EMusic.com is changing drastically. Gone are the days of 2000 downloads a month for $9.95 (well, $14.95/month for 3 months). I had a subscription and I'm now glad that I cancelled it. The new plan is $9.99/month for 40 downloads or $14.95/month for 65 downloads. Given that Emusic.com mostly carries indie, most of my downloads were hit-or-miss. I'd try something out just because they suggested it and sometimes it was great but more often it was deleted. Now that the downloads are so restricted, usage patterns are going to be changed drastically as well.

The site should be euthanized.

Wow, the Wings season begins tonight! Being out in WA now, I'm curious as to how many games I'm going to be able to catch. Tonight's game is on ESPN2, but I have flag football practice at 6 PM and the game starts at 4:30 PM (PST). I'm curious as to how the goalie situation is going to work out and how Hatcher is going to fit in with our team. I doubt we are going to win the cup, but I'm still going to follow the Wings heavily. Since Seattle and even WA doesn't have a hockey team, I'm completely allowed to root for the Wings!

I'm remembering at least portions of my dreams every night this week. Last night I know that I got stung by a bee on the left side of my torso, but that's all I remember.

I can't find my favorite Windows Media Player 9 visualization! For some reason, I'm almost positive it was just like Battery:sepiaswirl but with color. Gah, something so simple yet it's driving me nuts! I guess Ambience:warp will have to do in its place.

Ok, so in light of the car rental fiasco, I decided to add car rental coverage to my insurance. I got a bit curious as to what my insurance rates would have been had I purchased a different car. I used Progressive's online quote service and got some interesting numbers. Note, the quote I got for my car was $1,439 while in all reality I pay about half of that. For comparison purposes, I'm going to take $700 from each of the numbers I got. That should be more realistic:

2003 Ford Focus ZX3
2003 Ford Focus SVT
2003 Subaru Impreza WRX Sedan
2003 Subaru Impreza WRX Sport Wagon
2004 Mazda RX-8
2003 Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution
2003 Nissan 350z

$739
$807
$854
$939
$1,073
$1,105
$1,109

So let's see. If I had actually purchased the Evo, my monthly payment and insurance cost per month would have totaled about $800. In contrast, I'm spending about $520/month for the Focus. That is $280 savings per month on just basic costs, let alone the additional cost of premium fuel and speeding tickets had I chosen the Evo. Since I started keeping track of how much fuel I use, I've gone through 126.23 gallons of the stuff. That's only a $25 difference if I was using premium instead of regular. Maybe I should have gone with the Evo...

Alright Lindsay, let's see if I can match your dream posts.

The first dream I had was more of a nightmare. Basically, two shady guys were going door to door trying to sell Smartphones to people. They had about 40 of the phones just tossed into a big plastic box. I don't remember actually letting them into the house, but all of a sudden they were both in my parents kitchen trying to sell us AR11s. As a side note, the AR11 is our most hated device. It would never see a retail market because it has so many problems.

Anyway, at first they were lackadaisically trying to get us to each buy a phone. It seemed that they were both very tired, worn out and just wanted money. It also seemed as if all the phones were stolen, obviously. When we refused to buy a phone, they started to argue and yell at us. Eventually, I took things into my own hands and started to beat on the leader of the two guys. I didn't hurt him too much and suddenly he was gone. I shoved his companion out the door and he rested against a parked car.

Now this is where it starts to get weird and will be hard to imagine. So picture that you are looking out the door of a house onto a driveway. From your vantage point, you can see just the backend of a car parked in the driveway. The second bad guy that I tossed out of the house was leaning against the car, facing the door. He wasn't looking directly at me, but basically looking at the ground. He seemed exhausted and looked to be resting a bit before moving on. Suddenly and without warning, you see just a glimpse of the first shady guy come into the picture as he drops an axe down on the skull of the second guy, practically cleaving it in two! For some reason, I busted out of the house and ran past both the man wielding the axe and his now-dead accomplice. I felt that I was being chased a bit and then I felt everything had changed. I looked around, and the man with the axe was now laying on his back on the hood of a different car. His axe seemed to have bashed him directly in the face. I focused past that and saw my mom's friend Evelyn holding a smoking gun! I can only assume that while he was chasing me, she shot him in the back, he fell back onto the car and then his axe fell onto his face. I woke up after that one.

The second dream is fairly hazy, but I know some details. The scene was the last day of class in presumably high school. It was more like a boarding school because not only did we have to clean out our desks and say goodbye to students and teachers but we had to pack up our bedding and clothes as well. I'm sure this has something to do with me reading so much Harry Potter lately. I know there was some crying and there was a dark haired female teacher that we were all sad to say goodbye to. The next thing I know, I'm getting married! I don't remember much of the details, but it seems that in the dream I had a wedding and got married to Jamie, then we divorced, then I was getting married to someone else not a month later. Weird.

Ok, let's play with some numbers. Here are the current WRC standings:

(57 pts) Richard Burns
(55 pts) Sebastien Loeb
(53 pts) Carlos Sainz
(48 pts) Petter Solberg
(43 pts) Markko Martin
(38 pts) Marcus Gronholm

Burns is on a downward slope. If his performance in Italy is any indication of his desire to win the championship, we can all but write him off. Expect Burns to score maybe 8 more points over the last three rallies. Loeb is hot now, but he is also inexperienced. His car is sick, so if he can avoid a major retirement in Britain he is going to pull down at least 15 more points. Sainz is too experienced to drop out of this championship without a fight. He won't partake in any major gambling, but he will be consistant. I'll give him 12 points. Petter knows he needs to score some serious points to vault into the championship, so he will twist his natural talent into desperation. At least two early retirements will keep him below 8 more points in the final rallies. Markko is going to destroy the next two rallies. Expect a first and a second place finish. The final rally in Great Britain is going to decide this championship. Gronholm has retired from the last three rallies. Expect another two retirements with a third place race to finish off the season. The final standings and points:

(70 pts) Sebastien Loeb
(69 pts) Markko Martin
(65 pts) Carlos Sainz
(64 pts) Richard Burns
(56 pts) Petter Solberg
(44 pts) Marcus Gronholm

You heard it here first.

Deciding to change my own oil may have been a bad call and I haven't even done it yet! After calling around to four different oil change shops in the area, I decided to do it myself. The cheapest I found was $25 and that was at a place I wouldn't trust. I ran to Napa auto parts and purchased six quarts of Mobil 1, oil filter, filter wrench, funnel, shop rags and wheel ramps. $70 in initial costs and an estimate of about $31 per additional oil change means I'm going to spend more money to do it myself! Granted, the prices that I was quoted for an oil change was not for synthetic oil. I guess it is more respectable to change your own oil... nah, I screwed up.

Car update: So, you all know about the damage to my car (original condition, information, damaged condition). For some reason when I signed up for auto insurance, I didn't elect to add rental car coverage. My thought was simply that I doubt I will ever need to make a claim and if so it would only be for a couple of days. I figured that if I needed to rent a car, paying for two days wouldn't be so bad. Sigh, such stupidity.

I took my car in two Mondays ago (09/22/2003) and expected to have it back by Wednesday. When I dropped it off, they said it would be done by Friday at the latest. Oh well, what can I do, I need a car so I will just pay for 5 days. Friday rolls around and the car is not ready. That sucks because the shop is closed on the weekends meaning at least three more days of renting the car. Monday comes and the car is not ready. Tuesday comes and the car is not ready. Finally I pick up the car on Wednesday (10/01/2003) and they got the wrong fog lamp in so that wasn't replaced. Total charge for renting a car for ten days: $375! All because I didn't want to pay the $60/year for car rental coverage.

Dan owns a timeshare on a plane; a plane! Man, I really need to learn to save my money.