Thursday, April 1, 2010
300
Not the movie. That's my cycling mileage on Ruby this year to date (excludes the bit of mileage I put on my mountain bike and single speed). Not too bad considering the crappy weather we had for the first two months of the year. My goal is 2010 miles this year. It should be possible if I can average 250 a month for the next 6 good riding months and then fit in what I can towards the end of the year.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Whocoodanode
Apparently, the FBI did know and warned about mortgage fraud in 2004. Why didn't we see the people involved in these crimes prosecuted? You better believe if I held up a 7-11 for $500, I'd be in jail. But if I rip off a mortgage lender for $500,000, I get away with it? I call BS on that.
Goldie
I'm happy to have a new car but I'm also happy to have an old one. Goldie, a 1999 Subaru Legacy Wagon, has been with us since Seattle and has never let us down. Since she only has about 95k on the clock, I'm hoping she will be with us for a while.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
XenMotion
Last week, I upgraded our servers to XenServer 5.5 and migrated most of our virtual machines to a single shared NFS disk to create a pool of servers. One of the features I was interested in being able to use XenMotion to move servers around on our physical systems. It is super easy and works as advertised. It's pretty cool to move a live server with absolutely no downtime.
I'm happy with XenServer. It's free, works well and has a lot of nice features. The only drawback I can see compared to VMWare ESXi or Hyper-V is that there are not as many pre-built appliances for it. Since I don't use appliances, it doesn't really matter to me, but might be something to consider.
I'm happy with XenServer. It's free, works well and has a lot of nice features. The only drawback I can see compared to VMWare ESXi or Hyper-V is that there are not as many pre-built appliances for it. Since I don't use appliances, it doesn't really matter to me, but might be something to consider.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Taxes
Finished the Federal and Virginia tax returns yesterday. The good news: we are getting a few bucks back. The bad news: our 2009 income was way down from 2008 (my bonus is paid in January the following year so 2007 was good, 2008 not so much). The other good news: the energy efficiency tax credits make a big difference (we put in a tankless hot water heater last year) and we get $1300 on the TDI in 2010.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
2010 Jetta SportWagen TDI
I drove up to Alexandria, VA to purchase a 2010 Jetta SportWagen TDI. It's too early to give a comprehensive review of the car, but I'm impressed so far in the 200 miles I've driven in it.
The Jetta has excellent road manners and felt very stable and smooth on the highway. In traffic, it drives a bit different that the cars I'm used to. The TDI has a lot of torque which means you can use a very light touch when starting from a stop. It's not a sports car, but if you hit the accelerator, it moves briskly (with maybe a touch of turbo lag). The DSG transmission is very nice and anticipates the next shift very well (up and down). If you punch it, the tranny is ready to go. If you drive casually, it responds with smoothly spaced shifts.
The interior is quieter than I would have thought and if you have the windows up, you hardly hear the engine at highway speeds. At idle, it sounds different than a gasoline car but no louder than most.
The interior is fairly spartan and simply laid out. It has a mix of automatic and power features (e.g. seat recline is power, but other axes are manual). If you like a lot of gadgets and interior bling, this is not your car. There is a fairly large radio display in the center of the dash. Definitely big enough for a navigation screen (an option I did not purchase). I haven't had a chance to try out some of the more advanced features (Bluetooth integration, media cards, iPod dock).
Best of all, the mileage lives up to the hype. Driving reasonably in a mix of city (DC traffic) and highway (I-66 to I-81 to Roanoke), it got 40 MPG. I've read online that the mileage improves as the engine breaks in, but if we get 35-40 MPG in our mix of driving, that will be more than double what we get in the Silver Surfer.
More to follow after we start to put some miles on it.
The Jetta has excellent road manners and felt very stable and smooth on the highway. In traffic, it drives a bit different that the cars I'm used to. The TDI has a lot of torque which means you can use a very light touch when starting from a stop. It's not a sports car, but if you hit the accelerator, it moves briskly (with maybe a touch of turbo lag). The DSG transmission is very nice and anticipates the next shift very well (up and down). If you punch it, the tranny is ready to go. If you drive casually, it responds with smoothly spaced shifts.
The interior is quieter than I would have thought and if you have the windows up, you hardly hear the engine at highway speeds. At idle, it sounds different than a gasoline car but no louder than most.
The interior is fairly spartan and simply laid out. It has a mix of automatic and power features (e.g. seat recline is power, but other axes are manual). If you like a lot of gadgets and interior bling, this is not your car. There is a fairly large radio display in the center of the dash. Definitely big enough for a navigation screen (an option I did not purchase). I haven't had a chance to try out some of the more advanced features (Bluetooth integration, media cards, iPod dock).
Best of all, the mileage lives up to the hype. Driving reasonably in a mix of city (DC traffic) and highway (I-66 to I-81 to Roanoke), it got 40 MPG. I've read online that the mileage improves as the engine breaks in, but if we get 35-40 MPG in our mix of driving, that will be more than double what we get in the Silver Surfer.
More to follow after we start to put some miles on it.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Society
My wife had a funny comment the other day - "Comb your hair! We live in a society!" As a work-at-home guy, I don't typically do a lot to my hair in the morning and it is usually quite a mess but I didn't realize it was antisocial.
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