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Having just recently bought a new car and made a few observations while driving to/from work:

I’ve never been so glad I capped my search at $15k.
Buying an expensive car is the dumbest thing you can do – even if you can afford it. I looked into some Lexus/BMW’s but left them on the table – and don’t regret it one bit. In fact, part of me wishes I went even cheaper (but part not because I’m really happy with the car I got). Why? Because this may be the last gas car I ever buy. No, seriously. If gas prices don’t go down (they aren’t projected to), then alternative fuel vehicles now enter the realm of not only feasible, but cheaper. Technologies that would have been not cost justifiable before now becomes viable technology at $50/tank or $100/tank when gas hits $8/gallon. People are desperate for alternatives, and there’s soon to be a swarm of smart people who will decend on this problem. When gas hits $8/gallon, you can start adopting some pretty expensive technologies. So, with my cheaper car, it can be paid of soon and I won’t cry a river when I go to sell it in 7 years and find it has no value. You’re an idiot to spend more than $20k on a car until this all gets sorted out and gas either goes down, or the viable alternative appears.

I got a call from a car dealer wanting to buy my car:
I just bought it, and they wanted to buy my car for trade-in. I told them I just got it 3 months ago – and he still wanted to deal. It was a cold-call by a big local dealership too. They’re getting desperate. They were even offering lifetime powertrain warranties on their new cars. Yes, lifetime. Heck, I even got 2 years bumper-to-bumper included in my used car.

Traffic congestion is down:
It’s getting eerie. I drive in to work and home again some days and can markedly tell a difference in the amount of road traffic. It’s quite noticeable. The mornings that I turn on the radio and hear about gridlock are fewer and fewer. I used to take 40-50 min to get home if I drove and traffic was bad, and now its usually 30 min or less. I rarely stop in traffic anymore and haven’t had to take my ‘back route’ to avoid freeway gridlock in weeks. I got up one weekend and the freeways around Portland were so empty that I honestly turned on the radio to hear if some world catastrophe had happened (or maybe Dancing with the Stars was on).

If this is permanent – then society is shifting – and it’ll be dramatic:
If you can’t drive anywhere anymore, or gas is $8/gallon – what do people do? You’d likely start staying in or going to fewer, but maybe bigger shows/larger events. We’ll get more choosy about going out and doing it less often. More people will stay at home entertaining with TV, movies/dvd’s, video games, or other home diversions. They’ll eat out less. We might even <gasp> interact with neighbors more. People in suburbia will get hit harder after having built for sprawl. Instead, people will probably want to concentrate more – and outlying areas of urban areas will decline in value as they require a lot more money to get to/from services and work. Some of this is already happening.

Business in general will continue to slow:
As gas prices stay high, transportation will cost more, and people will again buy less. Food/goods/etc will all go up in price. This will drag on the economy and you shouldn’t expect things to improve much. Some have even said the ‘D’ word might be coming (Depression). I’m personally working on saving up as much reserve cash as I can – and putting it into something that will hold its value. Mutual funds are one option as long as they stay above inflation – but foreign currency is actually starting to look as a viable alternative if the dollar keeps dropping…

Europe will weather better:
If we’re moving into a new reality of fewer and fewer cars – we will now reap the pain of our urban sprawl and 8 lane highways right through city centers. They’ll be empty. Cities and communities will need to shrink back down and compact services. European cities were built this way, and suffered in recent decades because of cramped quarters. Now, we go back again to foot/public transport. Something their ped-friendly cities will weather far better than our layouts that require a 3 mile drive to groceries, a 2 mile drive to hardware, etc.

We’ll likely start loosing weight:
Walking more ain’t a bad thing – especially if you’re using public transport.

Public transportation isn’t just for liberal arts majors and homeless anymore
Simple enough. There are folks in Portland with chartered work buses from Portland/Salem now.

(moderately off-topic) Buy into the crash, sell into a boom
I’m also very very glad I didn’t buy a house these last 2 years. I felt like I had been missing the meteoric gains in housing that people had been seeing during the boom times and I was stupid for sitting on the sidelines. Now, I’m watching people lose 10’s of 1000’s of dollars in value. standing in my window at home, I can count 5 different forsale signs (and one is now edging up on being for sale 2 years now) in a neighborhood when people just 3 years ago didn’t even bother putting up forsale signs as they could start a bidding war just putting up a RLMS listing. It reminded me again what ‘buy low and sell high’ really looks like. Never buy when a boom is going on, save your money for when things are going down.

Reports on car sales are out – and the results aren’t surprising, but the numbers are not pretty. Overall sales are down about 14% compared to last year, truck and SUV sales are down about 30%, with only small car sales being up (way up). Luxury cars are also down. Some numbers (these are all the year-to-year ADJUSTED averages – some articles quote the unadjusted numbers):

Honda (+11% overall):
Honda Fit +73.8%

Nissan (+1.6%)
Altima +28.1% (test drove one – great car for money, great reliability, but a little cheap with interior plastics/finish)
Versa +26.4%
Sentra +25.5%
Titan -54.9%

Toyota (-3.3% overall):
Camry -2.6% (no surprise to me – these have been way overpriced for some time – and reliability has slipped)
Corolla -7.3% (also overpriced for features)
Prius +53.8%

Ford (-18.5% overall):
F-Series -21.0%
Explorer -38.5%
Expedition -35.5%
Focus +43.5%

Chrystler (-29.4% overall)

GM (-12.2% overall)

Good bye my old friend. I’ve put you on the block. Drop a line if you need a pretty darn good $2k car.

Ran across this guy’s music a little while ago – and it just keeps coming back hauntingly to my play list. He’s a 35-ish native Australian from one of the native tribes down there. His name is Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu. Born blind, he self-taught himself guitar – which is why he plays his guitar upside-down since there weren’t any left-handed guitars in his village growing up. His songs are mostly in his native language of yolngu. He only seems to do shows for the 200 people sized crowds. I can only hope he makes a trip to the states. I’ll go see him. Apparently it’s pretty common for people to leave in tears.

Here’s some clips of him singing at his myspace account. Try the track “Gurrumul History” for a good one…

Here’s a youtube clip of him playing one of my favorites live. If you can get through it a couple of times without it kicking you in the chest like a billy goat, then you’re a stronger person than me.  The guy is clearly tapping into a side of his soul most of us ever just get a glimpse of.

Great Indy 500 this year. New Zealand’s Scott Dixon won this year – which is nice to see a kiwi win. Nice to hear the accent too – missed the sound from my trip there about 2 years ago. Overall the race went great – very few accidents/yellows and lots of good racing. The warm track conditions lead to a lot of slippage. It was hard for people to make gutsy moves and most drivers commented on the lack of ability to pass. So it was fast racing with just a few, but really good, lead changes.

Danica Patrick got lots of coverage. More than anyone other than the leaders really. She started in 5th but hovered in that range all the way back to 12th at one point. The in-car coverage indicated she was having trouble getting full speed out of the car. But she was taken out late in the game due to a poor merge by a rookie Indy driver in pit row. Yes, it was pretty much the other guy’s fault, but merge accident happens a lot at Indy – the pit lane is really narrow – and it clearly was just bad luck and a rookie mistake. Still, after the wreck, she started walking on the track down pit row to probably have a few words with the other driver. A security guard went out on the track to get her off, and her press secretary was frantically trying to reign her in.

At first it was interesting and somewhat entertaining, but in the end it simply left a bad taste in my mouth. Competition at that level is very heated and passionate. Yes, people will get angry and I can understand that. But in that race, Tony Kanaan (started in 6th right next to Patrick and was well on pace to win or place in the top 3 of the race) voluntarily took getting taken out by his own teammate to prevent a crash with slower teammate Marco Andretti after Andretti pulled an aggressive move that forced Kanaan in the wall. Look at the difference in his response:

Kanaan said after the race that Andretti made “a stupid move,” (my note: which I agree) and he refused to back down from his assessment. But Kanaan expects the issue to be resolved professionally. “I’m not going to create problems; we have a championship to win, either for me or the team,” he said. “We’re going to talk, get frustrated a little and get over it.”

On top of that, veteran Sarah Fisher (who’s been at Indy more times than I can shake a stick at) was taken out by his wreck.  Which is horrible for her because it seems she has had no end of bad luck at Indy and has been working on a shoe-string budget for years. Yet Sarah was one of the first to come to Danica’s trailer after her recent win in Japan to congratulate her – a win Sarah has never had in the years of Indy driving she’s put in.

While I like Danica as a racer, I’m finding aspects of her attitude less and less likable. So exactly what was going down and confronting him in front of everyone supposed to do? What did she hope to accomplish? (this is more than rhetorical – really try to come up with an answer and see what I mean)  All it did accomplish was to get her escorted off the track by security and her picture isn’t on the papers today for having a good race, but for the ‘thwarted altercation’.  And this isn’t the first time she’s had after-accident altercations. This was clearly an accident, and yep, it was more likely the fault of a rookie driver. You might even come to words with the person – but doing it in front of the world – walking down the pit track during the race – makes you look unprofessional and immature. It also reveals a lot about your character and deeper psyche – and seeing the difference between Kanaan and Patrick really showed that difference to me.

I’ve really wanted to like Danica – I really have. I was quite a fan at first. She used to race on the same cart track my boss races on just south of Portland. But it’s what people do when people are pushed to their extreme edges that really reveals who they are underneath – and I’m beginning not to like what I see in Patrick’s push to win. We might now argue about gender inequality and the fact that she probably needs to work 2x as hard to prove herself in this male dominated realm (and you’d probably be right), but character is character no matter what you do.  And I’ll take character over winning any day of the week.

We can add one more thing to the certainty of death and taxes

Gas prices will keep going up.

Check out these charts from gasbuddy.com. I find it interesting that right as summer starts, prices go up a lot; but come about Aug/Sept in years previous, it dropped back down again. Except for last year. Also, the gas temperature map changes dynamically – so refresh often. Interesting to see that the midwest is so ‘hot’/high. However while I was at home, in one day, gas prices went from $3.73-ish to $3.95. Across the board. The one station that didn’t update it’s gas prices had a line around the block.

But, if gas guzzling is your thing – this Sunday is the running of the Indianapolis 500. I’m having a little get-together at my place for the event.

Here are a few fun facts:

• The fuel mileage of an IRL IndyCar Series car is less than 2 miles per gallon. A car burns approximately 1.3 gallons of fuel per lap at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
• They use 113 octaine 100% ethanol fuel (as of 2007) and last check ran about $9/gallon
• The 3.0 liter V8 engines of IRL IndyCar Series cars produce more than 670 horsepower.
• An IRL IndyCar Series car accelerates from 0 to 100 mph in less then three seconds.
• The draft created by an IRL IndyCar Series car extends 25 feet behind the car.
• While traveling approximately 230 mph, IRL IndyCar Series cars travel slightly more than the length of a football field in about one second.
• IRL IndyCar Series drivers endure G-forces equal to nearly four times the weight of gravity while going through turns, which is approximately the same amount of force the space shuttle leaves the launching pad at Cape Canaveral with.
• Each of the eight pistons in an IRL IndyCar Series engine travels nearly one mile up and down in the cylinder every minute.

I was just back in Indiana doing a presentation on some work I am doing in my current job to my old Computer Science professors at Purdue.  It was a great trip, and a wonderful chance to catch up with my those that taught me.  It was also great to get a trip home to visit my family on the company dime.  I got to check out the new CS building – almost twice the size of the old one – and still they said it wasn’t quite big enough.  Even in the midst of nationally declining numbers of those entering computer science.

At any rate, when I went in for my presentation, the price of gas was $3.72.  When I left the presentation, every station in town read $3.95/gal.  There was still one station with the old price in town where I grew up and a line had formed around the block.  Remind anyone of the 70’s?  My guess is because it’s prep for the labor day weekend…

Got me to thinking, at the rate of growth that the price of gas has gone up in the last year, I should have just invested in the futures market for gas.  Or heck, just buy a huge tank and fill it up, wait 1 year and sell it at 50% more.  It’s seen 100’s of percent growth in just 5 years – way better than most investments…

So, can you actually do that?

Looks like the crank and pan seal fixed the oil leak smells – drove all weekend without a whiff. The great weather also meant I got to drive around with the windows open and air out all the armorall smell.  It’s nice getting used to driving a car that actually responds nicely to acceleration, turning, etc. Driving the V6 just about gave me whiplash at first as I learned to be more gentle with the gas in traffic.  Surprisingly, if I’m not a lead foot – I get just about 1mpg less with this v6 car than my 4-cyl Nissan.   Enough car stuff.

Several of us had originally planned to climb Mt St Helens on Sunday and snowboard down, but the non-cleared forest roads (and unusually high snowpack for this time of year) would have more than doubled the round trip. It was looking like a 5 mile hike in across snow just to get to the trail head, before a 4-5 hour climb. Would would have had to hike in and snow camp overnight or do it all in one shot (not recommended) So, we postponed it and went snowboarding this Sunday – it was an absolutely gorgeous day. Sunny, warm, and you could see Jefferson and just make out all 3 sisters down near Bend. We got up and conditions were great at 9am, but by 11:30, the snow had gotten so slushy/sticky that it was difficult to even get down the runs. We packed it in, sat out on the patio in the sun and had a burger and fries. Wonderful day overall – and whats this? I think I even got a little sun through the sp45 I wore…

So, I got the new car and so far it’s been great. The only issue that was present before I bought it was the inspector found a minor oil leak with the front crank seal. I was assured it would be fixed and I believe they did do the work. However, when I got the car one could quite distinctly smell burning oil after the engine got warm – and in one case – I popped the hood and could even see the oil smoke from the left side of the engine. Unacceptable.

So I took it to a local Mazda dealer who said the same front crank seal was leaking (and the oil pan gasket was leaking too). I had them fix it, and SO FAR it appears to have solved the problem. When I got it back I could still catching a bit of smell if I push it hard, stopped, and crank the fan full (worst case scenario) – but only 3 hours after the fix – I’m hoping it was only residual oil in the compartment (which they mentioned). This morning I drove all the way in to work without the slightest smell. I hope it’s really fixed and not a systemic/more serious problem. Only a bit more time will tell for sure. I must say, however, I’ve never been so happy I got the bumper-to-bumper warranty on a used car. The fix supposedly cost $535, but cost me nothing and I got a loaner while it was being done. Let’s hope I don’t have to do it again.

• Extended warranty just paid for itself in one trip to the dealer – and I still have 2 years of it left…
• They put so much armor-all on the leather seats I felt like I was on a slip-n-slide while driving. I always wear my seatbelt – but I would have had to just to stay in the seat during braking. After about a week, I have now worn enough of it off that I can sit in the seat without it being an adventure.
• The ‘new car’ smelling cleaner stuff they used is not to my liking. Car is immaculate (it works) but the smell is just too cleaner-y/pine-sol-y/waxy. I’m trying to air out the car and it’s working, but it’s been so rainy it’s hard to drive with the windows down. Should be normal in a week or so.
• Mazda dealers upgraded the software in the transmission due to a recall, but it makes the shifting different. It makes the upshifts buttery smooth – but in really rare cases (read 2-3 times now) it tends to downshift while slowing a millisecond faster than I would normally think. It’s totally fine, but shows you what software will do.
• I LOVE the auxMod aux-line in addition I added. That and it works with the next item:
• Love the on-steering wheel controls for stereo and cruise. I can change volume am/fm/aux, and all cruise settings.
• Not digging the after-market tinted windows. I might have it taken off as they are just those plastic sheet style types.  They look sharp – but I feel like a drug dealer.  Anyone pulled them off before? Does it leave goo/mess on the windows?

I caught one of the 3 sold out shows this weekend. Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Adaptation

I’ve seen other kids that attempt to remake movies – but this went above and beyond. It was almost shot for shot the same movie sans the fight scene with the nazi at the plane and a few other modifications. But they actually went to a navy yard and filmed the scenes on a U-boat, the fighting/fire scenes in the Mariann’s bar in Afghanistan too. They even had the chase scene where Indy falls down the front of the military truck hauling the ark, slides underneath the truck and then pulls himself back up after being dragged behind it. They did the front crawl down, and then the dragging/pulling himself back up scene. Couldn’t believe how dangerous that was and they did it as kids.

They started at 12 years old, and finished about the time they were 17 – so you can actually see them age as the movie goes on. The guys who made it were there talking afterwards and had some fun stories to tell. Needless to say, during the filming, there were several trips to the hospital involved. Awesome stuff.

Not available on DVD unfortunately due to copyright, but keep your eye out to see if they do a showing in your town.