Archive for February, 2006

Camaro Concept Car

2/1/2006

Above: Camaro concept car from Chevrolet. All I can say is that I’m glad the car is still in conceptual stages, meaning hopefully the car won’t look completely like this. More on that in a moment.

I remember seeing several test mule Mustangs in Motor Trend before Ford released a full production version, both on paper and in real form. I think they got that one mostly right. The Mustang is a great looking and great performing car and yeah, if I had the money I’d probably buy one.

I also remember seeing the Dodge Viper in clay model stages (also from Motor Trend). That car is the only one I’ve ever seen where there was very little difference from clay to real production form - which in itself is shocking to begin with because that almost never happens.. but the car was an awesome ride even from the baby stages so there was no need to stray too far from the original concept.

As far as this Camaro goes, I dunno. The front air inlet I don’t like. The side air vents I do like. The raised cowl on the hood I like. Side windows look way too small, causing the wheels to look way too huge. Rear tail lights for some reason look “angry” (but maybe that’s the point..?) Combine that with the large rectangle for the rear license plate with the bowtie logo for a nose and it looks like an angry robot going EX-TER-MI-NATE - and that’s not a good thing.

I can see an attempt at ‘69 Camaro styling here, but I’m praying that they re-work it a bit. Tail lights should be rectangular with rounded edges reminiscent of the ‘69, the exhaust tips need to be pointing down not out or blackened out, a different styled wheel needs to be used, the bowtie on the back needs to be moved to the bottom right (80’s style), and the car needs an accent of some kind, either by thin chrome on the side or something like that. It also needs to say “Camaro” on the back somewhere. And those side mirrors have gotta go for something a tad larger. The Camaro logo on the side of the car needs to be moved down about five inches.

Am I being picky? Yes, I am. :-) I really don’t care about the performance specs, the appearance of the car is the first thing people see. It’s kind of like the same thing with the modern Dodge Charger. Great engines, great car, but ugly. Hopefully the Camaro won’t suffer the same fate.

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Big ass sneakers for big ass feet

2/1/2006

I finally found a pair of sneakers that fit right. These are Starter sneakers in size 12W (”W” is “Wide”). I have very happy feet now because my old sneakers are worn out.

You know what they say about guys with big feet.

Big shoes.

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Random notes and observations

2/2/2006

My cheap fifteen-dollar optical Logitech mouse I bought years ago is the best mouse I’ve ever had, it still works and I’m still using it.

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Since my template change, web traffic on here at menga dot net has gone up quite a bit.

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My new sneakers are awesome.

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My Pop’s birthday is this month. He will turn 71.

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G4 is a totally cool channel. The best shows are X-Play and Attack of The Show.

X-Play is described as having “‘tude” to it. Translation: The hosts are two sarcastic assholes (Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb), but their reviews of games are quite good. They get right to the point of why a game is good, bad or somewhere in the middle. However I don’t understand why they both have square jaws. I mean, we’re talking really square. Must have been a prerequisite to host the show or something.

Attack of the show is done really well. The hosts are a lot better in every respect. Instead of trying to be funny, they are funny in a good way. My favorite segment is “It came from eBay”. I think this show is a lot better than X-Play mostly because they have a lot more material to work with. Or maybe it’s because the hosts don’t have as-square jaws? Hm.. My only complaint about AOTS, cut the MyWhore MySpace shit, if for no reason other than MySpace is the puss filled boil on the ass of the internet.

..not that my web site is any better, of course.

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Shelby’s at it again

2/2/2006

2007 Ford Shelby GT500 Is Most Powerful Mustang Ever

Hot darn. I’ll give kudos to Ford here. With fuel prices in the stratosphere they have a lot of gall with the intent on releasing a 475 horsepower Mustang. The best part about this article is what they don’t say, that being there is absolutely no mention whatsoever about mileage. MPG be darned.

Know what I think about that? It’s great. This car isn’t about miles per gallon. It’s about 475 horses under your right foot.

I hope they sell a ton of ‘em.

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1975 Buick “Free Spirit” Pace Car

2/3/2006

(Edit added 6/7/2007: UPDATE! Buick found and bought! Restoration begins once she arrives!)

(Edit added 3/27/2006: I stated in this post that the car is a Regal. It’s not. It’s a Century, or to be more precise as “Century Custom Series” according to what Buick officially called it originally. However, if you placed a ‘75 Regal next to a ‘75 Century, the cars look almost identical to each other even though they’re different models, oddly enough.)

Sheesh.. been writing a lot of car things lately.. whatever. ;-)

I was fortunate enough to find some decent photos of the ‘75 Buick Indy Pace car (shown above) so I’m posting them here for reference. My father owned one of these and it was the family car for several years.

My Pop’s car met an untimely demise due to the passenger side door being bashed in by an 18-wheeler truck many years ago. This was before those “Wide Right Hand Turn” signs were put on rigs.

I’ve been searching for this car for many years. What I know about this ride is this:

• This is a heavily modified ‘75 Buick Regal. Buick as far as I know outsourced the Regals to a company to have the doors cut for the t-tops and there were some other modifications done.
• To the best of my knowledge there were no more than 2000 of these cars made that were actual pace cars.
• Many dealerships (at least in New England) that sold the car new purposely “demodified” the car first by removing the stripes and Indy-specific trim because evidently it made the car sell better…? This means that if you’ve ever seen a ‘75 Regal with glass T-Tops, it was probably a pace car.
• Some pace cars had the “Official Pace Car” decal on the doors, others did not. My father’s didn’t.
• Some pace cars had a thin chrome stripe across the grille, others didn’t.
• The only engine offered with the small block GM 350.
• The speedometer was round and racing style - not rectangular like most cars of 1975.
• The car had a ticking clock. Seriously, it did. I distinctly remember that clock in my Pop’s Buick.
• Wheels were standard GM steelies painted white with deep dish chrome trim rings.
• Automatic transmission was the only one offered to the best of my knowledge.

If there was any car that I would buy on the spot (assuming it was repairable and in good shape) - this would be the one.

–edit–

Found anoher photo, adding…

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Chatting / Ritzy home observations

2/4/2006

Met someone nice on ICQ last night - from the UK(!). We talked for hours. It was fun. UK girls rock. ;-)

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Also watched some HGTV. Two shows stuck out. This Old House - Classic Homes, which was awesome, and Dream Builders, which to be honest is absolutely ridiculous.

This Old House showed a Massachusetts home. A ritzy one very near to Boston. Priced high, but needed a lot of work. It was one of those homes that’s really tall but very thin like the ones you see on Beacon Hill. While having the priviledge of owning one of those homes is like no other, I would never own one due to the following factors which were depicted in very plain view:

Bitchy neighbors. Think you got annoying neighbors? Try having annoying wealthy neighbors. They are the absolute worst and will nit-pick every single little thing they think is wrong with your house. Of course, they’ll never tell you directly. They’ll go behind your back and go to some hoity-toity community committee, cast a vote that you didn’t know about, then send some messenger to tell you there are things wrong.

No room to work. If you have to rebuild a house in a city environment it’s nothing short of a hell-spawned experience. The only time you can work (or have people work) is after 10am when people leave for work and you’re only allowed so many hours, leading to massive costs later. It’s almost not worth it.

Get used to climbing stairs. Remember, these houses are tall and thin. Five flights of stairs is not uncommon. Not only do you have lots of stairs, but they are short stairs very close together. Screw that.

Then I saw this other show called Dream Builders. This program shows ultra-ritzy houses, complete with pretentious owners that love to do nothing but piss off builders with outlandish requests. The stupidest thing I saw (and truly, it’s stupid) is this guy who wanted a chimney built with no mortar. He wanted it built by stacked stone alone. When they interviewed the builder you could literally see the disgust on his face and said something to the tune of “Well.. (long pause).. we found the chimney challenging because we couldn’t use mortar. One guy was cutting stone all day and the others were building the chimney. We didn’t get more than three feet done per day. It was a very long build.” Guy - I feel your pain. That homeowner is a complete dick for wanting something like that no matter how much it cost.

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I watch shows like this for ideas and moreover to learn what to do and what not to do when building a house. Since I plan on building sometime in the future, it’s good to know a few things, like..

Working with stone sucks. I’m a native New Englander originally from Connecticut. In CT you see lots and lots of what’s called “wallstone” walls, also known as stone walls. There are two types, done right and done wrong. A good stone wall has thin stone slats that made a perfect angle when finished so the wall is literally rectangular or trapezoid shaped when done. Bad walls have stone sticking out all over the place, or in worst case the stone is cemented together. Being that I know how utterly expensive this crap is, I won’t touch stone walls. Ever. I’d rather use wood stake fences. While it’s true it won’t last as long, it’s a helluva lot easier to tear down a fence compared to a stone wall.

Drainage is king. After seeing a lot of homes over the past few years, over half of them have their draining solutions done wrong. Driveway cracks, foundation cracking/crumbling, wall shifting/cracking and so on happen primarily from water damage. Water gets in, spreads/shifts things around and makes it all a living hell to repair later. Anyone with a water problem knows what a sump pump is. In the house I design (should I have the opportunity) I’m going to pay super-close attention to water drainage.

Windows count. Never skimp on windows. Always go for the best you can afford. All are not created equal. When in doubt, buy Anderson windows. Sure, you can save a buck or two with cheaper windows that look the same, but you’ll be paying the price later when they wear out in less than ten years. Ten years may sound like a long time, but when the bill comes in, it will hit and hit hard. Better to get windows that last longer.

Anything labeled “designer” is worthless. As is shown on Design on a Dime, you can recreate just about anything for about 6% (literally) of the cost of the actual designer item, be it curtains, furniture or whathaveyou.

Stick to what works. Builders use specific materials for specific reasons. These materials have costs - and they cost a lot. Best option is to just pay the bill for a better home.

Watch the builders. Best example of this: Reliable Builders in Maine. Never trust a builder at his word no matter what experience they have. Need proof? Read that site and learn. And be shocked.

Buy books. Read them. Learn. Home Depot has extremely good books on home building, maintenance and repair. Get educated. Knowledge is power.

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Proof once again that the internet isn’t free

2/4/2006

You wouldn’t pay to send or receive e-mail, would you? Well now you may have to. Turns out some morons at AOL (of course) and Ya-Whore Yahoo! thought it a good idea to propose charging companies - literally - to send e-mails to people. Supposedly it cuts down on spam - which it wouldn’t.

Here’s how this will fare out if the morons are successful at getting companies to pay for e-mail sending/receiving: What will occur is that any company that does this will charge you extra just for the priviledge of receiving e-mail from them in the form of hidden “shipping and handling” charges. Example: Let’s say you buy a product for twenty dollars and the S&H is three dollars. You will be charged an extra dollar just to receive e-mail confirmation of your order. “But it only costs the company $0.0025 to send me the e-mail.. why are they charging a buck?” Answer: Because they can. “Operating costs”.

In addition to that, how long would it take before internet companies start charging you for every e-mail you send and/or receive? What if you just wanted to write your friend to say “hello”? Why in the name of all that is good and right would you want to pay for that?

What I’m hoping will happen (crossing fingers) is that any company that’s potentially forced into doing this will have “preferred e-mail” as an option rather than a requirement.

I would much rather deal with the inconvenience of spam instead of paying for e-mail.

To Yahoo and AOL: You suck. Take your corporate greed and shove it up your ass.

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Untitled Document / New Page 1

2/5/2006

May I present..

Tales from Internet Moronsville…

You know that thing called a title tag in HTML? Yeah. That thing in your title bar that says the title of your web page when you load it in a web browser at the very top of the screen (usually)?

Idiot webmasters who use Dreamweaver and forget the title tag have about a bazillion web pages called Untitled Document. For the daring who use Microsoft FrontPage? New Page 1.

Now you know why so many of these exist.

And knowing is half the battle. G.I. SHMOE!

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Right up there with watching paint dry

2/5/2006

I’m quite certain this weekend is going to be nothing but a boredom fest.. so I’m going to write about random shit.

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My iMac that wouldn’t run Final Cut HD Express is officially in California according to UPS, meaning Apple will receive it soon and should (operative word there) refund me without issue. The last Apple rep I spoke with said the shipment would be received with “plenty of time to spare” and there shouldn’t be a problem. Let’s hope not.

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As a fun little thing I’ve been leaving my ICQ with the “web aware” function enabled, meaning others can see whether I’m online with ICQ or not. I get many requests for chat daily, most of which are from outside the USA such as China, Russia, Malaysia, UK and so on. They all speak very bad broken English. On rare occasion I will get a chat req from someone in the US.

Best communication received was from a girl in the UK. That was cool. Funniest communication received was from some angst-filled teen in Russia who started blasting me with broken English insults when I wouldn’t chat with him. Most pathetic communication is from some early-20’s girl from China. She literally begged me to add her to my contact list. Uh, nope.

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Got booted from a DALnet IRC chatroom for putting “.com” in chat by mistake (seriously, it was a brain fart, I wasn’t thinking) and a bot kicked me out. The conversation wasn’t too interesting anyway so no big deal.

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I am running out of Fresca soda and need to buy some more.

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I reinstalled Condition Zero but since my satellite internet has such crappy ping times I can’t play on any game servers - which is probably for the best anyway. :-)

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A result of extreme boredom

2/5/2006

Ah what fun. I give you, the Milo show.

Download it (Windows Media).

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