The Daily Diversion Archive For February, 2005

Wednesday February 2, 2004

This is becoming something of a car blog.

We went out to test-drive some more vehicles on Saturday night. Unfortunately, car dealerships seem to close after 6 on Saturday. Odd. I suspect it's blue laws.

Anyway, we spent about 10 minutes at the Nissan dealership before they closed. 10 minutes was enough, though, to answer some questions we had. We're looking at station wagon/small SUV/sport wagon things. Nissan had three vehicles we were considering.

The XTerra, the Pathfinder and the Murano were the contestants for this fact-finding mission. We didn't get a long look at any of them, but we did get to sit inside each. That's really all it took to narrow out two of them.

I like Nissan. I own one. They have a hum-dinger of a V6 motor that really goes. I have a 3L in the Maxima, and the Murano and Pathfinder have the 3.5L of the same sort. I had high hopes for the three of these, but it was very easy to cross two of them off the list.

The XTerra was very small inside. Sarah and I, sitting in the front seats were uncomfortably shoulder to shoulder. Granted, we're not small people and both of us have large shoulders, but the XTerra was small inside. We really didn't look any further.

The Pathfinder is a large SUV thing. Oddly, it too is small inside. It probably has something to do with the body-on-frame structure of the thing. It was remarkably close inside. I didn't have a lot of headroom and Sarah didn't have a lot of legroom.

The Murano fit very nicely. It's a bit odd-looking, but the design has really warmed up for me. I hope to get free some time soon so that I might actually get to drive the thing.

We had a lovely dinner on Saturday night. We went to Ristorante Luci. Oh my was that good. We'll be going back very soon. Wow. If you get the chance, go. Bend every effort.

Wednesday February 23, 2005

Rotavirus sucks ass. How do I know this? The way Gus looked when I saw him in the emergency room after a day of puking and diarrhea spoke volumes about how much Rotavirus sucks. He was listless, had a high fever and was getting an IV. Not good. He spent the night in the hospital. He'll be discharged today as he's doing very well. They pumped two bags of IV fluid into him and he looks a ton better.

The other day, someone asked me why I wasn't writing very much these days. It's not for want of something to say. It's because of the constant drain on me of my boy being constantly sick and cranky and waking up at all hours of the night with various complaints. Apparently, writing is powered by sleep. Who knew?

Generally, after I get Gus to bed at night, I just don't have anything left. I sometimes will go down and play CounterStrike, but usually I just sit and veg in front of the TV. I also have some server issues at home and so even if I do have a spare half hour, I have other dragons to slay.

Taking time at work is impossible as I just have too much going on and too much to do. I have a ton of big, easy projects going on that I just can't start because I just don't have the steam for them right now.

I'd like to move the upstairs couch to the basement and put the beds back up. I'd like to put the Christmas storage boxes away. I'd like to trade the Volvo for another one with an automatic transmission or, better yet, a mini-pickup with an automatic transmission. I'd like to get the dog to the groomer. I'd like to replace my home domain controller with one that isn't about to die. I'd like to replace this server with one with a much bigger HDD and one that is running FreeBSD 5.3 Stable. I'd like to get some bids on some house work that needs to be done. I'd like to clean up my office. I'd like to clean up our yard. I'd like to get rid of the big pickup. I'd like to find out something to do about our dead hedge in the front yard. I'd like to shop for a new motorcycle for the summer. I'd like to do some updating to the site. I'd like to have a day off. I'd like to sleep in. I'd like to trade some tunes with Barry, but that's dependant on getting a Windows server that isn't about to die. I'd like to go out for a beer. I'd like to order some tickets to baseball games. I'd like to get our windows cleaned. I'd like to spend some time hanging out.

I think you might get the drift.

Instead, I sit on the couch and watch cool stuff off the TiVo and from Netflix. It takes far less energy.

One of the things we do seem to be able to do is to shop for what could potentially be our next car. The latest looks we got were at the Honda Pilot, the Volvo V70R and the Ford Escape.

The Honda Pilot was not a shocking vehicle and just about any way. Knowing Honda, I expect competence and high resale value from any of their products. I suspect the Honda Pilot will have far higher resale value than just about any vehicle we might end up with. Yes, we won't be ending up with the Honda. I really don't have anything bad to say about it save for the steering feel and the brake feel being a bit odd. It did everything you'd want a thing like the Honda Pilot to do for you. However, it was not compelling. It was coldly competent, but it had next to no character. Boring. Acceleration was good, handling was good, braking was good--heck all of those may well have been excellent. The car itself was not exciting. If I'm going to drop that much loot on a car, I want to remember what it was like to drive when leave it and I want to look forward to driving it when I'm not in it. That's what owning a Maxima is all about. Ditto the Grand Marquis. Not so much with the Pilot.

We didn't get to drive the Ford Escape. We were just having another look at the Freestyle and I thought we ought to at least look at the Escape. We fit, it was fairly roomy inside--although a bit smaller than the Freestyle for the driver and front passenger. It didn't have anywhere near the internal dimensions of the Freestyle once you got past the front seats, though. The mileage ratings were similar. The price points were similar. We'll be going back to have a test drive, but I'm thinking the shorter wheelbase will lead to a far less smooth ride than the Freestyle. Stay tuned.

The same night we went to look at the Pilot, we also looked at a Volvo V70R wagon.

Wow.

We didn't have enough time to test drive it that night, but we did go back on the weekend and took it out for a spin. For those of you who don't speak Volvo, or are too lazy to look at their website, the V70 is their larger Station Wagon. The R is the high performance version. 300 horsepower and 295 'lbs of torque make for a very interesting ride. The one on the lot had most of the options available including the over-the-top Flash Green Metallic paint job. Nice leather seats, decent room inside and a great road feel that can be adjusted in literally a tenth of a second from smooth to sporty to aggressive made it quite a joy to drive. We realized quite quickly that this car was not really in the same league as the other stuff we were looking at. This car was a car. Not a larger vehicle. That said, it handled far better than any of the cars we'd been looking at before. It had a cozier feel. It went like shit off a shovel, too. The only fly in the ointment was the turbo lag. It was there in spades. It wasn't a huge deal, but it was REALLY obvious when the turbo came on-line. The car went from kinda slow to cut cat fast. The turbo kicking in was kind of abrupt. I don't think it was a huge issue, but it would require a change in driving style to manage the rpms so that you'd stay in the turbo when you needed it.

Although the R is a very tempting package and they offer a great pick-it-up-in-Sweden package through the dealership, ultimately it's probably a bit too rich for our wallets at this point in time. The other thing that makes it a bit less attractive than it would be is the change driving style thing. Both of our current cars have large engines for the size cars they are. Step on the gas and there's no waiting around. You go. There's no muss, no fuss, no waiting on turbos spooling up, nothing. You go. It's pretty simple, really. The Maxima has a 3L motor and the Grand Marquis has a 4.6L motor. The Maxima's motor is a bit larger than the Volvo's and it has quite a bit less mass to move around. Sure, once the Volvo starts to move and the All-Wheel-Drive gets the power to the ground, it really moves. There's just that confounded lag.

We'll continue shopping, I guess.