Yearly Archives: 2009

2000 Volkswagen Passat Wagon – $5500 (Ypsilanti, MI)

This entry was posted in cars on by (updated 5447 days ago)

2000 Volkswagen Passat wagon, 73,300 miles. 1.8-liter turbo four cylinder 150 hp, 155 lb-ft at 1,750 rpm. 5-speed automatic transmission with tiptronic manual shifting. This silver station wagon still shines and has no rust. We are the original owners and the car has been kept in a garage since new. The engine and transmission run well and it still averages 25 mpg in around town driving and closer to 30 mpg on highway runs.

The car is equipped with the cold weather package so it has heated front seats. Other options include the premium package with a power moon-roof, alloy wheels and Monsoon audio system. There is an auxiliary input connected to the stereo so you can plug in an ipod or other mp3 player to listen through the stereo. There is 39 cubic feet of luggage space in the back with the seats up and the rear seats fold flat for carrying larger items. Anti-lock brakes and traction control were standard equipment and are fully functional.

$5,500 or best offer.
734-961-4473

Review: 2010 Chevy Camaro RS V6 4

This entry was posted in cars and tagged 2010 chevy camaro camaro review on by (updated 5557 days ago)

In the realm of pony-cars, there are mainly two kinds of people, Mustang fans and Camaro fans. The Mustang was the original pony and provided the name to the segment. It was three years after the Mustang’s 1964 debut before Chevrolet responded with the original Camaro. While the Mustang has been in continuous production for 45 years, falling sales of the last generation Camaro caused GM to discontinue it in 2003. Meanwhile Ford gave the Mustang a new lease on life in 2005 with a full ground up redesign that saw sales surge. Needless to say GM took notice and 2006 brought a new Camaro concept that was a thoroughly modern design that still paid tribute to the 1967 original. The response was overwhelmingly positive and three years later the production fifth generation Camaro hit the streets.

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Eat at Grange! you won’t be sorry 1

This entry was posted in Ann Arbor food and tagged brandon johns food grange kitchen and bar on by

grangeMASTHEAD2The Grange Kitchen and Bar is officially opening up on Thursday night in Ann Arbor and we were fortunate to get invited to attend a preview the other night.  Our friend Brandon Johns along with his wife Sara is at the helm for this new eatery on W Liberty in the space formerly occupied by Bella Ciao. Brandon and the crew have transformed the interior of the place from old world Italian to something with a bright, airy country kitchen feel.  That’s appropriate given Brandon’s emphasis on locally grown, seasonal ingredients. That also means that the menu will be changing up regularly as very elements of dishes become available and go away.

One example is the squash blossoms filled with goat cheese that were lightly battered in an almost tempura like coating and fried. These were amazingly tasty and didn’t feel at all greasy. Another of Brandon’s signature appetizers is the date, chorizo and blue cheese which always go quickly when he caters a party.

In spite of the fact that Brandon keeps the menu deliberately short, you’ll find yourself struggling to choose. Personally I went for the grilled halibut with a Portugese style seafood stew. The fish was perfectly cooked and sat amongst a bed of mussels, shrimp and house made chorizo sausage. The best part was the broth that surrounded it which was full of all the flavors combined.  Max had the grilled pork loin with chorizo and buckwheat dumplings while Sofia had the roasted chicken breast with crispy skin and Jules had the steak. The fillet was covered in a bacon-blue cheese crust and accompanied by whipped potatoes and red-wine syrup.

This may have been the first time that the kitchen staff worked together for customers other than the Grange team, but it didn’t matter. All of the food was perfectly prepared and beautifully presented. Our server was also very professional and very well prepared. She was able to explain the various items on the menu and what made selections like the squash blossoms special (that is that they are only available for about two weeks a year).

At Brandon’s last establishment over on Main St, the main courses and starters were also typically well prepared, but desserts were often a bit of a disappointment. This time, Brandon and Sara have taken the feedback to heart and Sara’s sister (this is definitely a family business) is now responsible for preparing desserts. Here again we could find nothing to complain about other than the fact that we were too stuffed to eat more. The blueberry roll, chocolate cake and the fruit and nut tart were all outstanding.

We haven’t had a chance to try the menu at the upstairs bar yet, but for those looking for something a bit lighter than the main menu, it looks like there will be great choices there too. Grange will be open for dinner every night except Sunday and you should definitely check it out.

Insurance IS about collectivism, not individuals

This entry was posted in america politics on by (updated 4394 days ago)

Frank Luntz is a Republican pollster, but more importantly he uses the words that he tests to manipulate the American people. Were it not for Luntz’s words we likely would not have had a Republican controlled congress from the mid-90s and the last eight years of the Cheney-bush administration. Using words to manipulate people is of course nothing new, especially in politics and it happens across the political spectrum.

The problem is that Luntz is particularly effective at find words that hit at irrational fears of Americans and twisting them around into often outright lies. A prime example is on this week’s edition of On the Media at just over 7 minutes in.

Luntz is interviewed on the subject of health care reform and the messages he is crafting for Republicans. Luntz is having the anti-reform side (yes that is an example of using words to manipulate, because the Republicans would love to reform the health industry, but not in anyway that will be beneficial to MOST Americans) de-emphasize the phrases free-markets and competition. He replies to a question about this with

“Well it’s not a matter of changing their principles, because what they support stil maintains an individual focused system rather than a collective system.”

The fundamental problem with this statement is that it runs counter to the entire premise of insurance. Insurance at its core is about collectivism. Insurers collect premiums from customers and pool risk over a large number of customers. The concept is that people pay in such as for homeowners insurance into a pool of money. Ultimately most people will never have their house burned down, robbed or destroyed in an earthquake, while others will.  Some will collect more in claims than they pay in while others will get nothing.  Because you can’t predict everything that will happen in the future, this mechanism allows large numbers of people mitigate financial risk down the road.

The problem with Luntz’s emphasis on individual focus is that it eliminates the whole point of an insurance system. While in many cases individualism is a good thing, health care probably isn’t one of them. When you get really sick or seriously injured the costs can so easily become totally overwhelming. While the wealthy can often afford to take care of themselves, the vast majority of us cannot in an extreme situation like this. Many of us will never need this kind of expensive care, but if we do a collective insurance system can literally be a lifesaver.

This is not about communism as Luntz would like to imply, this is about helping people when they need it most.

Next up the falacy of rationing

Changes in the local restaurant scene

This entry was posted in Ann Arbor food on by

Just over a year ago coworker and friend Sara Johns and her husband chef Brandon Johns bought into the Ann Arbor restaurant Vinology. Brandon made tremendous progress with his attempts to create a dining experience based around fresh locally sourced foods.  Food went from being something of an afterthought to the wines at Vinology to coming front and center. Unfortunately the partnership with the majority owners didn’t work out and Brandon has moved on to a new project.

He and Sara along with my boss Rob Cleveland and another partner have bought Bella Ciao on Liberty St and will be transforming it. Bella Ciao will shut down later this month and then re-open in August as the Grange Kitchen and Bar. Brandon plans to continue the local food effort with a rotating menu based on what is available at different times of the year.

Hopefully with full control this time, things will work out better and the Grange will become a permanent fixture on the local restaurant scene.

By the way if you happen to be in downtown Ann Arbor around lunch time, you might want to hit Kerry Town and check out Monahan’s seafood market where they have a daily special that you can find posted on their twitter feed at http://twitter.com/MonahansSeafood. Sparrow’s meats is also doing sandwiches and salads at lunch now over by the checkout counter.

15 years! 1

This entry was posted in family stuff on by

sam-and-jules-kauai15 years ago this evening we walked out onto the steps of a bed and breakfast on the south shore of Kauai. As we turned, our backs were to the Pacific with Spouting Horn off to our left as sun slowly sank toward the horizon. Over the next several minutes, we said our vows to each other in the presence of a retired minister, his wife and a photographer.

15 years later we’re still going at and still in love. Happy anniversary Jules! I still adore you! Here’s to many more years.

Beagle Brain for computer repairs 4

This entry was posted in Ann Arbor technology on by

bblogo_coming_soon

A new computer supply and repair shop just opened up around the corner from my downtown Ann Arbor office that so far at least is highly recommended. Beagle Brain is located at the west end of Nickels Arcade opposite the entrance to the Maynard parking structure. I’ve been wanting to put a bigger hard drive in my macbook pro for some time but unlike the plastic macbooks, swapping the drive is a more complex procedure. The whole aluminum case has to be opened up with lots of little screws to lose and several connectors. I stopped into the shop last week to see how much they would charge to do the remove and replace procedure, and to my pleasant surprise the price was a very palatable $30. I went ahead and ordered the new hard drive from Newegg and when it arrived I cloned the current drive to an external unit with Super Duper!. I dropped off my laptop when I went into the office and picked it up at lunch time. I plugged in the external drive to clone the data back to the new larger drive and a couple of hours later I was good to go.  If you need some repair work done and you’re in downtown A2 it’s definitely worth checking out Beagle Brain.

Too big to fail, the failure of “free markets” 4

This entry was posted in business politics on by

Over the past year, we’ve seen a string of banks declared as “too big to fail.” As a result they got hundreds of billions of dollars in essentially no-strings attached bailouts. In return we’ve seen them payout $20 billion in bonuses to executives that helped lead these banks to the verge of collapse. Why has this happened? Precisely because the policies of deregulation happy Republicans allowed them to.

These same “conservatives” like to cite Adam Smith and the idea of laissez faire economics. That is the idea of taking a hands off approach and letting the market find its own way. The problem is that to have a free market as envisioned by Smith, there needs to be enough players on both the supply and demand sides of the market equation to prevent manipulation by individuals. This is where Smith’s ideas have fallen apart in the modern world. Over the course of the twentieth century, corporations have grown progressively larger while the numbers of companies in many business segments has shriveled.

As that has happened, those huge businesses have taken control of the market and made it exceedingly difficult to new players to come in. Without someone to call bullshit, huge financial companies have also created a bogus economy that was built on a web of lies. By largely abandoning anti-trust enforcement over the last several decades we have allowed unprecedented consolidation to occur. The result is that institutions with far too much influence on the overall economy have developed. The combination of these over sized players and excess unchecked greed leads to stupid developments. Ultimately this is unsustainable and we have the situation we see today.

If there is one lesson that we must learn from the events of the past year it is that these huge companies should be broken up and never allowed to consolidate to this degree again. There is no reason why companies should be too large to fail. Some anti-trust regulation is a good thing regardless of what Republicans say. Will we learn this lesson? Unfortunately, probably not.

It’s the Fuggly! 2

This entry was posted in humor on by (updated 5779 days ago)

By now you may have seen the commercials for the Snuggie which looks like some old monk’s robe but is actually a blanket with sleeves. Yes it’s a dopey premise, but it makes prime fodder for the talented team that creates “This Hour has 22 Minutes”.