Site visitors for December

The top 5 visitors for December 2006, listed by country, were:

1) United States,
2) Canada,
3) Switzerland,
4) Germany,
5) European Union.

You can see the full list here. I don't recall if this has happened before, but curiously Poland had 14 hits but used no bandwidth. Eh?

For previous months you can follow this link.

Happy New Year!

This year I spent New Year's Eve with family. My eldest niece made a valiant effort to stay awake until midnight but ultimately succumbed to blissful REM. She stayed awake much longer than her sisters, though. :o)

I was surprised and dismayed to learn that the city of Vancouver no longer had fireworks for New Years (and Canada Day, too!). It gives the impression that Vancouver is cheap--not very flattering in the run-up to the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Anywhoo, having said that, you've probably guessed the firework photo is not from Vancouver--I found it on the internet and I have no idea how long the link will survive. Enjoy it while you can ;o)

If you want to see some amazing photos, I recommend checking out Stargazer's picture gallery on flickr. He's been taken by the photography bug, and I tend to feel a little inadequate when I see his pics. :o)

Customer loyalty

Sometimes I wonder if I'm stubborn. I guess like most things it's more gray than black and white. There's one McDonald's location I refuse to go to any longer because I wasn't happy with their service, once. I must have taken my car to at least 4-5 different Volkswagen service departments--the best of them lasting 3 visits--before something happened at each that crossed them off my satisfactory list. None of the incidents were major, I suppose, but at the minimum they all annoyed and disappointed me--there are only so many dealerships in my area, after all.

No matter how many spam mails I receive from Geico, State Farm, Progressive et cetera telling me how much money I can save, I'll only leave Erie Insurance if Erie themselves kick me out. I don't even want to know how much money I might save by switching. Why? Because Erie was the sole company that was willing to consider my Canadian driving record when I first relocated to the United States.

On the other hand, I've flipped back and forth between T-Mobile and Cingular as soon my contracts were up. The limited number of GSM carriers makes my flip-flopping the only way I can express my dissatisfaction. I've returned to a particular Burger King despite knowing they only give out minuscule amounts of fries. When I want something cheap my first thought is still Walmart even though I once vowed to myself, never again. That's probably more of a credit to their advertising department than anything else, though. Target is my choice for inexpensive goods whenever my mind gets a respite from Walmart's advertising.

These days I don't even bother complaining at bad service unless it's truly horrendous. It just wastes too much of my time and energy. And what does it actually accomplish? How much does the loss of a single consumer's business really affect a company? It just seems so futile, sometimes. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Big business is big business, and the little guy gets the short end of the stick.

"Democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time." Ugh. I guess I agree with Churchill--but it sure as heck doesn't make me feel any better.

Merry Christmas!

One day early, but who's counting? ;o)

Sampras still No. 1?

Well, obviously Pete Sampras is retired--and the current No. 1 is Roger Federer--but Sampras is and has always been my all-time favourite men's singles player ever since I watched him win his first major at the U.S. Open in 1990. Anywhoo, I read this article by Justin Gemelstob talking about Sampras and decided to post a link to the story, here.

Site update

The Blogger update finally moved out of beta and I spent a large part of this afternoon updating everything. Wangos. Well, obviously I changed the template, but the most time consuming part was tagging all my posts. I hope I didn't go overboard. I still can't figure out how to delete a specific tag altogether. Oh well. I'll see how this goes.

R32 fuel consumption

The other day I updated my R32 fuel consumption data. It looks like I'll be able to keep this year's gasoline expenses below $2000 USD, but above the VW estimated annual cost ($1142 USD). So far I've paid about 51% more for gasoline this year than in 2005. Wangos.

Hmmm... but now that I take a closer look, I can see that the distance I drove increased by about 40% over last year. Wow. I guess the longer commute I had this year added up. Furthermore, as time passes my willingness and desire to push the R (within safety and legal limits, of course) has only grown. I guess this has all contributed to my higher fuel costs... and I've enjoyed every bit of it. :o)


Anywhoo, I've uploaded my fuel consumption information for previous years on my R32 website.