Team-Building Activities

During the last couple of months, the project team at work has been under a pretty decent schedule crunch, thanks to our contractor's slip in schedule. Piles of documents and drawings to review, etc. As a reward for our hard work, our Project Manager has arranged a "Team-Building Exercise" at a nearby paintball facility.

I've never been paintballing, but I've wanted to for some time, so the idea sounds like a lot of fun. But then I got to thinking. Because of the intensity of the last couple months, a lot of people on the team have been working long hours, and losing time with their families. We've been in too-close proximity for a lot more time than many of us would like to be.

And our reward is...more time with our coworkers and away from our families.

Granted, I am eagerly looking forward to the opportunity to pop a few select members of our team and inflict as much pain as possible. Unfortunately, the folks whom I would have most liberally plastered with markers won't be there. One is back home, off rotation. And the others all work for the contractor, so they won't be there.

I'm a bit gun-shy about saying this to the PM, but if it were up to me, I'd prefer to take that afternoon dedicated to paintball, and go home instead to spend time with my family. You see, I commute an hour each way to work, leaving home at 6:00am and returning after 5:00pm or later. My kids are in bed by 7:00pm. That leaves me two hours at home while the kids are awake. Half an hour of that is occupied by their bedtime routine. Another half hour (at least) is dinner. Which leaves me less than an hour with my kids each day.

I guess I'll just have to settle for stalking the PM when we go paintballing...

Notch in the belt: brake pads

Last Friday, I took the car in to get the tires balanced, and the guy at Firestone told me that I needed some brake work. Specifically, 1) my brake pads needed replacing, 2) I was getting uneven wear, and 3) the rotors were near the minimum thickness. The solution to those three points is 1) replace the pads, 2) replace the calipers, and 3) replace the rotors. For a total cost of over $550.

I could have had them do it that same day, but I was in a bit of sticker shock, so I decided to think on it over the weekend. I've done a little mechanic work on my own cars, but nothing to do with brakes. So I spoke with my older brother, who has done a lot more of his own car repair, including brakes. He told me Firestone was a scam, and that I should look at the condition of my brakes myself.

I priced out all the parts, and found out that the parts weren't nearly as expensive as I expected. So yesterday, after the kids were in bed, I headed off to Autozone for a set of brake pads and a pair of jack stands. I figured this: it's easy (or so I heard) to replace brake pads, and they're cheap. As I replace them, I can verify for myself the condition of my rotors and calipers, and if they really do need replacing, I can then go get those parts as well. If, on the other hand, the rotors are all that need fixing, then I'll replace them and call it a day.

The whole process took me about two hours. That includes the trip to Autozone, several rookie mistakes (like forgetting to loosen the lug nuts before jacking up the car), and a trip to Lowes at 8:59 to get a big enough C-clamp to depress the piston in the caliper. When I finished up, everything worked fine, and a test drive around the neighborhood confirmed that I hadn't loused anything up.

The verdict on the calipers and rotors? I couldn't find any markings to see what the minimum is, but they did not appear worn (compared to the unworn areas of the disc). As for the uneven wear, the pads on the left front wheel were slightly unevenly worn. So when I was told to replace the calipers, they were slightly exaggerating. Sure, only a slight exaggeration, but one which would have cost me a couple hundred bucks.

I think I'll stick to my free rotation and balances, and my lifetime alignment, when I go to Firestone next time.

Why our family probably won't fly anytime soon

Earlier this year, my wife and I came to the conclusion that our family is very unlikely to fly any time in the near future.

It was a bit odd to make this realization. After all, I have quite a few frequent flier miles built up from a series of business trips, and I earn enough that flying, while expensive, is something we can consider.

But when we leave this summer for my family's biannual reunion, we're driving. Here's why:

1) It's cheaper. The reunion is 1400 miles away by car. Our '01 Honda Odyssey is rated for 25mpg highway, so we'll burn around 112 gallons of gasoline getting there and back. At $4/gallon (higher than actual cost, but let's keep this simple), that's around $450 for gasoline. Since we'll be stopping in a hotel once each way, let's add $200, plus $200 for food.

If we were to fly, tickets would be at least $1000 for the four of us. Once we get there, we'd have to rent a car. That's another $200-$300.

2) It's more comfortable. There are very few automobiles in this world that are less comfortable than a coach seat in an airplane. Everything from reclining to seat width to legroom is better. We have better control over the temperature. We can open the windows if we like. And if we start to get a little saddle sore, we can stop to get out and stretch our legs.

No worrying about our kids bothering the poor folks around us. No worrying that they'll push the attendant call button. No changing diapers in a very cramped airplane toilet (in those cases where the lav actually has a changing table). When mealtimes come, we can choose our restaurant and enjoy a good meal while sitting around a table. Heck, a car's even quieter than an airplane, so when the kids are asleep, we can actually have a good conversation.

Oh, yeah, the kids are strapped in their car seats as well, and they're quite comfortable in them. After all, they've got nice big windows to look out at the scenery, they can more easily nap in their car seats, and we'll be able to put on music and/or movies if they get really cranky.

3) It's more convenient. We can leave when we're ready. We can stop where we like. The security theater in the airport is an enormous hassle. Having to take your laptop out and your shoes and belt off, load everything into the x-ray machine, walk through the metal detector, and then get dressed and packed again is a pain. Doing the same thing with two kids, three times as many bags, and a double stroller is best not described. We've gotten better at it, and can actually move pretty smoothly now, but it's akin to choreographed chaos. In any case, it's far from pleasant.

No worries about batteries wearing out, either--our little power inverter will take care of that.

4) We can take anything we can fit. No baggage weight limitations, or limits on how many bags we can take. Our packing list now includes an extra gas can (ya never know...), an ice cream machine, water bottles, food, power tools, boxes of toys, pillows, a playpen, a kid-sized folding table and chairs, and a whole bunch of electronic gizmos, in addition to the regular clothes and toiletries. If we fly, we have to pull the kids' car seats out of the car, check them as baggage (in addition to our suitcases), retrieve them at the other end, install them in the rental car, and then do the whole routine on the way back. We don't even have to think about them now--we'll just leave them in the car.


In fact, there are only two downsides to driving:
1) We have to drive ourselves. Not a huge deal--I don't find driving a chore.
2) It takes longer. This is a bit more important, since I don't have a surplus of vacation days. Considering the advantages, however, the extra time spent on the road isn't all that bad.

Once we've done this first trip, I doubt we'll go back to flying. Next year, I'll get an extra year of vacation, so the longer travel time won't be an issue. We'll also have one more kid by then, so all the drawbacks of air travel will become even bigger.

Unlike most of my recent trips, I'm actually looking forward to this one.

Meetings

"If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be 'meetings.'" --Dave Barry

Ah, the truth of those words. I may only be in my twenties, but I have already developed a great appreciation for this nugget of truth.

This quote strikes home particularly well at my work. I work for a big company with lots and lots of engineers, and they're all very intelligent people. We have lots of meetings. I can without hesitancy state that less than ten percent of the time I spend in meetings is worth it. Here are my top eight frustrations with meetings:

1) Bad presenters
There are relatively few people in this world who can present and explain concepts clearly. Those few who can are rarely found in engineering or management positions. They're in sales, marketing, pedagogy, or similar fields. In a meeting last week, we discussed the numbering of equipment for our project. Despite the simplicity of the plan, half the attendees couldn't understand the engineer presenting it.

2) Unnecessary attendees
Every Tuesday, we have a two-hour series of meetings. Each twenty-minute segment focuses on a single engineering discipline. Originally, it was a single two-hour meeting, but my boss split it up so that only the necessary people would need to attend each portion.

We've run into a problem, though. Sometimes, one segment will end early, and the people staying for the next meeting sit around bored until the attendees for the next meeting show up. My boss has now decided that everyone needs to show up one meeting early, i.e. attendees for the 9:20 meeting also need to show up for the 9:00 meeting. In effect, the amount of time each person spends in meetings doubles, neatly negating the original intent of reducing meetings.

3) Meeting length is a function its size
It appears that there is a natural law in effect here: the higher the number of attendees, the longer the meeting. The exact equation is still to be discovered. However, my rule of thumb is this: the minimum length of a meeting, or the shortest duration you will ever see, is fifteen minutes for every two people in attendance. Thus a four-person meeting will last at least half an hour, and an eight-person meeting will drag on for at least a full hour. This is independent of the topic, the expertise of the attendees, or the circumstances.

4) Group Composition
On several occasions, I have attended meetings where we are to review, revise, or create some sort of document. The dangers of composition-by-committee are obvious, so I will not belabor that point. My frustration goes beyond that.

Murphy's law states, and experienced has confirmed, that the person at the laptop will nearly always be the worst typist in the group. We're talking two-finger hunt-and-peck typing, with one out of every three keystrokes incorrect. Forget about punctuation or capitalization, simply the spelling is bad enough. I was fortunate enough to have taken typing courses in elementary and middle school, and while I'm not the fastest typist in the world, I consider myself pretty decent at it. It pains me to see others stumble.

5) Death by powerpoint
Before I was assigned to a project, I worked in the company office. We often had suppliers and prospective suppliers in our office to present a new technology or an upcoming product, and the presentations were invariably in Powerpoint. And as Don McMillan will tell you, the longer the presentation, the more boring it is. Anything over 25 slides is too long, period. 60+ is right out. I have personally witnessed every single gaffe mentioned in that video. In every case, the presenter appears to believe that every word of the presentation is absolutely critical.

6) Getting off topic
I used to keep my mouth shut, but no more. When somebody gets off in the weeds, I now pipe up and divert it to the Parking Lot, a big notepad of topics to discuss later. A 30-minute (4-person) meeting can drag out to hours if one person pulls the discussion off-topic.

7) Long answers to simple questions
I must confess that I am guilty of this mistake, and I often see others make the same mistake. Arguably, there are times when a longer-than-expected answer is appropriate. Usually, however, the short answer is the best. As such, it is usually left unsaid.

It is worth noting that the long, convoluted reply might or might not actually answer the question.

8) The urge to justify one's attendance
In conjunction with #2 above. When one is required to attend a meeting unnecessarily, there are typically two reactions: either sit quietly in the corner without saying anything (sleeping is optional), or become inordinately involved in the discussion, regardless of one's knowledge of the topic, authority to make a decision, or ability to speak clearly.

This leads to a lot of repetition, restating, and often misunderstanding, as bad presenters try to restate others' comments and end up confusing other attendees. Then someone has to un-confuse those people, so everything gets stated three times(at least!).

9) Meetings when a phone call or a drop-in will suffice
I have never understood the urge to formalize every discussion in a scheduled meeting. Perhaps managers learn it in Business School. For me, nearly every discussion I have can be done informally, either by stopping by someone's office or by giving them a quick phone call. Sure, some situations call for a meeting, but they are a very small minority.

As I type this, I am sitting in a meeting of six people. I have nothing to add, but my presence is required because I have some tangential interest. I graduated from college about three years ago, and the number of such meetings I have attended is somewhere in the hundreds. The number of hours wasted is certainly in the thousands.

Continuing the Orange Box - Portal

Last time, I wrote about my impressions of Half Life 2, to the point I had played it. Since then, I've continued to progress, and am now progressing through the "Follow Freeman" chapter.

But I've been sidetracked. While playing Half Life 2, I got a little distracted, and played through Portal. Let me say this much: I wish I hadn't heard so much about it or watched so many youtube videos of it. It kinda spoiled the game a bit. However, it was still great fun. I played with the subtitles on, and found that there's a small, but noticeable, amount of dialogue that was omitted during recording. Nothing that would affect the game or the story, but interesting nonetheless.

In general, the game is a balance between FPS skills and problem-solving ability, with the balance tilted heavily towards the FPS skills side. A week or two ago I discovered Portal: The Flash Version, and sent a link to my brother. My brother doesn't play video games outside a few casual, more cerebral flash-based games. He liked the idea of the game, but complained that once he figured out how to complete a level, the rest was frustrating, because of the level of manual dexterity involved. In the "real" version of Portal, I felt the same way--once I figured out how to complete a level, I spent a significant amount of time trying to get my hands to do what my mind was envisioning.

The dialogue, or rather, monologue, is simply brilliant. I could go into more flowery, descriptive terms, but suffice it to say the voice acting and processing are spot-on for the tone of the game.

Overall, I enjoyed it, and have since started dabbling in the advance maps. At the same time, however, I wish Valve had done a bit more to improve replayability. Sure, there are plenty of people with way too much free time who will compete for speedrun records, but the game seems a bit too....prescriptive. The single-available-path is great for a game you play through once, but I guess I was wishing for a few more secret rooms, or high platforms you don't notice if you're just trying to get through the game, or things like that.

One more question: The other day, I attempted to do the Terminal Velocity achievement. I got the infinite loop going fine, and went to go get a snack, leaving Chell to the clutches of gravity. I think I let it run for six or seven minutes before growing impatient, and apparently still hadn't fallen the required distance. How long do I have to loop in order to get that achievement?

Working through the Orange Box

Last weekend, Fry's sold the Orange Box for $20. I've been waiting for a deal like that for a long time, and eagerly picked it up.

I started with Half Life 2, having a desire to keep things more-or-less chronological. To this point, I've progressed through the game up to Nova Prospekt. Here are my thoughts:

• The crowbar needs a greater reach. I don't like having to practically stand on top of a crate before I can hack it open.
• I like how the game now makes it clear which crates include goodies vs. which ones are just props.
• The ammo-carrying limits are really, really annoying. For example, Gordon can carry ten extra clips for his pistol and five extra clips for his SMG, but only two extra clips for the pulse rifle, and only twelve extra rounds for the Magnum. Given the choice, I would happily ditch the SMG, along with all its ammo, in order to carry more ammo for the pulse rifle. Especially since the ammunition for the pulse rifle is so much smaller than the ammo for the SMG.
• Pinning enemies to the wall from across the map is just cool. The fact that your weapon is a crossbow, and your ammo a piece of red-hot, glowing rebar, elevates it to the level of simple brilliance.
• Only allowing the player to carry 10 rounds of said rebar, on the other hand, is mean-spirited. Bad developer!
• I didn't like Ravenholm at all. A bit too creepy, perhaps, but the infinitely-spawning zombies were what really bothered me. On the other hand, I wish I could have brought one of those saw-blades with me through the remainder of the map.
• The air boat was lots of fun to drive. I didn't enjoy the car so much, for several reasons. First, it could tip over, which you couldn't do to the air boat. Secondly, I prefered the gun on the airboat. Thirdly, nobody told me that it had a turbo--I found that out from gamefaqs after failing that first jump several times. Did I miss a pop-up message on the HUD?
• Forcing the player to cross all the way under the bridge, flick a switch, and then cross all the way back is, IMO, nothing but annoying and unnecessary. Showing the player several RPG pickups on the way over was also a dead giveaway that a helicopter is going to meet him on the way back.

As an aside, I am amazed at the physical abilities of Gordon. To the point I've played, I estimate that he has been up for something on the order of 36 hours straight. A day in City 17, a night in Ravenholm, a day driving the dune buggy, and now it's night as I enter Nova Prospekt. In this time, he has climbed hundreds of feet of ladders, driven long distances across rough terrain at ludicrous speeds, shot down several helicopters, destroyed boat locks, played Parkour across an iron arch bridge, dropped shipping containers on bad guys, and caught more air time than Evil Knieval. He's taken hundreds of bullets, been beat up by zombies, chewed up by headcrabs, lacerated by manhacks, deafened by too-close explosions, has had to climb out of his overturned dune buggy several times, has been nearly cut in half by helicopter cannon fire, nearly drowned several times, and electrocuted by those bouncy-ball mine things. He's taken more medication in a day and a half than Dr. House does in an entire season. Gordon carries eight types of weapons, including an RPG launcher, along with ammo for all those weapons. He has fired tens of thousands of rounds from those weapons. He has killed several dozen antlions, scores of zombies, quite a few manhacks and barnacles, and probably hundreds of Combine. No wonder the alarms go off whenever they spot him!

And this for a guy who's been in some sort of hibernation for a couple decades. Anyways.....

• At the lighthouse, the NPC tells me to put the car in the garage so the Combine don't find me, but then the Combine show up anyway. So why should I have put the car in the garage in the first place?
• I was sorely disappointed that I couldn't actually get inside all those abandoned boats.
• I was also sorely disappointed that I couldn't drive the combine vehicles.
• I was disappointed once again when there was no sniper rifle to pick up after I killed the Combine snipers who were camped above the railroad tracks.
• I miss Dr. Breen's voice.
• While driving the airboat, I realized that there is an awful lot of really nice scenery, and I'm just blowing right by it without a second glance. Valve could probably have saved a lot of money by not putting in so much details in the parts of the map you're just flying by anyway!
• Having to register your single-player game online in order to play it is about the most anti-customer thing I've encountered in relation to video games. I can understand it for TF2, but not for HL2 and Portal. Bad publisher!
• I finally figured out that RPGs can fly nearly arbitrarily-loopy paths once you launch them. My hit rate on gunships dramatically improved once I figured that out.
• Antlions are awesome battle-buddies, especially since there's an unlimited supply of them. I like how they can jump ridiculous heights and kill Combine in seconds. It looks like they can't follow me into Nova Prospekt, and that disappoints me greatly.
• I wish I could control how hard I throw grenades. Sometimes I just want to give one a soft lob into a corner, not huck it a hundred yards or try to bounce it back to myself.
• Throwing explosive barrels or gas cylinders at enemies is fun. Really fun. I just need to learn to stand back a bit.

to be continued...

Home Improvement: Attic Stairs

I can now add another "home improvement" skill to my inventory. Last week, we decided to replace our air conditioner. The current unit is original, installed when the house was built in 1993. We're sick and tired of it, because:

• It has a small coolant leak
• It's inefficient, and costs us about $200/month during the summer to cool our 1500-sq-ft house.
• The return air vent and duct are undersized
• It does a poor job of distributing the air about the house--some rooms hardly get any cooling at all, some get way more than they need.
• It's an anti-selling point, when the time comes to sell our home.

So we're getting a new compressor, condenser, evaporator, plenum, and air return, plus a couple new ducts to help with the distribution.

We also noticed last week (before deciding to replace the A/C) that our attic stairs needed replacement. Part of the hinge mechanism was all bent out of shape, and it had nearly destroyed its own pivot. Once we decided to get new A/C, it became apparent that I couldn't postpone it any longer. I took a trip to Lowe's, picked up an attic ladder ($172 out the door), and headed home to take out the old ladder.

The next step was to remove the old ladder. During that process, my lack of trust in the original builders was strengthened. When framing out the space for the original ladder, they apparently ran out of 2x4's, 2x6's and 2x8's. How do I know this? because the original hole was framed a little too large, and they used a slab of MDF and a scrap of baseboard to make the hole the right size for the attic ladder.

Disassembly of the old ladder was by far much harder than installation of the new. The bottom two sections (the ones that fold up) weren't too hard to remove--just a few bolts. The springs, though, were a bit scary. They have a very large k value--enough that neither my wife nor I could get them to stretch at all after I removed them. The springs attached to the hinges with something akin to a u-bolt with threads on one leg. Since I couldn't stretch the springs enough to unhook them, I undid the nuts on the half-u bolts. It's a bit nerve-wracking, because you know that at some point, the nut is going to let go of the bolt, the spring will snap short very very quickly, and the u-bolt will become a high-speed projectile. It makes a big noise, too.

Fortunately, nobody got hurt in the process. After drilling out about a dozen rivets and undoing countless nuts and bolts, I finally had the old ladder out. In several pieces, granted, but I wasn't planning to use it for anythig anyway. Maybe I'll strip out all the nuts and bolts, since those are still perfectly usable.

Installing the new ladder was quite easy, by comparison. It was simply a matter of setting the wooden frame in the hole in the attic and using half a dozen lag screws to secure it to the joists. I was blessed by the fact that 1) the hole created by the frame of the old ladder was perfectly square, and 2) it was nearly the perfect size. Nearly. It was too wide by about 1 1/4 inches. I put in a length of 2x4, making the hole about 1/4" too narrow. Fortunately, the old frame had not been secured all the way to the joist, so a few seconds with the hammer gave me the 1/4" I needed. The entire ladder assembly hooked onto the frame very nicely. Three more lag screws and four nuts later, I was done.

Well, almost. The new ladder is a bit narrower and longer than the old one, so I'll need to re-do the moulding around the opening, but the dimensions are such that I won't even need to buy new moulding--I'll just need to cut down the old stuff. And paint the cover.

The list of other home improvement projects I've done:

• painting the living room, entryway, dining room, kitchen
  
• drywall repair
• laying tile (kitchen, entry, dining room)
  
• baseboards in above rooms
• laying hardwood floors (brother's living room)
  
• added electrical outlet in attic
• laid tile, painted, put in baseboards, added floodlights in garage over the laundry area
  
• running network cables through the walls
• furniture construction (does that count?)
• added hardware to our kitchen cabinets
• toilet repair (on several occasions)
• garage door repair
• replacing the back door
• fence/gate repair (wooden fence, cedar boards)
• landscaping (there are lots of parts to this, but I'll leave it at that)
• minor deck repair
• regrout the shower

And still on the "to do" list:

• fix the wall by the shower (replace sheetrock and baseboards, retexture and paint)
• get rid of wallpaper in master bathroom
• fix small and large dings in drywall around the house
• get new carpet (I'm not installing this myself, but we're getting new carpet soon. I hope)

At some point in the future, I would like to renovate and flip the house, doing most of the work by myself or with a brother or friend. Here are the skills I don't yet have that I would probably need:

• plumbing. I can do some minor things, but I've never done anything with copper piping.
• hanging drywall (along with tape, mud, sanding, etc)
• installing kitchen cabinets/bathroom vanities (my brother has done that, so if the two of us were to work together, we could do it)
• framing a wall (yeah, it's no big deal, but it's something I haven't done)
• window replacement. However, having replaced a door, I figure I'm not too far off on this one.
• major deck repair/construction.
• roof repair
• siding

I'm sure I've missed some. Let me know, and I'll add them to the list.

Battery cheapness

I've expressed my frustrations before, particularly with respect to battery capacity. I now have a nice example of the battery problem.

I'm in the process of fixing my older sister's old Tecra 8100. It has a Pentium 3 of some sort, 256MB PC100 RAM (upgraded), 14" screen, etc. She uses it for internet browsing, email, and word processing, so no huge amount of power is needed.

Since the battery (10.8V/4500mAh) is completely dead and my sister is not in a position to buy a new one, I requested and received permission to re-cell the battery. Last night, I cracked it open, and found the expected nine lithium-ion cells, each with 1500mAh capacity. The Li-ion cells used in laptop batteries typically come in one of several sizes, each indicated by a five-digit number. The first two digits indicate the diameter of the cylindrical cells in millimeters, and the last three indicate the length in tenths of a millimeter. Thus, the 17670 cells in this laptop are seventeen millimeters in diameter and sixty-seven millimeters in length. Other common sizes are 18650, 18500, and 14500 (AA size).

Off I went to the intarweb to find some new, hopefully higher-capacity cells for this battery. I found that 17670 cells are far less common than 18650. Not only that, it turns out that the highest-capacity 17670 cell I could find for a reasonable price was 1800mAh, while 2200- or 2400-mAh is quite common for 18650 cells.

In the course of repairing this laptop, I nearly completely disassembled it. The only thing that I didn't touch was the system board, which I was (thankfully) able to leave in place. Having done a nearly complete tear-down and reassembly, a realization came to me as I looked at the battery: Toshiba could have made it bigger.

The nine cells contained in the battery completely fill the battery casing, making a block that is 17x51x205mm or so, once you include the contacts between each rank of cells. If Toshiba had opted for 18650 cells instead of 17670, the package would have been roughly 18x54x200mm. That's one millimeter thicker and three millimeters wider. Inside the laptop, cramped as it is, there is plenty of room in both of those dimensions for the battery to have grown.

Surprisingly, lithium-ion battery capacity hasn't increased much in the last several years. My old Thinkpad 600 contains cells which have a similar capacity to those in use today. If Toshiba had opted for the modest 2200mAh 18650 cells instead of the 1500mAh 17670 cells, they would have netted a nearly 50% improvement in battery life, pushing the laptop from its stock 3-hour life up to four and a half hours.

You may say that the engineers were attempting to reduce costs by using the slightly-less-expensive 17670 cells. Even if they were, however, I don't believe it gives them any excuse. With the amount of room available to them, they could have made the battery compartment large enough for 18650 cells, and inserted 17670 cells for the standard battery. This would allow them to also market an "extended" battery with the greater capacity. With the ridiculous premium they charge for extra or bigger batteries, they could have made a killing.

I'm still going to re-cell the battery, but I won't be doing it with 17670 cells. Instead, I ordered six 2200mAh 18650 cells. I would have liked to insert nine 18650 cells, but it's already a tight fit. If I need to, I can shave down the inside of the battery case to fit the 18650 cells, but the extra 3mm in the other dimension is too much to compensate for. I'll end up with a battery that is lighter than the original (although that makes little difference to me or my sister), but which has pretty much the same capacity.

Amateur Car Review: Subaru Outback

Background: I travel fairly often, and sometimes have to drive a lot. I've never driven the same model rental car more than once, so I'm getting a fairly broad exposure to different types of cars.

I am by no means a car expert. I drive a '95 Toyota Corolla to work, and my wife drives a '01 Honda Odyssey, so don't be surprised if I ooh and aah over any any new perks or bells or whistles that have become common in the last seven years or so. I won't make any presumption about being able to judge a car's performance, since I just don't drive that way. I also will make no extra effort to find out what different options come standard vs. with a premium package. Think of this as a "normal guy" review. If you rely solely on my opinion while buying a car, you're nuts.

First review: Subaru Outback ('07 or '08, don't know which)

This past weekend, I travelled to Utah to attend the wedding of my wife's older sister. The car I ended up renting was a Subaru Outback. I drove it about three hours to our destination, did a little running around town, and then drove back a few days later.

The good:

• The controls are easy to find and pretty intuitive. I didn't have any problems locating anything I needed, although the radio panel seemed a bit busy.
• In the center armrest, I found a compartment with an auxiliary audio jack in for plugging in an MP3 player, DVD player, laptop, or whatever, along with a standard power connection. So it's easy to hook up your music source and hide it away.
• The cargo area is big. Many full-sized cars, including the Dodge Charger, can't hold our double stroller in the back. It fit just fine in the Outback, and left plenty of room for our suitcases.
• It's quiet, at least to my ears. Lots less road noise than my Corolla, and even a little less than our Odyssey.
• I was impressed with the ease of ingress/egress.
• The clock/temperature/mileage display was useful, but it took me a long time to figure out how to reset the Average MPG display. None of the buttons on that display perform that function. Turns out it's linked to the trip odometer, which is displayed amidst the gauges on the dashboard. You select and/or reset using the button on the dash.
  

The bad:

• I have yet to drive a car that has a satisfactory cruise control. And this car was no different. Going up a slight incline at 60-70mph kicked it down into "this has to be bad for the car"-sounding 2nd gear. I can't really ding this car specifically on this point, since it seems to be a problem with just about every car out there.
  
• The coupe-style frameless windows seemed flimsy. Not having had much experience with this style, I must ask: is this typical for this type of door? I'm used to being able to close the car door by grabbing whatever part of it is closest to me, which is usually the window frame.
• Our kids' car seats fit just fine in the back, but after searching in vain for the top/center LATCH anchor, I gave up and resorted to using seat belts. Only later did I notice the center anchors--they were located in the ceiling. Why the Subaru engineers couldn't find a more appropriate, non-view-blocking location is beyond me. Also, the anchors have removable plastic covers, rather than being tucked inside the seat cushion. Removable means "easy to lose." In fact, a previous renter had managed to lose two of the covers.
• If you want to unlock the car with the key (they didn't give me the remote), you can only do so from the driver's side. And there does not appear to be a way to unlock all the doors at once using the key--you have to unlock the driver's door, open the door, and push the lever. Compare this to my Corolla, where unlocking once will open just the driver's door, and unlocking a second time will unlock all four doors.
• The seats are shaped oddly. During my three-hour drive, it felt like someone had moved the lumbar support from the bottom of the seatback up about six inches. It was mildly uncomfortable at first, but the discomfort did not increase with time, as I expected it would.
• My wife found it comparatively difficult to twist around in her seat to tend to the kids. I can't really explain that one, but it's true.
• The car comes with Daytime Running Lamps. I hate those. If I ever buy a car that comes with DRL, I'm cutting those wires.
• Along those same lines, the headlights are HID, and aimed (predictably, typically, and unfortunately) to the right angle for a motionless car. This means that if you a) go up a hill, b) accelerate, or c) go over a bump, the beams go too high, and you dazzle anyone unfortunate enough to be in front of you. It's annoying, even if you're the one in the HID-equipped car.
• Is 25MPG on the highway the best we can do? My Corolla consistently gets about 33mpg, and isn't much smaller. Without a great deal of perspective, I could be off-base on this one
• The cupholders for the front seats, though effective, are too far back, so you have to contort a bit to use them.
• Our minivan has a thermostat--set a temperature, and you can forget about needing to adjust the climate controls. It's a feature we now find indispensible, but it's one that's unfortunately lacking in most cars. Including this one.
  

Indifferent/didn't test/other miscellaneous stuff:

• It has a roof rack, if that matters to you
• It looks pretty decent, but I'm not an expert in that realm
• You can manually control the gear changes, if that's something you need
• The console buttons are backlit red
• My model had seat warmers. Neither my wife nor I care for them, so we never used them.
• The cargo area had included, removable/retractable covers. I'm not sure when you'd actually use them, unless you had something in the back to keep hidden from casual observers.
  

Overall, despite the overwhelming numbers in the "bad" category, I would have to say that the car was pleasant to drive. I didn't notice the same seat discomfort on our return trip, so perhaps the fact that I had been sitting in a plane for five hours before renting this car had an effect on my shape. Most of the negatives were little things which don't apply to every potential buyer out there.

Frustrations with laptops

It seems that the notebook industry hates me. From a few years of experience hauling around various sizes and type of laptops, it has become apparent that the companies who manufacture, distribute, and market laptops will do anything in their power to make it either impossible or ridiculously expensive for me to get a laptop that meets my needs. Here's a list of my requirements:

1) No Windows Vista. This immediately eliminates all notebooks marketed to the consumer crowd. Nothing in a retail store is going to come with XP. Linux would also be acceptable, provided the graphics hardware plays nice with Compiz Fusion.

2) A 13 or 14" screen with a 4:3 aspect ratio. Widescreen monitors are good for precisely two things: movies and games. They're not wide enough to comfortably fit two windows side-by-side, and you're forced to sacrifice vertical resolution in order to get the widescreen. For viewing documents or web pages, however, widescreen simply stinks. Most manufacturers seem have an aversion to selling anything not widescreen, or anything smaller than 15.4", in the US. Don't believe me? Take a look at the ads that appear in the Sunday paper for Best Buy, Circuit City, OfficeMax, OfficeDepot, Staples, Fry's, etc. They *might* list one or two laptops smaller than 15.4", but none have a "normal" aspect ratio, and none have a reasonable price.

(and things aren't getting better)

3) Long battery life. I want five hours from a standard battery. There are very few notebooks out there that do that.

4) Optional second battery in the optical drive slot. I have a Dell Inspiron 700m at home. Aside from the keyboard (see point # below), it's a pretty decent machine, until you get to its battery life. The standard battery, a 2200mAh unit, lasts less than 3 hours new. The extended, 8-cell battery lasts somewhere in the region of 5 hours (woohoo!). However, I hardly ever use the optical drive, and I would love to have a secondary battery there to extend the battery life by a few more hours. Dell's management decided, in all their wisdom, that since it was a consumer-line laptop, they would not include the hardware to allow me to swap in a battery instead of the optical drive. A little bit of research gives me the impression that such a feature is reserved exclusively for business-line notebooks.

5) Docking connector. Like the second battery, this one seems to be arbitrarily limited to business-line notebooks.

6) Headphone jack on the front. Happily, this one actually seems to be fairly common nowadays.

7) A good keyboard. The keyboard is my biggest complaint about the 700m. The keyboard is very cramped, and for no apparent reason. There's about 3/4" worth of bezel on each side, so there was certainly plenty of room available when they were designing this. Sure, the width of the keyboard happens to match with the width of the screen, but whoever decided that sacrificing a great deal of usability for a small iota of aesthetics should be taken out back and shot.

8) Good internal layout. My experience with laptops doesn't cover the entire industry, but it's apparent to me that they aren't doing comfort testing on these things. Here are a few suggestions:

• Put the battery and the optical drive closest to the user, under the palm rest. Every laptop I've used has the hard drive in front, right under one of my palms. And it gets hot. I'm not willing to spend $1000 to get a cooler SSD to compensate for a fault in the design. This, incidentally, would also help with the laptop's stability.
  
• Don't put ventilation intakes or exhausts on the bottom. This is one of my minor complaints about my 700m, as well as the D600 I use at work.
  
• Aimed at Dell: why does the power supply have to use such an enormously long plug where it attaches to the notebook? The standard Dell notebook power supply uses a plug that is a full two inches long, and protrudes at least an inch and a half out from the notebook when it's plugged in. This looks ridiculous when it's sticking out from the side of my otherwise petite 700m. There's no technical reason why the connector can't be shorter, or why it can't be a right-angle connector like we see on many other laptops.

9) CPU speed isn't a big issue for me. I like the ULV chips I've seen in some laptops. I don't crunch huge spreadsheets or run a highly-trafficked website or play demanding games with my notebooks, so getting the fastest possible CPU is not a priority.

10) Reasonably priced. I get bothered that smaller laptops have a huge price premium. Sure, the smaller size requires better/more engineering work, but why not do a single design for a small notebook and then reuse that design for the bigger ones? Nobody's forcing the OEMs to use a larger motherboard for a large laptop.

That about covers it. Oh, one more point:

Someone needs to convince the laptop manufacturers that it's time to find a new hinge mechanism. We've had the current design for over 15 years, and I think we've all become convinced that it's not good enough. I have only witnessed a very few cases where the screen hinge has neither lost its friction nor gained some amount of play. Yes, the current design takes very little space, but it wears out fairly quickly because it is exposed to high stresses. Of course, in our "throw away" culture, nobody expects you to keep a piece of electronics more than a few years, but some of us are perfectly happy using our hardware for many years.