ubuntu sound, or lack thereof

So some time ago (I honestly don't remember when, but it was a LONG time ago) the audio on my work computer seemingly randomly stopped working. I run ubuntu 8.04 (hardy) on an older Dell P4. I tried off and on ever since to get it working, doing all kinds of Google searches, reading message boards, looking at the ubuntu website, Googling for the error message (a generic, not so helpful message as is typical in my experience for GNOME/Linux) but all to no avail.

Finally today I came across this link: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SoundTroubleshooting I have no idea how I missed it before. Perhaps it's new. But this page finally got my sound working again at work.

As a post mortem, I suspect that ubuntu removed the sound support files during the last kernel update. Should it really be that difficult? I don't think so. This, to me, is further proof of my convictions that that desktop / non paid Linux is still a hobbyist's OS. I run the distribution that is supposed to wean people off Windows - it has a company pumping money into it and all, yet, something like this can happen and it can take an experienced software engineer months of off and on tinkering (mostly off, this is my work machine and I'm expected to be productive after all) to get it working again.

VOCM

This is a news story from VOCM about the city testing audible pedestrian signals.

I've been in cities with these signals and I think they're amazing.

What I find odd is that everyone seems to have forgotten the fact that the city installed audible signals at the bottom of Kenna's Hill about ten years ago, and ended up turning them down and ultimately (as far as I know) taking them off altogether.

Why? Because local residents complained about the noise.

I guess memories are short.

VOCM

Summer cars, Part II

Last time I preached here, I was extolling the virtues of my top three Summer cars. I promised that eventually I'd write up my second string of personally interesting cars. These cars are ones that I could see myself affording but fall below the first three in terms of my personal likelihood to buy. The reasons for these are varied so I'll try to justify them when I feel necessary. You will note that my favourite car - the Corvette - is here rather than up with my top string. Ahh, fickleness.

So, in no particular order, here's the second string of Andrew's potential summer cars:

1. Chevy Corvette, any generation


(Image courtesy Roger's Corvettes - www.rogerscorvettes.com)

I love every Corvette ever made. Yes, even the mid-late 70s ones with their smog choked output that can't keep up with a modern forced induction four cylinder engine. My favourite Vettes are those post 1991 after they updated the C4 styling to be a little more modern. Color of choice; Admiral Blue, though it wouldn't have to be a 1996 Grand Sport as their rarity makes them more expensive (the 330 hp LT4 doesn't hurt either). I also think the C6 is a better looking car than the C5.

Why isn't it on my first string list? A C6 is too expensive. Some C5s are very affordable and slot nicely into my $20-$25k fantasy budget. The C4s are getting old though so I have some concerns about reliability, and the price for a decent used late C4 is barely less than a early to mid C5. I think the truth of the matter is that at this point in my life I don't trust myself with 300-400 hp. Believe it or not, I've never driven anything with north of 200 hp. I figure I'd lose my license or kill someone. The Corvette is also a large car - nearly 15 feet long. Compare with my first string and you'll find it's adding at least a foot in length.

2. Audi TT, first generation


(Image courtesy www.channel4.com

One of the most beautiful cars of the last 30 years, the Audi TT is a damn good looking car, eschewing modern aesthetics for unabashedly 30s inspired curves. I have loved these cars since they came out in the late 90s. This car looks amazing in pretty much any color. Black is particularly amazing on these cars, and I'm not normally a fan of black because it's so hot and hard to keep clean. The light blues are nice, and I'd skip silver ;)

It is not on my list because it rides on an ancient VW-sourced platform that, I've read, had the rigidity of spaghetti, hurting the handling considerably, and I'm afraid of Audi maintenance costs. This fear applies to the Boxster as well, but the Boxster is midengined and handles like a mofo in addition to being nearly as beautiful and more powerful than the TT.

3. BMW Z cars, inline six versions only


(Image sourced here on Blogger where it had no attribution)

The Z3 is another beautiful car, and can be made seriously powerful, especially if you pop for an M version with the 3.2 liter inline six. Early cars were saddled with a 1.9 liter four cylinder engine borrowed from the 3 series and are very affordable now. I would have to buy a six though.

On my second string list simply because the Z3 just doesn't excite me as much as the idea of owning the cars on the first string. BMW's infamous maintenance costs can't be overlooked as well of course.








4. Mazda RX-8



(Image courtesy www.smartlease.co.uk)

This is one seriously hot looking car as well, and supposedly handles nearly as well as a Miata while having a back seat and 9000 rpm of screaming Renesis rotary engine.

Falls onto my second string due to very high depreciation and a small engine toasting problem. In
fairness, Mazda has dealt with the engine concerns by retroactively increasing the engine warranty of every RX-8 sold to 8 years / 160 000 km. That may make a third year car (a 2006+) a screaming deal as right now their values are nearly as low as the 2004 and 2005 cars that are the only ones exhibiting the failing engine problem. The last thing I need is a regularly broken car. Hottest in the 2009 styling update, but second hottest in either red or the beautiful bright blue.

Also rans
There are a few also rans that flirt with inclusion on this list, but I guess really form more of a third string. Those cars are the third gen Toyota MR-2 (the one they sold for 3-4 years in the early 2000s), Chrysler Crossfire, Mercedes SLK cars and the Nissan 350Z. Honourable mention to the Ford Mustang GT because I love its sound but not the company I'd be keeping.

Perhaps next time I'll do the "If I was filthy rich" list. That one includes Ferraris.

Summer cars

A long time ago (ok, it was only two years ago) I used to own a 1985 Pontiac Fiero. Base coupe tragically saddled with an automatic transmission and anemic 2.5 liter Iron Duke engine. As I told everyone, it was fun, but damnably slow fun.

Though I did manage to get some decent finishes at our local autoslalom events, finishing as high as fifth over all with it.

It was old though, and less than reliable. I cycled from "keep it forever!" to "F***ing thing", from joy at keeping an old car on the road to near tears with frustration at times, from planning and starting to buy parts and a donor car for a v8 engine swap to ultimately selling it and moving on.

The decision to sell it came when my better half told me to get rid of it and go buy the Miata I really wanted. It was late summer 2007 when the Canadian dollar hit and exceeded par with the USD, so car prices in the US were very attractive.

My decision was to buy a 2005 Lava Orange Mazdaspeed Miata, which at the time was selling for $15-$18k USD at retail all over the East coast of the USA. I figured I could land one here, imported, modified and all, for $21k USD not including the trip to get it (which, as I saw it, was a bonus for wife and I to enjoy).

Then my supposedly reliable 2002 Mazda Protege went in the shop. Every six days for six weeks. I realized I couldn't trust the car to survive long enough to pay off the Miata, even though the Protege was barely five years old and had only 65k on it. So the Protege was sold as well and I used the money I would have used to pay off the Miata to lease a new car.

But that doesn't stop me from dreaming about owning a summer car. I've been watching prices in the US and Canada to see if/how they're being affected by the current economic downturn.

Thus far, they seem resilient. I've been looking at the major online sales locations though (ebay, cars.com and autotrader.com), so perhaps I need to look in a more targeted fashion at areas with worse economic situations.

I just re-read that post and it sounds terrible, as if I'm trying to profit from or make any kind of light of the misfortune of others; that's not my aim at all. I'm just looking at sports cars.

I started writing this post as a companion piece to Earl's "A summer driver" series of blog entries, so without blathering on any further, here's my list.

It's not structured like Earl's, though I suppose I could do that. Perhaps in another six months when I write another entry.

When it comes to summer cars, I have multiple categories. There's "I could afford that and see myself buying it", "I could afford that but it's too expensive for me to justify", "I lust of someday owning that" and "Dear God I wish I was filthy rich."

Today I'll talk about the first category, "I could afford that and see myself buying it".

I find myself looking at these three vehicles the most. So in no particular order, here's my top three possibly affordable and sensible and hence attainable used cars:

1. Mazda Miata. Preferably a late NB (that's the second generation car introduced in 1999). My plan back in 2007 was to get a Lava Orange 2005 Mazdaspeed MX-5 (note the lack of the word Miata....it does not appear on the Mazdaspeed MX-5). Mazda made only 394 copies in Lava Orange, and they were only available to the US market, and only in 2005.

This picture is kinda big, but I think the beauty of this car in this color deserves it:


(Image courtesy www.miata.net)

The values of these cars have seemingly not fallen a smidge since 2007, which is rather incredible. The Mazdaspeed MX-5s did not sell well and many languished on dealer's lots for months. Apparently they are now a couple of years older and the used car lots seem to be latching onto their rarity as somehow increasing their value. I've seen this before with the 1988 Pontiac Fiero.

Anyway, moving on, here's my second choice. The Honda S2000. These are $52K new in Canada and $30something new in the US, so the used prices for 2004-2006 models in the US are approximately 1/3 the cost of buying one new in Canada. They have classic Honda reliability, with engines good for 200+k MILES if looked after. Oh, and they make 240 hp with an 8000 RPM redline for the second gen (AP2) version, 9000 rpm for the AP1.

My favourite color on the S2000 is called Laguna Blue, which came out in 2006 and was used in 2008 to make the Club Racer (CR) edition. I prefer the non racer version:




















(Image courtesy www.autospectator.com)

The third car I find myself returning to is the Porsche Boxster. It is available in the same general price range as the S2000 and Miata as long as you don't mind a slightly older car. I think my favourite one of these is the 2004+ restyled version in either trim as the 2004+ base model makes about the same power and handles as well as the 2003- "S" trim:



(Image courtesy www.analogstereo.com).

The Boxster would be best in red, yellow or blue, though some of the one-year colors they've done would work well as well. JUST NO SILVER! I think 50%+ of all Boxsters you see are silver and that's just too done. Aside from the fact that I can't stand silver in general anyway.

I'm going to end this one here for now. I've changed my mind and I will do this as a multi-parter. Next time will be cars on the second tier of my "I could afford that and see myself buying it" list.

This thing on?

Dear Reader,

I've been away for some time. That's not to say that I haven't felt the urge to get onto my soapbox and preach to all one of you, but I just haven't had the time for a proper diatribe.

In exchange, I'll offer some randomly, incompletely thought out opinions:

- American Politics: I wish President Obama all the best. I fear that the bar has been set so high for him that he cannot succeed no matter how well he performs. I am encouraged by his apparent leadership abilities though.

- Canadian Politics: Sigh. I still can't believe Harper's government is clinging to power, nor can I believe how weak the opposition has truly become. I'd love to see a man of Duceppe's frankness and firm grasp on reality become the leader of a credible mainstream party. Sadly I cannot, in any way, support his politics.

- The house: Most of the reason I've been quiet is because I don't stop in the evenings and weekends unless it's a night when I just run out of energy and can't form a coherent thought. Fortunately, I have nearly finished a nice new custom shelf for the kitchen that matches the kitchen cabinets in all ways except for the touch of a real capenter's hand. I'll post pictures here or on Facebook when it's completely finished. Plastering is well under way in the basement, which is a wonderous thing.

- If you can believe it, I have month old news papers waiting to be read home on the couch.

- I bought R comps for this season of autoslalom. Kumho V710s with six events on them. Very, very exciting.

That's about it for now. Back to my AIX work.

The trick to getting me to work outside when it's cold...

...is to trick me into thinking it's warm. Honest. This is a story that doesn't say a lot for me, but I think it's funny nonetheless.

I had a ton of stuff to get done yesterday. I was going to go to the gym, change Colleen's winter tires over, install mudguards on my car (which included doing some cleaning on it first), wrap the trees, get groceries and I was hoping to get some time in on the basement and maybe vacuum. It looks like a pretty short list but accomplishing these tasks includes other tasks, such as digging stuff out of storage to do the work, making up lists and trying to ensure I buy the correct amount of groceries without forgetting anything, etc.

The day got off to a great start by sleeping through my alarm for an hour. That's because, as usual, our cat Harry spent from 5 AM to 7 AM intermittantly whining, chasing our other cat Trudi around, and sleeping. It's very distracting to someone who tends to sleep light after 5:30.

So the gym was jettisoned. Neither Colleen nor I were up to it. However, that meant that I had the chance to get out at the cars nice and early-ish. The thermometer said it was 10 degrees out, which is perfect weather for working with a sweater on, so I went for it.

I got the tires changed over (discovering that 14 of the 20 lugnuts I picked up to use in the winter were wrong...thanks NAPA Torbay Road), and that was good. I cleaned up the wheels and in the process also cleaned the Accent enough to install the mudguards I bought for it. After lunch I decided to wrap up the trees which meant I had to find all the tree wrapping materials that I had cunningly stowed away two weeks ago when I cleaned up the garage. The first part involved a small avalanche of stuff falling from the top of the cupboards in the garage to the floor. Dear Reader, you will remember of course that the contents of my basement are currently sharing the garage with the normal contents of the garage. The pile is impressive, but it's a house of cards. Or, perhaps I should say, it's built on quicksand. Either way, that entailed cleaning up a mess and possibly some foul language.

Anyway, I got the trees wrapped, thinking to myself what a lovely 10 degree day it was. I was also thinking of putting out some Christmas lights, but two things stopped me from doing so. Firstly, the lights are somewhere in the pile of stuff from the basement that is built on quicksand, and secondly, it was getting a little late to get started on it. There are secondary factors of the wind blowing up and it starting to hail, but I figured I could deal with those since it was still 10 beautiful, glorious degrees out.

So I started on the mudguards on the Accent. I almost had them done by 5:00 when Colleen came to let me know it was time to come in for supper. I say almost because I had been stymied by these stupid connectors that the car uses to hold the inner fender to the rocker panel.

Anyway, even after supper, with the sun gone down it was STILL 10 beautiful, glorious degrees out. I had to finish up the mudguard installation, bring the stuff back into the garage that had to move outside to make room for the car and I was hoping to test drive Colleen's car to make sure the wheel swap went well.

I thought it was funny when I noticed her car was covered in ice.

I double checked the thermometer, which was proudly proclaiming 10 glorious late November degrees.

I checked the car. Yes, that was ice on it for sure.

Slowly it dawned on me why I had to turn the thermostat down below 5 degrees earlier in the day to stop the rad from cutting in while I had the garage door open to those glorious 10 degrees of heat. Oddly, I thought nothing of it at the time.

Moral of the story: There are a couple. The first is that I'm easily tricked by a stuck thermometer on my back deck. The second is that I'm a little stunned. I recounted the short version of this story to Earl today and he responded with "And we hired you!?"

Sigh.

In case you're still here and reading (wow, your insomnia must be bad), I finally got my groceries all packed away at 10:30 PM. With the exception of a lunch and short supper break, I'd been going full tilt since 8:30 AM. And I didn't get any Christmas shopping, vacuuming, time on the basement or a trip to the gym.

"It's a little thin...it doesn't last very long"

So I went to my first ever WineFest last night. The title of this post is what the guy next to me was saying about the wine in his class and wife and I couldn't help but laugh at him. While he was standing next to us. But I digress, and it's only the third line.

If you want the short version: Wow. What a waste of money. The long version follows.

Wife and I had never been to a WineFest but a lot of people enjoy it, including a number of our friends, so we struck up a group of four and bought tickets. One of our group couldn't attend - she was called out of town on business last minute on Wednesday. So our friend K, wife and I went downtown and met at the Convention Centre at 6 yesterday.

Now, honestly, wife and I were both dropping. It has been a very long short week. The election hangover has been heavy. Neither of us was all that interested in going out for a night on the town, but felt we should, partially because there were other people involved, plus the HUNDRED DOLLARS our two tickets cost. We were sufficiently tired that we decided at least one of us would behave and brought my car downtown with us to drive home afterwards. I'm not really all that much into wine either (though I could name at least a dozen different ones that my wife and I buy) so I decided I'd behave. I could barely keep my eyes open anyway.

My impressions of the show were about how I expected. There were ladies there in beautiful satin dresses, men in suits (including some guys who were trying way too hard - here's a tip guys, the Fedoras looked foolish and won't get you lucky), men in jeans and sneakers, cougars in clothes that would have looked good only on the girls in the satin dresses, and all shades of pretension and people who thought way too much of themselves.

I tried a couple of wines but didn't like much of what I tasted. Wife had a number more samples than I did, and I sniffed them but didn't taste many of them because honestly the odors from the wines just turned me off.

We did find a new ice cider that we liked, which is convenient because we both love ice wine but aren't well enough heeled to buy $40-$50 wines on a regular basis. This one - I think it's Domaine Pinnacle Ice Cider - is $30. Not bad. Not quite as good as our favorite Ontarian ice wines, but it's also only $30.

I found it over crowded (and it wasn't even sold out). It was way too warm - I was sweating through the armpits of my shirt. By 7-7:30 there were a lot of rosy cheeks and people getting tipsy. 7 PM folks. One hour in. And you're not even supposed to drink it!

We bought a couple of bottles of the ice cider and cashed in our "free" bottle of wine coupons. I enclose free in quotes because I'm sure the cost was included in our $48 + $2 service charge tickets. We gave our $10 taxi vouchers to K to help her get home and left around 8:45. I personally wished we'd left at least an hour and a half earlier but we really didn't want to ditch a good friend until we were sure she'd be fine by herself.

I can't understand that people get so off on this event. Bizarre. Given that I expect the wineries are providing the samples for free and covering their own costs to get here - who knows, possibly even paying for the table space - that your ticket includes a supposed $20 bottle of wine and a $10 voucher towards your ride home (big deal - wife and I are a $30 cab ride from downtown and K is another $10 or $12 past our house), you're theoretically paying about $18 for your entry free.

And even that is too much IMO.

Next year, I'll just shell out $100 on wines I wouldn't normally buy and have a tasting session at the house. You, dear reader, are invited. I won't even charge you. But if you say one word about the nose of the wine, whether it's thick or thin, or whether it tastes like apples - I mean, pears* - you're out!

* We were sampling a local maple sap wine and the lovely lass serving it was clearly helping her parents out but is otherwise uninvolved in the winery - and that's what she said when she was pouring the wine. I could taste the pear. Unfortunately, it tasted more like Mr. Borden's Industrial Arts shop smelled when I was in Junior High School - that completely unique combination of wood, Varathane, silk screen ink and fragile teenage male egos. An honestly pleasant odor from my past, but not so pleasant of a taste, unfortunately.

I've rambled long enough. This post is probably long enough to split into a review of the event and one of the wines I tasted, but that would be way too pretentious of me. After all, that might be a little thin and not last very long. Or taste like apples - I mean, pears.