UPDATE: Our Flickr account is now closed. Photos and images have been moved to http://picasaweb.google.com/thayerwilliams and I will update thumbnails throughout the site accordingly.

I understand the feeling of latching onto something good, and the whole collective sharing thing but this phenomena often falls within a long string of “must watch” TV.  It even happens with commercials!  We all know our way around YouTube and can get that warm fuzzy sharing with just a few clicks.  But nothing says pariah (or castaway) louder than ‘sorry, I don’t have cable TV’, oh and ordering a simple ‘large coffee’ from Starbucks.

If you’re looking for your next addiction, check out this British must see.  Run don’t walk to your nearest library for all the seasons!  Midsomer Murders

That’s when I discovered the Droid font family, from Google and Ascender. I’m probably the last person on earth to learn about it, but I still have to say that Droid is one of the most beautiful typefaces I’ve ever used; be it serif, sans or mono. Best of all, it’s free! It is now the preferred font for this site and has become the default font at work and home.

(images courtesy of Wikipedia)

To complicate matters, we recently upgraded our old, grainy and speaker-blown 27″ CRT TV to a beautiful 40″ Samsung LCD TV, matching blu-ray player and Bose HTIB.

I realize that diehards may scoff at those specs, but for us it’s been like watching our favourite movies for the first time. Rob Roy, Children of Men, Shawshank Redemption, Master & Commander, Jeremiah Johnson, Shaun of the Dead…did I mention there’s just not enough time in one day?

Where am I going with this? Well, this will probably be the largest post here for a long while. From now on I’ll be using the blog more as a progress report for the various projects I’m working on…sort of like twitter, but with no less bullshit.

To get the ball rolling, you can now find my dotfiles, vimbrant themes, dwm preferences and more at http://git.cinderwick.ca.

Over the next couple of days I’ll be making some structural changes to cinderwick and dusting off some unreleased projects. Stay tuned…

Unfortunately we only have one — which cost something akin to buying a large appliance.  I’ve been using it for my university statistical Math course; getting quite comfortable calculating t and z distributions of many sample proportions.  Now with a month left (read: crunch study time), hubby comes along with his condensed Math 12 summer course and I’m sitting here with my unsolved binomial distributions.  How will I ever know the probability of rolling a die 1000 times that it will roll a 6 fewer than 160 times?

Since we are on the same study/school/work schedule, we’ll have no choice but to purchase another, not a very sound investment, seeing as how both courses end Aug 7th and I’ll probably never touch a calculator again — unless I’m trying to figure out a tip (yes, my math is *that* good!)  Now give me back my calculator!!!!

(In case you were wondering, there is a 28% chance of rolling a six fewer than 160 times.)

The 1024×600 screen is brilliantly bright and colourful. The 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor is snappy and the new touchpad/buttons are a welcome change from the first generation of the AA1.

It’s not without it’s annoyances however…the Canadian models ship with an international EN/FR/NL keyboard, which features a half-size Shift key and moves the Enter key vertically under the backspace rather than horizontally above the right Shift. Also, the Acer recovery partition and related software made it a real bitch to add Arch Linux partitions without completely wiping Windows XP. I’ll post my workaround for that soon.

The funny thing is that I almost forget the discomfort of shopping for our car, in fact looking back now I vaguely remember the frustration.  But what I do remember were the endearments…the engaging grandpa from Fiji, the amazing snowfall that crippled us and the city within minutes, the shared laughs about salesman’s idiosyncrasies, and playing hangman by the faux fire in the restaurant we warmed up in.

And in the be careful what you wish for category, yes we now have two cars, two sets of gas bills, two sets of washer fluid jugs, extra keys on our key chains, endless shuffling and discussion about ‘who gets to park in the garage’ and have control over the godly door opener. Should the newer (thus perceived “nicer”) car get the protection from the elements? or does the older car deserve it because the heater doesn’t work (thus takes longer to warm up when parked outside on those cold mornings)?  I think we might have settled that one, and despite the problems we thought having a second car would solve, it has somehow created issues we did not fully perceive.

… so for those eager to know what we finally bought?  A 2000 Ford Focus, 4cyl, high kms, well maintained and in good shape, but now in need of a wash.

Stop 1: A smoking, hoodied gentleman casually explains that there is no need for us to take the car out for a test drive, but if we “really want to”, we can. Uhh onward.

Stop 2: Two dealerships. No, of course they don’t have cars < $10,000!

Stop 3: This car has to be dug out of snow that fell two weeks ago and also needs a battery boost.  The salesman breaks the hood latch doing this but hey, we can deal with that as it means a few bucks off. Out on the road (with the salesman) a cupful of water pours from the visor mount onto the dash.  Back we go.

Stop 4: This car is nice.  It’s got everything we could ask, albeit a  bit larger than we wanted for a 4 cyl, but it’s in great shape.  However, it’s boxed in their driveway by another resident who isn’t home, and there’s no insurance on the car which means that even if we could get it out of the driveway, we couldn’t actually *drive* it–though we did have a really nice chat with Grandpa while standing there.

Stop 5: Reluctantly home. Heavy snowfall sent us home earlier than we planned. But it was mainly due to the fact that the heat in our current car is lukewarm (at best)–the ‘defrost’ mode makes seeing out the windshield worse than if we didn’t turn it on–and it was getting dark at 1630 hrs.  Frost-bitten and tired, we stopped halfway home for warm food and to get the feeling back in our toes. Six cups of tea later, and a pee break we make it home unsuccessful, but planning the next outting for Sunday.

Day 2 – Stop 1: Dealerships at the Auto Mall.  One-stop shopping! Dressed in multiple, wooly layers and another list off we go. We quickly find that Sunday shopping doesn’t exist in the bible belt of the Valley so we settle for walking the humongous lots on our own. Found some good deals, but no way to get in touch with anyone; frustrating, but their loss I suppose.

Stop 2: Smallish, but friendly car lot.  Test drive two cars; one noisy, ugly and overpriced, the other nice, clean, running well but out of our price range.  Some bargaining, but in the end, not good enough.

Stop 3: Notice a small used-car lot on the way to our next destination. Two possibles!  Take the better one out for a road test and see that the wipers aren’t intermittent; they run rapid –or off.  We wipe the condensation from inside the windshield and note the large crack running down the centre.  Bad brakes, no side mirror and rough idling. We don’t bother with our second choice.

Stop 4: Decent salesman, new car just came in from a trade-in.  Bingo!  The back seats are a bit roughed up, but not a problem.  This is it… our new car.  Just needs to pass the test drive. Topped up with gas and away we go. Less than two blocks from the lot, the heating gauge jumps to H.  Okay maybe it’s a glitch; we drive a bit further but then notice the smell.  We turn around and while stopped at the red light, the car shakes and just about dies. Back on the lot, we open the hood to smoke billowing and the salesman mumbling, “well that’s no good…”.

Stops 5,6,7,8,9...  various dealerships, backlots, salesmen, u-turns, illegal and dangerous driving, phone calls, bad directions, train-crossings, drive-bys and non-stop rain.

Home: The goal was to purchase –and drive home a car before the end of this weekend. We weren’t fussy, we had cash, we thought we were as prepared as we could be.  It would be easy and fun!  Instead we found the weather, our current car and our timeframe were all against us.  Who would have thought that spending thousands of dollars would prove to be so damn difficult?

Everything should be working OK, but don’t be surprised if you find a hiccup or two over the holidays.