Another weekend trip had me driving around in a just about new 2007 Toyota Camry. Refridgerator white, LE version with a 2.4-liter 4 cylinder VVTi, twin cam, 4 valves per cylinder. 158 hp at 6,000 rpm, 161 lb-ft torque ( I stole the specs from another site, there you go). Light color interior, and let me tell you, this car feels big, drives big, and is pretty darn, well, not small.

It should be noted that I drove this car back to back with a 2006 Ford Taurus, which in theory is the direct competition for this car. The differences are striking, and I think now I can understand why the Camry has become the best selling car. I did a similar amount of mileage in each car, with mixed city and highway driving totaling about 500 miles.

The new Camry has got a big shnoz. It has a big nose. It is striking, in a similar manner to the Dodge Magnum, it has a pretty big presence when you walk up to it from the front. I am sure it makes a pretty big presence in rear view mirrors as well… 🙂 Anyway, the profile almost says hatchback, as the trunk is cut in pretty deep under the back window. I found the truck lid opened very wide, but wasn’t all that big of an opening. I would say that the trunk is huge, but much of it is under the rear parcel tray. It gives the car a very nice overall swoopy look. It’s nice.

The interior size is huge. 5 passanger size space, a huge rear seat and the fronts are generous in size as well. No problem putting 4 full sized adults in this car for a very long trip, and 5 for a reasonable trip wouldn’t be punishment. The inside is really well appointed, and I was most impressed with the HVAC controls. Three round knobs, very simple, but each one is also a push button. The temperature control is also a push button for the AC on/off, the fan for the recycle, and the vent selector turns the reare defroster on and off. It makes for an extremely neat package with few apparent buttons, and allows the nice smooth fake metal panel to look wonderful. Clean and simple, and totally functional.

I would have prefered the car with the 6 rather than the 4, but to be honest with you, this isn’t a sports car, so don’t worry too much. There was enough ponies for this car to keep up in traffic, and the milage was pretty darn good, in theory 32-34mpg on the highway, and I think with the cruise set reasonably I got pretty much that result.

Downsides?  Well, the car has the soul of an appliance.  There isn’t really anything exciting about driving this car.  It is nice to drive, pleasant and not at all annoying, but certainly not anything you would mention to anyone.  It is a very capable car and I am sure that pushed to it, the car would turn nicely and run pretty well, but I felt no desire to see.  I don’t even think I made a really hard accelleration from a traffic light or stop sign or anything, the car just doesn’t even suggest that as being a good idea.  I felt very responsible driving this car.

Quite possibly the perfect car for people who buy them to go from A to B but not to notice the trip.  I suspect it will be a huge seller!

I took a day off yesterday (and part of today) and took a little trip to Toronto to do some stuff, see a friend, and do some shopping. Living in Quebec isn’t bad or anything, but language issues and whatnot do keep some companies out of the market place (Old Navy only showed up last year), and Toronto does have a good selection of stores and whatnot.

On the ride back, I got to drive a Toyota Prius. Hybrid car. First hybrid I have ever driven. Nice car.

I refer to it as a video game. You get in, insert your ID chip (not a key) and push the start button. Things light up, the screen comes on, but nothing happens.

Then you take the little joystick and push it towards the D postion, and the car is in drive. Still no noise except maybe the fan for the AC running.

Push the gas, and the car moves away smoothly and if you push enough, engages the actual engine. Drive along to the first traffic light, stop for the red, and the car shuts off the engine and just dies. Until you push the gas to go, and the process continues.

I drove all over Toronto (almost 150kms in town) and back to Montreal (550kms) and averages 5.2l/100kms or 45 miles per gallon, in a car with an interior the size of a camry.

Yowsa!

Anyway, more later…just wanted to mention that:)

Month ends always bother me.  I guess it is a personality defect, but I don’t look at what was accomplished as much as what was missed, forgotten, or never gotten to.  It can sometimes be mentally crippling to look at all you didn’t do in a month… one thing about building porn sites and whatnot is that there is always more you COULD do… it just isn’t always mentally possible or there just isn’t enough time.

Speaking of porn, would you like some Camel Toe?  Click here to check out Sasha’s Cameltoe Pussy

(Wanna see me stick Nine Inch Nails through each one of my eyelids?  Slim Shady your so cool… )

Anyway, it is the start of the hurrican season, and of course the media is going ape shit.  Typical media thing, last year was the “big one”, so it could happen this year so let’s report on shit like mad making it look like we are concerned so that we can get that 0.1 more rating point for the week.   For all the money spent getting these guys on the ground in New Orleans, they could have rebuilt some of those houses or paid a crane to come and help move some shit and put space back in order.   I don’t need the news anchor to be standing on a levee in the lower ninth ward… a fucking video is enough, guys.   Donate the money it would cost instead and make a difference, not just noice.

The only good thing is the more the hype, the less likely is that shit happens this year.

Anyway, get out there and enjoy the free porn… check out findpics free porn for more!

Memorial Day weekend is mostly important to me because as an auto racing fan, I get a triple play this weekend… The F1 Monoco GP, the Indy500, and the Coke600… ( you can get all the results by visiting Racing News… )

So as a result, Sunday was spent actually indoors much of the time, enjoying the racing and attempting to get some work done (which I did) and napping out.  This has lead to my current problem, for me it is still Sunday night but it is Monday 6AM.  Not sleeping, not good.  🙁

Anyway, the F1 race was a decent start to the day (got to see it live on TSN, no waiting for the CBS tape delay for me), although Monaco’s track is very tight and not at all easy to pass on, which leads to much of the action coming in the pits as people try to leap frog over other cars in pit stop exchanges.  Michael Schmacher, starting last after a penalty for being creative in trying to keep the pole ran from 22nd to 5th, proof that some passing is possible, I guess, and looked like a better man for doing it.  Alonso won again… the points run away is starting.

The Indy500 was a real classic, decided on the last straight of the last of 200 laps… damn good racing.

The Coke600 was long, with tiny little fuel cells there was something like 20 pit stops, the race took a long time to run, and the last laps a bit of an anti-cliamx.  Congrats to Kasey Kahne, he did a fine job putting a Dodge in the winner’s circle and making sure that Jimmie Johnson didn’t end up there again.

As for work, well, nothing much I can show you at this point, some template development for galleries, and some back office work on sites and stuff that it pretty hard to track down.  You can see some “please fuck my wife” videos if you click here, that is one thing I did today that was public.  Otherwise, it really was behind the scenes stuff setting up for a very, very busy month of June. June will have new galleries, free sites, and blog entires every day, so stay tuned and RSS or bookmark this site, because I will be listing much of it here so you can find it.

I added about 200 new galleries in rotation to Sexy Asian Thumbs…  and reviewed and approved a bunch at Thumbskingdom as well.  Enjoy!

Just so that my webmaster friends know, I added a page quickly that explains some of the link trade situations I have available.  I want to hook up with as many people as possible, so come on down:

Rawalex’s link trade info page – click here

I should know better, considering my duel citizenship puts me both as Canadian and British… I should know more about the Queen’s birthday and whatnot, but I honestly cannot be bothered.  Worse, because of issues in QUebec, they call it something else, so that french people won’t get offended or something by taking a holiday on the Queen.  What the fuck ever.

That’s not my department, so fuck it.

Updates time… Porn Pig Blog Thing got it’s facelift, not entirely done but pretty much on the go.  A little frustrating because the designers used non-standard techniques in the template which makes it a little hard to make changes, some features are missing, and so on… but I am getting it all together and it is looking better all the time.   More and more people are bookmarking the site, so that is a good sign 🙂

I also added almost 1000 galleries into the rotation at Sexy Asian Thumbs, and I changed the display order a bit to put the most popular thumbs right near the top of the page.   This means you can find the asian pussy you want faster, m’kay?  Me love you longtime and faster too.

As you can see from the RSS feeds on the side of the site, there are a tons of updates all over the place, I have been working hard to find fresh porn and get it up and running as quick as I can… so stay tuned!

Oh yeah…    🙂

One of the more interesting parts about working in a net based business is that it is often very hard to put together cause and effect.  There are many events that happen between a small tweak and a result in visitors, sales, or SE listings, so it is very hard to put things together.

This is doubly true for search engine stuff.  For those of you who might of stumbled in here without knowing the deal, basically all websites to one extent or another try to get good listings on the various search engines, like Google, MSN, Altavista, Ask, and so on. The better we rank (closer to the top of the list) for the search words and expressions we want, the more people come to our sites.  For some that is where the concept stops, the pure vanity of counting people who have read our words and consumed out thoughts… for others, visitors (aka traffic) is a requirement for making money.  Potentially buyers, maybe clicking on a paying ad or whatever, or doing something that someone is willing to pay for.

Attempting to get better listings in the search engines is a game without end, without timeouts, and without written rules or clear boundries.   This leads some people to go to very large extremes to get thier sites listed.  Others (like me) are a little more middle of the road, concentrating on building good, informative, or entertaining websites that people would actually want to visit.  No tricks or smoke or mirrors in my work.

The time delay on changes can be maddening.  Google, as an example, updates their listing all the time subtly, but bigger updates (also known as a google dance) happen every so often, tossing the salad as it were and re-ranking sites and altering the listings in google.   Because the amount of time between these major upheavals is hard to predict, and with a new system at google that does this shifting over time rather than in one day, it is a very hard thing to predict.   So I can update a site or make changes, and it can take days or weeks to see if the results really worked.  That is painful to play with.

Other things (like link exchanges, listings on blog pages, etc) happen much faster, but often have a much shorter shelf life.  So in the end, much of what happens in site design, layout, and the pace of updates and listings is very directly attached to this weird web rythem that all websites follow.  It is a bumpy ride 🙂

If you bookmarked rawalex’s random thoughts or linked to the site, please update your bookmarks to https://www.in-the-raw.com .  I have been enjoying writing a blog enough that I decided to give this thing it’s own little place in the sun.  I put in a 301 coded redirect so everything should work out okay by itself, but just in case, I wanted everyone to know.  This will be the home for this site for at least the next year, so get f-ing use to it, okay?

I have a ton of other things to do today, I will do them and probably be back to post some updates later… enjoy 🙂