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My dad and I were planning on golfing this afternoon but due to the heavy rains in the morning, it left the ground soggy and we decided to cancel. With the entire afternoon open, we decided to head across the river to Moncton for some test driving. Our test driving sessions started a few years ago when we would go to car dealerships and take out the sportiest of cars for test drives… just for fun.

During the past couple of weeks, I’ve been doing a bit of car researching since I will hopefully have a full-time job within a month and I’m getting tired of taking the bus or walking everywhere. While looking through half a dozen different car manufacturer’s websites, I came across the Chevrolet Cobalt which recently took over from the Chevrolet Cavalier. The price is half-decent and it comes in an SS supercharged trim for the coupe with 205hp under the hood.

We arrived at the GM dealership and saw an entire row of Cobalts which were either the LS or LT trim and the dealer said they were out of the supercharged models. However, on the main lawn of the dealership there were two black supercharged Cobalts. After taking a look around and inside the car, we decided to take a test drive. Several minutes later, we were zipping up Wheeler Boulevard.

Overall, the car is much quieter than I would have expected, especially with a supercharged 205hp engine. It became very evident as I stepped on the gas that there was plenty of available power. The ride was much smoother than I was expecting. Usually, sporty cars shake all over the place when you hit a bump in the road but the Cobalt barely shuddered. Another common occurrence in a sports car is the lack of visibility and increased blind spots, but these weren’t noticed at all except for the view of the wing on the hood when looking through the rear-view mirror.

There were only two small problems with the Cobalt that immediately came to my attention. The interior seemed to have too much plastic and looked a bit cheap. The second problem dealt with the small opening for the trunk. Instead of allowing the rear window to lift up with the trunk to create a larger opening such as a hatchback, the Cobalt only uses the small bit of trunk behind the window for the opening. However, it still shouldn’t be too much of a problem since the opening can still handle a large suitcase.

The price for the 2006 Cobalt SS Supercharged coupe was $28,000 as tested. GM Canada has a graduate program where they will pay the first two month lease or finance payments (up to $600/month) for recent graduates of an accredited university. That makes the Cobalt even more attractive since it’s almost like driving it for “free” for the first two months.

After leaving the GM dealership, we made stops at the Acura, Honda, and Audi/VW dealerships before calling it a day. Other cars on my list are the Acura RSX, Honda Civic, and Mazda6 Sport. Hopefully we’ll be test driving these cars in the upcoming weeks.

After using Movable Type for just over 2 years, I decided that it was time to move onto something better… WordPress. The main reasons for my switch are listed below:

• Pricing. After providing their software for free, Six Apart started charging for newer versions of MT. I’m not really sure why they would charge for such ’simple’ blogware. After all, there was a time when I considered writing my own blogging software but decided to try WP instead, which is free and open source.
• Static content. When a new entry or comment is submitted using MT, static web pages are generated instead of querying the database when these pages are accessed. This could have an advantage on high traffic sites where the number of queries is greatly reduced when simply viewing a blog entry. However, it doubles the diskspace required for the blog content as there are copies on the static pages and in the database. It also dramatically increases the amount of workload put on the server when an entry/comment is added since it must rebuild several webpages. This can also cause headaches when deleting comment spam as all of the affected pages have to be rebuilt. WP comes to the rescue and retrieves all of the entries and comments dynamically from the database. It makes sense to me.

The switch to WP was quite uneventful. MT entries/comments could be directly imported into WP without much effort. I was then able to use MT to create a script for looping through the entries to create output for forwarding old entries to the new WP entries in my .htaccess file. It was rather amusing to use MT against itself.

Here is a snippet from my current .htaccess file which takes care of forwarding all of my old entries to their new location. This also allowed me to remove the old static content and simply rely on the database backend.

RewriteRule ^archives/([0-9]{4})_([0-9]{2}).php /$1/$2/ [R,L]
RewriteRule ^archives/000491.php /2005/09/15/job-hunting-and-walk-the-line/ [R,L]
RewriteRule ^archives/000490.php /2005/09/05/rolling-stones-in-moncton-review/ [R,L]
...

I have now been using WP for almost one week and haven’t had any problems. I’m sure the comment spam will be on it’s way, but having builtin support for moderating comments and not having to rebuild static content, removing spam shouldn’t be too difficult. During the past week I have also dabbled into WP plugins and rewrote the “last comment by” to be used with WP. I am currently working on another simple plugin which functions similar to del.icio.us where I can post links into my blog with ease, taking advantage of some of Firefox’s features.

Yesterday I went to see the Hopewell Rocks. It was the first time I went to see them in about 10 years and much has changed since that last visit. They are now charging $8/person and it’s a 1km walk through a trail to see the Rocks. The last time I went it was free and the parking lot was right next to the stairs for going down to the ocean floor. They have now commercialized it with a gift shop, restaurant, and other ‘tourist trap’ amenities. It was still quite impressive to see how many tourists are fascinated with these rocks. The parking lot was filled with cars from almost every state and province.

As usual, the pictures can be found in the gallery.

I have been back living in Riverview for the past couple weeks and boredom is finally starting to take it’s toll. This has provoked me to start looking for a full-time job.

Yesterday I was doing some searching for software development jobs and came across a small company in Vancouver. I emailed them a cover letter and resume and was surprised to hear back about a phone interview just a couple hours later. Anyways, I just got off the phone with them and the interview went great. However, they don’t hire over-the-phone and the company doesn’t have enough money to fly me out to their offices for an interview. At this point, it doesn’t seem right to spend $750 to fly out for a job that I might not get, so I’ll keep looking… hopefully to find a job in Vancouver for certain reasons.

I had the tv on yesterday as background noise as I was playing some games on the computer. I overheard them talking about a Johnny Cash movie with Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon. I remember hearing about this movie a while ago but then completely forgot about it. It’s called Walk The Line and is currently being shown at the Toronto International Film Festival and will be released to other theatres in November. While watching The Late Show with David Letterman last nite, Reese was one of his guests and Dave spent most of the interview talking about how great the Johnny Cash movie was. For the first time in a long while, I’m actually looking forward to a movie. Hopefully one of the theatres in Moncton gets it! Watch the trailer!

In chronological order, here are the events from Saturday:

9:00am - Got on the bus in Riverview which took us over to Moncton for a shuttle conection to the concert. Upon arriving at Highfield Square for our transer, we headed into Shoppers and picked up a disposable camera to sneak into the concert.

11:00am - Arrived at the gates to the concert which left us with an hour-long wait before the gates opened. This involved sitting on the grass with the other 3000 people who were also waiting.

12:00pm - The gates opened and we made it through security with no problems at all. They didn’t even notice the camera which we had taped inside a sweatshirt.

12:20pm - We headed towards the stage to get as close as possible. We found a great spot about 100 feet away which was situated on a knoll that allowed us to see above everyone in front of us. It was closer than I ever thought we’d get seeing as the entire concert site was 100 acres in size! It was now time to wait for another 3 hours until the concert began…

1:30pm - We had hot dogs and hamburgers for lunch. Two hot dogs and one hamburger cost $9. At this point the crowds were still small which meant no line ups for food. Later on in the day, I heard stories about a guy waiting an hour and a half to buy a pizza.

3:00pm - The opening band, Les Trois Accords from Quebec, opened up the concert with a 30 minute set. They seemed a mix between punk and alternative. I never heard of them before and they exceeded my expectations even though all their songs were in french and I could only understand some of the lyrics.

3:50pm - Our Lady Peace took the stage for almost an hour and performed some new and old songs. I haven’t heard much of their new material but it was good to hear Naveed and Superman’s Dead. For the most part, OLP didn’t seem very energized and it became somewhat boring watching them perform after their first few songs.

5:00pm - Maroon 5 started their set out really strong but completely died down after the first two songs. The lead singer’s voice got very annoying after a short period of time and it was a joy when they finally finished.

6:30pm - The Tragically Hip came onstage to the most cheering of any opening band for the day. Gord was pumped up as usual and striking some poses. They played some great material but it got annoying to watch Gord continue to goof off during their entire set.

8:15pm - The sun begins to set beyond the horizon as the stage is being prepared for the Rolling Stones. Finally, darkness is upon us…

8:35pm - The Stones explode into their set with Start Me Up as the 7-storey stage lights up and spews fireballs into the night sky. It seemed unbelievable to see Mick, Keith, Ron, and Charlie only 100 feet in front of us. During their 2 hour long set they played some oldies, covers, and songs from their new album. While they were singing Miss You, part of the main stage started to detach and move along rails towards the B-stage. It was totally unexpected as the Stones were transported a mere 50 feet away from us. After several songs on the B-stage, they moved back to the main stage to finish up their set. In my opinion their best song of the night was Paint It Black which got the crowd into it as the 7-storey high screen behind the main stage flashed black and white video of the Stones. The encore presentation was Satisfaction which got the crowd into it again. When the song finished, the stage lit up again with fireworks and fireballs.

10:45pm - We started to make the trek out of the concert site and back to home. There were already several thousand people waiting for buses which couldn’t go anywhere since the crowds were walking the entire width of the street. Instead of waiting for a bus, we opted to walk to our church which was 1km away and got picked up.

1:00am - Arrived back home after a long day of walking and standing in one spot for many hours.

Overall, this was an awesome concert and was well worth the cost, waiting in lines, and standing for hours on end.

Here is the set list for the Stones:

1. Start Me Up
2. It’s Only Rock’n Roll
3. Live With Me
4. Tumbling Dice
5. Rough Justice
6. Ruby Tuesday
7. You Can’t Always Get What You Want
8. All Down The Line
9. Night Time Is The Right Time
10. The Worst (Keith)
11. Infamy (Keith)
12. Miss You (to B-stage)
13. Oh No, Not You Again (B-stage)
14. Midnight Rambler (B-stage)
15. Honky Tonk Women (from B-stage)
16. Sympathy For The Devil
17. Paint It Black
18. Jumping Jack Flash
19. Brown Sugar
20. Satisfaction (encore)

Here is an aerial view of the 99 acre concert site: