Are my eyes really blue?

Looks like the VW guy overestimated his ability to do a deal with the dealership up north. Now it doesn’t look like I will be able to get a Rabbit to spec before January, barring a miracle swap of some sort (which itself would not deliver a car until about December 1). Now that the Dodge Caliber is on the work discount program – at invoice less one percent, no less – I could spec it up and get out for $17,500, with 28 MPG city to boot. I think it may be time to open up the bidding again.
Actually, right now I’d just settle for windshield wipers that wipe properly.

Every passing day reminds me of how glad I am to be married, how glad I am to have the house, and how glad I am that I got out of the profession of political science. At least in high-tech, you have reason and science and objective truth. There’s a reason the PSCI degree is a BA.
Still waiting to get word on the car – should be a done deal by now, but it may be as long as another week and a half to take delivery. Meanwhile, my casting about for a new phone has run up on the rocky shores of “nothing worth paying for a handset AND reverting to paying for my own service again.” Sure, I’d like a 2-megapixel camera and the ability to moblog and be able to get my e-mail and surf the web anywhere, and maybe play some of my iTunes stuff besides, but for $300 down and another $50 a month? Forget that. I’ll slide by with my iPod and my L2 for nothing down and nothing a month. Especially with a car payment coming soon.
Wish Vandy hadn’t lost to Ole Miss. We needed that one to have any hope for a bowl game. Maybe next year – I think most of the principle figures on the team are back next season. Not counting on Alabama to do much the rest of the way, especially with games left to play against UT, LSU and Auburn. Naturally, the wife is pleased with the fact that if Cal runs the table, they’ll be in the Rose Bowl…

So far today, I’ve been working on prospective cars, prospective browsers, and prospective cell phones. I think I have some sort of OCD for specifications.
(For the record: VW Rabbit, Safari 2.04, and Nokia E50 with data or Moto L2 without.)

Was anyone outside Fulton County GA rooting for the Falcons tonight? Vegas may have laid three, but they never had a chance. Not in a rivalry game that happened to also be homecoming. And when they blocked that punt for a touchdown barely two minutes in, the producer in the truck got it just right: nothing but the crowd noise. And it sounded like the Sugar Bowl, which is something you can almost never say about an NFL game.
Well done, Saints. And big ups to Justin and Amanda and Joseph and Amber =)

…but Vandy did have a 48 yard FG shot to win with a minute left, and they might have won outright if an incomplete pass has rightly been called a lateral and thus a fumble. All in all, given how Michigan is paddling Notre Dame on national TV, I think you could make a case that Vandy is the best 0-3 team in football. If we weren’t in the SEC, who knows – six, seven wins a year every year?
Ah well – better to serve in heaven, etc. =)

So having disavowed my undergrad alma mater, I’ve embraced Vandy with both arms this year. I think it’s a good thing. It’s not like I’m bandwagon-jumping or anything; I actually did go there and collect a nice degree, albeit a graduate degree. I was there three years only, and didn’t really have the fully-immersed college experience. But I did have a Commodore Card to buy stuff in the bookstore and the Munchie Mart. I did camp out for Kentucky tickets in the snow (okay, inside the gym with snow outside. We may camp out, but we never rough it). I did go to football in the fall and baseball in the spring. I played softball, I got invited to parties, I drank in dive bars watching Monday Night Football, I saw live music at the Bluebird, and I experienced autumn in Middle Tennessee, which is basically heaven on earth.
I have more good memories in one semester at Vandy than I had from four years of undergrad combined…so for future reference, until further notice, as far as the wider world is concerned, I’m all Commodore. 3 fingers out, show your gold ;]

VANDY 10, BAMA 13: I don’t know what was worse – Vandy leading and fighting hard only to let it slip away again, or the fact that the winning points came off the leg of Van Tiffin’s SON. I am SO OLD. Haven’t actually seen the replay yet – I am anxious to see whether John Parker Wilson looks like a viable option at QB. I am not sanguine about the prospects for the Bama defense if they couldn’t contain a weakened Vanderbilt – as I told somebody last night, just once, I’d like to see what it’s like for one of my teams to run up the score…
CAL 42, MINNESOTA 17: A very necessary win for Cal – important to soundly thump an opponent and get their confidence back. Nate Longshore is finally starting to look like a viable QB. The big problem I have is the extent to which they have incorporated the spread to the exclusion of their previous pro set – if you’d told me they would be working out of the option at UT with less than a dozen handoffs to Lynch, I never would have predicted a Cal win – in fact, I would have predicted Cal getting eaten alive. So much remains to be seen – after Portland State next week (probable win) it’s all Pac-10. Maybe the spread will work on them.
MORTON 2, COWDENBEATH 1: Scottish Second Division action. Morton thumps their nearest foe in the standings to go 4 points clear at the top of the table. Promotion here we come!!

…it’s just not the whole world.
But anybody who spends any time in the blogosphere – or worse yet, in the fetid fever swamps of MySpace, LiveJournal, etc – should be able to grasp a fundamental truth very quickly: given access to a high-speed link to all the world’s information and a global audience, human beings immediately revert to age 14.
This is why, in retrospect, all the people who told me not to sweat high school, or college, or whatever, because things would be better in the real world? They were mistaken. Badly…

…while I angst about getting a new car and bemoan the thought of giving up Danny after 205,000 miles of loyal service, the thought occurs to me that the best way of figuring what I was is not to think of it in terms of “what car do I want?” but “what do I need from my next car?” So in no particular order:
* Sunroof or convertible. Prefer convert, probably get sunroof.
* Satellite radio. Prefer factory; don’t want to tamper with car’s electricals from day 1.
* Plenty of room in front; sufficient room in backseat (if any) that I will not be utterly miserable when I inevitably wind up back there. (Happens more than you’d think.)
* Sufficient handling characteristics to deal with the two classes of Horrible California Driver: the ones who cut across three lanes at once and swerve through anything, treating their Honda Civic as some sort of manned cruise missile, and the ones who hold their three-ton SUV at a steady pace irrespective of the flow of traffic or the presence of other vehicles in their path, barely able to see over the wheel of their Hummer H2.
* Better mileage than my current ride. In reality, this probably means about 26 or 27 MPG in the aggregate. The thing that really bugs me about the Rabbit (heretofore my first choice) is that its 22/30 city/hwy mileage is scarcely better than some V6 cars. (And at only 150 hp, it makes me wonder what the point of the 5-cylinder is – V6 mileage with 4-cyl performance is quite the reverse of what they were looking for, I think…)
* I do like the blue dash lighting of the VW, but I’m not wedded to it.
* Ideally, I’d like to err on the side of smaller and easier to park. A Mini Cooper or Nissan Versa would be ideal, if cost and fuel permitted. (The Mini has remarkable mileage, but the need for premium fuel leaves a little to be desired.)
What I really need is a US version of the Smart Roadster, which I think was around as a concept as the Dodge Slingshot. 3-cyl engine with 100 hp and 49 mpg, in a lightweight spaceframe body that would survive a crash without having to weigh 3000 lb. Yeah, good luck with that…

“…it’s wanting what you’ve got.”
Things I need to do:
* See that my MacBook fits my existing Timbuk2 grip sleeve. It’s a close one, but it does fit. The MB is basically 13x9x1, which just fits the Small-size grip sleeve I originally bought for a 12″ PowerBook. (The Small is actually a little snug for a 12″ iBook, I discovered, but it works out OK for the MB.)
* See about replacing the lining in my Indy jacket. (The duct tape isn’t working anymore.)
* Settle on a browser I think OmniWeb 5.5 is the browser of record at least until OS X 10.5 ships – its newer version of WebCore and fast rendering of multiple pages puts it ahead of the Gecko browsers. Now if only they could put the tabs on top instead of on the side…
* If my car had fifty thousand fewer miles and a sunroof, I’d work on getting the door replaced but good, and maybe put in a new head unit and sat-radio tuner. As it is, I’m not sure about the value of putting more than $500 into a car with 204K miles on it. Although as long as my usage is still less than 500 miles a month, it also seems foolish to put too much stock in buying a new car.