I've just put up pictures from this weekend's Thunderhill driving school with the BMW club.

If you don't see yourself in the pictures, it may be because you were too chicken to come drive with us. Maybe next time, eh? Thanks to Lisa, for letting Eric come out and play with us!

Microsoft Sharepoint's tooltip designer should probably go back to working at StarBucks.

With a somewhat unfortunate book recommendation debacle on his record, you'd think I would stop taking my Media Recommendation Friend's advice. But I generally enjoy sci-fi more than "literature" so I was willing to give MRF's gift of two of Vernor Vinge's books a try, despite the record.

And I'm happy to report that they were both great! I couldn't put them down, and my productivity at work suffered greatly from them. Definitely the mark of quality fiction.

Thanks, Media Recommendation Friend. You know who you are.

My Subaru gets bad gas mileage. It's 4 wheel drive, which doesn't help. I have sticky tires on it, which doesn't help. I, um, drive it to its fullest potential... which definitely doesn't help. (I have a performance software package that boosts its horsepower, and that, ironically, improves its gas mileage, but that's not the point.)

So you might imagine that with gas prices being what they are, I should ditch the thing and buy a shiny new Prius because the mileage is so much better. (Let's assume that I were lobotomized so that I could somehow live with a car with less than 300hp.)

Well I thought that too, except for the power of spreadsheets. Because the thing is, my Subaru is almost paid off, so within a few months it's going to be costing me zero ... except in gas.

So if we compare two scenarios, one where I keep my current car with its bad gas mileage, and another where I get a shiny new Prius (which I somehow find in the corner of a bathroom stall such that it only costs $299/month to own), I would still need gas to cost over $6 per gallon before that would be worth it.

Don't get me wrong, I want to use less gas. But when the economics are that far away from working out, it's pretty hard to justify right now. Perhaps if I made a kajillion dollars I would feel differently--- or perhaps I just need to wait 6 months and gas prices will be in that neighborhood.

• Why has the website only existed since 2004, and why does it look like a Web 2.0 portfolio showpiece?
• Why is the front page of the site and all of its supporting content geared around the product controversy, instead of the product?
• Why would a legitimate engineering company want your email address? Or take a poll of the public? Or have a forum filled with fake science debate? Or have a forum at all?
• Where are the company's other products?
• Given that the website was recently and professionally designed with state-of-art web standards that wouldn't be followed by some technology company's IT intern, where is the web designers' "Designed By" mark?
• Why is steorn.com a redirect, instead of the main site content, unless it's going to become something else after some kind of press hit?

Introducing zerotrickpony.com, my personal photo gallery:

At the moment there are some vacation snaps in there, so if you were part of the Spahr Family Reunion or Dave's Bachelor Party you can see the pictures that I put up. I'll put up more albums as I get time.

You might wonder why I refuse to use Flickr, and the answer is that I hate their software, and I wanted an excuse to make a project that would let me flex some different w3b sk1zlz.

Granted, currently my viewer widget doesn't work so great on Safari, but it should at least limp along. Let me know what bugs you find, and then I'll not bother fixing them. Just like Flickr!

• If Paul can win round 15, he'll replace one of his 70s with a 200, netting him 130 points. That's enough to beat me to first place, and he would be the season champion.
• If Paul gets second place, he'll replace one of his 70s with a 160, netting him 90 points. That would tie me exactly in points, and we would share the season championship.
• If Paul gets anything lower than second place in round 15, he will take second place for the season. Again.

I must admit that Penny Arcade has been waning in consistency in the last few months--- I think I'm at the periphery of their fandom because I basically know nothing about video games. I still read it, although not quite as fondly.

But I feel like this comic shows that they can still zing out a classic when they want to.