Toyota Corolla Rental

I was forced to rent a Toyota Corolla, which wasn't bad but defiantly certainly wasn't near the same as a quality German vehicle. 

I got inside and realized I wasn't in Kansas anymore. It just didn't feel comfortable to sit in, maybe it wasn't' designed for long drives, or maybe they couldn't afford to put in more comfortable seats at this price point. Pushing on the accelerator it would squeals out like I'm at Nascar! (Maybe my foot is heavy?) Don't get me wrong, I enjoy burn outs as much as the next guy, but not when I'm just trying to move away from a light. 

I realized that the cabin wasn't ergonomically designed, I had to reach wayyy over to get at the radio. The blind spots were quite large for such a small car, and going down a winding road, it wasn't really confidence inspiring.

When it comes to creature comforts, it's fairly bare bones. No leather seats, no power windows, no climate control, no moonroof, no auto dimming rear view mirror, no auto sensing windshield wiper. 

When it comes right down to it, what's my life worth? This car isn't confidence inspiring to me and drives poorly which may ultimately result in a bad driving experience or worse an accident. The one thing the Corolla is is great on gas, affordable, and less things to break down (My first real car was a 1988 Toyota Tercel, me and my friends had some great times in that car)

As for a luxury car, it should be powerful, comfortable, confidence inspiring (without allowing the driver to be overconfident!) but above all safe at all speeds. I realize that I'm comparing a luxury vehicle to an entry level vehicle, which is unfair but still. 

Some people only buy luxury cars for the brand name, or the perceived prestige that goes with it, but in many cases (even if the driver doesn't know) there's usually a lot more to a luxury vehicle than a price tag, but having said that generally luxury cars don't last anywhere near as long as a car made to be economic like the old reliable Corolla there.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Webex Support with Windows 7

So I decided to break down and try out this new fan dangled Windows 7 (Build 7100), I must admit it does *look* nice. As I use WebEx for support purposes, I happily then fired up IE and tried to start a support session. This didn't work. :(  After the fact, I found some blogs that describe how to run IE as administrator (Shift + control), but for some users this didn't fix it.  For me, I tried to fire up WebEx in Opera 10 beta and that led me to a direct download of atscie.msi (For me, this was https:// .webex.com/sc<#####>/supportcenter/site/download.do?siteurl= &Rnd<####>=<####>&type=direct&file= an 8667KB file).  After firing up IE in Windows 7, all was well. A happy side note, after installing Java 6, then realizing that Opera doesn't like the new java installation directory, I copied the msvcr71.dll from /Program Files/Java/jre6/bin to /Windows/System32 it was happy (But still didn't work).  (Thanks to http://my.opera.com/communit...
Read more

Upgrading to the Marlin firmware on the Anycubic Mega S

 I recently started to try to use my 3D Printer again, and I decided to upgrade the firmware to the newest version of Marlin to use the mesh levelling system. Pre-requisites Raspberry Pi with Octopi Installed Stock (IE: No hardware upgrades!) Anycubic Mega-S Atmega 2560 board (I would open the unit up and check the board yourself to make sure!) Some time on your hands Process: Connect to SSH of your OctoPi Update your repositories pi@octopi: ~ $ sudo apt-get update Install avrdude pi@octopi: ~ $ apt-get install avrdude Find the location of avrdude pi@octopi: ~ $ which avrdude /usr/bin/avrdude Download the firmware file ( Marlin-Ai3M-v1.4.6-stock_drivers.hex ) from here (https://github.com/davidramiro/Marlin-Ai3M on the releases page) Install the Firmware Update plugin module on your Octopi if you have not already done so Click on the Wrench Icon at the top right Click on " Plugin Manager " Click on " Get More " Search for " Firmware Updater "  Install ...
Read more

Installing TinyCore 8x Linux to the Hard Drive via Command Line

Most of this can be found here: http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/install_manual.html but I made this document for the following reasons: 1) Installation is incorrect (wrong files specified) 2) Installation instructions specific to VMware 3) using fdisk instead of installing and using cfdisk (smaller footprint) 4) Not running as root (Yes, I understand the security implications here are heavily mitigated) On a side note I also found some parts confusing (like the explaining of the hd0 nomenclature in grub) Prerequisites: - VM with IDE disk (NOT SCSI) - 1 CPU - 256 MB of RAM - 100MB of space You can install with SCSI, but the process is labour intensive, for that reason, I find it easier to use an IDE disk (But we can load the SCSI driver later, so we can still use it as a helper for other VM purposes!) 1) Download the ISO from the following location: http://www.tinycorelinux.net/8.x/x86/release/Core-current.iso 2) Upload the ISO to the ESXi host 3) ...
Read more