Day After Yesterday

So, like everyone else in the internet world, twitter has been enough to keep me from posting here. Not that I post that much here, but the desire is gone, so I am not even thinking about it anymore. The perpetual lie to myself is gone.

But I really like this domain name, and I want this to be an aggregation of all my internet related stuff. Think friendfeed but not on their server and without comments, because really, I am not sure I want people to talk back to me at that level. I’ll still have a blog for bigger posts (I am being optimistic here) and there will still be comments there, but the otherwise no.

So there will be changes, but I’ll cover the big things with redirects so things should operate per normal. I hope the new thing will rule. I have started the concept, but I haven’t started coding it yet. Scratch that, I am confident it will rule. RULE. RRRUUULLLEEE.

So on a list I am on, it was posed that we talk about an album that’s had a tremendous impact on your guts. So here was my response.

Get Out Of My Stations, Guided By Voices. This is not their best work, but it is the first one I bought by GBV. I remember being 16 driving in the car listening to WNUR and they played a GBV track and I pulled over at the first payphone, called WNUR to find out what that was. From the payphone I went out and bought the first GBV thing I could find, which was Get Out Of My Stations. I was amazed. The lofi mixed with the hooks mixed with the lyrics that made no sense what so ever on some tracks but seemed to speak directly to me on others. I now know that, especially at the time, that Robert Pollard drank alot of beer, and there is a really good chance that those lyrics really don’t make any sense, but I still am of the believe that I just don’t understand the meaning, but it certainly has one. For every major relationship, heartache, or drama in my life, I have a GBV song that I have matched up to it. I have written multipage letters to accompany mix tapes where I explain why this particular song matches that particular person’s situation so perfectly. There is also a good chance that given the sheer size of Robert’s catalog, he has no clue what half of the songs mean himself, but some are so amazing to me. So combine that exploration aspect with the hooks that I can’t seem to get out of my head ever, I have a band that I still listen to on a daily basis. My last.fm shows that they are my favorite artist, with 3 times the plays of the number 2 artist. And they were so awesome live. Amazing. And drunk. In the heyday there was a giant cooler of bud light or some such crap beer on stage and he would just drink and drink and drink and somehow the shows were still good.

30 Something, Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine. Remember when mtv played music videos? Remember 120 minutes? I used to look forward to that show everyweek, and sure I was really tired in 7th grade monday mornings as it was a midnight to 2am sunday night time slot, I loved that show. So when they played the video to Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere I had to have it. I used to tape the show so I could rewatch it, and I remember that VHS tape was all warped at that part. So then I started buying everything of theirs I could. The lyrics all tell some story, often pretty down like alcoholism, child abuse, death, depression, etc. I loved it all. It was all so political and amazing to a 13 year old. And it seemed so much more arranged and british than The Dead Kennedys (whom I never loved as much). I even convinced had the DJ at my 8th grade catholic school dance play Prince in a Pauper’s Grave as the last slow dance. Of course I carried the CD with me. When I was in college and heard they had broken up I was surprised that I was actually depressed about it. I must have played only Carter for 2 weeks straight. My roommate thankfully spent a lot of time in lab. It is one of the bands where I own every single they have released on mutlitple formats. I have test pressings to certain records. I have an autographed copy of jim bob’s book. I have emailed with them. I never saw them live, as the first time they toured the US I was underage and the 2nd time I was actually in the UK. I know, a band that is, at its core, 2 dudes and a drum machine seems kinda lame, but seriously, Amazing, but when they announced they were getting back together, 10 years from their breakup, to play one show, I looked at airfare to london.

De La Soul - De La Soul is Dead. This is the first album that I really GOT as an entire album, it is like a journey, and I find that even though mp3s has destroyed the concept of a linear path through a recording, I still listen to this album straight through and enjoy it that way. I don’t listen to it as much now, but man, my seiko portable CD player played this CD straight for so long and used so many AA batteries (that joker used 6 AA’s for about 4 hours of continuous play. Life was tough for CD players in 1991). I have nearly everything De La put out as well.

I’ll stop, but other highlights are Sugar’s Copper Blue, The Vindicitives - The Many Moods Of The Vindicitives, Minor Threat - Discography (and any Fugazi, Fugazi at the aragon in ~1993 is on the top of my most memorable shows), The Dead Milkmen - any, Guns N Roses - Appetite for Destruction and to a lesser degree use your illusions (I convinced my dad to take me to the midnight release of those albums when I was in 8th grade. It was me, my dad, and a bunch of crusty dudes standing in front of a record town or some shit in the dark. It was awesome. I didn’t sleep that night although they can’t carry like Appetite did for me at the age it did), The Best of Rotterdam Records Volume 1 (German hardcore techno FTW), The Pixies - Trompe Le Monde, Naked Raygun - Throb Throb and Jettison, New Order - Brotherhood, Primus - Seas of Cheese (Saw them at aragon a few years ago where the 2nd set was that entire album, such a good disc)….

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Originally uploaded by skabaru

So that is the reason the audi is louder now… I hit a bump on lower wacker at speed and the car slammed into the ground… and then I had a louder exhaust…

Here you can see the flange actually hit the pavement hard enough to buckle the pipe. That is T304 stainless steel. See the bubbling on the left? that isn’t supposed to be there. So there is an air leak there and the pipe touches the body a bit further up near the motor since the bend it causing the pipe to be pulled towards the back of the car.

Awesome.

This is a rant, and I apologize, but it irks me every single time I experience it, so time to rant!

I live in Chicago, which is a fairly dense city. But I am over 2 miles from downtown, so the tallest building around me is usually 3 stories, so the density is not that high. But with that kind of density, parking is clearly at a premium, and I understand this. I even pay for extra parking outside of the 2 spots that I have at my house and I am fine with that.

What I hate are people that double park. HATE it. I hate it when people do it on quiet little residential streets, but it isn’t the end of the world, because there is room to get around and one is really not blocking the flow of traffic due largly in part to the fact that there aren’t usually that many cars driving by. I hate it more when it is done on a major artery, so Ashland, a major north south street in the city that is 4 lanes plus a center lane.

The thing that often makes it more frustrating is it is almost ALWAYS done with an empty spot within a stones throw. Perhaps it is a no parking zone, or a hydrant, but it is a place you could park your car that is not impeding the flow of traffic. And really, if there is a fire, I am not sure double parking is really any better.

I can only assume that the people that do this are either too self centered to even consider parking a little further away as to not block traffic? Or perhaps, even worse, they considered it but just don’t care? Let those people go around me? Or perhaps they just don’t want to have to walk so far?

I mean how can one not feel like a giant asshole blocking all the traffic on a major road?

On my way to work today, which is what prompted this rant, I encountered an even more slefish situation. I am driving on a quiet residential street. I approach a stop sign, and none of the cars are moving. This is due to the fact that both other vehicles, a school bus and an SUV wanted to go east. However eastbound was blocked due to a double parked car that had managed to back up 4 other vehicles, one of which was another school bus. I, going north, thought oh, that is unforunate that one person is causing a problem for so many others and drive on.

I notice that traffic is not moving much northbound either, but due to the one way nature of the streets, north is looking better than east. I get up there and there is a couple loading a uhaul truck, of course double parked, blocking my northbound lane. On the southbound lane, there is a gentleman unloading a uhaul trailer, again double parked. These 2 geniuses managed to leave JUST enough room for 1 car to slalom between them. Meanwhile there are 4-5 cars in each direction that have essentially gridlocked themselves in due to the fact that southbound traffic is already stopped by the OTHER double parked car. Awesome.

To make this entire thing worse, there is a LOADING ZONE about 10 feet from where the uhaul truck is parked that is sitting empty. In fact people are using it to turn around.

So there are now about 15 cars all stopped, honking, with no place to go. Would you, as a perhaps NOT insanely selfish person, feel a little anxiety if it were you blocking the road? Would you perhaps feel a little emabarrased or al the very least uncomfortable? I would. I would feel really bad.

These 2 groups of people, who are evidently very important people, so much more important than the rest of us, but not so as important to be able to hire movers, have stopped unloading and loading their respective vehicles and are walking up to the cars and yelling at us.

Insane. Seriously. Insane.

So we just rolled past 7,500 miles on our 2008 Mazda5 Touring. It goes to the dealer tomorrow for the maintenance. Just last night, my brother in law was in town and took his first ride in it and it got me thinking I should answer the few questions from the comments here and here and make another post.

If you missed the pre-purchase post or the couple month followup, check them out.

So do we still like it now that it is full of kids’ toys and isn’t as clean as it once was? Now that it no longer smells brand new?

Yes.

It is still the perfect car for our family of 4 in the city. One question in the comments was about life with 3 kids and some gear…. I would say it is not optimal. The 3rd row is really the trunk, you get one or the other. Sure, you can fold down one of the seats and split the difference, but really, it won’t be enough. If you have a child small enough to live comfortably in the 3rd row, you are likely still carrying more gear for that child that one would like, so it becomes a space issue. With 3 kids, it could be a good second car, but as a primary car it might be tight.

That being said, I personally feel that people should purchase the smallest car they can deal with on a daily basis, and for the few road trips or big trips to home depot or what not, one should rent a car. If you are subscribing to that concept, then the Mazda5 might be a great car for a family of 5, especially if not all 5 are in the car all the time. For our family of 4, the Mazda5 could do a cross country road trip without issue. If we had 3 kids, I would just rent a minivan for the trip, put the miles on someone else’s car, and not drive a giant mostly empty car for the remaining 350 days of the year, sucking down fuel and moving an extra 1,000 pounds around that you aren’t using. (Assuming the Mazda5 weighs 3400, and the Honda Odyssey weights 4550).

The other question was about high speed stability and the lack of traction control/stability control. Short answer, in my humble opinion, the Mazda5 will out-handle a Honda Odyssey in high speed emergency maneuvers without question, regardless of the lack of electronic driver aids.

Long answer.

A little background, I am an instructor with the Audi Car Club of North America and call the Chicagoland Chapter my home. As an instructor, we take students out on area tracks and teach them high performance driving. We provide classroom instruction, a slalom exercise, a threshold braking exercise, and a lane toss exercise. Then we take the student out on the track and teach them how to deal with the car at speed.

My Audi does have ESP, which in the case of Audi uses a yaw sensor to determine the movements of the car, compares that to the steering input, and if they are not in line, the system will apply the brakes on the corner of the car necessary to bring the 2 lines back together. If is amazing in the snow and the rain. If the Mazda5 had such an option, I would have purchased it without question. It can do amazing things, and it is a nice safety net. But I am of the thought that a properly trained driver can do a lot.

Traction control is usually only in play at low speeds, IE when you floor it from a stop sign and the wheels spin. Many systems are not involved in a high speed emergency lane change or anything so I am not worried about that. Would I like traction control? Not really. I would like a proper differential on the front axle, but hey, it isn’t necessary. If I induce wheel spin, I just lift a hair until traction is regained and that is that. Would it be nice in the snow? Sure, but I have found a set of snow tires makes a far bigger improvement, and it works in all aspects, driving, stopping, turning, etc. Buy snow tires if you live in a snowy area, and this applies to all cars. But that isn’t the point here.

So comparing the high speed maneuvering abilities of a Mazda5 and a Honda Odyssey. Disclaimer: I have not had a pucker moment in the Mazda5. I have in other cars, but not the Mazda5. I am ok with that. I have tossed the Mazda around the occasional Chicago pothole at 40-50 mph without drama. I also have never driven a Honda Odyssey. That being said, I still feel confident saying the Mazda5 will win hands down.

First off, the Mazda5 is over 1,000 lbs lighter (3400 vs 4500). I also have a 1985 VW Jetta, and that car is ~2,300lbs. Trust me, you can feel the weight difference. The difference in weight is insane when you talk about handling, braking, and acceleration. Less weight means less work for the engine on acceleration, so you don’t need as much HP. Less weight means less work for the brakes, which convert energy to heat and will have a limit. Less weight means less work for the tires, as they are the only things touching the ground. When you slam on the brakes at speed, you are putting a LOT of weight on the front tires. Then you try to steer, and the tires just can’t do it. This holds true for all cars. Tires can’t do multiple things at once very well. And the more weight you put on the tires, the less likely they are to do what they are asked. So the weight of the Mazda5 will inherently make it a better handling car. Don’t get me wrong, engineers do amazing things in suspension tuning to make a big car feel nimble, but you can’t engineer around physics.

Second, the size of the Mazda5 compared to the Odyssey is significant. Obviously that is the reason the people get the Honda over the Mazda. But that very size is going to be a liability when you need to toss the car around the debris that just fell off the truck in front of you at 70 mph. The size combined with the weight will, again, in my humble opinion, give the Mazda5 the edge.

Third, suspension tuning. As I said, I have not driven a Honda Odyssey, but EVERYONE I have ever met that has one loves it. So I am sure it is good. But I am confident in saying the Mazda5 drives like a car. It drives NOTHING like a Toyota Sienna, a vehicle I have put a few miles on in the past. So if the Honda is anything like the Toyota, I feel comfortable saying the Mazda5 suspension tuning is more agile and performance oriented when compared to a full size minivan. This again will give the edge to the Mazda5. The lower profile tires on the Mazda5 also help.

So handling wise, I am confident the Mazda will out handle the Odyssey in nearly all situations.

I also thing that every driver on the road would benefit from driver training, like at a driving school put on by the Audi Club, Skip Barber, etc. The driver is the best place to start when it comes to improving a car. All the modifications in the world can not make a poor driver good. But a good driver can make a poor car perform. The average driver has never done FULL threshold braking intentionally. They haven’t learned how to best avoid an accident like in the lane toss. They haven’t felt the weight transfer as they move the car through a slalom course. And knowing how the car is going to feel and how to control it will make all the difference, regardless of the car.

Other issues with the car? None. It has been great. I would still like 35mpg, but that isn’t happening in this market segment, so I am ok. We have had no problems to note, and I actually still enjoy driving it.

So I read daring fireball by John Gruber and enjoy the little snide comments about the current tech item of the minute. So the current news item is the new photos of this previously unphotographed tribe living in the amazon.

John’s Comment:

Someone needs to let these people know about the upcoming new iPhone.

Funny funny shit. Nice to see that he can recognize the frivolity of the same industry that he works in. Good job.

I like the green party. I would like them to win someday, although I am not sure they have their act together yet. And as I was reading Rodney’s post about the candidates that are in the running for the green party nomination, I went to all their sites.

As you may know, I am a web developer by trade, so I am often more critical of sites than the average bear. That being said, the Green Party will never get ANYWHERE at this rate.

Number one, Jesse Johnson. Not sure about his logo from a design point of view, but I AM sure that it should not be that pixelated. Header and footer design are a bit lacking in terms of style. Not liking the font either. But I REALLY don’t like how the navigation is present only on the home page, and is gone on every other page (although there is a ‘back to the home page’ link). Seriously, dead end every click? And needless to say, it doesn’t pass validation.

Number two, Kent Mesplay. Not sure what year it is, but is isn’t 2008. Those buttons are nice and smooth. The header takes up the entire ‘above the scroll’ area. Awesome. Table layout. No doctype? You can imagine how validation went.

Number three, Kat Swift. oooookkkkkk really? This is your bid for the president of the united states? Really? Your index page doesn’t even have your full name on it. Perfect for SEO. The blog link is first and foremost, but it is off site. And written by someone else. Design wise, I won’t even start. Again, tables (surprised?). And Doctype is also missing. Serisouly. It is tabbed nicely, so that is a plus. White and yellow text on a black box with a green background is not a plus. My eyes are still adjusting. I’ll stop here.

Number four, Cynthia McKinney. This one actually looks like they used photoshop, so that is cool. Not sure on the middle hump top shadow thing, not sure what light source could actually create that. I guess I am supposed to think the green box is coming TOWARDS me. But the other buttons on the page have lighting effects that don’t support that. Glowing text is a good use of a filter in the aforementioned photoshop. ALMOST had the heavy header thing working, but for some reason stopped shy of full width. The even have a gradient in the background. Would have been cooler if the background and the content box worked better together. They are the only one with an RSS feed, which is good. Not updated too often, but hey, they have one. Table layout. And this is the ONLY site I have ever seen were w3c couldn’t complete the validation. Oddly enough, this seems to be due to a comment in some script. The calendar link takes you to another site, with a totally different look and feel. I wish they had done some more styling of the text in the site. But really, this is the best (?) site of the bunch.

So this is the current state of the Green Party’s candidates.

Getting all my tax stuff together and over to my accountant and I was reviewing everything. Being that my father is a CPA he sold some of my apple stock off this year to diversify my IRA a bit.

I bought Apple stock on 10/24/2000 at $10.44/share. I sold it this year at $190.28/share. Nice.

Now if I had only bought more than the few shares I did, as I bought under 100 shares. Oh well.

Harper shared this today, and it is really interesting not only based on the role of religion in Japan, but that the United States of America was lowest on the ‘Atheist’ front.

Awesome.

So I have had this iPhone for a little while now, and I have gotten pretty used to it.

I also have had this MacBook for a while now.

On the MacBook, you can use 2 fingers on the track pad to scroll. Obviously, 2 fingers going down on the trackpad scrolls down. Two fingers up scrolls up. Amazing. I use it all the time. Love it.

Recently though, I have noticed myself thinking ‘lets scroll down’ and my fingers 2 finger scroll up. My mind says ‘wth’ and my fingers do it right. You know how it is, it happens quickly and you you think nothing of it. It just now dawned on my it is a result of the fact that the MacBook and the iPhone do OPPOSITE motions for scrolling.

It is kinda frustrating. Opposite paradigms for the same thing. Both make sense.