Oh, Mega Man 9, why must you hurt so good?
I actually made it all the way to a robot master and I considered that a major accomplishment.
One way trip
Yesterday I picked my brother up at the airport (San Jose) then drove him up to Marin. I then left him there and drove back home. Although this sounds like some sort of sibling abandonment, he managed to procure transport back to Southern California, although at considerable expense.
You see, he wanted a very specific model of car — an Infiniti FX35 if I remember correctly, maybe EX35, but with a specific combination of packages he couldn’t find anywhere down in SoCal — so he made arrangements to buy it up here. The car can almost drive itself, between the cruise control that uses sonar to determine distance to and speed of the car in front of you to the camera that recognizes lane lines and warns you if you drift (and even does slight corrections to keep you in the lane).
As a side note, this sounds scarily similar to the work that my AI professor was doing 10 years ago when I was at Berkeley. I wonder if it’s the same technology.
It also has true iPod connectivity, although it didn’t work perfectly with my iPhone, it connected but didn’t charge. This seems to be a common occurrence with cables that weren’t designed for the iPhone 3G. I did have to chuckle at the digital MPG meter that only went up to 30, though. If it seems like I’m talking more about the car than anything, it’s because we were stuck in the car for more than half an hour while we waited for the finance guy to finish with the previous customer, so we both became very familiar with the car. Well, it seems like my brother already did his research and knew everything about it beforehand.
Although it was overcast when we drove up, by the time I drove back down it was a beautifully clear day in SF. I don’t know if it was $6 bridge toll worth of beautiful, but it was still a very nice day.