It’s Thursday. I was listening to a podcast interview with auto designer Chip Foose the other day. They were discussing Chip’s childhood and how his father was his biggest influence growing up. Chip mentioned that his father was involved in building a groundbreaking 1960s custom car known as The Reactor. Chip even remembered riding in at as a child. In addition to touring the US in custom car shows, it was used in television shows like Bewitched, Star Trek, and Batman. I had never seen or heard of The Reactor before, so I looked it up and found the video featured above. Check it out if yer interested!

-keep

It’s Wednesday. I have a 4-foot Christmas tree that I set up every year for my ever-growing collection of car ornaments. I always post a photo of the tree and last year one of my readers pointed out that it didn’t have a tree topper. In the many years that I’ve been doing this, it had never occurred to me to get a car themed tree topper for it. So I thought, why not?

After searching the internet for a suitable topper, I came up with basically nothing. The only one that came close was the VW Bus topper pictured on the right. It was printed on a 3D printer and that got me thinking. What if instead of the VW Bus it had a Chevy symbol? Or even the “Stingray” script? I know there’s plenty of places online that will do the 3D printing, but I’m guessing the source file has to be created in some type of 3d modeling software. If any of you do that sort of thing and you’re up for it, drop me an email.

-keep

It’s Tuesday. I mentioned last month that I thought I might have an overheating issue with my Microsoft Surface Studio 2 Plus. A few of you wrote in suggesting that I monitor the internal temperature of the computer with a monitoring app like Core Temp. I did that and quickly found that the CPU was reaching temperatures above 200 degrees Fahrenheit, which was obviously way too hot. The heat would eventually cause the computer to suddenly shut off.

I contacted Microsoft support and got an actual person on the phone almost immediately. They set up a support ticket and offered to send a prepaid box since the computer was under warranty. I was disappointed that they wouldn’t send me a replacement, but they claimed the turnaround would only be 5 to 8 days for the repair. I received the box and prepaid shipping a few days later and sent off the computer.

Several days went by and I hadn’t received notice that they received my computer. I contacted them and got a response almost a week later. No details were given, but at least I knew they received it. Another week went by and not a word from Microsoft. Again, I emailed them and got a response a day or two later that basically said they didn’t have any new info. Was it being repaired? They offered nothing. I would write in every few days but I was never given a status or any type of explanation.

A total of four weeks went by before suddenly getting an email one day stating that my computer had been shipped. They didn’t say what was broken or what they repaired, but I now had a UPS tracking number. I checked and it was scheduled to arrive the next day. And arrive the next day it did. I opened the box to find a brand new Surface Studio 2 Plus computer, equipped exactly as the one I sent in. I expected that they would either fix it or send a refurbished machine, but this was a brand new one.

Microsoft could certainly improve its communications and tighten its turnaround time, but I’m pleased with the end result.

-keep