Gasoline tanker explodes in the “MacArthur Maze” - what we locals call the intersection of I-80, I-580, and I-880, just beyond the east side terminus of the Bay Bridge linking San Francisco and the East Bay. I love this quote from the San Francisco Chronicle.

The tanker, which was traveling from I-80 full of vehicle-ready gasoline, seems to have disappeared. One Caltrans worker at the scene held up his thumb and forefinger an inch apart to describe how big the tanker is now.

Scene of the accident on Google Maps, now imagine a smoking crater in the center. Tanker was apparently on the roadway below and the ensuing fire collapsed the overpass. Good thing I don’t work in SF, because that happens to be the main route from the Bay Bridge to our house. Still, we take the stretch of 580 just a little bit to the east every day on the way to work (Emeryville is just NE of the maze) so it’ll be “interesting” to see what traffic will be like next week.

Update: we drove past the scene of the collapse this afternoon, joining all the other gawkers on the onramp from I-580 to I-80 N (the one that goes right by IKEA). It was awesome to see, in Susan’s words, “one road folded over the other like a blanket”.

After four months of searching, I was getting worried about buying a Prius in time for the September 30 deadline for full federal tax credit (it drops to 50% after that and phases out in the following quarter). Toyota Oakland and Alameda were content to offer us the wrong color or wrong package every few weeks or so, but I held out. Finally, fed up with my whining, my fabulous car procurement specialist (aka Susan) e-mailed forty dealerships and found a 2006 Magnetic Grey in Las Vegas with the right trim level. We flew out and picked it up Friday.

My first new car! I’m glad we waited. It’s a beautiful color - originally my second choice, Susan’s first, but I’m very happy with it. The picture above doesn’t do it justice, it’s more of a shade like burnished pewter or dark brushed nickel. I’m still getting used to the smart key system and the push button start thing, but driving it back from Las Vegas yesterday at 85 mph was a breeze compared to driving the rattling death trap that was the Acura.

Oh, and we averaged 49 miles per gallon on the trip. Which was, of course, one of the points of getting that car in the first place.

Yesterday morning we were woken up by a cop. Turned out at around 6 or 7 am someone decided to break into my car and grab the stereo. The people across the street saw this happening and called the cops, but by the time they showed up the thief had gone. I’m less annoyed about the loss of the stereo than I am about having to drive out to Walnut Creek this morning to get the glass replaced - all for a stereo that should (in theory) be useless, since it’s unlockable without a specific CD - one that says something about Jamie’s former taste in music.

More cars: I’m in the market for a new one, and we’ve been trying out hybrids for a few weeks now. Zero luck trying to get a test drive through the dealerships around here. We managed to test drive the 2005 Prius at Berkeley for about half an hour, but after phoning every Honda dealership within 30 miles we decided we had to rent one from Fox Rent A Car. Through a mishap we got the Prius again for a day, and finally this weekend we rented the Honda Civic. After all that, I’ve decided on the Prius. The cross bar on the rear window is a definite minus, but the Honda’s rear window visibility is far worse for parallel parking. The Prius feels a lot better when driving than the Civic - with the latter, I had a bad passing experience at 40 mph on the highway, and it also handles weirdly when moving from a stop - almost like the car is going backwards for a split second. It tends to roll backwards very easily too. The two clinchers, for me: the Civic’s lack of fold down rear seats means my cello doesn’t fit easily (as I found out when I went to orchestra practice on Sunday), and the Prius’ mileage during our two rental days edged out the Civic (43 mpg vs 38 mpg, both averaged out over at least 50 miles of driving). I’m going to go put a deposit down tomorrow.

And you thought this entry was about that movie of ours.

It’s like it’s L.A. around here all of a sudden. 30 minute car chase yesterday (watch the video). 14 year old goes on joy ride with stolen SUV. Another car chase today. Almost makes me afraid to drive to Home Depot at night.

I’m sick of painting, accidentally ripping up paint with masking tape, repainting, caulking, removing botched caulking, and recaulking. My brain function has been impaired by toxic fumes: I bought a pry bar at Home Depot last night, then left it there. At least I didn’t leave the wainscot behind and the circular saw should arrive tomorrow so this weekend it’ll be cutting, sawing, and hammering, assume my RSI flareup this week calms down - spastic shoulder, not caused by remodelling. If it doesn’t, there’s always hockey. After 17 months, the NHL season started today! Canucks won, Naslund scores 2! Yeah!

Update, 10/11/05: Okay, usually I can’t be bothered to link to weird eBay auctions, but the guy whose car was stolen and used in one of those car chases I mentioned (the one with the video) has put it up for sale. “Doubles as a golf cart!”. Classic.

• Headlight assemblies, from Autolights Inc.: $303.60
• Socket wrench set, Home Depot: $39.96
• 3 shattered Dremel emery cutting wheels: $0.75
• 6 hours labour: whatever
• Realisation that I have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to car repairs and should never attempt this sort of thing again: priceless

The car has been insured, passed the smog test (needing only a gas cap replacement, the inspection of which seems to fall under the purview of emissions control), and has been properly transferred to my ownership. I have not hit anything or anybody - other than my narrow driveway, scraping the right side of the car three times to date. I’m so glad I swallowed my pride, took advice, and accepted a beat up car which turned out not to be so beat up after all, because I’d be literally crying over the scrapes if it was a new Z4. As it is now I just shrug. In my defense, the retaining walls begin immediately after the sidewalk, and it’s an awkward right turn on a busy street. Despite the added expenses which just add up, the insane cost of parking downtown, and some jittery nerves which haven’t gone away it’s just so freaking cool to be able to go grocery shopping and stock up on lots of stuff. (Those of you who’ve been driving most of your lives are rolling their eyes at this point. Hey, I still take the bus every day.)

The July 4th weekend was an anniversary with Susan, so naturally we spent it together in the Bay Area. We had dinner at Chez Panisse, which was worth absolutely every penny spent, munched on kettle corn while experiencing the superhero angst that was Spider-Man 2, and watched fireworks at Jack London square in Oakland. I thought the display was mildly disappointing, although I was satisfied somewhat by the exploding happy faces. Anniversary: it’s been one year of dating. I can’t imagine life as a single geek again. If I’m lucky (and I have been, to date) she’ll overlook the serious geekiness (Wow, it’s Doc Connors! The Lizard! I had the first issue of Spectacular Spider-Man with him on the cover! And look, there’s Stan Lee!) and also the current obsession with plums and apples (I have two abundantly bearing fruit trees on my property).

A little bit of overdue maintenance: I’ve decided to switch this blog over to blosxom. The easy part is done already - you can check it out here, it looks almost identical at the moment. Since my current scheme is text based to begin with (albeit one monolithic file), and since Wayne already turned my text to html formatting code into a blosxom plugin (which he unfortunately called “fongination” - I need to have a little chat with him about that - yes, we use blosxom quite extensively at work) it was pretty simple to get this far. I have to rethink some of the permanent link, archive page, and navigation stuff though, and I could probably spruce up the CSS a bit.

I finally got my driver’s license today. Ten years behind the curve, but who’s counting?

The test went well, all things considered. My stress levels weren’t helped by the fact that the car sent by the driving school didn’t have up to date proof of insurance. The drive tester was definitely not happy about that. After faxes were made and things were sorted out (including some confusion as to whether I needed a Vietnamese translator or not), we were off and running around the familiar roundabouts of Greenwood. I scored 90 - she docked two for being too far from the curb during parallel parking and four for hitting the curb while backing around a corner (which, incidentally, seems to be a bit of sadism peculiar to Washington State drive tests as far as I know). What I felt was really unfair was taking off four for attempting to move from a parked position while still in parking gear. I mean, in the end I wasn’t moving, so how unsafe could that have been?

So I have a license, and I even have a car. Jamie gave me his old one, a 1990 Acura Integra GS.

It’s a little beat up in the front due to an incident between Jamie and a van, hence the greatly recessed lights, but it seems to run just fine. Note the fuzzy dice, a fitting and much appreciated gift from Susan. I now need to get proper insurance, take the car to get the oil changed, pass a smog test, and get the title transferred, all within two weeks (the title transfer clock started ticking last Friday when the car was passed to me). Over the course of last week I’ve already slowly worked out the backward dependencies: i.e. that title transfer depends on passing a smog test, and the smog test requires driving the car, which requires insurance, which requires having a valid license, and if any forward dependencies exist in these steps then I will be screwed.

I’ve also discovered that State Farm Insurance isn’t the same thing as Farmer’s, and the insurance agents get huffy when you mix the two up.

Of course, having a car just makes it easier to go to home improvement stores. Mimi visited for the last couple of weeks, and relatives are of course most useful for manual labour, so we made the trek out to the Home Depot four times (twice while I was driving - and yes, there was some unclear insurance status during those trips, so it may not have been such a good idea). In between weeding, bookshelf assembling, spackling of lawn, piano polishing, and general cleaning, we managed to paint the guest bedroom/office “hilltop green”:

It turned out a lot darker than I expected. Here’s where the graphics geek in me emerges, because according to the paint manufacturer hilltop is supposed to be #4a5d52, which according to your browser is this color:                   , and as I sit here staring at the wall and my (badly calibrated) monitor I realise they doesn’t match at all, and neither matches the printed color sample either. I’m not sure what lesson there is to be learned here, other than it would be great if someone came up with light emissive paint in monitor color gamut space? Anyways. I like the result, and in any event it’s a vast improvement on canary yellow with teddybear trim.