I’m up way too early on a sat for not playing golf.

I just got a note from the IRS telling us we’ll be getting our “stimulus package”. Of course, they don’t tell you when, so I had to find it elsewhere.

I see this as a thinly veiled bribe that says to me “hey, now that I gave you $1200, we aren’t so bad, right?” For $1200 we’re to forget about the illegal war, the domestic spying, the firing of US Attorneys, outing of CIA agents, Blackwater, Abu Grabe, Gitmo, mysteriously deleted emails and a VP who, with a straight face tried to tell us all that the White House was not under anyone’s jurisdiction and therefore didn’t have to turn anything over. Ever.

Well, how about this, I’ll take the money (which if you listen to those ya-hoos at the GAO, we don’t have) and I’ll spend it on a new Denon receiver, or I’ll donate it to the DFA, or I might bet it on black but what I won’t do is be stupid enough to color my opinion of this administration. So, thanks for the money, I’ll end up having to pay it back, plus interest before long but for now, it’s a nice bit of change. Too bad they just dont seem to get that this is not the kind of change we need.

my tune-up turned into a new clutch, new pads, new rotors, and lots more expensive stuff…

Oh the humanity. It’s so sad when people don’t even know they’ve been rick rolled until it’s too late and they already started dancing.

I’m dying to know what the dealer is going to charge me for this 45K/mi tuneup + short list of fixits.

I fee like I’m cheating on Pandora by signing up for Last.fm. Last just threw in a Death in Vegas track… Strong Woo.

Your dog doesn’t care about playing fetch with YOU, he just wants to chase the ball. Don’t think so? What if you had a robot that the dog could use to throw the ball for him.

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Another job taken by a robot.

Cars are part of some of my fondest moments. They’re also part of some scary and downright dumb moments. For example, a new 91 Miata in a full sideways WRC-style slide down a rather small street, trying to find the speed governor in a Euro-spec Audi V8 and climbing a 45 degree grade in a new Pathfinder. The Miata lived, as did I. The Audi never divulged it’s top speed but it was faster than I was willing to go and the Pathfinder is no wimp.

As an *ahem* adult, I take my need for speed to the track or the monthly autocross which lets me be perfectly happy puttering around town like an old person. But, every once in a while, there is a moment when you see another driver on the frontage road or on-ramp area, in a competitive car and there’s this immediate “we will now battle for dominance” acknowledgment. For the most part, these are as harmless as a quick sprint to highway-speed plus about 10 mph for good measure, nothing dangerous.

Yesterday, there was such an incident. There I was, minding my own business, and suddenly an E63 Mercedes, rippling with it’s 507 HP appeared right in front of me, dad in front, 2 8-10 year old boys in back. The head movements in the E63 told me everything that was happening in the car and what was about to occur. This is what transpired:
“Dad, there’s a Porsche behind us. Is that faster than this car?”
“Oh no son, not a chance, this car has 200 more horsepower than that little Porsche”
“Are you sure dad? it looks fast”
“Ok kids, sit down in your seat and I’ll show you”
[Loud noises as the E63 hurls itself forward onto the Interstate]
“Dad, he’s still right behind us. Are you sure you’re pressing the pedal all the way?”
Silence, other than the roar of the V8

I happen to like the AMG Mercedes cars and would happily have a CLK63 or even an older CLK55. Nothing wrong with them, fast as stink and the interior is just gorgeous. It’s just not a sports car, its a sporty GT or sedan, which is not better or worse, it’s just different. It’s not meant to launch to triple digits like a scalded chimp, it’s meant to pull hard and cruise on the highway at 140 without complaining about crosswinds, road quality or ride quality. My car will happily complain about everything while giving you a frighteningly fun ride.

I was a HUGE lego fan as a kid. I had barrels of the stuff and pretty much had the floor covered in weird little cities. Often, things got lost and buying bits for legos seemed like a huge ordeal. While legos are still popular, it seems that there is a burgeoning aftermarket, most notably one that caters to the para-military lego fans.

When I was a kid, I had to use matchsticks and Sharpie them black…

I have no issue with a better ID system but for it to work, we need to fix a lot of other things too. With that, if states are mandated to do XYZ, I’d expect they get some $$ to pay for it. Montana, a state known for not caring about “those fat cats in DC” and what they have to say is pretty much telling DC to get bent. Well, in May when the deadline for states to get with the program arrives, there will be a little face-off in airports between federal agents and Montana citizens. I expect that this will be extremely entertaining. My money is on Montana for not flinching.

Ok, I love VWs .Well, all German cars to be honest. But tuning VWs for abnormal amounts of speed and lateral grip is a particular fav of mine.

This guy makes minced meat out of some rather pricey cars with a car that likes to lift its back outside wheel when it gets overly excited in turns. The music, I cannot explain.

Red Devil – Golf3 VR6 Turbo

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Every day it becomes harder and harder for someone who would want to pry us away from living in Austin. I love it SO MUCH I want to squeeze it, but I might squeeze it too hard and they’ll take it from me…

Anyway, we just got another thing which makes us uber-cool and everyone else very not. Viva Aerobus is running round trip flights FROM AUSTIN to Monterey and Cancun. So, while that’s very good, the little bit where those flights are $9 makes it one of those “in your face!” things for those lame other cities without rad Mexico discount-shuttle-planes. So, I’m now going to pre-book flights to Monterey and Cancun, alternating each week. Forever. Cause it’s cheaper than pretty much anything else you can do. And more fun.

The page might be in Spanish, making it so you have to select a button for English, which is wonderful irony.

wondering how i lived without netvibes ginger

Name the reference in a comment. I dare you.

Yes, it’s happening, the galactic collapse of social media is happening. No no no, this is a GOOD collapse. All of these cool apps have been out there in the Internet tubes getting lots of peeps but until major parts and minor parts come together in better collections, it’s all a mess and kind of useless. For example, a house is made up of 2X4s sheet rock, shingles, doors, trim, paint, concrete, stone, brick, nails, you get the picture. If they’re spread out all over the place on the ground and around the neighborhood, it’s hard to track, things go missing, it’s not a house. It’s just parts. A lot of social media is that way but it’s starting to coalesce into areas.

Google has done a good job of snapping up properties like youtube, picasa, blogger, talk, docs, gmail etc. And, it all kind of, sort of, fits into iGoogle. I didn’t mention Orkut because, well, no offense but, I know no one who uses it. Hey, it’s probably good. iGoogle, like my.yahoo and other personal dashboards were great when they started but didn’t evolve a whole lot. Here and there widgets popped up but with social media being so hot, so diverse, so rapid in growth, people got caught up in their Twitters, re.dig-u-lose-whatever, mo-blogging, gps-enabled-cu-see-me, facebook stuff, they didnt pay any attention to the fact that they were going to have to track all this stuff and pretty soon invite-fatigue set in.

Invite-fatigue is a chronic disorder of social media participants who are constantly joining sites, inviting friends, setting up profiles and managing invites from other friends. It’s a job in itself to constantly track who might have joined facebook since the last time you let it fondle your Yahoo address book, AIM list, Plaxo and Linked-In accounts. Oh, and Outlook. I’m surprised everyone isnt just passed out at their keyboards with bleeding eyes and swollen fingers. Perhaps you are.

And in the midst of all of this amazing innovation, Netvibes, a dashboard provider or moderate popularity releases Ginger. Ginger hooks into just about all of the major social media apps and I’d be surprised if within 90 days, everything else in the long tail of SM apps are not addresses, wrapped up into widgets and festooning peoples private and public pages.

Now that’s a very cool thing there that almost went under the radar. In essence, you can now make a public “web page” (I hate calling it that) built on SM widgets, RSS feeds, web-page inserts, calendars (I included my own compiled 2008 road racing calendar) and then layer in tabs so you’re essentially making a destination site. How do you like that?

Netvibes is now way out in front of everyone else in this space. If they didn’t do anything for 6 months, they’d still be out in front. They’ve essentially created personal portals for all aspects of social media. The game has changed, I think that now everyone in the space understands what’s at stake and if they want to be a player they’re either owning the SM properties, building SM properties or applying metrics to measure the marketing / sales values of SM properties. Game on.

We have to prepare ourselves for a world without Rip Taylor. One day my friends, we’ll not have Rip to lighten up a tense meeting with a bucket of confetti and you’ll be sorry that we didnt prepare a contingency plan. Good thing someone has done just that. ANd, in typical German fashion, it’s both aggressive and funny. Ah, I love the Germans, so sad I’ve not been there recently.