New Bulb #2
So fortunately it ends up that the brake lights on the 2006 GTI are actually user-serviceable, but it requires a few more steps than on a 1984 Buick. First, the molding behind the the light must be peeled back and the light enclosure unscrewed:
Then the entire enclosure can be removed:
And the bulb holder can be extracted:
Finally we can replace the actual bulb and notice a tiny break in the filament of the broken one:
Dead Bulb #2
Fortunately this one is in my car instead of in my projector.
I like how the car knows exactly which bulb is dead and can even tell me about it. On my old car I had no way to tell that something was dead other than manually checking out all the lights.
Of course, on the old Buick, I could go out there with a normal screwdriver and replace the stupid $1 bulb myself. On the new car the lights are all hermetically sealed into the back of the car and I'll probably have to pay Volkswagen $75 to fix it.. grr.
I wonder if this is related to this story from February which I seemed to have missed: VW recalls 790,000 vehicles because of brake lights
iPhone
So if you're at all familiar with my cellphone purchasing habits, you know that the question posed in my previous post was more rhetorical than anything: of course I had to get an iPhone. Yesterday my boss convinced me to ditch work early and go stand in line for an iPhone with him, so we did (and I obviously didn't have to worry about what the boss would think about leaving in the middle of the day). We were about #25 in line at the AT&T store (the Apple store already had 100+ people), and we had no problem getting 8GB models. Fortunately I had my DS and was able to play through a couple dungeons in Final Fantasy V while we waited, so it wasn't that bad. On the unfortunate side of things, once it was all done the stores did not sell out and had plenty of stock left over, so it was a waste of time to wait in line. Oh well.
Now that I have been playing with it for a while, I am glad that it appears to have been worth it (money-wise, if not time-wise). I expect to make heavy use of a lot of the features, so it might not be worth it for somebody who wouldn't. Since there are plenty of iPhones to go around, you might want to try out a friend's before getting your own if you're on the fence.
Here's my Good vs Bad list so far:
Good:
- It really is as smooth and as fast as in the ads - they were using the real thing.
- The EDGE data rate is not as bad as I expected. Google Maps is pretty usable, and I was even able to stream a YouTube video of David Hasselhof singing and dancing with almost no lag time for buffering. Safari can load yahoo.com from scratch in about 30 seconds, though repeat visits should improve a lot due to image caching.
- The Google maps application absolutely rules. The turn-by-turn driving directions are particularly sweet. I will never have to print out directions to anything ever again.
- Calendar & Contact syncing to Outlook works without problems - now I can check where & when my next meeting is at work without needing to go back to my computer.
- Safari works as advertised - it really is a full-fledged web browser on the phone (minus Flash). This will get lots of use whenever I have to take the bus somewhere or am waiting in a restaurant.
Bad:
- It took 45 minutes to activate the phone using iTunes, which bluescreened my computer once (it was probably an interaction with my sound card driver).
- Transferring my phone number from T-Mobile pre-paid was a huge pain because I did not have a billing address for the old number (since there's no bill). Fortunately after calling AT&T a few times it eventually got worked out. (Though I never provided any identifying information other than my old phone number and the zip code where I bought the phone - apparently that's all it takes to steal a T-Mobile number from somebody..)
- Exchange email syncing only works if the Exchange administrator has enabled IMAP over SSL, which no security-conscious IT administrator will do. No reading work email on the phone 🙁 (this may be a blessing in disguise though)
- The IMAP mail client does not recognize any of my IMAP folders other than Inbox (such as Sent, Spam, Drafts, etc.). I think I can fix this though.
- I cannot use my good headphones in the iPod jack because it is too small. David Pogue noted this in his column but it was unclear what he meant. Here's a picture:
Finally, here's a YouTube video of me using a few of the features (Google Maps, YouTube, Mail, Safari, iPod) if you want to get a feel for how they work (note that the phone was using WiFi in this video):
Denver Street Views
Google Street Views has patchy imagery of Denver, with pictures at lower resolutions than their San Francisco imagery. Even so, I was surprised to be able to find lots of pictures of familiar places:
My parents' house (obstructed by a tree):
High school (shudder):
Old job (Sun Microsystems):
Across the street, my old apartment (not really visible):
1 Year
One year ago I created this web site with the goals of creating something that might be interesting enough to read and to take over the #1 Google search result for my name. I'm not unbiased enough to comment on the first goal, but I can gauge the success of the second:
- #1 in Google search results - Check
- #1 in Yahoo search results - Check
- #1 in Live.com search results - Check
In fact, as an added bonus due to some blog posts and a magazine article I wrote for work, now 9 out of the top 10 and 43 out of the top 50 Google search results for my name are related to me. Sweet. I don't think I have to worry that somebody searching for me will find the wrong person any more.
It's also interesting to check out the Analytics stats for the past year (which, somewhat significantly, do not include RSS readers):
Daily pageviews:
Thoughts:
- 200 pageviews per day? Not enough for AdSense 🙁 (not that I would anyway)
Hits by Browser/OS combination:
Thoughts:
- Since 90% of the hits to my site are referred by random Google Image Search (images.google.com) queries, this mix of hits might actually partially represent a statistically random sample, combined with the people who know me.
- One wonders, who are those 53% of people who still use IE?
- Mac OS X at 11.5% is a pretty strong showing.
- So much for Linux on the desktop. (0.85%?)
Search engine keyword hits:
Thoughts:
- It's nice to see that Jehovah's Witness propaganda is still 2x more popular than me (and, alas, the end of false religion still has not come).
Eyeball Thief
Ever since finding his new home in the Crypt hallway, my Wallmonster has been repeatedly defaced, requiring numerous repairs. Now, I am sad to announce, one of his eyeballs has been completely stolen.
It's time for a Wanted poster to help catch the thief.
Watch problem solved
Needlenose pliers: is there anything they can't do?
Unscrewing a watch
Turning on a light
Eating a cookie
Playing XBox 360
Washing the car
Dead watch battery
My watch battery just died after only a year and a half. The watch itself was not very expensive, but now I see why - they want to charge $30 to replace the 75 cent battery. It's like the printer companies and their $50 ink cartridge refill scam.
Supposedly the battery can only be replaced by mailing it to an "authorized technician" or else the waterproof seal will break and the warranty will be voided. I already tried getting it open but I don't have the right tool to unscrew the back. If anybody has a watch-unscrewing clamp tool, I'm in the market..
Venus
By the moon
Point-and-shoot cameras don't seem to work very well for astronomy photographs
New bank
I've been using a credit union for banking, but I never really analyzed it to see if it was the best deal. This weekend I took a look at it and noticed that I've been getting a pathetic 0.0-0.5% interest rate on my checking account, and 2-3% on savings.
I checked around and it looks like it's possible to get 5% on savings accounts with various banks like HSBC, EmigrantDirect, ING Direct, and E*TRADE.
Ultimately I decided to switch to E*TRADE because they also have checking accounts at 3.25%, and it'll be handy to be able to do stock trades from the same account. At these rates, I calculated that I "lost" several hundred dollars in interest on checking & savings last year, so switching definitely looks like the smart thing to do.
Of course, the higher rates are only possible because these are mostly online discount banks, meaning that they don't have physical branch offices anywhere - all customer service is done over the internet (the way of the future), or over the phone (probably in India or China). Credit unions and traditional banks earn their fees since they have to pay for lots of branch offices and people to staff them, as well as maintaining whole ATM networks (which has got to be expensive).
E*TRADE works around this by allowing you to use any ATM and refunding the fees the owner bank will charge you. If it works it sounds great, but it seems a bit unsustainable since if everybody switched to online banking, there would be no brick-and-mortar banks to maintain all of the ATMs. So the high interest rates might not last forever (or maybe electronic commerce will eventually evolve to the point where cash is not required for most transactions, and ATMs will be obsolete).
Next step on the way to smarter finances: get a cash-back credit card and stop using my debit card. I've been using the debit card almost exclusively for several years, and getting 0% back. Even with 1% cash-back, that's another couple hundred dollars "lost" per year. I'm looking at several cards but haven't found one that's clearly better than the others. Currently I'm thinking about going with the Amazon Visa Card (3% on Amazon purchases, 1% on everything else) since I buy a lot of stuff on Amazon, but it's administered by JPMorgan Chase (infamous for evil customer service), so that might not be the best idea..
Jeopardy Typo
In yet another sign of the impending apocalypse, today there is a typo in my Jeopardy calendar.
Discovery
I just discovered that after the gas pedal on my car is depressed all the way, it can still be pushed one "click" further, to accelerate even faster. Sweet.
Buy vs. Rent
The New York Times has a fascinating Flash-based Buy vs Rent calculator that is much more interactive and detailed than any other calculators I have seen on the web.
If I plug in the numbers I'm currently considering and leave all the interest rates at their defaults, I get the surprising result that buying is better than renting only after 26 years, with a net difference at the end of $72,000:
But, switching the "Annual home price appreciation" from 2% to 4%, it's better to buy after only 8 years, and the net difference is $400,000:
In other words, which is better is so completely dependent on what the market does over the 30 years that it's hard to make any good predictions. So despite playing around with the calculator a whole bunch, I'm still at square one in terms of my decision.
One interesting thing I did note is that changing the down payment percentage has almost no effect on the final result, because this calculator accounts for all the opportunity costs (that is, it assumes that you will invest the money you save by renting in the stock market). So in terms of the final net result, there's no reason to make a bigger down payment if you have the money, because you'd be just as well off investing that money in the stock market instead. Similarly, it seems to follow that there's no reason to wait a few years and save up for a bigger down payment, since at that point you would have the same choice (though I have not thought this one through completely). Obviously this doesn't account for other non-strictly financial benefits of having a large down payment, such as the lower risk in case something goes wrong.
By default the calculator assumes a 5% rate of return on investments, which is a pretty low estimate - that's what I get on my regular savings account, in the long-term the stock market will average much better. If we change it to 10% (not unreasonable), we get this fascinating graph which says that buying is always worse than renting, and after 30 years a renter would have $570,000 more in the bank:
Twiddling with the home appreciation price slider at this point leads to wildly different graphs, so it's obviously impossible to make any good conclusions from it.
If anything, what I'm taking away is that renting is not necessarily that bad of an option compared to buying (despite what the real estate & mortgage industries would tell you), and that renting for one more year will not make a huge difference in the long run - who knows where I will be in a year, it's entirely possible (though improbable) that I could be married and thus be looking for a completely different type of house. Hrm..
Housing Hell
I recently got a note on my door saying that my apartment complex is raising my rent by almost $150 per month when my lease is up in mid-June. This is the second time in as many years - it looks like apartment rents are finally catching up to the recent Seattle housing boom. When I moved in 2 years ago the rent was already high, but now it's verging on the ridiculous. So I think I need to move, but where to?
Thanks to the Invisible Hand, similar apartments are going to cost about the same, so my options for reducing my rent payment are somewhat limited:
- Move into a lower-quality apartment (smaller, no attached garage, more neighbors, bad neighborhood, etc.)
- Move farther away from work (worse traffic/commute)
- Find a roommate
Finding a roommate to split the rent with might be my best option, especially considering that one of my friends is looking for a new roommate in about the same timeframe.
My other main option is to buy a condo (a house is out of the picture unless I want to move 40 miles out of town). Of course the housing market in Seattle has gone ballistic over the last couple of years - some of my friends who purchased 2 or 3 years ago have seen their condos increase in value by almost 50% (!!). Now everything is priced ridiculously high.
Many other parts of the country are seeing housing prices actually fall now, but the Seattle market is bucking the trend and is still going up a bit, or at worst leveling off.
Example: Riverwalk at Redmond is a recent condo conversion (highly visible from 520) at W Lake Sammamish & Leary Way near Redmond Town Center. They've been selling almost as fast as they get on the market. Here's a representative unit:
15825 Leary Way NE #E1 - Redmond - $325,000 for a 758 square foot 1 bedroom/1 bathroom condo, which is a conversion from an apartment (not new construction), and doesn't have a garage. One thing it does have though is a really great location.
As a comparison, the nearby Cleveland condos are new and go for about $390,000 for a similar unit, or $500,000 for a 2 bedroom/2 bathroom condo.
Being from Colorado where housing prices are far, far lower, this just blows my mind that people are eagerly paying this much for tiny little condos. Where I'm from these prices would get you a huge McMansion. But, I guess this is the reality of living on the West coast - it's even worse in California. I'm glad I didn't end up living in Silicon Valley, which is the other main market for software engineers.
l guess the big question at this point is: what's the future hold for the Seattle housing market? Will the bubble pop like in a lot of the rest of the country? Or will it keep going up? Obviously nobody knows for certain, and anybody who knows more than we do is better off keeping it to themselves and making a killing on the side.
My feeling, given the recent Seattle immigration numbers and Microsoft expansion plans, is that recent trends will continue and that the market will continue to rise, though at a slower rate than it has been. At worst, things might level off for a while.
So I'm actually giving serious consideration to buying one of these overpriced things. Of course, $350,000 is a huge amount of money to bet and be wrong :).
Lots to think about..
Locked Out
I recently learned an interesting lesson about the proper protocol for securing locks and shutting garage doors. On arriving home I drove into my garage and walked back out to grab a UPS note on the front door. Not wanting to have to go inside only to come back out the front door, I just reached into the garage to hit the close switch and walked off to get my package.
When I got back with the package, I unlocked the front door with my key and discovered that the "U" latch was locked from the inside (see picture below). I couldn't open the garage door again since my remote was inside the car in the garage, so I spent a good ten minutes trying to reach in the 2-inch gap in the doorway and somehow undo the U latch. Not surprisingly, they are apparently designed to stop you from doing just that, so I was unable to get it open.
I noticed that the latch was held on by two screws, so I got my swiss army knife screwdriver through the door and started to unscrew one of them. It was actually working, although very slowly, and I had one screw about halfway out when some neighbors walked by. Not wanting to look like I was trying to break into an apartment, I took my hand out of the door and pretended to be looking at my UPS package. As I did that I accidentally dropped the screwdriver inside the door and it bounced inside and out of reach.
Now I was really stuck, so I went to get the apartment maintenance guy. A bizarre conversation followed:
Me: "Hi, I locked myself out of my apartment"
Him: "OK, what's the number? I'll get the spare key"
Me: "1072, but the spare key won't help, see I have my key here"
Him: "Then how are you locked out?"
Me: "The U lock is shut from the inside, so I can unlock the door but can't get it open"
Him: "How did you shut the U lock from the outside?"
Me: "Well I went out the garage"
Him: "So why don't you go back in the garage?"
Me: "It's shut, and the opener is in my car, which is inside the garage"
Him: "How did you shut the garage door?"
Me: "I hit the switch and ran out before it closed"
Him: "Mmm... this doesn't make any sense. Let's go look at it"
We walked over to the apartment and I showed him that I was indeed completely locked out, even though I had the key.
Me: "Can you program another remote to open this garage door?"
Him: "Yes, we can do that. But we need the serial number of the opener, and it's inside the garage."
Me: "Don't you have them all written down somewhere?"
Him: "Hmm... no I don't think so"
Me: "What do you normally do in this situation?"
Him: "Nobody has ever done this before"
Me: "Uhh..."
Him: "How about I just kick your door in and then patch it up?"
Me: "OK, but won't that mess up the door frame?"
Him: "Nah, these U lock things aren't really secure anyway"
Me: "Ah well that's nice.."
The trusty U latch and the crack where the door frame was kicked in
Easter Monkey
At work I won a squeezie-monkey in a contest to write an array-shifting algorithm.
It's very cheapo, made in China, and the packaging has pictures of painted eggs and describes it as an "Easter Monkey" in broken English.
I can think of 3 possible explanations for this:
- In other parts of the world they celebrate Easter very differently than we do.
- There was a gross mistranslation of "bunny" somewhere.
- They only have a limited number of squeezie-doll molds, and rebrand them according to the time of year. So you might see the same product as a "Christmas Monkey" or a "4th of July Monkey" depending on when you bought it.
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