wrm

Rental cars

When I was in Dallas in 2005 I saw the then new Mustang. When I started browsing rental cars (about two years ago, because we wanted to go last year already) I saw that Hertz offered the convertible Mustang, and I was in lust.

Hertz’ web site made it clear that I’d be lucky to actually get the Mustang, the convertible of choice was the Sebring. I booked one in any case. Well, the new line up is out, and I now have a booking for a Eclipse Spyder for the low price of $413… not bad, but while two adults and two kids will fit in the ‘stang, I don’t think I can fit four people in an Eclipse Spyder. And because it’s now so much closer to the date, even a Camry will now cost me $860. Bastards.

Fox has a slightly tarnished reputation*, but… they also have the Mustang.

<– Is dit nie fokkin cool nie huh?

Versus

Decisions decisions… although trunk space is a concern.

Fox only has a few locations for returning the car — while I can drop of a Hertz rental in the middle of San Francisco I will have to drop the Fox rental at the airport. This is either a pain in the arse or a blessing — if I keep the car while we’re in San Francisco, I have to pay for parking ($20/24 hours), but we won’t need to pay for transport ($8/head Powell Street to SFO on BART, one way) to town after drop-off and back to the airport when we leave — that more than breaks even IMO.

* Two stars on Yelp, while Avis and Hertz have three. National has five starts, but wants $1600 for the week.

2011-05-09 by wrm USA 2011 0

USA Trip 2011

One of the first things Tanya told me after we met is that she wants to go to Disney World. Well, the time has come (we wanted to do it last year this time but the FIFA world cup pushed airfare prices through the roof).

Tickets are booked, we’re flying out on the 15th of June and returning on the 9th of July. Our itinerary is explained in detail in the page linked at the top right — ~~it’s password protected to foil stalkers or something~~.

Brief outline: San Diego, rent-a-car to Los Angeles and San Francisco, then fly to Las Vegas, rent-a-car to the Grand Canyon and up to Ogden and Yellowstone. Fly to New Orleans for a brief visit, then the dreaded Disney to extract what money we might have left from our pocketbooks.

We’ll be staying in hotels, with friends, and camping. We’ll be seeing museums and zoos and geysers and wildlife and cemeteries and talking meese. Jessica is hoping to meet up with a famous author whose work we might one day see on TV, but only if his crazy schedule coincides with ours. We’ll be blogging along the way, I have an EEE running puppee, Tanya has a Dell 910, Jessica has an Acer Aspire One (now running XP) and Tamsyn has an EEE running XP. Tanya has a new camera, and memsticks and CF cards are on order.

It’s going to be hectic.

2011-05-08 by wrm USA 2011 1

XP on an Acer Aspire One

A while ago we bought Jessica an Acer Aspire One running Linux (this is the cheaper option, the XP ones were about double the price at the time).

She got tired of that and asked me to install Windows XP.

I tried following the tutorial , which involve putting XP on a memstick, but I gave up on that, borrowed the external USB CD drive from work, and installed from the CD. That worked well.

You’ll need to download the drivers here.

(I also tried installing Windows 2000 on my eeepc (I hate XP) but that didn’t work so well, so I’m running puppeee now).

2011-05-08 by wrm Computers Geek 1

I am not worthy

Between my brother and myself we have five and a half pinball machines.

This fellow has around 700.

In addition to collecting and restoring pinball games, Conger […] owns 15 classic cars (none of them running) and has a collection of more than a thousand nonadjustable wrenches. And somehow he still finds the time to be married.

(emphasis mine, of course :-)

Gorgeous eye candy. Thanks Roland.

2011-05-06 by wrm Pinball 1

Flattered

To prove that bribery and corruption is alive and well, welcome to the blogroll Salamander.

2011-04-19 by wrm Geek Guns 0

Alive

<me> Yay! The internet’s up again! *

<Tanya> Yah, but is it going to stay up?

<me> That’s what she said.

(you had to be there)

* Internet’s been down for a week. Telkom lines. And on a good day, internet is 384 kbps down and a whole lot less up ADSL. 1999 indeed.

2011-04-12 by wrm Farting around Geek 0

Posted without comment…

… but a translation is available on request.

Basically it involves my brother, his girlfriend, a new-year’s eve party, and my brother’s girlfriend’s father’s shotgun.

2011-03-25 by wrm Farting around 1

Tamara’s on the money again.

Solar’s a supplement at best, and wind turbines are nothing but prayer wheels for suburbanite Buddhists. In the long term, it’s either get comfortable with nukes or continue servicing King Abdullah, your choice.

2011-03-15 by wrm Farting around Geek 0

A good example…

… of a bad example.

Take a hermit living in a big house all by himself, add winemaking as a hobby[1], and before you know it he’s rolled up the carpet and planted a tank in the living room.

Gotta love my bro, he sets the bar low so I can shine :-)

[1] Or maybe obsession.

2011-03-11 by wrm Farting around 0

Much needed waterworks

This is something I’ve been planning for years, finally figured I’d get Frank to do it since I’m not getting around to it myself.

15mm black irrigation pipe, on brackets, running all the way down the side of the house and around the corner. Once I add microjets, I’ll be able to water the whole stretch at the turn of a tap. Ain’t technology awesome?

2011-03-11 by wrm House 0