Porsche Cayman R

The dilemma of liking Porsche.

The flagship model is a beetle designed by Hitler with its engine in the wrong place.  Everything else is held back.

Case in point is the Cayman -- also known as a Boxster with a roof.  It's a simpler, more basic car with its engine in the right place.  Unfortunately, Porsche holds it back.  Until the Cayman R, they didn't even fit it with a limited slip differential.

The Cayman is a great design that is held back by Porsche.  They don't fit the top engine from a 911 into it, let alone the turbo.  They don't give it the 911's AWD system.  And there's a reason for it.

Back in the mid 70s, Porsche wanted to move on from the 911 design -- which was based on the Volkswagen Beetle, which was designed by Hitler.  It has the distinction of having its engine in the wrong place -- all the way in the rear, behind the rear axle.  This makes the 911 handle like a pendulum.

When people design a car, the ultimate place to position the engine is in the middle -- between the driver and rear axle.  High end sports cars (such as the Ferrari 458, Lamborghinis since the Miura, etc.) use this configuration.  The next best solution is a front engine with a rear transaxle (the engine and transmission are split so one is over the front axle and the other is over the rear) -- cars like Corvettes and Aston Martins use this configuration.  Common cars have the engine and transmission all in the front.  The rear is just about the worst place to put an engine because it makes the front end light and makes the car susceptible to terrifying snap oversteer (spinning out).

Porsche originally intended to replace the 911 with the V8 grand tourer 928.  The evolution of the 944 into the 944 Turbo a few years later saw another Porsche finally challenge the 911 Turbo at the top of Porsche's range, for half the price.  It's a widely known secret that Porsche makes a hefty profit on the 911 and the fact that another Porsche at half the price could match its performance laid it out for all to see -- that Porsche had the 911 on a pedestal.

Porsche learned the lesson well -- don't threaten the 911's supremacy at the top of the lineup.  Even if that means making other models worse than they could be.

That's the lament I have with the Cayman.  It has a proper mid-engine design and is a simpler, back-to-basics sports car design.  But Porsche holds it back.

 "...the trees are all kept equal by hatchet, axe, and saw. " -- The Trees, Rush

That time of year -- KOSHER PEPSI!!!

The best version of Pepsi, IMO, is Kosher for Passover Pepsi.  Only at this time of year, Pepsi makes special bottles for the Passover holiday that contain cane sugar and eliminate High Fructose Corn Syrup.  Forgive me if I get this wrong, but the gist is that during Passover you aren't allowed to have any forbidden grains that the Israelites didn't have during their exile in the desert, and luckily for soda lovers, corn would be something they didn't have because it's a new-world crop.

Only available for a few weeks leading up to Passover, you can tell by reading the ingredients label and verifying there is no HFCS and the only sweetener is sugar.  The telltale giveaway is the white bottle cap with Kosher symbols/writing on it and the KP (Kosher for Passover) mark. 

I've had all kinds of Pepsi -- all four runs of Pepsi Throwback, Mexican Pepsi, et al, and this is my favorite version.  Mexican Pepsi is also very good but very mellow, to the point of reminding me of RC Cola.

While Pepsi Throwback has been on the market (and appears to be here to stay), it is missing one crucial ingredient that regular Pepsi has -- citric acid.  No idea why.  But KfP Pepsi still has it, and that, in my opinion, pushes it over the top.  It's also possible that Pepsi Throwback uses cheaper beet sugar and not pure cane sugar.

NAS Update

Some bumps in the road.  Updating to 1GB RAM worked fine.  Sticking in 5 2TB drives was a problem, however.  The NAS would create the RAID array (RAID 0, in this case; no redundancy; later I may switch to RAID 5) but formatting would hang.  Or more appropriately, act like it's happening but the drive lights were not blinking.

After several failed attempts, I created a 3 drive RAID 0 array and that succeeded, and I'm now adding one drive at a time and migrating.  Surprisingly, migrating from a 3 disk RAID 0 array to a 4 disk RAID 0 array is taking a very long time, especially considering there is no data on the array.  At this rate it looks like it will take 6 days.

NAS update

5 2TB drives are on the way.  In the mean time, the NAS had a memory DIMM with a mere 256mb of memory, which I've upgraded to 1GB.  This should help speed things up a little. 

Upgrading my old crusty NAS

So I have a NAS that's about 4-5 years old, a Thecus N5200 5-bay RAID NAS.  The problem with old technology is that even if something works, the manufacturer starts to neglect it.  I originally stocked the NAS with 5 750gb drives in RAID 5 for 3TB total storage.  When I started collecting vinyl and other high res audio, I ran out of space and added a 2TB external drive to it.  It's almost full, and that's without the DVD rips I'm working on.

Today you can get a 2TB drive for $80, so it's time to upgrade (which would give me 8TB in a 5 drive array).  The problem is the drives are not "officially" supported -- but the reality of what that means is that Thecus can't be bothered to test them.  They should work.  Gulp.

I took the NAS apart to dust it out.  I've cleaned it externally a few times, but when I cracked the case open, good god was it filthy.  Inches of caked on crap in places.  I'm amazed it didn't short out.

While I was in there, I noticed the old 184-pin DIMM was only 256MB and I'm going to upgrade it to 1GB.  Time to back up and prepare for NAS 2.0 (and pray it works).

Might not make it

6.2TB into an 8TB array, and I still have about 1/3 of my DVDs to go, not to mention the Blu-Rays I'm postponing.  I don't think I'm going to make it and I'll have some spill-over.

Digitizing your movies

Long ago, when the iPod came onto the scene, everybody started ripping their CDs and reducing their music collection down to files and getting rid of the ugly wall of jewel cases.  Sometimes they are ripped multiple times (low bitrate MP3, high bitrate MP3, lossless) as disc space and players improve.  Great!  We've waited for this for a long time.

Now I'm at the same point with my huge DVD collection.  One way to do this is a lossy rip to DiVX/AVI/MKV, but that's an amateur solution, the "MP3" of video ripping -- because of generational loss and loss of extras.  The proper "lossless" way of ripping is to copy the entire DVD to a hard drive using a tool like AnyDVD.

So, for the 2nd or third time, I've set off to do this.  The last time I tried, a few years ago, I quickly realized I'd run out of disk space very early on in the process.  Now, we can get 2TB drives for under $100, but this is offset by the creep of Blu-Rays into my collection.

This process will take weeks/months, so I'll update you on how it goes.

UPDATE:  Roughly 1/3 - 1/2 through, I might just make it.  The Blu-Rays are huge though.