphlet that they had in the display area of the building (including both the large cardboard and small little tri-folded bills (many duplicates), especially the ones listing every possible accessory), but my mother and I played no less than 12 games of Gin, 3 rounds of King's Corners, and a full, long, game of Crazy Eights. Either way, I now have a brand new, 2004 Silver Honda CRV, black interior, 5DR 2WD SSRS. SSRS being the Honda code for side airbags. I'm told it stands for Supplimental Side Retraint System. $19,500 , but it'll be lasting me a good long time.
Meh, that much waiting sucks, poor deluded lackeys suck, great guy, just got confused. Oh well, that's life, live it and move on.
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