This is a re-post from dbmini but I thought it good enough to share with you that don’t follow the MINI stuff.
200K Miles in a MINI Cooper
It’s official as you can see from the photo. My MINI eclipsed the 200,000 mile mark recently and thought it would be a good time to give you my thoughts about this car since it has more than 10 years worth of normal driving miles on it.
I got my MINI on March 9th, 2003 and hit my first 100K miles on October 7th, 2005. Lots of miles for work, lots for SCMM events and just general motoring.
This 100,000 miles did take a little bit longer, mostly due to the extreme increases in the price of gas. When I bought my MINI, I was paying $1.899 for a gallon of premium in SoCal. We all know the rest of that story. I also drove less for work, which is another reason why it took a bit more than 3 years to hit this 100K versus 2.5 for the last.
I’ve said this here many times before, but the MINI is the best car I have ever owned. Except the alternator going out and getting 1 flat tire, this car has never left me stranded and never not started. I’ve driven this car in pouring rain, searing heat and even snow without a hitch. Never thought I would lose control and have always felt safe, even driving next to 18-wheelers with 60MPH gusts!
The following is a recap of the life of my MINI. Follow the jump!
Wow, the big five-o! Makes me want to surf or book somebody.
Updates, Upgrades and Uniques
I’m starting to serious wonder about my resume writing skills. No kidding, I have sent over 40 copies out in the last 3 week without so much as a nibble. Working on a re-write this week, but if anyone has any tips or pointers, please feel free to leave a note below.
As soon as I hit Publish here, I’m going to the gym. This is worthy of posting since I haven’t been since the weekend before MTTS. I managed to catch something that week and was congested and 1/2 deaf (yes, again). It’s finally cleared up, so I’m going. 3 weeks is a long time, and it’s going to be tough getting back into it.
Secretly, I want an iPhone. Not so secretly I don’t want to be an AT&T customer.
I’m still upset about missing the New Media Expo. Cool stuff happened there from what I could tell from the tweets and video posts I saw. I’ll have to try again next year.
I am extremely pleased with the way the new sites have turned out. And the redo on WRR (if you haven’t noticed). Helps keep the self confidence up. All new sites should go live this week.
I have a feeling a new computer will be purchased in the next couple of weeks. It will be for either myself or my Grandfather. I hope it’s me. 15″ MBP or 20″ iMac would be keen. Not sure I want to edit video or help Grandpa relearn his computer with Vista. And, since I will be doing all of the editing…
I hate that Wordpress releases a dot update a month after a new version. I need to figure out how to script Transmit to handle that all at once. Also not happy that the photo feature of “Press This” still doesn’t work for me. Although, they said it’s fixed for IE7.
I have a baby shower and wedding happening in the same weekend. One Saturday, the other on Sunday. Oh, and they are 1,000 miles apart. Wedding wins if I can swing it, otherwise a trip to Vegas will be in order.
Which would be good, since I need to get to the resort for maintenance and checking of things. Big upgrade might be coming their way after the first of the year.
Church bus full of screaming kids just drove by. That was weird.
Just so you know, you can count yourself among the 1,500 or so w(t)f readers. Sure, not huge numbers, but I’m still fairly pleased. Thanks for stopping by. Don’t forget, you can subscribe to get the posts easier. Don’t worry, I’ll let you know if there is something worth click back about.
After I take the new sites live, I will be able to get started on The Hollywood Car Show site. Go ahead and click it if you want, should be a placeholder page there. I think by the end of the week it should be up and running.
Ok, that’s it. Time to start my day. Have a great Sunday everyone!
And while I was gone, in case you missed it, the new Delicious rolled out, as did the new Facebook. Neat, both counts.
While I sleep to prepare to close out MTTS with photos and posts, watch this.
More MTTS to come.
This coming weekend I will be heading north to Los Angeles for MTTS. I’m really looking forward to it.
We’ll be recording audio, I will, again, attempt video. Plus I’ll be posting a bunch of photos to my Flickr. And, if I can, I will be posting to Twitter.
Posts here from Thursday to Monday might will be lighter than usual.
On another note, later this week I will be giving the pressd section it’s very own Wordpress install right here at w(t)f. New feed and everything. I will post when that happens.
Cameras will be with me all week too. Hopefully I will get some stuff posted before MTTS.
Spent most of the week closing out MTTS East. Lots of video and photos. And more dreaming of new equipment, mainly a Macbook Pro. Then came the complaints.
On video cameras
I took the The Flip with me for MTTS. Heck, most of you saw that video. Most of someone saw the video because I have over 30k views (combined) on the dozen or so that I posted from the week. The bulk of those views are from Motoringfile.com, primarily the JCW MINI in action video I posted last Friday.
And damn if I didn’t get more complaints than compliments on that thing.
Sure it’s shaky. Sure the sound isn’t that great. It was take with a The Flip Ultra video camera for craps sake. And the entire shoot happened in less than 5 minutes from the time we found out we could ride in the car to the time we were done.
Just in case anyone might have missed it, I operate on a very low budget. Esp. for the show. I have spent less than $600 in total for my gear (and one of the other hosts) and that includes the The Flip.
But the The Flip works very well for me. It takes video that is very easy to edit and my Mac doesn’t choke on them too badly. This is one of those things that I have to think about.
Well now I’m thinking about upgrading to a better camera. I really hate complaints. Complaints mean that someone, somewhere, was not 100% satisfied with my work. I think it’s pretty good, but what do I know.
So, research has ensued. What I’ve been looking for is a camera that, at the very least, shoots 16:9 and uses SD Cards for storage. No tape, no hard drives, no DVDs. And it has to have external microphone support. Remarkable, in low end cameras, this is a tough combination to find. So, I dialed the money up a few notches and this is what I have found.
For a while I was very keen on the Panasonic HDC-SD9. You know I’m keen on Panasonic, and I’ve used my point and shoot (Panasonic DMC-TZ3) for video and it produces great results, albeit with horrible sound. The problem with this video camera is it doesn’t have external mic support, and that’s kind of a deal breaker.
So, the other camera I’ve been looking at is the Canon HF100. It’s about $100 more expensive, doesn’t have as good of sensors (CMOS instead of CCD) and it’s a bit larger. But, it does have external mic input (and monitoring) and great video quality (here is an example.) Plus it will shoot at lower than HD resolutions and still keep the 16:9 format.
Hopefully I’ll be able to upgrade before MTTS LA. If not, I’ll leave the The Flip at home and either do video with the point-and-shoot or not do any at all. I really don’t like complaints. I would rather have no comments at all then have complaints.
And, if you are on WRR and look to the right and see a donate button and want to click it, feel free. Someone suggested I do that, so I have. Camera money only. Should I get enough to cover the cost, the button comes down immediately after I order.
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