Experiments in Life

Wee! I’m learning to program in C….again

Why is it that car manufacturers feel the need to heavily use Macromedia Flash on virtually all of their websites? I mean, I can understand wanting to do a little bit of animation to show the cars moving, but a large number of the sites use Flash for content that is extremely static. All that accomplishes, really, is making it so that search engines cannot crawl through the data on the vehicles — which makes it that much harder to find manufacturer information on vehicles. Also, at least on every computer that I use, interacting with a Flash site just feels sluggish compared to a regular HTML/CSS website. The auto manufacturers could accomplish much the same effects (minus the animations) with a well-designed HTML/CSS page, with the added benefit of, oh I don’t know, Google searchability?

Well, since I was already being cranky and all, I figured I’d post this little tidbit as well. I found out this morning that our fair city has had a blond moment…since they were building a new high school near research park, they decided to cut a road from slaughter into research park to help with traffic flow. Well, they put up a light and columns on slaughter…however, if you were to turn in and follow the road, you end up at the new high school. Apparently the city ran out of money and could not afford to finish cutting the road through, so the only option is to cut through the high school parking lot, which of course you are not supposed to do. Looks like to me they would have thought about that before putting up the light and the signs and all. Anyway, it made me laugh and helped brighten my morning after that 40 minute drive.

But part of me wonders…whose engineering and financial brilliance do we have to thank for all of this?

Where did all the people come from? It’s like someone knocked over an anthill…there were cars everywhere as far as the eye could see. I knew I wasn’t going to get into work anytime soon.

Man, it took me 40 minutes to get to work….and I only live 15 minutes away. What is it about the first week of school that makes Madison go absolutely crazy? I know, the parents of first-time school-goers are taking them to school, but still….is that any reason to have traffic backed up from the Volkswagon dealership all the way out to Wall-Triana? I’m thinking more people need to carpool. It’s environmentally friendly and all, but most importantly, people wouldn’t be in my way!

That hybrid is looking better and better if more of my mornings are going be spent like this. At least everytime I hit the brakes it would charge my battery. If I’m gonna be stuck in traffic, it might as well do something for me.

We began looking at cars last week, in preparation of replacing Ashley’s aging Nissan Sentra. So far, we have found one car that we both like, the Chevy HHR. It is referred to as a crossover vehicle, but to me it looks more like a PT Cruiser than an SUV. However, it is large enough that I can drive it and ride in it comfortably (which is very important, even though it is Ashley’s car). It has a large amount of hauling capacity like an SUV, but is as fuel efficient (supposably) as my Beetle.

I have to take a moment to talk about the Toyota Prius, though. That car is so cool! It is the ultimate geek toy — pushbutton starting, a large LCD touch-screen for controlling radio, environment, and statistics on the engine/battery, plus it has a goodish amount of get-up-and-go for a hybrid. In addition, it had a rather spacious back seating area and lots of room to haul things. There were only two problems with it. First, Ashley did not like it — it was too high-tech (which is why I loved it). Second, although I had enough headroom and leg room to drive, the steering wheel was not high enough (and did not go any higher). I had to drive it with the steering wheel between my knees, much like how I drove my Dad’s MGB back in high school. However, if Toyota fixes that in some later revision of the car, I will seriously consider it when I am looking for something new — at least 5–7 years in the future.

We still have a lot of looking to do for Ashley’s car, though. I want to look at another hybrid, the Honda Insight. I also want to go back and look at the Toyota Highlander, although I have a suspicion that it will cost more than I really want to spend. But, I have had an obsession lately with hybrids, although the current frontrunner, the Chevy HHR, is not one. The hybrid obsession is even making me want to look at the Ford Escape Hybrid (and I do not care for Ford — too many bad service experiences in the Columbus/Starkville area; however, Huntsville may be different). I do know, however, that I do not plan on getting anything that does not average at least in the upper twenties for MPG.

We have some time, though. Current thoughts have us getting the new vehicle sometime around the end of the year. That leaves us plenty of time to look for the perfect car.

Well, my Beetle is now officially paid for — I made the last payment over lunch. Now all I need is the title…

Aquerple

Alright, I was going to wait a little while before posting again, but my stupid blog account is down, so I have a little more time now.

Anyway, as Jon saidyesterday, it was a crazy weekend. But, one of the most exciting things for me was getting my rings resized. The plan was to talk to Jon’s dad about gettting a spacer at some point in the future. I really didn’t think I needed one yet. Yeah, my rings were a little loose, but nothing I couldn’t manage. Well, I guess that’s not really true. We were at a restaurant the other night talking and eating dinner. As usual, I was talking with my hands. All of a sudden my wedding rings went flying off my hand, going in two different directions before landing on the table. Needless to say, Jon was not impressed. So, we had the rings looked at. Well, it turns out that not only could I have used a spacer, but I ended up going down two ring sizes on my left hand and one ring size down on my right hand. I was simply stunned. I have never worn such a small ring size in my entire life. I can now wear a ring size of 6 and 7.

Guess the weight loss is paying off in ways I never considered. I only hope the weight loss continues for a little while longer before it levels off. To date, I’ve lost around 17 lbs. or so

For those of you who missed it the first time ’round, the show I posted about so long ago, “I am my own twin” is airing again. So, if you didn’t get a chance to watch it the first time, you’ve got another chance!!

It airs on Aug. 8 @ 10 p.m., Aug. 9 @ 1 a.m., Aug. 12 @ 5 a.m., and Aug. 14 @ 7 p.m. Hope you guys find it as interesting as I did. Fire up those tivos and get ready to be amazed

Boy, what a weekend! We went back to Columbus for the weekend to see my family and I am worn out. Saturday was my sister’s 24th birthday (Happy Birthday, by the way) and Sunday we all drove down to Meridian to meet up with a large number of Creekmores/Masseys to celebrate my grandmother’s 80th 60th birthday :-). It was a lot of fun getting to see everyone, but it made for a long day. However, I did get to see my Dad’s freshly repainted MGB (which was very exciting — it looks so much better than it did when I was driving it 10 years ago has it really been that long???). Also, I slept like a baby last night (the proverbial baby that sleeps peacefully through the night, not the screaming, waking up every few hours, crying their heads off babies like I actually was).