I’ll admit that I didn’t know much about CARFAX and the company history before seeing this Toyota FJ Cruiser on the road. It stimulated me into looking up the company thinking “hmm, a lot of car shoppers use their services.” I’ve used their services as well to find out the history of a vehicle, but I’ve never contemplated how large the company was or how much they dominate their market niche. Over the past 20 plus years, they’ve assembled a database of over 5 billion records. The privately held company uses affiliates and is a subsidiary of R.L. Polk Company based in Southfield Michigan, although it was started in 1986just in Missouri to supply vehicle history to the dealer market … by ‘fax.’ As the Internet grew facsimile machines were no longer the best means to research vehicles and the web-based CARFAX.com came along. They now service over 23,000 dealer subscribers and record 1.25 million web visitors per month.
I delayed my travel plans as a quick snowstorm and cold weather covered most if not all of Ohio with a blanket of beautiful white snow. Local schools were closed an a short trip in the morning on the road had me rescheduling appointments. By afternoon all was well and I used my Palm Treo 700p to capture a couple ‘through the windshield’ photos.
For those appreciating performance tweaked TDI diesel engines in our VeeDubs, Audi will be enticing us with by putting a the 2.0L TDI in its attractive 2009 TT sports car. The engine is the same diesel that will be in the A4 and the Volkswagen Tiguan, although it will be tuned to crank out 200 horsepower. There isn’t any news that guarantees the U.S. will see this diesel, but it sure would be on my ‘gotta see it list.’ According to LeftLaneNews Audi will debute the TT TDI in March at the Geneva Motor Show.
For those of you who enjoy the online photo service called Photobucket or Google’s Picasa and the Tivo DVR, here’s a new feature that makes slideshows easy. According to Engadget’s post, “photos will be pulled down at the highest resolution your Tivo supports, so Series3 and Tivo HD owners will get HD-res images displayed, and what’s more, users can also access friends’ photo albums. The feature should be rolling out starting today.” I’ve put together a YouTube demo that demonstrates setting up Picasa.
Shortly after the school year began, Lakota East High School in Liberty Township, Ohio (our local HS) started prepping for a late fall production of an Agatha Christie novel made into theater production they called “Ten Little Indians.” After a complaint was filed from a local member of the NAACP due to the racial history, the play was cancel. (threats of protests were rumored) The national news media picked up on this story and eventually the administration decided to reschedule the production with a few tweaks and the officially licensed name — “And Then There Were None.”
A little history: The Agatha Christie mystery was originally titled “Ten Little Niggers” when released in 1939 in England. The Americanized version was published in the U.S. in 1940 as “And Then There Were None.” Since that time, the novel was adopted to play, re-published book and film and usually titled “Ten Little Indians” in the U.S., although it maintained the original title in the U.K until the 1980s.
It is sort of a tradition in our family to add a few odds and ends to the Christmas tree — this year we’ll add some ‘cotton’ I picked up on my way back through Alabama on this past week’s trip. I’ll also include two quick photos as I spent a morning in Destin and Fort Walton Beach Florida getting my fall ‘saltwater’ fix.
Also, I had to repost my quick cellphone to flickr.com to blog post from earlier in the week … there was a question about a ‘city skyline?’
😉
RC looking — but it does fit a pilot — twin engine airplane. I’ll try to remember not to complain about legroom when flying commercial coach anymore.
🙂
Entering a quick post from the road while stopping on I-65 in southern Alabama (Greenville) a trip down memory lane … Krystals and Rolaids. I suspect that only one reader will understand this entry, nevertheless I’m including a cellphone photo to see if the site is still working. (I’ve been in Crestview Florida visiting with another Sonex experimental airplane builder and picking up a few more components for my project)
If you have tried to access My Desultory Blog recently, you are no doubt experiencing slow — or “NO” response on my website — Grrr. I’ve been frustrated with my current host for some time now and go round and round with the hope that a ‘cure’ is just around the bend. So far they have not come through.
The issue is a MySQL database problem and although the company I host with has attempted to upgrade the 15 or so servers from MySQL 4.1 to MySQL 5 and have improved their hard drives, the machine my data is on is not running smoothly. (nor has it been for a while)
As a reminder, we had previously attempted to upgrade mysql15.powweb.com to MySQL 5, but the server did not perform quite as we expected. We had temporarily moved it back to running on MySQL 4.1 while we explored the issue further.
I’m looking into moving my account to a server at my office or to one of the other providers that I’ve use and have little problem with. (see Cirtexhosting)
For those of you who enjoy the online photo service called 
Shortly after the school year began, 
If you have tried to access