Car Radio

The ABS light came on in my car, so I made an appointment to have it checked.  

Meanwhile I put in a new stereo--the original was a cassette with 6 disk trunk-mounted CD.  The CD player wouldn't play CD-R's, and the cassette auto reverse was based on volume rather than end of tape.  This made using an adapter to play MP3's a problem, because at gaps it would reverse back and forth, and if you didn't start the MP3 player quickly enough it would spit the adapter out.  

Turns out that diagnostics for the ABS system come through the radio plug, so the mechanic had to remove  the new radio to read the code.   And the factory radio shoved a splinter of plastic into my thumb as I was tossing it in the trunk, on my way to work, when I was running late. 

The new radio is fantastic, and is working out just as I planned.  I've got music on the USB drive. I can shuffle either a single folder or the entire drive.  I have my music organized into folders based on what my wife and I both like, and what only I like, depending on who is riding.  I've got podcasts on a CD Rewritable, and they stop and start without losing my place when I start and stop the car--this was the main reason for the new radio, and alone worth the switch. 

One minor downside is that apparently the VW antenna is weak, and apparently needs an amplifier.  I can pick up only one station.   Not a significant problem--I can't think of the last time I listened to the radio except for a short trip out of laziness. 

USB

I replaced the stock stereo in my Beetle with a new low-end JVC that can play CD's, MP3's recorded on a CD, and MP3's on a USB drive.    I don't plan to use the USB drive for anything else, so I wanted it as small as I could easily get.    I could at least remove the folding cap, and figured I'd open the plastic up to see how much more length could be safely removed--If nothing else, remove the shell and use heat shrink tubing to cover the circuit board.

The shrink tubing turned out to be unnecessary.  The little metal bit in the lower right corner is the entire drive, the rest is just a handle.

The first replacement hard drive I ever bought was a massive 1.6 Gigabytes.  at least 10 times more expensive, and 100 times bigger.  Doesn't seem that long ago...

8 quarts of soup

Campbell's tomato soup made with milk was one of the simple foods I missed most when I was in the Air Force.  The chow hall would often have tomato soup, but I think it was made with water-not sure the details, but it wasn't good.  

Trader Joe's Tomato and Roasted Red Pepper Soup is the first tomato soup I've had that is better than what I grew up with.  The texture is right and the flavor is excellent--the peppers and spices make it a good bit more interesting without being excessive.   I don't get to Trader Joe's that often, so after trying this soup on our last trip,  I decided to stock up this time.

(Despite the periodic reviews of Trader Joe products, I'm not sponsored by them in any way)

Partial blog feeds.

I read a lot of blogs in Google Reader--usually more than I can keep up with.  I use Reader's tags function to sort and prioritize--Blogs I never want to miss, comics in their own section, etc.  I've started to read blogs from my phone.  Unsurprisingly the G2 "Google phone" works very well with Google Reader-there is a dedicated app that downloads batches of blogs, so even with a painfully slow or spotty network connection the next blog post pops up instantly.

...except when the authors decide to only do a partial feed, only showing the first paragraph or so in RSS, requiring you to click to their site to read the rest.  I can kind of understand this for commercial blogs--although a better alternative is to include ads in the RSS feed.  I can't understand why noncommercial blogs  do this.

This was a minor annoyance when I was reading exclusively on a computer--but with the limitations of a phone, makes most partial-feed blogs not worth the effort.  I've decided that the vast majority of partial feed blogs that I used to read are going to the end of the line, into a different folder.   I'll only read them in the very rare cases when I'm caught up with everyone else.  

(If you are using Blogger.com or Blogspot, fix this by going to Settings, site feed, and pick "Allow Blog Feeds Full")

holes

Grandson at the park.  Click to embiggen.