Stuff I know
I know a thing or two about mental illness. It runs in the family.

My maternal grandfather was an incredibly intelligent and driven human being. When he was in his mid-20s, he was an accountant in Cleveland. An image that stands out in my mind is a picture of this man and his two daughters standing in front of a car with a 1956 Ohio license plate. The car was a '54 Cadillac. The daughters were my mom, who would have been 4 or 5, and her sister, two years older. Clearly, to get himself into a ride like that, he was doing something right.

Five years later, my mom found herself in the back of an old Buick station wagon, leaving Cleveland, headed for Springfield, Mo. Her dad had chucked everything to go to a Bible college in the Ozarks, a place he'd never been. He packed his wife and two kids and whatever possessions they could fit into the Buick and headed west. God had told him to.

If God speaks to you, that doesn't make you insane. But it wasn't God's voice he was hearing.

My mom has, thankfully, been stingy with details about what her life was like during the 1960s. The only thing I know clearly is that her life was bad enough that she believed the only way out was to get married at 16 and have a kid.

My grandmother divorced my mom's father in 1967, which was a pretty gutsy move, not just because divorces were uncommon in the late '60s, but also because it left her and her newly married, pregnant, high-school sophomore daughter without any discernible means of support other than my soon-to-be-dad's wages as a fry cook. My grandmother went to work, for the first time in her life, in her late 30s, and later married the man that I called Grandpa when I was growing up, a retired Army guy who was 18 years her senior.

I knew nothing of my biological grandfather until I was 5 or 6; at that point, because I wasn't very good at assembling details, I thought he lived in Cleveland. And because I had what I believed to be a complete family unit -- two parents, four grandparents -- his lack of presence didn't bother me in the least.

As I got older, I started asking more questions and getting fewer answers. It turned out that I actually had met the man, when I was 2 or 3. My mom had broken off contact with him shortly after my sister was born in 1971, because his illness had progressed to the point where she not only was uncomfortable around him, she felt unsafe.

Treatment and medicine advanced, and by 1978, my mother and her father had reconciled. I was allowed to meet him when I was 10. He wasn't living in Cleveland at all. He was living in Anytown, not 5 miles from my house. He was married to a charming woman, who happened to be 2 years older than my mom.

I spent quite a bit of time with him when I was 10; he was smart, and fascinating, and funny, and creative. He and I shared a love for American history. His political hero was Stephen Douglas; mine was John F. Kennedy. We also shared a love for old cars, although I found his obsession with Cadillacs a bit odd. Deferring to the fact that he was my grandfather and I was 10, I didn't question that obsession, nor did I question the fact that he called himself "Steve" when his name was actually Rupert. Hell, I thought, if my name was Rupert, I'd have come up with something different, too.

I was also fascinated with his smoking habits. He was the only person I've ever known who smoked Old Gold cigarettes. He would open a new pack very carefully, tearing the foil portion so he could re-close it after he got a fresh smoke rather than just tearing it off. When non-filtered Old Golds were unavailable, he'd buy the filtered variety, very carefully open the pack, and even more carefully pop the filter off each cigarette.

I did notice that he signed his name with the title "Rev.," when, my mom told me, he wasn't ordained in anything. I ran this by my other grandfather, who was in fact ordained as a Baptist minister, and he quickly and not very subtly changed the subject.

I later learned that in the late 1970s, my mother's father was very well medicated, and he was diligently taking his medicine in an effort to stay in step with the world as much as possible. His charming young wife worked in the millinery department of a downtown department store; he didn't work at all, best I could tell. But other than that, he was trying to get by as best as he could around the limitations of his illness. My mom leaned on him very hard to take his medication, but it was hard; he felt fine when he was on his medication, he believed, so, clearly, he was cured, and therefore he no longer needed it.

Then, in 1980, he suffered a heart attack while shoveling snow. He had not been diligent about his medication before his heart attack, and the voices in his head had been telling him to be mean to his charming young wife -- mean enough that, after he had his heart attack, she threw him out of their house. He moved in with us while recovering from open heart surgery, and argued that his medication wouldn't mix well with his heart pills, and given the choice, he was going to take his heart pills.

The decline happened fast. His presence was the last straw on my parents' faltering marriage. My mom threw her dad out, and shortly after that left my dad. My grandfather went back home, reconciled with his charming young wife, then began accusing her of cheating on him with my dad, then began threatening her life. She, wisely, left again.

My mom tried as hard as she could. She ignored his threats, she bought him groceries, she made sure he at least took his heart pills. One day, he threatened suicide. She delivered his groceries while he was gone somewhere, went into his house, and took his gun.

I came home from school to find several bags of groceries on the front porch, with a note scrawled in his very distinctive handwriting: "I WILL NOT accept CHARITY from THIEVES." The tail on the "s" went all the way across the paper, from right to left, as an underscore for his indignance.

That was it. She cut him off at that point.

My mom was angry, and sad, too. Me, being a teenager by that point, I had no time for simultaneous anger and sadness, so I stuck with just anger. We went on with our lives.

When I started writing for the newspaper, my mother noted that he might try to seek me out sometime. "He'd be very proud of you, I think," she said. "Don't be surprised if he tries to make contact with you."

"If he does," I fumed, "I won't be responsible for what I'll do."

A tear formed in my mom's eye.

"I know, and I understand," she said. "But he isn't either."

That exchange happened in 1988. Two years later, my mother's father was dead of a heart attack. He had just turned 60. I couldn't tell if my mom was sad or relieved. I suspect it was a completely unexplainable and justifiable mix of both.

I don't have nearly enough megabytes to go into all the complexities of my mother's immediate family -- her mom, strong as a rock, who died of a heart attack six months before her ex-husband died; her sister, insecure, overweight, trapped for years in abusive relationships, who died of a heart attack in 2002; my mom herself, who is so detached from everything that she allows herself to be close to nobody. But at the heart of so much of that was a man whose greatest sins in life were caused by something over which, for much of his life, he had very little control.

I learned a lot from those experiences. I learned that mental illness is real. I know that perfectly wonderful people can carry a mental illness, and that they're no more deserving of your contempt than somebody who has diabetes or MS.

I also know that many mental illnesses are genetic. This is always in the back of my mind. Schizophrenia, for instance, often doesn't show up until a person is in his mid-20s. I'm 35, safely past that point, but I still worry when I don't feel like I'm in complete control of my emotions. I worry about my sister, whose ability to handle average, real-world stress is zero. I worry about my kids.

I've been scared into therapy a couple of times, and both times, I was reassured that my worry about having a problem was a sure sign that I didn't have one. Many of the elements of my dad's side of the gene pool cancel out those from my mom's side.

Society and science are starting to come around to understand that mental illness is just that, an illness, and it needs to be treated accordingly. It's difficult to say it's just like any other illness, because few other illness cause people to lash out at those they love or at total strangers and say and do hurtful -- or possibly violent -- things.

But in most ways, it is. And I know that somewhere inside my mother's father was a smart, and fascinating, and funny, and creative man.

If you know somebody who's mentally ill, stick with them and support them. Do everything you can to make sure they get the help they need. I understand -- deeply -- that there may come a point where you have to cut them off, for your own sanity or, perhaps, safety. But all you can do is all you can do, and that's all I'm asking.

No, vember
Around here, we hate November. Take a look through the archives and check it out. Big gaps in each of the Novembers. If you were to page through the archives of my brain and look through the previous Novembers, you'd most likely find the same thing.

I've always hated November. I hated November when I was a little kid, when school started to get monotonous and the days started to get shorter and the weather brought the season's first snow. I hated November as a young sportswriter, when football and basketball overlapped, meaning we covered neither particularly well. I hated November when it took my dad away from me 16 years ago. I hated November in 1993, when it came time to decide that it was time to leave Anytown and head out into the world. You can pretty much rattle off the last four: November 2000, the interminable presidential election; 2001, the month of never-ending ennui; 2002, the mind-jarring readjustment to life on the Edge after giving up the Texas experiment. And this one, which simply is the tail end of what has been a really arduous year.

So that explains everything. That's the "why" behind my recent dark spell. It's just November. It'll be over soon.

Thanks for dropping by, eh?
A quick stroll through the logs reveals we seem to have picked up a semi-regular visitor from Canada. Welcome aboard, and feel free to explain that selection process for a prime minister to me at any time.

Hit the road, Jack
It occurs to me that in the last four weeks, I have not ventured outside my immediate home-to-work corridor. That seems to be the problem. Must break free and see something outside of my home area code.

It's good to have a goal.

Me, crying my eyes out for a girl I never knew
Her message: "Make every second count."

She damn sure did. The rest of us can take a lesson.

Fair warning
I'm allowing my job to eat me alive. It's probably too late for me. Please don't let it happen to you.

It all comes spilling out
A roundup of unrelated items from the Edge:

Uncle John, who was hospitalized three weeks ago after a brain aneurysm ruptured (has it only been three weeks?) has "graduated" to rehab. Days of grueling physical, speech and occupational therapy are helping to bring him back around. The Cousin Who's On TV and Dr. Cousin have been rocks for their family, putting everything on hold at their homes in the Carolinas to be with their Mom and Dad back in Anytown. Thanks the miracle of technology, my cousins have been keeping us up-to-date ... via a blog, of course. (Because I'm absurdly protective about my family's identity in this forum, I won't link directly; however, send me an e-mail and I'd be more than happy to send you the link.) Bottom line is, it's starting to look like a happier holiday season in Anytown -- and that soothes my heart greatly.

Oh, by the way, we moved. Avid readers of this forum know that we change residences as often as some women change their hair color. This move was a simple cross-county move, however -- and it was embarked upon for many reasons. We were overpaying for a house we really didn't like all that much. The Wife took on the tasks, damn near singlehandedly, of 1/finding the house, 2/negotiating a mortgage that was actually favorable to us 3/selling our own house (for a tidy profit, after owning it for only 9 months) and the hardest part, 4/convincing me it was a good idea. Because of her work, we're in a house we do like, with a mortgage payment that's much more in line with our budget, in a more convenient location. My role in this was really very minimal, as is the amount of credit I should take. Further proof that The Wife is a goddess.

Helping to complete my technological circle, I became the proud owner of a slightly used Macintosh G4. Dual-processor 500 MHz, 256 MB of RAM (at the moment), OS X Panther. I started my tech life as a Mac user, and the reconversion is almost complete. Because I haven't found time to buy a router or a KVM switch, and beacuse I only have one monitor, I have to disconnect the Monster Dell and manually connect everything else to use the Mac. But the time I have spent with Mac OS X convinces me that it's radically superior to the previous Mac interface, and, as always, it's way better than Windows. I love being able to justify being an annoying Mac user again. And being surrounded by comptuers makes me feel like a geek, which I like.

I haven't had time to buy a KVM switch or a router because I find myself spending a lot of time at work these days. We're in the process of a "workflow conversion," a conversion which was envisioned late last year but has only recently been implemented. Change is abhorrent to most journalists, especially those of us on the production side. We're especially resistant to any change that we perceive to overemphasize the "production" part at the expense of creativity. We (me, too) sometimes forget that one can be extremely creative in the production parts, too. I also apparently missed the part of my management class (I did take a few of those while I breezed past college) that would have informed me that recruiting and hiring an experienced, talented employee could be bad for morale. I anticipate the waters will settle soon, but until they do, I'm going to spend a lot of time at the helm. It's thrown my schedule completely asunder: I'm now working mostly nights, including Sundays. Neither my body nor my family is adjusting well. But dammit, I enjoy a challenge, on some levels.

Speaking of The Wife (we were speaking of her earlier, you'll recall): She and Champion Dog I (the female) took fourth place at a large-ish dog show this weekend. You'd be forgiven for yawning at that development -- until you were informed that she and her dog did this all by themselves. Up to this point, she's spent a ton of money on "professional handlers" to show off her Champion Dog. Because she became mildly miffed at the most recent professional handler, she decided to take the leash in her own hands. Beware The Wife when she becomes mildly miffed. With no real previous experience to speak of, she stepped into the ring and earned a ribbon in a very large field -- and, I might add, blew the doors off the person at whom she was mildly miffed.

Whew. I think that about covers it, for now, anyway. It's good to be back.

Out of Creativity AutoReply
Currently recharging. Lots to talk about, little time or motivation to write it. And, as I write this, a water-line break has left us without running water. There's a parallel there, somewhere.

I sense being on the way back. Hang tight.

Exhale
Uncle John is recovering from having undergone three brain surgeries in less than a week. The surgeries were, by all accounts, successful, and he's doing about as well as can be expected under the circumstances. The prognosis for recovery is good, although only time will tell what damage the aneurysm left behind.

I have been reminded that the bond that holds my extended family together is very strong. We're scattered all over the country, and we don't communicate with each other nearly as much as we should, but it's inspiring to see the loyalty that my aunts and uncles and cousins and parents have toward each other. I need to ensure that I don't need a crisis to remind me of that bond, and of why it's important.

Too confused to come up with a title
As you can see by the distance in the dates between posts, it's exceedingly difficult to turn my muddled thoughts into complete sentences. It's been a rough week here on the Edge. I'm basically living full-out -- working, parenting, moving into a new house -- between rings of a telephone. When the caller ID shows a "417" area code, everything stops. I can feel the friction on my the palm of my hand as I reach out to stop my spinning life. I answer, bracing for the worst by following the same procedure: A deep, deep breath precedes every "Hello." In that .6 of a second, I remind myself to not scream or collapse in a crying heap or punch a hole in the drywall if the news is bad.

Breath. Reminder. "Hello?"

My last remaining male role model is facing death square on. My uncle -- The Uncle Who Made Good -- suffered a brain aneurysm on Sunday. He is hospitalized in Anytown, surrounded by his wife, his two sons, and about a hundred friends and family members. The prognosis is neutral, leaning toward positive; much will be learned about his future over the weekend, and then a surgery tentatively scheduled for mid-week will provide

Uncle John is my dad's next oldest brother, No. 5 of nine children and the undisputed leader of our sprawling yet close family. In times of need, he's the guy people turn to. He is by all measures a success. He married a stunningly beautiful woman more than 30 years ago. He started a business from scratch at age 33; less than 20 years later, he began enjoying a very comfortable retirement. He and my aunt raised two sons who are on their way to their own success.

He has more basic intelligence and more common sense than any two people I've ever known, and I've known a lot of very smart people. But Uncle John is the standard. From him, I learned to always remember from where I came, and that my first loyalty is to my family.

It is from him that I received the most important piece of advice I ever received: "Be sure you tell your kids every day that the world is a better place because they're in it." Like he is about most other things, he's right.

I lost my own father at 19 -- he's still alive, but not enough to provide the guidance an adult child needs. He sometimes struggled with providing this guidance even before his accident. When I stumped him with a question or a concept, my Dad would say, "Ask Uncle John. He'll know, and he'll give you a straight answer." To this day, I'll follow that advice.

Uncle John couldn't replace my father and, to his credit, he didn't try. But he filled many of the gaps, and he sets an example that I bust my ass every day to follow.

We're not a very demonstrative family when it comes to affection. Under normal circumstances, we're more likely to insult each other than to prattle on about how great one of us is. But when things turn, we're there -- even if we can't be there physically, we're there for each other. My cousins know they can call me at 3 in the morning if they want, and if they do, they'll find somebody on the other end of the line who knows exactly how they're feeling. If or when my presence in Anytown becomes necessary -- for my cousins, for any of my aunts or uncles, for my dad or stepmother or sister -- I'm on the next flight out.

Until then, I hope. I listen for the phone. I try to stop my over-caffeinated world from spinning long enough to compose a cohesive thought. I remember who I am and where I came from and why I am who I am. And I wait for things to settle down to tell one of the most important people in my life how important he is.

That's an opoortunity you can be damn sure I'm not going to miss.

Confidential reminder
I read somewhere once about my family: "We're a family of survivors." I need to keep that in mind right now.

Technical interlude
Having finally become completely fed up with Microsoft and everything for which it stands, I'm taking up arms. I'm doing battle against the giant from Redmond, Wash.

So far I'm 1-1.

E-mail: When I downloaded the latest patch to fix yet another security flaw in Windows XP, it somehow tore my Outlook Express all asunder. When I attempt to send an e-mail, a little box comes up trying to locate some plug-in for Microsoft Picture It! 2002 (which I own but have never used). It does this through about three or four "Cancels," then finally, a dialog pops up: "The spelling check is not complete. Would you like to send anyway?" Of course, it had never executed a spellcheck.

This frustration led me through a few other e-mail clients. Can't recommend Mozilla; loads much too slowly, and the spellchecker wants to stop on everything. Can't recommend Opera; if you try to set any security at all, it clamps down and basically won't allow anything to happen.

I did find a winner: Eudora, which has been around for years and years in various forms but gets little exposure, largely because it somehow hasn't found favor as a corporate e-mail client.

Eudora 6's interface is fresh and incredibly easy-to-use -- once you get used to it. I found myself clicking around more than I needed to, thinking, "This really shouldn't be this easy." Being cheap, of course, I'm using the ad-sponsored version -- the ads are unintrusive, and they're clearly not selling well; I've only seen one ad from a company other than Qualcomm, which makes the software. I have all of the features of the paid version that I need, and I'm not dropping $49.95. A stripped-down, ad-free version is also available. If you're a Windows user, it's worth the switch.

Web browser: Back when I was a full-time Mac user, I was also a full-time Netscape user. I first started hitting the web about the time Netscape 3.x was the only game in town for graphical browsers. I upgraded to Netscape 4.0, and was a little worried, because the program didn't seem as stable as its predecessor. I then migrated to Windows, and slavishly used Internet Explorer from that point, only launching Netscape for nostalgia.

When Netscape 6 appeared, after AOL bought Netscape, I was all ready to start using Netscape again. A fully loaded, cool-looking interface wrapped around the browser of my technical youth. But alas, Netscape 6 sucked. Slow as hell, crashed a lot, didn't render some sites correctly, completely useless on secure sites.

I've been faithfully downloading each new Mozilla release; it's the open-source version of Netscape, using the same basic architecture as the AOL crew but in a more compact way. Because it's beta software, it's pretty buggy, too, but I do like it for some uses -- particularly viewing video. Its pop-up blocker is pretty solid, maybe a little too solid (it blocks solicited pop-up windows, too.)

I decided to check in on Netscape, just to see how version 7.1 looked. I had read and heard bad things about version 7, but I wanted to see for myself.

Terrible.

Installed seamlessly (including, of course, the damn AOL solicitation); crashed on launch; crashed on restart; crashed on exit; crashed while uninstalling.

So I'm back to Internet Explorer, waiting for some hacker to come in and steal my keystrokes. But at least it works. It has earned its 98 percent market share.

Potentially unpopular opinion
Don Zimmer had it coming.

[Deep sigh]
That's all. That's all I have to offer tonight.

Random stray thought

Different things keep me awake at night. All of them are keeping me awake tonight. I hate that.

More on the Epiphany, as promised
The solution: Quit talking about it and actually do it.

I could launch a commercial airliner with all the energy I've expended over the last two years babbling about:

How much I dislike my job

How I need to do something different with my life

How I need to exercise more/eat better/sleep more

How I need to find some source of actual inspiration.

It's been two years. The time to talk has passed. I'm tired of talking about it. You're tired of hearing about it.

So:

It's time. Self-improvement plan starts with ...

... finishing my bachelor's degree.

Somehow.

---------------------------------

I don't consider myself anybody's intellectual inferior. The one thing that distinguishes me from the rest of the population is that I have a fairly sharp mind. I'm very capable of advanced analytical and critical thinking, my written and verbal communication skills are well above average, and I can remember facts and place them in historical context. I can even do simple math fairly well.

I skated through high school doing the minimum required to maintain a grade-point average in the high 3s. My ACT score all those many years ago was 28; I hit something in the high 1100s on the SAT. Not off the charts, but enough to put me in the top 10 percent of college applicants back in 1986, and well out of proportion to the amount of effort I put into school.

Long before I started college, I lost interest in learning anything that wasn't directly related to print journalism. I quit college when I was 20 because I was offered a job in my field. It seemed pointless to waste time in school when I could be getting paid for the thing for which I was attending school in the first place. I figured, "Well, I can go back anytime."

Not long after that, I got married, and not long after that, I lucked into a series of better jobs. I moved around the country, we had a few kids, and the idea of finishing my education dropped completely off the radar screen. After all, I was doing what I had wanted to do since I was 12 years old, and making a pretty good living at it.

The lack of a degree didn't seem to be holding back my career the way I always feared it would. Journalism's funny like that; it's a profession that talks a lot about the importance of having an education but actually puts more of a premium on having real-world skills. I'll put your parchment from Columbia University against my ability to assemble a page in an attractive fashion, put the stories on the page in the proper order based on their relative importance, find a mistake that saves us from embarrassment and send the page to the press -- all in a time span of less than an hour.

Best I can tell, few other professional fields actually rate experience and skill above education.

I found myself four years ago working for the eighth-largest newspaper in the country, despite my lack of formal education. I excelled there, but it was there -- working what I thought was my dream job -- when I started to realize that I was getting bored with journalism in general. I wasn't quite ready to face up to this fact, however; I decided I was just getting fat and happy working a job where I didn't have to leave blood on the floor every night or work a ton of extra hours, and that to restore my love for journalism, I needed to restore some of the urgency. I'm funny like that.

So I put my career in reverse and came back to the Edge, in a position of responsibility, trying to rekindle the spark that fired my love for journalism. It isn't happening so far. I've been through a bunch of big stories that really should have gotten the adrenaline pumping. It's happened, but not in the consistent, predictable way it used to. I find myself facing sudden news events with dread rather than with energy and excitement.

I've been working in newspapers for almost 18 years. I have 30 more years I have to cover before I can call it quits with any degree of financial security. I'm not sure I want to do what I'm doing for 30 more years.

I don't, however, have a clear focus on what exactly I would do. However, it's probably in one of those fields that values formal education over experience. I'd like to think 18 years of busting my ass would mean something, but I doubt it does.

---------------------------------------------------

I have many reasons to not consider going back to school:

I have a wife and three kids. In order for me to become formally educated, I'll basically have to remove myself from my family for a period of several years, except for brief periods between semesters. The Wife says that's OK; she's behind this idea, despite that sacrifice. I'm not sure I'm ready to do that.

I have enough debt; I'm only going to invest as much as I can afford in this. I didn't take out loans when I was 20; I'm not going to do so now. Nor do I want to plunder my children's college fund so I can go myself.

I don't plan on giving up my moderately high-pressure job, at least not immediately. I still need to get paid, and taking even a voluntary demotion would probably not be good for my fragile psyche. I will have to develop some much better time-management skills and self-discipline if I prove serious about this.

I'm 35 years old. Realistically, I'm looking at being 40 before I actually finish, given the constraints listed above. At that point, I'm going to be a 40-year-old white male who's no more attractive to potential employers.

It's very possible that I will find I'm no better suited to a classroom now than it was when I was 20. I would be very disappointed in myself if that was the case.

I have only one really good reason to do it:

To prove to myself that I can.

I don't know if that's the right reason. I'm figuring if I tell enough people, though, I'll be less likely to wuss out and not even try; it'll be that many more people who can call bullshit on me if I wuss out.

I'm looking for guidance here, folks. I'm a few days away from making up my mind. Give me a push or save me from myself.

Happy anniversary to us
It was on this date 13 years ago that I told The Wife that I would be hers forever, no matter what happened, good, bad or otherwise. I told her I'd do all of that for the rest of my life. She said, "You'd better, because that's my plan, too."

As of this moment, I've had roughly 410,227,200 chances to regret it for a second. I haven't.

Epiphany
It's quite possible I have Figured it Out.

More later.

Art for art's sake
Here's a rare solicitation, one from which we're not actually asking for any money: Go take a look at some new stuff on The Freelance Gig. The photographer took a trip to Maine last summer and, needless to say, came away very impressed. I think you'll come away very impressed with her work.

One of the reasons I really enjoy working on that site -- and referring people to it -- is that all it really asks of you, the viewer, is to appreciate the artistry in her photographs. Yeah, she's running a business, and yeah, she'd like to sell pictures to everybody who hits the site, but that's really secondary to the primary vision. That vision is simply to take a look and think about what you see. If you like it, it'll brighten your day a little bit. If you really like it, you'll hit the e-mail link and ask to see more. If not, you're out nothing but the minute or two you spent to check it out.

Too many creatives spend too much time worrying about marketing and copyright and from where their next check is coming, which necessarily takes time away from the main mission: being creative. I understand economic realities and all that. Sometimes, though, it's nice to take a break from all that and simply appreciate the work. I invite you to appreciate hers. No obligation.

Bonus! Two random stray thoughts for the price of one

Actually heard in my house today ... The Boy, 4, to his 2-year-old sister, who's been annoying him for two hours leading up to this: "Urrrrrrgh! I'm going to sell you on eBay!" (This, of course, begs the question: How the hell does he know about eBay? I'll keep an eye out for mysterious deliveries of action figures ... )

After the post below ripping the American automotive industry, is it any coincidence that my Oldsmobile almost left me stranded at work last night? Had to get it towed to the dealer from work to repair a "faulty ignition module." Thank God for Roadside Assistance and the 60,000-mile extended warranty. (Take that, Detroit.) Of course, it should be noted that Hondas or Toyotas probably don't need 60,000-mile extended warranties ...