The saga continues

January 26, 2020, 7:14 PM PST by Parkzer • 2018 GMC Canyon

This post is over 6 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.

While I was on my most recent California trip, I had my pickup truck dropped off at the dealership for some more warranty repairs. If you’ve been following this story for a while, you know that my GMC Canyon has a storied past of issues with the transmission, even though it has just barely over 12,000 miles on it.

As a reminder, just under a year ago, I did an owner’s review where I listed off all the problems I had encountered during my half year of ownership, one of which was a lurching and jerking transmission. The worst part about this was that all the dealerships I brought it to said that the transmission was working as intended, and everything was in fantastic shape. AutoNation Buick GMC Henderson sent it back to me twice saying that my transmission had no problems, and when I asked a Cadillac dealership that was fixing my flat tire, they said they did an inspection and found nothing wrong either.

Not long after my issues with AutoNation Buick GMC Henderson, I discovered that there’s actually a class-action lawsuit against General Motors for their 8-speed automatic transmission that’s currently in my GMC Canyon. After figuring this out, it all “made sense,” and it was clear why my truck was just being sent right back to me with the claim that everything is fine—General Motors was allegedly telling the dealerships to do exactly that. I enrolled as a contributor for the class action lawsuit and worked with a lawyer initially, but haven’t heard back with anything more. I did a bit of digging recently, and apparently the latest in the case is that General Motors filed a motion to dismiss the case.

Eventually, the transmission lurches got so bad that I felt like I still had to keep trying and take it back to a dealership. Even if they wouldn’t fix it, I still needed to have all this logged in the vehicle’s history so if I do pursue legal action, I have plenty of evidence demonstrating that I attempted to get it fixed. Seeing as AutoNation Buick GMC Henderson’s technicians were wildly unhelpful and disconnected my dash cam, which made me suspicious of them, I decided to go with a different GMC dealership, AutoNation Buick GMC West Sahara.

Now, I already wasn’t really a fan of AutoNation Buick GMC West Sahara, because I actually initially tried to purchase my vehicle from them, but my salesperson stopped responding to me, so I went and bought the vehicle from AutoNation Buick GMC Henderson instead. Regardless, I went online and set up an appointment with West Sahara, then followed up with a phone call to let them know that I would need a loaner vehicle while my truck was dropped off. Aaron said that he would call me back and let me know when a loaner would be available, but he didn’t call me back for a month.

Literally a month later, I called them back and spoke with Aaron, asking him what was going on. Apparently, they had zero loaners come through for the past entire month. Now obviously, that could mean one of two things: either Aaron was lying and he just forgot to call me back, or they are actually literally so bad at fixing vehicles that they have been keeping people’s cars and trucks in the shop for over a month at a time, which in the latter case, I wouldn’t want them to be the ones fixing my truck anyway.

At this point, I just wanted answers, so I went to a highly-rated private mechanic in southwest Las Vegas. I asked them to do an oil change, and while they had my truck, I also requested a multi-point comprehensive inspection. Within an hour or so, they had everything done and said that there was severe damage to the transmission, and that the problem had not been addressed for so long that the transmission had irreparable damage that would cost about US$8,000.00 to fix.

Now at this point, I was a little conflicted as to how to feel. I was relieved that at least someone acknowledged I wasn’t going absolutely insane and that there was indeed a problem… but the repair cost that they quoted me was unusually high—higher than what I would estimate it would cost to replace my current transmission with a brand new one. So did that imply that the transmission had damaged other parts of my truck too?

Regardless, the repair cost didn’t matter, because the private dealership refused to service my transmission. They said they would not make me pay several thousand dollars to fix a transmission that is still under warranty, and the service manager helped me schedule an appointment with another different dealership so they could actually look at my truck. I didn’t want to go through the hassle of coordinating and waiting for a loaner, but the timing was fortunate enough that I could drop it off before my two-week California trip, so that’s what I did.

Fast forward to now, and I picked up my truck at Fairway Buick GMC. My service advisor was surprisingly competent and professional, and he realized that what he was about to tell me wasn’t something that I wanted to hear, but he said that the problem with my transmission wasn’t actually as severe as I may have thought. He is unsure why the private mechanic thought there was $8,000 worth of damage, but he said that the mechanics were able to fix the transmission’s shifting problems.

According to the service report, my guess is that they took the steps covered by this service bulletin:

Problem: One of the more common 8L transmission problems is excessively hard or abrupt gear changes.
Solution: The TCM may need to be recalibrated with the latest control software. It could also be caused by one or more of the clutch fill times not being learned by the TCM. In which case, the Service Fast Learn (SFL) procedure will have to be performed. Should the problems persist, the valve body will need to be replaced.

Well…

It worked.

I’m not sure if they pretended like all they did was a recalibration, but they actually replaced the transmission or something, and they’re not allowed to tell me because of General Motors’ orders. It’s very possible that the private mechanic was just telling me what I wanted to hear to make me a happy customer. I’m not an expert with the inner workings of automobiles, so I may never know.

But my truck’s transmission is buttery smooth now.

It drives like the day I bought it.

I feel like, after this, I think I might have even more questions than answers, but at this point, I’m just thankful that my truck doesn’t jerk backwards like it crashed into something every time I accelerate from low speeds.

Goodbye again, California

January 25, 2020, 2:30 PM PST by Parkzer • Travel

… But not for long, because I’m pretty sure I have to go back in mid-February again.

Anyway, the Redondo Beach team house shut-down process that I mentioned just under two weeks ago was a surprising success—so much so that we finished everything up early, and Ed got to leave early on January 24 to make it back to the Chicagoland suburbs in time to spend Chinese New Year with his family.

Upon first arriving at the team house, the task in front of me looked next to impossible, but along with Ed’s help and the assistance of maids and other Tempo Storm employees and contractors, we were able to overcome the house full of garbage that was the PUBG team house.

I also took advantage of the fact that I was in California with a rental vehicle (I got a RAM 1500 Classic this time) by meeting up with various business partners and employees who I don’t regularly see. One of which was our branding and merchandising manager, with whom I met at the Spectrum Center in Irvine.

My home city of Las Vegas is obviously very artificial-feeling with very little green, and even Redondo Beach was mostly just misty and gloomy the whole time I was there, so it was quite the sight when I arrived at Irvine and everything was glowingly green and full of life. So much so, that I intentionally went all the way to the rooftop of the parking garage at the Spectrum Center just so I could take this photograph with the nice view.

The restaurant we picked was a Cuban restaurant called the Habana. Although I’m sure I’ve had Cuban food before, I had never been to a restaurant dedicated to Cuban food, so it was somewhat of a new experience for me. I actually don’t remember exactly what dish I ordered, but it was pretty good; the only complaint I had was that the rice was strangely salty, and I would’ve preferred the corn not on the cob.

The following day, I met up with one of my good friends, Doug Wreden, who goes by “DougDoug.” We met up in Beverly Hills so I could give him a tour of Tempo Storm’s new content house, then we headed down to the north side of the Santa Monica Mountains to a nearby sushi restaurant.

One of the final meals of this California trip was an order I put in through Uber Eats while I was at our production studio, where I dropped off the final load of computer and electronics equipment. If you know me, you know that I like trying new and interesting foods, and when I browsed through this Italian restaurant’s menu, I noticed a meat I had never tried before: wild boar.

I ordered some wild boar gnocchi. Unfortunately, I could barely even tell what the boar tasted like, because the sauce was way too salty, the seasoning was way too strong, and the gnocchi was a bit strange (it was the first time I ever had gnocchi, and I am not a fan of the texture at all).

I’ve noticed a recurring theme where, when I order some strange and unconventional meat, it’s usually prepared in some extreme way that completely drowns out the true taste of the meat, so I can’t ever actually figure out what it really tastes like. This happened when I tried alligator, where it was breaded so thick and fried so crisply that it just tasted like popcorn chicken, and it also happened when I tried rabbit, where it was drenched in so much strong gravy that I didn’t even realize there was meat underneath.

After handing everything over to the Redondo Beach team house property manager, I concluded another successful trip to California. As expected if you know my affinity towards early flights, I woke up at 4:30 AM to take a 7:00 AM flight back home to Las Vegas. It coincided well with the sunrise, so I tried to capture a photo from the plane, but unfortunately my phone decided to focus on the dirty airplane window instead of the sun.

The best part of traveling is coming back home.

Hello again, California

January 15, 2020, 11:05 PM PST by Parkzer • Travel

It probably comes as no surprise that I’m back in California again… this time to close down Tempo Storm’s Redondo Beach team house. That house is the one for the PUBG team that I set up last year, and now that the National PUBG League is dissolving, we no longer have a need for that house.

Ever since Tempo’s recent staffing changes and undertaking of new projects, I’ve been pretty overwhelmed with work, so I contracted one of my friends to help me out with some of the tougher labor. If you’re a long-time follower of my blog, you may recognize him—it’s Ed Lam, known online as Grainyrice.

We both flew into Los Angeles because my truck is in the shop for, yet again, another transmission repair. Ed’s flight was scheduled to land at about 2:30 PM PST, while mine was scheduled to land at 2:51 PM PST. I told Ed to deplane and wait for me so we could take a shuttle together to Enterprise Rent-a-Car. Naturally, I beat him to Los Angeles, and I was the one who ended up having to wait for him.

Thus ensued the immediate difficult work of trying to clear out the disastrous mess that was what the players left behind in the Redondo Beach team house, as well as driving all over Southern California from Beach Cities to Beverly Hills to Hollywood to transport valuables from the team house to our other properties.

On our way back from Los Angeles to Beach Cities, Ed and I stopped by the Santa Monica Pier. I had visited the Santa Monica Pier once before during the night with Jordan Kelly and Jordan King, but this was my first time seeing it during the day.

The deadline for complete shut-down completion is January 28, 2020, and we’re just now starting.

… It’s going to be a long two weeks.

Happy New Year

January 1, 2020, 12:28 AM PST by Parkzer • General

I’m done watching the fireworks show; now it’s time to listen to all the sirens headed towards the people who blew up their hands

Apparently I suck at traveling

December 31, 2019, 11:19 PM PST by Parkzer • Travel

Not literally. I’ve actually gotten really good at traveling.

The part that I apparently suck at is traveling to new places. I feel like I’m always on the move, driving all over the place and constantly getting on and off planes. I have a folder of screenshots of electronic boarding passes that has nearly fifty files in it just from the past few years, and that obviously doesn’t include all the paper boarding passes I’ve used. I’ve become such an expert at traveling that I know how to streamline and optimize each step of the process, making sure I maximize my comfort and waste as little time as possible.

But then I went to actually map out my travels on a map of the United States of America, and it looks like I’ve barely been anywhere. Apparently, I just travel to the same locations over and over again. The place where I go to the most, Southern California, is actually a place where I’ve literally lived before, so on a map, it doesn’t really look like I’ve “traveled” there much at all.

The map is pretty self-explanatory, especially considering there’s a legend, but here’s a quick overview. The house emojis represent locations where I’ve lived, and the graduation cap emoji represents where I went to university—these two locations take the place of a ton of destination pins simply because I naturally move around those areas a lot due to the fact that I live there.

The destination pins are actual instances of travel where I went to a particular location away from my home. The pins can be associated with a particular event or convention, which has been labeled. The pins can also just be locations where I’ve gone to just to spend time in that area, like when I go to visit friends for no particular reason.

And finally, going through a state or stopping by a state still technically counts as visiting that state, so I have car and plane emojis. Car emojis mean I drove through that area; I count it as visiting because I usually take very regular rest stops and get local food. Plane emojis mean I stopped at that particular location on a layover; I usually take non-stop flights, so the only state I’ve visited purely off a layover so far is Utah. I do not consider flying over a state as visiting it, so that’s not included in the map.

As I sit here waiting for the clock to strike 2020 (and falling asleep while doing so, because I usually sleep pretty early), I’m thinking that visiting more new places could be a new year’s resolution… but then I think back to the time when I was a little kid where I made a new year’s resolution to never have another new year’s resolution again, because new year’s resolutions encourage people to wait until the new year to do something new and consequently be lazy towards the end of each year. I was, and still am, under the philosophy that every day is important, and if you decide that you need to do something good, you should set an immediate goal and do it right away, rather than wait for the new year.

So I’ve decided that it’s my goal for the foreseeable future to try and go out and experience the country some more. I recently went to DreamHack Atlanta for no particularly important reason simply because I wanted to see what Georgia was like, and I think it will be valuable for my growth as a person to keep doing more things like that.

I doubt that I will literally book completely pointless vacations to completely random places just for the sake of visiting more states, but I’m hoping that I will get more opportunities to attend conventions and other events being hosted in states I have not yet visited.

Happy almost new year.

“Do you own any normal belts?”

December 29, 2019, 10:47 PM PST by Parkzer • Leather

Yes, in fact, I do.

That question was obviously a result of my recent blog post about my Indonesian stingray rowstone belt, in which I also referenced my white smoke hornback saltwater crocodile belt, both belts being made out of unusually exotic leathers.

Now I definitely think that stingray and crocodile fall in the realm of “normal” when considering types of belts, but when other people say “normal,” I imagine they’re thinking about less exotic leathers, like cowhide. I have an Italian full grain leather belt hand-crafted in Rutland, England by the British Belt Company, which they designed as part of a partnership with Massdrop.

I actually got this belt for free because Massdrop (today known as just “Drop”) used to be partnered with Tempo Storm, and as part of the partnership, they sent me a care package with a bunch of Massdrop goodies.

Back when they first sent me my samples, I did an unboxing and review of the Jessica GMK Plum custom keycap set and GMK Carbon add-on keycap kit, as well as a photoshoot and review of the NuForce EDC in-ear monitors. I was planning on doing a review of this belt as well, but Massdrop ended up not renewing their partnership with Tempo Storm, so I never actually got around to doing it.

I used to wear this belt a lot when jeans were my pants of choice a few years ago—I would throw on this natural brown leather belt and wear brown leather boots to match.

Nowadays, I’ve gotten quite a liking for slim-fit, ultra stretchy, Asian-made biker pants. They look slightly stiff and bulky on the outside, which makes them seem uncomfortable considering how tight they fit, but they’re actually the most comfortable and flexible pants I’ve ever worn. A vegetable-tanned, natural brown leather belt doesn’t really match too well with those kinds of pants, which is why I opted for black and white exotic skins.

Regardless, the Italian leather belt is actually really nice. One of my favorite features about leather products is when the clean cuts are shown on the sides and aren’t covered up in any kind of glazing or edge paint; this belt by the British Belt Company shows those raw cuts. It also has an everlasting aroma of leather (I got this belt over two years ago and it still has the rich, pleasant leather smell), and it’s one of those leathers that develops a gorgeous patina over time.

I believe you can snag one of these for less than $50, which makes it one of the most affordable leather products in my wardrobe, and if you’re a new leather goods enthusiast (or one on a tight budget), this is definitely a great starter item.

Although I don’t actively wear mine anymore, I’ll be keeping it safely stored in my closet, because my dress preferences will almost certainly change as time goes on, and this belt may compliment some of my preferred outfits again in the future.