Awhile ago I blogged about looking for a mini-van, either a Honda or a Toyota. After a lot of research, largely by my wife since it’s her car, asking friends and neighbors regarding their choices we decided on a 2007 Honda Odyssey EX-L. We purchased it using a broker located in Seaside and believe it or not it was an enjoyable experience, a first for my car buying career. It was delivered on time to our house where we filled out all paper work at our kitchen table in about 35 minutes at a significant savings over all of the dealers we talked to. The delivery driver was very knowledgeable and took us through a tour of all the available features which, btw, was about our third such tour having been to several dealerships. My wife, once very skeptical about becoming a mini-van driver is now asking why we didn’t do it sooner.

The Odyssey drives nicely and the interior is very roomy. The turning radius is very good turning much tighter than our Toyota Highlander. For me the only real bummer is that lack of memory seats especially considering my wife and I differ in height by slightly over a foot. That option is only available with the higher end Touring Edition but we felt it wasn’t worth the multi-thousand dollar price difference for that feature alone. I find it odd Honda excludes this feature on the EX-L since it’s actual cost must be pretty small considering all of the mechanical equipment is in place. One of the dealers told us that the Odyssey is the only Honda vehicle where that feature is missing in all but the most high end car. Apparently, several other lines offer it below to top end.

Another one of the major reasons we decided not to go with the Toyota was the cost was significantly higher for what we considered the same features.

Now, I just need to get a for sale sign on my '97 BMW 318is. It’s in good shape and has only 80K miles on it.

I recently purchased a LinkSys Wireless-N router ($99 on sale at Radio Shack) so I can roam around the house with my laptop. As a result I decided to do some bandwidth testing using broadbandreports.com's speed test as there is a server in Palo Alto, ~26 miles from my home, and it seemed like the results I was getting from Firefox were a bit slow. I started up IE to do some comparisons and found a not insignificant difference. As you can see on the graphic ComCast is my ISP which is easily three to four times as fast as what I was getting with my old DSL connection.

Results Using Internet Explorer 7.0.6000.16473

Results Using Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.6

These results have been fairly consistent across a number of tests. I'm wondering if there is perhaps a performance penalty for running Firefox from a USB drive? All of these tests were conducted on my laptop.

I'll have test again at the office (also wireless) tomorrow and see how things compare. Of course, I'll probably install Firefox for a true apples-to-apples comparison.

I've been very fortunate so far asking for advice and once again I thought I'd tap into the wisdom of crowds to see if I can get some help regarding water softeners and hopefully narrow the field a bit. I've been doing a bunch of research online though I have yet to reach a conclusion. I found this site which seemed helpful but locating unbiased information comparing various products has been hard to come by. Unfortunately, Consumer Reports doesn't even seem to review water softeners, at least searching their site didn't turn up any good results.

The Scotts Valley Water District provides a report each year on the quality of our water and it states a "Total Hardness of 216" which I believe by any means qualifies as "very hard". I do know our water is reeking havoc with our appliances not to mention our hair and skin. On top of the hardness I'm not at all fond of the taste and use a Watts Premier 5 filter reverse osmosis system which fortunately corrects that problem.

Anyway, I'm looking for a whole house system for a family of five with the understanding it's likely to be several thousand dollars installed. I've asked a number of friends and neighbors but have yet to reach any real conclusion though I've found many cases where admittedly systems are not well maintained. Do you have advice regarding whole house water softeners for a family of five with extremely hard water?

[Updated: July 30] Fix the spelling of "advise". Doh! At least I caught it myself.

Like millions of people my wife has really enjoyed Harry Potter and last Friday after my wife went to bed I decided to brave the crowds to try to pick up a copy for her to have it sitting on the breakfast table in the morning. I simply didn't realize how crazy things were going to be when I made it to Border's in downtown Santa Cruz. I'd reserved a copy a few weeks ago but my first clue came when I hit Bookshop Santa Cruz and I had to slow down to drive through hoards of people leaving with their copy with some even carrying the empty cardboard boxes the books were shipped in. I made my way to the parking garage and walked over to Border's. The street was full of people and Border's itself was packed wall-to-wall with avid fans either waiting in line or seated on the floor reading the 700+ page book.

There was a wrist band system in effect though it wasn't explained anywhere so I muddled through the crowd looking for clues of how to proceed until I finally ran into an employee who clued me in. I made my way to the wrist band line and after half an hour I got a small purple wrist band and was told that I'd probably get my copy around 2:00am, it was 12:40am. After wading through the crowd trying to assess the accuracy of that timetable I reached the conclusion that even that was probably optimistic so I headed home. I should have snapped a few pictures with my cell phone but I always seem to forget that I now have a camera wherever I go.

Anyway, the next morning we went to the farmer's market and on our way back to Scotts Valley we decided to run by Costco since they had the book too. We parked and I ran in and found a palette of books right next to the 300 flat panel TV's (if you've ever been to Costco you know what I'm talking about). Anyway, I ended up with a copy of Harry Potter for $19.74 tax included. The retail price was $34.99 and my wife mentioned Border's had a 30% discount so we saved a little money.

Anyone else succeed where I failed?

I've updated my blog template and added my photo so if you've ever wondered what I look like well, now you'll know. It was taken using my Nikon D70 with my wife behind the camera doing her best Austin Power's "work it" imitation accounting for the smile. I converted it to JPEG using Nikon Capture as I find Picasa's NEFfile, Nikon's RAW format, conversion well, poor. I then used Paint.NET's magic wand to replace the background with a gradient to make it look a bit more professional, at least to me. The color version is on my Facebook profile (requires login) where Hallvard's kindly offered me a little career advice (thanks Hallvard, I think) after harassing me update my picture from the default question mark.

This past weekend I did a bit more shopping for a mini-van and ended up at a Honda dealer in Chico. The first salesman who came out to greet us really turned me off particularly after I asked him what the advantage of going through the dealer was vs. using a broker. When he mentioned "warranty issues" my father-in-law chimed in and needless to say the salesman had the where-with-all to pass us off to another "member of the team" who proceeded to become fast friends with the two of us. I didn't beat around the bush and when I told him exactly what I wanted he asked me it I'd buy it if he gave me a "screaming deal"? I replied "show me the number" so he ran off and printed a piece of paper with the "screaming deal" and slid it across the desk. I looked at it, told him I wanted to run it by my wife and stood up to walk out when he replied that I couldn't take the paper because the dealer was "regulated by the DMV" and it was against the law for me to take it although he wrote the final number on his business card and handed that to me. I wonder what he'd have done had I whipped out my cell phone and snapped a photo?

At any rate, my wife had already contacted a local broker who quoted her a price $750 below the Chico dealer. Of course, now I know why he called it a "screaming deal". I'm beginning to think I should blog this whole car buying experience including quoted prices and all. Man, I hate car shopping.

After nearly fifteen years working for Borland, now CodeGear, I've made the decision to pursue a new opportunity. My last day at CodeGear will be June 28th, at which point I'll take some time off before starting a new job (which I'll disclose then). Making the decision to leave was an extremely difficult one especially considering I've worked with some of the same great developers for more than a decade. Heck, one of these guys was even in my wedding party!

That said, I've been very appreciative of the support of the Delphi blogging community especially since I began hosting my own blog last October so I felt it only fair for you hear the news directly from me. You can rest assured I'll be watching and cheering on CodeGear as it delivers on "Where developers matter". Just as an opportunity has opened for me this is bound to open the door for someone else as well.

As for my blog, well, you know where to find me and I plan to keep on writing so stay tuned!

Go CodeGear!

We're expecting our third child this coming October and we're in the market for a mini-van. We'd love to find a used 2007 Odyssey or Sienna though I have a feeling that's going to be difficult to pull off. Having tested both I can't really say that there is a clear winner though I sort of prefer the Odyssey becasue I like the fact that it's slightly larger.

One bummer is that memory seats on the Odyssey are only available on the Touring Edition, I need to verify the salesman's word on that and also check the Sienna. My wife and I vary in height by slightly more than a foot (30cm) and thus it would be a nice feature.

Got any advice?

[UPDATE: Jan 11, 2008] Late update but, we got the Odyssey.

We recently bought an inflatable pool for the kids to enjoy this summer and in the interest of not leaving the house this Father's Day I needed a plan to pump it up.

I wandered around the house looking for clever ideas then after a little bit of tinkering I came up with the idea pictured to the right. My wife called it a McGyver stunt which my three-year-old picked up on and ran around calling me "McDiaper". What better father's day could you ask for.

My search for a new bike has finally come to an end just in time for Father's Day. My wife an I went out on a date during the day yesterday to run a bunch of errands and enjoy lunch together after which my wife surprised taking me to pick up a new bike. Over the past few months I've tested Schwinn, Scott, Giant and Specialized bikes looking for a comfortable ride for commuting and riding with my kids. I finally settled on the Giant Cypress DX because it simply felt the best. The ride is very smooth and in a very comfortable position for the kind of riding I'll be doing. What's even better is that not only was the bike on sale the tires had been upgraded for a previously interested buyer which I didn't have to pay for! Woo hoo! My lucky day. Part of my Father's day will definitely be spent riding around the neighborhood with my daughter who thinks Daddy's bike tires are "really huge".

Thanks again to everyone who offered me such great advice back in March. I used much of it throughout the past few months as I shopped around.

I wanted to grab an image off of my home machine today so I fired up Remote Desktop and logged into my machine. Next I launched Picasa, my preferred photo software, and got this message: I can definitely confirm, it's indeed uglier but definitely faster. That's ok, I'll take the speed any day.

Google|Maps|Win32

Last night, my wife and I attended a fabulous Kentucky Derby dinner party hosted by Kevin Driscoll and his wife (btw, Kevin hosted last weekend's desert camping, this guy knows how to have a good time). They bid at auction for a Kentucky Derby dinner which they won much to our delight. The dinner was at the home of a couple who live in a beautiful house in Ben Lomond.

The main event had been conveniently Tivoed (we'd been instructed to avoid the Internet/TV as the race was run earlier in the day) and after Mint Julips and hors d'oeuvres on the front porch we all gathered 'round the big screen TV for the Derby. We had each selected a horse and having looked at the odds the night before I opted for Street Sense (9-2) since the favorite, Curlin had already been taken. The race started and as the horses rounded the first turn the announcer finished his run down with "...and Street Sense in 19th place..." out of twenty! I sat back in my chair and said "well, I guess I can relax now" at which point our chef tapped me on the shoulder and said "no, keep watching". It would take an instant replay before I really understood what had happened but by the straight away Street Sense was in first place and won the 2007 Run for the Roses by 2¼-lengths. I walked away with a very nice prize which included a few glasses and a bottle of Maker's Mark, one of my favorites.

After the race, we moved to the dining room where we were served a fabulous dinner. My wife said the beef was simply the best she's ever had which I agree was mighty good. I was absolutely stuffed by the time it was over and thoroughly enjoyed the evening.

This wasn't my first Derby party but it's the first one I'd attended in many, many years though I'm beginning to think that's been a mistake. It's hard to believe a two minute sporting event could make for such a fun evening!

Do you have a good Derby story?

Last Friday, while I was out in the desert (which btw was a blast), much to my surprise I got an email from a Public Relations person from Western Digital asking if it would be ok for someone from their Customer Relations department to contact me. I replied with my contact details and I just now got off the phone with someone from their CS department. They asked about what had happened and offered to pay for a card to replace the Firewire port which was burned out in the process of trying to hook up the MyBook Pro Edition II 1TB external drive which I think seems fair. The Customer Service rep gave me their personal number and email address and asked that I send them the invoice for the replacement card and they would get a check cut and set out directly.

To me, I think this really says something about Western Digital in that they are tuned into the blogosphere and reaching out to help. I haven't decided if I'll try another MyBook but this was certainly an unexpected but welcome exchange.

After this, then this, I headed back to CostCo to return a second dead MyBook in a week. The guy at the return counter said "Yeah, we've gotten a bunch of these back." He then looked it up and the CostCo here in Santa Cruz has sold 12 MyBook Pro Edition II's (I'm guessing that's over the last 5-6 days which is when I first saw them) and six had been returned so far. Of course, I purchased two of those but a 50% return rate? That's certainly enough to convince me to look elsewhere. I can't imagine CostCo will continue carrying these much longer if that record keeps up.

Btw, I've since found this blog post, unfortunately, I was unable to reach that site the other day nor did the cached version on Google work for me, go figure.

Ok, I believe I'm done blogging about the MyBook.

After this experience I finally made it back to CostCo to pick up another Western Digital MyBook Pro Edition II and get back to work backing up my images and video. I got the software installed (again) and plugged the MyBook into the wall then plugged the Firewire 400 cable to the MyBook then into my Dell 530. Right after making the connection I noticed a small curl of smoke rise up from the back top edge of the brick, right above where the Firewire 400 plug is located on the back of the MyBook, and that's where it ended. I immediately yanked the plug on the, now literal, Firewire cable and pulled the MyBook power cable from the wall. I guess they don't call it Firewire for nothing. Unlike last time, where I never actually saw smoke but thought I smelled that unique scent of electronic smoke, this time it was clearly visible and now I'm fairly certain something rather catastrophic must have occurred in the previous go-round and I'm guessing today's experience is probably related.

I tried powering up the MyBook again without any I/O cables attached and the circular indicator lights no longer respond. I also tried reconnecting my external Sony DVD burner into the same rear Firewire port and Windows failed to acknowledge it's existence. Switching to the front Firewire port worked just fine. Great, so now, not only do I have a second MyBook which is now toast, I'm down to one built-in Firewire port on my machine.

I'm pretty darn frustrated at this point and my confidence in the MyBook hard drive enclosure, specifically the enclosure, has taken a severe beating. This has left me wondering what if the Firewire failure had occurred at some later point when the machine was unattended (even five minutes later)? Would it have actually caught fire? The MyBook was two inches from a stack of recorded family DV tapes sitting here on my desk. Ok, I don't want to think about that anymore.

Anyway, just prior to all this MyBook stuff I had successfully copied several DV tapes from my Sony Digital HandyCam to my machine without any problems using this same Firewire port so I'm pretty sure the MyBook is somehow related to it's demise.

Ok, one last thing, I've now purchased two MyBook Pro Edition II's and upon opening each box I noticed the devices had the same odd smell which I think I'd describe as "solvent-like". It wasn't particularly strong though it did cause me to actually sniff the enclosure to ensure that's where it was coming from. The first thing that came to mind was that of airing it out before sitting in the same room with it for any extended period of time. I know PC's typically have a unique smell when first unwrapped/installed/booted but this smell distinctly stuck out to me as something I didn't want to be inhaling for any length of time.

I've been looking for a solid storage solution primarily for digital photos and video which currently consumes just over 110GB of disk space (50GB/photos and 60GB/video). I was in CostCo (a "big box" warehouse store) the other day and they are currently selling the 1 terebyte Wester Digital MyBook Pro Edition II with the triple Firewire/USB interface for $369 which appears to be a very competitive price according to Froggle. I'd done quite a bit of searching for good solutions and this seems to fit the bill fairly well especially considering it has the flexibility to easily support both RAID 0 and RAID 1, my preference.

So, I get the box home and I'm excited to get it hooked up and put an end to the constant stream of DVD's I've been burning which covers only photos since the videos are too large. The MyBook couldn't really be much easier to to install, pop in the CD, hook up the desired I/O interface cable, firewire 400 in my case and plug it in. Unfortunately, that's where my experience ended, the small led indicator on the AC adapter brick lit up but the device never responded. The blue indicator lights on the front never flickered nor did the power button respond. I thought I'd noticed a hint of an electrical smoke smell briefly after I plugged it in and I'm guessing that had something to do with it. I fooled around for a bit adjusting the connections but the device was simply dead. Having purchased it at CostCo returning it other than a trip to the store was painless though I didn't have time, with two tired kids in the cart, to wait in line to pick up a replacement so I'll have to wait for another day.

I really like the device and even though I've read about it being rather loud I don't intend on having it on all the time so that doesn't really both me unless it wakes the kids which I can't imagine.

On a related note, I found this blog post by Jeremy Zawodny as it has some great information and lots of good comments.

Btw, in case you're wondering the screenshot here is a picture of WinDirStat of my existing backup drive which is a LaCie 250GB USB external drive of which I've recently found some not so glowing reviews.

What are you doing for storage? What about some of the available online storage solutions?

I have a ReplayTV 4500 and this past weekend I had it set to record 4.5 hours of the Superbowl extravaganza. Yesterday, when I woke up at started to download it to my PC using DVArchive and moments later my wife went down stairs and turned on the ReplayTV at which point things went downhill. I immediately noticed that the transfer rate had dropped way down so I went downstairs to have a look and found my wife had turned the Replay on which meant it was trying to stream and play an 11.4GB file at the same time. It didn't work.

After several minutes waiting for it to respond to the remote it was clear something had gone wrong. Eventually, I rebooted it and when I got back into the channel guide I noticed the Superbowl along with about 3/4th of our other recorded shows were gone. Things got worse when I attempted to restore our scheduled shows which caused scheduling conflicts with programs that were no longer recording!

At that point, I downloaded the remaining contents and performed a factory reset (382 zones, for those of you who have a Replay). That worked but required me to completely reset everything from the network settings to our entire recording schedule.

I actually watch very little TV these days, mostly stuff from Netflix (recorded onto the Replay) but when I do I have to use commercial advance or chances are I won't make it through the entire show.

Anyway, so much for watching the Superbowl commercials from the comfort of my couch.

Last summer my wife and I purchased several new appliances two of which included a range and an over the range microwave. The latter presented a bit of a problem such that when we added the height of the microwave to the cabinet it didn't leave much room for pots on the back burners below. Fortunately, one of my wife's uncle's builds cabinets so I removed the cabinet above the range and had him shrink it about an inch and a half (3.8cm).

Now, being a geek I couldn't just sit down and draw out a diagram when I have a perfectly good computer right here in front of me? I happened to recall reading about Google SketchUp on The Daily Grind so I downloaded it and proceeded to model my kitchen in 3D. I was pretty impressed at how easy it was and the model came out better than I had expected. I've never used modeling software like this so it was a kick to play with.

So, if your even slightly interested in 3D modeling I think you'll find Google SketchUp well worth the download. Of course, the price is right too.

Over the holiday break I was trying to use iTunes to download and listen to a few podcasts and the performance on my Dell 530 dual Xeon 1.4GHz machine is just awful. To the right is a screenshot of Process Explorer specifically for the iTunes.exe process while sitting idle on my machine for over two and a half minutes. There are no downloads in progress and no other processes taking any CPU.

What's it doing? Every few seconds the CPU spikes to 47% and the mouse flickers like crazy when I hover over it. In fact, the mouse flickers even when iTunes doesn't have focus and only stops if I minimize it.

I really like the iPod device but iTunes, at least on the PC, has become a serious pain.

• There is no automatic update for iTunes so it constantly prompting me to visit the Apple web site and download the latest version.
• It never remembers my QuickTime setting where I turn off the tray icon
• The download is 33MB just to go from 7.0 to 7.02

What's your experience like?

I just noticed that Netflix has added an RSS feed for tracking my personal rental queue. That's sweet! Subscribed.