I was driving home today and while listening to the XM, I heard the song “3 Strange Days” by School of Fish. I hadn’t heard the song in a long, long while and since I don’t have the CD on me anymore, I figure I’d just go and grab their album from iTunes. Boy, I feel so dated.

I’m on iTunes right now and looking at their album, only to find out that the lead singer died in 2000 of testicular cancer.

I’m amused for some weird reason over the Japanese version of the official Mitsubishi Outlander site.

Update: MSNBC/Forbes reports that the Outlander was the worst selling model for Mitsubishi last year, selling only 11,848 units (including mine).

I really honestly think that is caused not by general car suckitude, but by the absolute lack of advertising on Mitsubishi’s part. I had only learned of the car when a certain someone had researched Consumer Reports. In the past month I’ve seen at least 10 other Outlanders on the road around where I live, but that just could be because there is a well known Mitsubishi dealership nearby.

Update 04/02/06 - author’s explanation: Yes, I do own an 2006 Outlander SE (purchased it off the dealer’s lot just before the new year). After driving the vehicle for the past three months, with a little over 3,000 miles on the odometer, here are my impressions.

Overall, I would rate the car an A-. I’m extremely pleased with it, with my only real complaints with it being a little underpowered and I wish the gas mileage was a little better (I’m getting about 22mpg city). The spare tire in the back doesn’t bother me like it does others, and I have to say that the car handles extremely well in rain and snow.

I’m glad I made the purchase. I enjoy driving again.

Today’s Sunday NY Times has an article on tracking travel deals via RSS, rather than relying on promotional email newsletters.

While not all sites allow you to track specific fares to destinations, the idea of even tracking promos via RSS is pretty neat. The article explains in simple detail how to aggregate RSS feeds via a customized My Yahoo page.

RSS is slowly becoming more useful to the consumer - it’s not just for “news articles” anymore.

This past Christmas, I received a Delphi XM SKYFi unit with the accompanying home and car adapters. I like to listen to the radio in the car and I usually have the XM going during my commute. I skip between channels 43 (college rock) and 82 (horrific electronica) respectively.

During my commute last week, I hit one of the satellite signal deadspots at a traffic light. I don’t have XM built in to my car audio system and I’ve only strung the anntenna inside of my new car which makes deadspots more frequent, or so I’ve been told. While sitting at the light, the radio signal went out and faded away and then all of a sudden I was hearing, of all things, Howard Stern’s voice coming out of *my* car speakers. Needless to say, I was just a tad bit surprised.

It seems that I was able to hear Mr. Stern’s voice because I’m using the XM car adapter kit with the low intensity FM transmitter. I use my transmitter at 88.3 FM and apparently, another car near me in traffic was using the same frequency for their Sirius car adapter unit.

I’ve heard of Pirate Radio with iPod FM transmitters, but this is a first concerning satellite radio.

So, perhaps here’s an idea for those guys who are streaming Howard on the net.

My parents just adopted a new kitten and he’s as cute as cute could be…and a terror to boot.

An Ode to Sam

Santa Claus must have heard about how much we like Apple Computers in this household as there was a note left here on Christmas as he couldn’t make one at his workshop, but there were some to be found at the Apple Store in Christiana, DE.

So, on my day off this past Monday (January 2nd), I took a trip down to Delaware, home of tax free shopping to pick up a new 17″ G5 iMac. The mall was packed. And by the time we got to the Apple store, the checkout line snaked down the center of the store, nearly to the entrance. So I had my accomplice stand in line while I hunted for the items I needed, an AirPort Express for my accomplice and the iMac. I located a roving floor person (it seemed like there were only two of those and three others were manning the checkout lines) and asked him where to get the iMac. He told me just wait in the checkout line and ask the checkout person. Anyway, I retreat back in line and wait for a good 20 minutes.

Finally I get to the checkout girl and she squares me away. The interesting thing that I didn’t realize is that the iMac comes with a wireless keyboard and mouse (instead of the wired Mighty Mouse) and I chose the wireless option, since my daughter would be the primary user and she prefers her wireless keyboard. In addition, there were a ton of rebates going on including ones for an HP printer or an Epson all-in-one printer/fax/whathaveyou and for Microsoft Office for Mac (which I already have). I did pick up the HP printer, because after the rebate it would be free and it would be used in this household.

Later that evening, got the precioussss machine home, and set it up in a snap (it would have been a snap if I hadn’t forgotten the password to my wireless router *ahem*….). And so I’ve got at least one machine running Tiger.

(As a side note, I’m not really all that excited about Tiger as I have Panther on my PowerBook, but on the iMac I think Tiger is more impressive…)

I think that the folks at Apple would be mightily amused to hear a seven year old say, “Oh wait, can you put that on my Dashboard?”

Happy New Year!