We are excited to announce the birth of Ethan! Follow him at his blog:
http://ethan.tsaiberspace.net/

Yet another “my cell service provider sucks” post.

When we moved here from the East Coast, we wanted to change our number. We were told by the Sprint service person on the phone that it would require signing up for a new two-year contract. We were on a discounted plan (state employee), so we didn’t want to enter a new contract just for a new phone number, and thus we put up with a few annoyances for about a year:

• Voice mails with East Coast timestamps (I think). Sprint told me that getting the timestamps corrected would require getting a new phone number.
• The handyman for our house was unable to call us because we were outside his metro calling plan’s range of service (no out of state calls).

Finally we decided to switch to a pre-paid (“pay as you go”) plan (T-Mobile, $0.10/minute), so it was time to cancel service with Sprint. I called them tonight, and:

• First rep transferred me to the “cancellation department”.
• Second rep at the cancellation department transferred me to a “special” cancellation department because of the discount plan.
• Third rep (finally) said that changing numbers would not have required a new plan (oh well), and that they would cancel the service after the billing cycle was over.

So we are now stuck with paying for two more weeks of service we don’t intend to use.

Ironically, when moving to the East Coast, I had switched from T-Mobile to Sprint, and T-Mobile had canceled my service immediately after the phone call. So welcome back to T-Mobile!

We went to see Kooza by AT&T Park. It is a touring show that focuses on classical circus acts – trapeze, tightrope, juggling, and some other daredevil acts with interesting props.

The SF Weekly implies that the recent touring shows have focused too much on the non-circus spectacle stuff. Of the standing shows in Las Vegas that I’ve seen, Kooza is more similar to Mystere (circus acrobatics) than it is to O (spectacle), which is consistent with their view.

One of the tightrope performers slipped (but caught the rope and pulled himself back up). The SF Weekly mentions this as well, so they either watched the same performance (and published the article a week later), or the performer perhaps slips every night to inject some drama into the act (kind of like going to NASCAR hoping to see a crash).

The juggling act was pretty good, but the crowd was the quietest for this act. It was kind of tough for me to experience a silent audience, but I imagine that San Francisco, with more than its fair share of MIT Juggling Club alumni, might be harder to impress. On the other hand, he did get the most applause at the conclusion of his act, so maybe everyone was just rapt with attention.

I liked the music a lot (Indian-themed) and actually wanted to buy a soundtrack CD on the way out – the saleslady told me that CDs wouldn’t be for sale until next year. WTF?

I voted today. There was one ballot for elections for mayor, district attorney, and sheriff, and another ballot for votes on Propositions A-K, covering miscellaneous local issues.

I learned that there is just a $4915 filing fee to get on the ballot, and that there are no shortage of people willing to spend that kind of money in a race for second place (see CAMPAIGN 2007 SAN FRANCISCO MAYOR’S RACE: Cast of characters livens up the field):

• Mayor Gavin Newsom, incumbent.
• Grasshopper Alec Kaplan, “vegan taxicab driver”.
• George Davis, naked yoga practitioner.
• Chicken John; with a name like that, ’nuff said.
• Michael Powers, owner of Power Exchange (link not provided, NSFW).
• Harold Hoogasian, florist.
• Lonnie Holmes, Juvenile Probation Department manager.
• Wilma Pang, music professor at City College of San Francisco, first Asian American woman to run for mayor.
• Dr. Ahimsa Sumchai, physician.
• Josh Wolf, journalist.
• Quintin Mecke, program director.
• Harold Brown, publisher.

It’s one thing to do what it takes to run for political office no matter what the odds, but it’s another to run irresponsibly. Not to denigrate the candidates, but I really doubt that any of the “alternate” candidates are capable of running a city the size of San Francisco. What would any of the alternate candidates do if they actually won the election?

The thing I really wanted to write about was what I saw at the polling station. I voted on the way home from work, and a few things made me sad:

• No identification verification. They just asked me my name, and crossed my name off of a list.
• Ballot was not truly secret. I put my ballot into a “secrecy folder” (just a big manila folder-like thing). The volunteer then took it out and had to fight the ballot-counting machine to get the ballot into the machine, in the meantime leaving my ballot exposed for everyone to see. I don’t really care, because this isn’t exactly a region of violent political turmoil, but there is a principle of a secret ballot. But this wasn’t a problem, either, because:
• The ballot machine had a counter on the outside displaying the number of ballots processed. The polling station had only a single machine, and that machine read “120″ after accepting my two ballots. That meant only 60 people voted all day in my district (I was the only voter in the building during the time I was voting). I incredulously asked the poll worker if there had really only been 60 people in to vote all day; the volunteer confirmed that the machine’s counter had not been reset all day.

It was already expected that this year would have a record-low voter turnout, but I was expecting more voters (for no good reason). According to Big drop in S.F. voters may lead to record-low election turnout, there are 418,726 registered voters in San Francisco.

There are 11 districts in San Francisco, so figure an average of 38,000 people per district.

• My district is basically a suburb of the city, which I figure is only one-quarter as densely-populated as the rest of the city (probably even less), leaving 9500 voters.
• Let’s further say that 90% of people vote at the end of the workday (I came home early today at 4:30pm), which means 600 people will vote at my polling station today. That leaves my district with a voter turnout rate of 600/9500, or a paltry 6.3%.
• Immigrant elderly are supposed to be active voters, but I will also guess that my district has a lot of ineligible voters, so those effects can cancel each other out.
• Even then, I’ll go ahead and guess that my district is particularly apolitical, and go on record with a prediction of 10-15% voter turnout for the whole city, or 41k-63k votes.

Wikipedia has an interesting article on voter turnout. The trivia highlight is that the record turnout for a national election was in 1876 (81.8%), 1860 with 81.2% (Abraham Lincoln and anti-slavery), and, more contemporarily, 2004 with 60% (GWB vs. John Kerry).

Update 2007-11-08: The results are not available yet, because of a problem with voting machines:

… the final results might not be known until Thanksgiving. … the city is required to individually check every ballot before it can be counted, a time-consuming process.

–S.F. prepares to sue voting machine company

Happy July 4th! We spent the afternoon being tourists around Ghirardelli Square and Fisherman’s Wharf, then stayed for the fireworks show. It was a nice afternoon right next to the water, with Alcatraz in the background.

We got to watch the Sausalito show across the bay while waiting or the SF one to begin. For the SF show, besides the regular starburst patterns, we had smiley faces and “Saturn” planet shapes, which I had seen before, and, as a first for me, cubes!

It turns out the cubes made their debut across the country this year:

• Fireworks Companies Working Around the Clock for July 4

I do have to admit that the Boston fireworks show is better. The San Francisco show lacks a soundtrack. For some reason, every year, the San Francisco Symphony performs their July 4th show way down in Mountain View.

I had an opportunity to play a game I’d been reading a lot about: Settlers of Catan. It is a 4-player board game, combining enjoyable elements of many other popular games. The notable thing about Catan is that gameplay is very balanced, even with a combination of beginners and experienced players (I won our first game :D), such that the outcome of the game can be completely up for grabs until the very end. Catan has elements of:

• Fantasy Football. The first two rounds involve something like a draft, where each player selects locations for their initial cities. Initial location is almost critically important.
• Sid Meier’s Civilization. Players may win via a variety of strategies, such as economic development, or military conflict (economic sabotage, really, but the game portrays it as a military action).
• Scrabble. Real estate is important throughout the whole game. Certain plays will open up or close off possibilities to other players.
• Craps. Knowing the probabilities of rolling 2-12 are important, and rolling a 7 is generally bad for those playing with you :).

Catan is a “first to finish” kind of game, and not a “last man standing” kind of game; players are never eliminated from play. Everyone may participate up until the end (indeed, the balanced gameplay is usually such that it can be anyone’s game at any time). An interesting element of Catan gameplay is that developments such as cities and roads, once placed, are never removed, nor do they ever change hands. This may dissatisfy poker players and other schadenfreude junkies. In particular, Catan is not like:

• Risk. How many times has a game stalled because of Kamchatka continuously changing hands between the player controlling Australia and the player taking over Asia? The immutability of cities and roads in Catan guarantees forward progress of the game, so that games will only take up a rather deterministic amount of time.
• Monopoly. Both Catan and Monopoly are about controlling real estate. However, Monopoly is a “last man standing” kind of game, whereas Catan is a “first to finish” game. Development of property is a goal in itself, rather than simply a means to eliminate other players.

However, the game does have a winner, so it is of course not without competition (and therefore not without schadenfreude), for people who need that kind of fix. The dice and other mechanics of gameplay allow players to benefit at the direct expense of other players.

Like any good board game, there are numerous expansion packs available, mostly to either affect the economy of the game or to expand the game to accommodate up to 5-6 players. And like any really good board game, there is an unofficial free version of the game that allows you to play online against other players: visit games.AsoBrain.com.

(I think) I got a great deal on a brand new 2007 Subaru “Brilliant Silver Metallic” Outback Wagon:

The (*) invoice prices were taken from Edmunds.com; everything else is what is on the sales contract. According to Edmunds, the invoice price on this car is $23,100, which means our price was $755.40 below invoice. For reference, the (meaningless) total MSRP for the first five items (through destination charge) is $25,526.

I don’t feel too badly for the dealer:

• He would not have sold us a car he couldn’t afford to sell (he said he was losing money, but would make it up on volume).
• The Subaru dealer holdback (3% total MSRP) is about $750.00 or so, so he probably basically broke even on the car.
• After this experience, I’m pretty sure I’m still behind in the car game: I paid sticker price for my first car 10 years ago.

Homes and used cars have to be haggled over: pretty much every one is different, so every one will have its own price. A new car, however, is a commodity that can be described unambiguously, sight-unseen. As such, once you’ve seen and test-driven a new car, buying that new car should become a simple matter of getting new car dealers to bid against each other.

Knowledge is Power (Not Really, But It’s Still Interesting)

The following references all promise the same way to get a market-efficient price on a new car. A friend of mine told me about Fighting Chance after buying their kit to buy her car, and I found the other two links after doing some more research:

• The Motley Fool
• The absurdly-named Rizzo Method (wasn’t that the name of some character on Crank Yankers?)
• Fighting Chance

I would have bought the Fighting Chance kit ($34.95), but they didn’t have a kit available for the 2007 Subaru yet. It’s supposed to have information about sales trends for your specific vehicle to help you in your negotiations. They also sell a book that I borrowed from the public library. The book was fun to read, but I don’t think it would have been worth the $22.10 purchase price.

Edmunds.com and AutoSite.com both have information about invoice prices of new vehicles and their accessories. It is interesting to read and know, but ultimately probably isn’t required. If the dealers already know they’re bidding against each other, you should theoretically be able to get a fair market-value price without having to know anything. But it is still interesting information, and you will feel better about your purchase.

Note: this technique only helps you get a market-efficient price; it doesn’t guarantee a “low” price. If you are trying to buy a popular in-demand low-stock new-model-year BMW or something, then you will still end up paying over sticker. This technique will only help you avoid getting unnecessarily over-charged relative to what other people are willing to pay (or at least what the dealer thinks he can sell).

Getting All the Fax

We already suspected we wanted a Subaru, and the Subaru.com website actually has links to their dealers’ websites, most of which have forms for submitting quote requests. However, in my online reading, I had consistently read an undertone implying that faxed offers would be taken more seriously than e-mailed offers. Also, all of the above articles advocate using a fax machine for the “fax attack” (although I think they may have been written before the hugeness of the internet).

Saturday

We test-drove a wagon to make sure we liked it. The dealer gave us a pimped-out model (6-cylinder engine, moonroof, leather seats). We didn’t realize this until we got into the next town (the important thing being the beefier engine); we had to turn around and ask for a more basic trim level (4 cylinders, no moonroof, cloth seats). The dealer apologized and got us a suitable vehicle to test-drive.

Monday

I gamely spent an hour or so calling a bunch of dealers (21 dealers in a 180-mile radius), collecting “fleet manager” names and fax numbers. I was dreading doing these cold calls, but it wasn’t as bad as I expected. Most phones were answered by a bubbly-sounding receptionist who has very happy to provide me with a name and fax number, or by a receptionist who tersely gave me the information and hung up immediately. A few were answered by more intimidating-sounding salesmen, but I survived.

I started with the farthest one first, to give myself practice doing these cold calls on dealers I wouldn’t care about as much (I wasn’t relishing the idea of driving three hours to pick up a car). Unfortunately, this backfired a little bit. One of the last dealers told me it would be simpler if I just went to the Subaru.com website and submitted my request there. I didn’t call the dealer where we test-drove the car (it wouldn’t be fair to go behind the guy’s back; more on this later).

Being asked to use the website was great news, in that I could now do this all electronically instead of by fax, but slightly bad news in that I had just wasted an hour on the phone. Darn. I rationalized that as long as each dealer was aware that they were competing, it shouldn’t matter whether the initial request came in by fax or by e-mail or by web. Also, I was already becoming a little bit lazy. So I nixed the fax idea and decided to hit the web.

I submitted a few online quote requests to the farthest-away dealers to see what would happen. Already I ran into a problem because the “thank you for your submission” page was messed up (a bunch of error messages). Well, maybe my request got through, and just the response got screwed up. I decided to wait and see.

Within a few hours, I had a few responses. Good; the website is only slightly busted. A few were bona-fide bids, a few were bids for the wrong car (extra unwanted options, or for the wrong trim level), and a few were shady (“come on down for a test drive and we’ll see what we can do”).

I then realized that the Subaru submission form was ambiguous; their online form doesn’t allow the user to distinguish between a “2.5i Basic Wagon” and a “2.5i Wagon” (includes power driver’s seat, heated seats, and heated side mirrors). Giving the dealers the benefit of the doubt, that probably explained why I got a few bids for “basic” wagons, which I didn’t want.

I discovered through online inventory searches that I wanted “model code 7DD” (my desired option package) and not “model code 7DB” (the “Basic” trim level). That night, I sent back e-mail clarifying exactly what I wanted, and included “model code 7DD” as an “option” in the rest of my online submissions to all the other dealers.

Tuesday

The next morning, I had responses from everyone. Most were good bids. A few were for the wrong trim level or included extra options. And a few were shady invitations to “come on down”. The Motley Fool website says to ignore anything that doesn’t match exactly, but I had until the end of the month before the Subaru $750 rebate ended, so I sent back e-mail demanding (politely but firmly) the specific 7DD car with no extra accessories and no extra options.

I also sent e-mail replies asking for “out-the-door” prices, including taxes and any fees.

Wednesday

Today, I got on the phone with the dealer where we test-drove the car, asked for the salesman who helped us with the test drive, and asked him if he could beat our best online offer. He asked what it was, told us he couldn’t beat it, and wished us the best of luck.

The best online offer was $24,341, but located about 2½ hours away. I really didn’t want to drive that far, so I called the two next-best dealers (both of whom were within 30 miles) and asked if they could beat that offer. The first guy stuck to his guns ($25,036) and said: “That’s impossible. When you drive out there and find out it’s for the wrong car, call me back.” (Coincidentally, this was the guy who told me to just submit my quote requests through the web site.) The second guy lowered his bid from $24,988 to $24,700.

We decided it was worth $359 to save driving time and buy locally (in case we had to go back for some reason). Also, the sales guy had been very responsive over the course of a few e-mails. So we went and picked up the car :). Over e-mail I had asked for the car and its quote without any accessories, but when we picked up the car we discovered that the all-weather floor mats and cargo net were still in the car. I thought I already had a pretty good deal, so I didn’t press the issue of getting them removed and the price adjusted. Besides, the dealer’s “out-the-door” quote had been for a car he said would be without accessories, and the sales contract said “as is” (e.g., no accessories). So I think I came out ahead.

Later, during dinner, the first guy called us to ask how it went. I told him we didn’t go to the 2½-hr-away best offer, but to a different place. He complained that we didn’t call him back to give him a chance to beat the offer of the car we were going to purchase. At first I felt a little bad, and almost remorseful (he probably really could have given us a better deal), then decided that I had already given him a fair chance. I had no reason to sound so apologetic on the phone.

Next Time

• Avoid ambiguities by doing more online inventory research to learn the “model codes” of the various trim levels and accesories.
• Do not reveal to any dealers any information about other dealers, except for the offer they have to beat. It just makes them want to keep you on the phone.
• Initially submit only one “test” quote request, and insist on an “out-the-door” price quote (including all taxes and fees, etc.). This will probably require a little more information (name of your county, for tax calculations). When this completes, request “out-the-door” quotes from everyone else up front, firmly-but-politely insisting that only the options and accessories you request be included. You can remind them that any unwanted accessories are likely to increase their quotes, making them less competitive. There will be a desire to request line-itemized quotes, but it won’t be necessary; the “out-the-door” price is the only price that matters. It will only waste time, and you will get a line-item receipt with the car you buy, anyway.
• (Optional.) Follow the Motley Fool recommendation and insist in the initial quote request that any quotes not exactly meeting the specified car will be ignored. I was getting tired of back-and-forth e-mails. This might save time, but it also might cost you a better deal: the place where we ended up buying our car had initially quoted us for a “basic” wagon. So I guess at least for now, buying a car and getting the best price is still not yet haggle-free.
• When going to pick up the car, bring a checkbook. Silly me, I had assumed I could just lay it all on my credit card and pick up mucho bonus points, but the car dealership said they would only accept only up to $2,500 of payment on a credit card (to avoid merchant fees).

Pictures

No “I just bought a new car” blog entry would be complete without pictures. Here is your reward for reading this far:

Outback