Rambling

Audi TT vs. C6 Corvette

Eric G. Harrison — Thu, 09 Jun 2005 09:43:00 GMT

Wow, people are weird. My 'summer' car is a new Corvette. It's a great car, although it can really kinda suck in Chicago traffic sometimes.

Anyway, on the drive home yesterday, I was toodling along in the right lane in traffic, when an Audi TT comes screaming up behind me and just before hitting me, swings into the left lane. “What an idiot” methinks. I assume the driver wasn't paying attention, and that's why he nearly hit me.

Well, no such luck. A few blocks down, we come to a red light, and he's in the left lane, and I'm in the right lane and we end up stopped next to each other. I'm ignoring him, fiddling with the radio when I hear “... smoking Corvettes!”...

Me: “Huh?”

Him: “I love smoking those new Corvettes!”

Me: “Smoking them?”

Him: “Yeah, beating them in races”

Me: (thinking - has he stuffed a big motor in that thing) “Really?”

Him: “Yup! Got a 3.2 liter Quattro. Nothing can beat me!”

Me: “Uh, you think you can beat a new Corvette?”

Him: “Got 390 horsepower in this thing!”

Me: (thinking - huh, I wonder if Audi has done some magic here)

Him: “Let's do it”

Me: “Do what?”

Him: (racing his engine - sounds like gerbils pedalling furiously) “Race, right now!”

Me: (looking at the bumper of the car in front of me) “Here? What, you want me to ram the car in front of me? (laughing)”

Him: laughs

Light changes, we drive away in traffic, he turns left a block later down some street. Now, there are some weird / bad things here:

First, he wasn't a young kid. He was probably my age (late 30s). WTF is he thinking wanting to race on the street?

Second, I'm not sure he was all there - even if I would race him, it sure as heck wouldn't happen when we're behind 7 cars at a light.

Third, I don't race people (he of course has no way of knowing that). I find that when I'm driving the 'vette, I feel that generally I have very little to prove. Technically, the car is one of the fastest on the street, and even if you put two roughly equal sports cars against each other, it comes down to whoever gets the better start. If my car can do 0-60 in 4.1 seconds, and yours can do it in 4.5 (or whatever), either one of us could win - not that I'd race you, y'all remember back to the future, right? :)

Fourth, I should point out it was a beautiful day, sunny and 80 degrees. Perfect weather for a high power car like the 'vette to actually get the power onto the ground. If it's wet out, or the temp is below about 50, traction is a real problem. If it were a bad weather day, he'd have a chance - Quattro is wonderful for putting the power down (of course, it actually hurts performance as you have a lot more mass in the drive train getting powered by the engine compared to a 2 wheel drive car).

Finally, the fastest Audi TT I could find in my online research is the 3.2 liter TT. 0-60 times of roughly 6 seconds. Not even in the same league. I wonder if it has something to do with TT drivers? I had a friend at an old company I used to work for. I had a 2000 Corvette, he had a TT (don't remember what engine it had). He was constantly bragging about how fast his car was, and how it would beat the 'vette. One day, he and I were out to lunch and he drove my car. About 5 minutes into it he said something like “I will never even joke about my car being able to beat this monster.“ That was in the C5 Corvette. 50 fewer horsepower.

Anyway, I have to get back to doing what I do, but I just thought I'd let everyone in the Chicagoland know that they should watch out for the Corvette beating Audi TT. <booming voice>YOU COULD BE NEXT!</booming voice>.

Pictures of Saddam Hussein in his underwear?

Eric G. Harrison — Tue, 24 May 2005 11:04:00 GMT

Not going to have much sympathy for him.

Another class action lawsuit with no benefit to the 'victims'

Eric G. Harrison — Sun, 15 May 2005 16:43:00 GMT

I received an announcement that I am a member of a class in a class action lawsuit against AT&T Wireless. I've taken to reading the details of these mailers (it seems I get one every couple of months) just to see how the lawyers and the 'victims' are making out.

In this case, it seems that under certain circumstances, if you cancelled your AT&T Wireless service, they charged you through the whole month, rather than stopping on the day you cancelled the service. So, for someone who had a plan like mine, that could be a $70 or so overcharge. I'm sure that on average, the charge is much less, but you understand my point.

Since these lawyers have gone to bat for me, you'd think I'm looking forward to my huge reimbursement check, maybe I could buy some friends some beers with it or something. Alas, no. My reimbursement is either a 50 or 100 minute long distance calling card (non transferrable) - retail value, maybe $10 - actual cost to AT&T Wireless - zilch + $.01.

Um, yeah. When was the last time someone with a cell phone with a billion 'free' minutes bothered to use a calling card anyway?

Well, surely the lawyers will enjoy their 100 minute callings cards, right? Alas, again, no. The are not receiving the very valuable calling cards that are just compensation to those of us victimized by the ruthless AT&T Wireless company. Rather they are nobly receiving $2.1 million dollars for a few months worth of work, and even that wasn't full time, I'm sure. Even if it was 5 lawyers full time for 2 months, that's about 3200 hours of time, that's about $650 per hour. Not bad work if you can get it. And realistically, it was probably a lawyer and an assistant, with about 100 hours of work total (it's not that hard to make a boilerplate lawsuit), equalling $21,000 per hour.

I think the first step in lawsuit reform would be to pass a law that says that a lawyer cannot receive more than (say) 100 times the amount that an individual victim will receive from a settlement. Of course, given that most lawmakers are in the pockets of lawyers (or former lawyers themselves), we know that will never happen. In this case, they could use their 10,000 free long distance minutes to shop around for other victims. How about those people sick of ads everywhere - there's got to be some money in solving a real problem like that!

Thank goodness those lawyers are out there protecting us from being ripped off.

Anyone remember NeXT's?

Eric G. Harrison — Fri, 06 May 2005 20:05:00 GMT

When the NeXT system came out, I had moved to Chicago and absolutely fell in love with the system. The only problem was that I couldn't afford one. So, I came up with an idea to try to become a certified developer (or whatever they called it back then) and applied. Fortunately, I was rejected. I'm quite happy with the path my life has taken, so I'm happy with just about all the things that have happened (I wouldn't be who I am if those things hadn't happened, right?).

What reminded me of the NeXT was coming across this site, through comments an article on Ars Technica on the history of the graphical user interface. The article itself is pretty okay. Took me back to when I first saw the Macintosh (lived near Ocala, Florida back then) and when I was messing with OS/2 - I had a machine that I had upgraded to 2 whole megabytes of RAM. Yes, two whole *megabytes*. I was quite the computer stud.

Anyway, time to change up my desktop on my home system again. It's been looking that same for a while now. Can't have that!

Hitchhikers "review" - no spoilers

Eric G. Harrison — Thu, 05 May 2005 05:23:00 GMT

In a word: “Meh”.

This probably describes it best.

Best part: The planet factory floor.

Second best part: The Guide itself.

The worst part: Lots of missing explanations - nothing to tie it all together.

Summary: Wait and get it through NetFlix.

NetFlix has a sense of humor

Eric G. Harrison — Thu, 28 Apr 2005 05:23:00 GMT

Mark Cuban's HDNet Films is getting ready to release “Enron - The Smartest Guys in the Room”, a documentary of sorts about Enron and the ensuing disaster. Mark Blogs about it here. Since Mark's claim is that all of HDNet Films' are going to be available in theaters, DVD and other formats right from the start, I decided to see if I could queue it up in my NetFlix account.

“This store is available 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. Well, almost ...” Cute! Hey, if the system has to be down for 'maintenance', you might as wel have a little fun with it.

Beware - MBNA setting traps for you!

Eric G. Harrison — Tue, 26 Apr 2005 17:52:00 GMT

I just received a mailing from MBNA regarding 'changes to my account', and just for fun, I decided to read what changes they've made. Here's what it boils down to:

If you are even one day late or you exceed your credit limit by any amount, your interest rate will go to 24.99%!
The definition of a grace period is changing. It appears that before, the grace period extended through the billing cycle, now it ends with the payment due date. This knocks a few days off the grace period, and if your payment is late, then not only will they jack up the interest rates, but you lose the grace period for any purchases you made during that billing cycle. More interest charges!
If you are used to getting your checks back from your bank, you will no longer get checks back from MBNA. They will do an EFT deduction of your payment (which results in a faster deduction than normal processing), and then the check will be destroyed and not returned to you.
There are a couple of other changes but these are the real killers from what I can see.

Basically, here's what it boils down to: They want to own you totally. You make any mistake, and they screw you eight ways to Sunday (whatever that means).

So if you have a balance with them, it's time to pay it down or pay it off. I'm sure other credit card companies will be happy to transfer the balance (be aware of course that transferring balances incurs charges as well!). Naturally, I'm sure the other credit card companies will be sending out change notices themselves.

The best policy is to only use your credit card for stuff that you know you can pay off at before the billing cycle is up.

It's funny, I was wondering if anyone else had blogged about this change, so I searched for MBNA in Technorati, and found this entry that had a snippet of text from the Clark Howard's web site (original article here). It seems clear that since bankruptcy is now apparently much harder than it used to be (another consumer unfriendly act by this administration - see entry about Fax Spam) companies like MBNA will use this opportunity to crush people under immense credit card interest rates.

We're fortunate in that we don't carry credit card balances (although in the long-long ago that was not the case), and we certainly hope that between incredible interest rates and the bankruptcy changes, perhaps American's on balance will start consuming a bit less, or at least only buying what they can afford.

Awwww, who am I trying to kid!? Ain't gonna happen. But it sure needs to.

UPDATE: There is a good article at Slate about the problems that MBNA and Capital One are encountering. I can't believe I just pointed y'all to Slate. I feel dirty...

UPDATE 2: Fixed typo :)

National Security impacts Google Maps...

Eric G. Harrison — Tue, 05 Apr 2005 05:57:00 GMT

Google has released a new feature that allows you to see satellite imagery from their Google Maps system. This is very, very cool. After looking for my condo (turns out it was nothing but a dirt field when the sat image was taken), I looked for my dads house (couldn't find it), and my old house in Minnesota (found it!). Then, for fun, I decided to look for the White House in Washington, DC. Google did a great job of zooming into the White House, but it hit me that something seemed a bit weird. Take a close look at the images for the White House and the two buildings to the East and West of it. The roofs don't look quite right now do they...

I totally understand why they did it, but it does jar the senses a bit...

Ah, April 1st, the day Slashdot becomes even more worthless...

Eric G. Harrison — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 13:31:00 GMT

If you don't read Slashdot, then you're unaware that April 1st is pretty much a day where all front page articles are worthless. Now usually, maybe 1 in 5 front page entries have something worthwhile (although, within the comments things degrade into an “MS Sux, Linux Rules” bitchfest pretty quickly regardless of the subject of discussion), but today, nothing but jokes. Even if there is a serious post up there, who would know / trust it?

Of course, last year Google announced GMail on April 1st, and that just confused the heck out of everyone!

HP Lightscribe DVD writer installation...

Eric G. Harrison — Sun, 20 Mar 2005 09:28:00 GMT

I've got a bunch of HP hardware laying around Casa De Harrison, so generally I feel pretty decent about their stuff. This morning, I installed the HP dvd640i DVD Writer with Lightscribe. If you haven't heard, Lightscribe is the technology that HP invented that uses the laser in the drive to burn a label onto the disc. It's a very clever idea, although it's not something that would scale up past the occasional CD/DVD. The reason for that is that writing a 'full' label with lots of detail, in the best resolution can take over half an hour (a simple text label in draft mode is only a few minutes).

Anyway, the point of this post is that after installing the HP software pack for the burner, there were a bunch of icons on my desktop for “related” products such as a link to Wild Tangent to play their games, and a Symantec program to “check the security” on my machine. Well, look HP, I appreciate that the versions of Sonic and other programs that you provide might not be the full “deluxe” versions and that they may prompt me to upgrade, but please don't put marketing links on my desktop and install marketing software (especially without an uninstall option)! I wasn't given any choice about whether I wanted extra crap on my desktop as well as extra marketing crap on my machine, otherwise I clearly would have turned it off.

Well, its just a few files to delete, but who knows what extra crap they stuck on there?!

In short, HP, don't be stupid. It's early adopters (like me) that set the tone for your sales, and you can bet that whenever the issue of this drive comes up, there will always be a “but it installs extra useless marketing crap on your computer” as part of my summary of it. That's not good for business, no matter what you got from the vendors. Not because I'm super important (I'm clearly not), but because it's people *like* me that drive the sales of this stuff.

Anyway, for those of you who thought I fell off the face of the earth - this is proof that I haven't. I've been super busy with some stuff that's been going on in my real world life, and I've spent a lot less time in front of the box than usual. Hopefully things will calm down shortly and I'll be able to do some of the larger posts I've been planning.

Y'all take care now, ya hear?