This year it was decided that I was going to get a certain Casio watch for New Year as a present from Alena. Since she claims she doesn’t really understand much about watches the choice was left to me. After days and days of research and deliberations I set my mind on one particular model.
We soon discovered that the model is nowhere to be found online except for one store. Alena placed an order, but to our disappointment got an email within an hour saying that there was a mistake on the site and they didn’t not have the watch in stock. I should mention that the list price for this item is $400, but a lot of online places have it for $299, when they do have it in stock that is. Read more…
It took us a bit over a month to do the first car mode. Last Friday, right before our drive to Pennsylvania, we got the windows of our car tinted1. It’s not nearly as dark as the previous car — 35% on the doors and 20% in the back. It does make it more comfortable inside though.
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More then a week ago Alena and I took a couple of shots of interior of our car during the night with all the lights glowing. One of them is HDR, but the colors are slightly off on it from the true ones. The other one doesn’t show as much detail, but the colors are realistic.
I didn’t want to post them before I had a chance to take a couple of shots during the day time. And we did that today.
Mouse over the images for a detailed description.
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It hasn’t even been a month yet, but there is already over 2,000 miles on the odometer of our car. Chrysler recommends to have the first oil change done at 6,000, but it sounded just way too long to me. I figured it’s a good idea to get all the break-in particles out of the engine sooner. I used the opportunity to switch to a fully synthetic oil. The car took in 7 quarts of Mobil 1 oil and so far seems to be happy about it.
And yesterday I tested out the built in 0 to 60 timer. For whatever it’s worth it came out to 5.7 seconds, and I guess it’s not a bad result for a car that weights over 2 tons. Also I’m sure it can be improved if done on the track and not on the entrance ramp of I-95.
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says:
October 17, 2008 @ 23:11
Hey Dan.
I found your blog. 
It was definitely a good decision to change oil. There is always some assembly lube, etc. in a new engine.
5.7 seconds is good time on the street with an accelerometer. The last time I used Gtech-pro (with an old engine) my car’s 0-60 time on the street was 5.1 seconds. A the track the same G-tech showed 4.3 on drag radials for a 13.0 second run. I’m sure a stock 300C won’t show that much difference but I would expect at least a .5 sec improvement at the track with good preparation.
Dima
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says:October 18, 2008 @ 10:30
Dima! Welcome to the blog!! I wanted to send you the link, but didn’t know if you’d care. 
Appreciate all the comments! We always love them.
How did you find the blog? 
Although it seems to come up on many things if you enter Alena and Daniel into Google. 
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says:October 19, 2008 @ 02:29
The blog came up on some Google search I made.
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Alena got me a pair of new sunglasses for my birthday. And not just any pair, but a pair of Oakley sunglasses — LIVESTRONG Flak Jacket XLJ. And it doesn’t end there. It’s not a regular pair, but a serialized limited edition version.
I wanted to get a new pair of Oakleys1 for quite some time already. My Prada glasses are nice, but only for the city. If you try to do any kind of activity in them, they just slide off. Oakley however makes the best sports activity glasses in business.
We went to a local store and tried several pairs. I was interested in Flak Jacket or Straight Jacket version. Flak Jacket with normal lenses looked OK, Straight Jacket looked better, but Flak Jacket XLJ2 looked the best.
Next step was to pick out the color combination. Oakley lets you customize many aspects of them. They also have a huge collection of lenses for different purposes. The best part is that Flak Jacket frame lets you easily exchange lenses, depending on the weather conditions or the activity.
Either way, I ended up liking the LIVESTRONG version the most, but it was sold out of serialized version everywhere. Zappos.com of all places, had a pair available though, and we ordered it.
I took them to our Pennsylvania trip. They are very comfortable, light and cover fully the field of view. They also have a pretty good grip. I went swimming with them and was diving. The lenses have special coat that makes the water just slide off. I’m very happy with my new Oakley glasses.
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We have the weirdest vending machine in our office. That’s what I call a good idea and a horrible execution.
It runs on nothing else than Linux. It’s able to read your finger print and based on that know how much money you have on your account and if it can dispense drinks for you or if it needs to recharge your credit card. And if something gets stuck while dispensing it generally can sense it and give you an option to select something else or try to drop the item again. Read more…
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says:August 12, 2008 @ 12:30
Вот во что может превратиться Линукс в неумелых руках разработчика
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Yesterday we went to our local Best Buy and bought1 a whole bunch of mice. I wanted something for my Mac, since some development tasks with a touch pad are much harder to perform than they should be. A natural choice was Apple Wireless Mighty Mouse — Apple design and bluetooth technology in one package. So far I like it.
Another one was for Alena’s office. Apparently they still use non-laser, non-optical mice at her company, and since she spends all day holding that thing in hand it makes sense to get something nice, comfortable and wireless. We went with Logitech MX™ Revolution. It feels good in hand, has additional buttons to speed up certain tasks and comes with a charger — she doesn’t need to worry about replacing batteries.
- Apple’s mouse was $69.99, Logitech’s was $99.99. [↩]
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says:August 27, 2008 @ 10:28
[…] нам в подарок из Арубы, и пачку с разными чаями. Мышка, кстати, оказалась очень удобной — все мои коллеги […]
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A week ago we were thinking of what to get my mom for her birthday and she said that a new computer would be a good idea. Indeed, their old Dell felt like an ancient animal at this point and was extremely sluggish. The total size of HD space on the poor thing was 27 GB!
We decided that we’re going to put in some money for the new machine and that my dad was going to give the rest. I went to Dell and put together a decently specced computer — Read more…
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says:July 27, 2008 @ 14:47
Was it FedEx fault or fault of Dell for refusing to cooperate and assist their customer? I think the Dell should have fixed everything the second you called and the second they verefied your info.
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says:July 27, 2008 @ 15:17
Both. I was very upset about the whole thing. Dell refused to do anything and FedEx was saying they need to hear from Dell to change it. Dell said they need to hear from FedEx to give them the correct info.
But when FedEx started writing down my info and sending it over to the distribution facility — the information wasn’t getting to the driver.
First I had wrong apartment on tracking, then they said I wasn’t home, even though my dad was and there was no notice on the door. Then it went to wrong street address and so on. It’s gotten beyond ridiculous.
But yeah, I was really upset with how Dell handled it, not any less then with FedEx.
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says:July 29, 2008 @ 10:07
i’m just glad your parents finally got the PC, i’m sure they were very upset by that point, hopefully they can put the Delivery mess behind them and enjoy the beast PC.
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I’ve never had a case for a phone before. But then again I never had a phone that seems so fragile to a drop. Don’t get me wrong, the build of iPhone seems sturdy and solid, but because of the huge glass display it seems it won’t live through a fall.
After reading a number of reviews on different sites I decided to trust iLounge and their opinion. Out of several B+ graded1 cases they had Griffin Wave seemed the most visually appealing, yet slim, to me.
We ended up picking up a pair of these at BestBuy yesterday. They didn’t have any color choices and they were sold as a pair — one was black and white and another one was green. Both of these are translucent to some degree.
After putting the case on one thing becomes apparent — it feels amazingly good in hand compared to the naked plastic of iPhone. It stops being slippery and it won’t collect grease the way iPhone does.
The cases came with a screen protector, but I decided not to install it. It’s very unlikely that glass is going to get scratched, and I don’t want to sacrifice even a small portion of touch screen sensitivity.
The fit of the case is also very nice, except for one corner where there is no locking mechanism of any kind is present. There is a 1/3 of a milliliter gap between the top and bottom parts there which annoys me slightly. Otherwise I think it’s a very good buy.
- B+ was the highest rating for iPhone 3G cases on iLounge. [↩]
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One uncool things about the iPhone that I start to notice more and more is the amount of grease that thing manages to collect. Now either I need to start showering 4 times a day or something, but I get the urge to stick the damn thing into a dishwasher more and more often. (2)
says:
July 24, 2008 @ 10:57
says:
July 24, 2008 @ 11:12
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says:July 24, 2008 @ 10:57
You mean, like, using the iPhone instead of a bar of soap? 
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says:July 24, 2008 @ 11:12
Now that wouldn’t help me, nor iPhone to get degreased, would it?
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I’ll start with the pleasant part. On July 11th we bought a pair of iPhones 3G. Mine is a 16GB white model and Alena’s is an 8GB black model. They both look great.
Here’s the box of my iPhone 3G right after we got home.
In the box we find what? Yes, iPhone, how did you guess?
And here’s its flip side. White one. It doesn’t collect finger prints as the black ones do. The screen however is another story.
Here are the boxes from 2 iPhones with a white phone on top. As you can guess the box color corresponds to the color of iPhone’s back side.
And here I have the phone hooked up to my Mac, trying to activate it through iTunes. This actually took quite a while to get done which brings me to the first part of the whole story. The actual process of buying the phones. And that part was not so much fun.
We arrived to the local AT&T store 15 minutes to 8. Yes, in the morning. When we got there were greeted by a rather long line. On the other hand this is probably considered a very short line when compared to some that were formed around Apple stores in Manhattan.
At 8am they let in several people and that’s pretty much when the fun part ends. After that it was 4 hours of waiting under a brutal sun. The line was not moving because AT&T couldn’t process any orders. We were told that iTunes and AT&T internal system went down. At some point they just started selling the phones without activation. Then the system came back, but was moving extremely slowly. They were letting 1 person at time into the store and it was taking hours upon hours. Then we were told that they are running out of 16GB models and we weren’t even sure if we’ll be able to get any.
By the time we got to the door I was pissed and wasn’t even sure if I’ll get what I want. We let Maruk go in first, since it seemed he would get a heart attack if he ended up without one. But once we were inside all went well. I actually ended up with the very last white iPhone they had. Some poor bastard after me had to go with a black one.
The whole buying process went very smoothly. We got our numbers transferred, accounts set up and so on. I even managed to apply 18% service fee discount, but we won’t know if it will work before we get our first bill.
After having the phone for a couple of days I must say that it lived up to the hype and my huge expectations. It’s as great as everyone said it was. The hardware is great and the software is just awesome. I’m glad we did this the first day and waited until the end so we didn’t have to go searching for it somewhere else the day after. That’s all.
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says:July 15, 2008 @ 18:12
I am happy with the phone too! 
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says:July 16, 2008 @ 11:44
I was impressed by how responsive / accurate the accelerometer input is 
December 22, 2008 @ 11:10
The first step in getting over an addiction is admitting that you have a problem
December 22, 2008 @ 11:14
To what addiction you’re admitting to?
December 23, 2008 @ 05:36
Changes, interesting changes…
Sneakers, Oakley sunglasses, excitement about Casio G-Shock model. What’s gonna be next? Ferrari? Nah… Probably thai-boxing trainings
December 23, 2008 @ 05:37
Wait a minute, what happened to Movado watch?
December 23, 2008 @ 12:05
Nothing happened to Movado.
Why does everyone have a notion though that a person can own only a single watch? 
December 23, 2008 @ 12:29
I also have two watches, one of them is Casio, well you know
But I find myself wearing Tissot more often lately. G-Shock is great for activities, sport, etc.
December 23, 2008 @ 13:12
Yeah, that’s my thinking too — Casio for hiking, camping and such, Movado for other stuff.
I found another watch that I really want — it’s nicknamed Seiko Orange Monster.
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