Another sign of the end of SUVs

I was looking for a car, and this one dealer had an inventory of the type of used vehicles on the lot. Check out this graph.

cali gas sucks

So, not only does gas here cost a lot, and it's only 91 octane instead of 93, it also has up to 10% ethanol. I'm pretty sure ethanol has a lower energy density than gas, so per gallon, we have less energy. So that translates into lower gas mileage. Sucks eh?

So many ways to communicate....

I was talking to my sister the other day and then my mom, and started thinking about how easy it is to communicate. Way back in the day, you had a messenger on horse back. Then the evolutions of: telegraph, mail, telephone, email, pager, cell phone, email mailing lists, forums, text messaging, and live video over a computer. The only thing that's left is being able to beam yourself somewhere like in Star Trek.

Speaking of apartments

Back in Texas and Florida, it was more often than not that a 'nice' apartment came with a fridge and washer and dryer. Not so out here in LA! More often than not, there's not a washer/dryer in the unit, and often not a fridge either.

Everyone does want to be an actor

So... I went with a friend to watch 'Wicked' up in Hollywood. It's an absolutely amazing show by the way, best I've seen. Anyways... we go to a restaurant afterwards and then a bar. My friend's friend who is a bartender at the restaurant is also an actress. Later, we talked to some random dude who was also an actor. My other friend's friend's boyfriend (confusing eh?) is also an actor.

Another thing about LA, it's a really laid back atmosphere in the night scene here. People are kickin it in jeans, some Chuck Ds, etc. Different scene than, say, Boston or NYC, where people tend to dress up more.

Rent is freakin $$$ in LA

Of course everyone knows this already, but still, $1600 for a 2bed/1 or 2 bath rents you a place with appliances 30 yrs old and one parking spot. And you probably have to provide your own fridge. And no in-unit laundry. Apartment hunting sucks.

Speaking of traffic

Why is it that the left lane is the slow lane? A lot of American drivers are retarded; driving in Europe is so much better.

Gas prices do seem to have an effect...

I went down to San Diego a couple weekends ago and I noticed that the average speed of traffic has slowed down. Go figure.

License plates

So... back in the day, Florida license plates said what county you were from. So it was kinda cool if you were in a different part of the state or country and saw someone from the same county.

In France, it was either the first two digits or last two digits (can't remember) of the license plate number which says what region the car is from.

MotoGP guys are amazing...

The picture says it all:

Google is definitely different

As everyone knows, Google does things a bit differently. Well, I applied online for a mechanical engineering position and after the typical resume and cover letter upload, I took a survey.

As almost all their engineers are EE/CS, the survey asked how well versed candidates were in various programming languages. Nothing out of the ordinary. The interesting parts of the survey asked for various coding competitions participated in and positions placed. SAT and GRE scores were asked for. Any type of leadership positions, number of people managed, ideal number of people to manage, languages spoken, and a few other behavioral questions.

Well, if you want the best, you have to ask more and better questions right? Seems to me that they have a pretty good filtering survey.

Tower cam again

Great image from the cam tonight!

I like checking it out every few days just to see...
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~obs/images/towercam.jpg