I jinxed myself!
Yesterday my car broke. It sucked. Totally.
Admittedly, the problem was probably caused by me. Personally, though, I'd like to blame XM Radio. As you may or may not know, XM recently merged with Sirius Radio. Without warning to customers, they combined their programming in December. Like many others, my radio did not enjoy the transition, as it was an older XM Radio. After about a week, it finally adjusted to the new channel listings. My major complaint, though, was the fact that they changed the format of every channel I listened to. After a while if not being a huge fan of the new XM Sirius radio, I decided to cancel.
Since I had an inline FM modulator installed, I decided to see if I could use that for my iPhone/iPod - I can! The problem was that I couldn't find a way to turn the modulator on and off (it's a specialized XM-brand modulator, not your run of the mill one). I was playing with the wiring, and after giving up, my car wouldn't start! I assumed I somehow accidentally tripped some obscure security feature of my car. After trying and trying, my car just wouldn't start. Turn the key, and all I got was a click-click-click sound and flashing lights. No turning over, just clicking. Of course, I called to find out the dealer service center had just closed and would be closed Sunday too. I started trying to figure out how I would work having my car towed on Monday - I figured I'd have to call in to work, abandoning my trainee on her first day.
This morning, I thought I would give my car one more shot before calling my boss and explaining why I wouldn't be in. I turn the key, expecting a click, and instead got a brief crank before it went back to clicking. Tanis and I dragged the jumper cables out, and vroom! My car starts up!
Tanis and I took my car up to the new Firestone in Fort Collins (very nice, by the way). They checked the electrical system and everything was fine, but apparently the battery was corroded and swollen. They replaced it and we were good to go. What I figure is that I drained the battery enough while playing with the radio that it wasn't able to start the car afterwards, but had enough power to tell me in a non-obvious way the battery was low.
Thankfully, everything's back to normal now - so here's hoping the FSM gives me a problem-free week!
Posted from my iPhone.
I am also thinking about canceling XM Sirius. A shame, really. XM had some good stuff on it.
Also, I was wondering about the typos... I hit "v" all the time when trying to hit the space bar!
Not too bad for posting from the iPhone, huh? The worst part was trying to scroll up and down in the textbox, since the iPhone gets rid of all the scrollbars [insert Josh's snarky comment about Apple here :)].
Corrections have been made, and my car is still running.