Nobrainer’s Think Tank

It isn’t uncommon for me to hear people rave about the British TV show Top Gear, the “award winning car show.” But in the few times I have watched clips, I have failed to see what the fuss is about. What I have typically seen is a show where they go out of their way to be unimportantly correct. For example, this clip [thanks Fark]where it’s claimed that “Prius More Enviromentally Damaging Than BMW M3.”

In the clip, they compare fuel economy of a Prius driven at top speed with that of an M3 that followed it around. The test isn’t remotely fair and leaves false impressions. But eventually they get to the bottom line that “[i]t isn’t what you drive that matters, it’s how you drive it.” They cleared up false impressions by lying. The real bottom line, of course, is that it’s both what you drive and how you drive it that matters. Smart as dipsticks those Top Gear hosts.

• I’m becoming convinced that Maryland is home to the worst drivers in the country.
• In my new house I chose FiOS over Cox. The internet has been working well, but I haven’t seen a difference VS Cox (not that I’ve really tried or bothered to benchmark it or anything). The only problem is that the Verizon DNS doesn’t find my work intranet. Fortunately that was easily fixed by telling my router to use OpenDNS.

  Unfortunately I can’t comment on the FiOS TV selections. Long story short, I’ve been seeking permission to install cable jacks in the rooms where I put my TVs and my property management company, which is apparently run by people who are under-qualified to be employed as trained monkeys, has yet to be able to get approval from the owner for those installations (They are also yet to remove the “For Rent” sign, or remove the Realtor’s lockbox from the front door, or have anyone fix a leaky sink).

• I was compelled to install Google Chrome this week after one of my favorite work-related web-pages quit working after I upgraded Firefox. It’s definitely a slick little browser, but I don’t see it replacing Firefox as my default any time soon. It has replaced Safari as my backup work browser, however. (No I didn’t try Opera… I’m just not hardcore geek enough to “get” Opera).
• I’ve also been using Bing more and more, but I have yet to see how it is drastically better than Google. Although Bing Cashback is probably going to get a lot more attention from me as I start to buy presents for Christmas.
• I’m also getting close to pulling the trigger and buying myself a Palm Pre. I was leaning toward getting one after my most recent flights and my desire to be better able to access the internet in the airport. And I was almost to the point of buying one when I found out that Sprint has unlimited data plans that start at $69.99 rather than at $99.99. I have yet to purchase the phone for two reasons. The first has to do with my inept property managers. Because of their ineptness, my roomates and I have been unable to fill our fourth bedroom and therefore I don’t want to sign on to a higher monthly phone bill since my housing bills are higher than I had budgeted them to be. Secondly, I realized that after a while the price tag of the Pre will fall down from the $200 it is now to something more reasonable and that if I’m going to have to wait anyway, that I might as well wait a little longer.
• One more thing, as some of you know I’ve been playing softball all summer in two different leagues. I hadn’t realized how used to a softball I had become until I just found a baseball lying around. Now a baseball seems so tiny… but it still seems right.

PS - The DC Clemson Alumni softball team is much better at drinking than it is at playing softball. That is all.

How to Use an LCD Monitor as a TV Without a Computer.

That sounds like a potentially good idea, although one drawback might be the refresh rates of cheaper LCD monitors.

In case you weren’t watching tonight’s new episode, here’s what you need to know. They did one of their flashovers, or whatever they’re called, to some old footage of Conway Twitty in a leisure suit singing some shitty country song for about 3 minutes. I’m not exactly sure how long it was. But it was long enough for me to lose interest, regain interest, wonder what channel I was watching, wonder why I was watching such crap, go to YouTube, search for some good country music, and watch the first minute of the video below.

So here’s Waylon Jennings.

Last night I was in the office until past midnight. It wasn’t as bad as it might sound because the problem I was working on was very exciting and could, if a solution is found, be extremely valuable. Even though that problem isn’t solved yet, I just realized that I have to make it home before 9 tonight.

Why?

9 PM - New Episode of Mythbusters
10 PM - New Episode of South Park, titled, “The China Probrem”

Also at 10 PM on Discovery there’s a new, hour-long episode of what might be a whole new series called “Explosions Gone Wrong”. I might have to catch the end of that.