perkonis

I’m constantly amazed and amused at the different concepts of bad winter weather. Right now it’s 15 degrees in west central Indiana and the low tonight will be in the single digits. Being February, we think this is perfectly normal. The news of course plays it up a little bit mentioning the “arctic blast” or “bitter cold”, but for the most part we just put on a sweater and go about our business.

Right now, I’m in Charlotte, NC. It’s 50 degrees. The low is going to be about 22 tonight with a high of 37 tomorrow and it may snow on Thursday. That doesn’t sound bad to me at all. In Indiana we would call this Spring. But I’m watching the local news and you would think the end of the world was upon us. I haven’t been by a grocery yet, but I’m betting there is a run on milk and bread right now (which is a whole other post). Hopefully we can all get dug out before that 50+ degree weather returns Friday.

Oh, and contrary to popular opinion, I did not bring this weather with me.

Around the edges of Indiana there is an annoying marketing ploy where they merge Indiana with the name of the neigboring state. We have Illiana, Michiana, and Kentuckiana. Fortunately there isn’t a combination of Indiana and Ohio that doesn’t sound completely stupid. These commercials are usually foisted on us by car companies. Your Illiana Ford dealers. Your Michiana Chevy dealers. Your Kentuckiana Hay Wagon dealers. I started to wonder if other stated and industries do this. If not they should.

California/Arizona - Calizona for a sandwich shop

Vermont/Maine - Vermaine for exterminators

Nevada/Arizona - Nezona for rhinoplasty

Washington/Oregon - Washingon for appliance repair

Mississippi/Louisiana - Misiana…Missana… I’ll come back to this

Tennessee/Kentucky - Tennesucky ummm, let’s go with vacuum cleaners

Iowa/Minnesota - Iota it wouldn’t make a bit of difference who used this

Virginia/Maryland - Virginland feel free to make your own joke

OK, what did I miss?

Forty-five years after his father, Dan Gurney, won the first sports car race at Daytona International Speedway, Alex Gurney took the pole position for the Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series presented by Crown Royal Special Reserve Rolex 24 At Daytona and will lead a star-studded to the green flag at 1:30 p.m. ET on Saturday.

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I intended to follow the Dakar closely this year. Really, I did. But I got busy and only got to read the odd report here and there on Autosport. I was interested to see how Team Fiat PanDAKAR was going to perform in their pair of Fiat Pandas. Based on the number of referrals this blog gets from Google searches about the team, it seems I wasn’t alone.

Unfortunately, trying to find anything about their progress was difficult at best (as I’m sure anyone looking for real information but wound up here can attest). I had seen reports that both cars were out on stage four as well as reports that one (or even both) cars had finished stage four several hours late but were, indeed, starting stage five. The press that surrounded the launch of the car had all but vanished. I don’t know if they lost interest or if Fiat quit pushing press releases, but information was hard to come by. And don’t even get me started on the official Dakar website.

I finally found the official Fiat press release here. Unfortunately the rumors of their demise were correct with Biasion retiring on stage four after getting stuck in the sand and Saby being two hours late to the start of stage five and thus, disqualified. I think this picture shows just what a challenge this team faced.

I don’t know if Fiat plans to try this again next year. I hope they do and I hope to find better coverage in 08.

“I picked up a box full from the Ballarat site earlier today, and inside were a few M&Ms packs, in unusually good condition. Halfway through them I found these… In each bag there are three or four M&Ms with the Apple logo stamped on them.”

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Further proof that anything can get to the Digg front page if the title contains the word Apple.

WOOHOO!!! Well that was quite the defensive battle.

Fujitsu today announced a breakthrough in magnetic recording. Using patterned media technology, Fujitsu was able to achieve a one-dimensional array nanohole pattern with an unprecedented 25 nanometer pitch. This dramatic new achievement was presented at the 10th Joint MMM/Intermag Conference in Baltimore, MD.

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