Pool Covered For Winter

Well, I bought a cover for our 16 x 32 above ground pool. From what I have read covering the pool does two things. 1) It keeps crap out of the pool, and 2) the lack of sunlight prevents algae from growing.

I added three jugs of chlorine to shock it, and one gallon of algae-side to make sure there is no algae already in there. I am hoping it will be ready to go with a quick shock in April.

This is my first time with a cover. In the past I just ran the pump on a timer and vacuumed it once a month or so. Well, in 7 winters I have had to drain it twice because of the amount of scale and crap that built up at the bottom and had to replace the liner once. So… that’s 4 good winters to 3 bad winters. And that was will a bunch of maintenance.

Now I am hoping for maintenance free and cheaper expenses. I shut the pump off since that’s what I would have to do if I lived up north to prevent damage from freezing water. If shutting the pump off is good for northerners then is good enough for us southerners.

I will report back in April how well this went.

Can Toyota Be Cool?

My Motor Trend newsletter came and it looks like Toyota wants to make a serious effort at a cool car.

It looks cool as a concept. I wonder how much Toyota can bland it out before production. This should give the Accord Coupe and Genesis Coupe a run for their money.

2010 Camaro For 4 Days

My son and I visited New York last week and when we saw the 2010 Camaro in the rental lot we turned around and paid for the upgrade.

2010 Camaro V-6 Automatic

We picked the car up Thursday night and returned it on Monday. Granted, Sunday we took the train to the station to head into Manhattan so it did not get much use that day. But here is my opinion of the car with the 200+ miles I put on it.

Overall

I like the car. You should know that I am a Camaro fan having owned a 1993 Camaro Z-28 and a 1967 Camaro RS Convertible. The car looks great, but you pay a big price for that. This car had the worst visibility of any car I have ever driven… ever. If you get claustrophobic you will hate this car.

The ride was as good as my BMW 335i and grip was amazing. However, steering feel is non-existent and it feels heavy. It is not a nimble coupe like my 93 Z was. Power from the V-6 is adequite, but the weight of the car always makes you think the engine is being strained. It felt like the transmisson was slipping, or the torque converter was too loose. You have to rev the engine too much for good thrust and the engine makes a lot more noise doing it than you would expect for the thrust returned.

I really wanted to like this car, but it makes me want to test drive a 2010 Mustang. The problem there is that the Mustang with a V-6 is a dog, and you would have to compare this car to the V-8 Mustang which hardly seems fair.

Performance

Like I said, the engine seems overworked by the weight of the Camaro. Leaving the transmission in drive the car is sluggish. Put the trans in sport mode and in maintains gears longer, which helps, but it still feels like it should be quicker. Manual mode doesn’t help much. I think a tighter torque converter with slightly short gearing might make a big different in feel. The trans is the weak link hear. Shifts are so slow that any thoughts of a sports car are removed. Does anyone make a shift kit for this trans yet? It needs one. Full throttle from rest gives plenty of speed, but this is the only way it feels good. 1 gear downshifts while cruising increase engine speed and noise with no increase in thrust. You have to push the pedal enough for at least two gears to get any thrust increase and that comes with a significant increase in noise.

There is enough power for the average person. If you are buying this car for style than it is fast enough. But overall I would prefer less noise and more push in the mid range of highway passing at 50-80 mph. I am sure the V-8 does not have this problem.

Ride and Handling

The ride is excellent. Even over pot-holed NY streets it was never a problem. The tires also have a massive amount of grip. No matter how hard I tried I could not get the tires to squeal. The car corners quite flat as well. However, steering response is slow and the car just feels heavy. It reminds me of the drive I took in a Challenger STR8, a big heavy cruiser. Nimble is just not in the new Camaro’s vocabulary.

Mileage

I really wanted to prove the 29 MPG this car gets on the EPA cycle. I could not. But this was as much a problem of New York traffic as anything else. The first morning I averaged 24 mpg in the suburbs of Long Island. That dropped to an average of 19.9 mpg with a drive out on the island in rush hour traffic. I drove out to New Jersey and maintained the 20 mpg overall for the first tank of gas.

I filled up in New Jersey before driving back to Long Island. I reset the mileage assuming this was my best chance… it was around 11:00 PM on a Saturday. Sure enough the trip computer climbed its way up to 28.4, then bounced between 28.1 & 28.4 for about 5 miles. There is no instantaneous mileage readout to help me hypermile the car, so I think this was as good as it was going to get. At this time the GPS had me switch from the Garden State Parkway to the New Jersey Turnpike. I have not lived in New York in over 20 years and it was too late before I realized the GPS was taking me through the Lincoln Tunnel and Manhattan rather than the bridge to Staten Island. Oops. I spent 2 hours in gridlock traffic before we emerged on Long Island. The total trip took 4 hours 15 minutes back to the hotel. The average for the entire trip from Jersey… 20 mpg.

So, I averaged 20 mpg the entire time I was in New York. If you live there you can comapre that to what you get with your own car. In Texas I am sure I could average 25 mpg, and would love to see if I could break the 29 mark on a trip to Dallas (I hit 31.7 mpg in my BMW 335i on my way to Dallas a couple of months ago, and it is rated at 27 by the EPA).

Interior

As I said, this car has the worst visibilty of any car I have ever driven. To the rear is a joke. The view out the rear view mirror looks like looking through a tunnel. Forget looking over your shoulder as you back up, there is nothing to see but the interior of the car. The A pillars are also huge and create blind spots on either side of the windshield. Plus the side windows are so narrow they add to the claustrophobic effect the interior provides. Rear seat legroom in non-existent with the front seats all the way back. I an 5′ 10″ and I had the seat pretty far back. A friend that is 6′ 3″ rubbed his head on the headliner, but the car was equipped with a sun roof which clearly took up 1 – 2 inches. Without a sunroof my friend would just fit, but I could not see him driving a car long term he could just fit in. Up to 6 feet you will do fine, above that you should get a long test drive before buying.

I like the interior. Yes, the gauges on the front of the console are virtually impossible to read quickly, but who cares. You can read them once in a while. So racing this car is out, but for everyday driving I found most of the gauges to be acceptable… except the speedometer. The orange pointer is so wide that it is difficult to accurately tell how fast you are going within less than 5 mph. 60 or 65? Stare long enough to see if it is 65 when you notice that cop car while your in a 55 zone and it could be too late for you. This is all about style. You sacrifice practicality for style with almost everything about the Camaro.

Speaking of practicality and its effect from styling… the truck is a nice size truck… with a tiny opening. You will not be carrying large objects. Not for a problem with the size of the trunk, but for the hole you must stick them through. We could not load our two soft luggage bags at the same time. Stick one bag in and slide it to the side or back then put the next item in. Keep doing it this way until you have a month’s work of close in the trunk.

The interior lighting it excellent. At maximum the dash lights are too bright late at night. This is a good thing. On almost every car I have ever driven I always leave the dash fully lit. I turned down the lighting on the Camaro. I really like the mood light in the doors that come on with the dash lights (and dims with the dash lights as well). This is style that didn’t cost anything in practicality.

And now for the seats. The seats in the Camaro we drive were by far the most comfortable seats I have ever experienced in an automobile bar none. I know this because when we ended our 4+ hour drive back from Jersey my back felt as fresh as when we left. You should know I have class two bulging discs in my back. When we drove to Dallas in the 335i I played with the lumbar support quite a few times during the trip (also about 4 hours or so). I did not have to touch the Camaro’s seat controls once during the 4 hour drive. That’s good because there was no lumbar control for the Camaro. And I didn’t need it. How cool is that.

Conclusion

The Camaro is the most comfortable, least practical Camaro I have ever driven. All that means nothing. This car is acceptable for its purpose. It looks great and can be enjoyed for miles and miles. Would I buy one. If I were single I would have to test drive the Mustang. I would also test drive a manual transmission with the V-6 in a Camaro to see if that makes up for the mild performance problems. Then there is the V-8.

I like this car… and I would put it on my short list of cars in its price range if I did not have kids.

Gas Guzzler Problems

I see problems already. I wrote an article on the Cash For Guzzlers last month. I was worried that dealers would take unfair advantage of this. And I saw the first of that over the weekend.

I saw a commercial for Nissan’s Altima where they listed the price with incentives at something like $13,999. I may be wrong about the final price, but I know I saw the Gas Guzzler incentive listed at $4,500. How many people will be suckered in on this?

If you read my article, you will know that the incentive is your trade, so that means anyone watching the ad thinking they could get a car for $13,999 plus their trade-in is in for a shocker. There is no trade in value for your car with the Cash For Guzzler program.

Also, to get the $4,500 the car you are buying must get 10 mpg better (according to www.fueleconomy.gov) than the car you are trading in. The Altima with a 4 cylinder and manual transmission is listed at 26 mpg combined city/highway. That means you would have to trade in a car rated at 16 mpg or less to get the $4,500. The only other option a $3,500 voucher is the new car get 4 mpg better than the old car.

Finally, the program doesn’t start until July 23, and the commercial made no mention of this. People expecting to leave a dealer with a car before then are in for another surprise.

The commercial is on the verge of false advertising, at the least it is very misleading. There is no clear information about the $4,500 they show being removed from the price of the Altima and many people will be let down when they go to a dealer to try and get the deal. In fact, I believe many people will will not be able to get the deal.

So the troubles begin.

Facebook vs. Twitter vs. MySpace

I don’t get it. Which means everyone thinks, “he will never get it!“

Let’s see, Twitter, the most recent of the big three (not big three car brands, that’s over) social networking sites is a micro-blogging site. Short little 140 character posts. This is kind of cool, but to whom? You start micro-blogging what seem to be insignificant tid-bits about what you are doing. I suppose this is best done from a phone through some form of text-messaging to your Twitter account. I get that part. But if people don’t subscribe to it how will it ever be read. I never seem to come across a Twitter post when doing a Google search for anything. So how do you get people to “follow” your Tweets? I suppose if you follow them they might look at yours, but I suspect you need to find some other way of initiating this following process.

Facebook is the second, and maybe the biggest at the moment, of the big three. Facebook allows you to build a somewhat custom web page that others can visit. As best I can tell (without joining myself) you can join social network groups (for lack of a better term). Once in a social group I assume you get some kind of notification of updates and vice-versa. So you can post to a group and others get the message, and you get everyone’s posts. This seems like it would lead to a lot of posts to read through. I assume you can also sign up for updates from individuals like Twitter does. Facebook seems to be similar to Flickr in that you can also post entire photo albums, making this the best of the three if you care about sharing photos among your social network.

Finally we have MySpace, the first of the big three, though I am sure not the first. I originally thought MySpace was a blogging site. But my memory must be weak or outright wrong. It seems MySpace allows you to build a customizable web page, like Facebook. However, MySpace riddles your page with ads to no end. Plus, people generally load up MySpace pages with tons of music, pictures and videos they get free from everywhere on the web. Although you can post pictures to MySpace, it seems it is not the kind of place to upload photo albums. More like the occasional photo that goes well with the social networking of the site. MySpace also has a section of your page where people in your social network can post comments. Those comments can be read by others in your network before you get a chance to mediate. So if you don’t want Robin to know that Jill went out to the bar with you last night you better make sure that Robin and Jill are not both in your network… and in doing so maybe upset the one that you don’t befriend into your network. Yikes!

So, what’s the big deal? I have this blog where I can rant (at well over 140 characters) just as I am doing now. It works for me. Nobody has to follow it, but the content does show up in a Google search. Google “Outlook 2000 Vista” and I am at the top of the page. Here’s proof.

I don’t expect people to “follow” me, but it would be nice if people found the information I disseminate to be worth bookmarking my site and visit from time to time.

If I want I can post pictures, but I tend not to put pictures of my family is such a public forum anymore.

I also have my own web site. I write articles on my site, so they are usually longer than this post, but this post could just as easily have been an article on my site. I tend to blog smaller information than what I would write an article about. For me this blog is a supplement to my site.

Creating an actual web site is probably beyond most social networking fans. You have to do it all. I get the domain name, I build the site in Expression Web and I host it from a server of my own. I could pay for the hosting part, but I am a cheapskate by nature when it comes to this stuff. As are a lot of people on these social networks. I think if Facebook, Twitter or MySpace charged money for their service they would dry up overnight.

So, is it that I don’t get it and never will, or are these social networks a fad? A fad perpetuated by a mentality that everything on the Internet is FREE.

You can leave a comment below and I will get an e-mail with the contents. I don’t have to do more than check my e-mail to know you had something to say. So go ahead… join my own personal social network for one minute, one minute only, and leave a comment. You will feel better because you will have made me feel better. And you will never have to worry about me again unless you bookmark this blog. It’s a win-win situation all around.

What do you think?

Camaro To The Rescue

I like how The Times says the Camaro is the Muscle Car to the Rescue for General Motors.

Makes me want to run down to a Chevrolet dealership.

Lutz Stays

According to Automotive News it looks like Bob Lutz, GM’s executive in charge of product development, has reversed his decision to retire at the end of this year. This is GM’s best news this year.

Lutz is responsible for a lot of change in GM’s products over the last few years. Many may say that is it too little too late, but I think not. Cadillac’s restyled CTS, the all new Chevy Malibu & Camaro, the Pontiac Solstice & G8 as well as the upcoming Volt are all Bob’s doing. If it were not for Bob Lutz GM would have already gone out of business.

Regardless of your opinion of GM, Bob has done a lot of good over the past 4 years (or so). He is the only executive that should still be there. A true “car guys,” Bob was strategic in getting Chrylser in shape in the 90s with the Viper and PT Cruiser, both huge successes that would never have happened without Lutz’ passion for cars and this industry.

Finally I have a reason to believe GM has a chance. Good luck, Bob!

Need For Speed: Shift

I just saw the teaser trailer for Need For Speed: Shift and I have got to get this game for my XBox 360!

I don’t know if I will like NFS’s switch to simulation physics from its previous arcade physics, but I have been playing Forza 2 on the XBox 360 and it is more realistic that previous NFS titles.

Let’s not forget that Forza 3 is coming out soon as well.

I will end up getting both. I like that Forza has you driving street cars. Helps my fantasy of ever owning one. NFS:S looks like it is going to mix race cars and street cars, but all the previews I have seen show race cars.

We’ll just have to wait and see.

Camaro Outsells Mustang

Rejoice Camaro Fans! The Camaro wins… for now. As reported my Automotive News, Chevrolet sold 9,320 Camaros to Ford selling 7,362 Mustangs during June 2009.

The last time Camaro beat the Mustang in sales was in 1993. Two things were different then. 1) I bought a Camaro is 1993. It was all new and a great car. 2) Ford’s Mustang was old and awaiting a redesign that would come the following year, 1994.

This time I am not buying a Camaro (because I can’t afford a new car at this time), and Ford has a new Mustang in dealers at the same time as Chevrolet has a new Camaro.

I would not expect this to continue. Remember, Chevrolet had 14,000 deposits for the Camaro before the first one was delivered. There are a lot of Camaro fans out there releasing their pent-up frustration. Some, like me, will not be able to buy a car, and others will. Once that initial band of Camaro fans runs out the car will have to survive on its own.

The 1993 Camaro was better in every measure of performance than the new for 1994 Mustang. But the Mustang has always out sold the Camaro. Even when the Camaro was better. Chevrolet has to be a lot better to out sell a brand like the Mustang.

At least we Camaro fans have a small victory.

With GM’s approval to sell the good parts of itself to a “new” GM maybe the Camaro will be around for a few years.

To Pre Or Not To Pre? That Is The Question.

With the resent introduction of the iPod Touch in my household (my boss sold me his iPod Touch to offset himself getting an iPhone), I have less need for an iPhone myself. Since I am on Sprint that begs the question of whether I should get the Palm Pre.

My immediate response is… GET OUT OF MY WAY, I NEED TO GET TO THE SPRINT STORE! But will clearer heads prevail? Is the Palm Pre going to make a really good phone and provide the just the items missing from the iPod Touch?

For instance, my current data plan with Sprint covers most everything, including GPS. I would like to see that on the Palm Pre, and it could definitely influence my purchasing decision if the GPS feature is good enough to get me to forget about Garmin or TomTom.

The web browser on the Palm Pre and the web surfing experience when away from WiFi (the iPod Touch handles WiFi web surfing almost perfectly) will also be critical to my opinion of the Palm Pre.

My youngest son is eligible to turn in his Mom’s old cell phone for a new one in August. I am already eligible for an upgrade. He is thinking about the Instinct. I need to touch and feel the Palm Pre by then to see if we both get new phones.

iPod Touch… Almost New

Well, I have an iPod Touch.

My youngest son made a deal with me. If he saved for an iPod Touch I would match him dollar for dollar. He was up to about $66 dollars. I told him that tax would be part of it. He needed to save about $130 to cover half the cost of a $229 iPod Touch with sales tax.

My boss (an good friend) was contemplating getting the iPhone. What the heck.. he is an IT geek and he already has cell service with AT&T. I mentioned my deal with my son over the iPod Touch. He came to me and offered to sell me his iPod Touch if he got the iPhone. He did, so I did.

What surprised me, and my son, was that we got a 16 GB iPod Touch… for $125. I was expecting the 8 GB. What a bargain.

As my boss said… it was a win-win-win. He got an iPhone, I got an iPod Touch, and my son got an iPod Touch.

I know what I am doing tonight.

Microsoft Shutting Down Microsoft Money

Wow! I just read on PCMag that Microsoft is going to stop selling MS Money at the end of June.  This was the first I heard about this. I use Microsoft Money… 95 edition. I started suing it in the Windows 3.1 days. Here’s the story…

I originally wrote my own “checkbook” program in the DOS days because Quicken couldn’t do a couple of things I needed. In Quicken 3.0… when you reconciled your checking account against your bank statement, if you found an entry in error you could not edit it. You had to leave the reconcile function, find the order to edit it, and then start the reconcile process all over. Or… you could let Quicken enter an adjustment transaction. Neither of these options were good enough for me. Also, Quicken 3.0 had limited text “graphics.” I liked entering checks in a form that looked like a check on screen.

So I wrote my own check book program that used the extended ASCII characters to draw forms on the DOS text screens of the day. I enabled editing transactions while reconciling, and could run the entire program off a floppy if I had to (someone asked for a copy and needed to run it this way).

After 6 years of use the program started to loose transactions. I may have hit a DOS memory limit or something. I was now programming in Windows, but did not have the time to invest in writing a program in Windows, so I bought MS Money… I think it was the first or second version for Windows 3.0/3.1. It did everything my program did, but it did it in Windows graphical world. Forms for data entry and editing amounts as you reconcile. Cool!

When Windows 95 came out I was beta testing it. I also got a beta MSN account. MSN beta testers were given a free download to the Windows 95 version of MS Money… if you downloaded it from MSN within the first 60 days of Windows 95 going live.

I downloaded the install and I am still using it. That’s right… I am running Microsoft Money 95 (actually version 4.1, but the first for 32-bit Windows 95).

I tried buying Money 2000 in case the Y2K bug was going to be an issue. I struggled with Money 2000 and its browser interface until I was blue in the face. It was a huge step backward in usability. So I reloaded Money 95, restored my Money 95 data file (it was converted to the 2000 format, a one way conversion) and re-entered two months worth of transactions from my bank statements.

From February to March 2007 I compared Quicken to Money. I really, really wanted to make use of online banking. My goals were simple. 1) Connect to my credit union to balance my check book so I didn’t have to manually reconcile to the monthly statements I get in the mail, and 2) setup budgets so I can see how much money I have left to spend as the month progresses. The budget part was super easy as I setup only two categories, Bills and Other.

Both failed my very simple budget requirements. All I wanted to know was home much money I had left to spend of my monthly budget as I entered transactions. This was beyond either program. Feel free to read the gory details yourself.

Quicken stopped connecting to my credit union and I was forced to use Money 2007. It did not last. I was too frustrated with the reconciling of transactions. Money 07 did not allow easy tagging of categories to certain transactions it found in my credit union’s data. It would not do a good job matching up transactions I entered manually to those it got from my credit union, causing double entries and other strange anomalies. In the end it  was actually easier when I manually reconciled my paper statement to Money 95. Plus the budget feature was worthless requiring me to do double entry with my spreadsheet. Back to… Money 95.

When I abandoned Money 2007 I switch back to Money 95. I did not go back to a saved copy of my Money 95 data file. All that would get me was 12 years worth of historical transactions with no categories and no budget information. So I started a new data file.

I have been using Money 95 ever since. Things are easier. My credit union has redesigned their statements so that it is very easy to reconcile to Money 95. And I have gone to a new budget system that eliminates the need to keep track of our spending.

I call it the Cash Budget. At the beginning of the month I withdraw the cash we would use for all non-bills. Bills are mortgage, credit cards, electric, water, cable, phone, etc. Groceries also fit in with bills. I budget these only, so when I am already sitting at my desk writing checks I just enter the checks in Money 95 and my budget spreadsheet.

The cash is the key. We have a budget for how much we can spend on other things. Other things is everything that is not a regular bill. Clothes, dinners out, movies, ice cream at Sonic. Name it and it is in this section of the budget. I take the cash at the beginning of the month and put it on the dresser. We just pay cash for everything. When the cash runs out there is nothing left and we have to stop spending.

It is so simple, but so effective. I wish I had thought of it sooner. Actually, I had thought of it years ago, but was never bold enough to do it. Now we are doing it and our miscellaneous spending is much better controlled.

So… to recap… 1) the paper statements are simpler making reconciling easier, 2) the budget spreadsheet is easier with only a couple dozen items a month to enter, and 3) the cash spending is easier. All this is easier and it is now more effective than ever at managing our money.

MS Money 95, an Excel Spreadsheet, and a pile of cash each month makes for a great way to manage finances.

Bankruptcy… For How Long?

I am reading about Chrysler about to come out of bankruptcy after only about 6 weeks, with the Fiat buyout and more government money. GM just went into bankruptcy with the Obama Administration promising to push them through quickly with another $30+ Billion dollars of aid.

I don’t get it. Delphi, the parts maker that was spun off of GM and has GM as its largest customer, has been in bankruptcy for 4 years. Why doesn’t the government help them out and speed their process.

I have to say I am very disappointed with the way Obama is handling this. I am glad a new Chairman has been named for GM, but I seriously doubt an AT&T executive can understand the car business. Is this better or worse. O.K., it can’t be worse, the current leadership at GM is clueless on how to make cars people really want. They only know how to cut costs and give rebates to get people to buy their cars. I hope the ex-AT&T executive can figure out how to make cars.

It just rubs my grain that the government is taking such a large stake in this… while clearly showing favoritism to the companies that hold the most voters. How much easier does it have to be to see Obama is just protecting his re-election.

New MacBook Pros

Just like the rest of you I checked in on a live blogcast from Apple’s WWDC. I like what I am hearing about the MacBook Pro refreshes. The 15″ MacBook Pro will start at $1699. That’s a little more than I wanted to spend for my next laptop ($1,000 – $1,500), but it is low enough to put the MacBook Pro in contension. I will have to check out its specs over the next couple of days.

The 13″ MacBook Pro (yes, 13″ Pro, the MacBook label is only on the older “white” version) will start at $1,199, just a little down from starting at $1,299. I will have to revisit my reviews of reviews of 13″ laptops here. I was close to giving up on the MacBook because the last refresh, which brought us the aluminum chassis, got a slower CPU allowing the competition to catch up. I will look into the MacBook specs over the next few days and plan an update to my laptop comparison spreadsheet.

Not Enough Blogging

I clearly have not been blogging enough lately. I just checked my stats and I dropped below 500 hits per day in mid April and this blog has been averaging in the 430-450 hits per day range since then. I need to post more stuff.

I know one topic that should drive a lot of traffic. I need to load Windows 7 with the new virtual machine software to test running in XP compatible mode. Then I need to test Outlook 2000. This will probably have a lot of interest for people running Vista and still trying to use Outlook 2000.

If I can get some free time I will try that. But I have to do a lot of prep work. First I have to install Outlook on Windows XP and set it up with an e-mail account. Then I have to send mail to and from it, and create a few contacts. Then I have to backup the data for that. Then the actual work begins by installing Windows 7, setting up virtualization, install Outlook 2000, and finally import the XP/Outlook generated data.

That will take several hours. I am hopeful it will work a lot better than Outlook 2000 on Windows Vista.

Hypermiling

While going to Fort Worth I decided to test my own hypermiling techniques. I wrote about these techniques before I ever heard of the term hypermiling. I called my techniques Deceleration Management.

On the way up to Fort Worth we were driving with my in-laws (in separate cars). I took the lead most of the way and using my radar detector I tried to keep our speed at about 80 the entire way. Granted, trying to maintain 80 was not easy because of traffic, but we were close. This was the only part of driving that was not including in the hypermiling. After all, the best gas mileage comes from going slower.

However, I never used cruise control and I milked that gas pedal for every chance I could. My wife could not even tell i was doing this, that’s how subtle I was with the gas pedal. Leaving from my house I reset the mileage computer and when we arrived at my brother-in-law’s house after 3 stops, I showed an average of 31.7 mpg. This was with out 2007 BMW 335i with an EPA rating of 17/26 city/highway. That means I beat the highway mileage rating by over 5 mpg! Not bad at all.

On the return visit I was trying to make much better time. With two very short stops the mileage I got from the hotel to home was 27.6 mpg. Still better than the EPA, but I was averaging closer to 90 mpg whenever traffic would allow, and frequesntly bursted to that speed when traffic cleared the way.

Zune on TV in Lo-Res

We went to Fort Worth over this weekend for a graduation. I didn’t think I would have time to do much of anything, but at the last minute while packing my suitcase I threw in the cable to charge my Zune 80. I figured I would use it in the car ride their and back, and might need to charge it.

At that moment I figured I should load a couple of movies on the Zune and take my “camcorder” video cable to hook it to the TV in the Hotel room.

I did this literarlly 5 minutes before leaving. I quickly tagged the Bourne Series of movies and started a sync. I had to cancel the sync after one movie because everyone was already in the car. Boom, one movie and a cable and no testing. Not a good way to go.

I connected the Zune to the TV when we got back to the hotel and I was able to watch The Bourne Identity on the hotel’s TV. All went perfectly. But the reason for this post was the movie file/quality. I did not have time to plan for this so I synced up the version of The Bourne Identity I made for watching on my Zune. That means it was a 320 x 240, low resolution copy of my DVD. It looked surprisingly well on the widescreen LCD TV in the hotel room. I was actually impressed. I thought for sure it would look grainy and pixelated. It looked excellent.

I am planning on taking the Zune to the coast next week for our annual trip to Rockport. I will plan the movies this time. I love my Zune.

Clean Your Pools In The Winter

Well, I just finished getting our above ground pool cleaned for summer use. During the winter a LOT of Mountain Cedar “dust” and Live Oak “debris” got into our pool. We did not vacuum it in a timely manner and this gunk stuck to the liner. I tried scrubbing the liner using Scotch-Brite pads with my feet, but it was not even close to enough.

I had to completely drain the pool and use a very harsh Scale Be Gone chemical with various scouring pads to get all the gunk off.

But the pool is clear and looking as good as ever now, with a week to go before my sons are on summer vacation.

This is the second time we let the pool get this bad. Clearly we did not learn our lesson the first time. Hopefully this winter we will maintain the pool during its unused months.

Chevy and Cadillac ONLY, I Said It First

I just read in Automotive News they think GM only needs Cadillac and Chevrolet. Too bad I said it first. My article on GM’s Brands came out yesterday (even though it is dated June 1, I published it on May 31st).

I believe you can cover the market well enough with a mass market brand (Chevrolet) and a luxury brand (Cadillac). You don’t need Buick to muddy the waters between those and GMC does nothing but compete against Chevrolet for truck sales.

This means all those Buick-Pontiac-GMC dealers should be the dealers that close. Sorry, but that’s what its going to take… assuming GM can be saved.

GM has just a little more than 3 years to fix itself, bankruptcy or not. Obama will do whatever it takes to keep GM afloat… until he gets re-elected. Then GM is going to be on its own. No more help from the government.

Star Trek

I took my two sons (11 & 14) to see Star Trek yesterday. We were all thrilled. I would have to say the worst thing about it was the theater. The surround sound would kick off all during the movie. You would here a character’s voice come from the left and two or three words into the sentence the sound would cut out and you would here it from the front. This happened mid-sentence at least a dozen times through the movie.

As for the plot of the movie… I am a long time Star Trek fan. Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan goes down as an all time great movie with lots of repeat watchability. Many of us old time Trek fans compare all Star Trek movies to it. It is the yardstick by which all other movies must be judged.

This also means the #1 thing us long timers wanted to see was Kirk beat the Kobayashi Maru, the no-win scenario test that is played out in the opening of The Wrath of Khan. It is the Kobayashi Maru in the new Star Trek movie that leads to two minor complaints I had with the movie. First, Kirk is too lax in beating the test. I suppose his pulling out an apple and eating it during the test is derived from the Khan movie when he describes how he beat the test while eating an apple. I thought the Kirk character would have made it look more plausible and not beat it with such ease. The next problem with the movie was that Spock was the one that programmed the Kobayashi Maru test, and I don’t recall that ever being the case in any reference with the original cast.

These are two very small points. Overall I liked the movie a lot. I will buy it on DVD (or this may be the movie to justify getting a Blu-Ray player). Only time will tell how well this movie will hold up to being watched 20-30 times.