A Digression

Things I’ve learned in the past week:

• Scripts that may work under Apache and PHP 4 aren’t guaranteed to work under Apache 2 and PHP 5.
• Mucinex either works or it doesn’t.  If you have a cold and it’s not working, chances are it’s just draining you of your soul and driving you to early dementia.  Let me tell you - once I stopped taking the stuff this weekend, my cold felt much more manageable.
• Caffeine is a glorious thing.
• It’s a little hard to convince people to throw together a serious protest involving permits and money when the organization you’re convincing doesn’t even have a bank account yet.
• You’d be amazed how much energy and time gets put into campaigning in a party with fewer than 100 active, dues paying members.

I wish I had more to say at the moment, but, yeah, things have been a little busy around here.  The rather nasty cold that I picked up on Wednesday definitely didn’t help.

Car Lusty

Okay, I know this week has been kind of dry over here, but that’s not to say I haven’t been writing anything.  At Car Lust…

• I engage in a semi-coherent rant about the Dodge Aspen that changes tone and direction at least a few dozen times.  I’m really not proud of this one.
• A little toilet humor, anyone?
• A requiem for my old truck, which I replaced over the weekend.

So, you see, I have been writing.  As for the bailout bill, I’ll get back to that - I’m still chewing on the final version, which is laid out a little differently than the version the House threw at the Senate a few weeks ago.

While I Wait

Today was, by necessity, a slow blogging day - unfortunately, my youngest son came down with a nasty case of diarrhea and the ESO had class, so I had to take a bit of a sabbatical from work and online pleasures.  At the moment, however, I’m “patiently” waiting for a teleconference to start, so let’s see what’s on tap…

• This video from the Onion sums up just about every ounce of frustration I’ve ever had with any technical device.  Please note that the language is extremely NSFW.
• I have a new Car Lust up!  Enjoy the melange of Oldsmodiesels, Italian military futility, and multi-dimensional physics.
• Map Scroll is easily one of the most fascinating new map-loving blogs I’ve ever seen.  If you enjoy esoteric bits of cartography half as much as I do, you’ll love this one.  It already has a fond place in my RSS feeder.

That’s it for now.  Sorry for the light content - hopefully tomorrow goes better.

Nash Metropolitan

Hooray - another Car Lust post!  My post on the Nash Metropolitan is up.  Enjoy!

I know better. I swear!

Since Monday, give or take, I’ve been suffering from a mild cold.  After it kept me up throughout the night a couple of days ago, I decided I would take something last night to make life a little easier and let me get some sleep, so I took a Mucinex with cough suppression pill and went to bed.  Unfortunately, cold medication and I have a bit of a checkered history - it either doesn’t work (Claritin) or makes the symptoms worse (Sudafed/Actifed/etc.).  The nice thing about Mucinex is it at least doesn’t make the symptoms worse or lead to nasty sinus infections.  Instead, it does a solid job of liquifying the mucus and letting it drain out of my nose and off of my throat.  Unfortunately, it also makes my head feel like my cranial fluid has also been thinned out, which leads to me feeling a little lightheaded, mildly increased light sensitivity, and a whole host of other fun side-effects that I could go without during my workday.

So, what do I do?  I wake up late this morning, decide I need a caffeine jolt, and pick up a Rock Star on my way to work.  Oh yeah - drug that makes me spinny is going to mix real well with a drink that makes me hyper and jittery.  Brilliant.

Needless to say, my ability to throw together a coherent thought right now is somewhere between “You’re kidding” and “Go do something anatomically impossible to yourself”, so this is as good as it gets today.  In the meantime, I’m going to do what I can to focus long enough between floaty spells to actually do what my boss pays me to do, if only in brief, lucid spurts.

1977 Buick Nighthawk

Yep, this isn’t the only blog I’m active on.  Here’s my latest Car Lust post, which should help dispel any rumors that I might actually have taste or good sense.

Refactoring

I’m making some changes around here.  Here are some of the highlights:

1. Updated to Wordpress 2.7.  As I mentioned earlier, if something is broken, now is the time to point it out.  As an aside, 2.7 is awesome.  I’m not kidding.  The Plugin Installer function is muy bueno, especially since that means I can easily install plugins like Wordpress Database Backup.  This little plugin will save my bacon, let me tell you what.
2. I’m changing the premise behind this blog.  Though I do write about politics from time to time, I think the whole “I’m running for President in 8 years” routine is missing the point, or at least not really communicating what I want to communicate.  Originally, it was meant to be a tongue-in-cheek knock on the two year long primaries that we were going through.  Now that the election is over, I think it’s time to move on.  Time permitting, I’m also hoping to clean up some of the categories; then again, I tell myself that almost weekly and never get around to it, so we’ll see what happens.
3. I changed the theme and will be fine-tuning it over the next few days, time permitting.

I hope everyone likes the remodeling around here!  If you want to express your opinions on it, there’s still a comment button lying around somewhere.

Wordpress 2.7

I updated to Wordpress 2.7 today and changed the theme.  Let me know if anything seems broken.

Okay, Now That’s Just Cool

Via Herding Cats, I stumbled across the Typealyzer, which scans your blog to tell you what Myers Briggs type you are.  Apparently, I’m an ISTP.

The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.

The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.

Well, you’re not going to see me as a policeman or a fireman anytime soon, but as anybody who ever sat in a car while I drove between ‘98 and, oh, ‘02 or so would tell you, I definitely had my moments of insanity behind the wheel.  Thankfully, increasing age and a couple of kids have taught me to mellow out a bit, though I have been known to go on a dirt road or two that I had absolutely no business being on.

As an aside - Been busy lately.  Once Christmas is done, I should be able to post somewhat more regularly.  We shall see.

Bailing Out The Bucket

Car Lust Blog, where I am a sporadic contributor, threw down the Bailout Challenge:

So, assuming you could present a list of take-it-or-leave-it conditions to the automakers, what would they be? Silly, serious, semi-serious–it doesn’t matter, I want to hear your suggestions

This led to me expounding on why I thought Detroit got into this mess, which is a point I want to focus on tonight:

Now, as for the root fundamental causes that led to them getting into this mess in the first place, well… let’s take a look at things from Detroit’s position about five years ago or so:

You are an American car maker. By the late ’90s, your cars were close enough in reliability and price where you were becoming a credible alternative to the Japanese. People were actually thinking of buying your cars again. However, there are a couple of problems. First, the Japanese economy is starting to improve enough where Honda and Toyota are putting money into R&D and facilities improvements again, which means you’re pretty much done playing catch-up. Second, due to some well-deserved perception issues, even if you do build cars that are as good as the Japanese, you’ll still have to sell them at a $1,000+ discount for the better part of a decade before people will legitimately believe that you can actually make a decent automobile. This means that, even if your labor and productivity were in-line with your Japanese rivals, you’d still be fighting a losing battle.

Fortunately, there’s some good news. People are starting to buy SUVs and trucks. Unlike passenger cars, which you can barely sell for cost + distribution, you can actually get $4,000+ in pure profit for each SUV and truck that you push out the door. Of course, you’ll need to resort to some clever marketing in order to convince people to buy YOUR truck, instead of your fellow domestic’s truck, but that’s where tow ratings, horsepower, and all that good stuff comes into play. Better yet, the Japanese barely have a presence in these markets and the Europeans are virtually non-existent here. Best of all, SUVs and trucks belong to the one market where people still trust your craftsmanship, meaning that you can charge full price for these things and not get humiliated in the process.

Then the price of gas skyrockets. Everyone complains that you didn’t put any money into marketing or developing a decent car. The politicians are breathing down your neck. Your bottom line is evaporating faster than a pool of water in Death Valley. The only question everyone has for you is, “Why?! Did you learn nothing from the ’70s?!”

Of course you did. Trouble is, at least for you, there is NO future in passenger cars. None. Like we established, not only would you have to produce better cars than Toyota and Honda, you’d have to do it for less. Basically, you’d have to become Hyundai, and there’s no way in heck the UAW or anyone else is going to let you do that. You’d have to junk most of your legacy factories while Korea and Japan invest in brand-spanking-new ones. You’d have to cut floor compensation to near-Walmart levels, which the UAW certainly won’t fly with. You’d have to increase labor flexibility, allowing people to do whatever happens to need to be done, which, again, UAW work rules will shoot down faster than a Spitfire facing a FW-190 over the cliffs of Dover. So, you try to fake it and hope it works. You buy a Korean manufacturer or two (Daewoo?). You buy some European brands. You hope that somewhere in that is enough car know-how, enough labor flexibility, and enough modern tech in the factories to let you crank out some cars and rebadge them as American.

Detroit has learned that their hopes were in vain. Daimler nuked Chrysler’s stake in Mitsubishi and Europe, which is why they’re done. GM is discovering that people in the US still don’t want rebadged Opels or Daewoos. Ford is trying desperately to figure out how to get its excellent Ford Europe cars over to the US before their bank account breathes its last breath. Is it unfortunate that Detroit didn’t put more money and effort into passenger cars? Sure. Did they have much of a choice? Not really.

So here we are.

Of course, there were a fair number of people that felt that Detroit could have avoided this by simply investing their money into cars that people would want in the future - smaller cars, higher quality mid-sizes (think Malibu/Taurus/Avenger, only decent), and other vehicles that would hold interest if gas ever began to cost more than $2 per gallon.  There’s probably some truth to that, and I think the Big 3 knew it - that’s why GM and Ford both went on an acquisition spree, buying Volvo, Saab, Jaguar, and so forth.  Chrysler, meanwhile, went a slightly different direction - they instead targeted themselves to be part of an acquisition spree, which was certainly more realistic considering their size of the time.  Either way, the overall strategy was going to be the same - sell SUVs and other high-margin, low-efficiency vehicles in North America and use the European and Asian subsidiaries to bail them out if gas prices rise.  This, to be fair, is the exact same strategy that got Detroit through the ’80s - if it wasn’t for Mazda, for example, we would never have experienced the ubiquitous Ford Taurus, or its smaller cousin, the Tempo.  Mitsubishi not only gave Chrysler numerous captive imports, such as the Colt, they also gave them a manufacturing plant.  Geo never would have happened at all were it not for GM’s acquisitions of Suzuki and Isuzu.  At each point in history, the strategy was the same - use the inefficient UAW plants to build the larger iron that could command a heftier profit margin and use the foreign subsidiaries to carry Detroit through when times were bad.  For nearly 30 years, it was a moderately successful strategy - a heck of a lot more successful, at least, than Detroit’s abortive efforts at trying to satisfy the small car market themselves.

So, what happened?

Detroit got stupid greedy.  They got it in their heads that it wasn’t enough for the American nameplates to crank out SUVs - they tried to get their subsidiaries into the act, with ill-fated ideas like the Saab 9-7X and the Volvo XC-90.  GM was the worst about this; Ford at least had the sense to let Ford Europe continue to make world-class cars, even if they still can’t seem to grasp that people in the United States might be interested in buying them.  Chrysler, meanwhile, was stripped bare, thanks in no small part to Daimler’s gross mismanagement, which eventually led to Daimler selling off all of Chrysler’s former overseas subsidiaries (including most of their stake in Mitsubishi).  Consequently, the Big 3 were barely viable when times were good - now that 40% of their primary market just vanished without a trace and what’s left of it has little interest in any of their higher margin SUVs and trucks, Detroit is completely and totally screwed.

The worst part about it, at least from where I’m sitting, is I’m not entirely sure what Detroit could have done differently.  As I said, they were barely viable when they were printing money with 15 MPG lifted station wagons, which is all a modern SUV really is these days.  In order to think long term, they had to do what they could to last through the short term, and it’s not any of them were recording record profits going into the past few years.

Detroit has three big handicaps going against it:

1. An overwhelmingly complex and largely duplicitous dealer network that’s protected by a tangled web of state and local laws that prevent effective divesture.
2. A labor union in a semi-monopoly position that can effectively shut down the entire business whenever a more efficient technology or a new factory is deployed.
3. A monolithic, inflexible, bureaucratic management that’s based in an area that believes that domestic automakers have no real competition (Detroit).

In short, there isn’t a single part of any American automaker that’s designed to function correctly, if at all.  At design, production, and distribution, there are so many barnacles attached to each automaker that it’s nothing short of miraculous that the whole lot of them took this long to sink.  Now, the barnacles are upset - they see that the ship is sinking, but nobody knows how to let go.  So, they’re asking all of us to prop the ship up so they can continue feeding just a little longer.  Unfortunately, in order to save any of the automakers, we’re going to have to chip off a lot of the barnacles, which means changing state laws and wiping out dealers (or just indemnifying the automakers from dealer closures - a lot easier during a bankruptcy, I suspect), renegotiating the parasitic labor contracts that the UAW strongarmed Detroit into, and jettisoning as much of the old management staff as humanly possible while still possessing some sort of fetal corporate structure.

This isn’t going to be quick, this isn’t going to be easy, and it’s going to take a heck of a lot more than $50 billion to pull it off.  Question is, will it be worth it in the end?

It looks like we may well find out…

I’m Just Happy It’s Over

Things that could have gone better over the past couple of days, but didn’t:

1. The bailout failed, leading to a record fall in the Dow, at least in absolute terms (albeit not in relative terms - to match 1987, the Dow would have needed to lose over 2,000 points).
2. On Sunday night, thanks to a wonderful bout of food poisoning, the digestive systems of both the ESO and myself did a wonderful imitation of our current financial markets.  She proceeded to reject the “bailout” through repeated vomiting out of her mouth, while my intestines did a wonderful job of flushing all value out of the financial systems of my rectum.
3. Kid Rock Branded Beer is coming.  I’m guessing the flavor and price point will be somewhere between Pabst and MD 20/20.

Regarding point #2, yeah… it got a little interesting Sunday night.  The ESO and I went to a barbecue at a friend’s house, at which I started to get sick after eating some appetizers.  Then, a few hours later, the ESO got rather sick as well.  Of course, there’s no way to prove whether or not the barbecue had anything to do with it - some foodborne pathogens can take a day to wreck havoc, which would place the problem with what we had for dinner the previous night (El Pollo Loco, for those checking at home).  That said, I do think it’s a rather strange coincidence, timing-wise, and toxicity-based food poisoning (botulism, etc.) can definitely affect people within a relatively short time.  In the end, it really wasn’t important - by 3 a.m. on Monday, after feeding Aiden and doing what I could to take care of myself, I heard the ESO collapse in the bathroom.  It was around that point that I made an executive decision to get us all to the ER and let the professionals sort it out.

The good news is we’re getting better.  We were probably already on the mend by the time we got to the hospital - after some anti-nausea medication and some IV-administered fluids, I was feeling moderately better, though the ESO and I still ended up sleeping through most of Monday.  Today, I’m somewhat able to digest solid foods without severe discomfort; tonight, for example, I managed to work my way through a bowl full of noodles with a dash of parmesan cheese.  It’s the most substantial thing I’ve had to eat since Sunday night; up until tonight, eating more than a banana and downing a bottle of Vitamin Water led to severe issues.  I was even able to make it to work today; tomorrow, I might even be able to drink some coffee so I can actually be awake at work.  My bosses will appreciate that immensely, I’m sure.

I do have some good news from all of this:

There are no pictures.

You may thank me later.

I’m Not Dead.

Last week was busy - it was my last week at my old job, so there was a fair amount of unfinished business to take care of.  Sadly, this cut deeply into my blogging time.  That said, it wasn’t a complete black hole of creativity.  Observe:

I posted a Car Lust article on the Yugo GV.  It was good enough to be Instalanched.  On the quantity vs. quality scale, I’m doing pretty well.

Excellent Timing

Last night, Obama gave his convention speech, where he outlined his vision for his candidacy and what he hoped to accomplish.  Slate has the entire text here, including some background information on key points; it’s definitely worth a read.  Since Obama has historically been an excellent prepared-speech presenter, this was supposed to be a moment that would earn him an abundance of press, bump his poll numbers up, and help him finally put McCain away once and for all.

So, what are we talking about today?  Let’s see here…

On Slate, we have… McCain’s VP pick!

CNN?  Why, that’s… not Obama on the front!  That’s McCain again!

Okay, what about MSNBC, home of Olbermann and Matthews?  Surely they think Obama’s speech was headline news, right?  Right?

Okay, okay - what about overseas?  Surely BBC thinks Obama’s speech is more important than anything else going on in this race…

All right, I know one place that will almost certainly have Obama as front-page headline news:  NPR!

That’s right - instead of talking about Obama’s great speech, everybody’s talking about McCain’s choice for Vice-President, one Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska.  By not only choosing Palin, but by announcing her as his VP pick when he did, McCain has done an absolutely outstanding job of shifting the focus away from Obama’s presumed moment of glory and towards his campaign, and, no matter who you’re rooting for, that’s a pretty clever feat of politicking right there.

UPDATE:  While we’re at it, let’s also go over how Palin’s pick benefits McCain - she gets Obama talking about experience.  In order for McCain to win, he needs to fight on ground of his choosing, not Obama’s.  This is why McCain has wanted to debate Obama for months - Obama’s a great preparatory speaker, but not as solid in a debate.  Hillary proved that nicely.  By throwing Palin out there, he reveals a “weakness” in his campaign - an inexperienced Vice-Presidential candidate that’s just as inexperienced as Obama is.  There’s just one catch:  There’s no on-the-job training for being President.  Being a Vice-President, on the other hand, is nothing but on-the-job training.  Yeah, she would also become the President of the Senate, but what are the chances that there are going to be deadlocks that she would need to settle in a predominately Democratic Senate?  Nil?  Slightly less than nil?  So, her job, at least as long as McCain is capable of being President, would involve sitting in meetings, soaking up information from McCain and whatever advisors he chooses to pick, and learning every bit of Washington arcana she will need in order to succeed should she ever need to, well, succeed McCain.

In short, she’s the bait, and Obama is already starting to bite, hook, line, and sinker.  Come to think of it, I seem to remember there being another old man in history that had a knack for getting his opponent to fight on ground of his own choosing, too.

ANOTHER UPDATE:  Welcome, Instapunditeers!  Feel free to look around and enjoy your stay.

Car Lust — Lightburn Zeta

That’s right - another one thrown into the hopper.  Enjoy!

Getting Awake

First, a moment of self-disclosure:  I am not a morning person.  Not even remotely.  Getting me awake under the best of circumstances involves an Act of Congress, a 21-gun salute, and enough coffee to fund a small South American insurrection.  This made college interesting; my freshman year was a near-disaster due to me discovering that “not a morning person” and “Calculus at 8 in the morning” simply do not mix. After that year, I quickly adjusted my schedule to make sure no class started before 10 a.m.  Since then, however, I’ve recognized that, though I may naturally wake up around 9 or so in the morning, the rest of the world doesn’t, and, until I get high enough in my field to work at a place with flextime or that at least allows telecommuting, I better learn to find some way to adjust against this particular weakness.

This journey has led to something of a small war between myself and my subconscious.  At first, I started with something simple - I turned up the volume of my alarm.  My subconscious adapted by learning how to turn off my alarm in my sleep.  I then asked my former roommate, who woke up a little before I did, to wake me up in the morning.  My subconscious adapted first by talking in my sleep, then following it up with grabbing limbs in my sleep, which ultimately led to me starting to hit people in my sleep - this sufficiently discouraged that roommate enough to nix that idea.  Talking to others like me, I picked up another trick - I moved the alarm clock to the other side of the bedroom from my bed.  That was the most successful measure, for, by the time I got out of bed and walked to the alarm clock to turn it off, my mind was usually awake enough for me to stay awake once I killed the alarm.

The key word in that last sentence, of course, was usually, which brings me to where I am today.  At this point, I literally sleepwalk to the alarm, turn it off, then sleepwalk back to bed and go to sleep.  This, needless to say, has done absolutely wonderful things to my work schedule.  Consequently, I need to come up with another countermeasure.  The catch, though, is that the ESO, though also difficult to wake up in the mornings, hasn’t quite reached the level of sheer and utter malevolence between herself and her sleepy subconscious; if I get too creative, I risk turning her into collateral damage.  That would not bode well for my ability to continue sleeping next to her.

Here are my thoughts:

• I could get another baby monitor, place it next to the alarm clock, which would be relocated to the opposite end of the apartment, and put the other side of it in the bedroom.  This would make it necessary for me to walk all the way to the other end of the apartment in order to turn it off.  Of course, this could be countered by my subconscious simply turning off the baby monitor.  Until that point, of course, the ESO would probably be rather miffed that it took the better part of five minutes for me to wander over to the alarm clock.
• I could do what I did during finals week in college - plug in a set of computer speakers into the alarm clock and turn the volume to maximum.  Thus, when the alarm went off, I’d wake up due to about 90 dB of morning talk radio blasting through my ears.  Of course, when I did this in college, my entire dorm floor was ready to kill me, and, in fact, had begun to organize a small posse to find out whose alarm clock was going off - it didn’t help I had a final at 7 in the morning and that it took me about 15 minutes to realize that was my alarm clock going off like a jet engine, so I should probably turn it off.  Yeah… I wasn’t very popular in college.
• Put the alarm clock in the kid’s room.  This would wake the kid up, waking me up, and waking everyone else in the house up.  Of course, this would result in the instant loss of genitalia as soon as the ESO discovered what I did.

So, I’m submitting to all of you - how do you wake up in the morning?  What tricks do you have up your sleeve to make sure that, when that alarm goes off, you get out and start your day?

Chrysler Executive

I’ve got another Car Lust up, folks.  Behold - my words are being read by thousands!

In the life & times of children

One of the fascinating aspects of living with an infant that people rarely nail down is what an infant does to the time you have during a day.  Most people will tell you that infants require tons of time and tons of attention - believe it or not, this really isn’t true.  Always remember that, when dealing with infants, they behave very similarly to dogs; they’ll sleep through most of the day, being awake at various random parts to eat, poop, and occasionally snuggle.  That’s all an infant does.  In many ways, you can treat an infant similarly to a dog - if you feed it, talk to it, occasionally take it outside, and bathe it from time to time, you’re meeting its needs for the next few months.

There’s one hitch, though.

A seldom-discussed fact of infant life is that, strange as it might sound, they actually sleep more than adults.  A lot more.  Infants will actually sleep up to 14 hours each day.  What they won’t do, at least not for a few months, is actually do enough of that in a single block to be remotely useful for an adult sleep cycle.  This wrecks complete and total havoc on the sanity of the parents.

What this means, at least in my experience, is that you still have nearly as much time as you ever had to get things done, but a lot less energy to do them with.  Everything just kind of feels like you’re pushing through molasses, making everything take longer than it used to in order to get things done.  It’s not that the kid has really affected your time schedule much - he’s barely awake half the day, after all, and it’s not like children aren’t portable - he’s just completely nuked your ability to actually use your time with any efficiency.

This, coincidentally, is my cop-out on why my blog has suffered a minor meltdown.  The good news is that work has been increasingly quiet as of late, which tends to help my energy levels a little.  The bad news is that my ability to maintain a coherent thought worth writing about is directly proportional to the amount of sleep I’m able to get during the night, and, at this point, we’re in “How the hell am I not babbling random Broadway showtunes?” territory.  I’m not kidding.  During a work meeting tonight, I caught myself humming the Canadian National Anthem. No idea why.  Not sure what the point of it was, or what its relevance was.  My brain just decided it was time to hum it, so I did.  Thankfully, I did it quietly, so I doubt it was noticed, but, even so, it’s a little disconcerting.

Things on the list for the near future:

• I haven’t given up on the “Stuff Nerds Like” feature around here.  I have a few posts started, believe it or not.  The trouble is actually coming up with something interesting to say about them - I mean, you can only write, “Nerds really like X.  It helps them escape the cold, harsh nature of reality,” so many times before you feel you’re not only repeating yourself but not really providing anything useful to the conversation.  Yeah, I get it - Science Fiction, LARPing, etc. is all an attempt to escape reality.  So is Burning Man.  Surely, in the wild, twisted maze that is my brain at this point, is some insight that digs just a wee bit deeper than that.  I mean, if you need me to state the obvious, well, I can do that, but c’mon…
• At some point this week, I will find a way to check out some Hot August Nights action.  Then, I shall blog about it… but not here.  I shall blog about it there.

Go me.

When Aiden was born, my traffic numbers, according to Sitemeter, went into the toilet.  I couldn’t understand why, or what had happened.  Then, I noticed I was getting no referrals, except for a couple from Google - what was going on, I wondered?  Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore, and decided it was high time to find out what happened.

The answer?  I’m an idiot.  That’s what happened.  Apparently, sometime close to when Aiden was born, I wiped out the Sitemeter code.  Brilliant. What I was getting was my hit counter on the old Blogspot blog.

Oy.  Sleep deprivation is a bitch, people.  I’m not kidding.

Another one up!

Today’s special:  The Suzuki Samurai.

I’m hoping that my schedule becomes more sane next week, which will help alleviate the dearth of decent posts around here.  It took effort to throw together a Car Lust post for the week, and it’s not like they need to be terribly long or frequent.

So very quiet…

I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here.  There is, unfortunately, a reason for that:

I have an infant at home.

For reasons that clearly only make sense in the female mind, the ESO would much rather I focus my energies when I’m home on helping her with the kid than with more important pursuits, such as furthering my campaign for global domination through blog.  Consequently, things are going to be a little lean around here for a little while.  That’s not to say I’ve given up blogging entirely, mind you, though, with the hit numbers I’m getting lately, I would not be insane to do so.  I mean, at this point, shutting this thing down would disappoint a whopping five people.  Why on God’s green earth would I dare to do that?

I will guarantee that, unless something truly catastrophic happens, I should be able to pull out at least one posting a week out of my ass.  Since I don’t get any revenue from people visiting here, if you only visit once a week, it won’t hurt my feelings.

In the meantime, here are some fun thoughts to pass the time:

• Linux Hater’s Blog is now my new favorite blog.  I’ve been using Ubuntu for almost two years now, and the Evolution of an Ubuntu User article nailed my experiences better than none other.
• Don’t work for people who think this sort of thing is a good idea.
• It’s official:  Obama has become the douche.  Waiting for confirmation on McCain becoming the turd sandwich.
• This is still the funniest and strangest music video I have ever seen.  Ever.

One down

My first Car Lust posting has finally been approved and published.  Enjoy it - Chris Hafner didn’t edit much of it.