That New Car Smell

I feel a little obligated to write about the new car I bought last weekend. I'm not sure I have much to say about it (not that it's not exciting), it feels a bit surreal yet completely normal at the same time. Although my lease is coming up and I'd been thinking about replacing the RX for the past couple of weeks, it still felt like an impulse purchase.

I've always been a same-day car buyer. In fact, until this experience, I'd never walked out of a car dealership without a new car, granted I walked in with the intent of buying a car. This time, I waited until the second day. :) I suppose I get this from my dad. One of his infamous negotiating tactics was the whole I'm-leaving-unless-you-give-me-this-deal.

So before this weekend, I had the Mercedes ML350 and the all-new RX350 on the top of my list for replacements. (Adding the "all-new" is a bad work habit) So to avoid making an immediate car purchase, I decided to go to BMW as my first stop. As I approached the X5 to check it out, I was immediately repelled by the sheer size of the car. If my RX was a soccer mom car, this is a soccer mom of 4 kids car. I didn't even bother sitting inside or test driving, but I was intrigued by the diesel version and even more excited to hear there was a 335 version of the diesel.

I proceeded to test drive the 335d and the 335i for comparison. I loved it. It may have to do with the fact that the salesperson encouraged me to gun it after a 4-way stop sign and to take a sharp turn without braking. It might have been the donuts he had me try in an empty parking lot. I was sold. But, Max wanted to check out Mercedes before any decision was made so I headed next door to House of Imports.

We tried out the E550 coupe and the C63 AMG. Both were characteristically Mercedes and although I loved the C63, I didn't think it was in my price range. The next day, we headed back to a different BMW dealership to check out the competition. Max loved the 335 diesel but they only had a black on black in stock. I refuse to do black on black. After much pleading, Max convinced me to take the new Z4 for a spin. I tried both the 30 and 35 versions and I loved it. So much so that I was pretty convinced that this was the right time to buy a roadster. But, of course, there wasn't a color combination that I liked (seemed to happen a lot at McKenna BMW) so we headed back to Shelly BMW in Buena Park.

{Wow, this story is longer than I thought I could write}

So back at Shelly BMW I fell in love with a space gray Z4 sdrive35i. Unfortunately it was also fully loaded so after pricing it out, I felt more and more like it was the impractical choice. Back to the 335 diesel with the $4500 ECO credit. Only then we found out that it had a premium APR to offset the incentive. What to do? "If you want to stick to your price range, take a look at the regular 335i," he says, "we can do much better deals on the regular 3-series."

"But I don't WANT a regular 3-series," I think, as I begrudgingly walk through the lot.

Then at the very end of the row we find him*. A 335i sedan with the M sport package in manual. Hmmm... could be fun.





After a bumpy test drive (hey, it's been 10 years since I've driven stick!) I decide this is the one. We went into the negotiating room one more time and when my hunger couldn't take it in anymore I settled on a deal and drove it home.

*Is this car really a male? Max thinks so but I'm going to wait until a name calls out to me before I decide gender.

Omnigraffle for House Things

Marcela and I got into a lengthy (and involved) discussion this morning about landscaping and I was eager to plot some ideas down on paper. (Well, digital paper) Max and I have thrown some ideas around about pavers, flagstone, cement and shapes and I thought it might be fun to sketch out some of them to share with friends and family for feedback. (Plus it will also help when it comes time to getting bids)

I use Omnigraffle everyday at work so I decided to browser through stencils online to see if there was anything that might help me plot out the backyard. Score! Found one for gardening.

I started with a rough sketch of the backyard as it is. I wanted to send this empty plan to Max and Marcela so they could come up with their own plans. I tried my best to be true to the proportions but it was hard to imagine since I am rarely in the backyard and don't remember how big (small) it is. It took me 10 minutes to put together with various stencils in Omnigraffle.



I showed the picture to Phil (who sits in front of me at work and is working on his own landscaping) and he gave me a couple of ideas of things he saw on the web. I immediately took a liking to two of them.

I've been hearing more and more about colored cement, or even painted cement, and I thought the colors in this example would be perfect for our Spanish-style house. It might be fun to come up with a pattern for the main area as well, or would look great as big tiled slabs. I do want to explore what kind of coatings we can add on top to make it look more "clean".

I thought this example with the vines was a great way to make a place look full without taking up too much space. We could do something similar off to the side and put a lot of large bushy pants and flowers to create a garden-like seating area.

So now it came to plotting on Omnigraffle. I found the stencil incredibly easy to work with. I was able to shrink some of the trees to make into shrubs and grow some tiles into slabs. I played with overlaying opaque layers to create a "cement" look. It's such an easy and visual way to plan something out -- I should have used something like this for furniture!



So the basic idea here is that the main part of the backyard will be made up of these colored cement "tiles" and the base color will extend to one side, which is the side we use for trash and storage. The other side will have the colored tiles layered on top of grass with a small strip of flowers and plants near the fence. We'd cover as much of the white fence with vines as possible and have an area on the top right dedicated to fruit trees and our more colorful plants. I think this layout works well with the house because the elememts closest to the house still look Spanish but we can have more fun with colorful flowers and fruit trees away from the house.

I think this is a good layout to start with. We can always do flagstone or other hardscaping in place of the cement or add a curve to the border so it doesn't look so boxy. We can move the patio furniture closer to the grill and add a little patio terrace (is that what it's called?) and string some cute lights and lanterns. We can get a combo table/fire pit and get larger, lounge chairs to go around the table. We can shape the area more with potted plants and trees too. I can't wait until I have time to do an option 2 and 3. :)

Pizzeria Mozza

I rarely get the chance to eat dinner up in LA but on this uncommon weeknight Max and I left work early for a concert at the Hollywood Bowl. I thought it would be nice to share a pizza and some wine at the outdoor venue so we headed to Pizzeria Mozza for some to go. We arrived so early that the normally 45+ minute-wait was only 10 minutes for the bar so we decided to eat there.

And oh-em-gee I wasn't sure what I was expecting but the food there definitely blew my expectations out of the water!

The first dish we had was the grilled corn. The outside was slightly caramelized and crunchy and the butter carried so much flavor. I have to say this was the best corn I ever had in my life and I've had some pretty good corn.

The next dish was more interesting in promise. The Bone marrow al forno was served with some toasted bread and natural salts and herbs for taste. I was a little greasy but it was a lot of fun to prepare.

The pizza itself was probably the least impressive part of our meal (though it was supposed to be the center point). We ordered two and although they were good, they weren't spectacular.

Overall, Pizzeria Mozza was a fitting dinner before Mozart under the stars. =)

Facebook Lite

So I was browsing Facebook when this message appeared above my feeds:



It immediately piqued my interest. Facebook lite? Does this have anything to do with Facebook acquiring Friendfeed today? My mind was a-flurry with thoughts about what this "lite" version of Facebook could look like. As my mouse pointer approached the link, my mind wandered to the Amazon redesign case study that was discussed in the recent UX meetup. How was I segmented to be included in this select group of people who get to test this beta version? Is it a select group of people? Do they have analytics in place to measure my engagement with the lite version, and if so, will they be using that to finalize their design?

So many thoughts flying through my head until... *click*

Nothing happened.

*click*

Still nothing happened.

Wait, is this a trick? Are they just doing this to test and see how many people would click on the link, hence gauging audience interest in such a feature? Or does "plenty of kinks" = page load fail?

Oh well. The thoughts were fun while they lasted.

Me vs. the exercise ball.

About a week ago I was having a super stressful morning at work. I had a couple of assignments to present at 12 noon while I was being bombarded with phone calls and e-mails on other projects... I needed some peace and quiet to focus on my work.

Cue wheezing sounds from the next cube, getting louder and louder. Wait -- is that an air pump I hear? At work?! Then I hear some giggling, some explaining, "<muffled> mdids fdk..skdsf.. chair..." Is my cube neighbor pumping up inflatable furniture in her cube?? I'm sitting here trying to crank out all of this work and missy in the corner over there is making a ruckus with her squeaky air pump.



So, as it turns out, she was pumping an exercise ball to use in place of her office chair. I've seen this practice being done around the office a couple of times before, ironically, by girls that were already thin enough to begin with. "It's better for posture," she explains, "it activates your core as you sit down so you get an 8-hour ab workout."

Anyways, fast forward one week and I notice she's still using the exercise ball. And even better, she repumps it every few hours because it deflates from her constantly sitting on it. AND even better than THAT, she slouches. So now I'm looking at her, sitting on her exercise ball, slouching so badly that her back looks like it's suffering from scoliosis, wondering -- is this the good posture you were talking about?