hit 186,000 miles on my ‘91 benz which I purchased at 133K.
I have yet *knocks very-hard on wood* to have any major repairs. on my ~75 mile a day commute I use about ~2.3 gal. of gas. not too shabby for a 17 year old car.
Category Archives: news
WARNING: painful to watch, worse to hear; bleeding of the ears may occur…
this is the kind of overproduced trash that makes me cringe at the possibility of microsoft absorbing yahoo… (I can’t imagine yahoo allowing something as awful as this vid - not to mention Y!’s “ecosystem” is entirely contrary to microsoft’s) - it’s so bad… it’s not even funny.
update: I purchased this bike!
Needs
(and what the V-Strom offers):
- comfort: upright riding position, feet flat on the ground at stop, no major fatigue from just cruising
(fairly hard to judge from intarweb reviews and a brief sit on it at the dealership)
- great mpg: would love 60+
(concensus seems to be ~52)
- safety: high speed travel with crazy commuter cagers and the occasional lane splitting
(ABS! full frontal fairing.. additional safety accessories available)
- sports-like torque, great 0-60 - top speed no where near as important
(still need to test ride it… but reviewers and various tidbits from around the web show it on the slow side from what I’d like)
- love the way it looks: cruiser appeal with the protection of a touring bike, great color paint
(it almost has it all… it’s a teensy bit too bug-like lookin’ but compared to the alternatives hardly an issue)
- passenger comfort, storage
(the girlfriend wants to feel safe & secure too! laptop & lunch needs a safe place while I ride)
Big consideration: 75-90% highway travel (commute ~70 miles a weekday)
a concise video review of a very-similar model:
a short thread on how much I’m shooting for at the dealership.
official suzuki DL650 V-strom product page of the exact bike I will purchase (most likely.)
uhhh, yum!?
01-Apr-08BBQ’d Happy People by naterawer
just two painstakingly long months to go til the June 24th release.
[the new film is the]…most tentacle-packed Futurama epic, space itself rips open, revealing a gateway to another universe. What lies beyond is a mix of horror and love as the Planet Express crew encounters a repulsive, planet-sized monster with romantic intentions.
The second feature-length Futurama film will be followed by at least two more movies…
as proclaimed by this animation mag post
as observed in this Hate Rises - washingtonpost article
(technically, RI also has “none”, but that ruins my title, and honestly how accurate can this really be?)
blackberry pearl II (8130) review
18-Mar-08
in short: it is awesome, even without the BB data plan - sprint has been unable to add to my account for me.
(note: sprint CS on the whole, sucks ass. however, once in awhile you will get through to some great people; really depends on the time of day.)
I have a pre-existing data plan on my account that “conflicts” and will not allow BB data on top or instead of. cest la ve ~ no +$30/month for sprint… besides not being able to use the BB browser/messenger/maps, I am cool with the data plan I have now. it allows me (via BB’s underlying built-in TCP stack) I am able to use all these cool (nate’s naraku approved) free apps:
- google maps (takes advantage of the GPS unit in the phone; freaking awesome) - 4.5 out of 5
- gmail - 5 out of 5
- yahoo go - 3.5 out of 5
- opera mini - 4 out of 5
- jivetalk (has a 30 day free trial, then it’s $15 - well worth it IMO) - 5 out of 5
other than a few issues loading apps on the phone by USB (one “big” key is getting them without the use of the BB browser - use this user agent switcher firefox add on to fool google & yahoo into letting you download) all is swell.
battery life could be better, but is definitely acceptable. on a heavy usage day I can run down to the red, but I generally charge everynight anyhow. and the fact that you can use a universal usb charger makes charging on the go an unfettered snap.
here is a neat side-by-side tech spec compare of the RIM BB Pearl and the Apple iPhone.
my new BB pearl replaces the former samsung a900 which I reviewed over two years ago - it had a great run.
it gets better and better as now my blackberry serves as a modem for my laptop on my commute. check out how I teathered it to linux via bluetooth here.
last updated: 8/15/08
…They [Researchers from several Japanese Universities] asked drivers to cruise steadily at 30 kilometres per hour, and at first the traffic moved freely. But small fluctuations soon appeared in distances between cars, breaking down the free flow, until finally a cluster of several vehicles was forced to stop completely for a moment.
That cluster spread backwards through the traffic like a shockwave. Every time a vehicle at the front of the cluster was able to escape at up to 40 km/h, another vehicle joined the back of the jam.
this issue is rather easily alleviated if people didn’t fucking tailgate. you don’t need to break when there’s slowing down in front of you, IF there’s enough space to compensate. it’s common sense people.
see?!
be a hero - dampen the shockwave - don’t tailgate.
4 day work weeks - sign me up
05-Mar-08the guys over at 37 signals experimented with the 4 day work week, 3 day weekend last summer and have since made it the standard. I think this snippet sums up the logistics of their thinking:
Three-day weekends mean people come back extra refreshed on Monday. Three-day weekends mean people come back happier on Monday. Three-day weekends mean people actually work harder and more efficiently during the four-day work week.
I imagine this sort’ve setup, however dreamy as it is, probably does not work as well as hoped especially as an organization grows. 37S is pretty small (~10?) and nearly no central office anyway, so great for them.
it all goes back to how do we fairly & accurately quantify “work-done / day” anyway? especially when it comes to creative production - sure, just about anybody can say “yes it is done” but only the author/artist/developer/etc can truly say when and how much “progress” is made. quantifying based on things like lines of code, strokes of a brush, or words written are obviously flawed.
I digress; I want 4 day work-weeks too. upon hire, I requested 4 in-office work days, 1 at home work day (wednesday, or friday) … still gunning for that on a certainty weekly basis. I know how much work I could get done, it’s the (employeer) trust issue that’s generally at stake.
IE8 to play nice with web standards
04-Mar-08in a blog update by the Internet Explorer 8 dev team, it has been stated that the microsoft standards “set” in IE7 will be abandoned in favor of more widely outside-MS standards set by those at w3 and the webstandards group.
In light of the Interoperability Principles, as well as feedback from the community, we’re choosing differently. Now, IE8 will show pages requesting “Standards” mode in IE8’s Standards mode. Developers who want their pages shown using IE8’s “IE7 Standards mode” will need to request that explicitly…
I’d love to say the days of multi-browser testing are numbered (fellow web develrs rejoice) but somehow I doubt it. this seems more like a move with hopes that its effects will to curb alternative browser adoption momentum by getting on the bandwagon that so many are loving.
(pick your poision)
further separating himself from the music industry, trent reznor has released his new album, Ghosts, as such: first 9 tracks (ghosts I) are free, all 36 (ghosts I-IV) for $5, 2xCD set for $10, $75 for a “deluxe edition,” and finally $300 for the supremo fan “ultra-deluxe ltd. edition.”
available now via:
- the offical ghosts release site - though extremely slow; the site has not been adequately “equipped” to handle the surging internet traffic driven by sites like digg, slickdeals, reddit, and probably every other mainstream media..
- amazon is also selling the $5 version.
I ordered from store.nin.com successfully… though, so far have been unable to complete the download for the version I paid for ($5). amazon is probably the way to go for now.
update 3/4 11am: site when down for 6-12 hours last night. it is back up today and blazing; download complete. way to go nin.com-tech! cheers.
coding horror
28-Feb-08in the latest article from my prefered programming-commentary blog, coding horror, aptly titled douchebaggery, Jeff Atwood calls some Rails OSX zealot named David a douche bag. I am inclined to agree, based simply on statements from David like this:
I would have a hard time imagining hiring a programmer who was still on Windows for 37signals. If you don’t care enough about your tools to get the best, your burden of proof just got a lot heavier.
and
Apple will continue to trounce everyone else for the preferred geek platform. The stigma of being a Web programmer still using Windows will increase.
Jeff takes (understandably) personal offense, as he is a windows platform programmer, but rises above that simple fact by extracting the deeper offense and offering a logical retort to Dave’s insult:
…What purpose does the statement “stigma of being a Windows developer” serve? I can only think of one: David gets off on putting other people down.
And that makes him kind of a douchebag.
Which also means when you’re using Rails and OS X, you’re using the platform of choice for douchebags.
I admire Jeff’s wit as well as his coding-insight and that’s why I will always be a CH reader.
Don’t waste time arguing about the character select screen. Results speak loudest. Show the world what you can do in your programming environment of choice.
While I am no longer a windows coder, I use tools similar to those available on windows AND osx. I chose Ubuntu on my macbook pro because I prefer the interface over OSX and windows offerings. in the end, it makes no difference what platform you “use”, it’s what you create that defines you as a developer.
According to CIA public records of country government current account balances, the US is in some deep ass debt, falling behind a myriad of third world countries. Not that our debt is any mystery, seeing the a point-blank ranking of countries definitely drives the point - the Feds suck at managing our money. of course there is all sorts of controversy (scroll to bottom) surrounding the CIA itself… so who can say how accurate this ranking truly is.
Rank Order - Current account balance
Rank Country Current account balance Date of Info. 1 China $ 363,300,000,000 2007 est. 2 Japan $ 201,300,000,000 2007 est. 3 Germany $ 185,100,000,000 2007 est. 4 Saudi Arabia $ 88,890,000,000 2007 est. 5 Russia $ 74,000,000,000 2007 est. 6 Switzerland $ 67,890,000,000 2007 est. 7 Netherlands $ 59,280,000,000 2007 est. 8 Norway $ 55,820,000,000 2007 est. 9 Kuwait $ 51,490,000,000 2007 est. 10 Singapore $ 41,390,000,000 2007 est. ... 160 Italy $ -57,940,000,000 2007 est. 161 United Kingdom $ -111,000,000,000 2007 est. 162 Spain $ -126,300,000,000 2007 est. 163 United States $ -747,100,000,000 2007 est.
ultra conversative Ron Paul to the rescue (ah, if only.)
the Comcast seek and destroy Rumor Mill
19-Feb-08last week my buddy abram posted a little blurb on some sketchy calls he has received about his new car’s warranty being up - it’s not, and they did not have the make/model/year. so he pondered, how the hell did this company get his cell #? perhaps it was comcast, selling or distributing (indirectly?) the contact info. additionally, abram wrote the consumerist a friendly little note with a heads up. they wrote back saying “oh, well, just subscribe to the do not call list” with little concern if there was indeed a scamola going on.
a few days later, he received a call from a legit (sounding) Comcast representative call letting him know he saw his blog post. “Frank assures me that Comcast is not selling any of their customers’ personal info to outside organizations, and then recommends I sign up for the Do-Not-Call list.”
now, the most interesting part about all this is that abram’s blog is under an alias, and in order to get his real (and up to date) contact info a decent amount of digging had to be done. so, this means Comcast has some sort of PR dept that actively and assertively seeks out and destroys rumors.
it likely went something like this: the representative received a tip (quite possibly from the consumerist) on the blog post, read it, whois’d the domain, looked up the real name in Comcast’s customer records db, retrieves cell phone #, and finally makes a friendly call to clarify and answer any other questions my bud abram had.
fairly impressive for a large company to go above and beyond to both save (Comcast) face and reassure customer. I wonder how often this sort of thing happens?
…perhaps the S&D Rumor Mill is in response to occurances such as this:
Ron Paul campaigns on
13-Feb-08dismay swept over the Paul camp after “super tuesday,” but not much suprise - Dr. Paul didn’t win any states. most people figured he had thrown in the towel. he has not. in short, Ron Paul’s not campaigning to “win” the presidency, he’s a realist, remember. while he won’t outright say “we are not going to win,” he knows what is more important is to further his message and empower the people involved in grass roots politics.
prime Paul points:
- belief in freedom as defined by the constitution
- a (much) smaller federal government, leave many matters to states
- a logical foreign policy (pundits say isolationist) that advocates protecting our borders over maintaining the US empire (world police)
- concentration on a balanced budget, serious crackdown on overspending
- maintain his seat in the 14th congressional district of TX
- the presidential campaign will continue until funding drys up (or the GOP selects McCain officially)
message from ron (2/11)
my biggest gripe about Ron is that he doesn’t keep things short - a two edged sword. on the plus side, he is thorough and chalk full of education & experience; even when I do not exactly agree with his stance on a particular point, I find myself nodding, yeah he knows what’s up. (unlike dubya, who knows what’s up… his ass)
on the other hand, we are an ever shorter attention span people - short and sweet wins broader appeal. he speaks quickly, pauses rarely, and guns his points hard - oft times to comedic degree that many consider “crazy.” to those I ask, how bad could it be to have a mad scientist as president versus what we have now?
