Yesterday was what I would consider pretty productive. We went to Ikea and got lots of organizing things like hang-able shoe racks and a big ol' shelf for the garage. Instead of a minefield at the front door, we now have nothing but empty space. Makes it slightly less claustrophobic in my tiny condo.

Same goes with the garage. Where once would open your door into an exhaust pipe leaning on the wall, you now have plenty of space to maneuver. The big project yesterday was putting my old JL 12" sub and amp into Julie's new car. Being that it is a hatchback, the fucker pounds! It sounds pretty phenomenal. The Navigation system plays DVDs also so really, it's a mobile home theater. Pretty cool.

My hands have paid the price though. Some of the interior moldings on the WRX are pretty tight and getting your hand in to unhook the plugs on the back of the head unit wasn't terribly fun. Oh well, they'll heal.

Recently, Julie and I obtained new cars after her Audi A3 met an untimely demise. Here are some crappy pictures for your perusal. Mine is a 2008 Audi TT 2.0T Cabriolet and her’s is a 2008 Subaru Impreza WRX Wagon. Much congratulations to her on learning manual transmission in just a few hours of seat time!

Who is Uwe Boll, you ask? Simply the mastermind behind some of cinema’s worst pieces of artistic crap including but not limited to Bloodrayne, House of the Dead, Postal and Alone in the Dark (all scored less than 5% at Rotten Tomatoes). If the titles of those movies sounds familiar to you, they’re video games. Uwe takes a video-game-of-the-hour (and sometimes video-game-of-last-year) and turns them into live action suckfests.

Do you remember a movie that was actually decent that was based on a video game? No, of course not. It would violate some law of nature for it not to stink more than a 3-day dead skunk. Well, this guy has spent the past 5 years doing it and it doesn’t look like he intends ..ping... UNLESS, apparently, a million signatures appear on a petition for him to stop.

So I say, let’s oblige him! The petition can be found at http://www.petitiononline.com/RRH53888/petition.html. Sign today and do your part!

Ah, January is one of the most exciting months of the year, as far as tech and cars go anyway. CES was last week, MacWorld this week, the Detroit Auto Show is also going on right now as well as Barrett-Jackson right in my own backyard.

For those that don't know, MacWorld is the biggest Apple-centric event of the year. Last year the iPhone was unveiled. This year I'm looking forward to a rumored 'ultra thin' laptop. Even if it's not, SteveNote is always entertaining.

My S4 lease is up at the end of September so I'm paying close attention to the auto shows this year. Among the revelations from Detroit are:

BMW announced pricing of the refreshed M3: A whole lot of car for around $60k, is it enough to make me jump ship from Audi? Maybe.

Audi announced the TT-S: I love the redesigned TTs. I hoped for a more powerful 300hp TT when the prospect of a TT-S was leaked but in fact, it turns out to be 265hp, a paltry 15hp more than the 3.2 V6 version. No pricing information for the US but it will come standard with plenty of bells and whistles such as Audi's dynamic magnetic suspension and S tronic (DSG). The question is whether or not it will be worth the price that will be in the ballpark of an S4/S5.

Pricing for the Lexus IS-F mini-super-sedan announced: Also in the very same price range is the Lexus IS-F. Putting out close to the same horsepower as the new M3 and mated to an 8-speed gearbox, it is a very tempting package and the looks are great to boot.

I'm very excited about this year.

For the past two Fridays, a few co-workers and me have graced the Firebird International Raceway for Drag Night. We got some embarrassing (mostly for me) videos of our performances. Yes, the camera work is mostly crappy but it is hosted on our shiny, new CDN I've been pouring many hours of my life into.

Check it out at http://www.lqx.net/drags.

Or don't. It's up to you.