If you’ve not been paying any attention to my twitter account, and chances are that you have not…. I recently got a new car, a 2010 Limited Edition Volkswagen Jetta.  It’s in many ways a return to what I liked about my first Saturn sedan, but also features the new things I like about driving Volkswagens.  Some people like trucks, others like SUVs, some like hatchbacks, maybe some people even like vans.  I am a sedan or coupe kind of person.  I don’t know why, and I can’t explain it.  Although I really like driving Alison’s Golf/Rabbit hatchback, when I thought about what I would buy it was always “Golf with a trunk”, which is the Jetta.  I like the style of it, you can get it with a stick shift, and the inline 2.5L engine is good.  The 2.0T turbo is a great engine, but maybe it’s a sign of growing older… I just don’t care enough to pay for the bigger engine.  It comes down to style and comfort, which is what my modifications were mostly based on.

Why get rid of the Eos?

By trading in the Saturn, I got a relatively low monthly payment on my leased 2008 VW Eos.  It was a great car, which lots of power and the cool folding hardtop…  But as much fun as it was, it was a lease and at the end they were going to take it away from me and leave me with nothing.  As the lease progressed, I felt worse and worse about paying so much money to basically rent the car.  So, in June I got a call out of the blue from Volkswagen asking if they could take a look at the Eos, and basically buy out the lease from me.  I didn’t drive it much, and it still had very low miles (14,000 in 2 years).  I was pretty interested in stopping the lease and starting to pay to own again, so Alison and I went down and test drove some Jettas.  I stayed away from the 2.0T models and liked the 2010 more than the 2009.  It’s quieter and has the new white/red dash from the old red/blue one.  I was looking for the cheapest S model, but it turned out the new “Limited Edition” Jetta was almost-an-SE model at the S model price.  Ended up getting it for a little less than MSRP, and decided to also get the nice warranty with the free maintenance for 7 years since I plan on keeping it for a long time.

Jetta LE Features

The limited edition is the last jetta VW will produce with the 5th generation body design.  The 2011 models have the redesigned exterior to make them identical to Hondas, so I’m glad I got one now.  Like I said before, the LE has many features normally found on the higher end models for the cheaper model’s price.  Also, it doesn’t have the horrible chrome around the windows.  Mine has 5 speed manual transmission, an 170HP inline 2.5L gasoline engine, silver exterior and black interior.  For the rest of the features, I’ll let the VW sales guy take you through a walk-through of the car.

Modifications

I got the car about a month ago, and I’ve spent some time personalizing it a little bit.  Nothing too major, as keeping my warranty valid is important to me.

1. Color Matched Side Markers

I find the orange side markers on cars horrendously ugly, and they don’t serve much of a purpose.  Like Daytime Running Lights, they are added to the car just because they might work, so why the hell not.  It detracts from the nice smooth look of the car, and if you can’t tell where the front of my car is, well then you shouldn’t have a license.  These silver side markers are a close match during the day, and at night, still light up amber(although not quite as bright as before), so really I didn’t even take away any functionality.  Side markers are not required on sedans in Texas.

   

2. Disabled Daytime Running Lights

This is an easy mod in the 2010.  With the ignition off, put the turn signal in a left turn and then pull it back like you are flashing your brights for ten seconds.  With the stick still held back, start the car.  Your DRLs are disabled.  Doing the same with a right turn will re activate them.  Sometimes I have noticed the DRLs still on.  I don’t really have a real reason to disable them, except for the fact that I am OCD about my dashboard, and I hate the “DRL” light in the dash that tells me they are on.  I don’t care.

3. The RCD-510 touchscreen 6 Disc CD Changer.

The ugly single disc changer had to go.  Originally, I had planned to wait a year while saving up for the RNS-510 which features Navigation, internal HDD, and a DVD player.  I found out later that it won’t play DVDs while driving, so when it costs $1000 even more than this RCD model, it was a pretty easy choice to skip that.  I found this used touchscreen being sold locally on a VW forum, and got a decent deal on it.  It’s great overall, easy to use, and having 6 MP3 CDs + Aux input pretty much eliminates my need for an internal hard drive.  It also plays MP3s from an SD card slot, but I don’t have SD cards.  It doesn’t have video-in capability, but I don’t need it as I can use an ipad or a laptop.  The RCD-510 has a few little quirks in the menus, but overall very very good.

   

4. Black “Wolfsburg” Grille

As much as I’ve talked about hating chrome along the windows, you must think I’m a bit of a hypocrite when the Jetta and other VWs have a gigantic chrome bumper in the front.  I did get the silver color on my car because 1. I always alternate between black and silver cars, and 2. it minimized the chrome disturbance more than other colors.  But when I found out I could buy a glossy black grille to put on the front of the car for only $100, I knew I would go from being okay with the front of the car to loving it.  It took forever to ship, but now I have it on the car and it looks amazing.  Pictures do not do it justice.  With the new grill, and the absence of any chrome on the outside of the car, it looks just like an actual Jetta Wolfsburg Edition except that I have the long radio antenna, different wheels, no Wolfburg emblem, and it’s the normally aspirated 2.5 engine rather than the 2.0 turbo.  Pretty minor things.  The look of the Wolfburg edition car, for $100 instead of the normal 4,000. 

5. Magnetic License Plate

Probably the only actual real “modification” I’ve done, a few sets of rare-earth magnets are glued between the black grille and my license plate holder.  These magnets are crazy strong, and hold the plate snugly against the grille without the need for me to drill holes.  I normally cruise around without the front plate (two years so far with no problems), but you never know if it may be handy sometime to have one.  It’s been fun playing around with the magnets, but they do a surprising job at holding the plate on.  From the outside, there’s no way to tell the plate isn’t screwed on.  I’m not sure if people walk by cars trying to pull the front plates off, but I guess I’m willing to take that risk.  I don’t plan on having the plate on all that much anyways. 

Final Review
After a month, I really like the Jetta, I even like it more than the Eos.  I learned that I really didn’t put the top down enough to really want to pay for it, and the lightness of the Jetta makes it fun to drive.  It has great features like the touchscreen, handsfree bluetooth calling, the leather steering wheel, the transmission feels great…although I do miss my 6th gear. I don’t plan on doing any other mods to it, other than maybe tinting the windows.  I’d like to protect the interior as it sits in the airport parking lot, and tint looks good on silver cars.  I’ll leave you with some random pictures I guess.

Ok quick rant about the iPhone 4!

It’s new and shiny and people can’t stop talking about it!  Literally, this is all that is on the news.  Apparently if you hold the bottom of the phone a certain way, it loses signal and can even drop the call!  People are so worked up about this that there is even a class action lawsuit starting against Apple over this!  You bought a phone you had never seen or touched before and it didn’t live up to your expectations.  Someone call a lawyer.  You deserve all of Steve Jobs’ millions of dollars for this outrage!  If you don’t like it, then you can fucking return it.  You can hold it a different way, you could even buy a case for it.  You could use your iphone 3Gs.  No one forced you to buy an iPhone 4.  Sometimes things just don’t quite work as well as you’d like.

Here is a “funny” video poking fun at iphone 4 fanboys (or fangirls in this case).  It’s always easy to kick around the fanboys for a few good laughs, but of course the shopkeeper fails to bring up any of the features the iphone 4 IS actually better at, such as the high resolution retina display, the new gyroscope, the fact that it works with their numerous iphone ready accessories, and the big one:  It syncs with their iTunes. 

Actually, there is really nothing revolutionary about the iPhone 4.  What is revolutionary is still the iPhone.  Apple already has the music player market cornered with their iPods and iTunes, and when a phone was added to that: BOOM revolution in smart phones.  People like the iPhone because it’s easy.  Because it really does just work for them.  Other phones might let you install whatever app you want or have a slightly bigger screen, but until you can make the experience easier than the iPhone + iTunes, people will still want the iPhone because that’s what their smartphone experience is built around now.  If anyone wants to compete, they will have to tear customers away from their already established investment in iTunes.  It can be done, but you’ll need a prettier phone/mp3 player than even Apple can make.  Good luck.

For that reason, I still prefer my original iPhone to any of the new phones out today.  The iPhone 4 isn’t any more another revolution than a droid or evo or hero or any other iPhone killer.  But if someone wants to spend the extra money for the new iPhone 4, let them.  It doesn’t automatically make them a fanboy.  It just means they will be the first to find these issues and let the rest of us know.  That’s the risk you take with a pre-order.

Extra Bonus Rant:
It’s just a phone!  Who cares!?

Kitchen

The first project was the kitchen.  Having the keys to the house for only a few hours, Alison, her aunt and I started work on painting the kitchen.  Looking at the original pictures makes me cringe now.  All that wood color….ugh.  Well we brightened everything up very well with 2 coats of primer and 2 coats of white paint.  From the original picture, you can see the washer and dryer hookups which were flipped around so those could be in the garage.  Those things are noisy and they fit perfectly in the garage far away where they won’t bother us.  The new refrigerator is nice with ice and water in the doors.  We then painted the walls blue.  The last pic is already outdated because we’ve removed part of the cabinets and tiled the wall between the cabinets and the counter top.

Living Room

The living room is challenging because it’s pretty small.  Our couch only fits well in one spot, facing the kitchen.  We’ve added some little tables behind the couch to push it away from the wall.  The TV was kind of pushed in the corner, until it was replaced with a bigger, more elaborate TV center which pushes it out of the corner a little better.  It is finally mounted on the wall, cables nicely behind the wall. 

Sunroom / Dining Room

Our sunroom is one of the nicest rooms we have, with its big windows and nice view of the yard and all the trees we have around us.  It doubles as our dining room.  There is also a little sitting area just through the door with a nice view.  When there is company the chairs can be pulled into the living room for extra seating.

Bedroom

Not much special about the bedroom.  I complained about the lack of doors to the bathroom a lot when showing the initial pictures, but with so much to do it’s been pushed to the bottom of the list.  It sounds like such a huge project and the spare bathroom has been working fine for us so far.  It’s one of the few rooms lucky enough to get some paint.  I like the white color, but Alison wants something more colorful.  Anything is better than the tan that’s everywhere else. 

Den / Computer Room

Finally, my favorite room (of course) is the computer room.  It has presented great challenges to my setup, which are overcome as I get new furniture and computer hardware.  I was originally forced to put my desk in front of the window.  There is only one outlet in the back (pic #1) and only half of it works.  I could fix it probably, but I’m so lazy.  That’s not enough for my setup, so I had to start off on the other side of the room.  I set it up just as it was before we left the apartment with the two monitors taking up basically the whole desk.  The room is pretty large and with only our two desks in it, it was very empty.  So off I went to finally get the large desk I’ve always wanted.  I got an ikea galant desk with a few extensions.  Putting my old desk drawers by it lets it fill up the entire wall side of the back of the room, and it’s long enough to reach the other power outlet so I can run power along the entire desk discretely.  I could finally split up the computers, which were originally 90 degrees apart, but now the gaming computer is in the corner.

New additions to the setup, thanks to tax returns are a 16gb wifi ipad and a like-new 30” Cinema display off of craigslist.  The 30” is awesome and actually makes my old monitor look small.  Games are amazing with it.  Text is a little small.  I wanted the 30” because I’m not a fan of multiple monitor setups, and it would give me the most desktop space.  I could sell the 23” to make up some of the cost, but they look so good together right now!  The third picture is a photoshop of the color I want to paint the room sometime. 

My setup acts as two workstations in one.  Typically, the power-hungry gaming computer stays off, and I use the black workstation.  While it appears to be a hackintosh desktop, the black computer is the NAS file server, and the display comes from the macbook pro laptop running to its left.  This setup is great because it’s whisper quiet, wakes quickly from sleep, and still usable for almost everything I do.  To the far left are the routers for U-Verse and the internal network.  The black monitor is also an HDTV with U-verse setup on it.  The iPad is great to pick up and use around the house so I don’t have to unplug the laptop very often.

When I plan on spending more time in the computer room or playing some games, I can turn on the silver desktop and take advantage of the great screens with more screen space than I know what to deal with.  The black station can run aim or web browsing while I play games, or I can watch TV off to the side while I use the other one.  The oldest part of my setup is my awesome lava lamp on the right.  Probably one of the things I’ve owned for the longest amount of time, the lava lamp is on a timer and comes on automatically and is always fun to watch and relax.  My desk backlighting is along the back wall between the black and silver stations.  I had to get some extension cables and move the silver desktop from the corner because I kept kicking it.  I’ve moved the small black table away from under the desk and moved the computer there.  It’s currently torn apart while I install a blu ray disc drive.

Alison gets my old desk, and the tiny one she had was sold.  She likes the bigger desk and I really like my new setup as well.  I just need some more posters and art up, as well as some bookcases and other little peices of furniture to fill up the space and make it look really nice.

Other

Lastly, some other random pictures include the deck in the back of the house which was been stained and now has a wonderful dark brown wood color.  Alison has been doing lots of landscape work and as long as the Texas sun doesn’t kill all the plants it will look great.  We pulled up an old monster truck tire and replaced it with a white birdbath and feeder that are attracting cool birds like cardinals and blue jays.  Alison’s parents brought some old furniture down from Cleveland and we have a classic theme going on in our guestroom featuring a queen size bed.  That combined with the queen pullout sofa bed makes a lot of room for guests to come down during quakecon.  :D And lastly, here’s some pics of the garage.  Featuring the new Jetta and the washer and dryer.  Plenty of room for the washer and dryer…why would you put these inside the kitchen?  But also why would you not have doors on the bathroom…

Phew!  Got that post out of the way.

We’ve been getting notices at work a lot lately about staying off twitter and facebook and blogs and stuff.  I notice people find my site from a variety of different web searches.  A lot are interested in my post about rutorrent on the appletv, others want to read my review of the linksys NAS 200.  The standby travel post is bringing a lot of visitors as well.  From there they can read my work posts and potentially get me in to trouble.  One of my YouTube videos was already traced back to me and had to be removed.  However, this blog is mine.  I write it for myself to look back upon later, and I don’t want to never write about stuff that happens to me at work.

Right now, about half my AA posts are now marked “Friends Only”, and the older half are closed for now.  While creating new entries with “Friends Only” access is a possibility, it really hurts the flow of the archive pages, and the company logo is still displayed.  I think I will be editing the template to automatically hide all AA posts, unless you are signed into my website as a user with enough privilege to read “Friends Only” posts.  The good parts of this plan is that I can still write about work without fear of google or idiots finding it, but the bad part is that updates to the site might be harder to follow for my friends.  Announcing AA Posts on twitter might be an option.  As always, being logged into my site makes commenting easier, lets you keep track of custom friends on my friends page, and will soon display work posts as well. 

Obey.

First impressions are just like the apple store.  It’s amazing to browse the web like this.  It’s going to be awesome to have this around the house.  Still feels a little bit heavy but i can rest it on my leg when I sit on the couch so it’s not a big deal.  I got the WiFi only version because I don’t want to take it everywhere, I don’t need to take it everywhere, and I don’t want to pay for it.  Anywhere I want to use the iPad should have wifi too.  Apps look great.  My iPhone now looks so small…

I actually left with the intention of buying a 30” Cinema Display but I couldn’t bring myself to spend that kind of money.  I’ll keep my eye on craigslist for the display.  A good one pops up now and again and I can have both it and the ipad for the cost of a new display. 

A real post with updated house pictures comes soon.
First image is a play off this pic from a 2003 codexlan.

NAS Solution	Judgment	Cost
Eclipse (Gaming PC)	Too loud, power intensive, resource hog no redundancy
Apple Extreme Wireless Station + USB HDD	Ran drive continuously leading to failure no redundancy
Linksys NAS 200	Ridiculously Poor Performance, Noisy
Atom / FreeNAS	Best of all worlds but expensive, large footprint

I tried all the cheap alternatives to buckling down and forking over the cash for a decent NAS / Server but in the end the only lesson is one we should all be familiar with already - You get what you pay for.  In trying to be cheap, all I got in return was lost data (Apple Base Station) and unusable performance (Linksys + hosting files on my gaming pc).  Not that a FreeNAS solution has to be expensive however.  These days many people have a spare PC in their garage or something.  All it needs to be given new life as a FreeNAS server is:

x86 Processor
128 MB ram
32 MB disk space
Network card

The catch is that your hardware has to be supported by FreeBSD, but I’d be willing to bet that if it’s anything similar to a commercial computer, you are all set.  I looked into the option of buying a cheap, used PC for under $100 on craigslist but in the end I decided to build a new PC specifically for a few reasons:

1. I knew exactly what hardware it would have, with warranties.
2. By using an Atom chipset it has power consumption comparable to a netbook, which is preferable to a power hungry P4
3. The Atom D510MO chipset is fanless, making the entire computer almost silent
4. Gigabit Ethernet (up from 10/100 on the linksys nas)

I bought a nice looking glossy black case from Newegg, which was running a pretty nice deal on it as long as I signed up for spam, and sold the Linksys NAS for $5 profit.  I had the disk drives already from the linksys raid setup, so in the end I just had to buy the case, atom board/cpu combo, and 1 GB of RAM for it.  Not too much cost to expand its use greatly, but if you were starting from scratch it might be a big investment.  So give it a try with your old garage PC first.  I paired the computer with a 23” Samsung 2333HD Display, which is kind of a misnomer.  The actual NAS is capable of displaying a typical Unix/bsd console, but it’s really meant to run in a corner or a closet without a keyboard or monitor hooked up.  In fact, there is no GUI display included.  The monitor is really displaying video from my macbook pro, which makes the computer give the appearance of a hackintosh.  It’s also a nice 1080p HDTV.  The actual Atom computer runs without being plugged into the monitor, unless I’m debugging something.

So I spent all this money getting decent hardware, at least the software was free!  You’ll need to decide between a “full install” or “embedded” install.  The full install is like a typical OS installed onto your disk.  The embedded install is copied to a USB Flash Drive which is then booted off of, and it runs FreeNAS in a virtual disk created out of RAM.  The full install is easier to customize, but the embedded install is blistering fast and allows your hard drives to spin down when idle.  I went with the embedded because it’s very important to me for the idle disks to spin down.  This saves wear and tear, heat (remember it’s fanless), and power ($).  You can’t repartition the boot drive, so I had to add another flash drive to run my custom server apps like rssdler and python.  Running these apps off the main data HDDs would prevent them from spinning down (they’d never be idle).  Flash drives are cheap SSDs and it works great for NAS purposes.

After the initial console setup, you can unplug the monitor and control the system via a web interface on any other computer on the network.  This makes it very easy to choose services, set them up, add disks and shares… You really don’t have to be a pro to get it to work reliable and consistently.  I followed a tutorial, added my two hard drives as a redundant software RAID 1 array, and added windows and apple file sharing in less than 20 minutes.  Performance was a ten-fold increase over my Linksys NAS, averaging about 40MB/s transfers which I’m guessing is limited by the software RAID 1.  But don’t take my word for it, here’s some fancy looking pictures:

Linksys                        vs.                          FreeNAS

My Atom server blows away any of my previous NAS attempts, and I’m finally happy and able to not worry anymore about my hard disks crashing and taking all my stuff with them like the great hard drive crashes of 2003.  It’s far quieter and faster than the Linksys NAS, and I can run apps like rssdler off the server alone.  This means the AppleTV, which is already slow, doesn’t have to use its few resources on downloading for me anymore.  It uses waay less power than my gaming pc did when it stayed on to serve files, and adds the redundancy of two drives, protecting against hardware failure.  The loss of one hard drive wouldn’t make me lose any data.  The web interface is easy to use, and since it’s a mini-atx form factor, it’s got plenty of room for additional hard drive space so I can expand it over time.  The Linksys and many other NAS devices only support a maximum of two disks.  And did I mention how quiet it is?

The only disadvantages I could think of was the additional cost for having an additional computer.  If you have an old PC and could throw it in the closet or something, this disadvantage may not mean much for you.  Also, the mini-atx form factor eats up some desk space for me, but I want to keep it close to my other computers.  Again if you threw it in a closet you might not care.  I’m decent enough with Linux/Unix/bsd commands that I didn’t have any trouble setting it up, but if you’re a windows lover then buying a commercial NAS might be up your alley. 

So in summary, I am totally blown away by FreeNAS and all it’s capable of.  I tried everything else, but sometimes when you need the job done right you just have to do it yourself.  My next tech post will probably be about AT&T U-Verse, how it’s integrated into my new house, changed my network, and reacted to my experiments.

Check out the free software at: http://freenas.org/freenas

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The first thing I like about the Linksys NAS 200 is its compact design.  It looks pretty similar to a linksys router, but sitting on top of two hard drive bays.  Installation of the two SATA drives was pretty simple, just push them all the way back.  Pulling on a ribbon will pull the drives free again.  You plug in the power, plug in the cat5 cable, and you’re done with the physical setup. 

The software that powers the device is alright.  It does the job as a NAS, but you get the feeling that something like this would be capable of so much more.  The NAS 200 will spin down the hard drives when they are not being used, which saves power, wear and tear, and heat from building up in its idle time.  I have a feeling this was what lead to failure when I used the USB enclosure.  When data is requested from the NAS server, it spins up the drive and fans help keep them cool, prolonging each hard drive’s life.  The number one reason I looked into a device like this was the dual hard drive bays supporting RAID 1 (Mirroring).  The NAS 200 can be setup to make an exact copy of the first hard drive onto the second so if one dies, you won’t lose data.  Alternatively, you can double up on hard drives for more space.  Other than a long wait for it to duplicate the disk, it was easy to setup and a load off my mind.

The NAS 200 uses samba, or windows file sharing, which is pretty much standard among home networks.  It was very simple to get the AppleTV and other computers to access data, and I was able to get Windows 7 Ultimate to backup to the drive pretty easily.  It also features a web interface, giving you the possibility of accessing your files remotely (like from work).  My upload speeds are way too horrific to give this a try.  It can download files for you, letting you turn your computer off, but it’s HTTP instead of bittorrent which is not as useful.

Things I do not like about the Linksys NAS 200 are numerous.  My first complaint is one I read before I bought it, so I knew going in.  It’s slow.  Like, it’s floppy drive slow.  The NIC on it is a 10/100 mbps speed, which..come on…we’ve had gigabit for almost a decade already…  On a device meant to handle large amounts of data, the speed at which it’s done is atrocious.  I have about 1 TB of content, and copying it all to the NAS 200 took over 3 days!  It’s so slow that windows has to put up a progress bar when renaming files.  Mirroring the hard drive took forever, and the web interface is slow.  It’s rocking a 486 processor inside, which probably runs hotter and slower than more recent even cheaper processors.  It’s irritatingly slow, and I’m surprised I held off for several paragraphs before blurting that out.  My graphing calculator could probably serve files faster than this. 

It’s also loud as shit.  Computer noise is starting to annoy me more and more.  With its fans running, I can hear it from anywhere in the apartment, and even over my gaming PC which sits right next to me.  I’m glad those fans are there to save my hard drives from heat death, but not if it makes my ears bleed. 

Those are really the only two bad things about it, but it’s enough to make me want to get rid of it.  If you are planning to hide the device in an attic, or somewhere you wouldn’t be exposed to its noise then it could be a good buy.  But you’d also have to have a jurassic-era 100base-t network and running pentium pro computers to not notice how freaking slow it is.  The only thing it has going for it, is that it’s cheaper than most of its competition.  It’s a cheap device and you get what you pay for.

Deciding to spend the little extra to get what I want, I’ve recently built a micro-ATX 1.66Ghz Atom server and successfully installed FreeNAS.  I’m hoping to have the configuration done by Thursday, which will be detailed in the next tech post.

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The house is an older house, built in 1963, which means it’s got some wear and tear, but nothing too major.  The only problems I see are the weakass electrical system and a little bit of remodeling in the master bedroom.  Other than that just a lot of elbow grease, and time.  The inside is nice, almost 1700 sq feet which is more space than we know what to do with at the moment.  What really sold the house was the backyard.  It’s got a nice backyard with a few big trees for shade, landscaping is already done, a huge porch for grilling and stuff, and an addition to the house in the form of a nice sunroom which, located between the kitchen and the future grill, will be our dining room.  Our option period is over, so it’s pretty much a done deal pending our financing now.

Should be looking good by quakecon, which was announced for August 12-15 at the Hilton Anatole, downtown Dallas.  You should come on down and visit!  Also, free standby airline tickets to the first 2 people who offer to help us move in April! :D

Not any really good pictures of the inside yet.  Will post when I have them.