Volkswagen CC

We had a few minutes to kill at the VW dealer this morning, while waiting to pick up Jeannette's Passat after an oil change. We wandered into the showroom, and checked out the new CC. Its similar in many ways to the Passat, but in a very sleek package! The exterior styling of the CC has a profile similar to a Mercedes CLS, scaled down a little... The price is scaled down a little, too!

The two-tone interior is awesome. Its available with the 2.0 liter turbo, which I think is a fantastic engine. 200hp, but still over 20mpg city and 30mpg on the highway. We've gotten 37mpg in the Passat driving in the mountains, which is pretty amazing...

In another year, when Melissa starts driving, it might be a tough call for me to decide between replacing the old Jetta with a CC, or a Jetta TDI...

Google Wave

A few days ago, I got an email invitation for Google Wave. In the video of the demo/presentation they made at their developers conference earlier this year, Wave is Google's idea of what email might be like if it were invented today, instead of 40 years ago... I think it looks very interesting! Sort of a combination of email, instant messaging, and an interactive "wiki" editable in real-time by multiple people at once. They showed some neat integration with Wave, Twitter, and Blogger, where the same comments posted in one place appeared in all three automatically, in real-time. I have invites left, let me know if you're interested...

My Life Just Got A Little Cheaper

Had to go to WalMart this morning to pick up refills on my prescriptions. As we walked in the door, Jeannette started pointing at the sign we passed advertising Prevacid - now available Over The Counter! We had to wait awhile for the pharmacy to open, so we started shopping for some groceries and things... We walked past the display for the Prevacid, available as either 14 pills or 42, but only a 15mg dose, where the one I take every day is 30mg. The 42 pack was just over $25, which is about half of what I pay as my co-pay for a 30 day supply. Once the pharmacy opened, I asked them if Prevacid was available as a "generic" yet, and one of pharmacy techs in back said "Yes, we just got it yesterday!" So, it turns out that the generic as a prescription is a better deal -- a 30 day supply of 30mg dose was under $15! Thats much better than $50 every month!

Fetzer Gewurztraminer

Last week, we had a bottle of wine that my mother-in-law brought over. It was the 2006 Fetzer Vineyards Valley Oaks Gewurztraminer. Gewurztraminer is a light grape from France and Germany, which Fetzer grows in its California vineyards. While not as sweet as the German Riesling that I usually prefer, this Gewurztraminer was actually quite nice! It was fairly smooth mouth feel, a mild fruit, good body, with a nice finish. Not overly dry, despite being 12% alcohol. It went very nicely with our dinner, grilled chicken and steaks. It actually held up nicely with the steak, as well as the chicken. Locally, Davidson Liquors carries it for $8.99, quite reasonably priced. This is one that I would definitely enjoy again!

Pay Attention, People!

OK, its April 1st, and the dreaded Windows virus "Conficker" is supposed to awaken.

The article on this story at CNN.com discusses the virus, and mentions that it only affects PC's running Windows, and doesn't affect the Macintosh.

However, the photograph that they choose to illustrate the article is a late-1990's Apple Power Macintosh G3 Desktop! I recognized the machine in the picture right away, because I have one, and its still in use as one of my home servers...

While I think its great that the media often uses images of Apple products in technology stories, it doesn't seem right when the story is about another Windows virus! ;-)