Peanut butter Kool-Aid.
Sausage and egg flavor Snapple.
Apple hamburgers.
Chocolate covered chicken.
Pepparoni jam.
Green olive ice cream.
Oatmeal-garlic cookies.
Grilled salmon yogurt.

Posted by ra at 03:53 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

The grand prix is really in a sad state. We don't want to sink any more money into it so that means it's time for a new car. We've ordered a 2007 Pontiac Vibe. This is essentially a Toyota Matrix, which is itself kind of a hatchback version of the Toyota Corolla. The Vibe and Matrix are both manufactured at a joint-venture plant in California.

I had really, really wanted to get a VW Rabbit TDI, alas it does not yet exist and probably won't until VW can come up with a new TDI that meets the new diesel emissions restrictions in the U.S. I've read that we probably won't see the new, cleaner diesels until 2008. That meant we were looking for a gasoline drinker for now.

So why the Vibe? Plenty of reasons....
- Comes in a 5-speed manual version
- Scored very well on NHTSA and Eurocap crash tests (Toyota Verso variant tested in Europe)
- Hatchback is very useful/practical
- Good on fuel consumption: 30 city/ 36 hwy
- Pontiac/GM brand means we save several thousand with discounts and points.

Not the most exciting car ever, but I like the looks well enough and the stick makes it pretty fun to drive.

Posted by ra at 00:14 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

I've occasionally noticed that my "new" computer (now 1.5 yrs old) is somewhat quirky about playing sound. I use the onboard sound chip, which actually sounds fine. It is a Realtek ALC850 and it uses a connector module that is insulated from the motherboard which reduces interference.

The problem is that I could only play one sound at a time. This would get really frustrating because something would have the audio device locked and then I would try to play a song or a movie and I just wouldn't get any sound. I finally got sick of bumping into this problem so I did some research to figure out what the heck was going on.

The conclusion? Simple! This POS does not have a hardware sound mixer! In windows, I assume the mixing for this thing is done in software by default once you install the driver, so one might not ever realize there is no hw mixer. I could setup software mixing in linux, but why would I want to increase the load on my cpu for that? Especially when I have several old SoundBlaster Live!'s sitting around.

So I grabbed an SBLive and stuck it in, disabled the onboard sound and rebooted. Voila. I had had the foresight to include the emu10k1 modules when I setup my system-- just in case-- so once the system came back up I instantly had sound that worked with multiple streams playing at once.

I'm really happy to have easily solved that problem, but damn is this pathetic! I had avoided onboard sound modules for years, but I figured by now they would be pretty decent. Nope, even on a higher-end motherboard cost-cutting has taken precedence over performance and quality. The SBLive that I purchased EIGHT years ago handily outperforms the onboard sound of my still newish computer. I've read that the nvidia nforce 1 and 2 actually included a nice sound chip, with hw mixer, but it was axed starting with nforce 3 to cut costs.

No wonder new computers often don't feel as fast as they should. The manufacturers assume that because you have a faster cpu they can eliminate chips designed/optimized for a certain task and simply offload that work to the cpu in software.

Posted by ra in rants, tech at 00:26 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Cringley's latest article about some guy named Frankston and his ideas about last-mile ownership reminded me A LOT of something I wrote here last October.

I really do think this is worth exploring. Not that I think it's guaranteed to work, but I wish someone would at least try it. However, privatisation is the rule here in the U.S. and I could see Telco-backed legislation outlawing the public-owned network idea. Sigh. Maybe it would be easier for us all to move to Japan, South Korea and Scandinavia.

Posted by ra in tech at 22:39 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)