Confessions of a Car Salesman

Looking to purchase a new or used car anytime soon? If so, the online car sales website edmunds.com has the perfect article for you to read, in which their writer goes undercover as a car salesman and learns some very interesting things about what goes on inside car dealerships across America.

Learn about the tricks and techniques used, and you’ll be better prepared to deal with the advantages car salesmen use against you the next time you step through their doors.

Home Networking Self-Help Book

Now that broadband internet connections are becoming far more common in the average home, so is the idea of setting up an in-home network to support multiple computers. Families, in particular, are showing an increased interest in the subject as they often will have separate computers for the kids.

If you know someone who’s interested in setting up their own in-home network who’d rather set it up themselves, yet doesn’t already have a working knowledge of local area network, consider the book Home Networking Simplified.

The book itself comes from Cisco Press, the print arm of Cisco System, commonly known for their networking expertise in the corporate world. Now that Cisco has become an owner of the residential networking product manufacturer Linksys, the company has started to look toward being able to support the average home computer user newly introduced to the idea of networking.

Home Networking Simplified is written for the computer novice, but without the stigma often associated with a “… for dummies” style book. Hundreds of screen shots of actual Windows XP dialog and configuration boxes will make setting up a network for file, print and connection sharing easy and understandable for anyone you know.

Thumbdrive of SECURITY!

While working on a good number of computers every day that require a number of standard security and diagnostic software, I decided that using CD-Rs was entirely too time-consuming and wasteful. Instead, I’ve purchased a thumbdrive, which for those unfamiliar with the technology, is simply a general name for any small, removable drive built using flash memory and that can be plugged into any available USB port.

The particular thumbdrive I purchased is Sandisk’s 1GB Cruzer Mini. While most consumers could probably get away with one of the cheaper 128MB, 256MB or even 512MB thumbdrives, I went for a full gigabyte due to the large number of files I tend to move back and forth between machines.

The Cruzer Mini is nice and small, though if I was going to make another, similar, purchase, I would probably look for a USB drive that had a strong loop in order to attach the thumbdrive to my keychain.

Batman Begins

I have to admit, I was pretty skeptical about this movie. While I love superhero movies, even the campiest ones, the previews released during the production of Batman Begins didn’t exactly impress me.

I’ve never been a fan of the all-black costume, for example. I personally would have preferred to see something with at least some contrasting grays along with the black in keeping with the common Batman comic costume, as well as perhaps some cloth woven across the top of the body armor. I’m still not keen on the idea of a thicker, rubber-like material around the neck, as I feel someone involved with the amount of hand-to-hand combat that the character of Batman would encounter would prefer as much natural head movement as possible. Still, as filmed, the costume serves the character well.

And then there’s the Batmobile. When I first saw photos of the Tumbler, I thought it was outright silly looking. However, in action it’s a pretty spectacular vehicle and easily my new favorite Bat vehicle. The Tumbler is like most of the tech in this movie, it seems silly at first, but works well enough within the confines of the movie that it seems natural for the director’s vision of the Batman world.

I had also been skeptical about the amount of star power in this movie. I feared that it would be hard to see famous actors like Michael Caine as anything other than himself, but he actually won me over to the idea that he’s Batman’s faithful friend and butler, Alfred, just like Gary Oldman and Morgan Freeman did as Gordon and Fox. Though I didn’t always buy Christian Bale’s “Batman voice”, he seemed to fit both Bruce Wayne and Batman better than any of the previous actors in the role. Katie Holmes was better than her current acting reputation, but the real star of the movie for me were Cillian Murphy as the Scarecrow and Liam Neeson as Wayne’s mentor and eventual enemy.

The action sequences were great, though I hope the inevitable sequels don’t keep this film’s technique of shooting every fight scene using nothing but close-ups and jump cuts. The sound effects, on the other hand, was perfectly loud and meaty. The Tumbler in low gear is a thing of horrendous beauty.

Overall, this isn’t just my new favorite Batman movie, it’s also my current pick as movie of the summer. Even if you’re just a general action fan with little obsession over the Batman character, this is a must see to add to your warm weather film nights.