Shawn's blog

Can tell by…
receiving all the graduation packages (and endless promotion brochure about “Congrats, Graduates! Buy our products!”);
getting my DSP graduation cord;
writing my last undergraduate essay;
planning & sending graduation party invites;
completing DSP office transition;
and soon: senior send off from the chapter.

It’s been a great undergraduate career – DSP is definitely a huge part of my life and glad to have a frat big bro looking after me before, during, and after joining the fraternity. And now I have a little bro and feel like I didn’t do my part…not enough as in too little, too late. Regrets? Yes. What to do with it? Hope to fix it soon and quick.
Leaving a position by pushing it to the limits and hope my successor a.k.a. my lil’bro going to bring it up to the next level.

I love driving, even not in my Charger. Helping a friend moving to Chicago, depends on the person, could be anywhere on the scale from “easy” to “extremely challenging” given the traffic you will encounter.

This road trip we rented a Chrysler Town & Country from Enterprise because luggage are literally spilling out of a Chevy HHR – the original rental. Minivans has never been on top of my list when it comes to rental because my previous experience driving my step-mom’s old model T&C in a family trip.
The old T&C was not too great at long distance roadtrip: acceleration, handling/cornering, and seat comfort were 3 things I did not like, and was not expecting anything good by renting a minivan even nowadays in 2012.

Picking up the 2011 T&C from Enterprise was easy as breeze, staff folded the seats down with minimal effort and everything was set. And I began my drive starting in Omaha after I dropped my car off at parking.

First impression about T&C is surprisingly peppy and eager to go with just a slight bit of motivation. Not sure if Enterprise recalibrate the throttle system before the rental or not (as adaptive can occasionally make it slower to respond), all I knew is stepping into a whole new world of Soccer Mom’s Van! Although the handling can still be further improved, its blind spot monitoring, reverse camera, and great acceleration were truly helpful in city driving just like having a mini co-pilot making sure not missing anything other than what one can see by turning the head around.

Given the fact that rental cars are usually the “fleet” trim – one that does usually miss out some of the standard equipments in the lowest consumer trim level – that is what surprised me to get a vehicle with all of them as standard across the board and let consumers get a taste of how its like to be in this particular product. Great way to do marketing by selling at a higher cost to rental and let more people know about it.

First HMM event of year 2012!

By the time I left work, “attending” on facebook counted at 14 so I was expecting a medium crowd for the club, it is a Tuesday night after all. Just hoping members will show up and have fun hanging out in the parking lot and BW3.

There are 6 or 7 Mopars in the parking lot by the time I showed up at the lot, that’s not bad…talked around and saw a very cool RAM 3500, a Chally with headlight mod makes it invisible when lights off (pictures to follow).

In the BW3 there were 16 people already sat down!! I came in with 8 members from the parking lot and we conquered the BW3 one chair at a time, at the end of the night we had 30 people making a looooooooooong table across the entire wings joint!