If you are in any way offended by animal cruelty, under no circumstances should you click here.

If you aren't then you can try to beat my high score of 1134 feet.

Now, By Popular Demand....

Ok, That's a lie. No one has demanded the following. Nobody (except Je- er, the Blue Fox) has even acknowledged that I got a new car. So even though you don't want to see this, here it is.

2005 Pontiac G6 GT



That's where I work (5th floor from the top, right side, third window down). And that's how I get there now. And that is the most gorgeous shade of blue I've ever seen.



The Specs:
3.5L V6, 200-hp @ 5600 rpm, 220-lb.-ft. torque @ 3200 rpm. (Ooo, low end torque. I like.)
4-speed Automatic with manual shift mode
4-wheel disc brakes

I've been reading some reviews of it (after I bought it... good thinking, huh?) and the people who dislike it always start by bashing the Grand Am. It's mainly the Sports Car Enthusiast crowd who apparently dislike it because it isn't a Ferrari. Anyways, one of the complaints I read was that it had a push-rod V6 mated with a 4-speed automatic, and not a DOHC engine with a 5-speed, like the imports. One reviewer, when mentioning that fact, said he "couldn't believe he was writing that in 2005." The claim is that the clunky engine makes it loud and rough at higher RPM. I dunno, this car is quieter and smoother at 5000 rpm than my Celica was at idle.



Safety:
ABS and traction control (boy, that woulda been great to have on the icy Steubenville roads).
Driver and passanger front and side impact airbags, full-cabin head curtain airbags.
On-Star
5-star front impact and passenger side impact safety rating.



One of the first things you notice about the car is how small it is. It's barely larger than my Celica, on the outside (inside is completely different, however). But it has the distinctive Pontiac sporty-tough look to it.



At night, with the headlights on, it looks like it's squinting angrily at you. From the back, when the reverse lights are on, it looks like the sinister, hypnotizing eyes from the snake in Jungle Book.



Cool stuff:
Panoramic roof (shown open here).
17" Aluminum wheels with chrome finish.
The cool thing about the panoramic roof is its amazingly quiet and non-windy, even with it open at freeway speeds. It's comprised of 4 panels. The front one pops up and acts as a wind screen. The other three slide backwards and stack up towards the back. Overall, it's supposed to be about twice the size of a normal sun roof.



Luxuries:
Leather interior.
Heated leather seats.
Leather-wrapped steering wheel with audio controls.
Power-adjustable gas/brake.
Tilt/telescoping steering wheel.
6-disc in-dash CD changer with 8-speaker Monsoon sound system.
Driver Information Center.

Today when I was driving, I was trying to find the little button on the dash to switch the odometer from the normal mode to the trip mode. After looking for a while and not being able to find it, I found the "Info" button next to the radio display. Pressing that cycled through several screens that told me:
Trip Odometer A
Trip Odometer B (yes, it does in fact have two)
Fuel Range (how much farther you can go)
Est MPG
Avg Speed
Remaining Oil Life

See, this car doesn't have a "Trip Odometer" as most others do, it has a "Trip Computer".

Gimicks:
Remote Starter.
It could be useful in cold climates, but here in SoCal, it's pretty pointless. Although it is cool being able to start your car from 100ft away.



On-Star:
That little antenna just in front of the panoramic roof is the On-Star antenna. It comes free for one year. When we went to pick up the car last night, the salesman was demonstrating all the features to us, and also showed us On-Star. When using this, you actually talk with a live person (the girl we were talking to was in North Carolina). They also demonstrated the "unlock doors" feature, in case you lock yourself out. Sorta creepy.

Anyways, the salesman, James, is a hilariously funny guy. He reminded me a lot of Pat Leinen (who is one of the funniest people I have ever known) in mannerism and even somewhat in appearance (tall, lanky). So anyways, he was demonstrating the "hands-free phone" system with On-Star, you push the "phone" button on the rear-view mirror, and it links in with Verizon's cellular service and you can voice-dial. That system is totally automated, with some very sophisticated, although imperfect, voice-recognition software. The conversation between the salesman and the very polite computer went something like this:
James: Dial
On-Star: Number?
James: 7-1-4
On-Star: Pardon?
James: 7
On-Star: 7
James: 1
On-Star: 1
James: 4
On-Star: 4
James: 6
On-Star: 6
James: 9
On-Star: Slower, please.
James: 9
On-Star: 5
James: 9!
On-Star: 5
James: Stupid!
On-Star: 7
James: Stupid!
On-Star: Pardon?

I'm not sure what exactly happened after that as my spleen was bursting and I was trying not to pee my nice new leather seats from laughing. That's a good system. It's polite even when you yell insults at it.



(That picture's blurry because I had to turn off the flash, which increased the exposure time and I have a hard time holding still.)

So how much does this machine cost, you ask? Well, base price for the G6 is $21,300. The GT starts at $23,925. Fully loaded (like we got it), it's $28,280. Now, any sane person's reaction is "that is a lot of money to spend on a car." I agree. That's why we only paid $23,565 (plus extra fees and such). That's below the base price for that model.

Wow. Good deal.

How did we pull that one off? Well Mr. Acosta, being an employee of The Company Formerly Known as Hughes Electronics (which was owned by GM, then bought by Boeing, then bought by L3), qualifes (and Anne Marie and I, by relation) for the GM Supplier discount. This discount is actually larger than the discount GM employees get. The GM discount brought price of the car to $25,065, then the dealer threw in an extra $1500 in rebates ($1000 because they like us and $500 because we financed through Kinecta).

So all in all, that's a pretty good deal. Saved almost 17%.

So anyways, if anyone is in the market for a new Pontiac, Buick or GMC, be sure to talk to James Cannon in Tustin (shameless plug).

Area Man Accidentally Buys Car
Man: "What just happened?"

TUSTIN, CA - A local man, who was not identified, wandered into Tustin Buick/Pontiac/GMC and accidentally bought a car, according to sources close to him.

Said the man, "I don't know what happened. I mean, I came here intending to, like, maybe test drive one and just, y'know, see what it was like. I sorta blanked out and the next thing I knew, I drove away the owner of a brand new 2005 Pontiac G6 GT. I don't really remember what happened in between."

The man said the experience was not unlike "talking with my girlfriend about marriage then spacing out, then the next thing I know I'm married. And I speak from experience on this one."

[Pictures to follow]

And now some more hellos...

Tom Thimons and Dan Taibi, how's it goin in Austria? Did both of you see the Pope on the big screen or just Dan? Glad you liked the videos Tom. Sounds like you might have used my "too sexy" video as inspiration for your girlfriend survey idea. Glad it went well for you. What do I do in my spare time? I write these lengthy posts/emails and listen to music while I scribble down ideas I have for software. Keep prayin for me and I'll keep conquering.

Amanda Leaderstorf, that is funny that your boyfriend is in the same Battallion as me. What a coincidense. I know exactly what base he's at too. I'll have to look him up if I get the chance. Thanks for writing to me and please let other SOL gals especially the grads know that I miss them and that they should write me and look to FU-NEWS.com for replys. Thanks and keep prayin for me.

To Bethany Croteau's Class
Ainsley Nugent - what sports do I like to play? My favorite is still baseball, even though I'm not very good at it. I always did enjoy playing football during recess though. Bethany, I mean Ms Croteau, knows a lot about me, but I'll bet she doesn't know who my other favorite saints are: St Peter, the pope of the Catholic Church and the guy who runs the gates of heaven. He's a really cool guy if you ever study the lives of the saints and one of the saints who died a very similar death like Christ. I also like Saint Thomas More who I'm named after. He is a guy that would not compromise his principles and what he thought was right no matter how much peer pressure his friends put on him. Ultimatly his friends lied about him and had him killed because he wouldn't agree with them on something that was wrong. I also like St Michael the Archangel because he kicked Satan out of heaven. He's also the patron saint of warriors so I pray to him a lot. What does this place look like? Did you ever see Star Wars? Remember the desert planet Luke lived on? It looks like that. Thanks so much for writing me and keep me in your prayers.

Michael M - Thanks so much for writing me. You are right it is hard out here especially without family and friends. Especially for me without Ileana who is my favorite girlfriend ever. I don't know what you think of girls now, but this girl would knock your socks off. Ask Ms Croteau. Ileana is tougher than most boys and looks great in a red evening gown to boot. Enough with the soppy girl stuff though, I think she's awesome and I miss her. Its a good thing I married her or she'd probably be dating someone else while I'm here cause lots of other guys like her too. Keep me in your prayers Mike, and thank you again for writing me.

Connor Bolton - Glad to hear you like math and spanish. My wife speaks spanish but I don't. I guess its a good thing she speaks english to or that would really be difficult. I like math a lot and went to college for it. Now I'm a computer programmer and trust me that math stuff is very important for all sorts of stuff there. What do I like to do here? I watch some movies every once in a while. I draw pictures and make up ideas for video games so when I get back I can make them on my computer. What kind of foods don't perish? Mostly candies like Jolly ranchers and life savers. You can also try things like Ramen Noodles and beef jerky. And beer. Oh wait, you can't send me that. Dang. What do I need? I'm actually doing pretty good here. Every once in a while I need things like baby wipes to clean myself off with, AA batteries to power tings like my walkman. Most of the other stuff is pretty taken care of. Usually I really like pictures of what other people are doing back in the US. See if Ms Croteau can't take a class picture and mail it to me or something. What kind of gun do I have? I use an M16A4 which fires a small round very far and very acuratly. Its important that it be acurate because our number one biggest concern over here is safety. We don't want to hurt anyone that is not a bad guy. What do I think of air soft? I think they are cool guns and a great way to teach yourself weapons safety. Remember the most important thing when it comes to weapons is safety. If you can't be safe with an air soft gun, then you can't be safe with a more powerful gun. If I were you, I'd ask your mom and tell her you want to learn to be responsible with weapons so that you know how not hurt yourself and others with them. If she thinks you are mature enough, maybe she'll let you practice with an air soft gun or some other way. Keep in mind, you can still hurt yourself with an air soft gun, and your mom may still think its a bad idea. Whatever she says is probably right, and you should take her advice. Thanks for asking, Connor. Please pray for me here and continue to write.

And to the anonymous person who wrote for me to have a Froggy Day, thank you! You have a Froggy day to and pray for me. Thanks you everyone, especially Bethany Croteau who is the coolest school teacher ever!

Irony

Ever worry when you get onto an airplane? I suppose it's only natural to be slightly afraid when you get into a metal cage with 20,000 moving parts and miles of electric wiring, carrying several hundred gallons of highly explosive fuel 5 miles above the earth at speeds normally reserved for meteors. How do you reassure yourself? "They do all sorts of testing on these things to make sure they're safe." Which is, of course, correct.

Cars, trains, airplanes, nuclear power plants, chemical factories and the like all have one thing in common. They have extensive safety testing done on them to make sure that the chances of them killing everyone around is relatively slim. But can they really accurately test every part to see how long it takes to fail and, therefore, determine when it should be replaced? Of course not. It takes thousands, if not millions of hours for some parts to fail. They can't possibly run a whole group to failure to determine an average. Instead they'll just use the data they get from the part manufacturer or the sub-system contractor in a calculation for the failure rate of the Device of Death they're building.

But where do those failure numbers come from? One technique is called "Reliability Prediction of Electronic Parts". There are several different methods, or standards, used to determine what the failure rate of an electronic part is. Two of the most common are the Mil-217 standard and the Telcordia SR-332 method. These methods involve taking various bits of data about a component, such as its operating temperature, applied voltage, quality, etc. These bits of data are known as "pi factors". These pi factors are then multiplied against a base failure rate for the type of electronic component (capacitor, integrated circuit, transistor, etc.) to calculate an average failure rate for that particular component in that particular usage. So if you trust the US Military (which never makes mistakes, right?) or Telcordia Technologies (whoever the hell they are), then you pretty much know about how long it takes for your component to fail.

But most companies are still too lazy exert even this much work. That's where software applications come in, such as the fine products written by the company I work for. They can easily calculate all these pi factors and failure rates within milliseconds, based on a few user inputs. So now we also have to trust the engineer who inputs the parameters into the software.

But being Americans, this is still too much work. When you have 10,000 components in a single system, you don't want to be bothered with inputting every single one and setting the operating parameters. No, that's far too much work. Instead, we want a library of parts from various manufacturers already defined in the software so all we have to do is provide the software with a list of all the part numbers of the parts we're using, then the software will look up those parts and import their pi factors. So now in order for our Killing Machine to work safely, we have to trust the library and the person who assembled it. And who assembles said library? Me.

The other day, I realized what an awesome power over life and death I hold in my hands. thousands of reliability engineers from hundreds of companies are relying on the parts data in the library I'm making. If I screw up and enter a part as a Thyristor when it should be a Transistor, the consequences could be dire.

Take, for instance, the bug I found this morning in the code that imports a list of manufacturer's parts data to our library. For a certain capacitor, if it has a rated temperature of 65C or lower, the output to the library should be "CARTCR=RT65". This way the program will read the rated temperature properly and everyone lives. But due to a typo that I made (probably because I was reliving my previous nights adventures in the land of Azeroth in my mind), this was importing as "CARTCR=65". What's the big deal? Well, the next step down the road, the reliability engineer needs to use this part in his Suicide-o-nator. He tries to import the part, and the program gives him the error message "Part THX1138, invalid attribute 'CARTCR'. Setting to default." The engineer doesn't stop to think twice. He has tens of thousands of parts he just imported at the touch of a button. He doesn't have time to hunt through his entire project to find this part, nor does he really care, because he has no freaking clue what "CARTCR" even means or stands for. But (and this is where things get ugly) all hell breaks loose. The default rated temperature for this particular capacitor category is 85C. So in this engineers system, suppose he runs it at 75C. The software sees no problem with this, as the operating temperature is well beneath the rated temperature. The software calculates the part has a failure rate of 1 failure per 3 million operating hours. But such is not the case. For in reality, this capacitor is only rated to 65C and will explode at temperatures of more than 70C. In reality, the part failure rate is more like 3 million failures per 1 operating hour.

So the engineer signs off on his system, with an overall failure of once per solar cycle, thinking everything is safe. The maintenance engineer, seeing this overly optimistic failure rate establishes that, as preventive maintenance, the system should be replaced once every quiggly-jiggly-illion years. And all is peaceful in the land. Until the part is actually used on the Gizmo-o-Death.

"Tower, this is United 334 requesting permission to land," the black box records. "You are cleared to land, runway 3," comes the response. "Hello folks," the pilot says over the PA. "We'll be touching down just inside five - OH MY GOSH! WHAT IS THA---" followed by static. The charred remains of the plane plummet to the ground, landing on the low-income housing tract on the approach path to the runway, killing thousands on the ground. All this because there was a faulty capacitor on the landing gear control system, run at a temperature too hot, which was not caught by the software because some 24-year-old kid was day dreaming and bored at work.

So the next time you get on an airplane, or in your car, or even use an electric can opener, stop a moment to think whose hands your life is in. It just might be in mine.

So then you ask, "but the title of this column is 'Irony'. Where's the irony?" The irony is that with my luck, I'll probably be sitting in seat 14A of that United Flight 334.

[Editor's note: this article was edited, by popular demand, to make it less macabre. Which is ironic, because it's still pretty darn macabre.]

Padres to Change Name
Hope to gain increased recognition with Los Angeles title

SAN DIEGO, CA - The Padres baseball franchise has announced that they will change their name from the San Diego Padres to the Los Angeles Padres of San Diego, in an attempt to garner increased public recognition and a larger fan base.

The move follows a name change by the Anahiem Angels to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Padres owner, John Moores, has stated that the Angels name change gave him the idea. "Let face it, there are only 2 million people in San Diego, but there are more than 10 million in LA county. If we can get just half of those people as fans, thats still more than twice the number of fans we could have in just San Diego," said Moores.

Moores said he also hopes that the name change will bring greater public recognition of the team from the rest of the country. "In this geographically-challenged nation, hardly anyone farther away than Imperial County knows where San Diego is anymore. It's best if we can be identified with the largest nearby major city." Added Moores, "everyone knows where LA is."

Unlike the city of Anaheim, which is suing the Angels franchise over their name change, the City of San Diego is apparently happy to see the Padres change their name. Said San Diego Mayor Dick Murphy, "for years, we here in San Diego have been trying to build a reputation as a major international tourist city. Now that people will no longer associate that third-rate baseball team with us, we'll have a chance. We just need to do something about the Chargers."

F.U. News has learned that name changes under consideration by other baseball franchises include the Los Angeles Rockies of Denver, New York Diamondbacks of Arizona, and the Hollywood Braves of Atlanta.

John Kerry announces Candidacy for Papacy

BOSTON, MA - John Kerry (D-MA), announced in a statement released earlier today that he will run as a democratic candidate for the papacy.

Speaking at Boston College, Kerry spoke of the passage of John Paul II. "He was a man that we all admire. His conviction on a whole range or moral issues, such as abortion, contraception, and gay marriage, served to strengthen the Church and better the world."

When asked why he should be pope, Kerry responded "I seek to be pope because I think that the Church needs a leader that will not alienate other religions by acting unilaterally. The previous Church administration, by unilaterally defining its own policies without consulting other religions, served to weaken the ties with traditional allies, such as the Presbyterians and Episcopalians.

"My message to the Catholics of the world would be to move on. I believe the previous pope took the wrong approach over matters such as abortion, contraception, and gay marriage. I personally am opposed to abortion; I think it's wrong. But to take what is essentially a matter of faith and require billions of people around the world to believe it as well doesn't make sense to me."


[Author's note: I actually came up with the idea for this article shortly after the election]