cat slave diary

Category: Life, the universe, and everything…

  • Our new car

    As most of my friends know, I’m a bit of a car nut. It always gives me pleasure to buy a new car, which is why I keep them about three years on average. However, this time it was less than pleasurable on two fronts: I had a terrible cold and Tanya had a broken nose (more on that in another post), and the strange way pricing and haggling works in the USA.

    Dealers have so long dealt with consumers who are terrified of not getting a unbelievable deal that they create fake “invoice” prices, along with the MSRP (RRP to Australians). Generally, you can find out what the invoice price is from web sites. The invoice price is hidden in Australia, but typically, it’s 15-20% less than tax ex RRP. In Australia, you try to get options and the dealer prep charge thrown in for free, and generally I think a good deal is done when this occurs. The dealer makes a reasonable profit, you get a good price, and relations with the dealer remain cordial.

    However, here in the USA folks will start a few hundred or more under “invoice”. However, dealers have holdbacks and volume bonuses beyond the invoice price, which mean that the invoice price is no longer the invoice price, plus they are sticklers on keeping the destination charge, despite freight being part of the invoice price.

    So if you get a car for invoice, the dealer makes about a $500 – $1k profit or so, and you think you’ve done a good deal. However, on some popular cars, dealers will hold out for MSRP and they make a few thousand per car. This is what happened to us. We originally started out looking at the Honda Fit (Jazz in Australia), Toyota Prius, and VW Rabbit (Golf everywhere else in the world). I wanted a Prius, Tanya wanted the Jazz.

    The Jazz is backordered to March. No good for us – the USA is not a place to be without a car. But we found ourselves looking at the new CR-V. Again, as most of friends know, I hate SUVs. But for some reason this one is different. It drove really well, it’s not that huge, and it’s car like (it’s monocoque construction and modern suspension and Honda’s version of all wheel drive (it favors the front wheels unless they slip, in which case drive heads to any remaining wheels with grip)) made it a nice ride. But the dealers knew they had limited stock and lots of waiting buyers, and even though they wanted to shift units (they have to pay tax on any units left on their lot on January 1st), they universally stuck to MSRP. So we walked away, which is a shame as it’s a very nice car.

    Strangely enough I now have a bunch of Honda dealers giving me very close to invoice pricing on the CR-V. So I will remember this in the future – go a week beforehand and walk away when they give you crappy pricing.

    After Honda, we test drove the Prius. I loved it. I wish we could have bought it. But Tanya HATED it with a passion. Oh well. Maybe I can buy one as a second car in a couple of year’s time.

    Some folks on newbeetle.org recommended a nearby VW dealer and the sales dude there. We went to Antwerpen VW, and test drove the VW. I was worried about the test drive as Tanya seems to be very picky with her cars, which is strange as she’s very much a car appliance (A to B) buyer. VW has a reputation (which I can back up personally) for making unreliable shit heaps, so that was weighing on my mind as we test drove a Rabbit. Luckily, Tanya liked it, I liked it, and they had a few on hand so I knew I’d be getting a good deal.

    The haggling was straightforward – he offered us invoice straight up. So the haggling being over, we started on finance. That was awful. After three visits and nearly a week later, we finally can announce our new car: a black VW Rabbit 2.5 auto, with ESP, extra airbags, upgraded stereo and sunroof.

    It drives lovely, is nice and quiet, has a delicious throbby 5 cylinder note, and has all the mod cons you’d expect. The only downside is that our car payments are horrendous, but after 12 months, the car is ours to own. Luckily, my new job has a salary to match, so although we will have to be careful, we’ll be okay. This means when we likely to have a new kid (assuming we succeed!) we will not have any car payments, which will be lovely.

  • Welcome 2007! You cannot have come soon enough

    We’ve moved to the USA and we’re nearly settled in now. Only 13 boxes to unpack… which is funny as we shipped 13 boxes.

    Unfortunately, we’ve had a bit of a illness closeout to 2006, and if anything, we’d like to say “sayonara” to 2006 with a vengeance.

    Just after arriving, Tanya ended up with reactive arthritis. After nearly a month of painful days, drugs which make her ill, and with a lot of tender loving care, she was finally getting better. We had almost a day where she could walk without crutches and do stuff without being nauseous or tired.

    However, we bumped into each other whilst pottering around in the bedroom, and in the jostle her nose broke again. To top it off, I got a bad cold the following day just as we needed to buy a car (I’ll blog about this later). Now I’ve given the cold to her. I can’t imagine how painful blowing a broken nose is.

    We’ve had some really good times here since moving – we were invited to several Christmas parties, offers which we took up. Tanya came to two of them, but unfortunately, had to give Diann’s Christmas party a miss due to her illness, and we had to leave early at the Wichers. Despite the health issues, we’re settling in nicely.

  • Comments for 2006 lost 🙁 🙁 🙁

    My host was attacked, and there was a fair amount of data loss. In this blog’s case, it is all of 2006’s comments.

    We’re moving hosts soon, but unfortunately, some really key comments have been lost, including the ones I didn’t believe in.

    Oh well.

    Andrew

  • Aaaah I can see!

    The last near 24 hours has been a complete nightmare. I now know how valuable my eyes are to my very existence and what a crap time partially blind and blind folks have with normal software.

    I was sitting in a waiting room with the wife, boasting that my glasses were indestructible as they were made of a titanium alloy. Less than two hours later, they were feeling a bit wonky. I took them off to clean them. To my utter surprise and dismay, two halves broke away in my fingers. The titanium bridge, supposedly one of the strongest points on the frame, had clean broke in two. 🙁

    glasses.jpg

    I can’t see crap without them. The entire world is a blur. I can’t read, I can’t see. I turn on universal access in Mac OS X and I can’t use it. Too many programs are inaccessible – Word doesn’t read to you unless you click the button on the speech toolbar to read to you. I can’t easily see that. I magnify the screen up and you see like three buttons at once, and it’s still blurry. I’m starting to get a headache. Entourage is “Button 3 Button 3 scrollbar”. It never reads e-mails to you. Apple Mail is MUCH better. So is Safari – both work just fine with the text to speech accessibility aide.

    At the moment, I’m using Eclipse, and being a Java program it’s simply not working properly with the system’s accessibility aides. So I give up. I’m stuck – I can’t drive anywhere, and I can’t do crap.

    Dinner is brown and white globs of food until they resolve themselves in my mouth. I try watching the big arse TV (bigger than the one Frasier’s Dad has), but it too is blurry. Tanya took pity on me and we went out to a nice coffee and cake place I know at the ferry terminal. There was a black and unreleased SUV (probably the new Freelander) doing an ad there. I wish I could have seen it as I’m a bit of a car nut, and even though I despise SUVs, I love seeing new releases before anyone else. I couldn’t even check out the hot chicks in the cafe as they’re all blurs. Tanya checked out the restaurant for hot chicks (other than herself) for me, and reckoned there was a couple of scraggers and not much else. Best. Wife. Ever!

    We come home, but Tanya would not read a bedtime car magazine story or three to me. I feel really helpless without being able to read myself, but remember her putting up with my pitiful moaning at the cafe and let it be.

    This morning, we got up early and went to a eye wear place which does “same day” prescriptions, had my eyes checked, and luckily, as my glasses are newish and very funky, they had the same exact pair there. They swapped out the broken bridge for the one from that pair. But as I don’t trust these glasses now and I don’t have a spare pair of glasses any more (it’s all packed away), I had my eyes checked and I’ve got a new pair of glasses on order. They’ll be here by next Thursday or so as my prescription is pretty funky and will require grinding of the lens.

    But at least I can see! Yay! I am so incredibly happy.

  • What’s wrong with this picture?

    Argggghhh…

    glasses.jpg

  • Greebo has gone missing

    Greebo, my first cat, has disappeared from her new home at my brother’s.

    Mistress Greebo

    As this is on the same road where she was run over back in 2001, I’m a bit worried. Tuesday will mark a week of her not being around, and realistically the upper bounds for her to return by herself if she’s just having a sulk. I hope that she has found a new home and carer – it can be tough to move and not have your previous cat slave living with you, and two small children trying to pull your tail.

    She is microchipped. Luckily, we changed the contact details for her in the week prior to our honeymoon, so if a vet or the pound finds her, we will get a call to the right address. However, since she was chipped in NSW, it’s not entirely clear if they share data with the Victorian animal registry. I will find out tomorrow.

    If she stays missing by the time we leave for the USA, I will take Meebles with us to the USA. I miss my babies desperately, and I want them to be close to us. I hope Greebo is okay, wherever she is.

  • Attack vector for Windows Genuine Disadvantage

    The other day, WGA decided that my volume licensed copy of Visio was a pirated copy. This is laughable… and annoying. Luckily, the situation sorted itself out; I have Visio 2007 installed and I was able to use that until Microsoft used the rubber hose on WGA’s servers.

    But it got me to thinking how a hostile Trojan could cause massive disruption. Product IDs are easily tamperable. If the user is an administrator, all a Trojan or virus has to do is change the Product ID for Microsoft products (Windows, Office, etc) to random values. It doesn’t need to set it to known pirated Product IDs, but just random ones. These are unlikely to validate under WGA, and millions of folks will end up with software which can open, but not print or save documents. Or in Windows’ case, not boot after 30 days.

    Microsoft’s only solution for this would be a massive program of issuing new ProdIDs to legitimate customers at a massive cost to everyone (including Microsoft), or to give up on WGA altogether.

    If product IDs are susceptible to change, and they are, they must be better protected by the WGA process. If I’ve thought of this, and I’m not precisely hostile, imagine what the organized crime dudes can do.

  • How many inaccuracies can a single song contain?

    I don’t know about you, but I find artists who know very little of what they complain about frustrating. I am not talking about irony and the lack of it in Ironic by Alannis Morrisette, but I wish I was a punk rocker (with flowers in my hair) by Sandi Thom. If you’re a fan of this song, please don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice song, but it’s woefully inaccurate.

    In the olden days, scientist philosophers like Galileo, da Vinci, Newton and Franklin were masters not only in their respective fields and great minds, but accomplished authors, musicians, artists, and in Franklin’s case, statesmen. As with most of my geeky friends, we are passionate authors, voracious readers, keen collectors of music and often musicians in our own right, love museums and galleries and the arts. However, many “artists” do not respect our arts and sciences.

    Let’s go through a few of the foibles of this song:

    • “In 77 and 69, there was revolution in the air”    Where? In 1968, there was the France student riots and Prague Spring, of which only one, the French student riots made any difference with an election being called. In 1969, besides the Viet Nam war, very little revolution happened. Maybe she’s talking about Woodstock. 1977 was the beginning of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, and the seeds of the Iranian revolution, but hardly progressive revolutions as the singer calls it out. The song’s main theme is punk (anarchy) and flowers in the hair (the hippy / free love movement), which is an expression of baby boomers “me me me” selfishness despite its best intentions. We owe a huge debt to the hippies for freeing up attitudes but little else. Anarchy exists today – see Darfur and a host of other hot beds of human misery and crimes against humanity. No one can claim to want anarchy without understanding what it truly represents. 1977 saw the release of Never mind the bollocks… by the Sex Pistols. Punks hated the hippies, so I’m unsure of why she wanted to be both. Anyway, disco / techno won the battle, not punk 😉
    • “Not everybody drove a car”    This is still true today, and if anything, anti-car choices in the major metropolises of London and so on make it very difficult for people to drive to where they’re going. The car is a symbol of freedom and personal mobility, so I’m not sure why this is a bad thing. The days of most people not owning a car or the ability to drive are long, long gone. This is more of a pre-World War II thing. My grand parents owned cars from the end of the war onwards. Certainly, by the end of the 1960’s most families had at least one car and it was an essential part of life.
    • “When accountants didn’t have control”    This is especially amusing. A&R and accountants in the music industry have been entrenched for years. In Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, written in the early 1980’s, the main protagonist fought against the A&R types and noted with extreme wit that music contracts were the devil’s work. This didn’t happen overnight. This is not a product of today’s society, but that of the exploitative music industry she so bitterly complains about.
    • “And the only way to stay in touch was a letter in the mail”    This is also particularly funny. Although I’ve personally only written a couple of actual letters to friends, and none in the last 17 years of being on the Internet, the phone system has been around for quite some time. Telegrams predated the phone system by the some considerable time; the first Atlantic telegraph line was completed in 1858, some 111 years before 1969. It was possible to call internationally from the 1920’s onwards with the laying of submarine cables, and from the 1960’s onwards with the launch of Telstar in 1962.
    • And the super info highway was still drifting out in space    The network that became the first nodes of the Internet were established in 1969 as ARPANET. It has only recently been extended to our local solar system – with a modified form of TCP/IP used to communicate with the Mars Orbiters to form the interplanetary internet (see http://www.ipnsig.org).
    • When record shops were still on top/And vinyl was all that they stocked    This ignores the 8 track (from 1965 onwards) and the compact cassette (from onwards), both of which were popular in 1969 and 1977 respectively.

    Although this song appeals to those hankering after a time long ago, the time the chanteuse desires never existed. I wish that artists were a bit more respectful of history and less hostile to modern life. I’d rather be alive now than living in the past; the world is a beautiful place and it is what you make of it.

    Boomshanka, peace.

  • James Van Allen dies at 91


    IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — Physicist James A. Van Allen, a leader in space exploration who discovered the radiation belts surrounding the Earth that now bear his name, died Wednesday. He was 91.

    A sad day for astronomy and space geeks. More here

  • OSCON

    Work: I owe my boss a huge beer (and a document) and an apology when I get back to Australia.

    Personal life: in the dog house. I got very little sleep these last few days, and I bet my other half is feeling far worse than me. Hopefully, she can come to Vegas so we can sort things out.

    OSCON: Awesome.

    My presentations went down well. I’ll upload the new presentations soon, but the Ajax Security demo went off really well. The room was overflowing with folks, so I’m really chuffed that so many of you decided to come.

    I’ll put up the Ajax XSS demo I did later, but please be aware that these demos are INSECURE by design, and only to test them on your internal systems. The trick is to:

    <img src="kitty.jpg" onLoad="... your javascript attack here ...">

    People forget there’s literally hundreds and possibly millions of ways to do XSS. Do NOT look for script or Javascript and think you’re done. That’s stupid. Make the output safe, it’s faster, it’s simpler, and it works.

    People

    I met so many folks who I had spoken to over the net, or e-mailed. Everyone is so nice and friendly, it’s incredible to meet the greats. I really enjoyed catching up with Chris and Laura, met the Schlossnagles for the first time (cool dudes, cute kids :), and of course, Wez.

    Unfortunately, due to the bad things going on in my personal life, I could not bring myself to hang out after hours as I was feeling extremely down, but life goes on. I was hoping to go out to Portland a bit more; maybe next time.

    Talks

    I went to a fair few webappsec related talks, and it’s truly gratifying to me that the developers had an entire stream dedicated to it. I really enjoyed the PHP Security hoe down – we had a wack job in the back row causing a bit of a stir, but after he left, the hour really flew.

    Portland

    I’ve never been here before. It’s a very nice city, great public transport. I’ll post some images soon as it’s very pretty this time of the year. It was a bit hot when I got here (about 40C) but it soon cooled down to mid 20’s and I’ve been happy with that. 🙂

    A friend through newbeetle.org picked me up from the airport last Sunday, and we went to her place and hung out for a while. She invited over a friend of hers, and I got to see her and her hubbie’s New Beetles (a nice Turbo S and a unired NBC), and her friend’s green Gecko TDI New Beetle. Very nice – I wish we could get that color in Australia. We had breakfast on Friday morning even though I was extremely tired (no sleep) and a bit sad, and she picked me up this morning to take me to the airport. I’m so impressed, I wish I could say I was as good a host when I have folks visiting. Thanks, Debbie – you set the standard!

    Next steps

    I’m off to SF next. I’m at the airport now. I have to spend a few hours this weekend getting stuff together to meet the CSO of a major partner of work’s, like running through the ESA presentations and ensuring that we have something constructive to talk about. I might need to go to Kinkos tomorrow and print off a few things unless my hotel has a printer I can use.