i've had a little time to cool off now...

$2200 still hurts, but the good news is it isn't the end of the world for me financially. but i've had M comment to me twice today about the merits of buying a car that isn't made by an american automaker. (we can discuss the merits of american made toyotas another day) but i've expressed my displeasure towards my "the fucking white sinkhole", and jennkitty and i both seem to agree that neither of us plans on buying another ford (except for the Ford GT in my case, but that ain't happening unless i hit the lottery, and a GT40 is more realistic. mmmm....gt40....)

i currently have a black 2007 (c'mon, i don't want to see the next model year until the fall at the earliest...) ford freestyle. nothing overly fancy about it, altho it does have the CVT transmission which should be interesting tomorrow to drive with. i was asked if i had a preference (which i didn't) but i was having to move some servers tomorrow, so i needed something i could put them in, so that's what they gave me.

anyways, i know i've talked with TK about this, and i was mentioning to jennkitty that it'd be nice to have something similar to what is in Minority Report where you get in your car and it drives you where you wanted to go. the only difference is that my idea is more of a taxi-like concept where you'd order a car (have pre-defined preferences for non-smoking, baby seats, etc) and then off you'd go. all auto-drive, and that headache of the Daily Display of Human Idiocy (tm) would go away because the traffic would all be computer controlled. you arrive at work, get out and off it goes to the next person. (really good for cities)

shopping gets a little more complicated because you'll want to have the same car if you goto multiple locations, but then you tell it to park and it parks itself and you have a little remote that you use to call it when you are ready to load your bags into it. program next stop and off you go. the auto-valet.

it would be good for kids too. your kid has a soccer game to get to and you are running late. order up a car, they get in and it takes them to the game, either directly (if so desired) or by way of teammates homes.

for longer trips, you order up a different type of car, but it works on a similar concept. you keep it for the duration of the trip. plus you can have some manual control over the driving so you aren't entirely emasculated (sorry, don't know the feminine synonym).

anyways, off to do more stuff...or attempt to at any rate.