March 2010
Monthly Archive
Weathering it
| Posted by Chill on 31 Mar 2010 |
The coldest winter in parts of Central Florida in history, and the worst flooding in 100 years in parts of the Northeast couldn’t possibly have anything to do with climate change, could they?
No, of course not!
Brrr
| Posted by Chill on 31 Mar 2010 |
I was wrong. It’s not been the coldest winter in 60 years here. It’s been the coldest winter in history here, at least for the months of January, February and March according to the records (and my cold ass).
No way to link directly to it, but the lowest-ever average temperature for those three months was 58.0 in 1998, and so far (as of March 29), it was 57.6.
Rev-iew
| Posted by Chill on 31 Mar 2010 |
A more unbiased bullet point review of the Pontiac GTO.
Things I like
♦Great interior
♦Insane amounts of power
♦Best ride of any car I’ve ever driven. It’s as sure-footed as a mountain goat (very apropos!)
♦Looks amazing
♦Better and more comfortable seats than cars that cost 3x as much
♦Very roomy for a car that is Ferrari-fast
♦Oil is very easy to change, which is highly unusual for a sports car
♦Engine parts are damn cheap compared to imports and even most domestic cars (also highly unusual for a sports car this quick)
♦Very few of these on the road — I see Ferraris about as often as I see another GTO
♦Is the most tame 470HP car I’ve ever driven in, or been in — it can feel like gramma’s Buick Skylark, if you want it to
♦Is very controllable when you break out the rear, or lose traction (even with traction control off –it’s just well-balanced)
♦Historically, outside of a Porsche, is one of the most reliable 400+ HP cars around
Things I don’t like
♦The wheel wells aren’t large enough for a truly large enough tire to handle all that power*
♦The lug nut caps fall off (just cosmetic, but annoying)
♦The suspension parts, while they feel good, are fairly low-end and prone to breaking at those power levels**
♦The climate controls are the worst part of the interior, and are just poorly-designed
♦Stock radio doesn’t play MP3 CDs, and has no aux port and is hard/expensive to replace
♦Checking the oil doesn’t work correctly
♦Parts specific to the GTO are a bit hard to come by, comparatively
♦Wish it were more than a four-speed automatic, though it’s a great (and quicker than the manual) four-speed automatic
♦Wish the computer interface were a bit better
♦Body parts for the GTO are so expensive that if it’s ever damaged, no matter how minor it is, the insurance company is likely to total it out
♦Like most sports cars, can’t see shit when backing up
♦Draws too much attention — wish it looked like a Ford Fiesta to most people, while still looking like a GTO to me
*Stock, the rims only take 245 tires. At minimum, should have 315s in the rear.
**Upgrading the most important parts is about $500, which is not much, but still wish it had better stock parts. But selling what in the ’80s would’ve been called a super-car for only $33,000 new, I guess GM had to cheap out on something
Pole position
| Posted by Chill on 30 Mar 2010 |
I think I’m a super-tasker.
Be interested in getting tested to see if that is true. But as an anecdotal example, I usually see more wildlife of all varieties while driving than my partner sees when she’s a passenger (and still drive safely).
Also, I don’t seem to have much penalty for context-switching, even for complex tasks. I can usually effortlessly switch between two difficult tasks, and I am constantly surprised when people who I work with take minutes or sometimes even hours to do things that take me seconds to switch to.
For instance, while writing this post, I am also in my head composing an email to my boss and to a vendor, and installing applications on several different computers that I am remoted into. I also am peeking back and forth to read a long email from someone else.
Yes, I know, that most people can’t really multi-task. But that doesn’t mean no one can. And given that in any job where production is measured I usually quadruple — without cheating, and often taking on the harder tasks — anyone else’s performance in unbiased metrics, I think I am pretty good at multi-tasking given the available evidence.
Helium Vola
| Posted by Chill on 30 Mar 2010 |
One of my favorite groups doesn’t have a single US-released album, or I’d buy one.
Even the MP3 albums are over-priced, and I definitely won’t be paying $36 for a CD.
If anyone is going to Germany, pick them all up for me, ja?
Fuck yeah
| Posted by Chill on 30 Mar 2010 |
Anyone who cares about dramatic character development should read this and study it hard.
Caduceus be gone
| Posted by Chill on 29 Mar 2010 |
One of the reasons for my very tepid support of the so-called healthcare reform was because it sold out women. (In addition to it being a corporate handout.)
Yes, it does help some people, but at what cost? And are we going to keep slamming women down to help people? And if so, what’s the fucking point?
Viridian
| Posted by Chill on 29 Mar 2010 |
It’s been an unusually wet spring here, following the coldest winter in about 60 years.
Though the winter was cold — colder than Seattle, for several months — the spring will be very green compared to last year, when 90% of the state was in drought.
Light me up
| Posted by Chill on 27 Mar 2010 |
This is disappointing, but expected.
Verizon will not be laying any fiber in cities where it is not already underway. They will, however, be continuing to hook up homes and businesses in cities where the rollout has already started.
Running fiber to homes should be now considered a utility-like service, no different than running sewer lines, and should either be government-done or government-mandated and then done by some well-regulated private company.
I don’t care which method is used, but not having fiber to the home is just making the US fall even farther behind other advanced countries. Soon, those countries will have gigabit internet connections (a few places outside the US already have this, btw), while we putter along with the modern equivalent of broadband dial-up.
Let’s quant it
| Posted by Chill on 26 Mar 2010 |
All of this is part of what some people — including me — call the “HR culture” that is pervading society.
Unfortunately, there are many parts of the human experience that can’t (and shouldn’t be quantified). Doing so is insane.
This quantification nonsense comes from a particular mindset that is fairly dominant now that, as Clarissa notes, believes that if something cannot be measured then it is irrelevant and immaterial.
Of course, most of the best parts of life and even of learning cannot be measured.
Therein lies a problem.
Chlorine
| Posted by Chill on 26 Mar 2010 |
When I was four or five, I thought “Saudi Arabia” was “Salty Arabia.”
How to set up the bomb
| Posted by Chill on 26 Mar 2010 |
If you need some nukes, here’s how to get rollin’.
VM
| Posted by Chill on 25 Mar 2010 |
Someone called my voicemail at work and left 10 minutes of hold music as the message.
How the fuck did that happen, and more importantly, why?
Tinkering
| Posted by Chill on 25 Mar 2010 |
Pretty much my my thoughts on the iPad and related devices.
Don’t misunderstand: I don’t think it’s a real problem that I can’t change the capacitors in my television today — I think that the most interesting surfaces for tinkering tend to evolve over time — and today the primary tinkering substrate appears to me to be the open web.
What I do think is a problem is that today, unless you buy the Apple SDK you can’t modify the software on the device that you already purchased — that jailbreaking is criminalized and actively fought against. That’s a problem not because $99 is so exorbitant, but because people who don’t know they could be tinkerers — who haven’t gotten the chances that they need — won’t ever get them in that situation. That’s a problem.
The manufacturers and corporations wish to make it into a world where it’s illegal to change or modify anything (including physical products), and we really shouldn’t let them.
Closed systems lead to closed minds and closed cultures.