When I turned 16, the first car I was given was a hand me down 1992 Pontiac Grand Am that my Mom had driven. It ran great, had low mileage, and there was nothing wrong with it – so I bought a Chevy S-10.
After that lease ran out, I had that 1992 Grand Am again. It still ran great and had low mileage (due to sitting in the garage for the last 3 years) – so I bought a Jeep Wrangler.
Fast forward to 2006. I was driving that Jeep Wrangler almost 60 miles / day back and forth to work and bitching about gas prices (why did I buy a car that only gets 17 miles to the gallon on a good day?) when I remembered that Grand Am.
For the past year or so I’ve been driving the Grand Am to work every day, and saving my Jeep for the weekends. It worked out great!
Anyway, I’m sad to report that the Grand Am seems to have finally met it’s match.
A few months ago the heat started going (it still blows very lightly..but it works).
Then the speakers started going.. but I think I fixed them.
A couple days ago I heard a rattling in the trunk and thought nothing of it. Yesterday though, it got really really loud so I decided to take a look:
If you can’t tell, that’s my shock… sticking up through my wheel well and into my trunk.
I’m not sure what it’s going to cost, but I’m sure it will cost more than a 1992 Grand Am with 92,000 miles is worth. It’s looking like it might be time to donate this car to Mother Waddles and take the tax write off.
I’m just sad to see it go. I’ve had this car ever since I started driving. Oh the memories.
February 22nd, 2007
I wanted to blog about Google Apps Permier Edition (GAPE), but after seeing it mentioned on so many other sites, I had a better idea. Instead of talking about GAPE, let’s look at how a news story spreads across the internet.
- Feb 18th – ZDnet talks about the possibility of the product
- 10:00 pm Yesterday – Google Blogoscoped mentions the feature is coming.
- 1:30 am – Google officially launches Google Apps Premier Edition
- 2:00 am – First mention of it by bloggers on blogspot
- 6:00 am – Robert Scoble mentions it
- 9:50 am – Search Engine Land carries the story
- 10:00 am – Slashdot has picked up the story
- 11:00 am – Techdirt replies with an editorial about Google Apps competing with Microsoft.
- 11:11 am – News.com publishes their version of the story
Who’s next? Wired? Fark? Digg** Where are you guys at?
* – Some of these times are estimates based on Google News finding the story.
** – The story has made it to Digg, but only in the upcoming, and only had a handful of diggs at the time of this writing – not significant enough to count as “on digg”.
Update: As predicted, Wired chimed in with the story late at 11:52 am.
February 22nd, 2007
I was just reading this article about a California judge who was sentenced to 23 months in prison for possession of child porn. That’s not the part that upsets me though.
It seems the judge was caught when a canadian hacker named Brad Willman installed a trojan on the judge’s computer and started reading his filed. Brad then turned the child porn over to authorities and they arrested the judge.
But what about Brad? Brad wrote and distributed a virus. He installed software onto the judge’s machine without his consent, and viewed all of the judge’s files. This no doubt includes confidential information only meant for a judge. In addition, Brad had to have downloaded the images to his machine to view them – if only temporarily.
It seems to me that while his actions ulitmately captured a creep, Brad should be charged with a lot more crimes than the judge.
Catching a bad guy is one thing, but do we really want vigilante justice to rule? Do we want to send a message that it’s ok to spy on your neighbor, trespass into their property, and illegally access their computers to make sure that they’re not breaking any laws?
February 22nd, 2007
