My new car is pretty good.  I'm still figuring everything out, and apparently they forgot to give me the manual or perhaps it didn't come with one because it was used, but I'm going to ask for one when I go back in.


My biggest complaints so far are that I haven't found a perfect spot to store my loose change without it sliding around and making noise every time I brake or accelerate and that the carpeted floor mats are held in place by small plastic hooks and one of them broke, so my floor mat now rotates somewhat freely around the remaining hook.  Oh, and the CD Player doesn't do WMA/MP3 CDs.


However, since Baltimore doesn't have parking meters and CAS has a parking lot, the change thing doesn't matter much.  And I'll either have the dealer fix the floor mat hook, or just replace the mats with the all-weather heavy duty rubber ones.  And I could upgrade the CD Player to the one used in the Sport version of the Fit, but it's not worth the cost.


The nice things about the Fit are it's aerodynamic tear-drop shape, huge cargo capacity, small size, and good turning radius.  It's engine is a little weird, it doesn't shift at the same times my old corolla did, but I'll get used to it.  And it has enough horsepower to handle the freeway at 75 MPH without a problem. 


Probably the biggest down side will be at the end of the month when I get my monthly car payment for about $500.  And then I'll pay about $800 on it.  At $800 it will be paid off in two years, $500 will take 3.5 years.  And there is about $2000 difference in price between the 2 years and 3.5 years.  It adds about $1200 in interest rate charges over the amount I financed for to pay it off in 2 years, not an insignificant amount, but not horrible either.  $800 should be about 1/4 of my monthly salary every month for the next 2 years, but considering I'll be saving about $300-$400 in gas every month by using the Fit instead of a Liberty, that's not too bad.


If you can't tell, I don't have a lot to do at work right now.  I've finished the first parser, but can't start on the next parser until I know which columns need parsed and get the data files so I can see what's actually in the columns.  I'm also supposed to be doing some work on a C++ part of the system, but that's on hold until someone else finishes their code changes and commits them to Clearcase so that we aren't stepping on each others code.


I've decided to start playing Call of Duty 4 again to kill time.  It's still a fun game, and it's nice to be a brand new player just so I can kill level 55 generals with the starting assault rifle.  Call of Duty 4 has experience points and a levelling system to unlock new weapons and abilities, but they aren't inherently superior weapons and abilities, just different ones.  So a level 1 player is almost as deadly as a level 55, the level 1 just has less options for different situations, but the options he has will still kill you just as fast.  Which is exactly how it should be in every game.  Just because someone is an elite warrior doesn't mean that a knife to their heart is less deadly.   In most games players will shrug off blows like they were just shot with a paintball gun instead of being decapitated.  Call of Duty 4 is probably one of the most realistic first person shooter or RPG games you can play that is still actually fun to play.


One more week until my next paycheck, I hope, and my first full paycheck.  Too bad I get to send $800 off for the car, and $800 off for the insurance.  So there goes half of it right there.  Then I get to spend $200 on gas for this month.  Liz will be gone for most of the month, so that actually helps expenses quite a bit.  I've found that I spend way less money on food when she isn't around because I don't buy as good of a quality of food when I'm just cooking for myself.  On the other hand, she'll need some gas money for trips to Cincinnati and back in the Liberty, maybe a couple times, but hopefully just once if we schedule everything right.  So, after misc expenses and food and such, about $1000.  Hopefully I underestimated my monthly income by a few hundred dollars, but if not, no big deal.  That will leave me about $200 to put into savings and $800 to pay down my credit card debt.  At $800 / month, it should take about 8 months, but since the insurance is just a one time cost, I should be able to put about $1500 into my credit cards every month after this one, and have it paid off in 5 months.  Way longer than I originally anticipated, but I also originally anticipated not having an $800 / month car loan to repay at the same time.