I poked a little fun at Nad’s car stereo back in April. She recently had it checked out at a nearby Car Toys and confirmed my suspicion: the last two clowns to work on her stereo equipment royally screwed it up. The first is this guy back home in Rockaway that everyone goes to. He has made a living off of ruining cars (everyone I know who has gone to him has complained of poor work). The second was this hole-in-the-wall shop on Route 1 in MD, who promptly closed up shop when Nadia ran into problems.

Now her car’s audio system is in much better shape, and looks pretty good:

I had to drive to New York this weekend to get our taxes done. Nadia’s car (Mimi) has been suffering from audio issues for a while now; the people that installed her system royally screwed it up, then went out of business before she realized that the speakers were busted. As a result of their excellent work, both right speakers sound like there isn’t enough power in the car to keep them going; they suddenly crackle and pop, then fade to the point of being inaudible. Sometimes, without warning, all four speakers will loudly die.

Last Christmas, Nadia got me a Zune FM tuner cradle by Belkin. I used to trust this company to build decent products, but this product broke that trust. This unit functions as a powered cradle only; to Belkin, “FM tuner” must mean “static noise maker” since that’s the only thing it does.

I was faced with a dilemma. I couldn’t trust Mimi’s speakers to last the trip. I was tired of hearing the same CDs that I’ve been listening to for the past three months. Listening to music from my Zune was not an option due to the non-existent FM tuning. What was I to do?

Then it hit me. I looked at a previous gift that Nadia gave to me. It solved my problem, but is the definition of ghetto:

Mimi Misses Taru, originally uploaded by opkchilliewillie.

I miss her too.