The Blog of Harald

As seen in the Pachelbels Canon – CollegeHumor video, it really is everywhere.

Maybe you have to be a bit of a music geek, but I laughed myself silly over this one…

The disk in the desktop box was getting full (too many photographs, too many TV shows :), so I ordered a Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 ST3250824AS 250GB. I finally installed it today, and copied a bunch of files over to it.

I noticed a lot of seek noise and clicks from the drive, which made me a little nervous; old drives used to make this noise when they stepped the heads all the way back to the track 0 physical head stop to resync. I don’t think modern drives do this, and the interweb says that many people find these drives slightly noisy. S.M.A.R.T. is reporting perfect health, so I guess I’ll make sure I have good backups and keep an eye on the drive…

The house of the future: complete computer control.

bq. The House of the Future: Complete Computer Control

bq. As Don Sheppard punches his special code into the electronic keypad at the entryway, a monotone computer voice says, “Welcome-home-Don-come-rightin.’ The front door then glides open.

This is from a 1983 issue of Creative Computing. It amuses me that the “House of the Future” articles haven’t changed all that much since then. The technology has improved (“Insteon”:http://www.insteon.net/ by “SmartLabs”:http://www.smartlabsinc.com/ is pretty cool) but it’s still to expensive (and too geeky) for the average home buyer. Because retrofits are so hard (and labour intensive == expensive), this stuff is best installed by the homebuilders, but there’s no demand…

Michaéla came up with a way to compromise on the “first model year” issue with the new car. If we lease instead of purchase, then if it the truck is a lemon we can return it and let dealer worry about it. We’ll take a bit of a loss, but theoretically this is smaller loss than if we tried to sell it ourselves; if it’s a lemon, the resale value will suck.

Because auto loan finance rates are disgustingly low (we’re staring at 2.9%), we do fairly well on the lease vs. buy tradeoff. We’ll pay slightly more in total interest if we buy out the lease, but our payments will be 25% smaller. Since we generally struggle with cash flow (damned tuition fees!), this is a good thing.

I didn’t get a chance to write about tow vehicles before we bought one; oh well :)

We went to the Hamilton RV show last Saturday and crawled around in a bunch of pop-up trailers. The data so far:

* Fleetwood is very expensive. The quality and features are there, but I’m not convinced that they’re worth the price tag.
* We want a 10′ pop-up trailer. 12′ would be nice on rainy days, but they’re freakin’ heavy and much larger than the 2′ difference would lead you to believe; I’d rather have the slightly easier to drive with smaller trailer. On the other hand, 8′ trailers are too small for the four of us, especially as the kids get physically larger.
* Rockwood and JayCo both have nice 10′ models. Palomino (same company as Rockwood) has some nice designs too, but for some reason they’re about 20% heavier than the Rockwoods.
* We decided to go with cargo space in the tow vehicle over a “box” on the trailer. We’d be hauling stuff in and out either way, and this way we have the cargo space without the trailer too.

The Rockwood and Jayco models that we like all weigh in at around 2000 lbs. Manufacturer “tow ratings”:http://www.suvoa.com/towing_matrix.cfm only include a driver, so add 400-500 lbs of passengers and 400-500 lbs of gear. Follow the “75%” rule of trailer/cargo mass vs. tow rating, and that means we’re looking for a vehicle with a 4000 lb (or more) tow rating. Strangely, there aren’t very many of those! There’s a big gap between minivans and small SUVs at 3500 lbs, and full-size SUVs and trucks at 6500 lbs and up.

We also wanted something that can carry our friends, and the kids and their friends, on normal trips (i.e. our regular kite festivals), up to and including carrying two adults and four kids on a camping trip. That ruled out the myriad 5-passenger compact and mid-size SUVs (probably just as well, because selecting from that many options would be challenging).

We also wanted to, at a minimum, _attempt_ to a passing wave at fuel economy, as our lives require two single-passenger vehicles during the week. You can’t really get an eight-passenger, tow-capable truck that isn’t a fuel hog, but we wanted to try…

Michaéla’s extensive research narrowed us down to a couple of the new “CUVs (Crossover Utility Vehicles)”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossover_SUV, which can be described as scaled down minivans or scaled up station wagons. They’re designed like SUVs, but have car-inspired unibody construction so they handle better and are more fuel efficient.

The only one we really liked, that met all of our criteria, was the new “Saturn Outlook XR FWD”:http://saturn.gmcanada.com/ss/english/vehicles/saturn/outlook/outlook_overview.jsp. While I’m very nervous about purchasing a new-model vehicle, Saturn has a reasonably good reputation for quality, particularly after purchase. Most manufacturers seem to be revamping their entire vehicle lineups anyway; there are lots of new-model cars and trucks on the market right now! Besides, it’s a very nice vehicle :-).

The Outlook also comes with all-wheel drive, but everything I’ve read says that AWD either doesn’t help with towing, or actively makes it worse. It makes the vehicle heavier, and it’s one more thing to go wrong. AWD also uses 5-10% more fuel.

Anyway, we’ve ordered one with the options we like; the heated leather seats, the trailering package (of course :), and we splurged and went for the built-in rear-seat DVD player. Everyone I’ve talked to with kids who didn’t buy the DVD option has regretted it. We could get a couple of portable DVD players for similar $$$, but there are advantages to the built-in. We didn’t spring for the “luxury” package (heated mirrors, seat position memory, yadda yadda) or the backup/parking assist (which would primarily tell us that we’re too close to the trailer :-). The “Cold Weather Package” (heated windshield washer fluid, remote start) sounded cool, but we decided not to be frivolous. Ditto the sunroof; I think we use the Maxima’s sunroof a handful of times each year. Finally, we left off the built-in GPS navigation system; we can get equivalent system for 1/4 of the price, which also means we can upgrade if the technology gets better (and move the GPS-nav to the other car when required :-).

It’s supposed to take 6-8 weeks for the vehicle to show up here in Toronto. We still have to choose a colour, though!

After reading “Rick Klau’s weblog”:http://www.rklau.com/tins/archives/2007/02/06/more-on-the-site-update.php I installed a couple of useful WordPress plugins:

* “404 Notifier”:http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress
* “Redirection”:http://www.urbangiraffe.com/plugins/redirection

They’ve already found a few errors within my website, and a few dangling URLs leftover from the days when I converted my Movable Type URL format. Recommended to my fellow WordPress users…

Via “Ned Batchelder”:http://www.nedbatchelder.com/blog/200702.html, I am now reading indexed, a collection of tongue-in-cheek venn diagrams and charts by Jessica Hagy.

I laughed myself silly reading the first page, so I thought I’d share…

Why Career Planning Is Time Wasted

bq. One group has to choose which sandwiches they want for an entire week in advance. The other group gets to choose which they want each day. A fascinating thing happens. People who choose their favourite sandwich each day at lunchtime also often choose the same sandwich. This group turns out to be reasonably happy with its choice.

bq. Amazingly, though, people choosing in advance assume that what they’ll want for lunch next week is a variety. And so they choose a turkey sandwich Monday, tuna on Tuesday, egg on Wednesday and so on. It turn out that when next week rolls around they generally don’t like the variety they thought they would. In fact they are significantly less happy with their choices than the group who chose their sandwiches on the day.

From BPS RESEARCH DIGEST: Do young children understand irony?

bq. Some children as young as six already understand the idea that people make sarcastic remarks, saying one thing but meaning another, according to psychologists Penny Pexman and Melanie Glenwright.

bq. The children found ironic criticisms – such as “that was great play” – easier to understand than ironic compliments. A grasp of the speaker’s true belief emerged first, then an understanding of the speaker’s attitude and intention to tease tended to emerge together, usually in the older children.

My kids are already experimenting with dishing out sarcasm…

To “wordpress 2.1”:http://wordpress.org/development/2007/01/ella-21/

you have nothing to lose but your germs!

‘Waving’ Goodbye to a Kitchen Hazard

bq. A team of University of Florida Engineering researchers have come to the conclusion that microwaving plastic scrubbers and kitchen sponges on full power can destroy practically 100% of the bacteria and viruses, parasites or spores collected on them.

(via “diane duane”:http://www.dianeduane.com/outofambit/)

We’ve booked our Pinery site for this year, as have several others.

We ‘stole’ Michelle’s site from last year (which she’s grumpy about, because it’s closest to the washrooms :). I liked our site from last year, but the layout of the trees at the driveway would make it hard to back a trailer in, and I don’t want that to be my *first* experience with the trailer on a campsite! (I plan to spend some time in a parking lot with pylons before going anywhere, but that’s not really the same…).

We’re planning several driving trips in the next five years, and are looking into buying a pop-up trailer instead of renting trailers or RVs. In theory, owning is cheaper than renting over the long run, and it gives us more flexibility.

We’ve looked into the possibility of renting a trailer or RV, but it’s not cheap. It’s not the insanely expensive that RV rentals are (I can go to Disney for a week or rent an RV for three weeks…). Reasonably sized popup trailers seem to rent for about $500/wk. For our first summer vacation, we’ll be gone longer than three weeks, so that’s $2000 right there. I can buy a reasonable used (and sometimes new) trailer for only 3-4 times that, and as we plan to take more than one long trailer vacation, we think we’re better off purchasing. Owning also gives us the option of taking 3-4 day trips across the various weekends that the kids are out of school and have no Holiday Program coverage, instead of sitting at home.

From what I’ve seen of the used market, we shouldn’t have too much trouble breaking even (compared to rentals) even if we change our mind in two years and decide to sell the trailer.

Mick’s uncle has 10 acres in East Gwillimbury and has offered to let us store a trailer there.

Gerry and I are planning to visit a Toronto RV show next weekend, to get an idea on what’s available, what the various sizes actually look like, what features we want vs. can live without, and so on and so on. Gerry already says that an awning is a must. The built-in kitchens are a nice idea, as long as the stove can be moved to the outside of the trailer on hot days.

Towing will be an issue. Even an 8′ trailer seems to be in the 1000-2000 lb range. Our existing car has a 1000lb tow rating (I’m told this is because of the unibody frame, not the engine or suspension); most cars are similar. We have yet to find anyone that rents SUVs or minivans that allows towing a trailer; usually they say it voids the insurance. (We need to find out if our personal auto insurance would allow coverage instead). Renting vans and/or SUVs for 3-4 weeks is also expensive. So we’ve been looking into buying a tow vehicle also, but I’ll write about that separately.

1.

I’ve got “another spasm”:http://blog.cfrq.net/chk/archives/2006/10/13/ouch-2/ in my back. Higher up this time, and not as bad as the first one; I can still put my own socks on today :-).

How’d I do it this time, you ask? I got in the car to take the boy to his hockey game. I looked over my shoulder to check for pedestrians before backing out of the driveway. Ouch!

Things to do this quarter:

* get the leaky summer tires fixed during the winter, when business is slow at the tire place.
* purchase an air conditioner (or two; we might need a separate one for our bedroom because of the ducting).
* find a roofer and book the new roof for the spring.
* -purchase a pop-up / tent trailer. First RV show is this upcoming weekend.-
* -purchase a tow vehicle for said trailer.-
* more crawl space insulation research.
* plan our August vacation.
* plan out the backyard renovation.
* design bookshelves and window seat for bedroom/library.
* design front hall shelving.

Michaela left for Kansas City on Monday morning, so I’ve been single parent this week. So far we’ve had:

– hockey practice, in which the boy injured his knee. Just a nasty bruise, fortunately.
– a lost tooth, with a lot of blood in the process
– one incident of vomit (probably caused by too much swallowed blood :).
– two nights of nose bleeds
– only one night of “I miss mummy!”, which is a good thing
– not nearly enough healthy food. Ah well, a week won’t kill them.

We’re going to the airport tonight to meet her… :)

ConsumerReports.org – Infant car seats 2/07: Safety alert, European models, Ratings

bq. You’d think that in a car crash, infants in their cozy car seats would be the most protected passengers of all. But you’d be wrong, our tests reveal.

bq. Cars and car seats can’t be sold unless they can withstand a 30-mph frontal crash. But most cars are also tested in a 35-mph frontal crash and in a 38-mph side crash. Car seats aren’t.

bq. When we crash-tested infant car seats at the higher speeds vehicles routinely withstand, most failed disastrously. The car seats twisted violently or flew off their bases, in one case hurling a test dummy 30 feet across the lab.

I’ve been trying to write a rant on the topic, but can’t seem to get it organized. The fundamental issue for me is that:

– government officials don’t want to scare consumers, so publicly refuse to admit there are any problems.
– manufacturers slip through the cracks, doing the minimum possible to develop and sell products.
– both parties seem more interested in the appearance of safety than in actual risk analysis.

I do not believe that consumers are served by this process, but I’m at a loss to suggest alternatives…

Update 2007/01/21: The whole point is apparently moot:

“CONSUMER REPORTS WITHDRAWS INFANT CAR SEAT REPORT”:http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/cu-press-room/pressroom/2007/2/0702_eng0702ccs.htm

bq. We withdrew the report immediately upon discovering a substantive issue that may have affected the original test results. The issue came to light based on new information received Tuesday night and Wednesday morning from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) concerning the speed at which our side-impact tests were conducted.

The New Yorker : talk : content

bq. a study of the performance of twenty major American companies over four decades found that the ones putting more emphasis on market share than on profit ended up with lower returns on investment; of the six companies that defined their goal exclusively as market share, four eventually went out of business.

I’ve believed this for decades. It is perfectly reasonable to be a successful “niche” player in a larger market, eg. Apple Computer.

I work for the sixth largest software company in the world. We used to be the seventh largest, after Electronic Arts. I’m not entirely sure why we think this measure is so important; I’d rather we measured our success, not our size…

From Paul Kedorosky:

bq. “Paul Kedrosky’s Infectious Greed: Top Tens of 2006: Advertising, Movies, Television, Stories, etc.”:http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2006/12/28/top_tens_of_200.html: You might start by considering that the best-selling album of 2006 was actually the worst-selling best-selling album since Metallica back in 1991. You might also consider that the best-selling album’s sales has fallen steadily over the last five years.

I was surprised to see the title of the top selling album of 2006, although in hindsight I shouldn’t have been…