This weekend, Jessi and I were down in New York having a nice relaxing weekend. I had gone down earlier in the day with a friend, and Jessi came down after she got off work bringing another friend. When she was down around Hartford the car died on her. We couldn't find any Mercedes garages in the area so we had it towed to a dealership where we had to wait until yesterday just to get a diagnosis. It turns out that the timing chain broke, almost definitely rendering our engine permanently useless. We've talked to a number of different mechanics and it seems the only option for getting the car running again is to replace the engine. This would cost us about $5000, on top of which it would likely take several months just to find a new engine to put in as they're rare and in high demand. We can't really be without a car for several months (sadly), so the only option available to us is to replace the car.

Fortunately, it still has some value even though it needs a new engine, so we should hopefully be able to get some money back out of it which will help offset the cost of another car we'll have to get early next week (this parts already planned out and shouldn't be a problem).

So, anyone interested in buying a 1983 Mercedes Benz 300 sd Turbo Diesel in need of a new engine? It comes with a second set of wheels with very nice snow tires on them, two extra rear diffs with half-shafts (one is for a gasoline), and various and sundry other, smaller spare parts. It could be a great car, and I was really looking forward to driving it for many years to come.

Also, does anyone know of a good, cheap way that we could get it back up here from Hartford? Regardless of where the eventual buyer lives, we need to move it out of the dealership's lot where it currently is.

About 30 minutes ago I was sitting in the Porter Square Breugger's working (I've since gotten tired of being there and am now working at home on our back porch) when something interesting happened. At first, all I could hear was squealing tires. There was a collective gasp from most of the people in there (who, I assume, had a better view than I). Then, about 30 seconds later, further tire squealing and further collective gasping. Mere seconds later there was further tire squealing and a loud clunk as a small, light blue, early 90s Japanese car slammed into the back of a taxi right outside the window. More tire squealing ensued as the little blue import pushed the relatively huge (about twice it's size) Crown Victoria the remaining 10-15 feet to the end of the block, at which point the cabbie wisely decided to pull around the corner and get out of the way. The import, undeterred, sped across the busy intersection (through a red light as cross-traffic sped along) and turned left attempting, presumably, to merge illegally with the cross traffic. At this point I lost sight of the car as just about everyone in Breugger's had jumped up and run to the window to see what was going on. At about this time another car pulled up by the window I was sitting next to and stopped. Everyone in the car—three or four people—jumped out and after a cursory examination of their own vehicle joined the people who were basically running down the street to see what had happened in the aftermath.

Long story short, the little blue import was driven by an older woman. While driving down Lancaster St. towards Mass Ave. had apparently lost control of her car. We (the customer of Breugger's) assume that she must have, in the ensuing chaos, hit the gas instead of the brakes. She hit one car up beyond where I could see, then continued down to the corner of Mass Ave. where she hit the cab. Unable to stop (from her point of view, anyway) she plowed through the cab and into cross-traffic. Eventually she was able to stop the car at the corner of Mass Ave. and Somerville Ave. Last I saw, as I was walking back home, she was still sitting in the car while the occupants of the cab and the other car that was hit were parked behind her, walking around on the phone (the cabbie presumably with his employer and the other with their insurance company).

All in all, I'd say this was an extremely happy ending to what could have been one of those 'old-person-who-really-shouldn't-be-driving-meets-farmers-market' scenarios. Usually I'm not lucky enough to be present for such exciting goings-on. I'm glad that, having been present, I didn't have to witness anything more gruesome.

Last night I went to the second meeting of the Young Somerville Advisory Council. The meeting last night had two main foci: the City of Somerville's website, and the mayors upcoming 'State of the City' address to the younger residents of Somerville. Two rather interesting topics really. The website is soon to be overhauled (with the new version coming online sometime this Fall) in the hopes of increasing its effectiveness, its traffic, and the sense of community it can build within the city. Personally, however, I think the best improvement that's being made is one that's already gone into effect: changing the URL from www.ci.somerville.ma.us to www.somervillema.gov. I imagine the reasons I think this was a good move are probably fairly self-evident.

As for the 'State of the City' address, there was a lot to discuss. First of all, the mayor wants to know what we, the young denizens of this fair burg want to hear about. Sure he could just talk about the same things that politicians always talk about in speeches, but he knows that we probably don't want to hear that. So he asked for our input (and the input of others we know in the community) on this. The biggest issue by far, I believe, is a public update on the status of the project to extend the Green Line to Union Square. Other that came up were issues of public safety, the local schools, the planned development in Union Square, and may other things. I wish I'd thought of it before we had the meeting, but I've just now created a Squidoo lens for the group with a text plexo so that we can get some sort of organized community participation for picking topics for the address:

There was one other thing of note about the meeting. When I went to the last one I realized that one of the other guys there looks very familiar. So familiar, in fact, that I was pretty sure we had gone to Carleton together. It turns out that this was the case. We actually even played rugby together very briefly. Now he's also living in Somerville, and just down the street no less. Small world.

Modern diesels are coming to the US. As I've predicted and hoped for, the availability of low sulfur diesel fuel in the US (which, I might add, is what we put in our car) is at long last spurring the introduction of new diesel US models beyond the heavy duty truck range. Toyota, Honda, BMW, the Chrysler group, Nissan, Audi, and GM all plan to release new diesels in the next few years, and Volkswagen apparently plans on selling diesel versions of the Jetta and new Beetle starting next year. I'm hoping that some of the other European manufacturers such as Peaugeot, Renault, and Citroen end up coming back to US shores as well—more competition is always a good thing—although at the moment I believe only Fiat has plans to do so.

It will be interesting to see what this does in terms of the 'we can't be more efficient' line the US manufacturers have been giving us for years. In the course of one year we could easily see the maximum fuel efficiency of non hybrid models jump from something like 30 mpg to closer to 70 mpg. Something tells me that we won't however, as the US manufacturers are going to want to slowly edge towards their true maximum efficiency at a snails pace. Hopefully the introduction of the diesel Jetta, which in Europe gets something like 50 mpg, will push them to do better. At any rate, it should be an interesting couple of years in the US automotive industry as the amazing advancements in efficient and clean diesel technology battle it out with the preconceptions about diesel most Americans formed in the 80s.

Today was supposed to be a nice, lazy, relaxing day. The Restaurant Week Project is finished, and I've got nothing pressing to do. So I decided to take my new bike (Oh yeah, last weekend I bought a bike off Craigslist. $25 for an old Schwinn hybrid in pretty good shape.) for a ride and get some things accomplished.

First things first, I decided I'd go back to the RMV to try again to get my California license converted to a Massachusetts one. So I got on my bike and headed towards Boston. I got all the way to the Boston Common before I ran into my first problem: a nut on my rear wheel had come loose and my wheel got pulled out of position so that it was rubbing up against the fork. I had foolishly not brought any tools with me, so I just locked it up and went the last few blocks on foot. I got to the RMV and got in line with 51 people ahead of me. One hour and 30 people later, I figured I was finally going to be getting my license. Then, all of a sudden, things slowed down. Up until that point they had been calling a new person every couple minutes.

Then for a long time nothing happened.

Then, as before, in a flash of smoke and brimstone an RMV employee appeared and announced to us all that the Social Security computers were down. AGAIN!!!

This is now the fourth time I've been to the RMV to try and convert my license and failed. It's the second time that my trip was a failure thanks to a crappy Social Security computer system. Had I previously had any faith in the state of the RMV, the Massachusetts state government, or bureaucracy in general, it would now be lost. Having never had such a thing, I'm simply wallowing in despondency and despair at the thought of having to try yet again.

So I left the RMV thwarted yet again and contemplating the issues involved in getting my immobilized bike home. Fortunately, I was able to borrow some pliers from a friendly bus driver and get my rear wheel mostly straight and my bike ridable again. So I continued along my planned route to the Copley Square branch of the Boston Public Library where I checked out a copy of Charles Stross' Accelerando, then bike back home via Storrow Drive and the Harvard footbridge.

All told, my main accomplishment of the day—which was supposed to be getting my Massachusetts license—turned out to be the fairly pedestrian achievement of biking ~12 miles. It is, at least, a very nice day for a bike ride.

Most of you probably know about Boston's Restaurant Week. For those that don't, it's a week (or more) that happens twice a year during which participating Boston area restaurants offer meals from a prix fixe menu at very low prices. For example, Excelsior will be offering a three-course meal for $33.07 (I might just have to give that a try).

What you probably didn't know is that there's a fantastic website at restaurantweekboston.com (offered by bostonchefs.com) that will show you all the participating restaurants, the details of their participation, the prix fixe menus that they are offering, and a Google maps mashup to help you locate and get to those restaurants.

I helped create it, so you should go use it to help justify my services. ;)

Way back in March I wrote about a competition to pick a new '7 Wonders of the World' list. Hopefully some people read about it here and then voted. At any rate, the results are in, and we have a new list. My picks for the new list were:

• Angkor Wat
• Roman Colosseum
• Moai (Easter Island Statues)
• Great Wall of China
• Kremlin
• Petra
• Stonehenge

The actual winners were:

• Christ the Redeemer (Rio de Janeiro)
• Great Wall of China
• Roman Colosseum
• Petra
• Machu Picchu
• Chichén Itzá
• Taj Mahal

So three of my seven picks actually made the list. Not bad, and I would have considered those three to be the best in there anyway. The only one I'm a little disappointed didn't make it was Stonehenge, but I'm glad that Machu Pichu and Chichén Itzá got on there; it's about time the Americas got some recognition for the incredible achievements of indigenous civilizations.

One thing that would have been nice would have been to leave the Great Pyramid of Giza on the list. As they say in the National Geographic article, the Great Pyramid was not only the oldest of the structures on the original list, but it's the only one still surviving today. I think that right there should qualify it for a place on the current list.

Way back in February I wrote about some depressing statistics. In a nutshell, fully one third of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives. Today, I've found some more depressing statistics that seem at least tangentially related:

One in five Americans believe that the Sun revolves around the Earth. Not only that, but fewer than 33% know that DNA plays a role in heredity, and only 10% know what radiation is. Most American don't know what a cell is.

In addition to being a complete disaster when we're expecting people to understand things like the relative merits of nuclear power, 'irradiated' milk, and stem cell research, this is obviously a complete failure in our education system. What we need, is some way of encouraging people to actually want to learn. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to do that. Clearly we need to put more thought into the way our education system is working beyond the fairly inconsequential concerns of public vs. private and standardized test scores.

As you probably know, I spent last weekend in New York. My last post was actually written from the SOHO Apple Store. The main reason I went there was because I knew I could get a free internet connection, but I was also hoping for the chance to play with an iPhone. Sadly, the iPhone table was about five deep in people, so I gave up on it. But I did manage to play with one at the 5th Ave Apple Store the next morning.

Prior to having actually touched one, I was of mixed feelings on the iPhone. On the one hand, I've been awaiting the so-called touch-screen iPod for as long as there have been rumors of it. The iPhone is clearly that, and more. However I was, as most people were and some still are, concerned about the efficacy of the interface, in particular typing on the touch-screen. Beyond that there were obvious, to my mind, flaws of the first generation device that everyone has gone into already. Jesse Legg has already written on the technical flaws of the iPhone and I see no reason to continue harping on them myself. Instead, I'll just say that I never had any intention or desire to buy the iPhone as it currently is. My plan has been to wait at least until the 2nd generation when they've repaired those flaws and hopefully made some other improvements as well.

That was, of course, until I actually got to use the iPhone. My expectations for the interface were high, but the actual product completely blew them away. Using the iPhone is so incredibly simple that anyone should really be able to do it. The screen is extremely bright and sharp and the interface is well designed and takes full advantage of the enormous screen available to it. In other words, it's an absolute pleasure to use for all the basic tasks. This was really to be expected, but Apple completely outdid themselves this time. Then, of course, it came time to test the virtual keyboard. I honestly was not expecting much, and when I saw how small it actually turned out to be I thought I'd be disappointed even still. The fact that the first time I tried to hit a letter I hit the one next to it instead didn't do much to improve my outlook. But when I tried actually typing out a message I was amazed. Within a minute or two of practice my accuracy had improved amazingly, but it really didn't need to at all. At one point I accidentally typed in 'uojpmw'. The iPhone correctly translated that to 'iPhone'. In fact probably about 99% of the time when I hit the wrong letters because of the small keyboard and lack of tactile feedback it didn't matter because the software was able to correctly predict what I had intended to type. The only times there were ever any problems was with it not getting the word right was with shorter words. For some reason it wasn't very good at the two letter words. Other than that, I was flat-out amazed. Even disregarding the auto-correcting, I'm now of the opinion that the small, touch-screen keyboard is more than sufficient. I think that within a week of using it, anyone should be relatively comfortable with it. Within a month, they should probably forget that there was ever any other way of having a keyboard on a phone.

Having entered the store with the position that 'the iPhone is cool, but I have no real desire to buy one at least until they fix a few things', I found myself very tempted to buy one right then and there. As much as I enjoy using a Mac, I would hardly call myself an Apple fan boy, but just then I was probably as close as I've ever been. I resisted the urge, of course; I'm very happy with my current phone (the Motorola e815, though I plan on replacing it with a RAZR 2 when I can) and provider (Verizon) and don't particularly want to drop $600 on a phone and then spend an additional $75 per month or so on the plan (also I have no particular love for AT&T;). None the less, I was forced to walk out of the Apple store with the opinion that Apple really hit the ball out of the park with this one. The fact that they sold nearly a million units on the first day would seem to support that thesis. I'm very much looking forward to the future of cell phones now. The iPhone and it's successors, I think, will really stir things up. We're hopefully going to start seeing a whole lot of innovation in cell phones, something we haven't really seen in a while.

I can't wait.