We usually tend to keep cars for a long time, where long means more than 10 years bearing unforeseen circumstances. Traditionally, we have always gone the Japanese route, so when we picked up the VW Passat as a one year old low mileage used car, it was a bit of an unknown.

The Acquisition

We were looking for a roomy sedan to accommodate our expanding family. We test drove the usual suspect in that segment from Toyota, Honda, Kia, and Chevrolet. Most fell short in one of the following aspects: unappealing exterior design, insufficient leg room, questionable finish or materials, or a convoluted dashboard. The VW was not our prime contender until we took it for a test drive at a local dealership. It offered more rear leg room than any of its competitors. We much preferred the classically styled interior with analog gauges over other models which featured rather non refined digital displays. The 2.5L 5 cylinder engine was not the most powerful, nor the most responsive, but it was good enough for daily driving. Once we found the right low mileage model at the right price, it took but a few hours to close the deal and drive off the lot.

The Good

Room and comfort have been the biggest winner over the last 10 years. The spacious rear seats made it easy to put in car seats and not suffer unwanted back massages from kicking feet. The vinyl seat material, or leatherette as VW likes to refer to it, has held up remarkably well. It has not faded at all even in the harsh Texas heat. It is easy to vacuum and wipe down, something that anyone with kids will appreciate instantly. And, there are almost no scratches visible after a decade of use - pretty remarkable for a daily driver. Trunk space is fantastic and gives much larger SUVs a run for their money. Distances in Texas are vast, but the Passat rides smoothly and fairly quietly on highways and makes even longer road-trips enjoyable.  

Reliability has been better than we expected from a German car. We had zero incidents which required roadside assistance or towing. Once, at about the 60k miles, the Passat did enter "limp mode" as indicated by the Electronic Power Control (EPC) indicator light, which reduced the engine power but allowed us to get home safely. A bit of Internet research pointed in the direction of the throttle body^[1], which was easily replaced with an after market part and the Passat has be running smoothly ever since. There are various videos on how to either replace or clean the throttle body. The process is straight forward and takes about an hour even when done carefully. It takes longer to remove and replace the engine cover and air intake components, than to replace the defective part.

Oil changes are only required once every year or every 12k miles, which is less frequent than several other cars in our household. VW recommends spark-plug replacement every 40k miles or every 4 years which seems excessive in my experience.  We went about 80k miles with no problems or misfires before swapping them out. We did have to replace the lower control arm brushings shortly after crossing 100k miles, and will need to look at the front CV boots in the near future as they are beginning to leak.

The design with its fairly straight lines has aged graciously. The body shape of the car still looks nice next to newer Passat models and other contemporary sedans, even ten years later.

The Mediocre

Electronics on our Passat have been a little suspect. The tail light, which thankfully are easy to change through a latch in the trunk, had to be replaced more frequently than expected, especially on the driver side. The rear-door lock / latch on the driver side is beginning to malfunction sporadically. I'm not sure if this is an electrical or mechanical issue yet, but as all other door still function properly it has not been a big deal. The XM Radio has a strange habit of "updating programing" more often than any other car we own, which is slightly annoying for the first minute of the drive as one is left in silence while waiting for the update to complete.

The Bluetooth connectivity for phone calls works just fine, however, we could never get Bluetooth audio for applications to play properly through the built in entertainment system. The system always tries to fade audio in or out, which may be fine for longer audio clips or songs, but for short snippets such as turn by turn directions it is an absolute non-starter. While on the topic of Bluetooth, here is a timesaver tip before you drive yourself crazy: To unpair an old phone you have to pair a new phone first. That makes absolutely no sense, but for some reason it is implemented this way.  

More related to service, than the car itself, but on one occasion the VW dealership managed to not properly secure the oil drain plug after an oil change, and we ended up with an oil stain in our garage the next morning. It was addressed promptly by the dealership, but it was still mildly annoying for such a routine service. While on the topic of fluids, once during the 10 year period the power-steering began making strange grinding sounds. It turned out that the power-steering fluid was simply running low, which for this car is either the Pentosin CHF-11S or CHF-202^[2]. Once again, the VW service department should have caught this as this happened shortly after the yearly service when they are supposed to top-off the fluids.

The Bad

If there is a design flaw for this car, then it has to be the front brakes, and in particular the front rotors. The Passat weights in at around 3200 LBS, and with a front mounted engine has a weight distribution of roughly 60% towards the front. It is not that the front brake pads or rotors don't work - they do work well enough for a family sedan. It is that the front rotors are paper thin, and with this size of car and weight distribution, the front rotors get replaced every single time the brake pads need replacement. Consequently, a simple job that most people could do in their garage over a weekend, becomes a larger and more expensive job which most will get done at the dealership.

The Passat seems to be rather heavy on brake pads, or maybe the materials VW utilized are on the softer side, but I've only had to replace brake pads more often on cars I've tracked. To add insult to injury, the Passat breaks also squeak even when not worn, especially at low speeds. There are long threads on VW forums with complaints about squeaky breaks and various suggestions how to make the problem better - none that I have tried have helped this issue much. Then again, we don't pull up to fancy restaurants or valet park the Passat very often, so not much effort has gone into fixing this.

While on the subject of brakes let's mention tires. When we picked up the Passat it came with Hankook Tires which worked pretty well. At some point we decided to only get two new tires, because of an unrepairable flat. The installer insisted on putting the new tires onto the rear axle, which is consistent with industry practices. Even though the front tires still had plenty of tread left, this setup made the Passat completely undrivable in wet weather conditions. The car would constantly lock up the front wheels and go into understeer, making it dangerous to drive in the wet. After a few of these rather unpleasant experiences, we ended up moving the newer tires to the front, and wet weather performance was restored in our case. We've since moved on from the Hankook tires to the the Bridgestone Potenza RE980AS+ tires, which offer even better handling and all season performance at a reasonable price.

Overall

Would we buy the Passat again? Absolutely! It has been our workhorse for the last decade. It easily handles our kids who manage to destroy just about anything they can get their hands on. The few quirks it has have not been deal breakers and we have become accustomed to them. While some more issues are beginning to creep up after a decade of use, the Passat still drives well and we have no desire to trade it in for anything newer at this point. Meanwhile the rest of our car inventory is as follows: An 08 Nissan Xterra which is our hauling and yard work vehicle. A 23 Jeep Grand Cherokee L has been recently added to our stable as a long distance cruiser or for when extra family is in town. We'll check in on that one in a few years and see how it holds up reliability wise. Unfortunately, the sporty 03 Nissan 350z Track is no longer around, as a drunk driver totaled it by slamming into it when it was parked on the side of a street a while ago.

The other week I spent a few hours on the plane travelling between Austin and Atlanta and per usual this tends to be my favorite place to knock out a book or two. I was flipping through the Kindle catalog and Brittany Hennessy's cover for Influencer: Building Your Personal Brand in the Age of Social Media caught my attention.^[1] With an easy flow and a page count just topping 200, it was a perfect quick read for the round-trip.

But before we get into any of the content, and so that you take any of what you may read below with a grain of salt, a little clarification: I know absolutely zip about the current or past state of the Influencer economy. To quantify, Brittany mentions at least 100 influencers in her book, of which I knew exactly one, namely Joy Cho, because on occasion I get dragged to Target by my wife. I also have absolutely no plans of ever becoming an influencer, thus reading this book was a simple exercise in curiosity.

If you have been around the web since the 90s, you won't find much that may surprise you in either the introduction or the initial chapter. Basic definitions of the various mediums from blogging to vlogging, a bit of info about the importance of naming and branding, some recommendations on domain registrars, hosting providers, and a content management system for your blog - yup you guessed it, WordPress. To close out the chapter there are a few more recommendation on how to write a bio, what the split should be between organic content and sponsored content, and what the general tone should be of your posts - all handy things to get someone new started.

A quick note on the recommendation of WordPress by the author. I have nothing against WordPress and have used it successfully for many small and large projects over the years, but I would probably disagree with the author here on two counts. First, if you are going down the influencer path and are serious about it, consider a managed WordPress solution rather than setting it up yourself as suggested in the book. Your job will be creating interesting content rather than being concerned about uptime and security. Second, unlike the recommendation in the book which encourages customization, I suggest you install as few plugins as you can get away with to minimize your attack surface. On a related note, you may want to explore other hosted solutions such as Ghost, Medium, and Substack.  All three offer well designed themes out of the box and features that are useful for audience management.

Things get interesting is Chapter 2 where the various stages of influencer status are defined from Stage 0 to Stage 5. Stage 0 is the initial stage where one has zero up to 2500 followers, while Stage 5 is when an influencer has an established community of 50,000 to 100,000 followers and is ready to approach brands for campaigns. As common sense suggests, buying followers as a short-cut is never a good idea and is easily noticeable. Regarding the stages, I do wonder if the numbers have shifted since the book's publication in 2018. Instagram annual users are up ~1.9x since 2018, Facebook's are up ~1.3x, YouTube are up ~1.4x, and finally TikTok are up a whopping 6.8x. Based on this I would think that the number of followers may need to be scaled by ~1.5x or so for each stage, respectively.^[2]

The subsequent part of the book is focused on packaging yourself. Engagement rate of your followers is the next most important metric for brands after they have established you follower count. Per Brittany, the minimum rate to shoot for here should be in the 1.5% range, but of course the higher the better. Any additional detailed demographics you may have about your followers are helpful, so collect as much as you can is the suggestion - This advice may have been good in 2018, but I'm not sure it passes muster in 2022. Users have become a lot more sensitive privacy wise, and any sort of cookies and tracking are a lot more frowned upon, if not blocked outright. Any of the above is a mute point if your production quality is sub-par as brands will not want to engage with you regardless of your metrics, so spend some time reading this section and hiring the right people to make your content shine.

To close out this section, there are a few more tips regarding your own personal web-site, about page, partnerships page and a several sample email templates you can utilize to reach out to people. Generally all fairly straight forwards and easy to follow advice. I do however, disagree with Brittany about posting your email address directly on your site over using a form. Maybe this makes it easy for people to send you nicely formatted emails, but it also makes it extremely easy for bots to spam your inbox into oblivion - you may never even see that nice email from Brittany because of that!  

The next part of the book focuses on monetizing your influence once you get to that point. It has guidelines about ratios of organic vs. sponsored content, and a few examples from successful influences who have tweaked these ratios to fit their personal styles. It has a succinct table about what you may potentially charge brands based on your follower count, and how that fee is derived from distribution fees and a talent fees, each of which is then explained in more detailed. An entire chapter is dedicated to explaining the most common terms that you are likely to encounter in a contract. And, most important of all, Brittany encourages you to read every single line in the contract even if you have a lawyer. It will be slow the first few times around, but will get faster with time and you will feel good about the extra due diligence.

Speaking about contracts, I'm a bit surprised that Brittany does not cover copyright and licensing in this section in more depth. Usage is mentioned and some examples are given, but I feel that for new influences this surely is a minefield they may not expect. I don't know how these contracts are structured, but I would think that even for sponsored content, creators and influencers should be very careful about giving out any rights, especially in perpetuity. Additionally, it should be crystal clear who owns the content, images, etc. after it is delivered and who is licensing what and for how long, so that there are no unwelcome surprises down the line.  

Once all of the paper work is in order, you have legions of followers, and brands love working with you, it is time to expand your team to take your brand to the next level. The roles you may need to fill are an assistant, a manager, a publicist, an attorney, and an agent. Personally, I think an attorney is probably the first person one would need build a good relationship with, but most of this chapter is instead dedicated to outlining how bad agents can ruin your progress and on tips for finding one that fits your niche. The final chapter focuses on a bigger goals such as collaborations, long-term partnerships, and brand ambassadorships. The conclusion is a set of feel good stories followed by a quick pep talk.

Overall, the book is a reasonable read, with some stronger chapters that were more of interest to me because the provided numbers gave a nice reference frame for the industry. A few weaker ones felt more like a pep talk than useful information. The "don't be that person" sections are predictable and of little value. If you want to consume this book even quicker you may want to skip all of them. On the other hand, some of the Influencer Icon outlines were interesting, as they diverged from the recommendations in the book, and yet were still successful. As mentioned at the beginning, the book is well written so getting through it was a breeze which is a definitely plus.

One final thing that I'm somewhat puzzled by after reading the book is as to why Brittany does not really follow her own advice when it comes to user and domain handles? She utilizes a different handle for just about every single one of her social media pages - it would be interesting to know why. After all with her follower count she is by all means an influencer. ^[3]

My parents will be heading to Maui, Hawaii for the first time in a few weeks and asked for a few spots worth visiting. My wife and I have been to Maui twice before and love it. I could swear I've written a post about our travels there, but digging through my old blog archive I simply couldn't find it. So time do dust off some old pictures, check if those places still exists, and put a list together. The guide is based out of Kihei which is our favorite place to stay in Maui as it is centrally located.

Beaches:

• Charley Young Beach: One of our favorite beaches in Kihei. Small and less crowded than most. We've stayed at many condos across the street from which access is very convenient especially when you have impatient kids. If offers great sunset views, and various restaurants and bars are just a leisurely stroll away.
• Makena Beach: This one requires a 15 minute drive south and you should bring a cooler and an umbrella. You can either park along the street and walk down to the beach or pay the state park fee to park closer. There is not much there other than a few food trucks and sheer natural beauty - the beach is probably one of the nicest ones on Maui. It is expansive and has wonderful sand. The waves tend to be on the larger side though, so this is not the best beach for little ones.  
• Ka'anapali Beach: This beach requires a 45 minutes drive towards the north western part of the island. The drive itself is very pleasant, flat lands yield to majestic mountains to the north while the ocean greats you on the west.  This trip can be easily combined with a visit to the town of Lahaina which is worth a stop as well. The beach experience here is the exact opposite of Makena Beach. While a very nice beach, it is lined by developments, luxury hotels, restaurants, and shopping. In other words, go here for an experience that is a bit more South Beach, Miami than for pure natural beauty. An alternate beach nearby is the Lahaina's Baby Beach, which has some of the calmest waters around and is far less crowded, and thus perfect for kids as well.

Attractions:

• Haleakalā Volcano and Park: Visiting the volcano is probably one of our favorite things to do on the island. It is not something be rushed, as there are just way too many wonderful sights to be seen before one reaches the final elevation of just over 10,000 feet. The drive is not scary by any means, but there are quite a few twist and turns, and it take a bit of time to get to the summit. Once there, be prepared for a semi-spiritual experience for the landscape looks absolutely otherworldly. When I'm there I like to close my eyes an image that one day when our species reaches new planets, just maybe it will look something like this. Be sure to bring a jacket or long sleeve shirt - at this elevation the temperatures are considerable cooler than at sea level, and there is too much to explore to worry about being cold.
• Paia and Ho'okipa Beach Park: Paia is a fantastic little town to grab some coffee, a breakfast, visit a few small shops, and then head over to the Ho'okipa Beach Park overlook to watch surfers catch some massive waves. I've never swam here myself so I can't comment much on that, but suffice it to say that the waves looked rather large so you better know what you're doing. If you are going to do the Road to Hana road trip, this is also a quite nice starting point to get it all going.
• Road to Hana: Let me make a point right up front - there is no need to make it to Hana as there is nothing special there. Instead, take your time, stop as often as you like, enjoy the various water falls, parks, beaches, botanical gardens or whatever else you may encounter along the way. The road is long and winding, there will be lots of traffic on it, and a comfortable car will win over a sporty one any day. Expect it to be a picturesque days full of amazing photo ops. And if you make it just a quarter way to Hana, it just means you stopped and visited interesting places rather than fought traffic all day. A few places you may want to consider stopping at include: Ke'anae Point, Wailua Valley State Wayside, Maui Garden of Eden, Pua'a Ka'a Falls and the Wai'anapanapa State Park.
• Kepaniwai Park & Heritage Gardens: A little treasure located between some majestic mountains and a gushing river especially if there has been some rain recently, located towards the north-western part of the island. As an added bonus small gardens pay tribute to various settlers including the Chinese, Portuguese, Japanese, and Koreans.  

Eat and Drink:

• Paia Fish Market Southside: This is our go to place when staying in Kihei. If you order anything with fish you can't go wrong here and you won't go bankrupt either. My personal favorite is the Mahi Mahi burger which I could eat daily, but other items on the menu are delicious as well.
• Monkeypod Kitchen: For those yearning something a little more upscale and some tasty cocktails, this should do the trick. Once again, anything with fish on the menu is absolutely outstanding. We've been to both locations on the island in Wailea and in Ka'anapali and both were excellent. You may want to reserve a table ahead of time as they get pretty crowded at dinner time and the wait can get lengthy.

Those who know me well, know that given no other responsibilities, I would spend most of my time on the tennis court - on warm days that is. The next best thing than being on the court yourself is watching talented tennis players play. Of course, watching in person is best, but the reality is that most of the time it is more convenient to either catch some tennis on TV or through a streaming service. Time permitting I'll watch just about any tennis, from Juniors, to Pros, and even the Champions Tour - great and inspiring tennis can be found at any level. I'm also of the firm believe that watching tennis is just as essential to improving your game as is hitting the courts or the gym.

With that said, some tournaments I get more excited about than others, especially when only considering Grand Slams. The Championships at Wimbledon has never been my favorite. I'm not exactly sure why. The sight of grass is rare in tennis these days as is serve and volley tennis - one would think I should be more exited about it. As a kid I really enjoyed watching Boris Becker, Michael Stich, and Steffi Graff win titles at Wimbledon while living in Germany. The Centre Court at Wimbledon is something that needs to be experienced in person. It is akin to taking a step back in time.  If you are ever in the vicinity be sure to stop by even if no tennis is being played to take in the serenity of this place, and while at it pop by the tennis museum as well. The only thing I can come up with is my personal dislike of the grass surface. This fast surface has never been conducive to my game leading to lots of frustration whenever I tried to play on it - even worse than indoor carpet surfaces because of the inconsistent bounce. The expected rain interruptions are not exactly conducive to a fulfilling watching experience either, but thankfully a couple of retractable roofs have somewhat mitigated this problem.

The US Open is a fantastic spectacle often times with some nail biting late night matches. It is the easiest for me to visit in person as well as to watch because of the time zone, and yet once again it is not one that I look forward to the most. The exact reason eludes me, but one thing that has bothered me over the years has been the Arthur Ashe Stadium. It is gigantic, and is as of this writing the largest tennis stadium in the world, but because of this size it somehow feels cold and distant at times. The players are tiny, especially if you can't afford the more expensive tickets, and in the earlier rounds when it is far from capacity the atmosphere is average at best. Several of the adjacent courts at the US Open offer a much nicer ambience.

Picking between the French Open and the Australian Open, now that is a tough proposition. I've been a huge fan of both tournaments for a very long time. On the one hand, la terre battue is the court surface on which I grew up on. The battles of stamina that unfold on clay courts are dear to my heart. One of my all time favorite players, Thomas Muster, won the French Open in 1995 - six years after being struck by a drunk driver and resulting in what some believed would be a career ending knee injury. Another favorite of mine, Gustavo Kuerten, played some fantastic matches at the French Open, include a really good one during his first title run against Thomas Muster in 1997. Epic battles between Steffi Graff, Monica Seles, and Arantxa Sánchez Vicario also come to mind.

And yet, the Grand Slam which I look forward to watching the most year after year is the Australian Open. When it comes as to why over the French Open, I think it may have to do less with the tennis, and more so with the fact that it signals a new year, a new beginning, new hope, and new adventures. For some people New Years arrives on January 1st, for me it does not really settle in until the Australian Open coverage shows up on the big screen. There are always surprises in the early rounds as new players emerge who have put in extra work during the off season - will they be able to keep up the momentum for the rest of the year, or was the early Grand Slam success just a fluke?

By the way, early rounds at Grand Slams are by far my favorite rounds to watch as wildcards, qualifiers, and those outside of the top ranks all compete with the established players to get ahead just one more round and receive the biggest pay check of their career. That is not to say that I don't enjoy later stage matches as I still vividly remember Boris Becker beating Ivan Lendl for the title in 1991, as well as Jim Courier defeating Stefan Edberg in 1992 and jumping into the Yarra River to celebrate. Several of the recent finals featuring Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, and Andy Murray have been an absolute treat as well.

Finally there is one more thing that the Australian Open has going for it, namely the weather. It may seem like a funny thing to mention, but you see, I've lived my entire life in the northern hemisphere and while never in particularly frigid places, Januarys can still get cold and bleak. It is quite nice to see sunny beaches, shots of the big red rock of Uluru, and the iconic Sydney Opera House at sunset, while you are trying to stay warm over a cup of hot chocolate. And to enjoy some unbelievable tennis on top of all this - well, it just never gets old!

It took me a while to finish How to Avoid a Climate Disaster^[1] by Bill Gates - not that it is poorly written or excessively boring, but it is not one of those lets go and do it books with an immediate call to action. In some ways this is not surprising - it will take hard work to get the emissions we humans generate under control, especially considering the rising global population^[2]. Many of the ideas Bill proposes are more appropriately viewed as plans or solutions which still need to be developed in more detail. In other words, if you intend to pick up this book to take immediate action and avoid a climate disaster, then this book is not it.

By the same token, this book's target audience is not the scientific community either. Many chapters and topics are a mile wide and an inch deep. I found myself constantly referencing the footnotes and doing additional reading on various topics to get a better understanding, more background, other opinions, etc. One example are the green premiums, which represent the additional cost of choosing clean technologies over existing technologies that emit more greenhouse gases, and underpin many of the book chapters. While the number and sources are clearly stated, the details and calculations are scant, until you visit some of the related web-sites mentioned in the book.^[3]

There are some interesting takeaways presented in the book in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. For example, the book groups these emissions into the following categories:

• Making things (cement, steel, plastics): 31 %
• Plugging in (electricity): 27%
• Growing things (plants, animals): 19%
• Getting around (planes, cars, trucks, cargo ships): 16%
• Keeping warm and cool (heating, cooling): 7%

Interestingly, transportation only accounts for 16% for all the GHG emissions. Although a lot of press and media is dedicated to electric vehicles, electrifying all of transportation will not get us anywhere close to where we need to be in the grand scheme of things. This is not to say that getting an electric vehicle has no purpose - as a matter of fact it serves a dual purpose: First, it helps getting the 16% down; And second but more important it sends a signal that consumers are willing to support more expensive alternatives, because they care about the environment and are willing to pay part of the green premium. However, while the transportation fraction is therefore improved, more strain is put onto electricity generation and construction, which are the two highest contributing categories for GHG emissions. Hopefully, this signal that was sent via the electric car purchase is loud enough that companies have courage to create products in the latter two markets, even if they are going to be more expensive at first.

Where Bill gets bogged down is whenever he discusses the delicate relationship between the required breakthroughs and the need for governmental action, assistance, and international cooperation. This will likely put the book at odds with various groups. First, with those who don't believe governments on a global, national, or even local level are remotely competent or capital efficient. They do have large budgets when it comes to procurement, but oftentimes their decisions may not favor the best solutions but rather those who employed the best lobbyist. Second, this approach may also run afoul with entrepreneurs who generally prefer building things and disrupting industries, and then wait for regulations to catch up. Asking entrepreneurs and startups to spend significant bandwidth up front in navigating the nuances of governmental bureaucracies and influencing incentives is a tall order. Finally, with the large percentage of startup founders who are foreign born, engaging with the government is not always a simple matter. In most states permanent residents are not even allowed to vote in local elections. Who do you think the local electorate will listen to more closely, voters or non-voters?

All this brings us back full circle to the aforementioned green premiums. Currently, the best clean solutions are much more expensive than those with more emissions. We need breakthroughs to reduce the green premium costs of the cleaner solutions. This too will be expensive and needs to happen fairly rapidly to avoid a climate disaster, hence the push from Bill to get the governments involved on the innovation side. If these cost gaps cannot be closed completely, he argues that governments need to close the remainder with subsidies and incentives in the short term. Thus you have government on the front-end, government on the beck-end, and innovation and product somewhere in the middle. When I contemplate governments having such a large influence over picking winners and losers in this space, well, let's just say I feel a bit uneasy.

To sum it up, not a bad book, but not a homerun either. Rather than spending hours reading the book, for many the Ted Talk between Bill Gates and Bruno Giussani on this very topic may be a better and more succinct option.

Now before you get all teary eyed and emotional, we are talking about Miko the housecat here, but nevertheless a loss like this will get to you after you realize how it not only impacts you, but all those around you that have come to love the little fur ball.

I still have the adoption contract from the Humane Society of Austin & Travis County Inc. dated June 30th, 2003. Miko, originally named Mimosa, was only 3 months old when she found her way into my then brand new apartment after I just moved to Austin from Atlanta post graduation. We would have never crossed paths where it not for an animal showcase that the Human Society of Austin put on at the apartment complex over a random weekend. The little gray cat, which eventually grew into a formidable Russian Blue, simply proved too irresistible, and the rest as they say is history.

What are my fondest memories of Miko? That is a hard one as they are so many, but what may be more comical are some of the irrational fears which I initially had. For example, at about the same time I acquired a set of fancy Natuzzi leather sofas, which were an absolute overkill for the apartment at that time. I was terrified that Miko, who was was never declawed, would shred them to pieces and ruin the leather. I tried all kinds of idiotic measures to keep Miko away from the sofas including glue-on nail caps, which fell off every few days, just in case she ever did venture onto them. It took a while, but eventually I realized that Miko had absolutely no interest in the leather sofas unless there was a nice and comfy blanket laying on them. Even then, she would jump on the blanket with the softest of leaps and never revealed her razor sharp claws. The sofas are still around in a setting that suits them much better these days, the leather on them looks great, and Miko never left a single scratch on them.

About those razor sharp claws - over the years I've really come to appreciate them. If you've lived long enough in Texas you know that when it comes to bugs, reptiles, and other pest, just about anything can be found here. Well, when it came to pest-control Miko outperformed any pest control company that was ever hired. Her favorite snacks were lizards, cockroaches, and the occasional scorpion and spider. She would also patiently sit for hours waiting for a fly or moth to make a mistake and fly low enough so that she could catch it mid-flight. Amazingly she didn't get sick once eating any of these things, but she would on occasion leave a few souvenirs behind along with a hairball.

"They can also be fierce hunters, often catching rodents, birds, rabbits, small mammals, or reptiles." ~ Wikipedia

Another bonus was Miko's functionality as a clearly superior Roomba. She never bumped into things repeatedly, was a lot quieter, navigated stairs and chairs without issues, and would clean tables even when not requested. Most importantly, she never had any trouble finding her base stations for re-charging. Trust me, when you have kids, a second Roomba like this one comes in quite handy. On that note, her smarts and sharp claws did defeat quite a few automatic cat feeders until this one^[1] was finally found which proved resilient enough to overcome her perseverance - at her prime weight of 23lbs she was by no means a small kitten.

Contrary to her ferociousness towards prey and pests, her kindness and patience towards kids was on another level. Not once was there a hiss or a claw swipe even when her tail was accidently pulled or when her furry belly served as a temporary pillow. And while her speed and agility failed her towards the end, she never lost her patience. Both kids absolutely loved the cat, and as we got busier and busier with the kids, she thankfully got plenty of attention and play time from them.

Speaking of play time, this was another funny thing about Miko - cat toys with a few exceptions were of no interest to her. But if you gave her some left-over tennis string she would entertain herself for hours. She gladly played pong with any random ball and occasionally even played fetch. We'll definitely miss her trademarked loud purring that filled the whole room after petting time, and we'll even miss the annoying meowing when she insisted that the cat feeder cheated her by a few pebbles. She loved laying in the sun for hours on end, or watching birds play silly games in the trees outside. At last, she will now get to finally rest peacefully under some majestic oaks in the backyard - in the meantime the kiddos will need do with a plush Miko replacement^[2] until future animal plans are sorted out, eventually.

I love watching the Olympics. I don't follow most of the sports in the Olympics on a regular basis. Most of the athletes I've never heard of, while others are just vaguely familiar to me from occasional mentions during coverage of sports that I do follow more regularly such as Tennis and Formula 1 - and yet I simply can't stop watching.

I can't even put together a definitive list of which events excite me the most. The swimming events are phenomenally fun to watch, but so are all the various track and field events. I absolutely love the physicality of the rowing and kayaking competitions, but volleyball and badminton are a blast to watch. Archery, table tennis, sailing, surfing, diving, wresting - I love them all, but in the end the actual sport does not even matter that much, what is amazing is having that many amazing athletes from all over the world compete at such extraordinary levels in one point in time - simply extraordinary. As a bonus on top, discovering and getting to know new athletes and their background stories - never gets old.

I used to play tennis at a reasonably high level and physical competitions get me excited. I see the benefits of sports far beyond the sports itself and the Olympics as a great conduit to get people aware of all the various sports options even if they will practice them at just a recreational level. Obviously, not everyone seems to feel that way. As with most things on the Internet these days, the Olympics has a lot of critics and like clockwork there are articles aplenty about costs associated with hosting the Olympics. Typically they center on obsolete structures in previous host cities and lament all the money which was spent. There may be some valid criticism out there and if anyone has good quantitative analysis on hand I would love to read it, but the simplistic waste of money accusations that are presented in many of these articles are usually very shallow.^[1]

They tend to start with the cost of the structures, how they haven't been or won't be maintained and how the money should have been used on something else, presumably something that the author has a personal interest in. Rarely any consideration is given to the value seen by local companies and sub-contractors who were hired to perform all the construction of the infrastructure - would these people consider it a waste of money or did their lives not benefit from it? Do inhabitants of the host cities not benefit from any of the improvements such as better transportation, updated hotels, and additional sport facilities in the long term?

Case in point, I lived in Atlanta during the 1996 Olympics and remember various complaints about the costs back then. Looking back however it seem that the city benefited greatly even if some of the venues eventually bit the dust. The new swimming center improved the Georgia Tech athletic complex tremendously and was more recently expanded into the Campus Recreation Center (CRC). If I still lived in Atlanta I would be making use of it today via the Alumni Membership option.^[2] Similarly, the Olympic Village which was built to host the 4,300 Olympic Athletes was later converted into Apartments for the Georgia State University, and eventually transferred to Georgia Tech in 2007.^[3] The Olympic Stadium became Turner Field which was leased by the Atlanta Braves baseball team until 2016, after which it was acquired by Georgia State and transformed into a football stadium.^[4] The rowing facility on Lake Lanier is still going strong, and the Olympic Park has been transformative for the downtown area leading to development that has been continuing ever since. Where there failures? Sure. Building a new tennis facility rather than upgrading an existing one in a large city which has more courts per capita than most was not the best of ideas.^[5] Ovearll though, when hosting the Olympics is seems, that just like with real estate investing, a long-term view is required.

The facilities are just one part of the positive story. I've not dug into the audience numbers over the the last few Olympics but what is clear is that Olympic broadcasting rights command billions of dollars and the price tag keeps rising.^[6] On top of that, if done properly and without scandal, corruption, etc., the amount of positive publicity that a country and the specific city can receive over the years leading up to the Olympics are rivaled by only a few other events such as potentially the World Cup. What about the athletes themselves, and the joy and pride they bring not only to the host country but to each of the countries they represent? How many children and adults alike do these athletes inspire and motivate to pick up a sport? Being active in sports keeps people healthy, keeps kids out of trouble, and builds lifelong relationships.^[7] Quantifying all these indirect benefits as a result of hosting the Olympics is much harder than just looking at a few desolate structures and calling it a waste of money.

Of course some cities and countries do it more efficiently than others. Some have an advantage of being able to reuse a lot of existing infrastructure which makes hosting the games easier. On the other hand, some, like Tokyo get dealt a bad hand, where COVID threatened to nullify the hard work of thousands of people and postpone the dreams of some athletes forever - and yet the Olympic spirit somehow came through and made the games happen even with all these challenges. And for that I'm very grateful, for especially in tough years like the world has seen over the last few years, the Olympics are truly an uplifting event.

Estate planning has never been an item on my to-do list until a few years ago when a co-worker of mine gave a nice and succinct presentation about why it is a thing you should really consider. It was one of those enlightening moments, when you realize that there many things you assumed without any basis or understanding, and that there are even more things that you have not even thought about at all which could have all kinds of consequences and repercussions. Motivated by that experience, I got a recommendation from same person to read Savvy Estate Planning: What You Need to Know Before You Talk to the Right Lawyer^[1] by James L. Cunningham Jr. I've read this book twice hence, once a few years ago and then again just a few weeks back as I'm finally beginning to work through my own estate plan. What follows is a brief summary of the book contents.

Let's start with what this book is not. It is not a self-help guide that will enable you to put together an estate plan, or which you can use in conjunction with an online service to compose an estate plan. As a matter of fact, this book will likely make you shy away from any online services and one-size fit all forms, unless you have the most simplest of situations. Don't get put off by the hefty 316 pages of content, as it is a really easy non-technical read. The second time around I was able to knock it out in less than a week with just a few evening reading sessions.

So what is the purpose of the book? In my opinion it is to educate the reader about all the major components of an estate plan, the major terms, some possible options that may apply to you based on your situations and variations thereof, and some of the most common mistakes people make and pitfalls they may encounter on the way. Yes, occasionally the book may read a little like an advertisement for using estate lawyers, but overall given the amount of information that it conveys it is well worth the read. Of course if you are absolutely determined not go the lawyer route then this book is most likely not for you. But if you are open to it, then when you finally go see a lawyer you will not end up in a deer in headlights scenario, as most items and terms with be familiar to you.

The topics that are covered include all the basic documents that are part of an estate plan including Power of Attorney for Property and Healthcare, HIPAA Authorizations, Living Will, Trust, Will, Guardianship Nominations, etc. Various possible Trusts are covered that can protect assets from lawsuits and creditors, protect heirs from themselves, reduce taxes and so forth. Education is provided about assets which generally do not go into Trusts such as 401Ks, IRAs, Annuities, Life Insurance, etc. On that note, retirement accounts are a particularly tricky subject and special care needs to be take to avoid huge tax implications.^[2] Estate Taxes and Gift Taxes are addressed as well and various vehicles to minimize those are mentioned. The book finished with a long check-list of important items for identifying a competent estate lawyer and implementing a complete estate plan.

Overall I feel pretty good about engaging with a lawyer to get the estate plan done after reading this book. I've also found the blog section of the Cunningham Legal website fairly informative to read up on more recent tax changes. I suppose now the hard part begins of actually getting it all into writing - let's see how it goes.

With the French Open upon us, I thought it would be fitting to put together a list of tennis racquets which I've used over time. Even though I've been playing tennis for more than thirty years, the number of racquets I've used over that time period is a rather paltry seven.^[1] Don't get me wrong, I do try new ones on a regular basis to see where technology is heading, but it is rare that a racquet makes such an impression that I contemplate switching.

Head Graphite Edge

A used Head Graphite Edge seems to be where it all started thanks to my first tennis coach who gave it to me.^[2] I don't have a picture from my childhood of this racquet to be precisely sure. The best I could do is traverse various tennis forums and auction listings to find something that seemed to match my faint memories. With that said, the colors seem to match, the vintage is about right, and the cover was identical to the one shown in the image.

I've only every owned one of these, but boy did it see a lot of tennis. Not always on the courts, as they were not that easy to come by at times, but anywhere tennis was possible: Against the living room wall - why not? Against the house exterior - sure, just try not to hit the windows! Why the landlord, who lived directly below us, never evicted us is still a mystery. There was also street tennis with friends between car traffic, tennis on soccer fields where the balls bounced exceptionally poorly, and so on - I think you get the picture. Overall it was a fantastic racquet, definitely not powerful and quite heavy for a kid, but it went a long way when it came to getting the technique right.

Slazenger Silhouette 95

This was my first brand new racquet and so I still recall the purchase which happened during the winter season when practice was indoors because of the frigid conditions in Germany.  The color scheme and the design of he racquet were lovely, and although it was my first new racquet it never ended up being my favorite. I was able to produce more spin with it than with the Head Graphite Edge because of the lighter weight and thus faster swing speeds, but I was not as precise with it nor as consistent. It was a fairly good racquet on clay and I kept it for several years, but the final nail in the coffin came for it when we moved to the USA and the lower weight of the racquet made it difficult for me to adjust to hard courts and the power-game that was beginning to dominate tennis.

Head Pro Tour 280

With the need to upgrade to a new racquet I stumbled into a local tennis shop without much of an idea of what to look for. By sheer luck it just so happened that the Head Pro Tour 280 at that time was being sold with a large depiction of Thomas Muster who just happened to be one of my favorite players at that time. Naturally, I gave the racquet a try and although it was on the heavy side I picked up a couple - advertising works I suppose. Unbeknownst to me at that time, I was buying what was to become one of the legendary racquets of the 1990s.

Today, if you are in possession of a Head Pro Tour 280 that was Made in Austria and it is in mint condition you can sell it on an auction site for $2,500 or more. Later versions of this racquets, were sold as "Designed in Austria" where the initial frame was manufactured in Austria but the final racquet was finished in other places such as Czechoslovakia for example. Towards the end of the production run all the manufacturing, paint, and finish for the racquet shifted to China.

I have various versions for the Head Pro Tour 280, and while they all play fairly similarly there are slight differences between them - as one would be expect due to variations inherent in manufacturing processes. In particular, the racquets made in China which I acquired later were a bit on the heavier side and played just a little bit stiffer. Of course, maybe my comparison was off as over time the original frames may have lost some rigidity and some paint.

This was by far the racquet with which I played the most and with which I reached my peak of tennis playing during my high-school years.^[3] I've won more matches and tournaments with it than any other racquet, and equally lost points and matches which I remember to this day.

Dunlop Aerogel 100

I didn't play college tennis. Looking back at it, I think that may have been a mistake, but I got busy exploring other interest which have served me well in life so in the end it is hard to say. However, after college when office work began and my lifestyle wasn't nearly as active, it was time to get back onto the courts and the USTA circuit. I still had a good stash of the Head Pro Tour 280s but they were getting a bit old and worn by the mid 2000s. Additionally, acquiring used ones in good condition was beginning to get fairly expensive. With prices routinely in the $400 range on auction sites, I began looking for a replacement.

After a lot of demoing, I eventually settled on the Dunlop Aerogel 100 Mid Plus in late 2007 as it seemed to come closest to my previous head racquet. Unfortunately, this partnership did not work out for very long as the racquet was just too lively and I could never get my backhand slice to work with it - it would consistently float long on me, and confidence would go out the window. On the positive side, I did love serving with this racquet and probably hit the hardest and most precise serves with it, but winning matches on serves alone is a difficult matter and a replacement was needed.

Head Microgel Prestige Mid Plus

I took a step back into the Head camp circa 2009 with the Head Microgel Prestige Mid Plus, after getting frustrated with the Dunlop. I don't recall anything exceptionally great or terrible about the racquet to the point where I almost skipped over it when putting this timeline together. However, I did not acquire another model until 2014, which means I played with this stick for almost 5 years - taking that into consideration must mean that I must have enjoyed playing with it more than I can recall.

Head Graphene Prestige Pro

This racquet was a natural progression in the Prestige series, and visually was absolutely stunning. It also came with a fantastic leather grip that at first gave me some blisters but had such a great hard edge to it that it made ripping one-handed topspin backhands and absolute pleasure. This racquet also worked very well for my serve, almost as good as the Dunlop Aerogel.

The other interesting feature about this racquet was the 16x19 string pattern which was denser towards the center of the racquet and less dense towards the edges. The idea behind this was to give the player a larger sweet spot than a traditional 18x20 string pattern. Unfortunately this feature backfired for my game with off-center hits yielding less control and sending the unforced error count up on days where my game was not in top gear. Overall though it was a great racquet and having played with it over the last six years I had no intention of looking for a replacement, but then out of nowhere Head decided to release an update to the legendary Pro Tour 280.

Head Pro Tour 2.0

When the Head Pro Tour 2.0 was released late in 2020 I just couldn't help myself ad had to buy a couple immediately. Does this classic frame still fit my game? To be frank, the jury is still out on this one. It is heavier than my recent racquets, and my older joints and muscles struggle with it a bit. My serves don't get nearly the pop they get with some of the newer frames.  Does it play the same as the legendary Pro Tour 280? I took it out with some freshly strung original 280s onto the court the other day and the responses is a bit different. The Head Pro Tour 2.0 feels a bit stiffer and does not pocket the ball as long as the originals, but how much this is due to the new frame make up or the fact that my originals simply have gotten soft and flexible as they are now twenty years old is probably a matter of debate.

Just like the original, the 2.0 feels very solid from the baseline, especially against big-hitters where the extra heft that it brings easily redirects pace. I've been having more problems with mid-court balls when trying to go on the offensive, where the heavier swing weight has been causing me some issues - my timing will need a bit of adjustment. Overall though it is still a fantastic racquet with great control. It will be interesting to explore what I can do with it once I dial in the string tension and adjust my technique a bit.

It has been quite a few years, seven to be precise, since my last post in 2014 recapping the South by Southwest (SXSW) Conference and Music Festival. A few minor things have happened in the meantime: got married, a couple kids showed up, worked on a startup company, moved homes, squeezed in a few vacation trips, etc. All these have been wonderful and positive experiences, and should have created ample of new material to post about, so why the empty canvas? Because, when life gets busy, one has to prioritize.  

Because most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time, and more tranquility. Ask yourself at every moment, “Is this necessary?" ~ Marcus Aurelius

The problem with choices and consequent elimination of possibilities is that sometimes in our haste, we don't make the right trade offs. Case in point are the walled gardens of the dominant social media networks. They provide any easy way to post a quick update, a tweet, react to someone else's post, press a like button, or heart an image, guilt on all counts, but nothing of the above is permanent. Many of these silos have come and gone before and this has led to creative content destruction that is down right tragic when it comes to Internet history. It may not be comparable to the burning of the Great Library of Alexandria, but there should be some sadness about all the design and information that has been lost just over the last twenty years.^[1]

The loss of older content because it cannot be archived by the likes of the Internet Archive is but one of the many problems which the walled gardens create.^[2] Others include the loss of control with respect to personal data and ad-based revenue models which either promote the spread of misinformation or lead to echo-chambers rather than intelligent debate.^[3]

"Companies must do more to ensure their pursuit of short-term profit is not at the expense of human rights, democracy, scientific fact or public safety." ~ Sir Tim Berners-Lee

Why are the above important to me personally? First, I would like my content to be easily accessible by the few or the many who may find it interesting, or simply have nothing better to do while sitting on the porcelain throne. Second, creating any sort of content is hard and takes times - no matter how simple it may seem to others. Why should this content live behind walled gardens and be monetized, or even weaponized, by entities in ways that are beyond my comprehension or control? Additionally, as previously mentioned, these entities could one day just turn off the lights, and with a flip of a switch all that content would suddenly disappear into digital dust.

All of this is just a long winded way of saying that my thoughts and rambling should exist on the open internet once again in the form of a simple blog like they used to do back in the days. Now, should I be writing under my own name or under a pseudonym and begin to partake in the Pseudonymous Economy?^[4]

Hard to believe, but a quarter of this year has already passed, and with that quite a few things have taken place. We celebrated our birthdays with some good friends at Flying Saucer this year. It was chill, it was fun, and it was easy. With this said we are way overdue for a house party, but this years is already looking super packed - more on this next time.

Right before SXSW we attended the SiteGoals 11th anniversary party at their new office in North Austin which was a blast. Oh yeah, and if you need some kick ass web development you want to hit them up as well - or if you have some mad skills, as they are hiring PHP and front-end developers.^[1]

Next on the agenda was the Circle Brewing 3rd Anniversary Party. Great times again with some good peeps, and of course some fantastic beer, which in addition to most pubs you can now find bottled at various stores throughout Austin including Whole Foods Markets and SPEC's. Speaking of which, what is up with that SPEC's rabbit mascot - anyone know the story?

Shortly thereafter it was time for some SXSW craziness. I did not manage to hit up any of the interactive sessions this year, but at least Clarice managed to squeeze in a single day. Talking to several people who attended, it really did not seem like I missed that much. Then came the music part and with my sister and her husband in town all hell broke loose as always. We attended various events but probably mostly enjoyed the Guitar Center sessions featuring Soundgarden and Damon Albarn. I have to admit the latter was sort of a sleeping pill, but Soundgarden was a blast, especially given the rooftop venue.^[2]

The number of people who congregating in Austin for SXSW these days is simply mind boggling - we are seriously thinking about skipping town next year to avoid the madness. Other than that, we came to the conclusions that the SXSW music wristbands are an absolute waste of money - we did not utilize them for a single event. If you know the right people and RSVP to the proper events, you will get in where you need to. It requires a little effort, but then so does anything worth doing.

We also did our regular BBQ binge, since we all know that people come down here not really for the music, but rather to feast on some of the great cattle inspired food that the great state of Texas has to offer. Anyhow, we hit up The Saltlick of course, and poor Martin stood in line for 6h+ to get us some Franklin Barbecue. Don't get me wrong, their brisket is amazing, but I don't see myself waiting in line for that long just to get some in the future. Also, if you find BBQ sauce a must, then I suggest bring your own favorite, as their sauces are really disappointing. Additionally we through in La Barbeque and Rudy's for good measure. Good thing the weather is improving so that I can get out onto the tennis courts to work off some of the newly acquired mass.

Much more to come this year, so stay tuned!^[3]

Not sure how it comes about, but although I delve in technology almost 24/7, in the end I seem to end up with some really old stuff myself. Not that this is always a bad thing - old quality speakers easily beat most of the speakers in showrooms these days. The same is true of my Technics turntables which with proper needles and a good amplifier produce a warm sounds which can put many club system to shame. Sadly, this is not the case for my ancient Dell E1505 Inspiron laptop which I've been lugging around for longer than I can remember. I have to give credit where it is due though, this brick of a monster which must weigh at least 7 lbs, has simply refused to die. The screen hinges have come loose and cracked, the bottom side has deformed due to an overheating processor and a failed fan, the battery doesn't last more than 45 minutes at a time, but when plugged in, this beast just keeps on going even after 8 years or so. Maybe, had I've not had a company laptop over the last 6 years or so I would have replaced it earlier, but given my nature of not fixing what is not completely broken, that is rather unlikely.

Anyhow, late last year I figured that lugging around this monster was really beginning to take a toll on my shoulder and patience, so it was time pick up something new. The criteria were rather simple: Something lighter, something thinner, comparable screen size, and of course good battery life. The latter mostly important on long flights where there are no reasonable entertainment options on board or when the magazines I have on hand just don't keep me entertained. Believe it or not, but even after all these years a good game of Civilization IV or V will make any flight pass by rather quickly. I digress, the last criterion was a reasonable price which is precisely where the problems began. It seemed that a reasonable light Ultrabook with a 15" display, a 1920 x 1080 resolution screen, and a 4th generation Intel processor was hard to come by - at least in the sub $600 range. I actually looked around for quite a bit and almost called it quits, when I ran across a sale on the Acer V5-573P- 6896. I ended up getting it for a little under $500 after tax, which I think turned out to be a pretty good deal.^[1]

This laptop is by no means a high-end machine but it has the essentials I wanted: a 15.6” Full HD IPS screen, a 4th generation i5 processor, is less than 1" thick, and came in a package which weighed in at less than 5 lbs. It also came with a few bells and whistles I was not specifically looking for such as USB 3 and a touch-screen. The former is actually quite useful for transferring large amounts of data. The latter one on the other hand, even after 3 months of use, still very much feels like a gimmick. There are places where touch screens work such as cell phones, tablets, and ticket kiosks, but I rarely find practical use for them on laptops. I seem to only use it for either quickly unlocking the screen or for when I'm lazily browsing the web and just need to scroll up and down articles in the browser. If I had my choice I would have traded the touch-screen for longer battery life, which at about 6 - 7 hours is not bad, but 8 hours would have been even better.

The screen itself though is absolutely gorgeous, with vibrant colors and great brightness even is sunny daylight conditions. The hinges are relatively firm, probably to support the touch-screen, which is great as the screen does not swivel when you pick up the laptop with one hand. The laptop came only with 4GB of ram, but I've already installed an extra 8GB for a total of 12GB which is the maximum this laptop will support. I used the following G.SKILL memory module in case you are interested in doing the same. The install took all but 5 minutes and only entails removing about 16 or so tiny screws on the back which then nicely exposes the additional memory slot. The laptop comes with a conventional 500GB hard-disk, and not a solid state drive, but at this price this is to be expected. Even with this drive the boot-times and wake-up times are phenomenal.

I'm not going to spend much time complaining about Windows 8, as the web is already full of complaints. Suffice it to say that even after a few months of use I'm not really much of a fan, and tend to use it mostly in desktop mode where it can be configured to look and feel very much like Windows 7. I don't mind the Windows 8 tile interface on my other devices such as my Nokia Phone where it works great, but on a large laptop screen I really don't have much need for full-screen applications, as I tend to multitask between many windows and apps which are open concurrently. Single app full-screen focus makes sense on devices where screen real estate is really limited. My other major gripe with the system is the Synaptics touchpad. It does work, but the default settings seemed way too sensitive for me and it took me quite a while to adjust them to my liking. Also, I'm not a fan of not having physical buttons at the bottom of the touch-pad, or at least some indentations which would help with finding these clickable buttons which are embedded into the touchpad when working in the dark - sometimes it is hard to tell where exactly your thumb is located given the large size of the touch-pad.

The back-lit keyboard is fair at best and the feedback on the keys is rather shallow. I personally would like a bit more travel on the keys but I'm guessing this is one of the trade-offs when opting for a really thin laptop. The speakers sound fairly good although being located at the bottom of the laptop rather than the top they won't work very well when the laptop is placed on a soft surface. The headphone jack provides a very clean sound output with no noticeable noise from other system components - given that I have a several sets of very good headphones I'll go that route most often anyhow. The laptop case is very plasticy but at least it does not look too cheap. I have a dings on the edges after about 3 months of use, so if you want to keep it in pristine condition I would highly recommend obtaining a case for it. As a final note, this Aspire does not come with a physical drive or any physical media, so you are advised to make a default system backup to a USB stick. Anyhow, apart from the couple minor issues mentioned earlier, I'm very happy with the laptop thus far, especially given the price I paid. If you are not stuck on getting an Apple, must have aluminum casing, or need something which weighs less than 3 lbs, you may want to give this one a shot.

This site has been largely abandoned, I know, trust me. As a matter of fact it has been down for most of this year – but life has been just too hectic, and the things I put in motion over the last year or so left little or no time to finish up what I started over here. Anyhow, without further ado, here are the things which are new and why it took so long.

First, for those who remember from a long time ago, this site originally started out on Mambo CMS. Eventually, Mambo split into several branches, derivatives, or competitors, depending on how you want to look at it. At which point, I moved the site over to Joomla 1.5 back in 2010. Since then Joomla has come a long way, and I've watched a lot of the progress with enthusiasm, however, I used a lot of modules, galleries, plugins, and components, all of which failed to keep pace with the evolution of Joomla. Not to mention, the Joomla team has not made it very easy to migrate from one major version to the next without significant effort.

After a while, the 1.5 version of this site became long in the tooth, thus at some point I decided to take the plunge and migrate to 2.5, then 3.0, and eventually 3.1. I gave up on just about most plugins and component bridges, since it was just too much change too handle. I did hang on to all of the content though, since it goes back almost a decade now and is worth preserving. I will be reformatting most of it to play nice with the new template, and will be bringing it back on-line over time.

So what's new other than Joomla 3.1? First is the template from the good folks at Rocketthem, which they released as part of the freely available Gantry framework. It in turn utilizes the Bootstrap framework which makes it fairly nice and responsive, at least in most modern browsers. Next, I wrote a couple wrapper plugins for Joomla which incorporate the Magnific Popup lightbox by Dimitry Semenov. It is one of the few responsive lightbox scripts which I've found that work well with mobile devices. It runs on top of jQuery or Zapto, and seems to play fairly well so far with the rest of the components on this site. Rather than relying on separate gallery components I will just incorporate pictures in the articles themselves from now on. The quantity will be less but hopefully the quality will be better. Anyhow, that's all for now folks!^[1]

I personally have nothing against HP. Over the years I've used several of their printers without any problems, and in more than one case they've lasted far beyond expectations. Sadly, the same can't be said about my recent HP EliteBook 2540p laptop. I used it extensively over the last couple of years and ran into so many issues, it is difficult to figure out just where to start. The 2540p was by no means a cheap or flimsy laptop, and according to several reviews it was built to military specifications for toughness. While this may explain why this laptop weighed in at close to 4 lbs, which is rather on the heavy side for an ultraportable. What it does not explain is why it completely fell apart over the course of that time - maybe a review of the military specifications might be in order for HP.

The first thing to go where the capacitive quick launch buttons which controlled functions such as volume, the wireless card, and so on. The malfunction of the wireless enable/disable button proved particularly annoying as it constantly confused the laptop and operating system about the functional state of the wireless card. On occasion the system would let me override this button using the windows mobility center application, but more often than not the defective quick launch button and the windows mobility center would simply not get along very well. This lead to the only other remaining option of completely uninstalling any quick launch functionality. I would have happily lived without that luxury, but that was only the beginning of my troubles.

The next thing that went bonkers was the cooling system inside the ultra-portable. On several occasions, the right hand side of the laptop would get significantly hotter than when the system was new. This of course took its toll on the fan which after a few months of hard work began to sound like an airplane taking off. Having built many a system over the years I'm not afraid delving into system configs, but no amount of re-flashing or BIOS adjustments seemed to make the issue any better. As long as I was able to utilize my headphones to listen to some tunes and suppress the excessive noise while ignoring the agony of innocent victims nearby, all was fine in my world. But alas, this did not last either, as the next thing to bite the dust was the sound hardware. It began with intermittent functionality of the sound output port, which when it finally failed completely, decided to disable the integrated speakers as well.

But wait, we are not done yet. The now prevalent high-heat on the right hand side did not seem to sit well with the OS, leading to ever more system crashes and the always popular blue screens of death. The final nail in the coffin though was the mechanical failure of one of the hinges, once again on the right hand side of the system. The hinge got perpetually stuck in an open position, and trying to close the system on a particular occasion le to a complete shattering of the lower screen bezel. Now I can't say that all these failures were related, but i find it very suspicious that all of them occurred in roughly in the same area. I'm not saying that all HP laptops are bad, but you might want to do some research for extended user reviews and just maybe think twice before purchasing one.

Our first stop was the downtown area of Dublin where we began with a tour of Trinity College. Trinity College is Ireland's oldest university and was established way back in 1592. Along with some really lovely old buildings and pleasant architecture, the College's amazing library houses the Book of Kells. The Book of Kells is an illuminate manuscript containing the four Gospels of the New Testament and was created by Celtic monks around the year 800 - it is truly a sight not to be missed. Next we took the local transit and headed over to Dalkey, a lovely little sea-side village. We took a nice stroll through the village center and along the sea-side where you can see Dalkey Island after which the village was named. Dalkey Island, although now uninhabited, once hosted ancient stone age peoples, then the Vikings, end eventually some military installation - to this day there are many ruins remaining on the island. Overall, Dalkey is a very low-key village with a very calming vibe, which might explain why celebrities such as Bono and Enya have purchased residences there.

After return to Dublin and Trinity College we visit the Science Gallery. While a bit on the geeky side of things, it had some very cool representations of the periodic table and other interesting displays - worth a few minutes of your time if you are in that area. Next up we met with my sister and she took us to Johnnie Fox's Pub which is an establishment about 30 minutes outside of the city. Here we had a few tasty pints, some good food, and were treated to some nice Irish dancing. Over the ages this pub has hosted some very famous people and celebrities, and was definitely a nice treat.

Finally, before heading over to London, we stopped off at the Guinness Storehouse. If you have one stop to make in Dublin, then this should be it. The Storehouse tour, although a bit on the pricey side, is absolutely phenomenal. You will learn all you ever wanted to know about Guinness, and in the end you can have a tasty fresh pint at the top of the storehouse overlooking the entire city. Few actual museums are as nicely laid out and pay as much attention to information presentation as the Guinness Storehouse.

In London we hit up many of the more touristy places including: Big Ben, The Parliament, The Westminster Abbey, The National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, The Tower Bridge, and of course The Tate Modern - all places are worth visiting if you have never been.