Update

I didn't postpone my trip to Austin, but I've been calling Admir every day in attempt to settle our matters. Of course, he isn't answering or returning my calls. I talked to Art today, who said Admir is "done with me" and plans to keep the parts because I never paid him for labor for the A/C and wiring. (Those are still going to require some more components and a skilled set of hands for the projects to be considered complete). I replied that I'd be happy to pay for labor where something was actually accomplished, but that doesn't equal the cost of parts as far as I'm concerned. He never billed me for labor, so I'm not sure how I was supposed to pay for it.

I know Art is sick of hearing from me, and this isn't his problem, so this is the last time I'm going to call him. I let him know that I'll be filing a complaint and taking Admir to small claims court. I'm also sorry for the mess, reminding him that my original request was just a stereo system anyway, and Admir appeared experienced and quite capable of installing that.

The fact remains that I need a ceiling, and I need to find out what I have to work with. If I can recoup the ceiling-related cash I spent, then I will probably just have Francisco's team put in a regular black fabric ceiling. That would be ideal at this point. If I can recoup the parts but no money, then I will try to make the ceiling myself. If I can't get anything, then I'll still put in a regular ceiling... and curse a lot.

I called the online store that sells the light engine that Admir and his dealer in Simi Valley overcharged me for, and I asked their representative to send me an installation guide. Once we nailed down the product I'm talking about, he sent me a one-page PDF. This doesn't even begin to answer the questions I have about this product. So I responded with this:

"Okay, it's not really clear to me how the average person is supposed to make use of that guide (not your fault; just saying). I have a sound-and-lighting person who foolishly bought one of these light engines (and paid too much) without knowing exactly how it works and now I'm probably stuck doing this project myself. If this is the only information that is widely available, I would really like to contact the vendor directly for more information.

I want to buy a few light engines and daisy-chain them together so I can have them working from one power source. I'd like the engineering specifications for the system so I can see how it works at the bare-bones level, and to see if there's a way I or one of my programmer friends can alter the toggle functionality so the lights can go on and off, instead of fade (for example). I'm going to have to look at the circuitry to see if this is even possible though. They must have at least a CAD drawing or some prototype to give the manufacturer. I'd like to see it all!

By the way, I'm a technical writer, and you can tell your vendor that, if they happen to be in need of one. :-)"

As much as I feel compelled to explain the absurd incompleteness of this document line by line, I'm too wrapped up in my car issues to edit technical documents for free. It was very nice of them to extend the invitation to "use my own creativity to explore its versatility," but I'm going to need a little more direction than that. Admir clearly did.

When I read this installation guide page, it became clear to me why Admir thought drilling holes in glass was a good idea. This dumb thing said to! So I was trusting my ceiling parts to a few paragraphs of text, likely written by a developer or mechanical engineer who was assigned the task due to lack of seniority and ease of pushoverability. This is a common practice among small tech outfits, and I wouldn't care if I weren't one of the handful of people who could actually use the instructions. It's also quite possible that the real-world applications were not fully explored when creating this item. Some marketing strategist said, "make something" and they did. I suppose they think they're done.

So yeah, no parts indicator, no arrangement drawing, no circuitry diagram, not even a part number to keep track of the damn thing! But like I said, I need to see if I can even get the parts and/pr money back. If I can, I'll see if anyone can help me pull this off. If not, I guess I learned a valuable lesson, haven't I?

In other news, I took some pictures of the upholstery earlier this week. Frank and I also had a nice talk before I left town, and he's going to try to get in touch with some car audio people he's worked with before. Doug also happened to be there, dropping off a late-model hearse for some touch-ups, and it was nice to see him again. He had positive things to say about the progress, but I know I'm going to be somewhat restless until the car is at least drivable.