Today I changed the front rotors (and brake pads) of my wife’s Volvo. I do a lot of work on the cars that I have owned and occasionally I stop and marvel at how well made something is.

It first happened when I adjusted the belt tension of my 1989 Nissan Maxima. You see I was used to American cars. My first one was a 1970 Mustang Mach 1. To adjust the belt tension you had to pull on the tension pulley real hard and then tighten the bolt securing the tension pulley. After that you would push on the belt to make sure it wasn’t too tight or loose. It was so stone age. The Maxima had a bolt you turned that would lift or drop the tensioner pulley. It was so easy to be accurate and it also stayed at the right tension for a long time.

The second time I was struck by this was when I was working on the engine bay on my Ferrari and I noticed a highly polished fragile piece of metal that basically connected some part to the engine. It looked like a piece or art. I was amazed that they took so much time to highly finish such a small part. It was circular at both ends and had a nice thin rod in between. It was a polished stainless steel!

Then today I looked at the rotor of my wife’s Volvo. These were made by a German company called Zimmerman. The rotors were Zinc impregnated to prevent rust and they are vented. As I picked up this part and inspected it, I was once again struck by how nicely finished it was. This part will be abused liked crazy on the car. Semi-Metallic pads will rub against it at high temperatures and all kinds of road dirt and grim will pass through it. The disc will be ugly and worn in a few years and you’ll only have a fleeting glimpse of how it once was. Still the manufacturer took the time to make it look great. I many have to but another pair for the rear of the car.

So here it is in all it’s glory. For the love of fine forged metal.

So today I was able to successfully upgrade my laptop computer to Windows 7. It was mostly good, but it was frustrating in a few ways. Props to Sony for updating their website to cover Windows 7 support!

However, they provided a link to Windows 7 drivers that had no content! There was a nice large droplist with all the versions of Windows 7. This was exciting at first because I thought I would be able to upgrade without issue.

But then I clicked on the links, got all ready to download the drivers and then I got this long list:

OK guys at Sony, what’s up with this? I went through the process of choosing every version of Windows 7 only to see the message that nothing is available. Why even bother to put all this up there if nothing is available! That’s insane.

I decided to proceed anyway. Here’s how it went.

• 12:15p Uninstalled incompatible programs, DeActivate iTunes
• 01:27p The Upgrade begins
• 01:44p Copying of files completed
• 02:15p Gathering Settings, files, and programs (more than 500K files!)
• 02:22p Reboot, then Expanding (2,224 MB)
• 03:01p Transferring fils, settings an program (552,396) 42% complete
• 03:43p Starting Windows again (72% complete)
• 04:02p Preparing for first use
• 04:03p Enter the Product Key
• 04:10 Done – first Windows desktop appears.

So after almost 4 hours, I was in Windows 7. I don’t know why mine took so long. I had read that most people completed it in 1-2 hour. Before I went through the pain of installing all my drivers for my Vaio laptop, I thought I would just explore a little.

Here I discovered a most pleasant surprise. Everything worked! All my special keys, peripherals, everything! I tried my various programs and they were all happy. Even my wifi was fine and I didn’t have to reinsall the Intel ProSet Wireless software that Sony has warned me about.

So there was a happy ending. After being somewhat annoyed by the lack of drivers and the reports of things that wouldn’t work, it all worked! I can only assume that the team at Microsoft went to great lengths to be sure that my upgrade from Vista 32 Business to Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit went as smooth as possible. Great job!

Now you boys at Sony need to improve the experience a bit….

OK, in my continuing effort to save myself from spending unnecessary bucks, I decided to tear into the doors of my Lexus and see what was up with the speakers. The left side of the Nakamichi car stereo stopped making any sound at all. The dealer wanted to replace the entire speaker enclosure for $320 each. Hmmm, I heard in ClubLexus.com that the speakers appear to die on these cars.

The speakers in the door are only 4.5″ in size. The Lexus has component speakers so the tweeter, sub, and mids are all separate components. I saw some Pioneer 4.5″ for $40. I thought I’d give it shot. I had to cut the mounting holes as the new speaker mounts were slightly smaller than the originals.

After about 1 hour, I have a perfectly working system again! Ah, it feels good when time spent works out well.

I have 7 PCs in my house a one Mac. I also have 3 printers in the house – a laser, a color laser, and a photo printer. In the past, I would hook all the printers up to one computer in the network and then share the printer so that the other computers could print to it. This seemed to work well, but I had to leave the computer with the printer attached to it ON all the time so that others could print.

Recently, this “main” computer had a harddrive fail. As I was tinkering with it and rebuilding the system, no one could print! Yes, I could have manually plugged the printer to the machine trying to print and then installed the drivers, etc. etc., but what a huge hassle. What I needed was a way for the printers to stand on their own. This is when I came across this little gem.

The Linksys PSUS4 has a print server for a USB printer, but it also has a 4 port switch. This is a very unusual combination. With the extra ports, I can plug in my networked printers and they hang a few cat 5’s off of it for a direct connection to laptops of visitors, etc. I installed this in about 10 minutes and with almost no setup i was ready to go.

It’s been about 3 weeks now and this unit has performed flawlessly. I have put the former “main” computer into a powersave mode now so that it shuts down if no one is using it after a few hours. In the past, that meant no one could print. No worries now!

You see, main computer is a pretty hairy setup. It’s got a large power suppy and a wicked GTX graphics card. It is under my desk and I can feel the heat coming up off of the computer. I am very happy now that I have this little print server. Highly recommended for a shared printer setup.

I’ve probably spent more cases for the iPhone than the iPhone itself. I am torn between ultimate protection and keeping the sleek look of the iPhone. After case after case, I keep going back to the same one. Which one? We’ll let’s take a look at a few.

Silicon Cases:
These seem like a good idea. Nice and thin, tight fit, good protection. But I hate them. You see, I put my iPhone in my pants pocket and the tackiness of these covers make it really cumbersome to take the phone in and out of my pocket.

Invisible case:
This clear polycarbonate case seemed like a great idea. You can barely tell it’s there. So what’s the problem? There’s so much wrong with this case. One, it’s fragile. The case cracks really easy. You can see that the edge of my case is already going to heck.

Also look at the edge protection. There is none. The case clips on and off. In order to make it easy the edges don’t wrap all the way. This leaves the chrome edges unprotected. Not only that, all kinds of dirt gets into the space between the case and the chrome edge. This scratches the heck out of the chrome. Nope, not a good choice, but it looks good.

iFrogz Rubberized Case:
OK, this is the ticket. It fits extremely well, protects the edges and it’s just tacky enough to be easy to grasp, but not make it impossible to get it into and out of your pocket. I find that I always gravitate back to this case. Highl recommended.

Luxury Case:
I recently saw a distressed leather case on eBay. Wow it looks so retro-cool. It’s got a front cover and a monogram with my initial on it! It’s a bit pricey at $48, but hey – it’s my case fetish. I am expecting this in the next week or two. I’ll give you a write up here after I get a chance to try it for a while.