electric relaxation

Ok this was just bizarre. I may be overindulging myself here, but the fact remains that I am some how and in some tangible way connected to the person who drives this car.

I actually cooked. Rasam satham, beans curry and yelachumbaram satham. I screwed up the sticky rice but the basmati was ok. This is all part of my new sunday-night-cooking plan. So far, I’m two for two – though it should be noted, I never have pulled this off had I not had access to LisaBus, LisaChop and LisaScrub. Thanks.

In case there was any doubt. I completely forgot my mom’s birthday (it was yesterday, Friday the 13th!). Anyway, happy belated birthday mom. Despite indications to the contrary, I love you very much.

I’m surprised I didn’t think of doing this earlier, but anyway it seems moderately useful. Currently, my website is backed by a virtual disk sitting on one of the two hard drives in my Media Center machine. It should be easy and simple enough to create a second virtual disk on the other physical disk, then use software RAID-1 and LVM or some crap like that in the guest to get basic mirroring and insulate me from failure of one of the physical disks.

I’m surprised that I didn’t see any notes about this in the VMware knowledge base. I couldn’t be the only person who would want something like this, could I?

I pretend to really like jazz, but for some reason I actually just really like Coltrane. I don’t just put him on to feel cool, but shockingly I seem to want to listen to his stuff – well to be honest, I never really make it much past Blue Train, even though Giant Steps is supposed to be the more seminal work. But I never turn it off either.

Anyway, the Wikipedia has a lot to say about John Coltrane. For example, I had no idea his career was so shaped by Miles Davis. Nor did I know about his heroin addiction and subsequent dalliance with LSD. Around the time he finally kicked the can he was even dabbling in ayurvedic medicine, or some other sort of Hindu hogwash.

Stupid hard-coded expiry date in stupid unofficial ghetto fabulous one-off GSX build off of the Workstation 5.5 branch. Thankfully, lchan abused her Program Management powers to spin me a new build and once again breathe life into my pitiful website. Better yet, the new build buys me six whole months before I get to go through this song and dance again.

I can’t believe it’s 2006 and there’s no better solution for running headless VMs on a Windows box. Although I suppose ‘better’ is a subjective term. But I want my e1000, damnit.

Seriously, what the heck is that all about. My best guess is that it has something to do with the 5.0 part of “Mustang 5.0″. See the new posts in the Craigslisted section. Credit for all three new winners goes to Mr. Behmaram-Mosavat.

Driving through Oakland with Lisa yesterday, the oft-told story that the Oakland cranes inspired the AT/AT walkers in Star Wars was revisited, as was my equally well-worn belief that I would actually bother to research this rumor. Fortunately, the weight of inaction was finally too much to bear. Inspired and resolute, I plumbed the abyss; indeed, I made it all the way to the FOURTH PAGE of the Google Search results, a depth that few can claim to have matched. And what I found was… insubstantial. A bunch of jerk-offs claim it’s true, the Oakland Port Authority mentions the rumor in passing without any real stance on its validity, and Snopes has nothing on the subject.

I just tried this out last night. I needed another fix of Lost after blowing through the first season at Jai’s house, and this was unsurprisingly the quickest way to get it.

I’m somewhat disappointed, for two reasons:

1. The video quality seems pretty poor. The movies are watcheable, but for the size (200 MB), I would’ve expected more. The average TV show obtained via other means is usually around 175 MB and looks better than this… or so I hear, or something.
2. There are polish issues. The videos aren’t more clearly distinguished from the audio in iTunes. The video files should be stored in ~/Movies or its equivalent on Windows instead of just in ~/Music/. The Music Store link should be renamed Media Store or just Store. I’m way anal about this sort of thing but Apple usually is too. I guess they just want to get this out there and they’ll clean up these sorts of issues if this really catches on?
   

Car: Ford Crown Victoria
Price: $6,000

I want to hang out with this guy and buy him a beer. This thing cracks me up every time I read it.


I'm selling my amazing 1999 Crown Victoria Standard sedan. There are many things this car is not:

* a lightweight, fuel-efficient commuter car
* a chick magnet
* a quick-cornering, Alpine Road-racing weekend joyride

However, there are many things this car is:

* tremendously solid, safe and reliable
* possessor of seemingly the world's largest trunk
* despite the Ford insignia, smooth and comfortable
* affordable as all get-out

I am the car's second owner. I purchased it in July 2004 from a senior citizen who moved back East. His loss was my sweet, sweet gain. He'd put a whopping total of 28,000 miles on it in five years of ownership, and had maintained the car like clockwork at the local Ford dealer.

I have continued the car's stellar maintenance record, which has basically been oil and tire changes. No current or previous problems. I've put perhaps 18,000 on the car, almost all highway (driving from LA to Phoenix, LA to SF, numerous times). I average 23-24 mpg on the highway.

NO problems with this car. I bought it mainly because of its incredible price. Check Edmunds.com or any other car site -- the Crown Vic is a constant award-winner for reliability and safety. My previous car was a $34,000 Audi, and, as nice as it was, it wasn't worth five times this car.

I am selling because we're a one-car family, and my 5'0 wife is tired of getting behind the wheel of such a large vehicle. From her perspective, I can't say I blame her.

I will include a magnetic orange police-style dome-light with purchase. The rest of the pimping is up to you, although I certainly have suggestions...

John

Please note: the picture below is not of my car. I’m too lazy to walk down and take a photo of the real one. But it looks just like this.