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First Track Time of 2014

Started the season with Canadian Tire and Continental Tires last week.

(the test car was an Audi A4 TFST quattro. 2.0 L outputting 220 hp and 258 lbs/ft.)

Despite being all black and round, all tires are not created equal.

Continentals compete with the high-end tire lines.  This model is exclusive to Canadian Tire, and are reasonably priced at $129 /each. For a barometer, cheap no-name tires are about $80 /each. But remember what I always harp…

… don’t cheap out, on the only part of your car, that touches the road.

It wasn’t all track time, the tires were tested in a braking exercise (stop accelerating Keri), and this is how potholes are simulated.

Run through the course once on the competition, then again on Continentals. The latter was a smoother, less jittery ride and sounded less hollow. In tire ratings, that’s “comfort”.

Best part of the tire is this:

1 – compare the wear pattern of those boxes each side of the tire, to know if things are balanced
2 – Dry / Wet / Snow – when that letter wears off, the tire is no longer good in those road conditions

Continental claims these will last 145,000 km, which is on the high side of things.

This is nicely framed.

The girls of Canadian Tire; welcome to my blog guys!

Middle is Melissa Arbour, CT’s Senior Business Manager for Tires, Wheels and Accessories, and right is PR megamind Nicole Grant.

Spot my Jag.

This was all last Thursday afternoon, kicking off the best night of the week.

 

 

It’s a Good Idea to Monitor Connections

When you visit to a website, there are multiple connections happening behind the scenes, not only one connection, like it appears.

For an idea, some conservative estimates:

– a reasonably popular site – 25+ connections
– KeriBlog – 4
– Buzzfeed – 50+

It’s a good idea to monitor these, and approve / deny what you feel comfortable with connecting to your laptop.

Example:

Why, out of nowhere, is Celebuzz site trying to connect to my machine?

At the time of this connection request, I was not surfing gossip sites, but I have in the past, which is why the site is checking in on me.

Connection denied.

How I’m doing this

I use a program called Little Snitch.

(this is NOT an endorsement)

It installs deep in my operating system, so no matter which program I’m using (iTunes / internet browser / photo editing software), it halts all incoming connections, until I tell it how to proceed.

It looks like this:

You teach it rules (example: I accept all connections from Google.ca, I deny all connections to many ad serving URLs).

I deny everything with “track”, “metrics” or “ads” in the URL, and don’t much notice a decline in quality of browsing.

It’s free to try, and a licence is $35. I bought mine like, 4 years ago, still works.

How this helps

Keeping your computing environment as clean as possible helps. And monitoring software, while it doesn’t replace an anti-virus software, can help catch malicious connections.

A small example:

While streaming TV from one-of-those sites, the site asked to have some dedicated space on my hard drive…

Had I not stopped the connection, the website would have not only connected to my laptop,
but stored up to 1 MB of “something” on it!

The video played fine even after I denied it access.

They’re not posting free, timely TV episodes because of kindness, because they care if I’m up-to-date on The Office.  This is the price guys. 

 

 

The 2014 Lincoln MKZ Hybrid

The 2014 Lincoln MKZ Hybrid

Starting at $37,960
This one $48,850

2.0L outputting 141 hp and 129 lb.ft of torque.

Fuel economy rating is 4.2 L/100km, I got 6.9 L/100km.

Massive sunroof, woodgrain trim, and all the safety aids that are en vogue, bundled into a classy styling.

The wide-open interior is thanks to the E-shift.  See the buttons running down the left side of the screen? That’s Drive / Reverse / Park / Neat eh.

Here’s a video [from last year] – the push button shift in action.

When they climbed inside, this interior made all my passengers get wide-eyed and go “ooohhh“.

They did last year too, so if that’s the effect you’re looking for, confirmed: this Lincoln will give you that.

Lincoln has an event on right now, #UncoverLuxury

The gas and hybrid MKZ are the same price.

This is very rare (usually the hybrid version is thousands more.)

Comfortable, perforated leather seats, and soft-touch everywhere.

2 large executives will fit easily into the back, where the rear seats are heated too.

Now you see the controls, now you don’t.

Touch-controlled everything.

Too bad I didn’t notice the shadow on the door there, this was almost a good shot.

The 2014 Lincoln MKZ Hybrid

Starting at $37,960
This one $48,850