My Desultory Blog

Posted By RichC on February 13, 2008

Edmonds Inside Line reported a little more on the new Volkswagen Jetta TDI schedule to show up for test drives at North American VW dealerships late spring and early summer. (should be available for delivery to buyers August 2008) Along with information on the 50-state compliant 2.0-liter common-rail diesel engine, the article also reported on the pricing.
“While the Jetta carries the Bluetec badge, referring to VW and Audi’s alliance with DaimlerChrysler on diesel emissions technology, the car will not require the AdBlue liquid urea additive to comply with federal standards.
That is because the engine is smaller than the 3.0-liter V6 diesel engine that the company will install in the Touareg SUV in 2008, which will employ AdBlue, according to Norbert Krause, director of VOA’s engineering and environmental office.”

Norbert Krause goes on to say that the “new engine abandons VW’s old mechanical fuel injection system in favor of a common-rail system using piezoelectric fuel injectors. This technology permits higher injection pressures, which better atomize the fuel and makes it easier to control pollution.”

Of course one of the reasons TDI advocates like their diesel is for the fuel economy. This new smoother, quieter and more powerful engine is also more efficient, so the fuel economy should be better as well. Krause hinted the the 140 horsepower, 235 lb.-ft of torque clean diesel should be in the 45 mpg range.

The new engine is smoother, quieter, more powerful and more efficient than the old Jetta TDI, which won many friends, but it won’t cost more. Fuel economy should be better, in the 45 mpg range, while the engine produces 140 horsepower and 235 pound-feet of torque, according to Krause. The starting price will be “about $23,000 and a typically equipped car listing for $25,000, which is in line with the outgoing model” as reported by Edmonds who referenced VW spokesman Keith Price.

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Posted By RichC on February 12, 2008

Senator John McCain narrowly defeated former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee in the Virginia, Maryland and District of Columbia Republican primaries today while Senator Barack Obama won handily over leading Democrat Senator Hillary Clinton. McCain the Republican front runner is almost surely the GOP candidate for President while the Democrats have yet to have any certainty. I won’t be surprised if the dirt really start to fly as we approach the Texas and Ohio primaries on March 4th.

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Posted By RichC on February 12, 2008

Volkswagen TDI “diesel” owners and those anxiously awaiting the new Jetta TDI are not the only ones frustrated with not having new TDIs this past year … OR hearing that the spring release of the new 50 state VW ‘clean diesel’ TDI as been delayed until late summer 2008. (when most manufacturers will be bringing 2009 models to market)

North American Volkswagen dealers have also listed it at the top on their ‘gripe list’ according to Automotive News when they interviewed Bob Grace, chairman of the Volkswagen National Dealer Advisory Council. “The Jetta TDI originally was due this spring but won’t arrive until late in the third quarter. That’s especially painful because VW didn’t build a 2007 TDI, so dealers have been without the model for some time. The new TDI will be a “clean diesel” that can be sold in all 50 states, unlike prior versions that couldn’t be sold in some major markets, including California and New York. Even with that restriction, the diesel accounted for 15 percent of Jetta sales, so dealers are hungry to sell the new one.” See interview article with Bob Grace. (or PDF if it becomes unavailable)

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Posted By RichC on February 11, 2008

Our Experimental Aviation Association EAA Chapter 284 had a superb meeting Sunday afternoon at the Tri-State Warbirds Museum in Batavia Ohio. (Clermont County Airport I69) About ten members from our chapter met at 2 PM to hold a brief chapter meeting and tour the museum. We enjoyed a guided tour of the aircraft on display — most which fly at least once a year — and a restricted area tour of the well equipped restoration shop. The volunteers giving us the tour shared their knowledge and gave us a great tour. Check out the 50 or so photos in a web slide show below.

I found the restoration of a FG-1D Corsair one of the most interesting, but the impressive P-51 Mustang (Cincinnati Miss), a T-6D Texan, a TBM-3 Avenger, a Boeing Stearman (Model 75), Link ANT-18 Trainer and B-25 Mitchell were all great. We were a couple weeks too early to see the latest restoration project … a Curtiss-Wright P-40 Kittyhawk — another excuse to go back.

If you enjoy aviation, and warbirds in particular, be sure to fly in or drive to Clermont Country Airport just east of Cincinnati. The museum is open from 4-7 PM on Wednesdays or 10-3 PM on Saturdays; admission is $12, or $7 if you are a veteran or student.

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Tags: chapter, eaa284, warbirds

Posted By RichC on February 10, 2008

Space Shuttle Atlantis along with seven crew lifted off on Thursday February 7th with the mission to deliver and attach the European Science Laboratory to the International Space Station. The news hasn’t really made the front page with the deadly tornadoes and political news this past week. The seven astronauts of STS-122 docked successfully on Saturday morning with the Space Station, but are delayed due to an “undisclosed health problem” with one member. The chairman of NASA’s Mission Management Team has not release the name of the crew member, but said “It’s not life threatening.” The crew requested two private medical conferences with flight surgeons and shortly afterward mission control advised astronauts on both craft that a Sunday spacewalk would be delayed. NASA has indicated that a crewman would be working outside during the spacewalk.

According to NASA, the delay in installing the $2 billion Columbus module (science lab), will add at least one day to Atlantis’s planned 11-day mission and the landing is now planned for 10:14 a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 19, at Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

Veteran astronaut, Navy Cmdr. Stephen N. Frick, is in command of STS-122 shuttle mission along with Navy Cmdr. Alan G. Poindexter serving as pilot. Mission specialists include Air Force Col. Rex J. Walheim, Stanley G. Love, Leland D. Melvin and European Space Agency astronaut Hans Schlegel. Poindexter, Love and Melvin will be making their first spaceflight.

Expedition 16 Flight Engineer Daniel Tani, who flew to the the space station on STS-120 mission, will return home with the STS-122 crew. STS-122 is leaving behind European Space Agency astronaut Léopold Eyharts to the complex. STS-122 is the 24th shuttle mission to the International Space Station.

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Tags: nasa, shuttle, space

Posted By RichC on February 9, 2008

I’m probably not the one to listen to when it comes to dealing with “spam,” that’s obvious if you glance at my ‘junk’ email address box (left) … yet here are a couple that might be helpful in keeping a primary email inbox clean.
Caveat: My advice is not heavily researched, nor has it eliminated spam. Its just a method that I have adopted in hopes to efficiently weed through my daily emails. Feel free to add your own idea in the comment section.
🙂
Plan of attack: Use more than one address and set them up for different purposes. For example, only use your business email address for work related correspondence and never use it when filling out forms or making online purchases. To keep your work email somewhat clean, dissuade co-workers from including it on forwards as a “To” address or a “CC” address and if they must forward non-essential items to others, use the “BCC” feature. Try to avoid the mass forwarding of jokes as most of us have noticed the strings of email addresses being forwarded around; these are attractive places for those involved in email advertising to pick up fresh email addresses.

Use a separate address for personal email and yet another when requiring to fill out access forms requiring email addresses and perhaps even another to subscribe to email group lists. These secondary email addresses can be of the free variety, although use them with caution as someday they might charge a fee. (ie. NetAddress, Mac.com, etc) Some services allow the use of filtering which is particularly nice if it is a web accessed mail account. The senders that you find particularly useful can be filtered to forward to your personal or business account — if it turns sour, change the filter.

A similar idea is to set up ‘alias’ email addresses in order to semi-protect your master account. All your mail still goes to your main account, but if an alias turns corrupt (loads of spam), you can change it without losing your main email address. (I prefer the free email services like Gmail, Yahoo mail, or Hotmail … see list)

Another service that works well when requiring an email address for access is to use the Dodgit.com service I mentioned last year. Its handy if you want to see what will be sent back to you. Try this: click SpamControl@dodgit.com and send yourself a message, then navigate to Dodgit.com and put in the above address to see what was sent. This is handy for those pesky news and publication sites that require an email address for registration.

Never post your email address online. Don’t use it in a forum, or any page that includes your email account name and ‘at’ symbol including the html code mailto:email@address. Instead use a coded address line with a couple spaces and the typed word ‘at’ instead … or better yet if it is to be used in a web page, use a little javascript. (see Email Protector as one example)

If you use an email client rather than just webmail, spam filtering software may be included free with your email client or through your service provider. Other products are commercially available (can’t vouch for them) or you could us an ‘add-on’ such as Adblock Plus for the Thunderbird email client. (a plug for Mozilla’s open source email client) I have found that the filters being used by Gmail to be better than most, but its hard to beat a well maintained “black list” or “white list” method offered by several commercial and open source email clients. The primary difference is that a “black list” looks for what you don’t want where a “white list” looks for what (who) you do want. (The “Grey list” offers something in between) Unfortunately managing mail by these methods restricts email too much for many users and as some have said — “it destroys the near-instantaneous nature of email people have come to expect, and throws email back to the early days of email.”
On the other hand, reducing the amount of spam even being delivered would free up servers and bandwidth saving billions of dollars. (Legislature findings in the California Business and Professions Code estimated that over 40% of all email traffic is spam and that it costs the U.S. $10 Billion per year.) Most will find a combination of the above should reduce your spam, or at least the amount of it you will have too sift though daily — very few can claim “I get NO SPAM.” (aka: John C. Dvorak)

Oh … I did mention the spam is a problem in the comment section of my blog once upon a time … so if you’re comment didn’t get posted, its probably one of these.
🙂

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Posted By RichC on February 8, 2008

The delayed new fifty-state legal VW Jetta CleanTDI should start to show up at U.S. and Canadian dealers in June. AutoblogGreen indicated that the first 1,000 diesel Jettas will start to show up, but that each dealer will only be allocated one car as a demonstrator. The test drives will be used to re-introduce VW TDI diesels to North America after a longer than expected hiatus. The post information taken from “Diesel Forecast” mentioned that Volkswagen would “start shipping cars to dealers in earnest for sale to any and all. No pricing yet but VW has previously indicated that the diesel would run about $2,000 extra just like the previous-generation model.”

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Posted By RichC on February 7, 2008

Google, the Internet search engine giant, has a free 411 business directory service that is available from any phone by calling 1-800-GOOG-411.

As a test I recorded a quick ‘lookup’ while driving to Akron, Ohio and will include the audio clip I recorded on my Palm Treo. (or listen to the clip in the right sidebar) The GOOG411 computer answers the call using voice recognition technology which makes hands-free business, address and phone number lookup a cinch … although the accuracy still need a little bit of work.
Besides reading back the phone number and address, there are a couple other options: 1) the information can be text messaged back to your phone — sample at right, or 2) the call can be completed with a free service from Bandwidth.com. (Hint: Its possible to save a long distance charge when using a home or pay phone and connecting through 1-800-466-4411.)
😉

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Posted By RichC on February 6, 2008

This is a test to see if the Reply Media Catcher software can be used to capture a YouTube Clip. (works on some Flash .FLV files, but not on streaming Microsoft .WMV files)

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Posted By RichC on February 6, 2008

I don’t watch that much network television and it is a rarity that my wife and I would both find ourselves anxiously waiting for one particular program to return … but such is the case with the CBS series Jericho. We were hooked back when the series first started and were very disappointed to hear that it wasn’t renewed when the season ended in the spring of 2007. Fortunately we were not alone in our addiction to this show as fanatical viewers from around the country went N.U.T.S. (literally sending and estimated 20 tons of nuts to CBS– see post from last year)

The show enjoyed a revival with a special summer episode as executives at CBS answered the call and reconsidered a shortened second season. Starting next Tuesday (February 12, 2008), Jericho will air for 7 episodes and conclude with one of two endings: one which will conclude the series and one which will open the door for a possible season three — so tune in! If you haven’t watched the show before or missed a few episodes, you can view the entire first season online. Below is the season two preview video … tick, tick, tick, tick … mark your calendars.

JERICHO is a drama about what happens when a nuclear mushroom cloud suddenly appears on the horizon, plunging the residents of a small, peaceful Kansas town into chaos, leaving them completely isolated and wondering if they’re the only Americans left alive. Fear of the unknown propels Jericho into social, psychological and physical mayhem when all communication and power is shut down. The town starts to come apart at the seams as terror, anger and confusion bring out the very worst in some residents. Jake Green (Skeet Ulrich), prodigal son of the town’s mayor, becomes a reluctant hero when a school bus crashes as a result of the explosion. Mayor Johnston Green (Gerald McRaney) is conflicted with the return of his estranged son, but is called to action when the town begins to riot. Johnston’s wife, Gail (Pamela Reed), is the strong, savvy first lady of the town who runs interference between her husband and her favorite son. Attempting to usurp the mayor’s power is Johnston’s political adversary, Gray Anderson (Michael Gaston), who is not above putting his personal agenda before the welfare of the very community he wants to lead.

Though the cloud appears in the distance, it affects all the residents in Jericho, including Dale Turner (Erik Knudsen), the 16-year-old trailer park kid everybody picks on, who finds himself in a position that could change his status; Robert Hawkins (Lennie James), a mysterious stranger who seems to be a jack-of-all-trades as he steps in to help restore order; Heather Lisinski (Sprague Grayden), a pretty young schoolteacher on the bus with her students returning from a class trip when the glare from the explosion causes a terrible accident; Emily Sullivan (Ashley Scott), Jake’s high school sweetheart who lives outside of town and innocently goes about her business unaware of the catastrophe, Bonnie Richmond (Shoshannah Stern), a pretty 17-year-old who is hearing impaired; and Bonnie’s older brother Stanley (Brad Beyer), Jake’s best friend from childhood and an avid car lover who works on the family farm. In this time of crisis, as sensible people become paranoid, personal agendas take over and well-kept secrets threaten to be revealed, some people will find an inner strength they never knew they had, and the most unlikely heroes will emerge.

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