Our New Ride

Well, I'm at home today. I got the flu yesterday and spent the day on the couch at home. Today I feel better (i.e. I can hold food down) but I'm still not up to speed. I didn't sleep very well at all last night and it's going to be a busy week.

I spent a lot of time last week reading about different vehicles. I checked out reviews, pricing and other info about a variety of SUV type cars. The wealth of information on the Net is invaluable if you are making a big purchase. The vehicle that kinda stuck with me was the Nissan XTerra. So, on Saturday we decided to go to the local Nissan dealer and test-drive an XTerra.

After a lot of bargaining, test-driving, considering and other -ings, we drove a 2006 XTerra off the lot. This is the first time that either of us has ever purchased a vehicle that is brand new so we are pretty excited.

The XTerra supposedly gets 17mpg city and 21 highway. I will be testing that the first full tank of gas I run through it. It has a 4.0L V6 engine that puts out 265 horsepower. It has 4x4 on the fly (meaning you can go into 4x4 at 60mph), is rear-wheel drive and also has 4 low. At 80mph it can still accelerate like a champ. The Painter and I took it out and did zero to ninety in pretty short order, for purely scientific testing reasons of course. The speedometer goes to 140 but I'm going to let that one go without testing. I've also had some fun testing the traction control and some other features in a snowy parking lot.

This thing should go anywhere my Ranger went but is a far more comfy ride and carries more people. The seats in the back fold down to make a big, flat, plastic-coated "bed" that will carry lots of gear and has tie-downs everywhere. There's a roof rack with a lot of available attachments for bikes, skis, etc. It is not as roomy as a larger SUV but it is comfortable and we were willing to make the space sacrifice for fuel economy and overall price.

Since it was an '06, not an '07, we got a lot of rebates and ended up with a pretty good deal. They gave me an excellent trade-in ($500 less than I paid for it new) on my Ranger. I also found out that the Ranger was a relatively expensive vehicle to insure, despite being about 4 years old. The brand-new Xterra only changed my insurance by $5 every six months!

Anyway, we are excited to have a new vehicle, but even more excited to get a car seat in the back. Now I'm going to go lay down before I start throwing up again.

PS: The pic is not our Nissan XTerra but it is identical...color and everything.

Vehicle suggestions

So, we're having a baby. We have a 2-door car that is cheap to drive. It's paid off, the insurance is cheap and it gets 30mpg. We also have an extended cab, 4WD truck that is not paid-off, only gets about 17-19 mpg and is a bit more expensive to insure.

Obviously, neither vehicle is particularly well-suited for carrying children. Since the car is very cheap to drive I don't want to replace it with an expensive vehicle. I would rather replace the already-expensive truck with a more family-oriented ride.

Here's are my criteria for selecting a vehicle that can do what we want to do:

• Some offroad capability. AWD, 4WD, I don't intend to go hardcore offroading but I want a safe winter vehicle and something that can handle semi-rough roads to the decent camping and fishing spots.
• Efficiency. I want a vehicle that can consistently get above 17mpg. A giant SUV, built on a truck frame is probably not what we're after. I want to put money in the bank, not the tank. Oh, I should totally patent that. You heard it hear first. Money in the bank, not in the tank. Alright...
  
• Price. I don't want to spend more than $20k. Vehicles are a liability, not an asset as some people incorrectly believe. It will never gain value. It will always cost you money. I expect to have to pay close to $20k for a larger, family-friendly vehicle but I think more would be silly. Another mark against the hulking, fuel vampires that grace the interstates these days.

I don't keep a close eye on the vehicle market so please leave comments with your recommendations. Here are vehicles I have heard glanced at:

• Honda Element. People love 'em or hate 'em. I think they are very clever in design (don't disagree without reading about one first), they have an interesting body style, they get 17mpg and come with an AWD option. They also fit the price range.
  
• Nissan Xterra. I don't know anything about this vehicle other than the used models are pretty affordable. 2007s start at $20k so a new one is probably out.
  
• Subaru, Toyota and other AWD wagons. Again, don't know much about these. Your thoughts?
• Dodge Durango. Paws rented one of these to go on a camping trip after an antelope decimated their car. It seemed like a very solid vehicle. However, this may fall into the money-burning, fuel vampire class. The windows roll up fast in the event that you are proselytized by zealous strangers, which is always a nice feature (this actually was a concern during our excursion).

There's lots of other stuff out there. Let me know what you drive, have driven, or wished you could drive. Normally I do all the research online myself. This time I thought it might be fun to read some feedback.*

*We reserve the right to ignore, ridicule, consider, reject or otherwise respond to your opinions as we please.

Dual boot, and I don't mean work shoes.

Hi all, you know that responding to my geeky posts will only encourage me, right? Anyway, I will be sure that we post plenty of baby news for the ladies when we have baby news. Currently there is not much to report. Wifey went to the doc again and they changed her due date by a few days and that's about it.

You may have noticed that I refer to everyone by nicknames. Please don't be offended if you find what you suspect is a reference to yourself with a funny nickname. Everybody gets one. Now that I've gotten the disclaimer out of the way...

We had lots of company this weekend! On Friday night the Basin Babe called and asked if she could come hang out for the night. An hour later we were feasting on pizza and swapping tales. She left Saturday morning to meet a friend and then we had two friends from a harvest crew come to stay for Sat and Sun.

Now, if you think that RAM refers to a hydraulic device or if CPU sounds like part of a hospital, you will probably be thoroughly bored by what follows. Stop here. However, if you happen to know what 11111010111 in binary translates to in base 10, you will probably read the bit below with a sort of geeky glee.

The Mission
Sparky, one of the harvest crew, called a few weeks ago asking about installing Linux on his laptop. I was rather surprised because Linux on a desktop is a step into the abyss of computer geekery. Linux on a laptop is an even more perilous venture. To make it more interesting, Sparky wanted to maintain his Windows install just in case he needed it. So, my mission was to repartition (resize) the Windows drive to make room for a Linux install without destroying Window's "functionality" (I use that term loosly).

Linux Explained
What is Linux? I'm glad you asked. Linux is, for practical purposes, completely FREE (legally too) operating system (OS from here on out). It is a path to freedom from the clutches of Microsoft and the rest of Mr B. Gate's evil empire. It is open source, meaning the programming code is available to the masses, and is the product of thousands of folks, more intelligent than I. The name comes from one of its founders: Linus Torvald, who combined his first name with UNIX, a very similar OS architecture. It was originally designed for web servers so it is very stable, almost immune to viruses and is an extremely powerful OS. Linux comes in different "distributions" or distros. These are specific builds, or versions, of Linux that are optimized to do different tasks. For instance, some distributions are designed for school systems, government offices and some for web servers. Each distribution comes with software (again, FREE) that is handy for whatever task it's designed for. Linux is used in many poorer countries and is used everywhere for web servers. Traditionally it has not been very user friendly (many commands are executed from a terminal, like DOS) and in the past was not easily compatible with many types of hardware. Modern Linux has literally thousands of free applications, programs and games that can do almost any task you can imagine. It can run on almost any chunk of silicon that resembles a computer. Oh, and Linux' mascot, that cute little penguin named "Tux" you may have seen around (like at the top of this post), is far cooler than the lame Apple or Windows logo.

Linux Distributions
Now that you know everything about Linux I can tell you that I chose to use the Ubuntu linux distro. Ubuntu is an African word that translates roughly as "I am what I am because of who others are." It was designed to be the most user-friendly version of Linux since the dawn of man. It was also designed to be an OS solution for poverty-stricken schools and governments. It comes with virtually all the tools that the average computer user should need, including the open office suite which includes tools that are very similar to Word, Excel, Access and Powerpoint. I believe that Ubuntu is not only a noble cause, it's a highly functional and golden piece of work. Other famous distros are Red Hat, Mandrake, Debian, Gentoo and there are many others.

Click here for more about the Ubuntu Linux Distribution

OS on the fly
The coolest thing about Ubuntu is the Live CD. You pop the CD in and restart your computer. It boots into a fully functional install of Linux FROM THE CD. Nothing is installed on your hard drive permanently. You can install from the Live CD whenever you want, or you can just see what Linux is all about. Though it doesn't install anything on your drive, it does have the ability to manipulate your hard drive. Herein lies the answer to my partition dilemma.

Partilicious
Time for step one of the process...repartitioning. I had a spare laptop hard drive with windows already installed. I put it in my lappy and tested a force-repartition of Windows. I'm not even going to explain what that means because if you care you probably already know. Point is, it worked and so I did it to Sparky's lappy too.

Does my drive look FAT in this enclosure?
So now I had the Windows install limited to half the hard drive and the other half unallocated space, Ubuntu's new home. Here's the kicker: Sparky needed to be able to fetch his Windows files for use in Linux (yes, Linux programs can read almost all types of files from windows). He could use a flash drive to save data from Windows and then pull it back off of Linux but that solution just didn't satisfy my inner geek. The problem is: For all practical purposes Windows can't read EXT3, the Linux format type. And Linux can't read NTFS, the Windows format type. But both Windows and Linux can read FAT32. Yay! So, I partitioned a 2GB drive as FAT32 so that he could save files from Windows or Linux to a hard drive that the other OS could read.

Mission Accomplished
Long story, slightly less long: I was able to repartition windows on the fly, install Linux, create a swap drive where he could move files back and forth, initiate a dual boot system so he can select which OS he wants to work on when he boots up, import his bookmarks, email, documents and address books into Linux and leave him with a ultra-powerful laptop that can do darn near anything.

The Summary
To illustrate what Sparky's request meant to me I will use an analogy: Imagine that you are a gourmet chef. Every day, the requests you get are for ramen noodles. Week in and week out you make ramen. Then, one day someone comes along and asks you to make a ceaser-salad, tomato-basil gnocchi, a toasted baguette and a complimentary wine. Finally, someone who speaks your language and can challenge you to create something great.

Refreshed, I now resign myself to another six months of spyware cleaning requests.

Final Disclaimer
Don't think that you are just going to install Linux and love it. If it were that easy, Bill Gates would not be a household name. If you do want to try Linux I recommend installing it on a totally separate drive or spare computer (you don't have one?). Never try to install Linux first and then Windows for a dual boot system. Never try to install both on the same partition. And, contrary to this post, I recommend NOT resizing your Windows partition if you like your data. Always save your game before trying the Linux quest in geekland.

Blogging, tracking, hacking and online security

I'm NOT an authority on online security. However, I have a pretty strong knowledge of how the internet works and how you are tracked because I work in online marketing. In fact, I'm tracking you right now. If you view the source of this page (view>source) you will notice a snippit of code at the bottom enclosed in script tags and containing the term "google-analytics". That code tells me where you're surfing from, what your IP address is (the digital equivalent of your home address), every page you viewed on my site and many other things. I will know how you got to my page, where you left and when you come back. You could block this script but my server logs it anyway and I can find you in the log files.

The media has cultivated a certain terror among online shoppers, centered around words like Javascript, cookies and IP address. That's a bunch of crap. While merchants and other online entities do track what you're doing, it's not on an individual level. They are building marketing statistics to find out how to please their customers. If you want to see what hacking, tracking and identity theft are really about read on.

People need to understand that there is no more anonymity on the web then in real life. Stores have video cameras, your credit card purchases are tracked. You have a social security number, a license plate number and many other things that make it easy to find out where you've been and what you're doing. Right down to the fingerprints you leave on anything you touch. Only foil-hat-wearing, conspiracy theorists believe they are being watched all the time. There are some 6 billion people in the world and chances are, nobody cares about you individually.

That being said, a healthy level of paranoia is a good idea when using the internet. Credit card fraud and identity theft mean that someone just might care about you individually. At least enough to "be" you for awhile at your expense. How can you be safe? It helps to understand how hackers work and what the dangers really are.

The reason a blog is dangerous is that people tend to publish quite a few details about their personal life. Let's say that Jaime Smith operates a blog for her friends. She posts about the car they just bought and talks about how they are going on vacation. She mentions her husband's name, Bob, maybe her maiden name and details about their house. She posts pictures of their family that could be used to create spoof IDs. A potential net predator now knows that Jaime will be gone from December 1st through January 15th, will be traveling to Jamaica with her husband and her maiden name was Jones. If he knows her birthdate (birthday post or a post about how hard it was to turn 30 back in 2002) he now knows enough information to guess some passwords.

The hacker runs a password script begining with terms that include her spouse and childrens' names and her birthdate (right now you are blushing because you thought you came up with a very clever password). Now he has full access to her poorly secured hotmail account and maybe even her bank accounts. At this point his access to Jaime's life is only limited by his imagination. He could lock Jaime out of her own email account and send mail to her friends and coworkers stating that they have hired a house sitter (so don't worry about the cars parked at the house). If Jaime has made this collection of mistakes she probably has vast amounts of personal info, maybe including bank statements and account numbers in her email. She also probably uses the same passwords for her online banking as her email and maybe even her blog. If Jaime's lucky all she gets is some porn posted on her blog and locked out of her email as a lesson from a benevolent (and I'm not being sarcastic there) hacker. If she's unlucky she will be stuck in Jamaica for an extra month while she figures out why their bank account is empty, as the hacker methodically cleans out their house.

Hopefully that illustration will show you what the "hacker" is capable of. How much hacking did you read about in that? IP Addresses? Cookies? None. The so-called hacker took advantage of the tools that Jaime handed him. He wouldn't even have to hack her email account. He could just start surfing blogs and guessing email passwords manually until he hits the jackpot.

The point of all this is that if you want a bunch of rules you can find the safety advice for blogging, emailing, surfing etc all over online. Problem is, the rules keep changing and the media is cut from the same block as our digitally-retarded government. There's some old saying (with about a dozen variations) about outrunning a tiger...you don't have to outrun the tiger, you just have to outrun the guy beside you. Welcome to the online world. Now, just be smart, make yourself a hard target and let some other sucker be the victim.

PS: Thousands of people potentially know who I am online. My name is all over the online marketing materials I work on. High profile folks like Matt Cutts from Google and Jeremy Zawodny from Yahoo run blogs where everyone knows who they are. Their blogs are hacked occasionally but they fix it and keep going...

Do you want my job?

Happy New Year everyone. To my surprise, I got three comments on my last post. This is interesting to me because I only told one person that I had even started this blog. Unfortunately for you, now that we've outed our most exciting piece of news, the majority of future posts will be exhaustive and dull.

One thing that I didn't mention in the last post was that I got promoted at work. This seems insignificant when I'm at home and thinking about the changes coming to our homelife. But the significance comes crashing back home when I arrive at work.

Beginning February 1st I will be managing the email marketing for Sierra Trading Post. I currently manage something called Affiliate Marketing for Sierra. Between now and February 1st I will be hiring and training someone for my position, training another person we hired, learning the ropes on the new position, and going to conferences in San Fran and Las Vegas. Needless to say, I'm pretty anxious to find some eligible candidates for my current position.

If anyone knows someone who's web-savvy (this means you at least know some HTML), driven and wants to learn a whole bunch of stuff in not a whole bunch of time, let me know. Marketing experience is a plus. Wait, isn't my sister in marketing?