Happy news for the neurotic, however – I Googled my Sonic’s VIN and found pictures!

Check out my ride.

After considering the price of fixing my 2001 Chrysler 300M — more than $2,000 for various transmission and catalytic converter problems — it became apparent that the car wasn’t worth it. It survived nearly 145,000 miles. I decided to move on.

What’s amazing is how easy the car was to sell once I made the decision. On Jan. 24, I put an ad on Craiglist (an ad that Craigslist flagged for deletion for no good reason at all) for $750. On Jan. 25, it sold.

In the week since my 300 tried to kill me, I’ve called a lot of friends for advice. Everyone has a different take. Buy used because the depreciation of a new car is so bad. Buy new so you don’t have to worry about anything going wrong for a few years. Only lease so you’re not owning the bad years of a car.

I haven’t financially committed yet, but after considering my options (and most importantly, the opinion of the future Mrs. Kulpa), I came across a brand new car that I’ve kind of fallen in love with: A 2012 Chevy Sonic LTZ.

It’s cool looking, gas efficient, and most importantly, I qualify for the 2.9% financing over 60 months. All I’m waiting on now is for my local dealership to get the specific car I picked shipped from another dealership.

R.I.P. after 144,000 miles.

I was going 40 or so when suddenly the car appeared to be in neutral. The RPMs climbed to 6,000. It was super loud. This lasted 30 seconds before the car violently clicked back into gear and everything was fine again. I was able to accelerate for a bit. Then the whole process repeated.

At one point, I was sliding backward, downhill, into the oncoming cars. So, yea. Awesome.

I’ve called three shops for quotes. As it turns out, car shops hate it when you ask questions. I’ve gotten different quotes, methods and warranties at three different places.

One guy builds the transmissions himself for $1,400, but provides only a 30-day warranty. Another place installs transmissions after buying them from a junkyard for $1,200. You get either a 30-, 60- or 90-day warranty depending on the junkyard he picked the transmission up from. The last one provides a three-year, 100,000-mile warranty – but won’t be able to repair it for at least a week and won’t be able to give me a quote for multiple days. I’m betting this one will hover around $2,000.

I don’t really have any point to this, other than to remind myself why I hate every thing about owning a car. This is going to cost me my entire tax return, and then some.

Things will be wonky for a bit as I experiment. Please accept my apology.

That’s why I highly recommend replacing the icons with this set from the folks at the A2591 blog.

The directions are incredibly simple. The whole process takes 45 seconds.

From Robinson:

A love of baseball plus a love of visual representations equals Flip Flop Fly Ball.

Essentially, this site is what I’d have been doing when I was 12 years old had the Internet and Photoshop been available to me in the eighties. And had I grown up in the States. As it was, I grew up in England. And I came to baseball in my thirties whilst on a business trip to New York. I went to see the Yankees play the Twins. And that was it, really.

My name is Craig Robinson. Not the guy in Hot Tub Time Machine. Not President Obama’s brother-in-law. And not the short stop who played for the Braves, Giants, and Phillies in the 1970s, either. I am a bearded, myopic, Englishman who (for the time being, at least) lives in Mexico City.

I’ve never met the man, but he seems like a helluva guy. And way, way more ambitious and motivated than the rest of us.

For instance: See that image to the right?

It’s a screen grab of every infographic Robinson has made for Flip Flop Fly Ball. I can’t say that I’ve looked at each and every one, but some of my favorites include “Welcome to Bradenia” and “The Age of the Yankees Roster.”

Robinson also has a lot of other kooky baseball- and graphics-related projects.

I highly recommend checking out his work if you have two or three days to kill next week.

In theaters: December 14th, 2012

Here’s the story, published by the Inquirer itself.

I don’t have much to add to this story that Deadspin hasn’t already covered. But if it turns out he’s guilty, I hope he spends the rest of his days getting hunted by sexual predators on Adam Carolla’s mythical “pedif-isle.”

Interestingly (at least to me?), I had never heard of Conlin until yesterday, when I stumbled upon this article while writing about the absurdity of the Texas Rangers paying more than $50 million just for the right to speak with Yu Darvish.

Dan writes:

Why am I getting ads for being an “addiction counselor” that address me as “punk fan” and “metal fan” and why do the women in the advertisements appear to be naked and have pink hair? Is this what Facebook is using my personal information to determine?

I thought, “HEY! I like punk. I work in addiction. How come I’m not getting these ads?” My friend Nick Volkert has been documenting ridiculous Facebook advertisements for years. I really needed to see what Dan was seeing.

Sure enough, I’m getting targeted in the same fashion as Dan (minus the naked, pink-haired women).

Look, I’ve set up several company Facebook pages. I understand how these things work. But my question is: Who exactly designs these things? Why would an advertisement targeted at punk rock loving criminals use THOSE images? Are tribal face-tattooed bald guys a punk rock cliche I’m not aware of?

I will say this: They got the height right. I’m exactly 6-foot tall.

Top marks, Facebook.

Howard is hiring a digital guru – specifically, a person to drive the newspaper to publish digital first. From the online job description:

We’re blowing up our newsroom (the new carpeting and tile) was just a start. We’re bringing in the latest eGizmos and iGadgets to arm our staff with the latest tools (in fact, I had to tear myself away from my iPad to write this).

The tools are great, but we need superior humans who understand not just the technology but how to coach others on how to use it as well as how to continue to grow our audience. (Yes, that’s right naysayers: Our audience is growing.)

We are looking to add a digital guru (fancy title TBA) who will help steer our digital efforts and lead a team of news producers and others. The digital guru will work with other editors on providing content across all of our digital platforms.

If you embrace change, are passionate for digital news and have the savvy to coax excellence out of others, then read on.

My favorite part of the job description is the part tacked on at the end:

Check out our website, www.jconline.com, our mobile site and our social media accounts. Then tell me what you would do to improve them. Previous newspaper experience is not required.

I’ve known Howard for a few years now, and the best man in my upcoming wedding actually worked for him as an intern back in the day. He’s a good dude by all accounts.

Here’s the official notice on JournalismJobs.com.

Happy job hunting!