10 past 7 or so here, and getting ready for work. Shift is 9-6 today and I have a customer from yesterday coming in, and my customer from wednesday bringing some paperwork.
Thursay was pretty rough day, but yesterday was mad busy in the morning, but quiet from 3pm through 9pm.
Today we have a band and catered food on the main patio / delivery area, so that’s going to be fun. Also, people get free water park tickets with a test drive, so that should bring some extra traffic.
Just read through the installation instructions for a new ECU for my Miata that should improve it, and also handle the supercharger upgrade better than the stock ECU. It’s a flyin’ miata ECU and comes recommended from Miata.NET so that’s good enough for me. The wiring changes don’t look too bad. In the UK I used to own an MG Metro which had something like this, and that was one of best running cars I ever owned.


Click image to read about MG Metro

Toyota Salesman and blog author
Well, went back into work. Didn’t manage to reach the two customers I wanted to, but still managed to get a cool looking Corolla out the door. Didn’t get home til 11:30, and forgot to clock out, which is about par for the course for me. Oops.
Still thinking about the XRS Corolla as a sensible but quick new car. Though I’m gonna drive the Matrix XRS too, and maybe a regular 5 speed Corolla S too, just to see what the pickup is like.
My new Sony Clie has the mp3 player installed and can be hooked up to my car stereo. That is pretty kickass for a regular PDA. The memory stick has 128Megs on it, so that’s quite a lot of music. To download music, you just connect the clie to the computer and copy the files on. My PC thinks the Clie is a USB drive. Plus it takes VGA quality pics too.

Scotland – Where most of my family live
I have a whole mess of family. My father David and brother Jude are directors of a Medical Instruments company.
My brother Micah, despite running a computer repair company is unrepresented on the web.
My sister Zevi works for the BBC in Scotland, and was listed as one of the Scotsman newpapers most eligible women.
My current job is selling Toyotas at a large dealership in Houston.

Another damp morning, and logged on at a very retro 4800 bps. I think the rain from yesterday gets into my phone junction box and does nasty stuff to my line. If I dial up and get dumped, I can pick my phone up and hear a dial tone AND the modem that I was connected to. It’s weird and re-connecting usually fails, but sometimes manages some pathetically low speed.

Slow, rainy day. Got up early and did my washing, then spent the morning calling customers, leads etc. Spent a bunch of time filing guest-sheets then looking for specific cars for customers. Managed to get horribly caught in the rain and totally drenched, but drove to WalMart to dry out and buy a decent umbrella.

Had a couple of new people come in, but the rain pretty much kept people from being out shopping for cars.

The new top on my Miata seems to not leak, but it does dump a load of water when you open the door. Still thinking about a supercharger, but we’ll see. Waiting for a quote from my insurance company on that before I get too far down the road.

Day off tomorrow, but seeing as I haven’t sold a car since saturday, I will be working until I do.

Night folks, clink of beer bottle…

Good 7 hours sleep last. Bed at 10:30, then up just before 6am. Washing on, and waiting to go put it in the drier. Car still looks great. My ASM is off today so hopefully will be able to close at least one deal on my own.

Weather looks real humid. Yesterday was horrendous. Humidity rather than temperature. Like the jungle really.

WOW !!!! All I can say is “Go Meguiars !!!!” My quick wax of red 90 last night has brought the paint to looking better than it has in about 5 years. That is absolute truth. I used to use NuFinish 2000 (Miata.net review), but it was really hard to get anything other than a badly swirled finish, and it was hard to apply.

The Meguiars (Miata.net review) is fabulous, very easy to spray on, I used the trigger bottle applicator, very easy to move about with a soft cloth, then very easy to buff to a fantastic deep smooth shine.

Click image to see a bigger version.
If your paint is looking a bit oxidized, you need this stuff.

That was a pretty quick day off. Hung out down at the airport (AXH) chatting with Chuck and watching the planes for a while this morning, then headed for Wally World to buy some car cleaning supplies. Wax, wheel cleaner etc.

Had a BBQ sandwich at ex-President Bush’ favorite BBQ place, Ottos, then washed the car at the Meadows car wash, and cleaned the wheels a bit though they still look a bit neglected.

Did some web surfing and filing this afternoon, then showered and met my friend Rebecca and drove to Thai Spice Express on Bellaire for some Thai food, including whole baked tilapia.

Waxed the car after getting home, so it should look pretty good tomorrow. The main drawback of waxing a car at night is that you can’t really see what you are doing. It sounds mad, but night is the only time right now that the temperature is getting down to about 80 oF or so. Waxing in direct sunlight at about 90 oF is probably not a real good idea.

Red 1990 has her new top, radio, and bezel. Lots of new bit to do with the top also, like rain seals etc.

Sadly, I am prohibited from putting the top down until it shrinks onto the frame properly. This will be 2 weeks or so. Aaaarrrggghhh !!!

Brian at MazMax didn’t believe it until I pointed it out, but the shifter in my car sits about an inch higher than in any other miata, so we are blaming Jay Marks Mazda (who did my prev clutch job at 98k) for putting something in upside down. However, the car has driven fine for the last 50k miles, so it’s probably not a catastrophic deal. Another Miata mystery. We’ll find out in maybe 10-20k miles at the next clutch change. This next one will be a racing clutch which will allow me to drop the cash for a turbo or supercharger if I can raise it, the stock clutch being the main weak point for tuning Miatas.