Battery Problem

Today I had my car battery replaced, but I had to fight for it. Here is the story. About 9 months ago I bought a new battery. The manager of Beaurepaires told me that a small battery rated CCA370 is enough. I told him, maybe its not enough. However he convinced me that it has 24 months warranty and should any problem occur he would easily replace it. The next day my battery went dead. Its possible that battery was a dud, or I didn't properly charge it since I went home straight. The 20 minute drive home, may not have been enough to fully charge a battery that was in long storage.

I went back to the shop the next day, asking for a friend to give me a lift. I told the manager that I don't think the battery has enough capacity for my car. I asked him if he can't replace the battery with a larger capacity, I want my money back. He wouldn't give my money back, but gave me another battery. I was a bit pissed, but then I can understand his point that he couldn't just give my money back since it maybe possible that I just got a bad battery. He then convinced me again about his 24 month warranty line. At the back of my mind, I thought was getting a poor deal. However I thought that if this battery has not enough CCA then I should appear in the 24 months use.

About a few weeks ago, there has been a bit of a cold weather. I had to jump start the car 2 times, after the car is not used for 5 days. I only use my car on the weekends. Its been really hard to jump start the car since its on a long driveway and my front is first in. My only recourse was to remove the battery, jumper it on my wife's car. Rev up my wife's car for about 5 mins to give my battery some charge. Then put back my battery on my car. After the 2nd time, I now park my car rear end first, so I can jumper it easily. Then I noticed the current battery, its even has a lower CCA than what I originally bought. He replaced my CCA370 battery with a CCA300 rated battery.

Anyway I went back to Beaurepaires. I told him about the battery, I told him that I couldn't start the car after about 5 days of no use. He then comes back to me telling my that my terminals was just loose. I told him that a loose terminal will not cause that kind of a problem. Also if my terminals are loose enough, why would my car start after charging the battery from my wife's car? He told me that battery was ok, and my car is starting. Of course my battery is ok, its been charged when I drove to the shop. We then argued a bit, what really pissed me is that he told me that I have a 9 month old battery, so I will need to start my car every 2-3 days. What crap!!! Now I know this guy is really crap and has been doing me a run around.

I then raised my voice and stood up, one of his staff came in. The staff asked me about the problem. I showed him the current battery, and told him about the situation. When I leave the car for just 5 days the battery is unable to start the car. The staff told me that he will just replace the battery with the original battery that was given to me. (CCA370 rated battery). I told him that is already acceptable to me. While the staff was removing my old battery, mentioned to him the manager told me that they did not have a larger capacity battery with small terminal. He thought that couldn't be right, he then looks at the stock and found a battery with small terminals that was CCA430 rated. We also looked the size, which is a better fit with the battery compartment. The older battery CCA370 and CCA300 was too small for the battery compartment. 2 more other staff came to us, they said that I should have got the CCA430 in the first place. My car has a big motor, there is no way a CCA300 will last. Its a turbo charged 2.5 liter straight six.

I am really pissed with the manager, I am glad he has competent staff and it was resolved professionally. His staff are also cool, as I can talk with them about cars, etc.

Blogging, a hard habit for me.

This blogging is really a hard habit to do. Hopefully I can do it more constantly.

Javascript revisited

Its been years since I did some Javascript. Been doing it since Netscape 3.x. I had to do some Javascript again for a web app. I found this great Javascript Reference

It really helped me since the date functions setMonth and getMonth is Month minus 1 (MM-1). Their bomb icon really helped me that its a known gotcha. I might have known this before, but it has fallen out of my memory.

I have always used this Netscape Navigator JavaScript Guide before. How things have changed, Navigator is now a minority. And how things are also the same, Firefox/Mozilla is still the best browser to develop on. Firebug, Web dev toolbar, etc.

What a busy week

Its been a busy week for me. Looking at postgresql, there seems to be a bottle neck. For some reason when you keep on hammering it on a multi cpu server. The cpu utilization lowers from 100% to 40%.

Hopefully I get to the bottom of it, its an interesting problem.