This just in

I have rosacea. Weeeeeeee!

On the bright side, this means I'm just like Bill Clinton and Mariah Carey. Bet you didn't think that was even possible.

Moving on

So, the company I work for is in the process of moving its offices, and last Friday was the last day I would work in the area in which I've spent most of my waking time for the past seven years. I knew it was coming, but it was actually a lot harder than I thought it would be. I really had to take a moment to say good-bye.

The new office space is very nice, and I'm sure I just need to get used to it...but the old place was home. I'm going to miss it.

MCS: Break-in complete!

Finally hit 1,200 miles the other day, which completes my new MINI Cooper S's break-in period. Now I can rev it up past 4,500 rpms. I mean, without feeling a little bad about it. Which is nice. It's just so much fun.

I've had the car for about three months now, and I still totally love it. I sometimes wish I'd bitten the bullet and bought one with a manual transmission instead, and just taught myself to drive it...but, to be honest, the automatic transmission is pretty awesome. I love using the flappy paddles, and when I don't feel like shifting, I can just throw it in automatic mode and not worry about it.

Now all I have to do is get the driver's side butt-warmer fixed and figure out how to take it to a track so I can drive absurdly fast. You know, without breaking the law and endangering innocent people.

What a dream I had

It has come to my attention that many MINI owners are so obsessive about keeping their cars in pristine condition that they put them in a garage during the winter months, and drive an old beater car instead, thus protecting their Coopers from the salted roads and such.

While I have no intention of doing this, I had a dream the other night in which I decided I needed to similarly go out and buy an old beater to drive. And my choice? This:



A new BMW 3-series. That's right -- my "beater" was a beautiful sports car that costs, base, about $4,000 more than the (heavily-optioned) car it was meant to protect. I think I need to be really rich. Or to stop eating pizza before bedtime. One or the other.

Speaking of my car, though, I've got nearly 300 miles on it, and it's been an absolute dream. Gave myself quite a fright driving down Lakeshore Drive a few nights ago, when I hit two potholes right in a row -- I've read about people ruining their run-flat tires and even their rims doing that. Fortunately, all seems well. The little guy's tougher than I thought! It must be the stripes.

MINI Commercials

Kossan.se













Heh heh. :)

2008 MINI Cooper S, Yo

Wow - it has been a long time since I've blogged! Since last I posted, the 2008 Olympics have come and gone, I took a couple of weeks off work to slack off, and I bought a new car.

Here, gentle readers, is my 2008 MINI Cooper S. Some say these cars are gay; I say they are freaking awesome.






I've never had so much fun driving a car in my life. These things are crazy. Nimble, fast, and no slouches when it comes to fuel economy and gadgets! A brother could do worse.

iPod, uPod, we all pod for iPod

So the other day, my iPod, a 4th generation 20 GB model from a few years back, started flaking out on me. It froze up, which didn't worry me, since it had done that before, and all it took was a quick reboot¹ to bring it back to life. This time, however, that procedure sent the poor device into an endless cycle of rebooting - a cycle I could do nothing to break.

Fearing the worst, I ran a few diagnostics² to reveal the problem: hard drive failure. Excellent.

Well, I'd been thinking about getting an iPhone for quite some time, because they're so damn cool and stuff. If this wasn't an excuse to go out and nab one, I don't know what was...except that, according to the rumor mill, a new version of the iPhone, one supporting 3G network connectivity, is due out sometime this year - possibly within the next few months - and I truly hate buying expensive equipment only to have it become second-rate immediately afterwards.

Anyway, I needed an iPod to tide me over until I was ready to take the plunge into iPhone-land. I could have gotten an iPod classic for about $250, but then I'd have felt like a chump if the next iPhone model came out a month later. The Shuffle was another option, since I mostly only use my iPod to listen to a single playlist in shuffle mode while working out anyway - and at about $50, the price was certainly right. On the other hand, I knew I'd get frustrated with it if the new iPhone took more than a few months to come out.

So, for about one-fifty, I went and bought myself a nano.

Dear, sweet Lord, is this thing tiny. I put it in my jacket pocket for a little while, and I had to keep touching it to make sure it hadn't fallen out. It doesn't come with a clip, so I bought a nice little incase sleeve/belt clip for it, so that I don't have to hold it in my mouth while I work out, which I could easily do, by the way.

The model I bought was the cheaper, 4 GB model, which is fine; not enough to hold everything in my iTunes library, but certainly enough to hold what I generally feel like listening to in this phase of my life. The screen is gorgeous, bright, and colorful - it's my first color iPod, so I'm still not used to that.

I was skeptical of the whole "watching videos on a two inch screen" thing, so I spent a couple bucks on a TV episode at the iTunes Store. I'd have expected my eyes to be hurting after forty minutes of staring at that tiny little thing, but I was perfectly comfortable the whole time. I'll chalk that up to the nano's sharp, vibrant image. Seriously, I'm impressed.

Oh, yeah, and it plays music good, too.

So, in case you can't tell, I like it, and I highly recommend it to anyone who's looking for a music player in that particular specific price and feature space. I think it will tide me over until the iPhone 2.0 comes around beautifully. :)


¹ To reboot a 4th-gen iPod, simply hold both the center button and the Menu position on the clickwheel simultaneously for several seconds.

² To enter diagnostics mode, reboot the iPod so that the Apple logo is visible on the screen. Then, hold both the center button and the Rewind position on the clickwheel simultaneously for several seconds.

Now THAT'S a Fortune

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