Call me crazy, but 34 miles per gallon is not impressive. My ten year old car gets 30 mpg. Let me repeat that with my trusty Caps-lock button: MY TEN YEAR OLD CAR GETS 30 MPG. Got it? Moving on, then…

I see ads almost constantly of how “fuel efficient” cars are. Nissan feels like it deserves all the credit in the world judging by their ad campaign. Well, ya don’t. No one does. We need to move beyond the fact that 35 mpg is some magical number, some amazing benchmark. Seriously, the Chevy Aveo, which is roughly the size of my fist gets 34 mpg (these are all highway, btw). 34?!? For serious, get your crack team of mediocre design engineers on task and bring that lovable huggable Aveo (which I actually enjoyed renting ~2yrs ago) up to 35mpg - you can do it!

Gas prices won’t go down. They will only go up and the people that can control the prices don’t seem to care that much because their wallets are nice and fat and they can afford to fill up their less-than-stellar-mpg cars. This, like our current government is why having people in control that focus on their own gains is a bad, bad idea.

You are now free to move about your weekend.

I don’t like it. I have a valid copy of Windows XP (you know, the “better-than-Vista” version) that I bought nearly 6 years ago. I understand M$’s point and why it needs to be done, but I’d rather not jump through a few hoops to download a simply little RAW thumbnail viewer (that apparently needs .NET 1.1…ugh). This wouldn’t happen if I was using good ole IE though.

Sigh, now back to waiting for .NET 1.1 to download/install *super happy face*

Sushi, laundry and hopefully a bike ride will make up this Sunday. Currently enjoying having Molly lay next to me, purring up a storm on my computer desk.

@Alex, gimme a holler whenever you want me to swing by to shoot some photos.

Happy Birthday Iraq “War”! Wow, 5 years old. Off to kindergarten soon! We are all pulling for you as you have trouble learning lessons, getting to the point, and completing anything in an organized fashion.

5 years old. Ya know, they say things get better with age and by golly that really is not the case here. Give it time though. Maybe by the time you are 20 or 30, you will have sprouted into a respectable, peaceful “War” that keeps to itself. But that would really go against everything you stand for, wouldn’t it?

Your mommy Cheney and daddy Dubbya must be so proud of you. And I bet you have some beaming grandparents over at Halliburton. You certainly have made quite a name for yourself at only 5 years old. Most are learning the basics of sharing, shapes, math and the like. But you’ve managed to create a black hole of sorts - and endless well of violence, poorly spent money and needless civilian and military deaths! Wow - just wow. Really impressive. I can tell you are aspiring to go “nuclear” as they say. Ooh, I hope that didn’t sound bad - It’s a good thing right? Isn’t that what all the kids are saying with their text’ed messages on their fancy I-Funs?

Ah memories. I remember when your mom and dad told the world the wanted to have you as their “War”. It’s funny - they had a lot of support from their 2nd cousins in the House and Senate, but it seems like they don’t want to have a thing to do with the support they gave your mom and dad. Not a lot of people understand, really. Why your mother and father have so much love and support for you - even sending in more people to help you along - people just don’t get it. Such is life. As I said, hopefully one day you’ll grow into a peaceful, non-existant “War”…

Just know that this was about as sarcastic as I can be at 8am with no coffee in me. I 110% do not support the supposed “War” in iRock. I feel betrayed as a US citizen. I feel lied to and I feel used. Now we are in a hole we dug ourselves and Dubbya bought the shovels.

Also, I put War in quotes as I personally don’t call it a war anymore. Wars end, and by the look at my half-empty glass, I unfortunately don’t see this ending. I still hope it will, however.

With President’s Day, comes SALES SALES SALES! We all know that on Washington’s birthday, he celebrated by going to the mall and thought it a grand idea if a whole bunch of random crap went on sale. Years later the holiday was revised with the arrival of the Television and now we have a President’s Day George Washington would be proud of: Loud, annoying commercials with lots of verbal diarrhea.

One company always willing to celebrate Prez’s Day is General Motors - that lovable, huggable, get your shit together-able American car company. You see, GM is made up of a slew of companies: Buick, Chevy, GMC, Saturn, Jupiter, Pontiac, Starbucks, Target, Wal-Mart, Congress, Switzerland and a small 4-acre farm in Idaho. All these small companies join together to make one large company. Sort of like Voltron, but not nearly as cool and with less miles per gallon. All these little commercials have the SAME exact Prez Day ad. So, we essentially have up to five copies of the same ad. Awesome. Really digging it. I get to hear about Saturn’s sale, then Buick’s sale, then Chevy’s sale, then Pontiac’s sale…

Why?!?

</rant>

Neighbors.  Can’t say I like them so much.  I’ve had a history of apartment neighbors that I’d just assume forget about.  Unfortunately, the saga continues.

We live in an area of the apartment complex that is prone to “over parking”, lets say.  The idea is we have a row of spots in front of our apartment to share with the other tenants of the townhouses.  This idea has recently fallen by the wayside.  Basically, people park in our spot(s) when they see fit.  On the other side of the adjacent building, there are limited spaces which I’m sure are almost always taken by other people.

This causes people to park in our spots which, believe me, delights us ever so much.  We are happy to give our spots up to people paying half our rent.  Then there are guests of our neighbors - hey, why don’t you guys park in our spots too?!  Increasing our immense delight that much more!f

We could go to the management of the complex but, is this even enforcable?  Really, we are only noticing it more because it is a cold walk from our cars to our door (which isn’t really that long even if we park in the farthest spot)

Fun Fact:  Very good chance our row of apartments used to be a parking spot.  More living spaces, less parking spaces.  Nice.