GenXJamerican

I came across a story about this nifty little plug-in just this morning in MIT Technology Review.  While the story was about companies trying to change the way people browse the web, Browster was the technology that interested me the most.  You install a plug-in that lets you hover over a link to preview its contents instead of having to click the link.  If

you want to change the way you browse the web, definitely give this a try.  It could be a long while before you ever have to use the “Back” button again.

According to this article, Windows Vista is losing yet another feature.  Reading further, PC-to-PC Sync doesn’t sound like much of a feature, since it only works between machines running Vista that have the same user account.  But add it to the removal of WinFS, Monad scripting shell, and other bits, and the remainder is an OS that requires more hardware resources (for a prettier GUI, whoopee!) without any discernable improvement in areas like performance or functionality.

Since Vista will probably be behind what Apple users now get with Mac OS X Tiger (not to mention Leopard when that finally comes out), perhaps Microsoft should quit kidding themselves.  A Windows XP Service Pack 3 release this year might help make up for Vista being so late.  Then they can target the Leopard feature-set so that they’re actually releasing something competitive in 2008.

Since I own 2 iPods (the 2GB nano that came with my new Passat, and a 20GB I bought myself), I hope to dissuade him from a non-Apple music player purchase.

He wants something to use during his workouts, and he wants a radio tuner.  He’s put off by the cost Apple’s music player offerings.  I haven’t looked at the Apple Store website in awhile, so I completely missed the re-pricing of the iPod shuffle.  The 512MB one is just $69, while the 1GB is $99.  While this doesn’t solve his desire for a radio tuner, it should meet his price.

Looking around for competitors to the iPod shuffle, I came across Dell’s DJ Ditty. It’s small and light, and manages to integrate an FM tuner.  It’s $84, $15 more than the iPod shuffle of the same capacity (512MB).  You’d also have to use MusicMatch Jukebox instead of iTunes.

Searching through PC Magazine revealed another option: the Samsung Yepp YP-T5. It’s an old review, but this player includes a screen, an FM tuner, and voice recording for under $60.  The catch: it only has 256MB of space for music.  Samsung has similarly sized (i.e. larger) offerings to the iPod shuffle that cost around $100.  None of the ones I’ve seen offers more capacity than the 1GB shuffle, and some offer less capacity at a higher price.

I’ll keep hoping he goes with an iPod instead of something else.  So far I’m underwhelmed by the iPod’s competition.

“Design consists of creating things for clients who may not know what they want, until they see what you’ve done, then they know exactly what they want, but it’s not what you did.” – Brian Sooy Read Mr. Sooy’s entire blog post.  I’m not a designer, but having spent most of the past 10 years working with them to build database-driven websites and applications, I definitely agree with him.  My most recent project (an extranet for the nation’s AMBER Alert coordinators) didn’t launch until 6 months after its originally scheduled launch date in large part because of the client’s uncertainty over what they wanted.

Akismet is a ruthless comment spam killer :-)  Moderating comments is super-easy now (since I’d been getting nothing but comment spam lately).  And there’s no better price than free.

I should have written this back in February, since I don’t have nearly as many recommended links as I should. Anyway, here are a few notes on my most recent car-buying experience.

What Can I Afford The first thing I had to do was figure out how much I could afford to spend. During my research, I came across a rule of thumb that said you could spend up to 20% of your net income on a monthly car payment. When I found out what that figure was for me, it seemed way too high. So I cut it down to about 12% of my net and moved on to the next step. The other thing I did which proved quite handy later was get pre-approved for a set loan amount. I’m a Costco member, so I went through their auto financing & refinancing service to do this. The end result of this process was a rate of 5.3% on $25,000 over 5 years. Capital One, the company Costco partners with for this service, gives you check and a payment schedule so you can shop for a car as if you’re paying cash.

What Do I Want Deciding what I wanted was the easiest part of the process (since the previous step removed the delusional “I want a Lexus” thoughts). There’s tons of information on the Web when it comes to cars and costs. I found Edmunds.com to be especially helpful. I used Consumer Reports for some of my research too. After settling on the idea of buying a car with at least four doors, my field of choices narrowed to Audi and Volkswagen. For options, the only real must-haves were leather seats and a sunroof.

Test Drives I thought pretty hard about buying a certified pre-owned car instead of a new one, so I ended up test driving a number of used Audi A4s and Volkswagen Passats (both with the 1.8 liter turbo engine). In the case of the 2005 Passat, it wasn’t enough engine for that size car. The A4 with quattro was a bit better. The real challenge with the certified pre-owned cars was finding one that was the right price that didn’t have more miles on it than I was comfortable with.

Moving on to new cars, I considered the Audi A3. It’s a nice car, but a bit small. Add too many options and it gets expensive in a hurry. Since my last car was a 2000 Volkswagen Jetta, I thought I’d at least test-drive the new Passat. I wanted a fallback if I couldn’t get a reasonable offer on the A3. The way the Passat handled during the test drive really impressed me. Even with the 2 liter turbo, it’s quite agile. It’s got tons of room inside as well. Given those factors, and the substantially lower cost compared with the A4, I felt comfortable choosing it.

Pricing my trade-in I didn’t want the trade-in of my car to have any impact on the price I was ultimately offered for a new Passat. So I took my Jetta to CarMax to have it appraised. They offered me $5500 for it, probably because of the high mileage (nearly 100k in less than 6 years).

Pricing the new car I used Edmunds.com to get quotes on a Passat from multiple dealers at once. They all offer “special” Internet-only pricing at points during the year. At my friend Sandro’s suggestion, I timed things so that the purchase would happen at the end of February. The hope was that their need to hit sales quotas would make dealers more flexible on price. In the case of the two dealers I seriously considered buying from (Congressional and Antwerpen), it seemed like that did factor into the outcomes. In order to offer me a lower price, both dealers offered to sell demo cars at a lower price.

Closing the deal
One key advantage I had in getting the best price was Sandro’s friend Elmer. He works in auto finance, so he knows the secret numbers and incentives that aren’t going to show up in a Consumer Reports price sheet or an Edmunds.com report. I told him what my best offer from Congressional was and what option package I wanted and he found a car at a friend’s dealership at a price that was a little lower. Once we showed up at Antwerpen to check things out, they offered a demo model at a lower price. The mileage was much lower than they thought, so I chose to buy there instead of trekking back to Congressional. This is where my second advantage came in. While I was doing some of the paperwork, Sandro remembered that I was supposed to get owner loyalty credit since I’d bought a Volkwagen before. His memory saved me $500. After a driver from Antwerpen took the Jetta for a test-drive, they matched the CarMax appraisal for trade-in value. In retrospect, my mistake was telling them how much CarMax had offered. I’d kept the car in good enough condition that their driver commented on it. Telling them the appraisal value probably cost me $500-$600. When it came time to deal with financing, this is where my Costco exercise paid off. Volkswagen Credit initially offered a 5.9% interest rate on the car, quite a bit higher than what Capital One had offered. So I mentioned that I’d gotten pre-approved for a better rate and their 5.9% turned into 5.3% in a matter of seconds :-)

The end result I paid $25,500 for a car with an MSRP of $28,430. They also threw in a 2GB iPod nano as part of the promotion they were running that month.

Summary of Recommendations

• Find out what you can afford first.
• Get pre-approved for the amount you're willing to spend. This gives you an alternative to dealer financing.
• Get your trade-in appraised. CarMax is a nice option because their appraisals are good for 7 days and 300 miles. In any case, it's an alternative to a dealer appraising it (since they have a vested interest in appraising it at lower than true value). Don't reveal the appraisal value unless the dealer's offer is lower.
• Have two different cars you're willing to buy.
• Consider buying a demo car. They'll have far less mileage than a certified pre-owned car, but will still have a price advantage over a brand-new car. You may even get a car with more features.

Lockheed Martin’s deal to buy Aspen Systems was finalized back in February, but until this week, the change hadn’t really manifested itself in a noticeable way. My colleagues and I have had more reports to write (since our bosses have had more reports to write), but not much else had changed until this week.

Yesterday we got an e-mail that our Aspen security badges were being replaced with Lockheed ones. The old ones will be deactivated April 1. Today we got an e-mail about company corporate cards we’ll be required to use for business expenses from now on. Bit by bit, the Aspen name and logo are disappearing from everything. Yesterday, they replaced it on the intranet. Today, the public website has the Lockheed Martin star on it (even though the title text still says Aspen Systems Corporation).

As I write this, there’s a crane outside the building removing the Aspen Systems sign from the side of the building (the sign said “pen Systems” the last time I checked since they’d only gotten 2 letters off).

I’m still waiting for more useful things to change, like intranet access, and software licenses for better tools.

Today is my 32nd birthday. To me, it doesn’t seem like a particularly special birthday. It isn’t like turning 13, when you’re finally a teenager, or 16 when you can drive, or 18 when you’re officially an adult. I remember being excited about turning 18 because I was finally old enough to vote. I don’t drink, but 21 was still a good birthday. People talk about turning 25 as a milestone, but I feel 24 was a bigger year for me because I bought my townhouse that year.

Looking back over the past year, I see a lot of changes. I finally got my MBA after 3 years of working full-time and school nearly full-time. I made my first career change by leaving a full-time programming role and moving into project management. Looking forward, I see the potential for more change. The Lockheed-Martin buyout could change things completely. I might start a business of my own this year, or get out of project management and into something else, like business development or strategy.

The entire list is here. It includes how much he gave and when.

Improve My Health

• Exercise 3 times a week
• Cook 3 times a week

Maintain My Hobbies

• Shoot 36 film and/or digital exposures a week.
• Post 3 shots on the photoblog each week.
• Start re-learning the piano.
• Go skiing once more (or snowboarding twice) this winter.

Strengthen My Faith

• Read the Bible every day
• Pray every day
• Help out with a church activity once a month

Improve My Career

• Work on a business plan once a week.
• Learn Ruby
• Attend one technology conference this year.
• Attend one business conference this year.
• Write a technical blog post once a week.
• Contact a different person in my network once a week.

I admit it–I’m a C-SPAN junkie. The purpose of the open phones topic this morning was to air people’s opinions on how the Clinton presidency should be taught in middle and high school history classes. As is usually the case with these shows, the callers didn’t so much answer the question posed as bash George W. Bush or Bill Clinton. The calls I found the strangest were the ones that blamed Clinton for the current Bush years and for how divided the country currently is. Those opinions aside, my own is this: teach Clinton’s successes and his failures–all of them.

I voted for Clinton both times. Despite that, I don’t consider him the best president ever, or even a great president–merely a good one. In the success column: NAFTA, welfare reform, the economy. Perot said plenty on the “giant sucking sound” of jobs leaving the U.S., and that’s true. But that has as much to do with companies not doing what was necessary to modernize as it does with lowering tariffs. I remember being disappointed that Clinton signed the welfare reform bill, but in retrospect, it did get a lot of people off the welfare rolls. Clinton should get credit for mostly staying out of the way as the economy recovered from downturn under the first Bush. He should also get credit for increasing taxes on the highest earners in this country. That contributed a lot to the government going from deficit to surplus. I would count Clinton’s actions on Bosnia as a success too, if only because he helped get NATO involved in stopping the slaughter of Muslims there.

In the failure column: healthcare reform, Rwanda, impeachment. The failure of healthcare reform is perhaps the one with the most consequences for the present day. The voices who said there was no healthcare crisis when Clinton was trying to get this passed are probably the same ones who passed the narrow, expensive and poorly-planned prescription drug benefit. While Clinton isn’t the only one to blame for the genocide in Rwanda (the whole world stood by on that one), as the leader of the greatest military power in the world, his government’s inaction was very disappointing. Impeachment ranks as the worst of his failures from an opportunity cost perspective, not just the moral one. A lot of time was wasted that could have been spent doing far more useful things (like chasing al-Qaeda for example). It allowed people to question his motives for trying to do what was ultimately the right thing.

This article from the NY Times (free subscription required) tells us that those of us who use Google will soon have to contend with graphical ads. I suppose it was only a matter of time, but I’m still disappointed by the news. There are areas when simpler is better, and search is definitely one of them. We can only hope they’ll be small and tasteful (or that CustomizeGoogle will still allow us to remove them).

I came across this article via the Signals vs. Noise blog. While the entire piece is 100% on target, this passage really spoke to my current situation:

But the worst are the ones that become slaves to their clients--often driven by the fear of losing one.

And fear leads to underbidding. And underbidding leads to… pulling all-nighters to make an impossible deadline on too few resources. (And the dark side is in there somewhere.)

It’s more fuel to do things differently when I (finally) start my own business.

Trying to find some information about Bush’s latest appointee to the Supreme Court, I found two comments especially troubling:

"The reaction of many conservatives today will be that the president has made possibly the most unqualified choice since Abe Fortas who had been the president's lawyer. The nomination of a nominee with no judicial record is a significant failure for the advisers that the White House gathered around it. However, the president deserves the benefit of a doubt, the nominee deserves the benefit of hearings, and every nominee deserves an up or down vote." — Manuel Miranda, chairman of the conservative Third Branch Conference

"This is a smart move. You try to pick a nominee that Democrats won't be able to criticize as much because they are a woman or minority. This is a classic Clarence Thomas strategy."

— Artemus Ward, Northern Illinois University political science professor.

For other reactions, see the full version of the article (free registration required).

They are minority opinions to be sure, the bulk of the comments so far range from polite to unalloyed praise for Harriet Miers. Still, I shudder at the mention of Clarence Thomas in connection to anything at all. Few things in politics have made me more angry than his nomination and confirmation to the Supreme Court. Thurgood Marshall’s record as a lawyer, his tenure as judge on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals (none of his 98 majority decisions was ever reversed), and his record as solicitor general of the United States (winning 14 of 19 cases he argued before the Supreme Court), stand in stark contrast to Thomas' brief and unremarkable tenure as an appeals court judge. Thomas was notable only for being a black conservative (and his alleged conduct while head of the EEOC). To replace a lion of civil rights like Thurgood Marshall with someone so opposed to what he’d fought his whole life for was has always disappointed me.

What’s sad is that Artemus Ward is probably correct. Miers won’t have enough of a paper trail for anyone to effectively oppose her–unless a significant amount of conservative reaction falls along the lines of Mr. Miranda’s commentary.

I was listening to C-SPAN on the way into work and one of the callers had an interesting question: why are the people suffering in New Orleans being called “refugees” in the press when people in Florida suffering from hurricane damage aren’t?

I checked out the Wall Street Journal this morning and sure enough, there was that word. Checked the Washington Post, same thing. Was the caller being overly sensitive? Maybe. Was he reading some racial connotation into the use of the word? Probably. But it may also be that the press has been sloppy in how it uses words. Usually you see the word “refugee” in the context of someone fleeing another country from religious or political persecution. The people in New Orleans aren’t running from some dictator, they’re from here. They’re just unfortunate enough to be too poor or too ill to get out of the way of the storm in time.

Paul Krugman seems to believe so. Check out his complete column in the New York Times online (free registration required).

I live in what Krugman describes as the “Zoned Zone”, a few miles north of D.C. in Wheaton, Maryland. While a townhouse in my neighborhood recently sold for about $400,000, it took 2-3 weeks. I think they started out asking for $450,000 and had to drop the price some. Another bit of information I got, which supports Krugman’s idea somewhat, is a conversation I had with a realtor a month or two ago. He was essentially trolling my neighborhood for people interested in selling their townhouses and I asked him about some new ones being built (a 5-10 minute walk from my townhouse). He said the price tags on those went as high as $800,000, but that the builders were having to rent them out because they couldn’t sell them at that price.

Between this information and the increasing popularity of interest-only loans, real estate prices have to come back to earth sooner or later.

I came across this story late, but it has to be one of the most bizarre and sad stories I've read in awhile. It's worth subscribing to the LA Times website to read the whole thing, but in summary, this is what's happening:

2002: 17 POWs from the 1991 Gulf War filed a lawsuit against Iraq for the torture they endured from Iraq troops at the now infamous Abu Ghraib. They're allowed to do this by the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996.

2003: Judge Richard W. Roberts awards them $653 million in compensatory damages and $306 million in punitive damages.

Soon after this, the Bush administration argues the case should be thrown out. Why? Reasons include:
--President Bush had voided such claims against Iraq because of the current occupation
--This Scott McClellan quote: "These resources are required for the urgent national security needs of rebuilding Iraq."

When the case goes to the US Court of Appeals for the DC circuit, the 3 judges ruled unanimously for the Bush administration and throw out the lawsuit. The case is now before the Supreme Court.

For their sakes, I only hope that the Supreme Court has far more sense than the government on this case.

Even though I haven't been a registered Democrat for some time now (switched to independent 5+ years ago), I'm very interested in this turn of events. I hope it means that we'll actually have a two-party system again, instead of a party-and-a-half like we've had for awhile. How he'll play in the South is anybody's guess, but I think a lot of his views will turn out to be more moderate than people expect.