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Yesterday, I traded in “Fighterjet.”

I feel pretty raw about signing away the title for my 1998 Subaru Legacy GT 2.5 Limited. (Frankly, I’ll never remember the correct order “GT,” “2.5,” and “Limited” are supposed to go in, even after 10 years — 3273 days, to be exact — of car ownership.) Looking back, I took delivery on July 1, 1998.

What do you say about a car you owned for 122 months? A vehicle that was there to transport you through the highs and lows of life?

Well, the brochure for our new car says, “Few things connect to your life at more points than your car.” Amen. I’ll take a stab at a few notes in haphazard arrangement, below.

This will all seem melodramatic, and it is. There are, I’m sure, people who don’t get attached to their cars. My wife and I are not those people. However, I am beginning to realize that you can only really get attached to one car, and thereafter you realize you simply can’t do that again. This is my struggle this morning, and my usual tendencies to hang on are amplified by how long I had that Subaru.

Fighterjet was the first car I ever picked out and bought myself. The two cars before it dropped into my lap, by the generosity of my family, and being young, I did my level best to destroy them quickly. The Subaru had 40-some miles on it when I bought it, partly because I drove it a few times and partly because the test drive area around the dealership was so large.

Every girlfriend I had in my adult life rode in Fighterjet. One of them helped me choose it. The car outlasted all but one of them.

My wife and our first son rode in Fighterjet. In fact, it was the car that Aaron and I had to rescue from the snowy parking lot at work — its door had been jammed open by ice so the alarm was sounding — so that I could collect the bags we’d left at home and return to the hospital with them. The baby was born a day later, and perhaps we’ll be more prepared in the future.

Fighterjet didn’t have LATCH anchors. Oops.

When I bought Fighterjet, I didn’t have any music in MP3 format. Having an iPod connection was unheard of, because the iPod wouldn’t ship for years yet. But it had a CD player and a tape player, not to mention weather band radio. (Weather band radio is really dull.)

Luckily, I had obtained my first digital camera nine months before Fighterjet, so I was able to document the car pretty well.

The month I brought Fighterjet home, I went to Macworld Expo in New York City. It was the first of five such expos in New York (and that was a particularly whirlwind trip), but it was even more memorable for a big product introduction: the original bondi blue iMac. Fighterjet, meanwhile, was “Rio red.”

Hearing about the color of my car, Kristi laughed and said, “Oh, it’s pull-me-over red!” I got exactly one ticket with Fighterjet.

The Sabres had only been to the Stanley Cup Finals once in their history when I started driving Fighterjet. Now, they’ve been there twice. And had a few conference finals appearances, too. (Did Aaron and I drive Fighterjet to that playoff game with Philly? The one that created the wall of sound in the atrium of HSBC Arena? Correction: Aaron says it was this game against Ottawa.)

I drove to a lot of Ultimate games in Fighterjet. Cleaning it out, I had a regulation Frisbee in the trunk. Along with a wiffle bat and some wiffle balls — you never know when an impromptu game would break out.

I spent one long day in Fighterjet, stuck on the New York State Thruway (I-90) for about 15 hours, one winter. There was a big snowstorm. Some of you lived through it with me, and others have probably heard me talk about it, so I don’t think I need to say more. At least that time, I was prepared.

That incident taught me that if you can’t tell your car from other snow-covered cars in the vicinity, you should probably stay home.

Fighterjet drove through a lot of snow, and barely broke a sweat over it. There were a few close calls, though. Once, I hydroplaned through the turn from 96 onto 332 — no wheels gripped, they only slipped. There was one Christmas morning, driving to Cuba, where we spun 180 degrees together; thank goodness the next car was so far behind us. Another morning, going to work and sliding slowly, sideways, into and kissing a (thankfully) snow-packed guardrail.

I didn’t have a cell phone when I bought Fighterjet.

Baxter was in Fighterjet when I hit my second deer with the car, and, as a dog, he was pretty freaked out by the sudden ordeal. I really thought that was the end of the line, but the insurance didn’t total the car. I haven’t taken Baxter with me to get take out since, as I recall.

The car got its name from the view I got sitting in the driver’s seat, looking back through my regular and oddball lane-changer mirrors. It reminded me of the rearview cameras you see in fighter jet films on TV, looking back on the tail of the plane. Dumb, yes, but I couldn’t think of a better name.

I can’t remember how many sets of tires I put on the thing. The first one involved a lot of anxiety while reading reviews on the Tire Rack Web site. The Dunlop Sport SP2s, later, were utter flops.

Fighterjet helped me move between apartments and houses. Thrice. And, I think it helped move Lloyd’s family once, and maybe others. I forget.

I drove it to Pittsburgh and the Adirondacks and other places, but I also think of destinations I never went.

After giving up this car, I wonder how many cars I have left in me. How many more will I own? My sense of mortality is briefly heightened.

I miss Fighterjet, but it was time to move on. I feel like I’ve abandoned a friend — but that’s silly. Hopefully that feeling will fade, because, after all … it was just a car.

Despite my general feeling of ambivalence toward Apple WWDC 2008 this year, I have woken up on the day after the conclusion of my trip with a feeling of confidence.

I’m sure that will wear off in the coming hours, days, and months, but my state of mind right now is very positive. I wanted to remember I had it. Perhaps the biggest single contributor to this feeling is enduring of 22 hours of travel — and 37 straight hours awake — on the way back. Survival can really lift your spirits.

I woke up this morning with a craving for music by Mike Doughty, so I played “Looking at the World from the Botton of a Well”. It hit the spot. (“27 Jennifers” is on the WWDC 2008 iMix, but it doesn’t fit my mood nearly as well.)

It was great to see everyone this year — some old friends and some new friends. The relationships truly make the conference for me, now that I’ve been to so many sessions that just change incrementally each year. This is true even if I didn’t follow everyone to Dave’s afterwards; maybe that’s for another year.

I was surprised at the amount of movement within and between organizations … so many people I know have different jobs (and even homes) since I last saw them in 2006. The Mac landscape is changing. Even with its growth, it could be maturing. That kind of positive sign can breed confidence, too.

It was especially meaningful to me to be able to visit some friends of the family on the first weekend, and then my best friend’s family on the second.

The Sabres won 5-3 over the the Florida Panthers, but rightly overshadowing that was the Panthers’ Zednik, who suffered a cut to his neck. The serious injury and its aftermath stopped play for about twenty minutes until it was decided to continue the game to its conclusion.

I was only listening to the telecast in catches from the kitchen at that point, but a call from my parents at the game brought us back to the Tivo to see what was happening. The replays were unnerving — as another Florida player’s right skate came up into Zednik’s neck as he skated into the corner to Miller’s left — but thankfully we didn’t see much of the blood on the ice. I think my mom said, "It was more blood than I’ve ever seen." The down-the-ice angle we saw of it on television certainly made it look like a profuse amount.

Richard Zednik skated quickly off the ice holding his neck, looking very, very pale, and was practically caught by trainers at the bench; he looked as if he was on the verge of collapse. I don’t know how he made it. They got him out of the bench area and later we were told he had been stabilized and taken to a Buffalo hospital. As of this writing, the postgame show indicated he was in surgery.

The Buffalo fans held a standing ovation when it was announced that Zednik was stable and on the way to the hospital, but up until that, there appeared to be little news in the arena itself. I had tried to let mom know what was going on from the telecast, but I probably called her during this ovation because I had to scrub through video on the Tivo and was still a little behind realtime. I haven’t heard from Aaron and Missy yet; they were in the seventh row for today’s game, but I don’t know what section.

Anyway, the injury was extremely scary and we pray for Zednik’s continued safety and recovery.

One year ago today, we rushed to the hospital, facing a great deal of uncertainty. It would be another day before the delivery of our new arrival.

Oh, how things have changed since then. It’s been quite a ride, and tomorrow we have a birthday to celebrate.

Rands In Repose: The Nerd Handbook. The only response I have is: so true, so true.

Now, what were you just saying?

[Via Daring Fireball.]

I got a chance to use Aaron’s new iPhone yesterday, when Elijah and I met up with him for the afternoon.

Friday evening after work, Aaron stood in line briefly at the new Cingular/AT&T store just west of Eastview Mall. After a customer earlier in line came out empty-handed, he learned that the store had sold its last 8 GB model. Aaron — sensing that it was not to be — left at that point for wings at Duff’s, celebrating his friend Matt’s birthday in Buffalo.

After the celebration, he and Missy stopped at the Apple Store Walden Galleria, sauntering in around 9:30 p.m. The Apple Store was the only one open in the mall, and of course would not close until midnight that night for the launch (which is one of the strangest parts of the iPhone debut, to me). About twenty people were lingering, most clustered around the display models. He told me he was trying one of those out when he saw a gentleman who had just purchased one — Aaron had just wanted to try one, and had no idea they’d still have any for sale.

Since it turned out that they did have stock of the higher-capacity iPhones, he bought one. He was already in my access logs by 8:24 a.m. the next morning:

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A543a Safari/419.3

I got to see it on Saturday, when we decided to see if the Apple Store Eastview had any remaining PowerSupport Crystal Films — we both now swear by these for adding some protection to our video iPods.

At the mall, he let me run the iPhone through its paces while he graciously watched his nephew. Having loaded a few Web sites, clicked around through the interface, and typed a little bit with the on-screen keyboard … well, I can say that it’s awesome. Solely as a handheld computer — throwing out all of the things it currently lacks, like some sync features and an SDK and so on — it’s a fantastic device.

Once I got to see it in person, hold it in my own hands, I felt like it was just right. It’s a natural extension of many trends — the iPod’s media-savvy, smartphones’ calling capabilities, and Web-connectedness.

Three things were immediately surprising. The screen is incredible, bright and crisp oh so hi-res. The phone calls were wonderfully clear — compared to the choppy and processed audio of every Verizon Wireless phone I’ve used, this was a winner (and on par with the GSM Treo 650 I had briefly two years ago). The Safari browser is much better than I expected, being both clear and readable in both portrait and landscape at multiple zoom levels … blissfully, much better than the display I got from the initial version of the iPhoney simulator.

The iPhone is not perfect, but it does seem futuristic and it does all fit together very well.

Now, if I can just store my 1500 existing Palm notepad notes on it, and create new ones that will sync to my desktop, I think I could live with it. I’m still not sure I can afford it, but that’s a story for another day.

Thanks to Aaron for letting me play!

I have a theory, based on the observed behavior of myself and my relatives, that every digital camera you buy is meant to get around the failings of the last one you had.

For me, the Olympus D-320L improved upon the resolution of the Apple QuickTake 150 I’d tried for a few days one summer. The C-750 that supplanted it got me zoom in spades, making up for the utter lack of zoom on the D-320L. Our Elura 100 brought me into the DV realm, but also carried some nifty tricks, like its continuous shooting mode and my introduction to SD/MMC media. Finally, our new SD600 is a pocket camera that packs a wallop, and the AF-assist lamp makes up for the low-light performance of the C-750.

I’ve been taking a semi-serious look at Reunion 9, since I have a passing interest in genealogy. (I’m not using tracking family relationships to the extent that Philip is, either personally or professionally.)

Reunion 9 was just released this month. It debuted a few days before I visited Leister Productions’ site, which was somewhat fortuitous for me.

The main drawback with Reunion on Mac OS X in the past, to my eye, was its dated Classic-style interface. It just didn’t feel like a Mac OS X application — a trap that many applications that came from those days share. (I live in Entourage, which feels old in some spots. And so many of the graphic design applications I once used have felt that way, leading me to look at other options.) I can appreciate that this is something software developers will often want to change, but that software development simply takes time. Besides that, as Apple adds new functionality to the OS frameworks, developers must decide whether to use those features (locking you more and more into Mac OS X, and specific versions of it) and perhaps remove their own code, which it may have replaced.

So this new version is invigorating to me. It seems like the developer has invested int the future. The application itself looks fresh and feels much more like a program that has both feet firmly planted in Mac OS X. I’m going to take the demo for a spin and see what it can do, but it may be one I end up registering.

I played Apple’s new iPhone “Hello” ad for Christen. She didn’t didn’t remember seeing it, after I’d mentioned that Apple had an ad during the Oscars. After watching it, she thinks she missed it in the Oscar telecast because it “looked just like all the other montages.” (She was fast-forwarding through the commercials with Tivo, of course.)

I didn’t see the Oscars, but I’d hazard a guess that the commercial was not very effective in its original run for those who were not watching the Oscars live.

The cold snap we’ve been experiencing, which has kept us below freezing continuously for several weeks, has me concerned.

Our new sump pump normally pushes water out into the storm drain channels on our side of the street. Under ideal conditions, this results in water flowing down the channels across the entire width of our front yard, to the storm drain grate on the far side of our driveway.

Since then end of January, this channel has been pretty much a solid block of ice, around four inches thick.

The water has, in the last week, spilled out more into the street. It is pushing a few feet across — maybe a quarter of road’s width. I did some bailing to keep the water from pooling at a high level and backflowing into the bubble pot. Eventually, I surmised, that could lead to the whole pipe from the basement getting frozen. The only thing saving it from backing up into the basement would be the emergency release that would let water spill out all over the ground near the house.

So, I decided to attack this problem in earnest. I bought my first pickaxe and tried to chip away with it. I’m out of shape, and it was tough to break through that much ice. Over the weekend, I finally made the breakthrough, and had a complete channel dug between the sump pump pipe’s bubble pot in our yard, and the storm sewer grate.

Now our neighbors know us for my pickaxe. Grin.

I was hoping this ice channel would last a few days. Since it was narrow and relatively free of slushy debris, I hoped the water would flow freely and more quickly than it did in the wider channel normally provided by the concrete underneath. As the sump pump did its job, though, I could see water moving, but new thin layers of ice were also forming.

Sadly, the free flow was not to be. By Monday morning, the ice had refrozen almost up to the previous level I’d chipped away. By Monday evening, it was overflowing even that — somewhat of a blessing, since that meant that it was still flowing, somehow.

While chatting with one of my neighbors, I found out that we probably have a spring behind our house. This makes sense, but it’s not comforting. We probably have the lowest basement on our side of the street, so we depend upon the entire system for our sump pump to be working. Thank goodness for the new battery backup, which we needed during a power outage caused the recent ice storm in January.

Well, I better get back to bailing out our little pond, and perhaps some chipping.