Back In The Saddle

Vacation is wrapping up.

We packed up the Über-Slëd on Thursday night the 17th and motored off on Friday morning to the great state of Maine.

We spent Friday, Saturday, and Sunday engaged in much reverie celebrating a dear friend’s wedding in Portland, South Portland, Scarborough, Cape Elizabeth, and beyond. The kids had a blast. We had a blast. The bride and groom had a blast. Although the weather wasn’t always cooperative, the crew barely noticed.

We ran around Mid-Coast Maine for four days, entertaining the monsters and ourselves. A few stops of interest included:

• A few years ago, our friend Lisa visited Boston from San Diego and in a single visit to the MFA with the kids, instilled in them a wonderful curiosity of art. We decided to try to extend that interest by hitting the Bowdoin Art Museum. The Renaissance exhibit was fascinating for all, and I was particularly impressed with Michael Mazur’s huge triptych; though I did not grok Lewis deSoto’s installation (methinks it might be soup).
• We all dug the Maine Maritime Museum. I was concerned the kids might be bored with it, but my fears were unfounded, as the place is huge (many acres) and has lots of cool stuff to see and touch and play with. There are a zillion different exhibits, so even the most attention-impaired child always has something new to explore.
• Our friend Nord was kind enough to have us by for dinner in Freeport and whipped up a wildly tasty Zucchini and Blueberry Crisp for dessert – way to go, dude!
• Of course, no visit to Maine would be complete without some time at the beach! We highly recommend Popham Beach State Park. Center beach has some really fun surf when the tide is coming in, and West beach has some stupendous tidal pools, sand bars, coves, and more when the tide is low. We’ll definitely get back there someday!

We got home Wednesday, and on Thursday we took the T to visit the Museum of Science. While the kids have been on the train (commuter rail) before, they wanted to experience the subway underground. At the MoS, I was completely blown away by the butterfly exhibit and can’t recommend it highly enough. I could have spent hours and hours sitting in there enjoying the little beasties. Unfortunately, the boss dragged me away after about 45 minutes. I’m thinking of going back before it closes.

So this beautiful, sunny, lovely Saturday morning I got to the Charles River Coffee House early to spend a few quiet hours caffeinating while getting my emails, twitters, to-dos, and whatnot sorted out.

It’s fun to go away, but it’s always nice to get back home.

Über-Slëd

As many of you know, I have an affection for motorized vehicles (the  boss is rolling her eyes – “more like ‘addiction’, thank you” she’d say). In the past, I’ve  torque-fed that affection, but after about ten years of such goofing around, I grew weary of what I now fondly call “stupid cars”. Although I am now playing with “stupid motorcycles“, cars aren’t entirely out of my system.

I am overdue to officially blog-unveil the Über-Slëd – so dubbed, most endearingly, by my friend Tom.

She’s a 1991 Mercedes Benz 350 SDL. She currently has ~75K original miles on her clock. For the non-car-nuts in the crowd, the model name dissects as follows:

• 350 means it’s a 3.5L engine (it’s a straight-6); that’s about 215 in³ for you Americanos.
• S means it’s an S class – the big guy in the product line.
• D means its’ a diesel engine – more on this in a second.
• L means it’s the “long wheelbase” model. What does ‘long’ mean? Just assume that my kids and your kids could play soccer in the back seat and get winded running to and fro.
• 1991 means she’s older than some of the folks reading this .

She joined the stable in mid-February. For the MB geeks in the crowd, this was the last model year of the W126 chassis, and, yes, this model uses the OM603.97 engine that has a bad rep (deservedly so) for bending conrods – c’est la vie.

So why on earth would someone buy an eighteen year old car? Early-onset dementia is always a reasonable assumption, but there was some logic involved too.

First, I wanted a big car again. My last big car (and my only previous Benz) was a 2003 S55 which was a superb beast (493 hp/516 lb-ft – YOW!), but which I ultimately only kept for a year since the boss wouldn’t drive it. She still gleefully drives my old 1998 Audi A4 2.8 QMS with ~110K miles on the clock. In fact, she seems to have taken a page out of Moses’s book on the stupid old thing, continuously mumbling something about her “cold dead hands”.

I wanted a big car for two reasons: space and safety. I wanted a ton of room in the back for the monsters and all their crap – whether we’re driving to school in the morning, or going on vacation. Oodles of space in the boot was also a requirement, and this car has a three-body trunk . As to the safety issue, I have previously blogged on that. This car is, pardon my French, a fucking tank. Will refers to it ’studly’.

Of course the challenge with big cars in today’s petrol market is that they’re damn expensive to get from point A to point B. As such (and my second reason for picking this monster up) I wanted to play with alternative fuels.

This old diesel engine hopefully has a few hundred thousand miles left on her. She is currently slated for a conversion to burn vegetable oil. Diesel engines were built from the get-go by Rudolf Diesel to combust just about anything, and Rudy’s first demonstration of his new engine design was a single-cylinder machination running on, of all things, peanut oil! I really like the idea of re-using an old machine (the decades-old car, which is in stellar shape) and fueling it with something that historically has been a waste product.

Obviously I’m not going to single-handedly solve America’s petrol addiction, but I look forward to playing with this stuff. As I like to say, “you can take the boy out of the geek, but…”

iPhone Alternatives

Ever since my post back in June about iPhone alternatives, I’ve been tracking the Net to see what might be coming down the pike and thought I’d share some data.

At this point, there seem to be four serious, potential options on the horizon. All of these devices should be in the US by the end of September (purportedly). None of them are currently shipping in the US, so one should probably consider the specs not entirely finalized. YMMV.

Unless you have truly stupendous eyesight, click on the table below for some summary data on these beasties:

The first group of three phones include full QWERTY keyboards. The second group of three phones do not include a tactile keyboard. The Treo 750 and Apple iPhone 3G are included for comparative purposes. I found the V(olume) column to be a rather interesting comparator.

The HTC Touch Pro is effectively the HTC Touch Diamond with a keyboard and a microSD slot. Kudos HTC on hitting both markets. You can purportedly buy an unlocked Touch Diamond today for $730 to $830. Unlocked pre-orders of the Touch Pro seem to be running $800 to $1000.

The SonyEricsson XPERIA X1 looks like a killer device with an insane display. Rumors are that it’s manufactured for S/E by HTC. Unlocked pre-orders seem to be running $900 to $1000.

The Samsung “Omnia” SGH-i900 looks like a compelling device on the face of it, but the display resolution, quite frankly, compared to the other emerging offerings, sucks. Perhaps they’ll address this before it ships. Unlocked pre-orders seem to be running $800 to $900.

The Sun Bubble?

Since 90 percent of PV sales in 2007 were to subsidized markets, one must ask the question: is that really a market?

My friend Lee Barken wrote a great article for GreenBiz.com last week that provides some educational perspective on where the photovoltaics market is and where it might be going. Very interesting read.

Scroobying

Or is it Pip-ing?

I’ve blogged and twittered various lyric snippets from dan le sac Vs Scroobius Pip over the last few months. I’ve been totally into these guys since the first time I saw/heard Thou Shalt Always Kill, and every new tune I uncover just cements the foundation of their sharpness (though they are, of course, “just a band”).

Their album Angles was finally released a few weeks ago. It’s still a bitch to find in the US.

Net-net, I’m completely enamored of their work. It’s fun, insightful, entertaining, thought-provoking, and fresh. They’re real guys without real attitude. I can’t recommend them enough. You can listen to lots of their stuff on their MySpace page.

Spend some time with Mr. Pip!

Autostrade Hogs!

Last week, Harley-Davidson announced they were acquiring MV Agusta. My head spun.

I assume that the overlap in their markets is something along the line of zero percent. That said, it does seem like a generally intelligent move to help diversify their product offering. This could be a huge win for consumer access, as MV’s dealership network is anemic and HD’s is definitely not.

The deal will purportedly cost HD $109M of which $70M is existing debt that HD will be presumably retiring. It is consistently entertaining to watch non-Italian companies try to run Italian companies. Hopefully HD will fare better at it than other similar historical examples.

Hats off to Claudio Castiglioni and Massimo Tamburini! This all will presumably give Ducati a run for their money in a couple years. Nothing like competition to benefit the consumer!

Quote of the Day

Problems don’t age well.

Jamie Dimon, CEO JP Morgan Chase