blindsquirrel.org

I don’t know why the experts are saying there are over 1 billion bees missing. I know exactly where they are. I found them all over my yard this weekend. I have a ton under a holly bush in my front yard. I have wasps that try to build nests on the kid’s playset daily. Bees buzz us when we’re trying to eat out on the deck. They sting the neighbors when they’re in our pool.

Missing? I don’t think so. If anything, I think we have more bees in our yard this year.

I just got back from the Simpsons Movie and it was awesome. If you have ever been a fan of the Simpsons at all you’ll really like this movie. Now if I could only get the song “Spider Pig” out of my head.

I’m going to tell you something that your family and friends aren’t – you look like a complete tool when you walk in to the restaurant with that bluetooth headset on your ear.  Look, I know it’s a great technology, but if you’re still using the phone, stay outside until you’re done.  If you’re not using it, take it off your head.

Seriously.  I’m just trying to help you.  I’m sorry you had to hear it from me.

I forced myself to go back to Safari when the beta for version 3 came out.  I now run the nightly builds of Webkit as well.  Overall version 3 is much nicer than version 2, but there is still one thing about Safari that is just driving me crazy -  WordPress.  I host this blog on my own site using WordPress and the editor is terrible with Safari.  It’s basically unusable.

When you open any post in the editor it strips out all of the line feeds and html.  Just destroys the formatting of your post.  Uploading a picture seemed impossible as well.  Of cource Firefox and Camino work great, but I was trying to stick with the Safari engine for everything and it is just not working out.  I had to fire up FireFox just to create this post.

I’m not looking to use more than one browser, I just want one that works for everything and, unfortunately, that just may not be Safari.  Is this an Apple problem or a WordPress problem to fix?

Tonight a neighbor showed up at the door with a plate full of chocolate chip pancakes.  They were awesome.  If I was a cat I’d be purring right about now.  Does it get much better than that?

My car has an Aux port in the glove compartment that lets you plug an iPod in and listen to it through the stereo.  It’s easy to find a cable to go from the headphone jack of the iPod to the Aux port, but what has always driven me crazy about this solution is that the headphone jack only puts out so much power, and if you turn the iPod volume up too far the sound through the stereo gets distorted.  If you have ever listened to your iPod when connected through the Dock to a stereo you can really tell how much more power there is without distortion.

So I have been looking for a cable to go from the Aux port to the dock connector of the iPod.  You’d think this would be easy but I checked at Radio Shack, Best Buy, WalMart, etc. and I couldn’t even find anyone that had ever heard of a cable like this.  I found a couple cables online, but one was retractable and wouldn’t work for the routing I wanted to do between the glove compartment and my center console, and the other was 4ft long and white.  The second cable was inexpensive, but I really wanted a black cable to go with the interior of my car and I didn’t think 4ft would be long enough, so I kept on looking.

What I ended up with was a connector called the PocketDock Line Out USB from SendStation that plugs in to the iPod dock connector and has a line out port. I can then run from the line out port to the Aux port in the glove compartment and the power and fullness coming from the iPod now is amazing. I bet it is at least 4-5 times more powerful than the headphone connector.  I don’t know why this isn’t carried in stores, but I was only able to find it online and I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a way to get better sound, and more power, from their iPod to their car stereo.

My only complaint would be the cost, but if you shop around online you can take a few bucks off of list.

Feel it in your hand.  Run your finger across it.  Flick left.  Now right.  Try up and down as well.  Bring your fingers together, now apart and watch the size change.  Feels amazing, doesn’t it?  Is it heavier than you expected?  A little more substantial?

That’s the way I felt when I touched an iPhone for the first time today.  I’ve read all the hype and a lot of the reviews, but I have avoided the iPhone in person.  Today I held one for the first time and it really feels like Apple has just changed the game a bit.  I’m not even sure I care about the phone piece of the picture – everything else was enough to keep me entertained.  I didn’t get to use it on a WiFi network, but I did get to try it while running on the Edge network and understand why people would be unhappy with the performance.  It would be nice if that part was faster.

It was a great experience and definitely made me want to use it more.  If you are not ready to hand over your hard earned money to Apple and AT&T you better not touch one.  You may just find it is impossible to put down.

UPDATE – added a few pictures of the new car, just click on the picture to the left.

Shopping for a new car is one of my least favorite things to do. It was time to let my 2003 Passat go so it was time to start the process.

My search started with a new Mini Cooper S, but that idea quickly ended once I saw how much leg room was left once I got in the car and adjusted the seat as I need to – approximately 2 inches of leg room for my kids. So the Cooper was not going to work. The next stop was to look at BMWs, which are beautiful cars, but I could not make it work financially.

From there the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord were next. Although I really like the front end of the Camry, both cars were just kind of boring to me. So I moved on to the Acura TL, which is stuffed with so many toys I had a hard time leaving the car after the test drive. The voice activation was right on the money for everything I told it to do. Excellent implementation. But the TL is not an inexpensive car, so I wanted to make sure to look at a lot of cars before I spent that kind of money.

I liked the Subaru Legend and the Mazda 6, but it ends up that I liked the Legend because the rear end looked a little like the TL and the Mazda 6′s front end reminded me a little of the TL, so neither of these cars were strong enough to pull me from the TL. I had heard a lot about the Saturn Aura so we took it for a ride and were very impressed. Probably the best American car that we looked at – plenty of power, decent features, OnStar, and a nice look. You won’t find many cars that give you so much for the low $20k’s.

Since the last 5 years of Passat ownership were pretty much uneventful I thought it was important to give VW another shot at earning our business. We drove a couple 2007 Wolfsburg Edition Passats with 2.0l turbo engines and were pretty impressed. Just about gone was the turbo lag I had lived with for 5 years. Nice, smooth power. My 2003 was reprogrammed with an APR chip to give it a lot of horsepower and torque, so it is probably still just a hair quicker than the 2.0 turbo, but the new Passats feel just as fast stock. APR has programming that will give the Passat more hp and torque than the Acura TL and it weighs almost 200lbs less. The car should run like a rocket.

So we had it down to 2 cars – the Acura TL and the Passat Wolfsburg Edition. It was a very tough choice as I really liked both cars for different reasons. The TL had way more bells, whistles, and stock horsepower/torque, but the Passat felt like it had a better ride to me. Maybe I’m just spoiled with the way a German car handles now. We were able to get the price on the TL pretty much as good as it was going to get, but it was still close to a 35k car. The Passat could be had at Invoice, and there was an additional $1000 for owner loyalty since we previously owned a VW, so we’d end up a thousand bucks under Invoice with the Passat.

In the end I just couldn’t justify the extra $9000 for the TL. I loved the car, but I can do a lot of things with 9k. Don’t get me wrong, if money was no object the TL would be in my garage right now instead of the Passat, but money is an object so I went with the car that I felt gave me a good value for a fair price. If you own an Acura TL you have a great car. If you’re about to buy one, go for it. For me it just wasn’t in the cards. The TL with Nav puts out 258hp and 233lbs of torque, but I can spend 600 bucks and take my little Passat from 200HP to 252hp and 303lb torque. That should be a pretty fast car that is almost 200lbs lighter than the TL.

The picture I took with my cell phone doesn’t really do the car justice, but this is much better than looking at United Gray on the VW web site. It looks terrible there, but in person it is a very nice color. Here’s hoping the next 5 years of Passat ownership are as uneventful as the past 5.