Some dreams are not meant to be

Aw, poo.

I finally had time to call all the hire firms to sort out a car for Denver – San Francisco. I made a booking a week ago through Alamo’s website, but I wasn’t quite clear on the insurance situation.

The first thing to note is that it’s much quicker and more pleasant to call than it is to poke around websites. It’s funnier, too, depending on who’s on the other end of the line.

So, the Alamo booking was fine, and their price was competitive with others’ too. But that meant that Hertz’s Ford Mustang deal really wasn’t all that much more. I mean, something like 20% more, which is a chunk of change, but… a Mustang… through the desert in America… it’s quite an image, no?

I could feel my resolve weakening. Much as I think American sports cars are, basically, crap, the mystique of driving a Mustang through Death Valley has tremendous appeal. I made one more call, to the last hire firm on my list, while I thought about it.

Damn, but National undercut everyone else by $300. So I’ve booked a crappy Pontiac with them.

Backing up

On second thoughts, backing up 6.5Gb of X-Plane global scenery data isn’t the brightest thing I’ve ever done. Then again, it does allow me to rave about X-Plane 7 beta.

It’s the mother of all flight simulators, with a flight model accurate enough that it’s used for general handling testing by… well, Boeing, NASA, etc etc. Oh, and you can order it with a set of Mars scenery discs, if you fancy flying on Mars. It’s really rather good. While it’s not visually up to MS Flight levels, the clouds are gorgeous, and overall it’s more than ‘good enough’; various tweaky geeky things help it piss all over MS Flight when one gets technical. I’m particularly fond of running the number-crunching simulation engine on my Mac, but with only the instrument panel displaying on that machine; out-of-the-cockpit visuals are left to my graphics-mashing WinXP box.

Anyway, X-Plane is also being used in ground training for Burt Rutan’s outrageously futuristic X-Prize entry. Indeed, models of White Knight (the launch vehicle) and SpaceShipOne (the suborbital/re-entry craft) are included in v7 – flying White Knight is a blast. Rutan isn’t saying when the first suborbital flight is planned, but the smart money is on December 17th this year. And if anyone’s going to celebrate the Wrights’ centenary in style, Burt’s the man to pull it off.

Almost makes me wish I’d done that aero engineering degree and gone to work for Scaled Composites.

Eddie Mair

Quite how Eddie Mair gets away with it, I’ve no idea.

Last night’s PM included a feature on bonds that had been sold, years ago, in the future proceeds of Rod Stewart’s music. At least, I think it was Rod – I can’t find the story anywhere this morning. Anyway, the story was that some analyst had recently down-graded the bonds, on the grounds that music profits were likely to fall with all the online music shenanigans.

PM proceeded to interview the fund manager who had issued the bonds – a lengthy, turgid, and entirely incomprehensible process. Signing off the report, Eddie said:

Remember, PM is not here to give financial advice. Your interest in the programme may go down as well as up.

All this by way of explanation: if, gentle reader, you happen to be the lady in the Vectra alongside me on the Leeds outer ring road yesterday; this is why I suddenly creased up. I really wasn’t laughing at you. Sorry.

Backups

It’s 2am.

I’m still at my Mac, because it’s backing up. To DVD-R. Now, this is a Good Thing, since it means I won’t have to worry when I’m away, since I’ll have a complete mirror. And I’m a big step nearer having a really sane backup system, which is always a Good Thing (as, curiously, only people who’ve lost vital data through not having backups will tell you).

Unfortunately, my Mac has something like a third of a million files, and it’ll take about seven DVDs and perhaps ten hours to burn them all. And if I go to bed right now, the Mac will bleat for blank disc number three very shortly.

So I’m sitting watching a little counter tick down, waiting for the gaping maw of the drive to open and a dialogue box reading ‘Feed Me’ to appear.

Remind me again why I’m backing up? [sigh]