Weird Stock Market

It’s become a bad habit of mine to watch the DOW 9 to 5, and it’s becoming clear to me that the performance of the stock market is inversely related to the quality of economic news. Good news usually makes for a slide, bad news makes it soar. I don’t get it. But I’m almost ready to start betting money on it.

GIS File Formats

I was googling and found this wikipedia summary of GIS file formats with a number of links.

Was this the Eye of the Storm ? – See VIX

Adventures in Going Digital…

Bits of Non-Trivial Trivia

1) Something I heard on the radio (kera.org – THINK) earlier today: A man will outrun a horse over 25 miles because the horse will die of heat exhaustion. This claim was made by Christopher McDougall who has some interesting thoughts on the running habits of early Man…

2) Everyone I told about the snakes in our yard the other day (see recent post), asked me : Were they poisonous ? Of course, that’s the main concern. But being no snake expert, I saw my task in identifying the species of snake. Instead if would have been sufficient to rule out that the snake was any of merely four (4) types of poisonous snakes in North America (I had no idea there were only 4!): Rattlesnake, Cottonmouth Moccasin, Copperhead and Coral Snake. – No, no, no, no – ergo: harmless !

Microsoft Surface

Okay, I did look at BING, and what’s the big deal ? Another search engine, duh ! Gimmickier than ever. But Microsoft Surface – probably in the category of ‘really, totally useless hi-tech stuff’ – is something else. I have a feeling – although utterless useless – we’ll all be using it (or knock-off thereof) in a few years.

War of Search Engines

The MS and Google worlds are at war. – When google launched Chrome, I installed it and tried it once before I decided there was nothing in it that made for a better experience or was worth getting used to a new browsing environment. I think that the same will be true for BING. I am all for competition. But if A differs from B only in shades of gray, I’ve got way too much inertia to change. I barely remember the days when I used lycos or yahoo. Maybe the same will be true for google one day. For now, I have no intention of even trying Bing.

Personal Technology Quest

I have finally returned to my computer programming adventures from last year. I just completed my first programming project. It’s short and sweet and actually helps me with what I’m doing at work. You can read about it here.

Our New Car

BTW, we bought a new car 2 weeks ago. Almost forgot to mention it, since it wasn’t for me. My wife was getting tired of her handme-down Mercury Sable (a great example of ugly American design and the idiocy of having two more or less identical cars as different models, Mercury Sable – Ford Taurus – WHY ???). The Mercury still had some zip in it, but it was utterly impractical for hauling around 2 kids in car seats and maybe another passenger or more.

These were my wife’s selection criteria for the new car ( and in fact, I had nothing to do with either selecting the model, finding the car, getting the car, or buying (financing) the car. She did it all !

1) Three Rows of Seating but NOT a VAN !!! It’s nice to be able to haul your kids and other kids (or grand parents) when they visit.

2) Better than Average Fuel Economy – A No-Brainer.

3) Affordability. Buying a new car is a BAD “investment”. Buying an expensive new car is the WORST way to spend your money . The minute you drive off the lot, your portfolio nosedives. It makes no sense at all.

4) Reliability and Safety – in a way those come first anyway. You rule out some cars (many American made) because of reliability and you’d never skimp on safety.

So what’s the new car ? A KIA Rondo. It’s small and light but spacious. It’s got seating for 7. It’s got good gas mileage. Totally improved safety over old KIAs (my only concern when I heard “kia”). And it was cheap.

I got very frustrated looking at and test-driving new cars and dealing with completely moronic sales people. If you’re selling cars and you don’t know every damn detail about every damn car on your lot, you’re a loser and don’t deserve my business. I have never seen this much amateurism in a sales man. The guy at Sears selling vaccum cleaners and the annoying guy at the mall selling cell phone plans both know way more about their product than the idiots we talked to about cars. Veru sad but maybe more evidence of an industry in decay !

Anyway, we ended up buying a 2008 model with 11K miles at a 40% discount over the 2009 model, and we’re very happy with it. Sure, it ain’t no fancy rides – no leather seats (That’s all the sales people were interested in – selling me leather seats when we kept saying we have 2 kids who eat and drink and spit and slobber!), no surround sound, no 400 HP, no fancy this, no gimmick that. This car was built to take you from A to B, quite comfortably so, and comes with a great warranty. I just don’t see why anyone would need anything else, or agree to $500-600 car payments a month. I just don’t.

The Modular Car

There is an interesting artcile in Wired about the dilemma of the American car industry. It compares its struggles with the situation in computer manufacturing and proposes that one way to start improving would be to go towards modularization. I think that’s an interesting idea. Think of how many cars already have parts – even engines – made by another manufacturer. What if you build your own car – choose a German engine, Italian body, Japanese electronics, and the over-paid workers at GM assemble it Just kidding. But it would add a lot of flexibility and competition to the market, I think.