Archive for June, 2007

of Windshields and Rollbars

Published by kindli on June 25, 2007 in adventures. 0 Comments

To help us determine what car we should purchase once we are in California, today Gavin and I used our ZipCar membership to drive a Prius. We had originally planned to use it to drive our dining room table to its new home with Jenny and Paul in Quincy, but Jenny had to work today (IT works weekends when the network is not in use anyway), so we opted to drive down the Cape.

I really don’t know where we drove or what we saw. We got out a few times, saw a light house near a golf course and generally enjoyed the beautiful weather.

We found the Prius in its designated parking space, opened it with the ZipCar Card, inserted the key and pushed the “power” button and nothing happened. After a few frustrating minutes we realized you have to push down the brake and press power at the same time. Good to know.

The Prius is a nice car, larger than the Matrix (the other contender), it is also a hybrid (= good gas mileage). It handles well, stops quickly, corners nicely, and has leg room. On the down side, it has the world’s worst rear-windshield (Toyota seems to have acknowledged this, they have a camera system to help you back up).

The rear-windshield is divided in the back by a large something (roll bar? extra structural support? who knows). The obstruction sits squarely in the center of the windshield and shows up nicely in the center of the rearview mirror –I tried adjusting it, but it persisted. The obstruction was especially noticeable if the car behind you has it’s headlights on, they peek over/under the bar or are completely blocked by it (great fun in tunnels). It was also a little scary on the hills –when the car is in just the right spot, you can’t see it in the rearview mirror (but it does show up in the side mirrors).

The rather “cool” dashboard gizmos are also not with out fault. On sunny days the little screen is hard to see and I wouldn’t want to adjust it while I was driving (that’s what Gavin is for, but he won’t always be along for the ride).

On the upside the dashboard does tell you exactly how fast your driving, and the little display can show you your fuel consumption and battery whatnots. Gavin seemed to enjoy playing with it (it made beeping noises and had colors), I found it a nuisance (and I was driving so I wasn’t going to mess with it).

It was also nice to drive the Prius without a constant stream of propaganda from a sales person. At first Gavin extolled the greatness of the Prius, pointed out all the neat things (I agree, some of them were pretty neat), but as the day went on, the “oh cool” factor wore off.

We are planning to drive the Matrix next weekend to take our table to Jenny and Paul’s to make sure we give both cars an equal chance (although we did drive the Matrix to Maine and back that was a few months ago). Then we will compare and contrast the options, and eventually make a final decision.

SAHARA

Published by kindli on June 13, 2007 in movie. 0 Comments

For fun I got Sahara from Netflix. The movie is loosely based on the novel by Clive Cussler.

From the moment I inserted the DVD into the iMac I began to have second thoughts. It stars Matthew McConaughey (not that there’s anything wrong with that, he’s hot and all, but he’s not what I envisioned Dirk Pitt –the main character in all of Cussler’s books– to be like). McConaughey is too pretty to be Dirk Pitt (he also doesn’t have enough scars. ) He also looks better as a blond.

The person playing Pitt’s side kick, Al is woefully inadequate. The person playing the Admiral Sandecker is also hardly up to my standards.

Of course the entire premise of the movie (based on the even more far fetched book). “… Sahara sets the daring adventurer on a mission to save the world from destruction. While investigating a deadly water-bourne epidemic along the Nile, Pitt uncovers a secret dating back to Lincoln’s assassination and battles an evil industrialist bent on killing every living thing in the world’s oceans.”

Now, why would any one intentionally wipe out every living thing in the word’s oceans. Naturally the most logical place for such a despotic business man to make his headquarters is the middle of Africa (in the middle of nowhere Africa) where the leader is (fictions) and a despot warlord himself.

The idea is that “solar energy to destroy the worlds toxins” but as Ms. Cruz’s character is so quick to point out the toxins are seeping into the under ground water systems slowly poisoning Africa, and as another character points out the poison will eventually get to the Atlantic and destroy everything.

Of course the Business Man and the Dictator are in a mess of payoffs. The Business Man suddenly grows a conscious and wants to stop the toxin shipments. The Dictator is not as thrilled and insists the payments continue. It’s a bit of a mess and a sticky situation for both sides.

Pitt trapes across the desert to try and convince the resistance to fight and help stop the Dictator and save the world’s water supply. After some unconventional maneuvering he manages to save the world, and the girl. What a shock there.He also finds the boat he’s looking for and uncovers a massive US Govmt. conspiracy (in the book the cover-up is even more massive).

On the bright side, there was a highly amusing somewhat redeeming boat chase, followed by an explosion, however, I would not say that alone made up for the rest of the film’s flaws.

The camel-train chase sequence was also amusing, but what sort of idiots crawl into a train marked biohazard?

Of course if the movie is that bad then why am I watching it? Gavin is playing WoW and I’m in denial about the apartment and the impending move date.

Let’s go to Maine!

Published by kindli on June 9, 2007 in adventures. 0 Comments

Last night around 6:45 I suddenly decided that driving to Maine for the weekend would be a good idea. Gavin got online looked up ZipCar availability, found a Prius that was open and started looking at hotels.

We realized Maine was a little far, so we looked at Martha’s Vineyard instead. One of the places wanted you to MAIL IN the reservation form. Not quite what we were looking for.

At about 7 pm we decided we were getting hungry, scrapped the last second travel plans and instead decided we wanted to go to PF Chang’s at the Prudential Center. We got on the 87 bus and by the time we got to Lechmere we really wanted food so we went to California Pizza Kitchen instead.

We’ll go to PF Chang’s on Sunday.