Car Problems make me That Guy

I dunno WTF my MINI is playing at. Last night as I was walking to my car after watching a movie, I heard a noise coming from near my car - I didn’t know if it was my car or someone elses since I was in a parking lot… After driving home and exiting my car, I was pretty much 100% sure that it was my car, because said mystery noise could still be heard. After a few minutes of poking around I narrowed the problem down to the power steering pump.

You see its like this - MINI engineered the car to have an electric power steering pump so that it wouldn’t take power from the engine. Good idea - except mine decided to not turn off when the car was turned off. I could tell that it was draining my battery since - duh- it is a big hydraulic pump working when then alternator isn’t re-charging the car.

So last night I woke up ONCE hearing my car alarm going off. This wasn’t a big deal to me since car alarms go off here all the time, and it was quiet by the time my brain realized it was my car.. Not the case at about 6:50am (ugh). The MINI alarm is the Death Sound of the MINI’s battery - it went off in 30-40 second bursts for about five minutes sucking the last little bit of life from the battery. Nothing would let me turn the damn thing off either.. clicking the clicker, unlocking the driver door physically.. And since the locks to the rest of the car are electrical I couldn’t open the rear-hatch to disconnect the mostly-dead battery either. (Yes, my car’s battery is in the boot). Not having anything else left to do, I grabbed the owners manual and went up to my apartment to try and find a number to call. But before that could happen, she fell (hopefully permanently) silent.

I really really am not looking forward to paying for this.