Life of Brian

I have a Sony 10 disc CD changer mounted in the trunk. I placed it off to the left and far enough over that I still had access to the little cubby that is all the way over on that side. It is mounted horizontally with the opening facing into the trunk. I needed to face that way so I could access the disc magazine. It turns out that there is a major disadvantage to this arrangement. The newer Miatas have a relatively flat trunk area and because it is a sports car, turns are usually taken with elan. This combination results in anything that is placed in the trunk sliding around. When everything slides to the right it is stopped by the inside fender well, but when that stuff slides left it gets stopped by the CD changer. It is mounted very sturdily, but the plastic disc magazine door is taking a beating.

It is like most changer doors in that it is a convoluted two-piece sliding thing. A few weeks ago I got tired of popping the small door back onto its tracks, so I got some household cement and glued it in place in the big door. This was great until this past weekend when I went to put my MP3 Christmas CD in. Those doors are in two pieces for a reason and that reason is so that they open wide enough to allow you to get the magazine out. Oops! I had to stretch the big plastic cover out of its tracks to get a big enough opening to change out a disc. Today I must have got a direct hit with a sliding lunch box because the little door came uncemented from the large one and was floating around the trunk. The small door is stuck in the trunk cubby for now.

I can move the changer to vertical so the stuff bounces off the side instead of the face, but then I lose the vertical space above the changer, which in the current full trunk scheme is reserved for the small cooler. This is undesirable option. IIRC mounting it facing the other way left no room to swap magazines. This option requires investigation. I probably shouldn’t just leave the door off because trunk projectiles may damage some important internal mechanism. Another option might be to rig up some sort of hinged or quick releasable partition. Is ditching the changer an going with satellite radio in the future?

Every year the 4 or 5 people in the department gather their funds and jointly purchase a gift for their supervisor. Said supervisor is a car guy, he subscribes to all the magazines and can converse fluently in everything from family sedans to exotics. The past few years his minions have bought him car related items, because there is always something to choose from in their price range. Plus from lunch, break or pre-meeting conversations during the year, a gift idea is sure to present itself.

Since 1998 the supervisor has owned a Miata. Seeing as one of the supervisees also owned a Miata it was easy to gather good gift ideas for Christmas giving. For a little over a year this supervisor has been contemplating what most would consider a move up the sports car ladder and buying a 1998 Porsche Boxster. In spite of his misgivings about the car, it was black, it had a plastic rear window and the cost of repairs, he went ahead and bought the car this last August. The deal was too good to pass up, even though the car is 6 years old, it only has 11,000 miles on it, so for all practical purposes it is new.

Seeing as one of the supervisor’s main concerns was the care and feeding of the plastic window in the convertible top, this year’s group gift idea was born. They would purchase a window protection blanket sold by a dealer of all things Porsche for him to use during extended top down periods and when he puts the hard top on over the winter. The week of Thanksgiving the order was placed and the Friday after Turkey Day the gift was in hand.

The week after Thanksgiving our supervisor is printing out web pages and circling items for his wish list to be distributed to family members. He has printed out the pages from the same place the gift window protector came from, but it is not circled. When questioned why not, his response is he is not too sure it is really needed and if it is, he will just get a cheap piece of felt or something. Uh-oh, should our givers return the protector and rethink this year’s gift? Nah, figuring he is still going to use it if he gets it for free.

The first weekend in December the supervisor puts on the hard top. Monday morning he is explaining to the troops that he watched the back window fold up closely and it folds in such a way that the plastic is not touching itself or anything else when stowed. His concerns about scratching the plastic window are gone. Unfortunately, this causes concerns for our gift givers. Should they return the window protector now and get their money back, although the sum will be reduced by the return postage and restocking fees? Or should they stay the course, because their cause is true and he probably will use the thing because it cost him nothing?