everyday

As is often the case in my life, I am confused. I like so many wonderful and varied things that it is sometimes difficult for me to formulate an opinion. One area where I think I need to work on this problem is that of architecture. I really do enjoy most styles of architecture, but certain styles do excite me more than others. This really isn’t my fault, after all there are far too many styles to choose just one that I like best.

In order to explore this further I have decided to search the interweb for pictures of houses that I really like and post them here, on everyday.

The Gamble House [official site] is a very nice, if not a little extravagant, example of the “American Arts and Crafts” or “Craftsman” style. It was designed in 1908 by the architectural firm Greene & Greene.

Ok, first let me start by saying that my new MacBook Pro is rad! It makes doing simple things like sharing pictures with everyone really easy. I plug the camera into iPhoto, transfer the photos, organize them a little, crop and correct, then drag them to the Flickr Uploadr… So easy!

More Pictures of Maui

I am now engaged to be married! A nice little slideshow from iPhoto is available on Google Video:

Or click HERE

We have seen some wonderully beautiful sites in Maui. The purpose of this trip was to scout out locations for our wedding on April 14th, 2007. We tasted some wonderful food from out caterer, found some really nice condos in Lahaina and visited the Alawalu Plantation House where our ceremony will be held. Oh yeah, we also got engaged! Everything is falling into place very nicely, click the below link to see some pictures from our Maui trip.

Flickr Photo Sideshow

This can be posted under: Another failing American automobile manufacturer makes yet another mistake moving them even closer to their eventual demise.

I have seen some advertisements where GM is offering a 100,000 mile warranty! Now most people will probably think “Why is that a bad idea?”, and that is a very good question, which I will try to answer. You see, GM has a cash flow problem, they have ridiculous union and pension liabilities and not enough revenue to cover them. The profit margins on all automobiles have narrowed to a point where they simply can’t afford the concessions they made to the UAW over the last few decades. The problem is so bad, that GM actually loses less money if they pay their employees not to make cars! Ha! So what does this have to do with them offering a 100,000 mile warranty? Well, this is a quick fix to bolster their short term cash flow problems. Sure, there will be an infusion of cash as a result of this offering, but without correcting the “real” problems facing GM, this will only make their end happen sooner and more drastically.

A few other car companies have offered a long term warranty to increase sales and turn the company around, but the success of this approach depends on a couple of factors: first, you have to be able to reasonably expect your cars to last for 100,000 miles without having to do major repairs to a significant percentage of them, and secondly you have to be able to rework your organization so that this infusion of cash makes you profitable. GM has not increased the quality of their products, so any extension to the existing warranty is only going to result in an increase of related warranty costs, and they certainly haven’t convinced the UAW that all of the members will be out of work sortly if they can’t turn this company around. Volkswagen offered a 100,000 mile warranty or a while, but it was after a serious reworking of every vehicle they offered and genuine attempt to gain back the public’s trust by building a considerably better car, this plan worked very well for VW, I doubt that it will do the same for GM.

via: Autopia on Wired

The subject as evidenced by the new 2007 Dodge Ram SRT10 and it’s slightly less than stellar fuel mileage rating of… 7 miles per gallon. Are they f-ing serious? Someone needs to point out that our dependence on foreign oil is the root cause for the deaths of thousands of American citizens and citizen soldiers. Radical islamic jihadists are funded with the proceeds of our gluttunous need for oil. In producing this truck, Dodge is saying that it doesn’t value these lives, that it doesn’t care about 9/11 and that it hopes the American people and the rest of the civilized West will remain sucking at the teat of the Middle East.

I know that they are just producing a product that a certain segment of the population wants, but when you are as big a corporation as Chrysler, perhaps you should show a little restraint in your quest for profits and actual make some decisions that will benefit all of us. Chrysler is bound by the same social contract that keeps us all a few inches from utter anarchy. As a gigantic nationwide corporation, their charge should be to provide the American public with a quality product that we want, but on the same note it shouldn’t be a product that will harm us in the long run.

A quote from the originating article sums up how I feel, and is a pretty damned funny too!

This truck could be more politically incorrect only if it ran on whale oil and panda tears.

I hate traffic! I hate it, it literally sucks the life force from me with every creeping mile. I think I would not be very happy with my life if I ended spending a major portion of it in traffic. I can’t imagine spending 3-4 hours every work day stuck on a freeway creeping along with every other zombie, for years upon endless years.

That being said, here are my solutions to the traffic problem!

• Large trucks must stay in the right lane! I can’t tell you how many times I have been on a freeway and some a-hole truck driver thinks that he will just get into lane #3 to pass some other a-hole truck driver who thinks he will just get into lane #2 to pass some other a-hole truck driver that is going 53mph. Imagine this, a four lane expressway that could handle loads of car traffic jammed up because there are large semi-trucks inn 3 of the 4 lanes! Can you imagine it? If not, just go drive on the freeways in SoCal for a few minutes and I am sure a group of a-hole truck drivers will accomdate your lack of imagination. I honestly think that if trucks were relegated to the slow lane only, and I mean ONLY, that traffic would flow considerably better. I am willing to make certain considerations for them though. If there is a steep grade, I think there should be two slow lanes, one for trucks only, and one regular one so they can pass each other. I also think that it would be acceptable for them to move out of the rightmost lane prior to an interchange so that they can navigate their way onto the correct freeway.
• Section off the carpool lanes with concrete dividers and seriously limit the ingress and egress points for them. This would help to eliminate the near gridlock that happens every 2-3 miles because some a-hole wasn’t paying attention to the signs and failed has to jump out of the carpool lane, zip across four lanes of traffic and exit the freeway. If you don’t give stupid people too many options, they can’t make as many bad choices
• Once the carpool lane is sectioned off, make the minimum speed limit 90mph and set a maximum of 120mph. Why not? If you don’t have to worry about lane changes and whatnot why not? Most people drive close to 90mph in the fast lane anyways, so what is the harm?
• Limit the number of on-ramps and off-ramps. Again, people are stupid, limiting their choices limits their mistakes. Most people get on the freeway, head directly for the fast-lane and cruise along at 75-80mph until about 1,000ft before their exit where they dash across all the other lanes with wild abandon because they don’t want to miss their stop. With our current configuration, this happens every mile or so, if we only had a exit every 5 miles or so, the a-holes cutting everyone off to make their exit would be condensed to a smaller area
• Now for my favourite solution: Mass Transit!!!! I am all for ripping out freeway lanes in favor of commuter and high speed rail lines. 10 lane freeways running across our landscape chock full of single occupancy vehicles burning Middle Eastern oil is a piss poor solution. We need an effective mass transit system of buses and trains that actually work together in concert to get people where they need to go in a convenient manner. If we stop pooring money into our parent’s idea of utopia (where everyone owns a car and drives for hours to work), we can start making some smart decisions. This would of course require us to completely change our retarded, suburban sprawl method of housing ourselves, but that is just one more upside to my idea.

Thanks to iTunes’ new “Cover Flow”, I think there may be a resurgance of beatiful and artistic album cover art. Kudos to Apple! The neat thing about this little addition to iTunes is that it wasn’t initially programmed by Apple, they purchased the code from a third party Apple developer, kudos again.

So, Apple had a little press show today, if you aren’t familiar with Apple’s press events let me just say that it is almost a cult phenomena. That being said, the new products and software they have released are really cool!

iPod

The new iPod, iPod Nano, and iPod Shuffle are really sweet. The design changes and improvements, while subtle and evolutionary in nature are really well thought out. I really like what Apple is doing, with the direction they are going.

iTunes

More of the same here, subtle changes that just make you go “ah… that’s nice”. It seems that Apple truly cares about making their products better. Instead of letting their accountants design their products and software by cutting corners everywhere, they are making high quality products and software, charging appropriately and reaping enormous profits!

via: The New York Times

The New York Times has an interesting article on testing human embryos for two different types of hereditary cancers. From what I understood of the article, they take an embryo in a very early stage (8 cells), remove one of the cells and test it’s DNA for the particular gene(s) that causes the cancer. Currently they are testing for a form of breast cancer and a form of colon cancer. The subjects of the article have a history of the colon cancer in the husband’s mother’s family that has killed many of his mother’s siblings. The couple learned that this gene had a 50% chance of showing up in their child, so they decided to shell out the $15,000 to have the genetic testing done.

I know this testing will not sit well with many people, especially religious types, and that is fine. My personal opinion is that we (humans) have been given the gift of infinite capability and choosing not to utilize this gift is the biggest sin we could ever commit.