Jennifer and I bought a new car this past week- it was our first new car purchase in fifteen years. We purchased a 2014 Subaru Outback. Created in the mind of Fuji Heavy Industries and built in the United States, this car is simply amazing. I showed a picture of it to my coworker Anna, and she simply said, "Road trip".
Truth be told, this car absolutely is pleading for us to take it on a road trip. We have at least four destinations in mind, and three are relatively easy day trips... but we are taking it easy until we get the car properly broken in and I have a few consecutive days off!
When we visited Grand Subaru for a test drive, our salesperson Sandy Jackson jestingly told us to "keep it under 120 (mph, ~190kph). I had some issues on the test drive. For starters, the analog instruments on the Subaru seemed to be reversed from the truck I was trading in (that is, the positions on the dashboard of the speedometer and tachometer were reversed from what I was accustomed to). Jennifer kept on asking me to slow down, and every time she did, it took a moment for me to figure out how fast we were actually traveling. Also, the Outback we test drove had all of five miles on the odometer, and the gearbox required more effort shifting than did that of our fifteen year old Escort.
We test drove the base model Outback, and it was fun to drive. We brought it back- all too soon- and were pretty impressed with the vehicle. We talked some more with Sandy about the price. I was looking through the brochure, and I noticed that the Premium model (one level up from the base model) had an all weather package; I asked Sandy what was in that, so she started listing some features, and as soon as she said "heated mirrors" I knew that was the model which we needed.
As it was very close to the end of the model year it took around two weeks, I think, to get our Outback. Sandy had located one with a dark interior and exterior, as well as a manual transmission, but it got sold before she could secure it. Not long after, she found one with the dark interior and manual transmission, and she called and asked in silver was acceptable... sure, we told her. When we went down to pick it up, trade the pickup and get all of the paperwork done, we noticed that the car has a little bit of blue in the silver- we like the color very much.
It took me a few days before I actually had the courage to start taking the Outback to work. I've mentioned before that I work in the largest industrial park in the United States.Some of the folks where I work drive a good distance to get to this job, so there are more than a few "beaters" in the parking lot. I very carefully sized up my parking prospects before the Outback's first trip, and I figured that the best place to park would be close to Anna's late-model sporty import.
So, how do we like it?
Well, since this is our first new vehicle in fifteen years, there's a bit of a learning curve, to say the least. Subaru has thoughtfully produced a quite comprehensive owner's manual... its actually larger than a few of my software books- and that is a feat! Since I work at night, one of the very first features I noticed was that every control in the Outback has soft red backlighting. The cabin is quiet enough to have a conversation with a rear seat passenger in a normal tone of voice. The doors close and lock with quiet authority. There are too many features to list here, but there are a few which I really like. Having grown up with vehicles that had manual trannys, Jennifer and I both set the parking brake almost without thinking. The Outback has an electronic parking brake, as well as a separate hill mode- if you drive a stick and have ever accidentally let the car roll a bit before setting the parking brake, you can see how handy the hill assist is. There's a little blue, thermostat-shaped light on the control panel that shuts off when the engine has reached operating temperature. Lastly, there's a center console which has a lid that flips up for storage. What's ingenious is that the lid covers two spaces: the large, "normal" storage space, and there is a smaller space directly under the lid. We're not quite sure what the upper area is for just yet, but its neat knowing its there. The console storage area underneath has a 12V output, a USB socket and a 3.5mm socket, the 3.5mm connection to hook one's MP3 player or cell phone to the stereo (of course this can also be done via Bluetooth).
I suppose you've had enough gravy, so how about some meat? I think I had mentioned recently that I really love driving. Ever since I saw Petter Solberg race for Subaru in a WRX, I knew that Subaru made a tough car. I don't think I'll ever have a WRX STI or even the "plain" WRX, but for the way I drive the Outback is a worthy stand-in. It doesn't have the intercooled turbo, but it does have the 2.5L boxer engine, which is peppy and powerful- a certain fellow in a Corvette that I went nose-to-nose with will attest to that ( I hope his suspension was okay after he hit those rough double railroad tracks at 50+ MPH [~80KPH]). I'm glad for his sake that we weren't racing, though- I'm pretty sure I could hold my own in the corners, and I think I could outbrake him... I'd definitely turn tighter! Yep, I learned this after driving the Outback for a week and logging less than 100 miles (~161KM) on the odometer.
And as much as I'd love to keep on talking about the Outback, there's some big news on the data front as well. I think about two weeks ago one of the tables in my database crashed without warning. It was an odd crash- I could still see all of the data, but could not modify it in any way. Here's where the story get a bit more interesting: among the Secret Underground Lair's computing arsenal, we use three flavors of MS Office: 2007, 2010 and 2013. The database is stored on two different computers, and each computer has an external hard drive where the data resides. Data is sometimes entered directly onto one of thes drives, or sometimes it goes on to a flash drive first, and then it is copied. Well, at some point this table MUSIC_RECORDINGS stopped allowing me to modify it in any way. I was unhappy about this, mainly because I didn't want to rebuild the table. But the thing that was most unsettling was that it worked perfectly in the 2007 version of Office. Still, I don't use 2007 all that often. I finally found an older copy that works, so this is the new working version.
Wow. Lots of words. As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
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