Went down to Tijuana yesterday with Ryan Morrison and some folks from Bakersfield to finish off some houses. Got tar paper, chicken wire and 2 coats of stucco on one house and a second coat on another. Before heading back across the border we got tacos at Ryan and the Amor’s rep favorite place in all of TJ. The carne asada was fresh off the grill and the pork (aka Mexican gyro meat) was cut right off the rotisserie. Throw in a cold Coke and it hit the spot perfectly after a hard day of work. Easily the best tacos I’ve ever had.
Cory and Tommy took the big step of deactivating Facebook, but I’m just demoting it a bit. I removed all my personal information and turned off the majority of notifications. My wall and comments have also been disabled. I left pictures up, but will not be posting more on Facebook. I have configured my blog to post a “New blog post” teaser on my wall which people can click through if they care. I removed the Status Update feed from Google Reader and uninstalled the Facebook app off my phone.
I prefer my web presence to be somewhere I have more control of my personal data. I highly doubt I’ll miss it since I never particularly liked it to begin with. Let our blogs live on.
Moving gaming sytem into new Antec case and HTPC into the monster P180. Gaming sytem gets full upgrade to i3 530, 4GB DDR3 and Radeon 5770 once the memory comes.
Oh yeah, new headset. Have we discussed the new headsets yet?
We started using rechargeable 9V batteries at church for the wireless mics a couple years ago. There’s a plethora of cheap Chinese batteries available and just started off using those. If we got four or five charges out of them then we’d be doing pretty good and come out ahead of alkalines in terms of cost and waste. We started going through those cheap batteries real quick; the cells would physically burst during a slow charge on a fairly nice dedicated 9V charger. I’ve probably bought ten different brands that all had two things in common: they were under $3 shipped and were made in China.
With the introduction of low discharge batteries like Eneloops in AA and AAA formats, I kept wishing they made a 9V version. Some eventually popped up on Ebay but were well over $10 each. After our stock of batteries started running low again, I found a company called Bear Wobble that offered a full line of low discharge NiMH batteries. I picked up two 9V’s to try out at the same price of eight cheap Chinese 9V’s. Their performance so far has been awesome.
The original two 9V’s I bought are still in weekly rotation and have had zero problems. I picked up four more so we can charge two ahead of time and have them in reserve. All have worked flawlessly and show no signs of giving out. I’ve also picked up a number of their AA and AAA batteries which are competitively priced against Eneloops and perform just as well.
Two big thumbs up for Bear Wobble’s low discharge NiMH batteries. I’m done with the Chinese garbage on Ebay.
We were outgrowing Sarah’s Acura RSX and really wanted a four door car; it isn’t fun cramming friends in the back of little coupe. It was about 8 years old and coming up on 90k miles which was starting to show. The leather on the seats was cracking and the clutch needed work. I also kept noticing how loud road noise was at freeway speeds, a side effect of low profile tires and stiff suspension.
We started the selection process with one criteria: the replacement vehicle had to get similar or better gas mileage than the RSX. That eliminated a pretty big portion of the car market because the RSX was capable of mid 30’s on the highway and high 20’s in the city while still being fun to drive. Our full list of criteria really narrowed things down: 35+ MPG on the highway, automatic transmission, 4 doors, leather interior, AUX input, and not a hybrid.
A quick filtering of 2010 models shows that there isn’t much to choose from once you add on that MPG requirement. There are some small gasser like the Mini, Yaris or Fit that get decent MPG, but they weren’t what we wanted really.
The only other thing left were Volkswagen’s diesel TDIs. Between the Jetta Sedan, Jetta Sportwagen and Golf, we liked the Sportwagen the most. It was equipped with everything we wanted and destroyed practically every other car in its class in MPG. It’s kind of crazy that no other car manufacturer has bothered bringing a middle of the road, fuel efficient diesel to the US.
If all we cared about was mileage then we would have just gotten a Prius, but I like driving. The Prius is a great midsize econobox, just a little uninspiring. Toyota can keep their few extra MPG and unwanted acceleration.
So after finding the one dealership in So Cal with the exact car we wanted and getting a quote $1k under sticker we drove home in a new 2010 Volkswagen Jetta Sportwagen TDI.
2010 VW Sportwagen TDI
Between the DSG transmission (Dual Shift Gearbox, pretty much an automatic manual) and the gobs of torque turned out by the turbocharged diesel the JSW is actually pretty fun to drive. Shifts are super quick and I don’t think I’ll miss driving a stick; the 6 speeds and lower RPMs would mean a lot of rowing through the gears around town. We got 35 mpg on our first tank of diesel with mixed driving, but I expect that to rise as the car breaks in and I tone it down on the accelerator.
