This is CTIA

Originally uploaded by jonknee.

If Bluetooth waves cause cancer, sign me up for some clinic time. CTIA is a wireless battle zone.

New York Strip steak

I can’t have any peanut butter so I had to turn on the grill. I can’t say I’m missing peanut butter.

My dangerous peanut butter

I read about a peanut butter recall today and checked the cupboard. Sure enough I have some of the toxic spread! It’s nice to be a part of something finally.

I’ve never had to rent a car before now, but I always heard it was hard to do until age 25. Over the past few years the major rental companies have loosened the rules a bit, thanks in part to some lawsuits. Oddly enough one of the first lawsuits was in New York, but that state now has the highest surcharges I’ve seen ($100 a day sometimes!). There is a lot of age discrimination in the US still, both for the young and old, but it doesn’t get nearly the attention that fun things like racism do.

I’m renting in Texas and checked all of the big companies, here are the surcharges added on for being young. These fees may vary by state, but I checked a few other states besides New York and they all seemed close. Some companies are just more youth friendly. Unless you’re military or work for a company with a corporate account, NY is about the only place people under 21 can rent a car in the US. You’ll pay through the nose for it though.

I decided to go with the company with the lowest surcharge and in the event of a tie then the lowest fee for a comparable vehicle. I’m voting with my wallet, I want to reward the most youth friendly company with my business. I wasn’t expecting limitations (not being able to rent certain classes of vehicles), but this is the normal practice. I was looking to rent either a premium or luxury car.

After my research I had an easy decision, Enterprise Rent A Car. It’s far and away the best deal. That makes sense though, Enterprise got huge by going after an undertapped market–off-airport rentals. Apparently they are going after another huge overlooked market. Another nice thing about Enterprise is that I can actually rent something with a V6.

Hopefully someone will find this useful, these companies often bury the information several clicks deep. The information may change and as already stated, is not accurate in all 50 states. NY is different for most if not all of the companies.

US Car rental daily surcharges for ages 21-24

As I’m fitting my new place out it’s becoming more and more wireless. Case in point: I have two Airport Express units to handle wireless music (via these great speakers) and printing respectively. I am using a Bluetooth keyboard right now and a Bluetooth mouse is on the way. I use a wireless phone exclusively. If there was only some way to keep the laptop charged wirelessly I wouldn’t need a single wire on my desk.

These things seem to come around faster each year. This time it’s twenty-one. If you’re in Tampa, text me and we can go out for a drink sometime.

I just checked and this is the third year in a row I have marked this day in this weblog [19, 20]. All of the posts have the same title, which I think says something about how I write.

If you’re a Series 2 TiVo owner (sorry folks, not DirecTivo) then you need to get yourself a USB to WiFi adapter and check out some of the home media engine stuff. Photos and music is and has always been great for broadband connected TiVo, but I just played and beat a Sudoku puzzle using HME. Freaking cool.

The best way to manage your HME apps I have found is Apps.tv.

I was in Chemistry, I don’t remember exactly what period that was but I’m guessing it was third. Class hadn’t started yet and someone came in and said that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. We turned on the TV in time to see the second plane hit. I don’t think most of my classmates realized the gravitas of the situation. The TV was on for the rest of the day save for my American history class. Like 9/11 wasn’t history.

Some classmates got picked up early but I was there the rest of the day. If watching Fox News and CNN counts as being there. Oddly I don’t remember how lunch was, but I can imagine it was very very quiet.

(After reading this and checking my math again I just have a hard time believing that was four years ago. Wow. How things have changed.)

This could be the one that has been talked about for quite awhile–the major strike on New Orleans. The city sits under sea level and could become a lake. Hurricane Katrina has become a cat 5 (the highest) after rolling across southern Florida as a cat 1 storm.

Sustained winds are up to 175MPH which is F3 tornado type strength, only hurricanes last for hours not seconds.

God speed.

CarbWire is for sale. Been meaning to do this for a while. I’m up in Ohio (with the CarbWire cofounder, Larry) so this was a perfect time. Great resource and it still gets lots of press. I even did an interview with NPR today that aired nationally.

Update: ProBlogger gave up some linkage and I found out that CarbWire has over 28,000 MyYahoo subscribers. That’s insane!