An Uninspiring Drive

I really wasn't prepared for the cold weather here in Toowoomba. The top today is due to be 9 degrees MAX!!. Some of the guys i'm working with up here have said there might be some sleet today! I stopped off at Myer on my way back to the hotel and picked some warmer clothes to get through the day.  The trip up yesterday was particularly long, with an accident on the Ipswich motorway, luckily it was quite a bit easier sitting in traffic with the A3 I had for a hire car. I like the look of the A3 and had it on my list of cars of consideration if I ever had to get a sensible car.

Unfortunately I was a bit uninspired by the driving experience. The whole drive was just a bit too refined. Sure the ride was comfortable but I felt like I should be reclining reading the Stock Report whilst listening to ABC Classic FM all at 100km/h. It's closer to a 100km/h arm chair than a car. In stop-start traffic it's a joy to drive, the 6 speed automatic is up and down so smoothly it's barely noticable. The trouble is I still enjoy the feedback that I get from MinX and the A3 feels so disconnected in comparison. So (for the moment at least) it's heading down the end of the list for my sensible car choice. I think a Mazda 3 MPS or Ford XR5 at about the same price as the 1.6 A3 would be a better choice.

The guys at Toowoomba have been great, they're heading out to a preview screening of Transformers tonight and they've invited me to tag along! So I've got my fingers firmly crossed that it's going to be a good transition to live action film as it was one of my favourite childhood series... (I wonder what ever happened to my Optimus Prime toy?)

I've also been working on upgrading the home cinema display. Originally I had planned (and had ordered) a Panasonic AX-100E but after some advice from the supplier I've gone for an Epson TW700. Same resolution as the Panasonic but with a better contrast ratio at the sacrifice of some brightness. The brightness is still pretty high for a HT projector and with our shutters I can knock almost all of the light during the brightest part of the day so it will be more than adaquate. The big draw car was the saving over the Panasonic combined with the ongoing savings with the cost of the replacement bulbs being less than 1/2 that of the Panasonic. Fingers crossed the gear will be here by the end of the week and I'll have a 90" display all ready for the final game of the Origin :) (or Wii Tennis)

In other technology news my poor Motorola RAZR is well on is way through a slow and painful death with random reboots a regular occurance. I've been searching for a new phone and the notion of built in GPS has been a bit of a draw card. The Nokia 6110 Navigator had bobbed to the top of the list against most of the other GPS phones with it's store Maps allowing it to do the GPS map translation without the need to connect to the web. I'll have to make a decision sooner rather than later with the rapid decline of the RAZR in the last few days.