it felt as if life had become a game of musical chairs and i was in the wrong place when the music stopped

i played around trying to get bluetooth working between the slvr and the powerbook, but to no avail. comparing the output of packetlogger (bluetooth sniffer that comes with apple's development kit) traces of the slvr and my razr showed that the slvr was locking up after the role discovery.

i figured the only fix would have to come in an upgrade to the bluetooth stack in mac os (not likely) or a newer firmware for the slvr. after looking around and reading various threads about the phone, i found the firmware that fixed everything for me:

R4513_G_08.B7.DCR_RB_LP0034_DRM0101_JPJAVA_L7_05_01_05R_GSTL7T676MH11E_1FF

i reflashed my slvr with this firmware and bluetooth works just like it did on my razr. i can sync address book contacts with isync and push/pull files with the bluetooth file exchange utility. and as far as i can tell, nothing else changed between my stock firmware and this one, it's still unbranded and has all of the same stuff.

%car, r32 the check engine light came on in the r32 a while back, so i pulled the faults with prodiag and found it to be something related to an o2 sensor. i cleared the fault and it didn't come back for a while, but since it was now showing no communication with the sensor at all, i left it on so i could bring it to a dealer to get fixed under warranty.

last weekend regis changed the haldex fluid and filter on the r32 for me, and while my car was up on the lift, he looked into what was causing the o2 sensor malfunction. apparently one of the sensor wires had melted onto the downpipe. since he knew a tech at the autobarn in mount prospect, he talked to him to make sure they could replace the sensor under warranty without any hassle because of my modifications. so for the first time since i bought my car almost a year and a half ago, it was going back to a vw dealership.

i dropped the car off at the autobarn on tuesday morning and was given a black chevy cobalt from enterprise as a loaner (on vw's tab). if there is ever any question why i gladly pay more for owning a german car, driving a chevy cobalt clears that up in a second. manual crank windows, no power locks, no traction control or abs (i know because i locked up the brakes at 70mph on an open road to test and almost veered off the road).

the service writer told me the repair would take a few hours but they'd just give me the loaner for the day and that i should come back the next morning. i drove back to work bopping in the cobalt trying to resist purposely driving it into things.

this morning i drove another 45 minutes back to the dealership to pick up my car. i signed the loaner back in and gave the keys to the cashier, but was then told that my car wasn't ready and they didn't even have the parts in yet. i got the keys back to the loaner and drove another 45 minutes back to work.

a short while later the service guy called and said he was trying to get ahold of me yesterday but he wrote my phone number down wrong. they had to order the o2 sensor and harness and my car would be ready by 16:00 today.

i left work early and eventually got my r32 back and all is well.