Joel, diss, and autoshow

The autoshow had nothing compared to THIS Smart car. Yes, that is a cell phone in the left hand. Bad habits can start at any time, I suppose.

Joel's first birthday was pretty fun. He got a lot of balloons and he loves his new little toys. Luckily, Anne has been enjoying cycling through his toys and removing some that he does not play with. Otherwise we would have been out of room in his playroom a while ago.

I have been deep in work on the dissertation. I have reworked it and changed a bunch of the arguments so that the experiments flow more naturally and logically into one another. The draft hit Rich's mailbox yesterday and I am really hopeful to graduate this semester. That means that the committee should have the draft in a month. That means I have a good 2 months of work to continue preparing for the defense, so sorry if I am not around much.

The autoshow was pretty cool. Highlights:
The new Tundra (Toyota's newly remodeled full size pickup) is something you have to experience. The interior was made so that a giant could drive it. It made me feel REALLY tiny. The armrest is large enough to lose a small child in. The only things of normal size were the HVAC labels, and they stood out for not being massive. You could be 400lbs and be comfortable in this thing. Go sit in one. Trust me.
The Dodge Avenger is Dodge's new Stratus, aka "rental special" and was the worst vehicle at the show. It was simply cheap in every way with no good side that I could see.
I kinda like the new Jeep Wrangler's looks. You know, the one with 4 doors.
The Chevy Volt is the electric vehicle (but it still has a generator, so you can drive it everywhere) that everyone has been asking for, and it is as good as can be expected given the immature state of battery technology. GM is serious about getting it made and it even has a proper product manager in place to get it done.
The Saturn Aura (photo of rear seats, obviously before many people touched it) won some awards, but it is still a G6 (though very decent, really). The Aura won my award for being broken the easiest. I dislodged a supposedly-permanent piece of the rear seat out while trying to fold the seat down (pulling a stubborn strap on a badly-designed seat) and the clip fell into a panel. The fix-it guy was not impressed. He should have also been fixing the plastic sides on the front seats that were breaking off and the hood release that had snapped away from the cable. I hope GM gets those details right soon, because the Aura was otherwise nice.
The Ford/Microsoft/Continental "Sync" system looks great. I would love to have that in my car. It is (from what I can tell) a well-designed and robust stereo/bluetooth phone manager. You can plug any music stuff (from iPod to USB drive) into it and the system will integrate it in. It also enables voice commands to enable you to call people (it reads the contact info from your phone). It is upgradable too. Too bad it is not in the aftermarket yet. It is available only on Fords for a while.
Blingy grills (actually the CTS is so bold it is almost funny-looking at first, but has some really neat lines if you stare at it long enough--it resembles a cool artist's concept sketch in ways).
The Ford Edge was decent. I hope it does well. While folding the back seat forward, I discovered that it really moves forward fast. It nearly broke my glasses!

Anyway, it was a fun show. Oh, I sat in a Smart ForTwo and it was remarkably comfortable. Better than Joel's car, even.