When you think of Japanese sports cars, you may think of the Supra, the NSX, or the 3000GT. They're all high-powered cars of remarkable power and (generally) amazing build quality. They're luxurious, they go quickly, and they'll last longer than any domestic car put against them. And they all owe...
Layla and I spent a lot of time in Kirkland this weekend. Odds are good that in the future, we'll be spending even more there. While we were there, we spotted a few special cars. Of course, the usual handful of M3s (probably ... five or six, at least), one...
With some luck, our apartment search is largely over. We left an application and a deposit for a 2-bedroom, 2.5-bath unit (with a ... garage!) up in Kirkland. The place itself is, in my opinion, a real find—it's a really cool unit tucked in the back of a community up...
Layla and I spent all day looking for apartments...and I think we found one. It's up in Kirkland (hence the, err, image) but it's almost exactly what we were looking for—and it's got a garage. H o t. I'm still a bit tired from my night, so I'm going to...
Today was an exceedingly long one—I think I spent nearly 14 hours at work in total. This sort of thing comes up once every three or four months or so and it's nice to be able to put the time in when it's needed. At the same time, this is...
This is a total copout post because I've been working entirely too much lately and, as it turns out, a friend from NMT was in town. Things have been busy and I'm absolutely beat. But nevertheless, here's some hot eBay action. Behold....
I bought an MP3 player about six weeks ago. I've taken it to the gym nearly every morning since then (with the exception of the last two weeks when I was, ahem, sick) and in that time, I've formed the following conclusions:The buttons really are too small. I've got the...
Earlier, I promised to post pictures of the Boeing assembly facility in Everett. Let's get to it. Big doors on the Boeing assembly plant. You can see here three of the bigass doors on the side of the assembly plant. I think these three are for the 747, although I'm...
It turns out that there was something of a miscommunication and instead of the Chrysler J and K platforms, I was asked to talk about the Chrysler 300J and 300K. Now, the 300J and 300K are somewhat more interesting than the J and K, although it happens that most toothpastes...
Layla and I found these at Whole Foods yesterday. Willy K, this is for you....
In honor of passing 768 posts a while ago, here's a recap of posts whose index is a power of 2 or a multiple of 128. This post is largely copied from Power of 2 roll call (100). The entire static version of this journal is now 206MB. 1100000000 (768):...
My post on the Galant VR-4 is number 800 posted to the site, which is notable only because it's going to take me until the end of the year to reach 1000 posts. I've done power of 2 rolls calls before any time I've hit a major power-of-2 milestone, but...
What do you get when you take a silly Japanese sedan and place a fire-breathing turbocharged all-wheel-drive powertrain in it? Well, you get the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution or the Subaru WRX STi—unless you'd like this all to happen sometime around 1991, in which case you get the Mitsubishi Galant VR-4....
For Valentine's Day Layla got tickets for the factory tour over at the Boeing plant in Everett. It turns out that Everett—much like a number of other cities in Washington which aren't Seattle—happens to look an awful lot like Roswell, New Mexico. Eerie. Back to the point: the Boeing plant...
The Cizeta-Moroder V16T is, in one word, crazy. It looks like a crazy Lamborghini Diablo, it's got crazy popup headlights, it's got a crazy 16-cylinder engine, and it has a crazy Italian name. In fact, it's so crazy that only 9 were ever finished—and the Sultan of Brunei was so...
Lotus has been making cars since the late 1950s and they're all largely indistinguishable from each other: for example, almost all of the cars are extremely light (like this Elite), look like frogs (like this Europa), and all have names that start with E (like this Elan). I'm not so...
Since I've had a long day and am tired (and am filled with filet mignon—another story), I'll keep this short. For Valentine's Day Layla got us tickets to go on the Future of Flight tour at the Boeing factory near town here. Hot. I'm not quite sure what to expect...
I saw this yesterday when reading news or something. It's an ad for a job posting company (like monster.com, only not) that specializes in tech jobs. This has got to be some of the worst computing style I've seen in a long time. Robustness aside, just look at the casing!...
I realize that although I've been keeping the Collectible autos article velocity fairly high, it's easy for a request to get mired at the bottom of the queue. So, I'm changing the way I select topics. This should lower the turnaround for requests, and keep me more flexible in selecting...
Around the end of the 1960s, the CEO of Lancia said to his design division, "my 12-year-old son drew this picture of a car that looks like a spaceship. Build it." I don't think that's actually how it went down—Lancia was bought by Fiat in 1969, so it was probably...
What you're looking at is a US Army scrapbook at the local crafts store, with a huge sticker reading, "Made in China." Fantastic!...
When it comes to designing cars, Toyota follows a very predictable pattern: first, they identify a market where they want to be. Then, they enter the market with a terribly inadequate vehicle, and are ridiculed for it. Lastly, they evolve the design year after year until they finally figure the...
For my journal's 1st birthday, the milkmandan.org server decided it would eat a hard drive. Sometime around 10pm (right around the time I was putting the finishing touches on the Collectible autos: the Ferrari 275 article) the system drive on my file server started screeching. This was a problem, as...
Selecting the most beautiful car ever made is a bit like choosing which outfit you like best on your girlfriend. There's a long formal dress, the Maserati 3500 GT; a well-fitted suit, the Alfa Romeo Brera; a pair of daisy duke shorts and a halter top, the Plymouth Barracuda; heck,...
I've done a recap of the collectibles series once before, but I've got a few more articles under my belt and figured now would be a good time to index them again.De Lorean DMC-12 Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40 Triumph GT6+ Chevrolet Chevelle SS Toyota Corolla AE86 Austin-Healey 3000 1960s Mustang...
Jarrod asked for an article about the collectability of cars built on the Chrysler J and K platforms. For the rest of this article, you all will have to bear with me. The J and K platforms were launched in 1980 and 1981 respectively, and both underpinned such fine front-wheel-drive...
It's been an entire year since I launched /dev/null. I originally put it together at Mouser's suggestion as a way for me to relay all the nuttiness that occured when turned from a slacker student into a slacker professional. Since then, things have gone from being fairly picture free to...
After not really doing much with the Mercedes for around a month or so (I've been busy), I asked around a bit and the simplest response I found was: check your float valves. They may be set incorrectly. It had never occured to me to actually check the position of...
I read an article recently about Zillow.com, a startup founded by an ex-Microsoft executive. The basic idea is that their online presence gives you access to home values for properties both on and off the market and doesn't require any sort of fee or even login information. It's really damned...
I've talked (at length, ahem) about automotive forums before. In almost all cases, the forums that I've encountered contains largely misinformed discussion by disinteresting people. Whatever truth one does find is generally dispensed by the few knowledgable individuals who happen to hang around. My experience has been that anyone who...
I'm sure most of you have seen a DVD of TV shows—something like Family Guy or Seinfeld or, as happens to be in our household, Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Because TV shows are often divided into discrete episodes, most of these DVDs offer a "play all" feature to plop down...
So, yesterday I came down with the flu (or something), so today I spent on my ass trying to feel better and, you know, not infect everyone at my office. And ... yeah. I only watched one MST3K today (number 0212: Godzilla vs. Megalon) and it wasn't the best ever...despite...
I don't like football. The Super Bowl is the only time that I've ever watched a significant chunk of a game, and I can't remember the last time that I actually watched the entire thing. Spectator sports just don't do it for me. But that's not to say that anything...
In the last ten days or so, I've said the following things:Wow, the power really never goes out here. I remember having nearly monthly outages in Socorro, but it seems like the grid out here is super stable! The best part about Seattle isn't the rain really, it's the total...
At the grocery store earlier today, I spotted a doppelganger of my Eagle Talon—down to the leather seats and sunroof. The only two things I'm not certain about on this other car is a) whether it's a 1990 or a 1991, and b) whether it had the ABS or the...
The Subaru XT. The 1st generation Toyota MR2. The Triumph TR7. The Pontiac Fiero. The Fiat X1/9. They're all little cars shaped like little door stops. I'm focusing on the last of these today: the Fiat X1/9. Now, Fiat has a reputation for making small and durable cars: the 500...
It seems that due to either a power outage or feline hijinx (infinitely more likely), the milkmandan.org server went down last night sometime after midnight. But now it's back up. This has highlighted a shortcoming in my network: if the server isn't yet up, I can't use the workstation for...
There are many words to describe the state of the American automotive industry at the moment—most of them are too impolite for me print here. It's clear, however, that Detroit in 12 months is going to be a very different place than Detroit today. One of these big changes involves...
So, my tax documents arrived from Microsoft today. Since I've already gotten all of my investment tax information, I'm going to start crunching those numbers pronto. Last year, I filed with H&R Block's online service, which was free because I didn't make squat as a student. This year, I may...
In the same vein as nearly every other technology purchase I consider, I'm going to talk a bit today about some cool new piece of hardware, elicit comments and suggestions, and then sit on the idea for a while. The subject, in this case, is the Fujitsu P1500D convertible tablet....
