Close Call
I tried to update my blog to the latest and greatest version this morning and it blew up. I was freaking out but luckily was able to eventually unupgrade it. What a nightmare that would have been. I checked the support forums for the blog software and it is flooded with bug reports. I will steer clear for awhile.
Yesterday I took the Camry to get the integrated Sirius tuner installed. It was done in only a few hours. It set us back a good chunk of change. I had no idea how Sirius was added to such a fancy stereo system as what the Camry hybrid has. However after the install, the little piece of cardboard that had the number I needed to activate the service also had the model number. Being the nosy type I punched it in when I got home and saw the actual unit could be picked up for around 100 bucks. I found the manual as well and it looked like it would have been in my realm of possibilities to hook it up myself, son of a bitch. This scenario seems to happen to me too often. I look into things in detail AFTER I pay for them. Stupid. Well anyway it is awesome having satellite integrated into the factory radio. After some fumbling trying to figure out how to do stuff, I was able to figure most of it out without a manual.
Getting the radio activated was rather annoying. I sat out in the audio stores parking lot for a good 25 minutes till I finally got it turned on. The first two times I called I got disconnected after waiting 5 minutes. The third time I went a different route through the automated phone menus and got a rather unprofessional black woman who sounded like she would have been more at home behind the counter of a convenience store than as a customer service rep. I told her I called twice before to get my radio activated and got disconnected and was not very happy about it. She said, without a hint of sympathy or remorse in her voice, “How can I help you” I explained that I was disconnecting one radio and activating another. She says “Wait a minute…” I wait and wait, probably for a good 30 seconds while I hear silence on the other end. I finally say “are you still there?” “Yes I am having computer problems” she says in annoyed tone and again leaves me sitting there in awkward silence until her computer responds a good minute later. She was very unprofessional the entire call and made me feel like I was somehow putting her out by asking her to perform her job. Finally the proper switches were flipped and I was able to get more than the weather channel on the radio. Hurray. I said my goodbye’s to the miserable woman and turned my attention to figuring out the radio.
The only negative that I have observed with the setup is when it displays artist and song information it will not display any more than 16 characters per line so it cuts off chunks of words which is rather annoying. When I was doing my price check I also looked into this and apparently that is just the way it is. It doesn’t make a lot of sense why the info could not scroll like the info on standard over the airwaves radio does. Who knows, it is a small thing, I’ll get over it. The car now officially has everything we could possibly want in it and we paid a tidy premium for it. Hope it lasts for 10 years.