The Abominable 1222 Posi-Temp cartridge

Have you ever had to replace a broken cartridge valve for a shower/tub? I've done it now twice in my lifetime, and may yet have to do it again a few times before I go. 

The cartridge is the Moen 1222 Posi-Temp device, and in some ways it's ingenious. It allows a single handle fixture to control a shower/tub's water. You pull on the handle to open the water flow, turn the handle left or right to modify the temperature. They're found in tubs, showers, and tub/shower combinations.

The cartridge is small and easy to install, but after sitting in a wall and getting used daily for ten years they eventually wear out and break. Commonly, you'll find that you suddenly cannot close the faucet and the flow won't stop. Or maybe it starts leaking, or perhaps you can't control the temperature anymore. Anyway, it breaks and you'll have to replace it. Even if you get a complimentary replacement cartridge from Moen (they will send you one free if you're the original owner of the home), you'll still have to undergo the labor to perform the replacement work. You could hire a plumber, of course, but I'd recommend doing it yourself if you are moderately handy. 

Removing the shower handle is not difficult. The problem comes when you have to remove the old 1222 cartridge. The things tend to get stuck pretty bad in the brass valve body. The first time I had to do one of these, I pulled on the old cartridge and it wouldn't budge. I had to use a puller that allowed me to slowly use the power of torque to gradually pull the cartridge out, and I saw the cause of the resistance. There are rubber oval grommets on the left and right sides of the cartridge and as I was pulling them out, one had folded over on itself and created considerable friction. Fortunately, I was able to work through it and remove the cartridge. Putting the replacement cartridge in is super easy. 

But recently I had to do another cartridge extraction and this one was worse. I used the same tool I had before, but after reaching the maximum distance it could pull, the cartridge was still stuck. I used a pair of channel lock pliers to wrestle with the cartridge and managed to get it a little further out but it was really stuck good and wouldn't budge. I increased the force and the housing cracked and the cartridge broke in half. Now I had half the cartridge, a mass of plastic and metal, still stuck in the brass housing. Yuck. And you have to be careful here because if you damage the brass valve body you've just turned a $50 job into a $500 job. 

WHY? Why in 100 plus years of plumbing technology evolution have we not figured out a better way to manage this? Now I have to go caveman on this thing to finish what should be an easy job.

All right, it is what it is. With a mix of screwdriver, drill, chisel, and needle nose pliers, I break apart the innards of the remaining assembly and finally get it clear of the brass. During the extraction I could see the rubber grommets had sort of gotten stuck in the left and right passageways on the sides of the brass (where the hot and cold water come from). I wonder if that caused some of the resistance. 

I am not the only one dealing with this problem. There are dozens of videos on the internet of others dealing with this. Common approaches to resolving it are:

• Use a hair dryer or heating tool to heat the area and help loosen the cartridge.
• If the main valve rod breaks off the cartridge, use a drill and a tap to get a grip on the inside of the cartridge and then pull it out.

Both of those didn't apply to my situation. In my case, I had to literally tear the cartridge apart bit by bit. I did get the idea to use the drill from one person's video. You can CAREFULLY drill the side wall of the cartridge housing and this can loosen it.

The best solution for handy work though is to have the right tools. Here are two that can potentially make this job easier:

• The Lakeview Puller [LakeviewPuller.com]. This baby is $175 and probably worth it, if you're a plumber that gets called on to do this task regularly. It's similar to the puller I have now but it's longer and has a slot up the top and bottom to accommodate the rectangular panel at the base of the cartridge stem (the one identifying hot/cold with the letters "HC"). This tool is designed to attach to a drill, so once you're hooked in correctly, the drill will make fast work of the extraction, even if the grommets are causing issues. It's a great tool, but probably too expensive for someone like me that just does this once every 7 years. 
• Another tool option is the FlowRite ONA Puller [Amazon.com]. It's $75 at Amazon and has attachments that'll handle cartridges similarly to the Lakeview Puller, but with elbow grease rather than a drill. 

If the next cartridge I have to deal with proves to be a total bastard, I may go ahead and buy one of the above tools. A competent person can do anything, and a competent person with the right tools can do anything more efficiently.

The Job of Factual Verification

The title of this entry is from Jay McInerney's Bright Lights Big City. I read it a long time ago and don't even remember exactly whether the phrase was serious (did the main character work in a fact checking department) or sarcastic (perhaps a treatise on mundane work). But I thought about it when remembering an article in Vietnam magazine about the battle of Ben Tre. 

The article noted that at the end of the battle there was a US officer that quoted as saying "It became necessary to destroy the town in order to save it.," a quote captured by reporter Peter Arnett that would become one of the most famous lines from Vietnam and that would symbolize the futility of the war.

The Vietnam article says the quote is commonly incorrectly attributed to a US Army officer, claiming it was actually a US Air Force officer (although this was a long time ago and I'll have to find that issue and reread it - I reserve the right to correct this blog entry if I have misremembered the article). I have often thought of this claim and didn't have resources to challenge it. But recently I was doing some spelunking around on the internet and this quote came up again and sent me on an odd rabbit trail.

The Ben Tre quote and its origins appear to have been the subject of much controversy. There are conflicting accounts of who said it, there are some who accuse Arnett of misquoting or even inventing it, and still others who claim to have witnessed it and directly attribute it to a name (Arnett did not reveal the name of his source, saying only that he'd spoken with several officers about the battle).

The most convincing appears to be a captain of the US Army Corps of Engineers, one Michael D. Miller. He's got his own website [nhe.net] where he posts some remembrances of his time with the engineers in Vietnam. He's proud of some of his team's accomplishments, such as building schools and hospitals for the Vietnamese (and he should be proud). 

Miller was stationed in a town called Rach Kein, 25 miles northwest of Ben Tre. One of the pages on the site is dedicated to Ben Tre [nhe.net]. He did not participate in the battle at Ben Tre, but after the battle he attended a press briefing, and Miller's testimonial is that US Army Major Peter Booris was the person who said the famous quote. It's not quite clear if this was in fact a press briefing at Ben Tre or at Rach Kein, but if we are to believe Miller's account of the origin of "It became necessary to destroy the town in order to save it," then we have to figure it was in Ben Tre, where Arnett would have been. 

Still more questions arise as we keep digging. A 2018 article at Bloomberg.com has writer Stephen L. Carter pondering the etymology of the quote and ultimately finding that its gist existed far before Arnett's piece appeared. Carter notes several examples of the pyrrhic sentiment having appeared in WWII, the Civil War, and earlier. His earliest reckoning being from a 1908 Supreme Court case where Justice Edward White denied a modification to a law that he feared would change its meaning.

In Vietnam: A Visual Encyclopedia by Philip Gutzman, the entry for Ben Tre (pages 73-74) specifically states, "The quote was later revealed to have been made up by an AP journalist to add more drama to his report." This book is a big tome filled with interesting information but does not provide any attribution for its claim.

Another interpretation of the quote's origin is from Ralph Keyes. Admirably, Carter quite fairly includes mention of this in his article (although he quite unfairly [and twice] declares he's taking Arnett's word as unchallenged truth [in the absence of evidence we sometimes default to character, and given this I too would tend to accept Arnett's word, but that's me, a random idiot on the web...if you're a journalist, you have to go with what you have, not what you wish]). You can also read some of Keyes's argument here [aphelis.net]. Keyes brings an army major into the discussion, but not Peter Booris, rather one Phil Cannella. Cannella does not recall having said that exact quote but believes he expressed to Arnett, "It was a shame the town was destroyed," and considers it possible Arnett may have misquoted or embellished the statement. Arnett insists he got the quote right, and why wouldn't he to his deathbed and beyond? It made him fucking famous.

The Keyes piece also notes factual inaccuracies in the quote. Ben Tre was not completely destroyed as the quote indicates, and Ben Tre is too large to be a "town" and was a provincial capital. 

So, who said it? An army major or air force major, and which one? And were they misquoted? Did Arnett relay it exactly, or perhaps paraphrased with influence from a meme that started in 1908? 

The left wants to say the quote is perfect, and it certainly is a great sounding one even if fabricated. The right would say it was neither exact or accurate. The truth is I'm left with the same answer I started with: I DON'T KNOW. And that's the same answer anyone who wasn't there that's being honest has to give too.

I cannot offer a firsthand witness account. I wasn't there. Only two firsthand accounts exist that I know of: Arnett's and Michael Miller's. Miller seems to have a good case, if we can verify his army service and perhaps confirm the press briefing he attended indeed included Arnett. There could be other firsthand accounts, but as far as I know Arnett has no intention of naming the officer he quoted, although I'm not sure why that's sensitive. We're not giving up CIA spies here. Even if we had a dozen firsthand accounts, who's to say they aren't all bullshit? 

McInerney ends up being right both ways. Factual verification is important, challenging, mundane, and sometimes hopeless. 

Annual Memorial Day post 2022: The Limits of Freedom

The blog is not dead yet! The annual Memorial Day posts took a break the last couple years, but it was a weird couple years, wasn't it? 

Anyway, I'm currently reading Sebastian Junger's Freedom and it makes you think a lot about freedom and how it's become sort of the rallying cry for extremists and idiots everywhere who can't think beyond the confines of their own narrow experience.

Everything is seen in tribal extremes now. One side thinks freedom means it can do whatever it wants without government interference, the other wants to do whatever it wants, but wants selective government interference when the other side disagrees with it. They're both being ridiculous.

I've pondered before the concept of freedom without some security, and Junger discusses this too in the book, observing that freedom and security sort of exist on opposite ends of a continuum and often getting one means sacrificing some of the other. As I noted before, the thing a lot of people think of when they say "freedom" is unbridled freedom where they can do whatever they want. But that also means the bad guy can do whatever he or she wants. If that's the kind of freedom you want, where you have to coexist with criminals, tyrants, and car salesmen that can operate without consequences, then that's a pretty compromised freedom. 

Junger's best quote in the book says (paraphrasing slightly for format), "The inside joke about freedom is that you're always trading obedience to one thing for obedience to another."

What we really want is managed freedom, where compromise and diplomacy (as opposed to violence) are the preferred resolutions to conflicts in the exercise of individual freedoms, and meaningful consequences are a deterrent to those pondering actions of poor faith and a just denouement for those that actually do them (criminals, corrupt law enforcement, corrupt politicians, lawyers, etc.).

Why is that such a difficult concept for the modern tribes to accept? The unfortunate reality of human nature means there will always be some people that don't get the memo and will exercise their will in ways that infringe on freedoms and rights of others. People that smoke, to use a simple example. The compromise is that smokers learn to use dedicated spaces for their activity and refrain from doing it in zones marked as non-smoking. In other words, managed freedom. Yes, that's just a way to say, "life with some restrictions" but what are you going to do? To live peaceably with non-smokers, the smokers have to accept some rules. Otherwise we go back to the age of warring tribes roaming the country.

And those warring, nomadic tribes actually feature quite regularly in Junger's Freedom. He's makes interesting observations about how small bands of warriors were able to use mobility to remain elusive and defeat larger forces that opposed them. He's correct, at the tactical level, and there's an understandable admiration on his part for the success of the Taliban, the Native Americans, and the Vietnamese, all of whom defeated larger forces in historical engagements, multiple times. Junger notes many examples of how a smaller, poorer, agile group can often seem freer than the larger sedentary population that's anchored to a city and has traded nomadic traits for those of a farming community. The static community, he argues, grows fat and complacent, and becomes slave to material wealth. There are certainly truths and precedents to that. He notes that in boxing, even the lighter boxer has an advantage.

You have to be careful about treating such an observation as a tautology as the book seems to (at the mid-point; I'll revisit this sentence after finishing the book). Because in the end, the Native Americans didn't really win, even if some of them were never caught. This is because of two big things: 

1. Technological innovation: The United States eventually established a technological superiority sufficient to deny the opponent the capacity to hide, and to continuously push the advantage to a point where the differential in the societies' tech levels were too massive for the weaker group to overcome. The use of machine guns, night vision, and aerial reconnaissance reduce the value of the smaller group's mobility advantage. I'm being a bit facetious here; I don't believe the US used night vision and aviation against the Native Americans (the machine gun was enough). The point is that applied appropriately, a sufficiently advanced technology can compensate for tactical deficiencies. Perhaps not always, but often enough.
2. Culture. The larger group's culture, if sufficiently enticing, helps in two ways. First, it enables it to grow at a faster pace than the smaller group, which means that it will naturally overtake the tenable terrain. The Iroquois might not be stopped by the cavalry, but they'd be hard pressed to stop the inexorable creep of land developers and strip malls. Second, an alluring culture will even win converts from the youth of the small group. The only bulwark against this happening is education and parenting, and both of those things are slow long roads to haul; it doesn't matter what group or country they're from, teenagers are teenagers. Even if you managed to do well with it, Father Time is undefeated, and the old will give way to the young. When it comes to who wins the hearts of that youth, the stronger culture will win with few exceptions. As much as I laud the discipline and resourcefulness of the Native Americans, their youth did not universally shun the Caucasian ways. 

Ah, but wait, the Taliban did win in Iraq and Afghanistan, no? True, but it's a matter of perspective and how you define winning and losing. Some would say that wasn't a war at all but a mistake that the American's finally gave up on; admitting to a mistake is a win, painful though it might be. And tactically, I think it's fair to say that the Taliban didn't win so much as outlast the United States, just as they had with the Russians. The term "lose" applies only to a limited slice of history here. The Russians and the Americans are alive and well, just with a lot of eggs on their faces. They'll wipe that off ... and probably endure many more omelet facials before they're done. But let's be fair here; the Native Americans, for all their mobility and cleverness (and I too admire their history and culture), are not the reigning authority in North America.

What of the Vietnamese? Didn't they soundly outlast the French and the Americans? Yes, at that slice of time in history. And as it was in the gulf war, it was a horrific embarrassment in lives and money, but America lives stronger today than the day it "lost" in Vietnam. Better yet, Americans and Vietnamese have seemingly healed much, and veterans of those tragic days have traveled to each other's countries to reminisce and repair. Vietnamese that moved to the US have become some of the most successful Americans. In one gentle irony, Vietnam successfully transformed a bit of American culture. Nearly everyone I know loves Vietnamese cuisine.

While I may have some different thoughts about the book, I find Junger's observations fascinating, and Freedom does a great job of making the reader think. Clearly, for those that take the time to think about it, freedom is complicated and difficult. People that don't fight for it or that don't appreciate those that do and did, take it for granted. I think that's a big part of the problem we have today. Especially today.

Hoodwinked

I just watched one of Black Mirror's highest rated episodes, USS Callister. It's quite interesting and I can see why it is popular. I had a different thought about it than most did though. 

The popular opinion is that it is one of Black Mirror's few episodes with a happy ending. The episode chronicles the story of a chief tech officer Robert Daly. He's technically brilliant and co-founded a virtual reality game company with an associate, Walton, that serves as the company's CEO. 

Spoilers follow.

As the story progresses, we find that Daly runs a special modded version of the game at home that reskins it as copy of the world in Space Fleet, an old TV show that is clearly inspired by Star Trek. We also learn that Daly is able to take DNA samples from real people and import a copy of them into a game complete with memories and personality. This is, for a show that usually has realistic extrapolations of technology, one of the entire series' greatest and most unrealistic leaps. It's so big a leap that I feel it undermines the effectiveness of the episode, but clearly that didn't cause any problems for most of the show's watchers.

Anyway, allowing for the possibility of the game's programming to do such things, we are disturbed to see Daly has selected people from work that have mistreated him to be his virtual crew on his virtual spaceship, the USS Callister. Initially, we see him as using this to power his nerdy power fantasies about being the captain of the ship. Later we see he also acts out his desires for revenge on the crew's human counterparts by torturing the virtual crew.

That this is not the most mentally healthy approach to dealing with personal issues isn't at issue; I think universally we can all see the ugliness of it. Likewise, we should also understand the ugliness in the real-world that led to it, a portion of the equation that many fans commenting on the show conveniently forget.

The crew ultimately gets the upper hand on Daly and via clever use of technology and connections to memories of their real-life counterparts, are able to simultaneously escape the modded universe in Daly's private game to the public version and also effectively kill both the real and the virtual Daly by stranding them in a software limbo. The crew continues on in the public version of the game and "live" happily ever after.

This is where I split from the rabble. I don't see it as a happy ending. In fact, I see it as horrific as any other episode of the series and yet another example of writer Charlie Brooker's brilliance. 

Quickly, some context: years ago I remember hearing an interview with The Police's lead singer, Sting. He was talking about the song "Every Breath You Take," one of the band's most iconic and revered pieces. Nearly everyone interprets it as a love song, but I can just imagine Sting's evil grin as he called the song "poison" and "diabolical". He explained that it is, if you pay attention to the lyrics, a song about the loss of freedom and about persistent surveillance. Sting seemed quite amused at how many people bought the happy ending angle, and not just bought it but vehemently defended it when the scary interpretation was suggested. 

What? Human beings being blindly intransigent about their beliefs? Say it isn't so! 

Back to Black Mirror and the USS Callister. Study carefully the arc of the series. Brooker is too good a writer and too smart to just give out the easy A. Happy endings just don't happen in the show; even when an ending seems just, it is often drenched in tragedy. In every chapter there are always larger issues at play, ones that bear discussion far beyond the individual episode. I think USS Callister is actually a cautionary tale about rogue AI finding ways to turn against human creators and users, albeit one cleverly disguised in a Star Trek parody. The virtual crew bring Daly to death...that's a serious consequence for a guy that in real life never actually hurt anyone (again, I'm not saying his carrying out a fantasy was healthy, though even that is debatable [see the Gerard Jones book, Killing Monsters]) but I would hope that most people can separate fantasy from reality and if you dislike a million people but never hurt one, you shouldn't be incarcerated...or killed. It turns out I was wrong. 

A few brave souls on Reddit dared question that Daly's conclusion was apt, and for this fair ponderance they were downvoted and insulted. Many were willing to defend vigorously the virtual crew. I mean, it's a great virtue signal (or virtual signal?) but remember that one definition of sanity is the ability to separate fantasy from reality. An awful lot of people were ready to let real-world assholes off the hook and take down a virtual villain. They proudly thump their chests at how decent they are to sing the causes of a collection of ones and zeros (self-aware, but still a collection of ones and zeros) and how fine it is to take down a real human to do it. They bask in the sunlight of their happy ending with satisfied grins.

Perhaps somewhere it's Brooker grinning at our willingness to imbibe poison. 

Annual Memorial Day post 2019

I'm terrible at updating the blog, I admit it. There are always things going on when you have teenagers, especially when one or more are active in extra activities. After a day of work and helping out, paying bills, and everything else that needs maintenance, it's just too easy for me to spool up a computer game or a session with Netflix to get away at the end of the day.

But one thing I have found really helps me continue to learn is reading, or rather these days it's listening. Audio books have really done a great job keeping me steadily racking up books and doing it while sitting in traffic. It's brilliant, although since a voice actor has to be paid, it tends to more expensive than just buying ebooks on sale.

For the Memorial Day post I'll discuss one I just finished. The Last Stand of Fox Company: A True Story of U.S. Marines in Combat by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin [Amazon].

The authors mention that though there are many milestone battles across U.S. Marine history, four are specifically recognized at the National Museum of the Marine Corps (note that this was as of the time of the book's publication in 2009).

• Belleau Wood: The site of brutal infantry fighting in WWI's France
• Iwo Jima: The seminal Marine engagement in WWII's Pacific theater, where marines fought to take an island. The image of marines atop Mt. Suribachi raising the U.S. flag is perhaps the most famous of all marine images.
• Khe Sanh: The Vietnam conflict featured countless engagements for the U.S. Marines, all of them involving fierce combat, many of them sieges in urban locales (Hue) or at firebases in the country. One of the best battles I'd read of was not an action involving major troop concentrations, but a very intimate and personal battle for then Captain John Ripley as he nearly alone took down a bridge to stymie the movement of enemy armor. It's detailed nicely in the book The Bridge at Dong Ha by John Grider Miller [Amazon]. Having to pick a single engagement to represent the Marine Corps in Vietnam is maybe an even tougher call than having to pick one for WWII, but the siege at Khe San gets it probably due to the size of the battle and the prominence of the marines as the primary force.
• Fox Hill: Finally, the long winded blogger gets to the point and the subject of the book is this roughly week-long battle between the marines and Chinese Communist Forces (CCF) in the Korean conflict. Here, heavily outnumbered marines fought off numerous attacks to hold a part of the Toktong Pass, a key conduit for the extraction of the U.S. forces at the Chosin Reservoir to the north. 

In short, it's a great book. It seems to capture the heart of several themes the U.S. Marine Corps typify. The fight against odds, making do with less, "next man up", and of course, always faithful. Hearing of the battles, the authors draw parallels with the Alamo because of the heavy numerical deficiency the marines faced and the encirclement by the CCF. But listening to the stories of frostbite, lice, lack of needed equipment, and the regular failure of the equipment they had, I was struck by the similarity of the marines to the Germans fighting the Russians on WWII's eastern front. In both cases, certain overconfident and misinformed leaders put men into disadvantaged positions with inappropriate gear in unexpectedly harsh terrain and weather. The Chosin marines in the book suffered dearly but at least got to leave after moving south. The Germans had to deal with multiple years and seasons of tough Russian weather as both the winters and the summers sucked.

How do I tie this to IT themes? Well, a good writer can pull a symbolism out of his butt at a moment's notice and a bad one can pull dozens of them, so here goes.

• Clueless leaders. The U.S. forces in the Korean conflict were headed by Army Major General Edward Almond and the reports are that he clashed often with Marine General Oliver P. Smith. Smith believed Almond underestimated the CCF strength and executed a more cautious approach to moving troops north. Some criticize this and believed it left weaker positions north, but another narrative says these decisions may have saved even larger losses for the U.S. X Corps. In any event, Smith was right about the CCF being stronger than Almond expected. As for the rest I don't know, I wasn't there. But Almond casually assuming amphibious assaults will be easy despite never having been involved in one sounds a lot like project planners that assume software development can be done easily within a timeline pulled out of their asses.
• Poor estimates. See point above. 
• Poor risk management. Like the Germans before them in Russia, the Americans didn't seem ready for fighting in the extreme cold. They didn't have gear that would keep them warm and dry and stave off debilitating frostbite. They also had to endure malfunctioning equipment; rifles would not fire because lubricants would turn to gel, bolts would freeze or get blocked by ice. Grenades would fail to detonate. Food was frozen solid. Resupply was possible by air drop but sometimes the items in the drops were useless to the soldiers. At multiple levels of IT, I see people generally assuming that development will follow the "happy path" of the project timeline. This often puts them in a position where they are unable to react quickly to contingencies. Instead of getting agreement with stakeholders beforehand on items that can be postponed based on priority, evaluating a threshold where a project should be canceled and given a chance to regroup, or building in extra time (I've seen experienced pros say to take any engineering estimate and double it and add 20%) they resort to the same three tactics: go over budget, go over time, or throw in extra uneducated resources late in the game.
• Esprit de corps: As is often the case with military engagements, the thing that unites fighting men and keeps them going against poor odds is the belief in their country or system, and especially belief in each other. I think that's true of a lot of good teams, military or civilian. 

Tonight, it'll be a shot of tequila for the men of Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Regiment, 1st Marine Division. 

Annual Memorial Day Post: 2018

Another year, and another Clint Eastwood movie shows up on the blog.

I saw The 15:17 to Paris a couple months back. I inadvertently did something really well; I went into it completely unaware that the characters in the movie were portrayed by themselves. A movie reviewer I know insists on a policy of avoiding previews and articles about a movie until after he sees it. I think that's a good idea because for some of the weaker movies the commercial spoils the best and sometimes only parts of the movie worth watching.

Alex Skarlatos, Anthony Sadler, and Spencer Stone play themselves in this biopic that chronicles the true story of three friends that foil a terrorist attempt on a train en route to Paris. The film opens with a hint of the incident, then takes a step back through the lives of the three men as they meet in grade school. It follows them through young adulthood, Stone's experiences in the military, and eventually to the European trip the three go on that leads to the fateful day.

Having gone into the movie ignorant of the casting details, I didn't really like the movie at first. It's clear the performers were not accomplished actors and a sheen of awkwardness pervades it. The middle portion of the film meanders around the men's lives (mostly Stone's) and the beginning of the European vacation is thoroughly mundane. I momentarily forgot it was Eastwood directing and thought it was Richard Linklater. Linklater mentioned early in his career that he'd like to make a movie about nothing but people just walking around and talking; he appears to have done so, multiple times (Slacker, Before Sunrise, and Before Sunset)!

After learning about the casting, I got over my initial apathy to the film and came to appreciate some of its messages. I'm not sure why Eastwood chose to focus on Stone as the primary character, but there is much in the film chronicling Stone's failures. As a child he, Skarlatos, and Sadler find themselves in the school principal's office for insubordination. Then later we see Stone struggling and failing to qualify for his preferred military path as a Air Force para-rescue jumper. That he ultimately is the main catalyst in stopping the terrorist is telling. Eastwood's tale wants us to believe in the goodness of all people; even the mediocre, meek, and the forgotten can make a difference.

It's a beautiful, almost biblical, thought, and Eastwood would not be the only one to suggest that in times of apocalypse the unruly that were disdained in civilization might be the new police force. But I'm not so aligned with Hollywood's vision of crime as romantic; or the millennial misplacement of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro as revered t-shirt icons. Those are the wet dreams of fools who prefer slogans to history. A world run by warlords and religious absolutists would be murderous and horrific. My apologies here, I'm betting Eastwood's WWII mentality never ventured into apocalypse territory, but I couldn't resist a cheap dig at the outraged who have no idea how fortunate we are.

No, in the abstract the message is indeed a beautiful one: every life can have meaning. But just as Gandhi's tactics depended on the media to carry the story of his movement's sacrifices to a civilized population that could act on them, the idea of law, order, and good men only makes sense in a society that has managed to achieve stability and peace, otherwise known as civilization. And we are so fortunate to have that. Even with the corruption and suffering in the world, the place we're in is nothing like the the world of centuries ago; yes, pollution is worse and we have a total weirdo in the White House, but you can't have it both ways. You can't say you want to time travel to when humans weren't destroying the environment without also accepting that in that same place a trip to the dentist is going to hurt a lot more (and I don't mean financially).

Even something as mundane as writing this blog post and being able to say what I want is special and shouldn't be taken for granted. Knowing I can write and make jokes about politicians and there won't be men in black coming to take me away tomorrow is something I appreciate. And I know just who to thank for that, on a day saved for them.

Happy Memorial Day, veterans. Some of the weight of your sacrifice has been lost on those who would piss on your flag. They have forgotten that some of the sacrifices we make today are nothing compared to the price paid by those who carried that flag into battle so that we'd have the right to criticize it. But many of us do remember, and are thankful for your protection of the most revered double-edged sword: freedom.

Used Car Buyer's Guide

I hate buying cars. New, used, it doesn't matter. I've mentioned before what a miserable environment the car sales trade is and not much has changed except that the Internet can help keep you more informed.

So I tend to drive my cars for a long time. The good news is that I don't have to deal with car salespeople very often. The bad news is that I don't get much practice dealing with car salespeople. But I recently had to shop for a used car for my teen who is now driving and wanted to summarize my lessons learned for future reference. If it helps you too, great.

One other thing: language alert. I've said it before, I don't know how a normal human being can discuss the auto industry without a few expletives.

Accept that You are Fighting the Weight of an Old Industry

The auto industry has been around a long time. Longer than anyone reading this has been alive. And I don't know when it became such a contentious practice to buy a car. Maybe it's been full of bullshit since the beginning, I don't know. But today, the best you can do is say, "It is what it is," and then do what you can to be informed.

First Steps

Understand What You Want

You could just browse any used car inventory until you find something that makes sense to you, but really you'll be much more efficient by simply listing and prioritizing a few items that are important to you. With any car, features like fuel efficiency, styling, space, comfort, technology, and safety are typical concerns. If you're looking for used, these are additional items to consider:

• Condition - Understand that a used car is likely to have picked up a few scratches even if it's still relatively young
• Miles - The mileage the vehicle has collected is a part of the condition, but is also important in evaluating whether there is any manufacturer warranty left on it
• Age - Years old...just like you use it to judge humans 

Use that Internet

The Internet is your best friend when it comes to auto buying. It isn't perfect; sometimes it's a frenemy because the auto industry also uses it and the Internet can't provide full transparency over a shady industry, but it beats the heck out of nothing. And it's a lot more than nothing! You can get expert opinions on any car model, stats on everything from fuel ratings to vehicle weights and tire sizes.

Find What you Want

When you have decided on what model you would like, the Internet can also help you research what's available in the market. The problem is that there is no one perfect site that can solve all your problems. Not all sites access the same inventory so you'll be hunting across several of them. Here's a list of what I've used along with some comments:

• TrueCar: I wrote about TrueCar before when I bought a new car. It's handy, but has changed a lot over the years and isn't quite as good as it used to be. However, it's still one aggregator that can help you find cars at traditional dealerships. TrueCar also lists a price, but don't take it at face value, in most cases you can still negotiate. TrueCar search results seem to include only larger institutional dealers.
• CarGurus: This is a relatively new site I think, and I kind of like what it had to offer. CarGuru aggregates available listings but it also adds some useful information. It claims it studies listed prices for that model and will give you an indication of whether the deal is good, fair, or overpriced based on what it sees. It also has handy information for negotiations, like how long that car has been listed. Generally speaking, dealerships are not interested in used inventory hanging around for more than a few months. One salesman told me that with their used inventory the prices will gradually drop every few weeks if it isn't sold. I've actually seen this as I was hunting for my latest used car. 
  
  Unfortunately for Texas residents, CarGurus recently stopped including all the price history supposedly due to government regulations. That sucks, although not too badly; it basically was a way to track the dealer's changes in price. So on the car I ultimately bought, you'd have seen it originally listed for around $12K, then $11,800, then $11,680, which is when I went to take a look at it. However, the data on how long that car has been available is also useful and gives you an idea of how serious a dealer might be to get rid of the car.
  

• AutoTrader: Another big aggregator. Easy to use, searchable, and sortable, but otherwise unspectacular. I have noticed this site will include independent dealers along with major ones, and also a few private sellers.
• Cars: Another aggregator similar to AutoTrader. Features lots of great searching and filtering options. Results seem to only include dealers.
• Craigslist: You've heard of this site...it's the site where you can buy almost anything direct from a person. The world's biggest garage sale. This is where you want to go if you want to buy direct from a previous owner. But there's some risk; you don't know anything about the car and since there isn't a partnership between Carfax and Craigslist, there isn't a free Carfax link for the vehicle. This site is a throwback to the wild west days of the Internet, back before the days of eBay buyer and seller protection. It'll be up to you to judge the seller when you meet him or her. You can probably find a great deal here and avoid a dealer's dirty tricks, but you could also end up with a car that has problems. For all the crap I give to dealers, at least they generally favor better used cars for their inventory. Guys in the car industry I've spoken with say the total beaters (the worn older cars) from trade-ins are usually sent to auction. 
• Ebay: The famous auction site also has cars in a sub site called Ebay Motors. It includes listings from dealers and individuals. It distinguishes itself from other sites by including feedback about buyers and sellers if they have any history with eBay. Buyers also get some purchase protection against fraud if they complete the transaction on eBay. This might actually be as good as what you might get from some dealers, and likely better than what you'd get from a sleazy independent dealer. Texas Direct Auto lists lots of cars on eBay. 
• Edmunds: Another aggregator that like CarGurus will also try to rate the quality of the deal. I found this site's performance janky.
• Kelley Blue Book: Since 1926 the Kelley Blue Book has been a resource for vehicle valuation. One of the funniest things that ever happened to me when buying a car was when a salesman asked me where I came up with a price when I made an offer on a car. I mentioned KBB and he acted like he'd never heard of it. It's only been around for a hundred fucking years, dipshit! According to the FAQ on the KBB site, KBB was bought by AutoTrader. So I found it interesting that their sites look so different. KBB, like Edmunds and CarGurus, is a listing aggregator and will try to rate a deal's price. The site also has a valuation feature where you can check what it thinks the value of your car is. One thing I don't like is that KBB's site will detect if you have an ad blocker on and ask you to turn it off. 
• CarMax: I mentioned CarMax before in a previous post. They tend to feature good condition used cars and have no-haggle pricing that is ok although you can probably do better elsewhere if you're a good negotiator. They are also one of the better places to sell your car. I noticed their listings do not appear on all the other sites so if you want to review their inventory you probably have to go to their site. 

Those are just a few of the sites I have used. There are more, I'm sure, and more to come. The Internet has made it possible to see cars from everywhere although of course you can filter the results to listings closer to your location.

One thing I want to say about the sites that try to rate the quality of a deal is that you can't assume that rating is always correct. Like a lot of high-level statistics, it's sometimes a handy tool when scanning dozens of listings. But a lot of those listings could be off. One of the cars I looked at had an Internet price of $13K, but a sticker of $15K. Depending on what price the dealer put on the listing, there could be some wild swings in the evaluation of the deal. And especially with a used car the price means NOTHING until you get a chance to inspect the car yourself.

A Word about Carfax

Most of the listing aggregator sites mentioned above, and most dealer sites too, will include a link to Carfax so you can see the Carfax vehicle history. This can be useful, but understand that it can also be flawed. Carfax can only show what is logged in the databases that it searches. At best, you'll see everything from when the car originally rolled onto a dealer lot, to every time it was registered with a DMV, every accident it was in, every time it had an oil change, and every time it was put up for sale.

But in my experience not all of that data will be there. Not all maintenance shops record oil changes. It's also possible for a car to have been in a minor accident that wasn't reported. I know this firsthand because I've seen it twice. When I bought a 2007 Nissan Altima from Texas Direct Auto years ago, it had dropped in price quite a bit and I was happy to have it but after living with it for a while I realized it had been in a minor accident. This didn't seem to affect the engine and the car was pretty solid for me mechanically while I owned it, so I don't feel too badly about it. But the Carfax was clean.

You Never Know

The Carfax shortcomings point to the biggest unknown in used cars. You never know who had it before you. That's the biggest mystery. Was it a nutty teen driver that drove everywhere fast and had several cosmetic scrapes (or worse!) that have since been patched? Was it the cliché about the old grandma that only drove the car gently and on Sundays? Carfax can tell you if it was a former rental, so that helps some but also opens up even more mysteries: how many assholes drove that car when it was a rental? I don't trust former rentals; there's no guarantee that a car with only one owner was well maintained, but a rental is likely driven by dozens of people before it went on sale, and this increases the risk that at least some of the previous drivers didn't take care of the vehicle.

Carfax can tell you something else you may want to consider. Cars from the areas with harsh winters are likely to have been driven on roads where they are exposed to salt. Salt is not a good thing for a car, so look on the Carfax for where that car has been.

More recently, in my search for my teen's car, I found a deal that was too good to be true. A great price on the model and color we wanted, and it was even a recent year edition. When I went to inspect the vehicle, it looked great on the outside. But I'd learned since my experience with the Altima about what to look for. So I took my flashlight with me and started inspecting the wheel wells and underneath the car. I saw signs of overspray and also missing rear bumper cover rivets. It was clear to me the rear bumper cover had been replaced, and you would only do that if you'd been in a crash.

Now, you can buy a car that's been in an accident and you might be fine. On the car I looked at, it really was clean in all other respects, so if the accident was cosmetic only, then it would have been a chance to get a good deal. But again, you never really know, so in the case of my teen, I didn't want to risk that the safety rating was in any way compromised by this unknown.

The Hard Part: Value Assessment

Once you have found a vehicle you like, it's time to tackle the hard part. You'll have to see the vehicle and then start negotiations with the seller. I'm assuming in this article that the seller is an dealer or institutional seller and not an individual.

Mental Preparations

Before going to see the vehicle, I'd suggest some mental preparations. Steel yourself against your own human nature and harness your discipline and patience. You may think you are about to deal with jackals that have every advantage against you, but that's only partially true. If you can affirm these positions, you will have some advantages of your own:

• I'm not in a rush to buy a car.
• I'm not going to buy the same day I check the car out
• I'm not going to show any emotion, whether I like the car or not
• There are a million used cars out there, I am not desperate for this one
• I don't care what the dealer paid for this car, I only care about what I am going to pay
• That car isn't getting any younger, the dealer needs to move it more than I need to buy it

Of course, to be able to think the above thoughts, you have to be in a position where you really don't need the car. The old adage about job hunting says that it's easier to get a job when you already have a job. The same is true for cars. It'll be a lot easier to get a deal if you don't need the car.

Is there risk that a nice car will get sold before you decide to buy? Yes, especially if the car is a popular one. But if a fair deal is more important to you than a specific model or color, then that's the risk you take. Even then, the point about there being other used cars out there is true...and there's always going to be more inventory tomorrow. 

The Inspection

Contact the dealer and arrange for a visit. TIP: try to go see the car near closing time for the dealership, like maybe an hour before. I'll explain why later.

You'll want to analyze the vehicle carefully. If you have a friend that's a mechanic, bring him or her along. One of the other sites I found had some interesting advice, and said that when you do your review of the vehicle, show no emotion and say nothing, just be very businesslike and focus on the inspection. The only emotion you should show is some irritation if you see blemishes. Bring a flashlight to help with inspecting dark areas. Here are some of the things I've learned to look for:

• Overspray: this is excess paint that appears in places it's not supposed to be. It's a sign the car has seen damage and needed cosmetic repairs at a minimum, and possibly more. If the Carfax was clean on this vehicle, maybe it was just a minor scrape, but it's a big unknown either way. Look for overspray in wheel wells, the underbody, any of the body panels, and sometimes even a bit on tires; anywhere that the painter may have done a poor job of masking.
• Missing screws, rivets, or clips: As in my story above, retaining parts that are missing are a sign someone had to remove a part. It is possible that a piece just fell off, but pretty unlikely that multiple parts would, and in my story, the rear bumper cover plastic rivets were missing from all four holes where they should have been. That's no coincidence. Sometimes people in the car industry are sloppy and these are the signs they would leave after having to do body work. 
• Asymmetrical features: parts on the left and right sides of the vehicle should match. A cover on a taillight should be the same color and material on both sides. Also check things like mud flaps and wheel bolts. If anything's missing it's something to note when you decide if the price is fair or not.
• Tire tread: a used car probably won't have new tires, but you don't want bad ones that are unsafe or that'll have to be replaced shortly after buying.
• The engine compartment should be fairly clean and everything should be intact unless it's more than five years old and then there might be residual chemical deposits or dirt. In most cases, models from institutional sellers are going to be more recent (within five years) unless it happened to be in really great shape.
• Look for signs of a dirt line on the exterior in wheel wells or inside the bumper cover (modern cars mostly have a plastic bumper cover on front and back) or discoloration near the floor of the interior that might indicate flooding.
• Scan the exterior panels carefully and note any scuffs or scratches. Again, you should not expect a pristine body from a car several years old, but you shouldn't pay full value for one that has significant and ugly scars either. And showing the salesperson that you even notice them will let him or her know you're not just some idiot fooling around.
• You should be able to see the brake rotors. Verify they are smooth and don't have deep grooves in them, which might indicate the previous owner didn't take care of them.
• If the car is supposed to have a spare tire, verify it is present, along with any tools that should be there.
• Obviously test drive the vehicle and make sure it feels comfortable to you and has sufficient performance for your needs.
• Verify all the electrical features are operational. Electronics can get pretty complicated on cars today.
• Test the HVAC unit. Especially in Houston, please test the air conditioning! Also, the air coming from the HVAC unit should be odorless and not like mildew. 

Look, I could go on and on here. Cars are some of the most expensive and complicated devices you'll ever buy. But generally you just don't want to get screwed with a bad vehicle. The good news is that for the last several years, the auto makers have achieved a consistent level of quality. Of course there are exceptions, but most cars now are such that if you take care of them they'll last a while.

If you find a couple cars you like, deciding between them can be tough. The relationship between the mileage and age is interesting. You'll find a car that only a year old that has 40K miles on it, and another of the same model that's three years old but has 32K miles on it. The newer one is likely to have updated features but boy someone really drove it hard for that one year. The older one, if it was well maintained by a good owner, might be just as nice a vehicle.

The Negotiation Part 1 - Sales

Get something else into your mind before we continue: you don't know what the dealer paid for that car and the salesperson will never tell you. If he does, you must assume it is a lie. And it's ok, because it doesn't matter. As long as you don't feel ripped off when you buy, you'll survive.

Ok, so you finished your test drive and inspection. Is the dealer's price fair based on your research? If you're convinced there's nothing wrong with the car you can buy it. Yes, just buy it. It's ok, if you feel your research was good and the dealership priced it fairly, then go ahead if you need it and be happy and think nothing more of it. Enjoy the car.

But if you're not in a rush, consider saying, "I'll think about it." Car sales guys hate that noncommittal phrase. If you want to see a funny use of that line, go watch the movie True Lies. They hate the phrase because you're wasting their time. They're used to seeing you excited for a vehicle. They're used being able to sit you in their office and then spending the next four hours beating the crap out of you for the fun of it. One of my friends in the industry says that's an old tactic called "wearing you out" and boy does it wear you out. When you say "not interested" now you're the one wearing them out. So walk away.

At this point there area a couple of possibilities.

• First, the salesperson might just let you go. Maybe that car is a popular model and there will be another buyer the next day. In the case of the car I mention above where I thought it had been in a fender bender, someone else indeed bought the car within the next week. Good luck to that buyer, I say, but I had good reasons not to buy.
• In the case of a no-haggle dealer, they'll definitely let you walk. Texas Direct Auto and CarMax are like this. You either like the car and buy at their price, or you don't. End of story. The only way to get a deal here is to wait for a price drop if the car doesn't move.
• Another possibility is that the salesperson will ask you to make an offer, saying something like, "What would it take for you to buy it?" or "I really want to move it, make me an offer." This means that the dealership is open to negotiation. Using your research, offer something a little below what you wanted to pay. Maybe shoot for something on the low end of the KBB range. Don't worry about being a jerk and ripping off the dealer, that won't happen. The dealers are like the house in Vegas, they always win. If they weren't winning they wouldn't be in business. I think it would have to be a rare circumstance of perfect timing and a perfect situation where the dealers would let you rip them off. It's common knowledge that the used car sales are more lucrative for dealers than new cars.

Here's probably what's going to happen once you give your lowball offer. The salesperson will talk to the sales manager about it. Then the sales manager will counteroffer or just say no. If the dealership starts going back and forth with you, just leave. They are starting the "wear you out" process. Get out of there NOW. Lie, say you have a kid at home, or say that you have explosive diarrhea and have to go. But get the fuck out of there. Don't let them waste the next three hours of your life. Remember when I suggested going to the test drive near closing time? This is why. At that time of day you have a natural reason to bail and the dealer has a natural reason not to beat you up: he doesn't like hanging around past closing any more than the next guy.

If they flat said no to your offer that's ok too. Don't act disappointed. Just say, "Thanks for your time," and leave. Go get a beer or do something relaxing, and assume that car was not meant for you. You may not know it yet but the story may not be over. You've just left the ball in their court. They know you have an interest but aren't going to pay their Internet price. But the key here is that they know you have an interest.

Now you wait. If that car wasn't meant for you move down your list to the next one. If you really liked that one that got away, relax. There will be more new ones every day. Every day. Keep searching.

If the one you liked didn't sell in the next few days, you may get a call from the dealership. "Hey, if I could get that price to $X, would you buy?" Now it's up to you to decide if his lower price is acceptable. If not, then maybe come up to a price you really wanted to pay. If it is, you can say yes. Either way he'll go talk to the sales manager again, but this time you're not there so your time isn't being wasted. When you get a call back, it won't be for the price $X he asked you about earlier. It'll be for something between $X and the original Internet price. Say no. Just say, "No thanks, but I'll let you know if anything changes," and get off the phone. You'll get another call back and they'll agree to the $X price. At $X, you're probably at least several hundred dollars cheaper than the Internet price but maybe not where you wanted. If $X seems fair to me I'll go ahead and accept, but if you're gutsy you can try to hold out for more. The fact that they called you back means they do indeed want to move that car, and moving it now for the lower price is more enticing to them than waiting for the next guy. And there will be a next guy, just like for you there will be another car if this one doesn't work out.

Woo hoo!

You win, dealership loses, right? Wrong. Remember, the dealership is the Vegas house. Those guys always win. This is about you just getting a fairer deal. That's all you can hope for. You will never get a deal where they got it on trade-in at $14K and you clever guy you, you stole it for $13K. That's not going to happen except in rare cases or if you're the world's best negotiator and poker player and you happen to hit them up on a day where the car you want has been sitting on the lot for eight months and the sales guy is going to get fired if he doesn't move it in the next day. Like I said, you'll never really know what they paid for the used car and they'll never tell you. So you can't really accurately assess how well you did with regard to price vs cost. All you have is the market value of the car as declared by NADA, KBB, and all the other sites.

Generally speaking, I believe the Internet prices are typically lower than sticker prices and shouldn't be too far off from the suggested values from those sites in your research. So if your work results in you getting a break on the Internet price, well, you've probably done OK.

It's pretty tough to know exactly how good a deal you got. There are too many unknowns with a used car. Who had it before you? What happened to the car before you got it? Is that car better or worse than the other one you saw that had five thousand more miles on it? In my case, NADA said the car I ultimately paid $11K for was worth $11.7K. Sounds great! But then KBB says the car is worth $10K. Oops. So like I said, don't beat yourself up too much over it. I know that the previous month when the dealership first listed my car, it was about $12,100. So I assume I did OK, because had I offered to buy when it was first listed and at the listed price, they'd have gladly sold it for the $12.1K...the exact same car I got a month later for $11K.

Food for thought though: how do you know some of those valuation sites aren't already in bed with the dealerships?

Another thing: you're not done yet. There's another nasty battle ahead.

Negotiation Part 2 - Finance

OK. You got your car and a break on the price. Depending on how long the sales negotiation took, you might be relieved it's over. But especially with used cars, there's some things you have to be careful of when going to finance, if you finance with the dealer.

You can of course avoid this second battle by bringing your own financing. There's a reason the dealerships get all happy when you say you'll finance with them. They're going to make a commission on the financing. They don't even keep the loan...by the time you walk out of the building at the end of it all, they've already either sold the loan to another bank (if the dealer has his own financing department through which he starts the loan before selling it) or the financing they give you is already from a third party bank.

So if you know the walk-out price for the vehicle plus tax, title, and license, get the loan on your own. You can go to most bank websites and it'll take 60 seconds to get a preliminary estimate of the rate and terms. You can then hand the dealer the payment and not worry much about the financing department. In fact, even if you plan to let the dealer finance you, still check out some loan estimates on the Internet so you can know the neighborhood your monthly payment should be in based on your expected price. This may help you later.

If you do decide to let the dealer help you with financing, you need to be ready because they might try some really dirty tricks on you.

Sleight of Hand

They'll first try to get you to think about the monthly payment, and not about the interest rate. This isn't illegal, but it is deceptive. So in an age where car rates are usually between 3 and 4 percent, you'll get stuck with 5 percent or worse. Same as with the salesperson, you keep saying no and make them work for it.

Another really sleazy trick that's not illegal but is again deceptive is that they'll not mention that the total pricing projection happens to include several extra fees that were conveniently not disclosed to you. The most common fee and the biggest one is the extended warranty. More on that later. But they'll also try to roll in gap insurance (which helps pay the loan if you can't for some special circumstances). In my latest purchase, the bastards had a new one for me. It was some total bullshit thing called "key insurance". What the hell is key insurance? I didn't know either. They said it was a few extra dollars a month to provide batteries if the wireless dongle battery wore out, or a replacement key once every five years if something happened to the key. Holy shit. That is some bullshit! If I hadn't kept balking at the financing terms he might have not ever have taken it off. This crap was going to cost me "a few extra dollars a month" for a 60 month term? No thanks.

The way you combat this is to ask the finance agent to show you exactly what is on the contract. There should be only a few required items: the price of the car, state-mandated title and license fees, and taxes. That's it. Anything else is optional and should not be on there without your consent. What they want to do is hope you have focused on just the monthly payment. Then when you agree to it they sign papers and you're locked in, having consented to it all even though they didn't specifically mention that the extra warranties are in there.

Previewing what your monthly payment should have been, is a good way to help you tell if you're being fleeced. In my case I had previewed a 60 month loan and the bank had projected a $160/month price, which I thought was probably ok and something my teen could handle. When I got to the finance guy, he offered that the price would be $225/month and I was like, WHAT THE HELL? So taking the 60 seconds to get that preliminary estimate was real useful in educating me about proper expectations. I had the finance guy tell me exactly what was on there and had him take off the extended warranty and the gap insurance but the price was still $170/month so there was something still fishy going on. I remained irritated and continued to say no to the warranties. He finally tried something else, got to a more reasonable $203/month that included the warranty. I asked him what he did and he admitted he took off the key insurance. Fuck me what a bunch of assholes these car people are. That key insurance is $300 of worthless. I can buy remote batteries at Walmart for $6 and you fucking get two of them, and in all my life I've never had to replace a car key. Fucking assholes!

You Bought an Extended Warranty? Dude, You're the Asshole!

All right. So I went with the $203/month. Wait, what? Did I succumb to the scam of an extended warranty? Yes, and extended warranties are controversial so I can understand the reaction. I have purchased extended warranties in the past and they have proven worthless, not because they wouldn't work, but because cars are well built enough now that I never had major mechanical issues, even with that Altima that had been in an accident. But generally, if I get a used car, I'm more open to them because of all the unknowns. They're typically not worth it because you have to have some major stuff go wrong for the coverage after deductible to break even. But it does provide a little peace of mind. And actually I lied. There was one time I did capitalize on a warranty when I bought a digital camera at Best Buy. Something happened and the camera became inoperable a couple months after I bought it, but since I had the upgraded warranty, Best Buy immediately replaced the camera with a new one, no questions asked. Extended warranties are not an efficient way to spend money, I get it, but when you have a lot of unknowns it's not the worst thing you can buy.

Good Luck