my favs:
“do you even know what Laguna Seca is?”
“yeah…it’s this killer beach in florida where everyone’s a hardbody.”

“who cares when she can do this” *shows phone*
“why’s she behind you, dude?”
“dammit!”
“that’s gross…”

i driving back from rosh hashanah dinner last night with mom from grandma’s in her car (C300 Mercedes). we were taking home some leftovers that included pickled tomatoes in a psuedorubbermaid container. dropped my mom off at a friend’s house to check up on him after a surgery while i took the car down the hill to fill up the tank. on my way down the hill, someone in front of me slammed on their brakes and caused me to do the same. shortly thereafter, i noticed that the intoxicating new car smell had been replaced by that of pickled tomatoes. in that instant knew exactly what had happened. the cylindrical container containing the coveted russian delicacy had popped open in the bag carrying the leftovers and an amount of liquid equivalent to that of a regular cup of starbucks coffee had spilled towards the front passenger seat.

figured there wasn’t much i could do about it till i reached the gas station, i kept driving. about 45 seconds after the incident, the dash and center console lit up like a fucking christmas tree. every conceivable error message began popping up one by one. the car still ran fine in terms of engine & drivetrain, but the whole electrical system was shot. the windows wouldn’t go up or down, the turn indicators were non responsive, and the center console (which at this point controls everything from entertainment to climate control) was just dead. the only electronics that did work were the brake lights and the hazards.

got to the gas station and wiped up as much of the spill as i could from under the passenger seat. this is when i realized that the remote locking mechanism was no longer functioning. not just the remote, even the internal lock/unlock button decided it didn’t want to work. once the car was turned off, the lights still remained on even after turning the headlights off the automatic position to just off. suffice to say, at this point i was rather frustrated.

about 20 mins later, after picking up my mom (like i said, minus the whole part where none of the fucking electronics worked, the car ran fine), we were heading to drop the car off @ Keys Mercedes in Van Nuys. on the way there, it seems that the components under the passenger seat were drying out (by drying out i mean short circuited enough creating heat and evaporating the liquid) and beginning to come back online one by one. the christmas tree was turning into a menorah and then into the dark of night. by the time we had taken care of all the paperwork, even the windows were operational and the remote locking mechanism was back in action.

reflecting back on the whole incident, all i really have to say is WHAT THE FUCK, MERCEDES?!?!? i mean i’d expect this from a Ford or something along those lines, but are you really trying to tell me that one of the flagships of German engineering can be brought to its knees by spilling some liquid under the passenger seat? way to lose some major points in my eyes. what in the world could have inspired the engineers to design this car in a way that would allow for sensitive electronics to be located in such an area or leave vital cabling uninsulated on the floor of the cabin. shit happens. design should keep this in mind and in this instance obviously failed, miserably.

ok. this is fucking funny. i kinda take offense to the whole BMW M3 driver character (ugh. i play electronica too ), but i know they’re out there, and i want them to die…in a huge fireball. so yeah. just thought i’d share.

Sen. Joe Simitian came up with this hot piece of legislation and was signed into law today by the Governator. it will go into effect on January 1, 2009 and is supposed to supplement the hands free legislation that went into effect sometime this summer.

now i’m the first person to admit that the majority of people behind the wheel of a car are fucking morons. that said, making sure people aren’t writing their thesis paper or reading one on their phone while at the same time trying to drift the tricked out neon yellow honda with pulsating blue underglow is probably a good idea. i suppose just being one of those people who can haul ass on mulholland dr in a manual while responding to email and lighting a cigarette (theoretically speaking, *cough*) i just feel a little oppressed.

ya know what. how about throwing reading newspapers in there as well as applying your makeup. i don’t know how many times i’ve looked over to see a girl late for work with her front visor down going 75 applying her mascara. ugh.

gotta admit, back in the day when i had a nokia with those ancient things called buttons, i didn’t even need to look at my phone while texting. that’s the one downside to having an iPhone. the lack of a tactile interface really kills blind texting.

last friday i ordered Canon’s SD750 to replace my older SD230 from i think back in 2001. the 2.1MP bugger had a good run, but the CMOS started going out, so i figured it was just time. after some searching and working with a sub $200 price range, i decided on the SD750. i think this might turn into some shameless plug, but whatever (alas, no one’s paying me yet). so basically i LOVE Canon. always have. always will. i don’t think anyone does digital better. i was basically comparing the SD750, SD1000, and the SD1100 IS. after looking at the specs (which are pretty much similar besides the 8.3MP, image stabilizer, and faster fps on the 1100) i went to Best Buy to get some hands on with all the ones i’d picked out. played around with all of them and checked functionality and interface as well as build. after a good half hour, i simply came to the conclusion that the SD1000 and SD1100 IS just felt dinky. i don’t know how else to put it, really. i just felt as if i were to drop either one of them that they’d explode. i KNOW that’s not the case with Canon’s, but it just felt as thought the SD750 was a more solid piece of technology and could take a beating as digicam’s usually do. and quite honestly, the 3″ viewscreen on the SD750 is to die for.

went home and jumped on NewEgg to pick everything up. the camera was $175.99. i ended up throwing in a Kingston 4gig SDHC card for $10.65 and genuine Canon leather case for $17.99. thanks to NewEgg yet again for prompt service and delivery. ordered on friday evening and the camera was in my hands on tuesday.

memory card, camera, case

couple macro shots i took as soon as i opened it.

speaking of out with the old. the fellas just picked up a new 52″ Samsung LCD for the living room. 650 series if i’m not mistaken with the 120hz video processing. looking forward to enjoying some football on that bad boy this weekend.

Alan and Shawn with the new arrival.

(image courtesy of Hudson’s iPhone)

sometime last night or early this morning (assuming the attempted transaction took place somewhere in SE Asia) Samsung made a hostile take over bid for SanDisk. Samsung offered $26/share a the time when SanDisk shares were only trading at high $14 low $15. so that would have meant that they were offering $5,850,260,000 for a company trading at $3,370,649,800, by my rough ass estimates (share price end of trading last night * shares). SanDisk’s board rejected the bid unanimously saying that the offer greatly undervalued the company. i guess i kinda see where they’re coming from IF they still think their stock is worth what it was back in October 1, 2007 ($55.08/share) which would make the valuation of the company $12,393,550,800. so from what i’ve gathered, Samsung is going after SanDisk to bolster it’s own dwindling profit margin in the memory division. makes perfect sense. buy them out. have them become your memory division and focus on doing what Samsung does best (mmm. LCD’s. and other assorted goodies). i’m no corporate analyst, but it seems a purchase in the ~7 billion dollar range would make everyone happy. memory isn’t going to get any more expensive (great for consumer) yet at the same time, SSD is an emerging technology with lots of potential applications and future profit. so who knows what’s on the horizon or what other sorts of trade secrets SanDisk is holding in their vault making them think that Samsung’s offer was lowballing their perceived value…

WSJ Article
Samsung letter to SanDisk
SNDK @ Google Finance

would be interested to see how this all plays out. i have the utmost respect for both corporations as innovators in their fields with high standards for product quality. i would not at all be against a merging of the minds on this one.

Intel just launched the Xeon 7400 processor. it’s reportedly got an almost 50% performance boost over the soon to be forgotten quad core 7300. oh yeah. it costs $2,729.

i guess BMW owners in Europe have been a bit more fortunate than those in the states. at least those with the navigation package seeing as they’re running Google Maps vie Edge. fucking bastards. i want one. something about being available stateside in 2009 and costing $199/yr for the service. i’ve never been a fan of BMW’s navigation system. my buddy’s got a new 3.35 (fucking sexy) and the interface still looks archaic compared to the electronics running the powerplant. is it too much to ask to put some R&D into the navigation and general center console? and did they really have to throw in navigation, climate control, entertainment, and system setting into ONE UNIT?!? gotta love when it breaks down, because then you just lost it all. take a page from NASA’s book. compartmentalize. if one system goes down, the others will still function as long as they’re not all interconnected and dependent on each other. it’s ok. i’m a big boy. i can move a couple knobs to turn on my AC. maybe voice input for those times you’re trying to find your way home from a party in BFE while not entirely sober? and for the love of god. touchscreen > iDrive.

insurance giant AIG got knocked down a couple pegs by three top global ratings agencies. the rating downgrades varied between the companies and still leave the company as investment grade, but depending on what happens in the near future, downgrades could continue. the downgrades stem from mortgage-linked derivatives totaling $18 billion in losses. it’s shit like this (as well as the general mortgage industry implosion) that makes be firmly believe that free markets are not always what they’re cracked out to be and that government regulation and oversight in some industries is crucial and mandatory. this meltdown has had an effect on economies and institutions on a worldwide scale. thanks Gordo Gekko for showing us that sometimes greed can bring down financial institutions on an international scale. *thumbs up*

(thanks Shawn for the following two)
McCain finally realized that our economy (i’m not even going to talk about what’s going on worldwide as a result because his aids haven’t got that far on his cliff notes) is in a “crisis”. when Matt Lauer asked McCain to clarify what he meant by saying up until now that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong”. McCain responded by saying “Well it’s obviously true that the workers of America are the fundamentals of our economy, and our strength and our future, and I believe in the American worker, and someone who disagrees with that – it’s fine. We are in crisis. We all know that. The excess, the greed and the corruption of Wall Street have caused us to have a situation which is going to affect every American. We are in a total crisis.’’ he went on to say “We need a 9/11 commission, and we need a commission to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it, and I know we can do it and how to do it.” we don’t need another 9/11 commission to tell us what happened. Ron Paul was warning that this exact thing would happen a fucking year ago. no one listened. anyone who’s paid attention over the last 3 years knows exactly how we got here and what needs to be done and what kind of leadership we need. and i’m sorry sir, but it’s not you. you are SO out of touch with what’s going on with every level of American society, yet at the same time claim that Obama is an out of touch elitist. fucking really? ugh. (might rant later if my head doesn’t explode)

and a little something for the DRILL DRILL DRILL crowd courtesy of the US Energy Information Administration:

best recent political motivational poster.

looks like Windows 7 might be coming out June 3, 2009. not really sure if there’s all that much to be excited for. i’ve still only used Vista a handful of times and i’m doing just fine with XP Pro, personally. it might be able to read what you’re thinking this time and actually be useful. who knows. some other big news today is that Best Buy purchased Napster for $121 million. what i think they did was purchased the technology and user base, because last time i checked, no one uses Napster. iTunes & Rhapsody ftw? WoWInsider.com thinks it’s got the Wrath of the Lich King expansion pegged at november 13, 2008. i’d be excited but i’m just glad that my character got banned and i no longer have to spend 4 hours a night raiding BT while normal people are either sleeping or enjoying the company of their friends. still kinda have that itch sometimes though. and the the ever turbulent local economy has caused the per barrel price of oil to drop to $94, which i guess is great for consumers (keep going down to $50, please!) but in the end is just a bigger red flag letting us know our economy is in the shitter.

and on that note, i’m going to take my FOB cousin and his friend to Magic Mountain today to get some scream on.

update: massive fail on the roller coaster front. i guess now Magic Mountain is only open on the weekends. what a fucking disappointment. well mainly for them because i already have three tickets ready to go for next weekend. *thumbs up* way to not check the schedule though.

something we can all agree on is that McCain is running a dirty race. full of lies, deceit, and business as usual in terms of historic smear campaigns. something that people SHOULD take notice of is what organizations are joining which candidate’s camps. Planned Parenthood sure as hell knows who’s camp they’re in. here’s a video that has yet to air in the areas that were targeted by McCain’s ad that claimed that Obama’s supported bill (SB 99) had the intention of teaching sexual education to kindergartners. (fuck i still can’t get over that accusation as well as the thought that some people would actually believe it)

the Politico.com article can be found HERE along with a colorful letter from Planned Parenthood to the McCain campaign.

there’s also a great article on HuffingtonPost.com dissecting the interview of McCain by the wonderful ladies at The View. i have to take a second and say that i didn’t expect the ladies to grill him so effectively on such key topics and to such an extent. i also hope more ladies are now watching The View then Oprah. maybe this will help bring about a new generation of women who are actually interested and informed on what’s going on in the political sphere (yes instead of the OMG SHE”S GOT A VAGINA I”M GOING TO VOTE FOR HER, because i know they’re out there). but i digress… it’s a great article with commentary and clips from the show in question.

further reading regarding the McCain campaign train of bullshit comes from Paul Krugman courtesy of the NY Times titled Blizzard of Lies. i truly hope that people are paying attention to the fact that Obama is covering issues that are important to the people as well as the future welfare of this nation while the McCain campaign is doing their damnedest to create controversy in order to take attention away from the fact that they have no plan or different stand on issues than the administration of the past 8 years.

think people. think.

also came across a great interview with McCain by a journalist from Maine. textbook example of how you can ask a politician a direct question and they can respond with anything besides the answer to the question you just asked. to sum it up, it goes something like this: “what foreign relations / national security experience does she have?” “energy. because they have oil in alaska” WHAT?!?

+1 to Cindy McCain for having drifting as a hobby. (thanks Shawn)