Ad Notes
No, these aren't
sponsored links. As the song says, these are just a few of my favorite
things. Isn't it odd, though, how rarely it's done? The question
is, if you have the space on your home page, and you like the products
and want the companies to do well, then why not post little ads
for them?
What a cool
organization. Tons of everything for a fourth of what I was paying.
Expanded info here.
Wow, what a
winner this thing is. After dealing with spindles and binders
and jewel box racks for years, trying to keep my ever-burgeoning disc collection
in hand, these things were a godsend. About $140 apiece, each one
holds 150 discs. The USB cables can be daisy-chained together, they
stack on top of one another, you look up the movie on your computer and
the disc automagically slides right out. Is that cool or what?
I own seven of them. Much more info here.
I've been a
Gingeraleaholic since the days it was considered a 'mixer' and was found
in the wine section of the grocery store, sitting right next to
the Tom Collins mix. Unlike the colas and clear drinks, it has zero
caffeine, which I like for two reasons. One, you can drink it all
evening long and it won't keep you up, and two, it didn't get my body used
to caffeine, so when I do drink a cup of coffee, it has a decent
effect.
In all fairness,
though, any recommendation for Ginger Ale merits three warnings:
1.
It is completely unlike any other soft drink, and, once you get used to
it, it's hard to go back.
2.
Not every store carries Ginger Ale. This is the price the poor Gingeraleaholic
pays in a modern, uncaring society.
3.
When you do drink a sugary soda, it's going to taste like someone
just dropped three heaping tablespoons of white sugar into your drink when
you weren't looking. Ginger Ale, as a genre, is 'tart', not sweet,
and once you get used to 'tart' as your main soft drink taste, everything
sugary tastes ten times so.
Also, while
there are other brands of Ginger Ale out there besides Canada Dry, the
difference is somewhat akin to comparing Coke to RC Cola. Yeah, they're
both in the 'cola' family, but that's where any similarity ends.
Put another way, if I'm at some gas station dying of thirst and they don't
have any Canada Dry Ginger Ale, specifically, but offer some other brand,
I'll grab a Coke or Pepsi.
I own a top-of-the-line
Presario. Dual-core Intel CPU, sucker screams. You know that
little blue animated bar that displays while Windows is loading up?
On my old computer, it went through 12 cycles before the machine continued
booting. In the new Compaq, it does it twice and moves on.
And, if you like tinkering with the insides, Compaq has always made a great
case that just snaps apart.
It sounds a
bit silly, but one of the things I like about the Compaq is the variable
CPU cooling fan. It goes a little faster as more CPU power is used,
to keep the chip cool. A lot of programs, like my latest fave, Dreamweaver,
don't signal when they're finished with the process, but I can hear the
CPU cooling fan slow down just a tad as the CPU goes back to 0%.
Although completely unintentional, it acts as a great "Program is through,
dude!" signaling device. Very thoughtful of Compaq, however inadvertent.
The only downside — and this is probably true with almost any new machine
— is that it has an ATA hard drive, rather than an IDE, so there's only
one IDE slot. I daisy-chain that into my two ROM drives, but since
I wanted an additional (IDE) hard drive, I slapped in a PCI IDE card.
Works fine, but still a bit of a bother. From my casual tests, the
ATA drive isn't any faster than the IDE, so why force us to switch?
Typical 'busy work' on the manufacturers' part.
Actually, I've
liked M&Ms for my sweet-of-choice throughout most of my adult life,
but a few years ago I bought a bag of Kisses on a whim, and have been stuck
on them ever since. Storing them in the fridge is highly recommended.
This is what
I own and live aboard. By genre, it's a 'motoryacht'. Specifically,
it's a 40' Mainship Sedan Bridge. Basically, it's the aquatic version
of those great big motorhomes you see barreling down the interstate.
I don't have any good pictures yet, but the following looks identical to
my boat:
Dig the cool
sliding door and the steps up to the flybridge, rather than some clunky
ladder. Ever tried to carry a plate of food and a drink up a ladder?
Happily, there's nothing 'uncomfortable' about the boat. The interior
ceiling is 6'4", so there's no feeling of being 'cramped', and it's nice
and wide and the interior space is utilized perfectly.
NETFLIX
What a great service, and what a fabulous selection. And it's only
getting better. I started with them when they had 4,000 movies online
— I believe they're now up to 70,000 80,000
90,000.
On the subject, I should state that virtually every bad thing you've ever
heard about Netflix is either a distortion of the truth or an outright
lie. Much of it, admittedly, is simple ignorance on the public's
part. For example, one of the biggest myths is that they throttle
big-time users, but I was a "big-time user" for years, living in the same
town as a distribution center (which meant a 3-day total turnaround),
and they never missed a beat.
Also, they
don't have hundreds of discs of every backwater documentary at every center,
so occasionally one will actually take an extra day or two (gasp!)
to arrive if it's coming from another state — and here come the "they're
throttling customers!" rumors again.
The biggest
part of the rumors stems from the fact that the idiot lawyers who wrote
their bylaws actually used the dreaded word "throttle" in it, but
the context is this: If a distribution center has one disc and two
people want it, they'll "throttle" the frequent user and give it to the
guy who doesn't rent as many movies, figuring the big-time user will have
other things to watch and won't mind waiting an extra day for the disc
to arrive. This is actually a pretty nice thing to do, took extra
money for the extra programming of the system, and Netflix should be given
kudos for it.
Here's my little
dynamo:
400 horses
under the hood, all muscle. Has the optional 'Performance' switch
on the console (it's an automatic) that basically eliminates any pause
between shifts. This bad boy will get scratch from first to second,
and second to third.
The thing that's
so much fun about it is that, in 2008, this is a 'sleeper' to most of the
younger drivers who don't recognize it as a muscle car. Yeah, it's
got a spoiler — but my neighbor's baby carriage has a spoiler.
The fun of the car isn't racing off the line, but outright snookering unwary
drivers.
Like so:
-
What's very
common is to be in a left-turn-only lane, turning onto a wide street, with
some great big black SUV behind me. Their salesman told them that
they've got the biggest, meanest, baddest vehicle on the road, and all
they see in front of them is some common sedan.
I make
the turn and pull into the left lane. Inevitably, they'll
hit the gas and try to pull around me, determined to show everybody just
who's boss. After all, their salesman told them that they've got
the meanest, baddest...
In the
meantime, I've got my arm out the window tapping on the roof like I'm listening
to the radio, nodding my head back and forth to the music (the radio's
not actually on), not a care in the world. But what I'm really
doing is watching the SUV like a hawk in the rearview mirror, pushing down
on the gas pedal just enough to stay exactly one car length in front
of it. The driver's clutching the wheel, hitting the gas, fire and
smoke are billowing out the tailpipe — and they just can't believe
they're not passing a... a... a common sedan!
-
Kind of the
same thing happened the other day while behind a brand new BMW. We
were behind some slow truck creeping along about 35 in a 55 on a back country
road where there aren't any cops. The truck finally, slowly, turns
off, and the guy in the BMW nails it. He is g-o-n-e, gone!
Except
that he's got company.
I'm pretending
to be tapping on the roof to a song, nodding my head back and forth, not
a care in the world — and staying exactly three car lengths behind
him. His eyes looked like saucers in the rearview mirror. He
simply couldn't believe some common American sedan was keeping up
with him. After all, his salesman had told him that he had the meanest,
baddest...
We hit
95 before he realized he wasn't going to shake me and we settled down to
a cozy 65 the rest of the way.
-
And there's
something else about the car that's pretty special, and has nothing to
do with horsepower. If you're an old-timer, you'll remember "Wide-Track
Pontiac" being introduced by Pontiac back in the 60's. Basically,
Pontiac started coming out with slightly wider cars, which improved the
ground-hugging capabilities immensely in some of their lower-slung models.
With its wide tires, this thing sticks to the pavement like glue.
So I'm
driving along this country road through grassy fields. I'd been on
the road three or four times before and knew it fairly well. It was
a 35, so I'm moseying along about 40 when — naturally — this great big
black SUV comes roaring up behind me, king of the road.
Well, I'm
in a frisky mood and, knowing what was coming up, I hit the gas.
We're both flying along this thing about 50, just about the time the road
narrowed by half and went into a real nasty series of s-turns.
I never
touched the brakes.
Figuring
if the car in front of him wasn't going to hit the brakes, well, he sure
as hell wasn't going to, either!
I clung
to the wheel and just forced that bad boy through those curves.
The last
thing I saw in my rearview mirror was a big cloud of dust as he want skittering
off the road.
Sorry,
dude. Blame the salesman.
If you're wondering
if I mortgaged the house to pay for the fuel this gas-guzzler must use,
consider that I was originally thinking of buying a small Honda Passport
SUV. Being a tiny 6-banger, it'd probably get TWICE the gas mileage
that a gas hog like the Firebird does, right? That's certainly logical.
Well, no sense
in just talking about it — let's look at the official EPA stats!
You were saying?
Besides the
sleek, slice-through-the-air aerodynamics, the reason it gets such decent
highway mileage is because of the gear ratios. It doesn't shift into
top gear until almost 60, and at 70 it's sitting right at 2,000 RPM, basically
a fast idle.
The lower gears,
however, are another story.
One of the
things I most like about this rascal is the way the spoiler is molded into
the body. That way, when I'm yakking with some hot Mustang or Camaro
owner, I can lightly touch his spoiler and say,
"Ah.
Optional equipment, I see."
Being aboard
an oceangoing boat, I need something wireless so I can check the weather
radar maps while at sea. The download rate isn't anything to jump
up and down about (150 KB/s), but it beats the hell out of wi-fi.
The modem is a small thing about half the width of a pack of cigarettes
that sits on top of the tower and has something I'd never seen before.
Right before the USB jack, it splits into two, with the second USB line
only supplying additional power to the modem for a little extra boost.
Pretty cool.
When it's time
to hit the road water, I yank out the USB plugs and throw
it into the laptop case. Up on the helm, when I see something nasty
on the horizon headed my way, I pop open the laptop, grab a few radar maps,
and decide whether it's just a squall I can ride out or if it's some mega-storm
the size of Nebraska and I should head ol' Nellie back to the barn.
I don't drink
much, but if I'm in a bar, I'll usually order a shot of Yukon Jack in a
brandy snifter. I'll then let it air for about 15 minutes before
touching it. Make no mistake — this is a real whiskey.
200 proof, but it has a hidden sweetness that's really cool. I call
it "an adult Southern Comfort". It's unique, like Southern Comfort,
and a tad on the sweet side, but not gooey-sweet like S.C. is. It's
a little pungent at first, though, and needs to air out a bit. Occasionally,
I might get a bottle as a gift, in which case I leave the bottle uncapped
for a few weeks, just to get rid of the harsh alcohol tang.
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