Out For a Drive

We made it out yesterday for a drive down A1A to St. Augustine. It's a great little trip with lots of fabulous beach houses (and mansions). These houses are about as close to the water as I'd think you could build a house. Nothing separates the property line from the beach, no dunes, nothing...

Unfortunately, this route is straight as an arrow. So I didn't get to make much use of the cornering abilities of the car. But the cruise control works great. We took I95 back home. The BMW 325i really settles in at high speeds.

Today I took a few photos of the car. It finally gave me a chance to try some of the Strobist exercises.

Spending Habits

If you ever tried Quicken, you'll know that while the concept sounds great, it's a real pain to set up properly. I once spent hours trying to get all my accounts configured. A few things changed in my financial life and I simply gave up trying to keep Quicken in tune.

Check out Mint.com. It offers the basic benefits of Quicken without the hassle of setup time. Enter all your bank and credit card accounts and Mint will sort through all your transactions and categorize them accordingly. Categories are limited but sufficient, and it doesn't appear to support investment accounts. Otherwise it's pretty useful. Vanguard does a fine job of showing my investment allocation but my banking sites are pretty worthless when it comes to analyzing anything (except finding an excuse to charge an outrageous fee).

The site analyzes your spending and even provides recommendations to save money (ads in disguise).

Nothing says you shouldn't have bought that car like a huge slice of the monthly pie chart...

A Wet Week

Finally, the rain has let up. It's been raining just about non-stop since Monday. The low lying areas of Jacksonville flooded. Apparently it's rather common. I hate to think what a hurricane might do. Our neighborhood was fine - I guess there's some benefit to living in a newer development.

New Ride

Succumbing to my driving urges, I signed my life away for the next 4 years. The punishment: A 2004 BMW 325i. Luckily I was able to resist the temptation to go all out for a 2006 or 2007 model year - maybe next time (and hopefully gas won't be $8 a gallon).

Plain and simple, just like every review out there, this is a driver's car. The 'growl' of the engine is almost soothing... It may even sound better than the stereo! Even with the base engine, the car is quick and agile.

The German ergonomics take some getting used to. Some things make sense but aren't as obvious. Setting the clock, for example, is probably the easiest to set of any car I've ever owned - once I figured out which knob to turn.

Storage space (again, as any review mentions) is quite minimal. The manuals nearly fill the glove box. Ashtrays seem more prevalent (and accessible) than storage compartments. Nothing wrong with a sterile cockpit, it'll keep me focused on the road.

So far, my favorite 'luxury feature' is the rain sensing wipers. They're perfect for the scattered rain so common in Florida. The blade speed adjusts automatically depending on the water volume passing over the sensor... so cool.

Unfortunately, I didn't get the real leather seats, just the 'leatherette.' So it may be a little sticky in the intense sun - nothing will prevent that in Florida.

Hopefully this weekend we'll get out for a drive. And photos are in order as well...

San Francisco Images

The vacation photos are up (if you're interested). I've been playing with the controversial new iMovie. Whatever you think of its capabilities, it makes some great little slide shows. And the ability to upload them to YouTube is wonderful. All it takes are some half decent images and one Apple application and you'll have a better YouTube video than most of the junk on the site.

The punishing Florida heat is finally starting to subside... Ahhh... Now we've just got to make another month or so through the end of hurricane season.

And if only I could decide what to do about my car purchase.

Back Home

We've settled back in from our San Francisco vacation. Those red eye flights are brutal. Anyway, I got a few good photos. I'm going through them now, hopefully they'll be posted this weekend. Vacation photography is tough. You never know what to expect and odds are that someone has a better shot posted on Flickr.

I've been asked several times what I'm going to do with my iPhone refund. Yes, I probably paid too much for my iPhone. But as MacWorld says, that's the price for a few months of 'cool'. I've a got a few goodies in mind - unfortunately they're all a little more than $100.