This past Friday I rented a car for a job interview, and I kept it over the weekend. I have to say, I hate cars, but the freedom of motion from having a car was nice. There are lots of places that public transportation doesn’t go, or just takes too long to get to. It’s also nice being able to carry things in your car, have a conversation while you drive, or listen to music and sing along.
A did an auto insurance quote this morning just to give me a reality check. It looks like insurance would be about $150/month for the hypothetical situation I told Geico. I might be able to do a little better than that, but probably not much. I don’t know if it’s better to pay cash for a car, or pay in installments. I think the only way you can spread the payments out is with a loan, and then they get you with interest. Anyway, add the actual price of the car, $3.50 gas, and maintenance costs, and you’re looking at easily $500 to $600 per month.
I think that maybe I’ll just get a bike with cargo rack. A bike like that would help me save time when I go to the store, and it would extend the range of places that I can easily travel to. It’s really a no-brainer; why don’t I have a bike??
Tonight I made something new out of the cookbook for fish. I made tuna steaks with a garlic confit. I’m still not sure exactly what a confit is, but I seem to have made it well. I guess this post is fairly pointless without at least a photo, so I’ll need to make it again some time and get a photo.
Basically, here’s how it was:
First, I mixed a head of peeled garlic, a cup of olive oil, a teaspoon of salt and thyme, and half a teaspoon of pepper. I simmered it on low heat for about half an hour until the garlic was golden brown. I separated the oil from the garlic, and re-used the oil to pan fry the fish steaks at high heat. I saved the garlic, and pureed it to use as a topping with a little fresh lemon juice.
The hardest part was getting the fish to not be too pink on the inside and not too tough and overcooked. If it was super fresh fish, I’d say to just let it be a little pink. Deeeeeelicious!
I know I haven’t been updating my blog lately- my dad even bugged me via email that I need to update. Sorry, I know I could be updating all the time, but I’ve been fairly busy looking for a job- which is a job in itself. Regardless, the lack of commute has been nice, and I’ve had more free time lately.
I came across an interesting website today, and if any of you are curious about why I care about the quality of sound gear, check it out:
http://www.klippel-listeningtest.de/lt/
I guess you need to really care about music before the overall sound quality matters- but that website gives some decent indication of what this audio quality thing is all about. Give their listening test a shot, but make sure you have some decent headphones first. This won’t work well on crummy laptop speakers.
I found a program that allows you to do distortion measurements using your sound card, and I found out a few things. First, my laptop sound card has a minimum distortion of 0.15% from 100hz to 10khz. Second, the speakers that I built have significantly less than 1% distortion at moderate listening volumes, above 60 hz. This surprised me a little bit- I thought that they would play somewhat lower without distorting. That just means that there should be some significant audible improvement in sound if I ever add a high quality subwoofer so that they don’t have to play the deep bass.
Speaking of spending money- I won’t be blowing any money on audio or anything else for a while. Once I’m employed again, Kendra and I are seriously looking at buying a house. We may settle for a condo, but right now we really want our own house.