Radios, Jeeps, and Lileks

Lileks is amazing. I was fortunate enough to live in his territory recently, and I got to enjoy him in the paper as well as on the net. If you don't read him regularly, you should.

Anyway, today he's talking about satellite radio. Now, the Lileks family seems to be in a slightly different financial position than the Bad Dog family - that is, they can buy all sorts of cool shit. Good for them. Wiring my house for anything other than floorlamps is a little beyond us, but the satellite radio discussion got me thinking.

I bought my Jeep when I was overseas. Several vehicle manufacturers have some sort of contract with the Army and Air Forces Exchange Service (tool of Satan) to sell vehicles to deployed servicemembers. The prices are very good. You can select exactly what you want and have it waiting for you when you get back stateside. As an added bonus, you don't finance anything until you get back, but you can send money the whole time you're deployed.

I ordered mine while particating in a program that grants some servicemembers in Iraq a four-day pass to Qatar. Mr. Abby was in Qatar at the time, so that rocked. Also, my location was not the sort of place that had an AAFES vehicle sales representative.

So we sat down with the car guy and ordered the Jeep. Mr. Abby did the research to find out that this was, indeed, a fabulous deal, and talked me into getting the Rubicon model (it's the expensive one, and I was dithering about the few grand separating it from the others. Mr. Abby more or less, said, "just shut up and get the nice one. It'll hold resale value. And you deserve it." He rocks).

One of the options available was satellite radio. I was already appalled by the amount of money we were talking about, and I passed on it. I like local radio, I thought. Actually, I don't - I hate "radio personalities" - but I like the idea of local radio, particularly since I live in hurricane country. I dislike the idea of evacuating by road and instead of local updates on which roads are clogged, getting mass-produced patter from some yahoo in Oklahoma.

Fast-forward. I have (and adore) my Jeep. I keep a CD in the player at all times, since my local stations seem to descend frequently into fart-joke-and-sound-effect hell.

My satellite TV recently started feeding me Sirius satellite radio on a bunch of the channels. And I've started listening to it. Since I hate TV but like background noise, it's FABULOUS. There's an "old country music" channel. An "alternative country music" channel. And something called "Radio Margaritaville" that's very cool.

If I had it to do again, I think I'd get the satellite radio in the Jeep. In fact, if our next move is to the boondocks (and most of the working options really do involve the middle of nowhere), I might still pony up for it.

Good stuff, that magic radio from space. Worth looking into.

Oh, an aside about AAFES car sales. They don't manufacture the vehicle until shortly before you're planning to take delivery. So you can make changes in what you want. As we were getting ready to leave the sales place, I asked the guy a question. Things were getting a little rough where I was.

"Hey, not to be morbid or anything, but if I get blown to hell, can he cancel the order without penalty?"

"Oh yes! We'd never be difficult about something like that!"

"Cool. One more. I ordered a stick. If...umm...well, say I lose an arm or a leg. Can we change it to an automatic?"

God bless the salesman, he didn't even blink.

"Sure. They won't build the vehicle until spring."

Good to know.