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I'm selling my amazing non-functioning Ford C6 transmission core for the unbelievably low price of only $50!

Come buy it today and get a free torque converter.

Really though, I've hung on to this thing for almost exactly 4 months since I finished the transmission swap. It's time to be rid of it.

The thermometer and watch battery people appear to be in cahoots. We've had this outdoor digital thermometer since we bought our house, and in the ~20 months since we've moved, it has displayed this "change battery soon" warning for nearly 15 of them.

I'll put a new battery in it when it dies, thanks.

Layla spotted this (cached) for sale earlier today—it's a presale for a house that doesn't yet exist. And the artist's rendition is ... something else.

Be the first person on your street to own clipart of a Lexus in your driveway!

I didn't go snowboarding today. And I don't think I'll have a chance to go this weekend, either.

So here's a shot of the mountain that I took earlier this week.

It may have something to do with the pile of nuts perpetually stocked right outside our door.

I'm trying to figure this one out. It's difficult.

The chart at right shows my heart rate (red line, at top) and the speed at which I'm running (blue line, at bottom). In both cases, up is faster.

Ignore the weird jaggies in the blue plot. The GPS track isn't super-accurate when I'm running under trees—the important part here is that I'm running at a pretty constant pace.

Anyway as I start running, my heart rate comes up until it hits 162 or so, and then it falls back down below 160. And here's the weird part: when I slow down, my heart rate spikes to just over 170 and then falls off.

I have no clue why this is. Any ideas?

P.S. This happens with two different heart rate straps and two different monitors, so it's unlikely to be a production flaw.

Evite is down for, reportedly, "planned maintenance." Either this is actually planned (which seems like genuinely awful planning) or is a huge lie.

I'm betting on the latter. Nobody will kill their invitation site on such a huge party night.

P.S. evite.com itself was temporarily reporting that '/' is 404, and is not even producing the "planned outage" message I got from following the link in an invitation. Wow.

I made a huge mess in my driveway and ate Chinese food.

I also gained a little more weight than I would have liked, and made less progress on my yard than I was planning.

How about you?

Two notes now that we're in the cold part of the year.

• Replace your furnace filter. It's probably filthy.
  
• Rebalance your vent registers. Are some of your rooms colder than others? Open the registers in those rooms all the way and close the registers in the rooms that are warmer (not completely—just a little). Even if you had these properly configured last year, they often get bumped out of shape over time.
  

Enjoy.

Rob and I went up to Stevens Pass today and boarded—mostly on the backside of the mountain. Conditions were spectacular.

Stevens has switched to RFID ski passes for this year, and I've made two mistakes so far:

• I put my pass somewhere other than my front-left jacket pocket. The machines are situated so the scanner points right at that pocket. Oops.
  
• I put the pass in the same pocket as my cell phone. Apparently the scanners don't work too well with phones nearby.
  

Otherwise, fantastic day.

I spotted this earlier tonight at the local Petco: it's Dog Whisperer-brand bottled water ... for your dog (screenshot for the day this inevitably goes off the market).

I totally understand that some owners would want to keep their pets healthy, but this is a little over the top. And parsley flavor that dogs love? They're dogs. They chew their own backsides.

Now that the snow has melted a bit, I fixed a bunch of stuff on the truck that has gone wrong over the last few months.

I lost a dashboard lamp a while back and finally pulled everything apart (again) just to replace it. I also took this opportunity to actually assemble all the wiring back in the way it's supposed to, since I just sortof tossed it all back in there last time since I was in a bit of a rush putting it back together.

One interesting note is that the instrument cluster uses a really unusual electrical connector: the cluster circuitry is printed on flexible plastic, and the plug just pushes up against it. That doesn't completely describe it, so the photo will probably make more sense.

I also got around to replacing the other tail/stop/turn lamp socket. The right-side socket was burned through when I bought the truck (I replaced it long ago) but the left-side socket worked well enough to leave it. It's been slowly dimming for a while now and pulling it apart and sanding the contacts down only made things worse.

The local NAPA had this part in stock (again, I'm surprised) so I was able to put it all back together again by the time the day ended.

One hint here: when I debug tail light failures on my own, I find it helpful to prop the brake pedal down with something heavy (a fire extinguisher or floor jack) but it turns out that my floor jack handle happens to be right about the right length to push between the pedal and the seat.

Lastly, I glued the shifter knob back onto the shifter. It's been taped on for a long time.

Oh, and I'll leave you with these awesome mudflaps. These have been on the truck since I bought it.

I took a peek at the total post counter on my blog today and noticed that I've published 1982 posts in all—a mere 66 shy of 2¹¹. Since I'm coming up on my fourth anniversary in just over a month, I figured I'd hit the gas and see if I can clear 2048 by the time I hit 2² years posting.

So you'll see a bit more traffic in January as I try to assemble 66 (meaningful) posts in just under 45 days.

Frozen deep in carbonite the inches-thick ice covering my driveway was an incredibly well-preserved specimen of The Wall Street Journal dating from December 18 of this year.

I can't wait to see what treasures of the past this find will bring!

The first generation Ford Focus (and specifically, the ZX3 hatchback) is one of the best domestic small cars ever made. It's interesting and lively, and all of the inevitable foibles of a small economy car are drowned out by the hum of drama eminating from the soul of the car. I absolute adore this first Focus because it's a huge departure of the long line of boring domestic economy cars, and because it's an absolute riot to drive.

I didn't quite understand why this car was so interesting until I drove its replacement: the 2008 second-generation Focus. This new Focus has just as many interesting talking points as its predecessor, but it comes off as a completely different car. Everything is a little less over the top in this replacement, and the background buzz of unique design has been replaced by an irritating rattle of mismatched details.

And that's when I figured out the difference. The first Focus was a pile of uninteresting parts assembled into something incredibly interesting. The second Focus is just the reverse.

Admittedly, the comparison isn't completely fair. The 2008 Focus I drove for a week in California is a four-door and was equipped with an automatic transmission, whereas the first-generation models I've driven have all been ZX3s with manual gearboxes. I also had to live with the 2008 for a week and only got to drive ZX3s for a few hours at a time.

But the evidence is still there: gone is the goofy swooping dashboard housing no-nonsense gauges and switchgear, replaced by a more conventional layout with impossibly difficult-to-read gauges and knobs that give OCDers nightmares. The edgy and remarkably coherent styling of the first generation has been tossed out in favor of more staid fundamentals clad in some flashy plastic. The tidy proportions of the hatchback have grown into a larger and oddly-stanced two-door.

I can't really comment on how the driving dynamics have changed since the manual ZX3 and this automatic four-door really are two completely different cars. The new Focus is genuinely adequate in terms of power and grip, and the automatic transmission was inoffensive enough during city driving. One highlight here was the shifter and intelligent "low" position, which is a clever and welcome upgrade from the typical arrangement of fixed low gears.

Overall it's a decent economy car for the $16k sticker that the SE four-door retails for. It's completely reasonable for that money, in exactly the same way as its much-older predecessors (like the Escort) and competitors (like the Cobalt). It's also just as mainstream, inoffensive, and exactly what you would expect.

P.S. The light at the end of the tunnel for the Focus is that the current North America-only model will be replaced by its European counterpart in a year or so. The first Focus was the European model as well, so I'm expecting good things.