Thursday, December 30, 2010
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
We Committed the Auto-Sin
Alright, I'm secure enough in my masculinity to let people know that we bought a mini-van, and that I am exceedingly pleased. Actually, I knew ahead of time that I would like it. Quite simply, these modern day marvels are the best dollar-for-dollar, feature-laden utility vehicle you can buy.... hands down!
You can get away with one small child in almost any run-of-the-mill four door car. But with a second child the trouble goes up exponentially. It is not that there is just more crap to haul around, its that there is more crap and two children to corral and buckle and keep quite and feed and wipe, etc, etc.... Seriously, I don't know how parents with three or more small children do it. I guess eventually one of them just wonders into the street or a buzz-saw or something and the problem takes care of itself.
But our mini-van works much better than the VW Passat station-wagon we traded in for it. With that car, which wasn't small by the way, we could only get the two of us plus our children and our double stroller. Should a third adult want to come along, somebody got stuck wedging themselves between the car seats and getting their ribs poked for the duration of the car ride. NOW... well, now we can take the family plus three adults, the double stroller, other cargo and contraband... NO PROBLEMO!
I BLAME THE NANNIES! And by that, I mean all the leftist nannies that have regulated modern families to the point where a mini-van is a necessity. Everybody keeps saying, "In my day we put the family of six plus luggage in the station-wagon and drove across country." Yeah, I remember those days from my childhood. And then the nanny state busy-bodies got involved and banned putting passengers in the cargo areas of station-wagons, pickup trucks, and SUVs. There went the sleeping compartment. And then they required all children be in a child restraint booster seat. And there went getting four kids sitting shoulder-to-shoulder across the rear bench seat.
Yes, it is the nanny-state leftist to blame for the modern scourge that is the mini-van that they now denounce for producing copious quantities of carbon and ruining our environment. They brought it on themselves, the jackwads!
But that doesn't stop me from marveling at these modern monuments to Lee Iacocca, because pound for pound, dollar for dollar mini-vans are the best deal going. It is simply not possible to get as many features packed into another type of vehicle for nearly the same price point. Quite simply, this is because most car buyers don't set out to purposefully buy a mini-van. Nobody wakes up and says, "I want to cruise around in a bitchin' mini-van." Nope, they are purpose bought and have no spur-of-the-moment price structure to prop up the margins.
And that's what smart consumers like me understand. Yeah, I might not be catching the mouth-gaping stare as the pop brigade rolls up next to me at the light, but that was unlikely to happen anyway once they spied whatever that crap is rolling out of my sons nose or smelled the foul diaper disaster lurking in the backseat.
You can get away with one small child in almost any run-of-the-mill four door car. But with a second child the trouble goes up exponentially. It is not that there is just more crap to haul around, its that there is more crap and two children to corral and buckle and keep quite and feed and wipe, etc, etc.... Seriously, I don't know how parents with three or more small children do it. I guess eventually one of them just wonders into the street or a buzz-saw or something and the problem takes care of itself.
But our mini-van works much better than the VW Passat station-wagon we traded in for it. With that car, which wasn't small by the way, we could only get the two of us plus our children and our double stroller. Should a third adult want to come along, somebody got stuck wedging themselves between the car seats and getting their ribs poked for the duration of the car ride. NOW... well, now we can take the family plus three adults, the double stroller, other cargo and contraband... NO PROBLEMO!
I BLAME THE NANNIES! And by that, I mean all the leftist nannies that have regulated modern families to the point where a mini-van is a necessity. Everybody keeps saying, "In my day we put the family of six plus luggage in the station-wagon and drove across country." Yeah, I remember those days from my childhood. And then the nanny state busy-bodies got involved and banned putting passengers in the cargo areas of station-wagons, pickup trucks, and SUVs. There went the sleeping compartment. And then they required all children be in a child restraint booster seat. And there went getting four kids sitting shoulder-to-shoulder across the rear bench seat.
Yes, it is the nanny-state leftist to blame for the modern scourge that is the mini-van that they now denounce for producing copious quantities of carbon and ruining our environment. They brought it on themselves, the jackwads!
But that doesn't stop me from marveling at these modern monuments to Lee Iacocca, because pound for pound, dollar for dollar mini-vans are the best deal going. It is simply not possible to get as many features packed into another type of vehicle for nearly the same price point. Quite simply, this is because most car buyers don't set out to purposefully buy a mini-van. Nobody wakes up and says, "I want to cruise around in a bitchin' mini-van." Nope, they are purpose bought and have no spur-of-the-moment price structure to prop up the margins.
And that's what smart consumers like me understand. Yeah, I might not be catching the mouth-gaping stare as the pop brigade rolls up next to me at the light, but that was unlikely to happen anyway once they spied whatever that crap is rolling out of my sons nose or smelled the foul diaper disaster lurking in the backseat.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Busy, Can't Talk
Things have been fairly busy at work lately, and I've got my seasonal, week-long head cold. So there hasn't been much to post about blogging wise.
However, there is always my Twitter feed (also on the sidebar of this blog).
However, there is always my Twitter feed (also on the sidebar of this blog).
Sunday, December 5, 2010
"The Network is the Computer"
It has been some time since John Gage coined the term "The Network is the Computer". But it hasn't been until this new mobile/wireless/cellular revolution that this is now apparent to the users. Alan Andrews on his use of the iPad:
Getting back to John Gage, he was a Sun employee and Sun adopted his famous quote for marketing purposes. For those pining for the old Sun days, because now-adays they're owned by a company with the slogan "Our Customers Love It When We Overcharge Them... Again!"
I also spend more time using applications that let me store the data remotely. Because I’m always switching between different computers and the iPad and iphone I find myself more often using apps that are cross-platform (across Apple hardware, not Windows of course). If an app is iPhone only or MBP only or won’t let me share data out of it easily then I’m probably not going to use it.And then he goes on to point out that Apple's software is the chief offender of not using the network. While I am not invested as much in my iPad as Alan seems to be in his, I have noticed that one of the critical features I look for in an app these days is if I can save my work to the net. It is one of the reasons I'm becoming much less of an Apple fanboy these days, because while they make great gadgets and seem to understand user experience more than most, when it comes to being network-centric their products tend to fall down. And should Google and Android surpass the Apple juggernaut, it may well be for this reason.
Getting back to John Gage, he was a Sun employee and Sun adopted his famous quote for marketing purposes. For those pining for the old Sun days, because now-adays they're owned by a company with the slogan "Our Customers Love It When We Overcharge Them... Again!"
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