Cruftbox: My Box of Cruft

I recieved the new car registration sticker for the Prius this week. Hard to believe it’s been a full year since I first drove the Prius.

After 14,000 miles and a year of driving the car around town, to and from work, and several long road trips, I have to say it’s the best car I’ve ever driven. My Saturn, the first new car I ever had, still remains close to my heart from all the memories, but the Prius is a superior driving machine.
While the whole electric hybrid car is the first thing people think about when considering a Prius, I kinda forget about it most of the time. After spending the first few weeks watching the Info screen with the charging and mileage info, it got boring and I stopped doing. After Michele had the Prius up at 105 MPH on the I-5 with plenty left in the motor, I stopped thinking about performance.
For those that do concern themselves about mileage, I get 44 MPG pretty consistently. Yes, I know people can get 60+ out of a Prius, but I’m unwilling to do things like leave the air conditioning off, drive at 62.5 MPH, and fiddle with my tire pressure depending on the weather. That’s still phenomenal mileage for a sedan that seats 5, even several six footers.

The Good
What makes the car good is that it handles many of the little things well. There are three main tasks that the Prius handles in exemplary ways.

Keyless Operation
The keyless entry and ignition is fantastic. I simply walk up to the car and it unlocks. I don’t have to grab the keyfob to push a button. The car realizes I’m there, unlocks the doors and lights up the car interior. Once sitting in the car, I simply push the Power button and the car starts. Again, the keyfob can remain in my pocket. Once you do this for a while using a regular key seems old-fashioned and useless.
Bluetooth Integration
The implementation of Bluetooth in the car is nearly perfect. Once again, you simply start the car and it automatically connects to your mobile phone and now the car acts as your phone. There are buttons on the steering wheel to answer and hang up on calls. The car even accepts Bluetooth transfers of contact into a car based Address Book. There are three pages of one touch dial buttons you can configure.
The intergration of the phone is tight with the stereo so that the car mutes any audio, even pausing a CD, when a call is occuring. Hang up the call and your music starts right back up.
The only drawback is that you can’t switch between mobile phones while in motion. You have to be < 5MPH to get into the settings mode to do that. Not a problem for most people, but I carry a work phone and a personal phone, so it's an issue for me. Navigation System/Electronics
Toyota didn’t invent the GPS/Navigation system in the Prius, but they did integrate it well. Currently, I don’t like driving a car without a Nav system. It’s simply too nice to let the computer worry about exits and the details. I punch in where I want to go and the computer tells me how to get there and info about the the route. If I don’t like the route it chooses, it’s no big deal, I simply drive the way I want and the computer continuously reorients to the situation.
The deeply cool stuff is there in places like the location search. It’s easy to type in the name of a place and call up it’s location for use as a destination. But they went a step further and included the phone number as well. So when you call up a destination with a phone number the phone part of the car recognizes this and allows to dial that number directly. Who needs 411 when your car can do it?
The Bad
There are a few drawbacks to the car, but they are minor. Not enough to get rid of the car, but since you loyal Cruft readers are infohounds, I’ll include them.
Motion Lockout
When the car is in motion ( > 5MPH ) many of the menus are locked out on the display screen. You can’t enter a new location into the nav systems, dial a phone number, or adjust many of the car settings. The idea is that when you are driving you should not be typing. I agree to a point, but when you have a passenger in the car, they should be able to do this.
There is a third party mod you can do to the car from Coastal Electronic Technologies that fixes this, but I haven’t done it.
It’s not a computer
I use a lot of electronics in my daily life and most of them improve over time due to software revisions. Problems are fixed and slowly things get better. With automobiles it’s a different story. The car is forever locked into being a 2004 Toyota Prius. I’m not going get an email one day that says that an auxilary audio jack is been added if I just download a patch. I wish that the car could get more features over time without resorting to the 3rd party haxxoring. In theory Toyota could rev the software int he car and provide improvements, but it’s not in their plans. They’d rather have me buy a new Prius.
If you are considering buying a Prius, just do it. You won’t be disappointed.

More good news for LA radio.
Howard Stern said today that Adam Carolla will be replacing him in Los Angeles.
Nothing would make me happier than to get to listen to Adam on my morning drive.

I have been wondering how the new Coke Zero soda is different than Diet Coke.
I couldn’t tell from looking at the cans, so I decided to call Coke and ask.
Here’s a recording of the call -> Coke Zero (1.5 MB mp3)
Enjoy.

I’m on vacation here in Duck, North Carolina.
Part of the fun of being here in North Carolina is that I get to visit stores that I don’t regularly visit. The closest large store to our rental house is Walmart.
At home I don’t go to Walmart. California doesn’t have a lot of Walmart and none in my immediate vicinity. Furthermore, Michele has decided that we are Target people, not Walmart people. Not one to argue with my wife, I have not been to a Walmart in recent memory. Recent memory is the last 15 years, or the time since I moved out of the fraternity.
I was first shocked when I entered Walmart and they had boogie boards on sale for less than $10. ‘Wow, that’s a deal.’ I thought.
As I walked through the store my eyes began to glaze over like a zombie as my mouth said the words ‘Wow, that’s a deal.’ over and over. From chicken feed to video games to air conditioners to shotguns, there was nothing that Walmart didn’t have for a good price.
If not for the stern direction of my wife, all the cash in my wallet would have been sucked out into the Walmart registers. I still can’t get the image of the first-aid kit for $9.82 out of my mind.

Photo courtesy of cousin James
Here’s just one side of the sunscreen display. Amazing isn’t it?
How in the hell does someone shop regularly at a Walmart and not end up endlessly wandering the aisles looking for yet another deal?
I wonder how early Walmart opens and if those first aid kits are still on sale?

Happy Independence Day!

Much love to loyal Cruft readers.

I was at the supermarket the other day, in front of the Spam section and I noticed two new versions of Spam. Of course, it’s my duty to you, the loyal Cruft reader, to test them out.
Without hesitation, I picked up the cans and I now bring you, a Tale of Two Spams.

Yes, it’s the new Hot & Spicy Spam and the new Spam with Cheese.
To read the full story, click More…

Continue reading “A Tale of Two Spams”

Near our house is a book closeout store. It used to be a regular Crown Books store, but at some point it transitioned into a closeout only books store. The prices are rock bottom and there’s plenty of interesting stuff. The girls and I often browse and I encourage them to choose books there.
In our last trip this book caught my eye and I decided the $4.99 price was probably low enough to take a risk.
Man of Two Worlds: My Life in Science Fiction and Comics – Julius Schwartz, Brian M. Thomsen
To readers of DC Comics, Julius Schwartz is a familiar name. He was with DC Comics from the beginning when it was still All-American Comics. As an editor, he is best know for helming both Batman and Superman for long runs in the 60s and 70s. He’s less well known as the man behind the Silver Age of comics, reinventing core heroes like Green Lantern and the Flash into their modern incarnations.
Reading the book, I was suprised to learn of his huge involvement in the early science fiction scene and his role as the agent to many of the greats such as H.P. Lovecraft, Alfred Bester, and Ray Bradbury.
He played a critical role in creating the science fiction genre that I was unaware of completely. The book goes into great detail about how much money was made in those days, a half cent per word, for science fiction. This section of the obok is quite interesting, with insights into famed sci-fi writers from someone that was truly their friend.
Julius brings up a comic fact that I had never heard before. Most comics readers take it as fact that Bob Kane created Batman. the truth is that Bob Kane drew the art for Batman, but Bill Finger wrote the stories and developed most of the mythos that we associate with Batman from the Utility Belt to the Batmobile to the Joker. Props to Bill Finger for his work with Bob Kane to create the World’s Greatest Detective.
Some of the things that Julius did in the comics, I hated. He was responsible for killing Alfred and having Clark Kent work as a TV reporter. I really hated these things as core elements of the comic mythos were changed. Both plot lines were eventually ‘fixed’, but all is forgiven for two main reasons.
One, He edited the Ambush Bug comic, the greatest comic book ever written. It was the pet project of my favorite comic artist/writer, Keith Giffen.
Second, he is responsible for the proliferation of gorillas in DC Comics. Julius found out that if there was a gorilla on the cover of a comic, it sold more than comics without a gorilla. Julius didn’t need to know why, but if it sold more copies, he’s do it. For long time DC Comics readers, this should be an aha moment as to why Gorilla Grodd shows up in so many books.
The book itself seems a bit rushed in places. The creation of the fundemetal DC concept of Earth 1 and Earth 2 is breezed through in a couple of pages. You also get a taste for Julius’s feeling toward other comic book legends, but only a taste.
Julius Schwartz died in 2004 and DC rereleased several of his most famous comics in tribute. You would enjoy them if you picked them up.
For comic book and sci-fi fans, this a fun book to read. I’m now interested to pick up some books about Stan Lee and Steve Ditko to see what went on in the Marvel side of things.

I don’t often post on my blog about work. Mainly because I know that people I work with read this site. I’ve decided that my gauge for decided what to post here should be ‘would I mention this story at lunch with co-workers?’
Now some may disagree with this self-censorship, but this is my site and I’ll do what I want.
That said, this post is about work.
For those that don’t know, I work in television and help run the technical operations for several networks owned by Disney. Last year we were asked to help run the ABC Family channel by relocating the playback to Burbank.
This task is non-trivial.
Running a television network is HARD. Building duplicate capabilities and preparing all the content, understanding the workflow, modifying existing systems, and building a multi-million dollar facility is VERY HARD.
After months of effort, long hours, weekends, 3AM upgrades, arguements, endless meetings, countless phone calls, testing, rehearsal, and bajillions of emails, we went on the air yesterday.

Early Monday morning we toook over the operation of ABC Family and like a proud father, I’m still beaming.
I am so proud of my team and my co-workers. Pulling this off is a huge achievement and I just have to brag. Like any family, we fight sometimes at work. But in hindsight it’s simply amazing to see what our team can do when we put our mind to it.

Here is part of the team celebrating the successful transition. Take a moment to look at all those individuals, each doing their part to achieve what noone could do on their own. Each person filling their role to make sure their part of the process works, allowing the next person down the chain to do theirs.
As technical people, we don’t often get much of the glory that permeates television. But you won’t find a harder working group, more committed to perfection than the team I’m proud to be a part of at Disney.
The week before, I was surprised by my boss with an improptu gathering. He presented me with my ten year plaque.

That’s me at home with the plaque. Disney is an old school company with many traditions about celebrating long time employees. In addition, I was given my ten year tie tack. If a company tie tacks isn’t old school, I don’t know what is.
Hard to believe it was ten years ago that I sat on a loading dock in Singapore eating a peanut butter sandwich when I was offered an ‘all expense paid trip to Burbank’. Ten years from the loading dock to the corner office.

My company takes many hits in the press and especially in cyberspace. Some deserved, most not. Those who know me in meatspace, know I don’t always leap to the company’s defense. I’m more content to work from the inside discussing the future and helping to open minds that are closed.
But working at Disney is something magical. For all our faults, who could ask for better company product. We try to entertain people.
If we didn’t care about the people that watch our shows and films, wear Mickey, and visit the parks we wouldn’t work hard. Disney people work hard. I see it everyday, and it makes me proud everyday, doing our part to entertain children of all ages.
So today I post about work, and I don’t care who reads it.

Yubnub is a cool site I found via Ztuff
Basically Yubnub gives you a command line to the essential web sites of the hardcore net junkie. Want a Technorati search on pandas? Type ‘tec pandas’. A few other good command line items are wikip for a Wikipedia search, flk for a Flicker search, or say to create a wav file of text converted to speech, or eby to search Ebay and am to search Amazon.
The best thing about Yubnub is that you can create your own commands and others can then use them. The amount of new commands people have created is astounding. This is some kick ass social software…
Take a few minutes to try Yubnub.