Ramblings of a Martian

Got home around 410ish, went to bed around 425ish. Was woken by the phone around 730ish. Woke up, grabbed the phone, heard people talking, thought "ok, random's got it", and hung up. Zzzzz. Got up, went to the bathroom, and randomdreams comes down to say loree's been in an accident on 99 and do I want to come along. :blink. buh. uh. "Give me thirty seconds".

We drive out there, talk to the medic, he tells us where they're taking her, talk to the cop, he tells us the axle is broken and where they're having it towed. We head off to the hospital and discover we were told the wrong hospital (swedish was diverting to providence). Find providence (I could not for the life of me remember how to get to it), go inside and wait. See loree for a few seconds before they wheel her off to xray. Random went home to get my glasses and some things, gets back a little before loree comes wandering out. Take her to Denny's for breakfast, then to the towing place to empty out the car, then to Honda to see if they have any hybrids (I could have SWORN I heard they were coming out with a hybrid CRV). Then to Toyota, just for the hell of it. They happened, by some random coincidence, to have a used 2004 prius on the lot that had been aquired at an auction. We drove it, we liked it, she bought it. It's not the perfect color (driftwood pearl), and it doesn't have the ultra-cool pushbutton doorlocks. But, it didn't have a 9-month waitlist.

And now it's 524pm and I'm awake and operating on less than 3 hours sleep. And aside from my sense of humor being even more childishly simplistic than usual, I seem to be doing ok.

I'm going to regret this tomorrow.

First, you've likely noticed that these showed up on my livejournal. If you didn't (and you read my LJ), something's wrong with my new posting code. Comments there are disabled, but it links to the real site where comments can be posted. It was agreed this was a better solution than a separate RSS channel.

Second, I've gotten a couple responses to the car computer thing (which I appreciate, guys!) and thought I'd explain what I want a little more. I want a general computer. I want it to play MP3s thru my stereo, I want it to talk to a GPS receiver and tell me where I am and where I'm going, I want (eventally, when the service becomes affordable to me) to access the internet and check traffic maps and movie listings and livejournal (frex). I could get the first two in dedicated systems, but the car is one place I'm in favor of consolidating functionality into as few devices as possible. It needss a large enough screen to be used while driving, it needs a keyboard, and I'd like it to have a touch screen.

No, there are in-dash monitors and dvd players with neat pop-out screens, and some are touchscreen, but I don't know how well they could be tied into a computer (I suspect not at all). It needs to draw power from the car, and put itself into hybernate after the car shuts off (but only after checking for my local wireless net and syncing to base). It needs to come on /quick/ when I start the car. It needs to run Linux. It needs a big hard drive and 802.11b. It needs to tie into the car's onboard sensors to give the car's status. It needs to not void my waranty.

There are probably other things I want from it that I can't think of right now.


http://www.martian.cx/Words/Life/Ramblings/blog.cgi?entry=275