Winter is here!

We got pretty lucky this year, as we had no snow at all in November, something that hasn't happened in about 70 years in Toronto! But one day after my 40th birthday (which was on December 8th) we ended up getting about 6-8cm of snow here in Mississauga. Not a major storm, but enough to make a lot of people (like me!) dream of warm sunny weather again! (is it spring yet??)

I was definitely glad I bought a new pair of back tires for the Vette! I was running Kumho ASX all seasons out back and they were simply horrible in the snow! I almost spun the car out twice last winter because of them. I'm happy to report that my new tires don't have a problem at all in light snow. I already had a pair of them up front and now I have the full matching set. (they are Goodyear Eagle F1 all seasons by the way) I got them from Bramalea Tire in Brampton, these guys are top notch! They've got probably the best prices on Goodyear tires anywhere in the Toronto area.

I realize it's been quite a while since my last post! I still love my job at Edge a lot, it was a very busy fall season but yet it didn't seem stressful at all because everything is so well organized there and the people are fantastic to work with. Tonight I'm going to the company Christmas party and I can't wait! It's at Glen Abbey Golf Course so I'm sure the food is going to be great (crossing my fingers that it's prime rib!) :) I've got one more week there and then I'll be on temporary layoff for a few weeks (and I'm going to miss everyone a lot), but things should get very busy again sometime in late January/early February with all the graduation pictures. I don't mind being laid off for a few weeks, thankfully I can still collect EI and I won't have to drive in any of the snowstorms that happen during that time (hopefully all of the snow falls then and then there are no snow storms once I return to work!)

My first week at my new job

The first week at my new job went very well! It is a great place to work, everyone is so friendly and personable and it felt really good to get back in the saddle again and work with Photoshop! Even after doing it for 17 years, I have never had Photoshop at home, although that's something I need to rectify! (I've already downloaded a 30 day trial of CS2 on my son's PC, and am looking to find a free permanent copy of CS3 if I can) One of the tricky things for me is that this is my first time working on a PC with Photoshop, as all my previous companies used Macs. So I keep looking for the "apple key" :) The commute to and from Burlington is fantastic, the morning drive is almost entirely at or above the limit, and the afternoon drive only has a little bit of traffic for the first 10 minutes or so once I get on the QEW but then it starts moving above the limit just after I get past Trafalgar Rd (did you know that if you spell that backwards it is Dr Raglafart?) :)

Back to reality

I have definitely enjoyed my "retirement" this year but now it's time to get back to reality and re enter the workforce again! As of September 1st I begin a new position working at Edge Imaging, doing photo retouching and color correction in Photoshop. Same as I was doing before, only this time it's going to be working on school photographs instead of working in the printing industry.

5 years since I got my Corvette!

Today marks the 5th anniversary since I got my C5! I still remember that day like it was yesterday! I woke up to perfectly sunny skies on that Saturday morning, although "wake up" is a term I use loosely because I don't think I slept very well that night I was so excited! It wasn't my first Corvette, but it had been almost 13 years since the one I had before (which was an 84 that was a nightmare, but that's another story) and I wanted a C5 so badly, ever since I did the Bowling Green plant tour in spring 1997 (and again in summer 1998) Back then I couldn't afford a C5, so I got the next best thing, a new 98 Firebird Formula with the LS1 and a 6 speed manual. That car was a ton of fun, but I always considered it a stepping stone to the C5.

I remember in early June 2004 when I initially started looking for a C5 I was so excited, and figured I'd find one right away as I had been looking in the Auto Trader for years and in early 2004 I finally started seeing C5s priced at under $40,000 for the first time. But as luck would have it, as soon as I started looking, none of those cars were around anymore! So it took me almost 8 weeks of searching before I found this one. It was exactly what I was looking for except for one thing, IT WAS BLACK! That was the one thing I kept telling everyone, I want an automatic coupe in any color but black. Oops! This one was too good to pass up though, it was posted on Auto Trader by Oakville Infiniti/Nissan, the original owner had just traded it in on a new G35 coupe. This C5 was perfect though, never driven in rain or snow, only 51,276 km on it, and didn't have the ugly wagon wheels but instead had the chrome thin spokes instead. So that was a major bonus! The $33,000 price tag was even more incredible to me, considering how most C5s with that mileage were just barely under $40k at the time. I had figured all along that the only way I was going to find a C5 around $30k was to get one with 200,000 km on it.

Since I bought this car I've used it as my daily driver, in the rain, in the sun and (gasp!) even in the snow! I now have 171,813 km on it and I find the car just as exciting to drive now as I did on August 7th 2004! It's been very reliable too, the only repairs I've needed in all these years have been an ECM in January 2006 (first one died due to corrosion from the battery combined with road salt from a poorly sealed off compartment), and in February 2005 I had to change the head unit for the climate control (the first one went dim and I didn't know about the easy fix back then, as it wasn't posted on the forum yet)

I know that a lot of you have heard me talking a lot over the years about how I want a C6 but that in no way reflects how I feel about this car, as I totally love it! Even when I get a C6 someday (and it's a LONG way away now with my financial situation), I can't imagine ever getting rid of this one. (and my wife absolutely LOVES it, so I'd keep it for her to drive) This car is just so much fun to drive, it really doesn't feel like it's got 171,000 km on it, it still runs as smoothly as it did with 51,000 km on it!

2009 Corvette Production Numbers

The final numbers are now out for the 2009 model year production of the Corvette (I got this info from the Corvette Action Center) and thanks to the recession it was one of the lowest production years in recent history. Production has typically been about 35,000 cars per year lately, but the total production for 2009 was only 16,956 :( Here is the breakdown:

Total coupes: 8737
Total convertibles: 3343
Total Z06s: 3461
Total ZR1s: 1415

It's interesting that they made more Z06s than convertibles!

Here is the breakdown by color from most produced to least:

Black: 3665 (21.6%)
Cyber Gray: 3104 (18.3%)
Victory Red: 2231 (13.2%)
Crystal Red: 1987 (11.7%)
Blade Silver: 1642 (9.7%)
Velocity Yellow: 1370 (8.1%)
Jetstream Blue: 1367 (8.1%)
Arctic White: 863 (5.1%)
Atomic Orange: 726 (4.3%)
Luxo Blue: 1 (it was the ZR1 auctioned off at Jackson Barrett for 1 mil)


Atomic Orange has been dropped from the lineup, which typically happens to a color that ends up being less than 5% of total production (unless that happens with white, as they'll probably never drop white, it's the only color that has been in production for every single year since the beginning of the Corvette in 1953)

Here are more numbers:

Manual Transmissions: 8396
Automatics: 8560
Z51 package: 4515
CSC package: 72
Hertz cars: 375
GT1: 125
Canadian cars : 315
Museum delivery: 392
Chrome wheels: 5649
Comp gray wheels: 1028
NPP: 6238
F55: 3520
Mexico: 8
1LT: 3271
3LT: 5230

Trying to keep a positive attitude!

I truly believe that good things happen when you keep a positive attitude in life, but you also need to be realistic as well. With all the bad things that have happened to me this year it has been difficult to be 100% positive, but I'm surprisingly more relaxed than I ever thought I would be. I've always been the type that had more of a negative attitude, even when things were going relatively well for me. So it is shocking to me that I've been able to keep my sanity with all the hardship I've seen this year. I guess that my brain is telling me that things can only get better for me, and that dwelling on the bad things isn't going to be very productive at all.

I still have to be realistic though, and realize that I may not easily find a job as a Photoshop retoucher again. The printing prepress industry is dying in the Toronto area, many of the high end shops have now closed down and the ones that are left aren't hiring. So I might just need to focus on how I'm going to earn a living for the next 15-20 years until I can retire. Maybe this layoff was the kick in the butt that I needed in order to get out of this silly business and into something that will make me a heck of a lot more money.

Save A Blade update

I'm disappointed to report that the Save A Blade unit doesn't live up to it's claims, even though I reported last time that it does work. According to the TV ad, you can use the same blade 200 times, but after 19 shaves on the same blade I had to throw it out as it was just far too dull to comfortably use it any longer. The unit will definitely still save me money since I only used to get 7 shaves from every blade, but it's not as good as the hype. It'll take me a lot longer to recoup my investment in this thing now, and if this unit ever fails I won't buy another one (unless Walmart ends up selling them for $10 or something like that)