An Architect's View

I've mentioned this service before - $199 / year to skip the lines at airport security (you don't skip the security checks, just the lines) - and here's a way to get a month free: use this refer-a-friend code when you sign up - DSCAM1163375. The price has doubled since I initially signed up but the time savings are incredible if you travel a lot and now they offer photo ID on the CLEAR card so you can use it as your only form of ID to go through an airport which simplifies things still further. You can also use the CLEAR card to jump the lines at certain sports grounds :)

I saw this on my way to work Monday and snapped it: Wow! .00 is... like... FREE! (The gas station is being renovated and they've put in a zero price for some reason... very eye-catching tho'!)

Today I filled up the Honda for the first time. The nearest public station to the office is about 12 miles away at SFO airport. The station was empty apart from several buses that service the airport. The "Gas Gallon Equivalent" price was $2.75 and the station has a couple of 3,000psi pumps but is mostly 3,600psi (which is what the Honda takes). You have to watch a training video before you can pump gas unless you have a Training PIN (which you get after you've watched the video the first time). I totally missed one of the key instructions in the video and ended up trying three pumps and watching the video over again before I realized my mistake (the gas nozzle has to be "opened" with a lever before it can be attached and then "closed" with a lever - I'd missed the opening step so the nozzle wouldn't fit... duh!). The pump makes a ton of noise (well, it's a 3,600psi compressor so that isn't a surprise) but the filling process is quick and clean. We're going to keep a record of gas usage and mileage so we can see how it compares cost-wise to a regular gasoline car. If you care, you can watch my public Evernote record of CNG usage.

This morning I just took delivery of my new car - my new very green car:

It's a 2008 Honda Civic GX in Green Tea Metallic. As you can see from the image above, it runs on compressed natural gas. There are quite a few CNG stations around the Bay Area but we plan to buy a "Phill" - a home refueling station that connects to our home gas line so that we can fill up for about $1.25 per gallon!

So I said I'd post an off-topic piece about my trip to Vegas. If you don't like off-topic stuff, stop reading :)

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I'm 46 years young!

Probably the best Guinness advert ever made! Raise a glass!

OK, a personal rant... I've owned my house in Castro Valley for seven years (next month) and I just took advantage of the great interest rates and the new conforming loan limits to lock in a 30 year 5.5% mortgage, paying off my previous two mortgages (a $300k 30 year and a $70k 15 year balloon payment). This is the third refinance in six years and the first to lock in above what I paid for the place (paid $370k, financed $409k, value $600-700k depending on who you ask, although Indymac Bank thinks it's only worth $515k... go figure!). So, I'm happy with my new mortgage. I am not happy with the stream of insurance spam I've received in the last week. Several offers every single day (six today, OMG!). Mortgage protection, health insurance, home insurance. Jeez, leave me alone! I have all that shit already! I know that a mortgage is a matter of public record but this is ridiculous! The worst thing about these slimy insurance and loan spam offers is that they are all - and I mean ALL - couched in terms of something you should complete and return for your lender. Sure, they all have small print saying they're not associated with the lender but with some of them you really have to read it two or three times to convince yourself you're not reading something important from your own lender. It's disgusting. Especially given the sub-prime lending disaster we're going through right now. Clearly these companies have no ethics at all.

I'm here at The George (and a very nice hotel it is!) getting ready for Scotch on the Rocks. Tomorrow I'll be putting the finishing touches on my presentations (more than finishing touches on the "Getting Dynamic" presentation since I'm still changing it every few days!). Jay & I arrived in England on Friday, spent the night at my mum's lovely new house in the south then drove up to the Lake District and stayed at the wonderful Bridge House Hotel in Grasmere. The food was great - a four course meal is included in the room price (I had smoked mackerel salad with pink grapefruit followed by poached hake in a cranberry cream sauce - plus a soup course plus great desserts!), as is breakfast - and, as you can see, it has a nice space to relax outdoors, right next to the bar! Then we headed up to visit my friend Miles in Kilwinning near Ayr. He's an old university friend and we haven't seen him for a few years so much alcohol was consumed during ten hours of reminiscing! He's also a great cook so more good food was had (including a stunning white chocolate brioche pudding for dessert). Today we headed up Loch Lomond, stopping at the Duck Bay Restaurant for a wonderful lunch (Finnan Haddock Duncryne) followed by a nice drive up to Crianlarich and through the Trossachs then down to Stirling and finally into Edinburgh. The George is a very nice hotel. We settled in, I caught up on email and then we had dinner in the Tempus bar. Jay had the filet in bearnaise sauce and I had the pheasant, both of which were extremely good. Not that I'm at all obsessed with (good) food, of course...

Go on... you know you want to... An Engineer's Guide To Cats.

If you're planning to upgrade to Mac OS X 10.5, make sure you backup or move whatever you have in your /home directory before you start. You know, don't have your ColdFusion 8 install or your Eclipse workspace in /home. Like I did. Oh, I know, why /home? Old Unix habit, I guess. So, why should you be careful about this? Because the Leopard upgrade kindly blows away your /home directory. Yup. There goes my ColdFusion install, there goes my Eclipse install and all my projects. Backups? Fortunately, yes, I had a backup. Not a very up-to-date one, I'll admit (and I did toy with the idea of backing up my entire HD before upgrading to Leopard). Fortunately, everything is under SVN so I just pulled out my old backup (and put it in /Developer this time) and then ran svn update on everything. Other than that minor(!) trauma, the upgrade to Leopard seems to have gone well. I think. Watch this space for more Leopard experiences. Oh, and after all I've said about not upgrading early, why did I finally upgrade? Because, finally, everything I use on a day-to-day basis has been updated for Leopard. Or at least close enough to make the pain worthwhile. That and a new VPN client at work that is not compatible with Tiger.