It comes down to tires

I have to admit, I love good tires on our cars. Not 'good' as in long-lasting, necessarily, but in qualities that enhance performance and safety in all types of weather.

Consider the winter. I much prefer four modern snow and ice tires over all-wheel drive. Remember, you must do 3 things with any car -- accelerate, turn, and stop. All-wheel drive helps only with one of those -- acceleration -- and actually degrades the other two.

As this ABC News story my sister shared reminded me, though, it's also the age of your tires that matters. In short, tires age start to age the day they're made, and old tires can fail in ugly ways. I checked our cars and the tires were all less than 6 months old when we bought them, with the oldest set now almost 5 years old.

The Tire Rack, where I've bought most of our tires, has a good article on tire aging. The article has some good points about how tire inflation, speed rating, and where the car is stored can all affect a tire's lifetime. You'll also find a complete description on determining the age of your tires.

When will we have live street view?

I've been thinking. Today we can use the Internet to look at street-level view in Google, see photos on a map taken by Flickr users, immerse ourselves in photos stitched together by Microsoft Photosynth, and even walk indoors with EveryScape. And of course we can look at live webcams, like this high quality camera in Amsterdam.

So when will we bring all of this together, so we have the best of everything in one place? Heck, imagine adding in the video from webcams mounted on street lamps, city buses, light rail, garbage trucks, UPS trucks, and the like. And then imagine bringing in photos and video streaming from smart phones, cameras, and other personal items like Rovio.

Ultimately, we'll have live street view for the world. Sure, it will bring a host of privacy issues. But mostly, it'll just be cool.

December photos

Merry Christmas, everyone! I've uploaded some recent photos to my Flickr page.

Winter Concerts, 2009

Our girls' orchestra and chorus concerts were these past two Mondays. Listen to Green Sleeves and Carol of the Bells!

Pocono photos

More recent photos on my Flickr page.

Travels

I blogged before my October procedure that I wouldn't sit still for long afterward, and I think I've succeeded so far. In the 5 weeks since, we've been to the Poconos and central Pennsylvania twice (friends, family, and shopping), I've traveled to New Jersey (sibling reunion), and to West Virginia (road trip). Road trip photos are here.

p.s. This Thanksgiving I'm thankful for the heroes of the medical profession!

Good checkup

We met with Dr Ringel last week, the guy that did my stent procedure, and also had an echocardiogram. Hard to believe it's already a month ago yesterday. Anyway, the echo showed that the procedure did exactly what it was meant to do. My heart is happy and so am I!

I'll be on aspirin for another 5 months, but that's my only medication. I like that. I'm also free to resume all whatever activities I was doing before ... running, biking, weights, etc. That's a great feeling, for sure.

My next checkup will be a year from now. Ah, now to enjoy the holidays!