beep beep

I finally used Zipcar, for donut-related program activities. Thanks colorwheel.

It was easy and fun, and I enjoyed driving a new-ish car. (It was the Scion on Somerville & Beacon, if that means anything to any of you.) mrmorse was there for moral support but none was needed, I did not crash very much at all etc.

According to my Zipcar online statement, I have three more days to make my first month's $50 prepay worthwhile, since it doesn't roll over. Grunt. I foresee a lot of spurious shopping. (Though I do have to get groceries. And maybe I'll go get a replacement Shuffle if I promise myself to actually hang onto this one. Meh.) I don't know if I'll do the $50 thing again or not... one reason it didn't work out so well was that I retained use of the Toyota longer than I thought I would.

The Toyota, by the way, has been in the shop for about a week 'n' a half now. I talked to the guy a week ago and he wanted to verify that I was sure that I didn't want it to look pretty. I said I was sure. (I can't imagine it coming out of this looking even uglier than it was. It can be all parti-colored with bondo and still look better than that horrible, rusting dent. It will certainly sound better, and that's the main concern.) I oughtta call again soon.

Driving 'er up to Bangor, or perhaps just to Waterville, once she's all set. And taking the bus back!

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The Scion's dashboard was strange to me. All the widgets (if you will) were dead-center; the space immediately before the driver -- that is, behind the steering wheel -- was just blank plastic. So I several times was alarmed, thinking I forgot to turn the headlights on because I couldn't see the dash.

The speedometer was an especially old-school-lookin doohickey propped up above all the other widgets and given a visually distinct color scheme. It made me wonder if there's a going theory (amongst those experts what care about such things) that analog, needle-based speedometers have a different and perhaps more effective psychological effect on drivers than simple digital readouts. It seems to me that in the late 1980s I saw a lot of cars with digital speedometers, and I haven't seen very many since.

Funny that the radio was already tuned to the local NPR station, the only station I ever listen to when driving. Zipcar-lovin centrist commies

Make Me Mad

Explain to me how the National ID card is so depressingly worse than the established use of SSIDs/drivers licenses/state IDs throughout current American society.

Seriously, I'm asking.

Who is two pirates' favorite living fantasy author?

I started reading George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series because I've been meaning to for some time (being under the impression that a lot of y'all like it) and it was right there. I like it so far, but there's been enough mention of dr*g*ns to make me cautious with my judgement yet. I'm hopeful that it won't plop into a soup of slop like Robin Hobb's thing did, for me, about four books in. (Though the first three were so good I kept reading through number eight... sheesh.)

It wastes no time in introducing a backdrop of adversarial nastiness, which I far prefer to the undertone of futile despair and continual collapse that rings through half or more of Hobb. I'm looking forward to it becoming really good.

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I haven't played the board game based on the series , though I am led to believe it's pretty good, and I'll doubtless want to give it a whirl later. I appreciate that they chose to name it after the first book and not the whole series, though it's too bad they couldn't have added the obvious extra level of recursion to the title without sounding too cheeky.

There's also an ad inside the back cover for a similarly themed collectible card game, which I didn't know existed (not being too interested in CCGs as a rule), and right there was jazzfish! Or anyway one of his user icons. That's always funny to run into.