Friday, September 4, 2009

USS Dark Matter?


A little over 8 years back, my father in law and his wife sold us a no frills plain white Nissan Sentra. While I can't say I've ever been thrilled with the car itself, it has just kept running all these years. It also came at a price we couldn't refuse. I've used it to get to work while my wife and kids had access to our mini-van. It has been a wonderful help to our family. And it is not the first time he has helped us out with our cars. We've bought another car from him at well below cost, and he has helped us negotiate prices on the cars we've bought.

Last week the Nissan started having some problems. At first it was semi stalling, but then it started smoking about the same time the engine started working well again. Kinda odd, but it was clear that it needed some help. It turns out that the air conditioner compressor is tied into the belt system of the engine, and the compressor had locked up. The smoke was from the belt being stripped and once that was done the engine was free to work as it always had. Still, it requires that we fix the A/C for the car to continue to work properly.

My father in law had already talked about buying a new car and giving us his old one. He even had one on order. Great timing! We got our new car the weekend before we took the Nissan to the mechanic, so I still have something to drive to work while my wife has the van for kids and car pool. The new car does need some work done on it, and we'll get around to that soon enough. I don't think my father in law wanted to put any money into it, which is one of the reasons we got such a good deal on it.

Our new car is a black Buick Regal GS with lots of fancy stuff on it, including a sun roof. It has a nice stereo system and lots of other buttons to push.

The Nissan was definitely not worth naming, but I am starting to think about a name for our new Buick. Since it is all black, I was playing around with "USS Dark Matter". I also thought about "USS Dark Star", but that doesn't seem right either. I may need to give it a bit more time to jell.

Do you have any name suggestions? Star ship names preferred as my previous cars have been star ships. :)