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The lease on my wife's 2001 VW New Beetle is finally up in January so we have been keeping our ear out for specials and incentives over the past few weeks in order to make sure we didn't have to take what we could get at the last minute.
I am delighted to announce today that she got a car that she loves - the Saab 93 "Arc" Turbo - at $3303 below invoice and 1.5% interest on a three year lease. It is a smart looking automobile and she looks great in it. There are tons of bells and whistles including power memory seats, 6 CD in-dash changer, garage door opener built-in to the auto-dimming rear-view mirror with digital compass and many others.
I would like to give an extra-special shout-out to Robert at Saab of Sherman Oaks in California for my wife's best car-buying experience ever (mine was a few months ago when I got my new car, but this wasn't far behind). They were great, they didn't waste our time, and I would recommend them very highly.
In my last post I mentioned that I was looking forward to writing some software for my Smart Phone, and I re-created my automobile car lease calculator that I wrote for my Pocket PC (read the article here). It was pretty sweet to have that thing on my cell phone and I was able to plug the numbers in and see if they were taking advantage of us. If anyone would like the source code please post a comment here.
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I found a Smart Phone that hit the market the previous day, told my friend Ken about it, and by 9:30 the next morning he proudly owned one. Of course I had to follow his lead (and I've been waiting for a Smart Phone 2003 to come out for a year), and I'm now the extremely proud owner of the Audiovox SMT 5600. It even has the second edition of the Windows Mobile 2003 software.
It really is great to have (in every measurable sense that matters to me) a true Pocket PC and cell phone in one device. The screen is larger than most cell phones I've seen, but obviously not as large as regular full-sized Pocket PCs. But that doesn't matter to me. I love the operating system, I think the camera takes better pictures than my old LG VX6000 that I had with Verizon, and I got a 512MB miniSD card so I can put lots of files, songs, movies, or whatever I need right on my phone.
Think about that for a second - my cell phone has a half a gig of memory on it.
The phone also came with a stereo headset so I can listed to music or talk on the phone. I thought that was a nice touch. It has built-in Bluetooth and I'm looking forward to getting it to sync up wirelessly (right now it syncs (and charges) through the USB cable.
I am really looking forward to writing some applications for it, possibly porting over my car lease application in preparation of my wife's upcoming lease expiration.
Oh, and by the way, anyone who hasn't done so should REALLY see Team America: World Police. It is possibly the funniest movie I have ever seen in my life.
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I have 6 Gmail invites and will give one to anybody who gives me a topic for an article they'd like to see written in the ASP.NET arena.
Make your comments here.
While supplies last.
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A great guy named Jim Blizzard from Microsoft started a great concept called "Nerd Dinner". Developers gather in an informal setting to discuss their projects, seek advice, or offer suggestions.
Please check out my Nerd Dinner Blog for further details about the first Los Angeles meeting on November 16th.
Note (after the fact): The words "Nerd Dinner Blog" are a hyperlink to the actual blog site.
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As expected, I won the first poker tournament. Doug Seven didn't. And he's the one who taught me how to play today.
I wonder if he wishes he didn't now... ;-)
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I'll be giving my talk Creating Dynamic Themes & Skins in ASP.NET in Redmond at the .NET Developers Association on Monday October 4th. It would be great to see everybody if you will be in the area and you can make it.
I think they have some kind of enhanced security thing going on there - if I'm right you need to print the web page for the event and bring that with you or the guard won't let you in.
I'm actually leaving this morning (Saturday) because Doug Seven wants me to show him how to play poker tonight. It shouldn't take me too long to teach him.