Come buy it today and get a free torque converter.

Really though, I've hung on to this thing for almost exactly 4 months since I finished the transmission swap. It's time to be rid of it.

I'll put a new battery in it when it dies, thanks.

So here's a shot of the mountain that I took earlier this week.

The chart at right shows my heart rate (red line, at top) and the speed at which I'm running (blue line, at bottom). In both cases, up is faster.

Ignore the weird jaggies in the blue plot. The GPS track isn't super-accurate when I'm running under trees—the important part here is that I'm running at a pretty constant pace.

Anyway as I start running, my heart rate comes up until it hits 162 or so, and then it falls back down below 160. And here's the weird part: when I slow down, my heart rate spikes to just over 170 and then falls off.

I have no clue why this is. Any ideas?

P.S. This happens with two different heart rate straps and two different monitors, so it's unlikely to be a production flaw.

I'm betting on the latter. Nobody will kill their invitation site on such a huge party night.

P.S. evite.com itself was temporarily reporting that '/' is 404, and is not even producing the "planned outage" message I got from following the link in an invitation. Wow.

• Replace your furnace filter. It's probably filthy.
  
• Rebalance your vent registers. Are some of your rooms colder than others? Open the registers in those rooms all the way and close the registers in the rooms that are warmer (not completely—just a little). Even if you had these properly configured last year, they often get bumped out of shape over time.
  

Enjoy.

Stevens has switched to RFID ski passes for this year, and I've made two mistakes so far:

• I put my pass somewhere other than my front-left jacket pocket. The machines are situated so the scanner points right at that pocket. Oops.
  
• I put the pass in the same pocket as my cell phone. Apparently the scanners don't work too well with phones nearby.
  

Otherwise, fantastic day.

I totally understand that some owners would want to keep their pets healthy, but this is a little over the top. And parsley flavor that dogs love? They're dogs. They chew their own backsides.

I lost a dashboard lamp a while back and finally pulled everything apart (again) just to replace it. I also took this opportunity to actually assemble all the wiring back in the way it's supposed to, since I just sortof tossed it all back in there last time since I was in a bit of a rush putting it back together.

One interesting note is that the instrument cluster uses a really unusual electrical connector: the cluster circuitry is printed on flexible plastic, and the plug just pushes up against it. That doesn't completely describe it, so the photo will probably make more sense.

I also got around to replacing the other tail/stop/turn lamp socket. The right-side socket was burned through when I bought the truck (I replaced it long ago) but the left-side socket worked well enough to leave it. It's been slowly dimming for a while now and pulling it apart and sanding the contacts down only made things worse.

The local NAPA had this part in stock (again, I'm surprised) so I was able to put it all back together again by the time the day ended.

One hint here: when I debug tail light failures on my own, I find it helpful to prop the brake pedal down with something heavy (a fire extinguisher or floor jack) but it turns out that my floor jack handle happens to be right about the right length to push between the pedal and the seat.

Lastly, I glued the shifter knob back onto the shifter. It's been taped on for a long time.

Oh, and I'll leave you with these awesome mudflaps. These have been on the truck since I bought it.

So you'll see a bit more traffic in January as I try to assemble 66 (meaningful) posts in just under 45 days.

I didn't quite understand why this car was so interesting until I drove its replacement: the 2008 second-generation Focus. This new Focus has just as many interesting talking points as its predecessor, but it comes off as a completely different car. Everything is a little less over the top in this replacement, and the background buzz of unique design has been replaced by an irritating rattle of mismatched details.

And that's when I figured out the difference. The first Focus was a pile of uninteresting parts assembled into something incredibly interesting. The second Focus is just the reverse.

Admittedly, the comparison isn't completely fair. The 2008 Focus I drove for a week in California is a four-door and was equipped with an automatic transmission, whereas the first-generation models I've driven have all been ZX3s with manual gearboxes. I also had to live with the 2008 for a week and only got to drive ZX3s for a few hours at a time.

But the evidence is still there: gone is the goofy swooping dashboard housing no-nonsense gauges and switchgear, replaced by a more conventional layout with impossibly difficult-to-read gauges and knobs that give OCDers nightmares. The edgy and remarkably coherent styling of the first generation has been tossed out in favor of more staid fundamentals clad in some flashy plastic. The tidy proportions of the hatchback have grown into a larger and oddly-stanced two-door.

I can't really comment on how the driving dynamics have changed since the manual ZX3 and this automatic four-door really are two completely different cars. The new Focus is genuinely adequate in terms of power and grip, and the automatic transmission was inoffensive enough during city driving. One highlight here was the shifter and intelligent "low" position, which is a clever and welcome upgrade from the typical arrangement of fixed low gears.

Overall it's a decent economy car for the $16k sticker that the SE four-door retails for. It's completely reasonable for that money, in exactly the same way as its much-older predecessors (like the Escort) and competitors (like the Cobalt). It's also just as mainstream, inoffensive, and exactly what you would expect.

P.S. The light at the end of the tunnel for the Focus is that the current North America-only model will be replaced by its European counterpart in a year or so. The first Focus was the European model as well, so I'm expecting good things.