I've decided that in light of doing photoentries here on /dev/null, I'll skip doing full writeups in the gallery. You may remember the writeups like this page from EU2004—since they're really mini journal posts on their own, I'll just post them here and skip the hassle....
There are a number of things I'm planning on doing post-trip this time to put a sort of picture-and-blog-tastic wrapper on things. Specifically:Backfill all my blog entries. The current plan is to do these at a rate of one-a-day or quicker, so this should be done pretty swiftly. Cross your...
I'm proud to report that my expedition to Europe has revealed that the mullet is, in fact, back. Details pending....
This post was written after the trip ended. I'm very, very surprised that I didn't fill my pants when I spotted this E60 5 series in Granada. Doubly so when I realized it was an M5. This car comes with a 7-speed transmission and a V10 making 507hp. I'll spare...
This post was written during the trip. Mission accomplished. Layla and I found a hole-in-the-wall luthier in Granada and I'm now the very proud owner of a handmade Spanish guitar. Edit: Here's the shop. Pardon the fuzz....
This post was written during the trip. Sundays, as I had mentioned earlier, simply do not exist in Spain. That is all....
This post was written during the trip. Despite their charm, European cities really do piss me off sometimes. After arriving in Granada, it took us nearly two full hours to go a net total of about 5km (which is just under 25 furlongs, if my calculations are correct). In the...
This post was written during the trip. The Renault Twingo Open Roof is a remarkably odd vehicle even by European standards. Sure, it has the thin sheetmetal stampings and toyish looks that we have all come to expect from the continent responsible for the Isetta and the Fiat 500, but...
This post was written after the trip ended. Thanks to thousands of years of development, we can consider our human intuitive view of the physical universe to be largely accurate. Things move through the air with predictable trajectories, look about the right color whether the lights are turned on or...
This post was written during the trip. Some of you may remember the last Eurotrip I went on. Amongst many other (nameless) reasons, the single biggest source of stress during those two fun-filled weeks was a lack of planning. I remember making a sort of unspoken promise to plan fully...
This post was written after the trip ended.During the trip, Layla and I ran into a number of exceedingly goofy mopeds. Now, scooters tend to be goofy for the sheer fact that, well, they're scooters—but these were extra nutty. Exhibit A: Man crapping keg This fine gentlemen was spotted hauling...
This post was written after the trip ended. Despite evidence to the contrary, I'm really not obsessed with elevators. But, the ones in Europe are all bizarre. They're all quintissentially European which means that besides being tiny as all hell, they've got nutty control panels. Take, for example, this phone-style...
This post was written during the trip. Much like comedians in Germany (I'm really picking on the Germans this week, I know) and toilet paper in France, there are absolutely no clocks in Spain. From this stem two observations:All of my posts aren't accurately timed, although that's not at all...
This post was written during the trip. "B'dang," I told Layla, "we have a bidet!" ...I laughed....
This post was written after the trip ended. The first three days of our trip to Spain was spent in an idyllic little village called Nerja. Nerja sits on the southern Mediterranean coast approximately 50km east of Málaga, the largish city we flew into. In the words of Layla's mom,...
This post was written during the trip. This just in: Layla and I have arrived in Nerja and we have not yet killed each other. Bonus!...
This post was written after the trip ended. This is primarily a picture post. Comments are below the shots. Here comes the pain. This first picture features a vending machine under a "Yoghourt" sign. Now, I'm not even going to go through the effort of actually looking up yogurt to...
This post was written during the trip. The problem with air travel (besides, of course, the bastard kid sitting behind you) is that at around 600mph (that's about 4 million kPa/Deutschmark for all you damned Canadians with your silly metric system and rap music and rock-em sock-em robots) what was...
This post was written after the trip ended. This is the A340 on which Layla and I flew to Spain. I'm posting about it because, as you can see in the photo, it's something of a crapheap. Planes are things which, when shiny and well-serviced, can be safely ignored. When...
This post was written during the trip. "Caution: moving walking area ends. Please watch your step. Thank you!" is something I've heard at least a hundred times so far—and I'm not exaggerating that number at all. The fine administrators of the Seatac airport have deemed it necessary to install sensors...
Well, I'm really goddamned tired after a day of numbing work and an evening of running around Bellevue finishing up shopping and whatnot. So for the next week, you all get to see this post as the most recent. Bahahahahahaha!...
On Wednesday morning Layla and I will be on our way to fantastic Spainland. Olé. So, there won't be many updates between now and then. Clearly, there will be one tomorrow—and if I'm felling especially randy (which I probably won't), then there will be a post early on Wednesday morning....
I've mentioned previously that I think that Alfa Romeos are among the world's best-penned automobiles. They're nearly universally handsome cars and will doubtlessly age very very well. Older Alfas look better than most modern cars, and the newer ones are just plain fantastic. One example that I had pointed to...
IKEA, UKEA, we all KEA, for IKEA. Indeed. I took my first trip to Ikea today. I consider this a landmark moment in my ongoing suburban homogenization. In any event, the damned Ikea store is ... well, more than a store. The parking lot, for example, is actually indoors—this is...
A few days ago Layla and I watched Barry Lyndon. The title of this post comes from the fact that the title character of the film starts off life as Mr. Redmond Barry. But whatever. Here's how the film is: really really long. It seems that Layla and I have...
Ahem. Info after the jump....
Well, it arrived today. After loads of conversations about where the heckus the drive is ("did you send it?" "I didn't get the money yet" "I sent the money, did you get the money?" "I don't seem to have a record of the money" "Can I talk to someone else?"...
I admit it. I have a personal motive for going to Spain. I've actually had this motive for a while now. My Yamaha classical was broken in transit and ever since I've arrived here I've been dying to bust out a few tunes. I got some pointers to a fantastic...
This is, in all honesty, the fourth time I've tried to write this article. Saved on my hard drive are two other false starts—the third resides at the bottom of the Recycle Bin somewhere—and none of the three are all that unsubstantial. I've tried four times to write an article...
Well, I've finally gotten the phone situation cleared up. I hope. The short short version is that T-Mobile1 sent me a replacement phone in the mail, and that I'm supposed to transfer everything (i.e., SIM card, battery, etc.) from the old phone to the new one, and then send the...
A long time ago I posted about the kinds of retardation that automotive nuts can muster up when presented with the latest-and-greatest shitboxes from our favorite marques. One such story (as noted in the above post) involves the Fiat X1/99, which is a rebirth of the trusty old Fiat X1/9....
In just over a week, Layla and I are going to Spain. Awesome. This is Andalu[cs]ia, where we're going. Spain is nutty in that they spell everything wrong. You know, with cs where there should be ss and ss where there should be cs. In any event. I'm very very...
Layla and I watched Amadeus yesterday. It's a ridiculously long movie. I can't stress that enough. It's really really long. Like, 3 hours long. You had better like sitting on your butt or pressing the pause button often, because if you want to watch this entire movie, you're going to...
I'm still working on my mondo post about the BMW 8. So far, I've done the design analyses (much like the pictures in the Alpha Alfa article) but haven't finished wrapping them in text yet. I'm thinking of getting them wrapped up tomorrow evening or the night after. In other...
I had at least six boxes full of books. Now I have three boxes full of books (to go to storage), a box of books (to go to the office), and a bookshelf full of the rest of it all. Behold. In other news, I have a tip for you...
I ran across this on the Wikipedia page for the Cessna 172. Hootie hoo!...
Oops. Forgot one. Ooh. That's creepy....
Too few kitty pictures recently. Time to fix that. Plus, some pictures of Layla's fish. And yes, it's got a name that's at least as geeky as my cats'. Yes, that last photo is a picture of Aleph drinking out of the fish bowl. Mmm, this tastes like fish poops....
In an IM I missed last night (sorry!), I was asked what manner of camera I'm using these days. Well, it's the Optio. Still. I just passed the 6800 picture mark and there are some serious issues with it:The zoom drive is getting really worn out. I figure I've probably...
I admit: I've been trolling eBay for cheap autocross cars again. The big reason I'm doing this is that I really don't want to race the 3. I'm probably going to, but it would be nice to have something that I really can take the interior out of. For good....
I've gotten way behind fixing the fog lamps on the 3. Way behind. Behind on this and other issues. The windshield is still cracked, for example. And there's still a ding in the front end. And the front suspension squeals from time to time. So I'm doing something about it....
Last weekend Layla and I went to the falls in Snohomish Snoqualmie1. Hot. "Snoqualmie Falls" is really just one big waterfall, but it has a bunch of old power generation hardware around it. It seems that the Falls have become some popular recently that the town has put a ton...
I'm considering writing a long and ranty post, à la E36, Kankoku no kuruma, or Alpha Alfa. Especially Alpha Alfa. ...the thing is that I don't really have any good ideas for a topic at the moment. I've got this fantastic urge to write but I'm presently lacking the inspiration...
Layla and I bought some beer earlier. Behold. That's right. Dead Guy Ale. I guess this is only really directed at Mouser: but it matches your Deadguy Truck. Awesome. Sortof. Oh, and this is brewed by the same people as The Best Beer Of All Time....
The title of this post is a line from the Logo programming language. Unfortunately, it seems that Logo doesn't support multiple commands on a single line. Maybe Logo 97 or Visual Logo does. Whatever. The real reason behind this is that I'm going to discuss automotive logos and emblems. I...
Some of you (OK, probably none of you) remember the fact that my cats steal sponges and deposit them all over my damned apartment. Dammit. This hasn't really ceased to be a problem. I had, at one point, purchased a sponge holder1 which I hung near the kitchen sink. The...
The intention today was to clean up the apartment a bit, put the new foglamps in the car, and spend the rest of the time lounging. I also really wanted to put together a new ranty car post of some sort. Instead, it turned into cleaning up the apartment a...
The things that spammers do to elude antispam filters amuse me greatly. Today, I got some spam in my NMT account that had the following text appended, ostensibly to avoid content-based filters. Nerds are caught in network marketing scandals with alcoholics. I overheard Bush talking to the gerbils, and he...
I don't really have the time at the moment to actually go into all of the detail of my Sunday, but here's a snippet. Oh yeah. Hot. That's an M3, for those of you without, you know, eye balls....
