in our country of many travel opportunities, often people enjoy a cruise on a luxury ship. if only they knew that most cruise lines do not pay a single cent in taxes, pay there employees in the neighborhood of $1.00 a day, and overall conditions are akin to a third world nation. take a listen to a recent interview on KPCC with kristoffer garin about his new book:
Devils on the Deep Blue Sea
motorola started demonstrating the next generation of mobile devices:
it might take a year before these phones make it into the wild, but it sounds exciting to maintain your own mobile phone tower in your home, video around the house, and ubiquitous communications throughout the planet.
on top of wireless, chevron started a new ad campaign basically saying the era of cheap (free) oil is over, and we need to move towards alternatives to the carbon-combustion economy. what that solution will be is not developed (fusion, solar, wind, etc.), but the CEO calls to all people of the world to make their part to save, conserve, and move beyond petroleum (catch phrase for BP). chevron is even adopting a new (at least for me) catch phrase, “human energy.”
if you do a google.com search for green building, you’ll find greenconcepts.com as the fifth link. i’ve positioned greenconcepts.com to grow by leaps and bounds, and it will move into the web application space by the end of the year. now, juggling two companies may lead to a few sleepless night, but i’ll have to take it easy, letting these two enterprises grow organically, and just let it happen.
on 27 march 2003 saturn corporation launched the successor to the s class of cars with the ION class. with two body styles, the sedan and coupe, saturn wanted to re-enter the small car market with a popular configuration of a small car with a big 2.2 liter ecotec engine. they succeeded. i tuned into saturnfans.com and saturn regularly to find updates. i broke into the corporate auto journalist sites like saturnmedia.com to download pictures and more press releases and specifications. i read the usenet postings. i had eight months to prepare and research every detail of the car before it even went into production. on 29 august 2002, in spring hill TN, the s series went away, and the ION was born. initially only the sedan would leave the factory floor, and sometime in march 2003 the coupe would come. even though mom is single, she needs a four door model, to take her daughter-in-law around town when she comes to visit (hint hint). the trunk from the picture seemed very large, and the details fine this was the car i recommended to mom, but she would have to wait an entire summer and a little bit of fall to get to market. it was worth the wait.
there’s been only one good experience in my lifetime looking for a car. usually it’s at a public auto show, where the booths have corporate sponsorship. if GM is selling chevrolet, then as a consumer you get to see every chevy and every color available in a certain product line. when it comes down to it, a automobile is nothing more than a bar of soap with a particular scent. if you like how it feels on your body, and you don’t mind the slimey film and lather, you get the car.
on our visit many years ago with dad, van nuys chrysler plymouth (now called center) tried to upsell mom into a cirrus or sebring, even though she came into see the breeze or status. she’s always had a weird, but accomodateable request to have a fully functional top of the line model, but with conventional rolldown windows. why spend $1000 extra for a power window package, when you just bought a very complex device, and here are four more motors that can go bad? unless you live in a fastfood hell or never get out of your car, when does anyone leave the comforts of the air conditioned bliss of a car interior? who rolls down a winder anyway? if you go through a toll booth daily, maybe power windows make sense, or if you park in a secure garage with a parking ticket machine. so, she’s will not buy a car with a power or convenience package, and that pretty much eliminates 95% off all available cars.
mom would love to drive a volvo or BMW, but when they come over from europe, they only come in power. honda’s only come in power above the stripped version of a car without HVACR. now who wants a stripped car? mom could afford a $40,000 car easily, maybe two at that price. this is the accomplishment of a lifetime of thrifty living, and sound financial planning (i had a hand in some of this good planning over the last ten years).
it’s official, ford motor company has stopped production of the think city.they actually never sold the car in north america, instead they want to concentrate on hybrid and fuel cell cars, some 8 to 10 years away. i would have been a happy customer, but now ford has lost me forever.
leave it to near bankrupt ford to not have their think mobility cars on display at the auto show. on the web they have a very good offering call the think city. it has good range and can get passed 25 MPH. i just need a two seater to get from home to the train station.
being without simple transportation, can make the short trip long. yesterday i had an interest to attend the first major automobile show in north america, the california international auto show. i was told that there would be many neighborhood electric vehicles (NEV) and the public introduction of the saturn ion. indeed the ion was there, and most like it will be mom’s next gasoline powered car, but their all electric shuttles lacked. i wanted to see the segway but it was not be be found. the most likely candidate at around $6,000 was the daimlyerchrysler GEM car. for a novelty, the sparrow was nice, but three times more than the GEM
today in anaheim opens the earliest auto show in north america, as i enter 2003, it’s time that i become responsible for my own tranportation. i need a way to get from home to the train station, be it the metrolink or the simple subway. if i take connecting bus transit the 12 minute trip takes 60 minutes. the show is near disneyland, so all i have to do is take the red line to the blue line to the green line, and transfer to the 460 bus line. it should take around 2 hours on a good, day and who knows on a bad day.