My dad's cool

One of my niece's had her car totaled in a crash--everyone's fine, everyone, that is, except the car. It was an older car, and it didn't take much to total it, I guess. So she needed a new car, and my dad took her around to look for one.

There's a salvage yard that he goes to sometimes, when he needs car parts, and he remembered that he'd seen some cars there, too, at one time, so he took her there to look. She fell in love with a Toyota Paseo. There was only one small problem--it had no engine.

But she loved it, and my dad wanted her to have the car she wanted. So he talked to the salvage yard guy, who said yes, he could put an engine in it, and would put on all new belts and whatnot, and if my dad would give him $100 down, they could come back and drive it when he was finished, and if they didn't like it, they wouldn't have to buy it, and he'd give him his $100 back.

So a couple of weeks later he called, and they went out there, and he'd fixed the car up, put an engine in it, and she still loved it, so they bought it. She didn't get enough from the wrecked car to pay for the new one entirely, but Dad loaned her the rest, and she'll pay him back.

Is that cool or what?

I've given up on the CD recorder for the moment. Yesterday I had a very long, drawn-out, and frustrating email conversation with someone from the Iomega technical support department. Basically, their position is that it isn't the recorder that's the problem, it's the software, and they won't give me authorization to return it for credit (I bought it directly from them, over the phone).

My response has been that yes, I'll give you that the recorder is probably mechanically fine, but I can't confirm that, since I have no software that will run it. The Iomega software that came with it doesn't work, and I went out and bought Toast--which is, as far as I know, the premier Mac CD-burning software--which doesn't work, either. I obviously don't believe that Iomega should send someone out to my house to make a $100 piece of equipment work for me, but on the other hand, I think the problems are well documented enough and pervasive enough that giving me authorization to return it isn't out of line. If I had bought it in town, I don't think I would have a problem saying, "This doesn't work," and getting my money back.

I did go to CompUSA to price them, but they only had some generic-looking, off brand things that I wasn't sure about but which, in retrospect, would probably have been fine.

I thought today about subscribing to one of the online backup services, which I may still do, but one of the reasons I need CDs is that I can send them to my clients with back-up copies of their sites on them in case (as I told them last time I sent them a set) they decide to fire me . . .