Robert Aitchisons Home Page Has Moved

As of 01-01-2005 there is an all new home page at http://robert.aitchison.org.

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This is the old page, it remains for historical purposes only.

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Robert Aitchisons Home Page

Updated 1-31-2004
Hits Since 1-2-2002

NEW! (1-31-2004) Here's an interesting development

Last week I got into an accident in the Focus, the damage did not appear too bad but unfortunately the Focus has been totaled.

I just bought it's replacement, a new 2004 Mazda3 5 Door. This car is amazing, it's everything the Focus should have been (and was before Ford of North America "cheapened" it for the US market). It's based on the C1 platform, which is shared by the Mazda3, the 2005 Volvo S40/V50, the European only Focus C-MAX Small minivan and the non-North American 2005 Focus. The Focus in the US is staying witht he older, still decent C170 platform. Apparently Ford of NA in it's infinite lack of wisdom has decided that the C170 is "good enough" for ingorant Americans and as the rest of the world gets the 2nd generation C1 based Focus we will be getting the same old Focus with a new (ugly IMO) frunt fascia, a new dashboard (also ugly IMO). It appears to me that Ford of North America has completely given up on the youth market, they have restyled the Focus to make it appeal to the over 50 crowd and will be severely regretting it in about 10-20 years when most of their customers are dead of old age. in any case I'm ranting here...

I bought the 3 from the same dealer we bought the MPV from (Galpin Mazda) and the same salesperson (Philip Policarpio). Buying the MPV was easy but this was even easier, I cannot stress strongly enough to anyone in range of Southern California looking to buy a Mazda, Ford, Volvo, Jaguar, Mercury, Lincoln, Saturn or Aston Martin that you would be well served to call Philip at 818-742-3800

Without further adieu (little late I know), here is the 3 for your viewing pleasure

Zoom-Zoom

Hopefully soon I will replace the Focus page with a new "Mazda3" page. Yeah I'm sure I will get to that really quick. :-).

(10-13-2003) We are having a grocery store strike, I have another article by a proud father.

Jordan crosses his first picket line - I'm so proud

For those of you not in SoCal we are having a bit of a "labor dispute" here. Essentially the unions representing the grocery store clerks & box boys want the consumers to pay higher prices for products so the strikers don't have to pay their share of increased health care costs (that the consumers already have to pay) even though the unions bear no small amount of responsibility for the cost of health care since they spend untold millions of dollars every election cycle to get Democrats elected who are in bed with the trial lawyers which are the main causal factor for the cost of health care increasing so much.

In any case, I didn't really need to go shopping but felt like going so I ask my kids; "who wants to go to the grocery store with me and cross a picket line?" Now my 9 year old is too busy playing GT3 to even care but 5 year old Jordan wants to go.

Now which store do I go to? There are three stores very close to my house, there's Pavilions, which is owned by Vons (the target of the strike), Ralphs & Albertsons, both of which are locking out to show support for Vons. All three have picket lines.

Normally I go to Pavilions for the shorter, faster checkout lines (less check writers) but I could go to a store I don't normally do so I don't have to see the people who I usually deal with.

I decide to be as ethically consistent as possible I should go to the store I usually go to and where I'll go after the strike is over, so it's off to Pavilions I go.

Every entrance to the shopping center is covered, they aren't stupid enough to try to block the driveway. I park my car and go to walk in, of course there are quite a few who are calling to me to shop somewhere else (they want me to go to Gelsons or Whole foods, both of which are non-union (got irony)) nobody tries to block my way but one gets into my path and says something dumb (I forget exactly what). Since they have addressed me directly I calmly inform him that I'm at this store specifically to support it because they are there and that I hope they all get fired for being unreasonable (not exactly true, since I know there are people in the crowd who don't support the strike and would be working except the fear of retribution that accompanies the union membership they were forced into against their will for the privilege of having jobs).

Jordan is taking this all in stride, not being easily intimidated. Unfortunately there are quite a few people who are too scared to cross the picket line and the store is pretty empty. It does seem to be well staffed though the deli counter is closed. I get the items I need and head to the checkout line. On the way out a couple strikers just look at me and one idiot says "thank you for supporting us" (as if a guilt trip is going to work on me).

While I'm loading the car Jordan asks why they don't want us to go there. I inform him that they have unreasonable demands and that they want to scare people away. He asked if they are going to get fired and I tell him that they should if they don't smarten up (I don't bother to mention that they could very well win since unions generally have America by the balls these days). I think that one of the strikers overheard me (he was about 15' away) cause he went over to a larger group and started talking and pointed right at me. (heh)

NEW! (10-01-2003) One of these days I will actually have the time up rework he site. One of the things I hope to add is a place for me to post articles and other witting of mine. Everyone who knows me knows how opinionated I am. A BLOG is probably the best format for the new site but I haven't found any packages I like and haven't ha a lot of time to look.

Below is one of my recent writings, to give you an idea for what I'm talking about.

New legal music purchasing service - promises unfulfilled

Musicmatch launched their own music purchase service to compete with iTunes & BuyMusic. Like BuyMusic, MM is a Windows only service.

Initially I was interested in the service, especially since they say their licenses are "less restrictive" than those at BuyMusic.

My hopes were dashed when I learned that to use the new service you need to download the proprietary "Musicmatch Jukebox" software. Since there is a "free" and "professional" version one can safely expect that the "free" version contains a healthy dose of nagware to try to get you to cough up the cash for the "professional" (if only to make the nag messages stop).

The DRM crippling all the legal services in existence is bad enough. I might be willing to live with that as long as the service gives me the option to re-download the music I purchase as many times as I want for when I rebuild or upgrade my computer. I don't like Windows Media Player but it's on my computer already and there isn't much I can do about it. I don't realistically expect that the record companies will allow MP3 or Ogg Vorbis files to be purchased for fear that the files will be simply placed into peoples "My Shared Folder"'s (they will eventually "get it" but not any time soon)

Below is a message sent to the folks at Musicmatch.

http://www.musicmatch.com/form/company/web.htm

Does anyone get music downloads? Apparently not.

Your CEO was quoted in the press today saying "If you make it too hard on users, they'll just go to Kazaa." I have a news flash for Mr. Mudd, being forced to download a proprietary (and no doubt nagware laden) music player makes it too hard.

I've been waiting for years for way to purchase music online that is both legal and practical. It appears I will be waiting at least a little while longer.

(3-12-2003) Some news, last weekend Tove and I celebrated our 10th Wedding anniversary. We stayed at the Hotel Queen Mary and took a day trip to Catalina Island as well.

In other news, I got a TiVo about a week ago and I'm amazed at this thing. I've essentially stopped watching live TV altogether.

This thing will record what I want, no matter what time of the day or night it's on. If I want Office Space, but it's on at 10:00 a.m. when I'm at work, no problem, if I want to record all my favorite weekend shows but will be out of town for the weekend also no problem.

There are shows & movies I haven't seen in years that I never would see because they are on in the middle of the night or day but I get to see them.

I'm no longer a slave to a TV schedule that conflicts with my personal life, I watch what I want, when I want to watch it. If I want to go out to dinner on Monday night I don't have to worry about missing an episode of Stargate SG-1

On top of this the TiVo is learning the kinds of shows I like and recording them for me, so when I come home on an average day I see 2 shows that I told TiVo to record and 3 more that TiVo recorded on it's own, usually at least 1 of these 3 I actually will like and it's getting better at guessing the more I use it.

One downside, there's ALWAYS something good on TV now, I could sit on my ass from the time I got home from work until I went to bed and never run out of stuff to watch. Office Space will probably have to wait a week or so before I get around to watching it.

I knew this thing would be cool but honestly I had no idea how cool it would be or I would have got it a long time ago.

(2-26-2003) Well it's been a long while since I updated the site, this primarily since I've been very busy plus I've grown to hate the current site layout. I have ideas in my head for an all new (3.0) version but I need the time and energy to make it happen. All I can say is that if you check back every so often there might be something new here, and it ay not suck.

I've removed the banner at the bottom of the page since it's no longer relevant.

Oh yeah, I'm 33 as of yesterday, I had a fairly sucky birthday though.

(8-27-2002) Summer is winding down and we are gearing up for a new year for Cub Scouts. David is moving to a new school for Third Grade.

(7-9-2002) Check the Focus page for new news including the announcement of the new message web site Team SoCal.

Team-SoCal

(6-18-2002) I removed the 2 webrings and added a banner at the bottom where the old Millenium countdown used to be.

(4-30-2002) Apparently I've been under a rock for a while and didn't notice that Fox in their infinite lack of wisdom has decided to cancel Futurama. There is a campaign to save Futurama including a petition to sign and contact information for the musheads at Fox.

SAVE FUTURAMA! CLICK NOW!

(4-16-2002) Well it's been a while since I updated. For some news, I started a new job, the good part is that it's a good job, the bad part is that I have to commute to Downtown L.A.

Cub Scouts is taking up more of my time as well. As always my car take up my time and energy.

Finally, I took some REALLY old stuff off this page and moved it to the history page.

(1-2-2002) I reset the web counter after a little over 2 years. Of course I preserved the old counter image for posterity.


Hits between 12-13-1999 and 1-2-2002

(12-11-2001) I made some minor changes to the formatting of the page. Also I added a lot of new pictures of the Focus to the Focus page.

Finally, I promised a while ago pictures of the new MPV and finally I have delivered, for your viewing pleasure.

the Focus and the MPV
the Focus and the MPV

(12-07-2001) I have added a Toolkit page, this replaces the My Picks page since it was stupid.

Remember this is Pearl Harbor day, in fact the 60th anniversary of that terrible day.

(12-05-2001) Some new news, I have become a member of a brand new car club called Team Slow, there are actually some quite fast cars in Team Slow (mine not being one of them), the name is designed to poke fun at all the car "crews" who have "speed", "velocty" or "racing" in their name. This is a nationwide (soon to be worldwide) club open to all types of cars and their drivers.

For more information about Team Slow and to find out about joining check out the Team Slow home page or see the membership section of the Team Slow Forums

I will probably be resetting the web counter soon, on the 13th it will be 2 years old, seems like it's time.

(10-16-2001) I made some changes to the webring, it is no longer owned by Yahoo!.

One thing I haven't been talking about is the fact that David has recently become a Cub Scout. I have been getting involved too. So far it is a lot of fun for both of us. I may add a Scouting page to the site in the future.

(10-04-2001) I made the first update to the Opinions page in nearly a year, anybody care to know my opinion on AMD processors?

(9-13-2001) My deepest condolences go out to the victims of the terrorist attacks and their families. 09-11-2001, the new day of infamy.

Yet even amidst the destruction there is hope and procurances.
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E-Mailing Me

robert@aitchison.org

Copyright © 2001 Robert Aitchison. All rights reserved.