1) This is the most optimal solution.  I’d like to add a third monitor and be able to extend my desktop onto it.

2) If I can’t do the above, or it’s not cost effective, I wouldn’t mind just having a copy of the 2nd monitor on the 3rd screen.  So whatever is showing up on my 2nd monitor, is also identically showing up on the 3rd.

I’m assuming the way to do this is to get another video card in order to obtain another output.  If so, does it have to be the same card (I can run them in SLI mode)?  Or can I pick something cheap up?  If it has to be the same card, I’m worried about power consumption and heat.  I have an Shuttle XPC case, which is a small-form factor case.  It’s extremely tiny, and not sure if it can handle the heat or power of a 2nd powerful video card.  Here’s my specs that you may need:

• Shuttle XPC SD37-P2-BK-V1 case/motherboard/power supply
• Foxconn FV-N79GM3D2-HP video card

Any thoughts?  Post your comments below.

Ford sent over an essentially fully loaded all wheel drive model that had a sticker price around $47,000.  For reference, the AWD model starts at $39,590.  Optional equipment which was about $6,700 sticker price included the following:

• Technology package
• Navigation Package
• 19″ wheels
• Rain sensitive windshield wipers
• Dual panel moonroof
• Adaptive headlamps with auto high beam
• Forward sensing system
• Voice activated nav system
• Intelligent access key with push button start
• Rear view camera
• THX-II certified audio system with 5.1 surround sound
• Ultimate leather seating
• Adaptive cruise control

The 09 version of the MKS is built on the same platform as the Taurus/Sable/Taurus X and Flex, so you can kind of call it a pimped out Taurus.  Under the hood you’ll find a 3.7-liter V6 that provides a decent 270hp and 256 ft-lbs of torque.  The MKS is a bit of a fatty, weighing in at 4,127lbs, so it wouldn’t hurt to have slightly more power.  With the bigger V6 making all that weight move, I was averaging about 19mpg…one of my only bigger complaints about the car.  Then again, gas prices are down, and if you’re spending almost $50,000 on a luxury vehicle, how much do you care about spending a little more money on gas.  The MKS does allow you to use a lower-grade gas in the car if you don’t mind it not performing optimally.

One big thing to keep in mind is that Lincoln is working on an EcoBoost version of the MKS which will supposedly feature a twin-turbo V6 with some of the hp estimates coming in around 350.  While the car does move, enough to not really complain, it will really move with the additional ponies…and maybe even have better gas mileage.  Even a 4-cylinder EcoBoost motor that makes similar power to the current model, but increases the gas mileage would be a welcome option.

Now that we’ve looked under the hood, lets talk about how the car is dressed.  My personal opinion is that Lincoln did a fantastic job at designing this car.  The split grille, which is the new Lincoln “look” is elegant and along with the nicely shaped headlights, give the Lincoln a very classy yet sporty/aggressive look.  It screams luxury, but with a little muscle.

What I like best though is the rear of the car.  The new vertical LED taillights and generally shape remind me of the Maserati Quattroporte…but better looking.  While the overall design is not revolutionary, it does stand out as a handsome car in a sea of blandness.

The interior of the car is the best part of the MKS hands down.  I was pleasantly surprised how nice all of the materials were, how comfortable the car was, and how ridiculously great the technology was integrated.  One of the greatest steps that Ford has made with their lineup has been the integration of SYNC, a car operating system if you will, developed in conjunction with Microsoft.  The added Sirius satellite radio with Travel Link allows you to do some really cool things like auto re-route your destination based on traffic, find the lowest fuel prices in your area, check sports scores and movie listings, and more.  The voice activation feature to tie it all in works practically flawlessly, and is by far the best system I’ve ever used.

If you read the list of optional items that were included in the car, you need to know that everything other than the adaptive cruise control was part of the $5,715 “ultimate package”…and I wouldn’t buy the car without it.  There is just too much cool, convenient stuff to not shell out for it.  Take for example the 5.1 THX-II certified audio system.  For audio cds that support it, you will be extremely impressed by the quality of the sound.

In regards to handling, I was pleasantly surprised to how well the MKS stuck to the road.  While the car looks smaller than it is, it sits fairly high, especially at the rear.  I’ll be honest, I was expecting a good amount of body roll.  What I did find though was that I could take an exit ramp going 60 with no problems.  I was also a little surprised at how much of the road I could feel, I mean it is a Lincoln right?  I think this mostly had to do with the 19″ wheels that also provided a lower profile tire.  Note that there is also an option for a 20″ wheel.  While I did feel some of the road, the car was almost eerily quiet when driving.  It was so smooth accelerating and shifting through gears.  I had passengers in both the front and rear of the car, all complimenting the MKS on how incredibly smooth and comfortable the car was.

Speaking of comfortableness, the MKS definitely sticks to what you would imagine a Lincoln would be…notably comfortable.  My rear passengers were pleased and with no complaints, they were happy about their rear heat warmers in the 30 degree rainy weather we were in.

The Lincoln MKS puts itself into a class of heavy competition.  With cars like the BMW 5-Series, Jaguar XF, Cadillac CTS/STS, Acura RL, Lexus GS, etc…it’s tough to come out as number one.  What Lincoln does have going over the competition is the pricepoint.  A fully loaded MKS will come in lower than most of the competition, but I still think it’s priced a little high.  The initial reaction I was getting from most people was surprised when they found out how much it costs.  While it’s a nice car, they really need to undercut the competition.  I’d like to see a fully loaded AWD model come in at the lower $40,000 range if it’s possible.  In reality though, it is a great buy for what it is…which is why it was nominated for car of the year from Motor Trend.

For more pictures, as well as the high resolution versions, see the Flickr set.

On July 31st ActiveTuning received an order for an RGB2+ for $325 shipped.  This is not a product that we normally stock (we state this on the product page, and also state that it will take about a week before it’s shipped to the customer), so once an order arrives, we place an order with our supplier, who then ships it to us, and we ship it to the customer.  We shipped a few days later, within PayPal’s 7 day terms.

Almost 3 months later, on November 28th, I received a notice that the funds were on hold due to a chargeback.  PayPal asked for the tracking #, in which I gave to them right that day.  The tracking # confirmed delivery of the unit to the customer.  Two weeks later on December 12th, I receive an e-mail from PayPal stating that the funds cannot be returned, the customer won the chargeback settlement, sorry….and I’m responsible for the $10 chargeback fee.  From my perspective as the business I did everything correct.  I received an order and I shipped as soon as possible.  I used USPS Priority Mail, as PayPal heavily promotes and integrates into their service.  This was not fair to me.

I immediately called PayPal, and after looking into it, they directed me to the third bullet of section 11.7 of their twenty five page user agreement.  Under the definiteion of “proof of delivery” it states the following:

Signature Confirmation for transactions that total $ 250 USD or more (see Foreign Currency Equivalents below).

While I did get delivery confirmation on the package, I did not get signature confirmation.  Since I did not get this, I automatically lose the chargeback case.  Yes, this is in the 25 page user agreement, but sorry PayPal, I can’t memorize or read every single thing.  This is a pretty important aspect of seller protection in my opinion, especially on higher priced items (anything over $250).  Would it be that difficult to “promote” this term/clause a little better to protect their own customers (the sellers that generate a huge amount of sales in which they make money through transaction fees and monthly service agreements)?  A simple obvious note when receiving a payment over $250 for a good that says “hey, don’t forget to add signature confirmation so you don’t get fucked when your customer scams on you”.

That is all.

After seeing the new 370Z, I can honestly say that I’m not dissapointed.  I didn’t get the same “oh my god” reaction I got with the Maxima, but it does look much better in person than in pictures.  It gives off a much more aggressive look with it’s edgier lines than previous models, something I really love about it.  The new headlights are to die for, and the car just looks all around cleaner.  The interior has been hugely improved, and there is a lot more cargo space due to no more rear strut bar in the way.

There were two models at the event, a blue and yellow.  I obvioulsy was only able to look at the cars, but I’d be dying to drive one around for a bit and see how it has improved (hint hint Nissan )

Nissan did a really nice job with the car, it has already grown on me tenfold from first seeing it.  I look forward to getting behind the wheel of one in the near future and giving my opinion of that as well.  Here’s a little video I did from the event, also, to see all the pictures (including in high-res) see the flickr set here.

To this:

My initial idea was that I wanted to make the car nice overall from all aspects…from performance, to suspension, to audio. Looking back now, the one aspect I didn’t really do enough was suspension, but that would have required dumping in a lot more money. So let’s take a look at what was done:

To start off, I went with some little modifications like a smaller antenna, removing emblems, and intake, etc. The original plan was keep the car naturally aspirated (meaning all-motor with no sort of forced induction like a turbo or a supercharger), which is why I got the intake. That changed over time, but we’ll get to that later.

I also wanted to have a carbon fiber/orange theme, I always thought that the orange matched a gunmetal sort of color really well. To kick that theme off, I installed a JIC front strut tower brace for tighter handling and a nice look under the hood. I also installed 15% tint all-around to give it a more refined orange/black look.

Next, I installed RS*R springs. This lowered the car slightly to give it a more aggressive stance, and help improve handling slightly. You can see the height difference in the springs here:

In the meantime, I was prepping for a show quality audio system installation by starting to amass parts for that:

We can see here I went with Polk/Momo amplifiers, and Inifity Kappa Perfect speakers/subs, along with a Pioneer Elite headunit which isn’t shown.

Next, I installed a grounding kit (which my company ActiveTuning actually sells). A grounding kit is one of those things that some people argue it does nothing, while others definitely notice benefits. With all of the audio work I was putting into the car, I decided to put it in. I went with orange wires to match the car.

Next thing on the list was a carbon fiber engine cover to help match the whole theme, as well as the Injen true dual exhaust. I went with the Injen for a couple reasons. One, it was true dual, and two, because I thought they were one of the best looking exhausts on the market for the 350Z. I do wish it would have been slightly louder, but it does give a nice tone with no raspyness.

Afterwards I installed taillight and side marker overlays on the rear of the car to match the lights with the tint and keep going with the orange/black theme. Some people hate these, some people love them…I personally love them. The guy that makes these, makes them for a bunch of cars, you can check out some of the work here…they call him Blue Batmobile.

The next mod was a big one, I put on 19″ Volk SF Challenge wheels, with a gunmetal face. The wheels were wrapped in Bridgestone Pole Position S03 tires. Even to this day, these are one of my favorite wheel designs. The wheels are forged, which makes them lighter and stronger compared to cast wheels…it also makes them more expensive. Expect to pay well over $3,000 for a similar package.

Later on in the same month, a friend and I drove the car out to Wisconsin to meet with my business partner and build/install the audio system. We spent a week designing, building, and installing everything. This included building/painting a fiberglassed sub box with a 12″ sub (never done before at the time for the Z), as well as an amp rack to house both amps. We also custom mounted a Xenarc touch-screen LCD into the cubby on the dash and ran wiring for what would soon be a custom PC integrated into everything. We even mounted a color camera behind the license plate so I could see behind me on the screen.

I wrote up more about the actual step-by-step process of building and installing the system here in case you’re interested.

Next up was the Seibon carbon fiber hood. This was my favorite hood design, with two gills put in for some venting.

Afterwards I installed Cobra carbon fiber seats, which really set the car off. The seats are pretty rare, mainly because they were expensive (Over $3,000 for the pair)…but they looked really nice, especially with the theme I was going for.

At this point I decided to switch from the gunmetal Volk wheels to gold. I got the same exact wheels, but in a different color to better match the car and stand out a little more:

By now I had decided that I was ready to put a twin turbo in the car. It was starting to look really good, and sound really good, but it was time to make it move. I ordered an APS twin turbo kit, and we were actually the first (that I believe) to do it without a lift and without pulling the motor out. We literally had the car on jack stands in my garage with pieces everywhere. It was a weekend of three or four friends working on it, with no sleep. Finally on a Sunday night, the beast roared. Once it was dyno tuned (conservatively may I add), it was pushing over 400 horsepower to the wheels:

Along with the turbo we installed a couple of gauges, including an AEM wideband and a Defi BF boost gauge in a 2-pillar pod:

Now it sounded good, looked good, and was fast…but it was time to make it stand out a little better. I ordered a Do-Luck body kit from Japan, and had it painted:

Unfortunately 2 days after painting I hit a huge rock in the road and damaged the kit pretty badly:

With all of the power, I had to make the car stop good. At the time I also had a Infiniti G35 coupe, which is built on the same platform as the 350Z. Luckily my G35 came with Brembo brakes from the Infiniti, so I ordered up some slotted Brembo rotors, and literally swapped the brakes onto the Z. With the orange Brembo rotors, the gold wheels, and the orange paint, it was looking real good:

The last thing I did was add a bunch of carbon fiber pieces to the interior of the car. This was all cosmetic stuff, but all real carbon fiber. There were dash pieces, rear strut covers, door side sills panels, and more. It gave everything a more complete look, and it was really ready for show.

Unfortunately I didn’t drive the car very much, and instead of letting sit in the garage and depreciate, I decided to finally sell it. Boy do I miss it.

I ran over to Lamborghini Washington for a first hand look at the new supercar. They had two in the inventory, one in white, and the other in a semi-dark silver:

Thinking of picking one up?? The silver one will run you about $265,000:

Lamborghini has a habit of doing this. They design a car that I look at and fall in love with. I can’t even begin to fathom how the design can be improved, but then they redesign, and it looks even better. Most notably to me the major improvements are on the front and rear parts of the car. The frontend has a new, more aggressive looking bumper with larger openings. It looks more like their super duper car, the $1.6 million Reventon. Along with the redesigned headlights, it makes the new rendition much angrier looking.

More importantly the rear of the car has been completely redesigned. I would say that the rear of the first Gallardo was the one part of the car that a lot of people didn’t like so much. Obviously Lamborghini heard this too, and redesigned accordingly. The new rear is much cleaner:

The updated lower profile taillights and the quad exhaust tips really do the majority of the improvements for me.

Here’s some more pictures that I took for you to enjoy:

Here’s a couple that were hooked up that I saw at SEMA in Las Vegas:

Hey, just in case you weren’t aware, wanted to give you a heads up, especially if you tend to by gift cards for the holidays. The following are involved in, planning to file Bankruptcy, or closing a significant number of stores:

Circuit City (filed Chapter 11)
Ann Taylor- 117 stores nationwide closing
Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug ,and Catherine’s to close 150 stores nationwide
Eddie Bauer to close stores 27 stores and more after January
Cache will close all stores
Talbots closing down specialty stores
J. Jill closing all stores (owned by Talbots)
Pacific Sunwear (also owned by Talbots)
GAP closing 85 stores
Footlocker closing 140 stores more to close after January
Wickes Furniture closing down
Levitz closing down remaining stores
Bombay closing remaining stores
Zales closing down 82 stores and 105 after January
Whitehall closing all stores
Piercing Pagoda closing all stores
Disney closing 98 stores and will close more after January.
Home Depot closing 15 stores 1 in NJ ( New Brunswick )
Macys to close 9 stores after January
Linens and Things closing all stores
Movie Galley Closing all stores
Pep Boys Closing 33 stores
Sprint/Nextel closing 133 stores
JC Penney closing a number of stores after January
Ethan Allen closing down 12 stores.
Wilson Leather closing down all stores
Sharper Image closing down all stores
K B Toys closing 356 stores
Dillard’s to close some stores

I knew about a lot of these stores, but there were many new ones. The economy is really going through some crazy times right now. There is a possibility of the domestic automotive manufacturers filing for bankruptcy. The world is folding as we know it right?? Wrong.

Right now is sort of a the strongest survive scenario. The fact is, we as consumers will still continue to purchase products, we will still wear clothes, we will still buy people presents, and we will still drive cars.

Think about GM as one example. GM owns a ton of auto brands; Chevy, GMC, Cadillac, Hummer, Pointac, Buick, Saturn, and Saab. Just imagine how many vehicles per year are manufactured sold from the conglomerate of all these brands?? I don’t have exact figures, but I’m sure it’s well into the millions. If GM went under, that’s a huge void of vehicles that were at least partially sold…that are now not. While becoming a new car manufacture may not be the easiest thing in the world, somebody is going to take a lot of that business…and that ain’t no chump change. The strong will survive.

Now take a look at any of the other stores above, and I can bet it’s the same scenario. Who knows why some of these stores are folding…some expanded too fast, some didn’t do enough marketing, some expanded in the wrong areas…you get my point. Just because they failed, doesn’t mean you will to. What this new economy teaches us to do is to not be extravagant on how we spend. Run a company lean, and learn from past mistakes.

Now is a great opportunity to get into business…if you can survive the time while things are bleak…for what goes down must come up.

Just my 2 cents.

Each round of deals is tied to a specific day, so the PS3 stuff is for the first day which is November 27th (Thursday - Thanksgiving). If you get randomly selected, you’ll see an e-mail the day before letting you know. That means you should then login early on Thursday as you’ll have the opportunity to buy the product. Keep in mind that there are going to be a lot more participants selected than products available, to it is a race to try and buy first. There are a good number of products though, for example there are going to be 500 of the PS3’s.

This is somewhat familiar to Amex’s My Wishlist, but I actually like the way it works better. Generally for those doing Amex’s My Wishlist, the servers always get pounded, and a majority of the time the site goes down…pretty annoying. By Amazon pre-selecting the participants, I’m sure a big part of the reasoning behind that is to limit how many people are hitting the site. This way there should be no server issues, and you’ll know from the get go whether you’re too late or not.

This is a great promotion from Amazon for a few reasons:

• It’s a cool promotion, hey, it got me writing about it
• It will get people onto the site and looking at products. Amazon is known to have a very high conversion of visitors:buy ratio. Getting visitors to the site is the main step.
• The promotion page links to the products they are selling at a discount. This helps the conversion:buy process, and should help generate some sales simple for awareness factor.
• They are not giving the products away. A PS3 bundle which they normally sell for $574 is being sold for $199, which means they aren’t giving away their true cost. If they were to give these bundles away it would be $287,000 worth of product. Let’s say there is a 30% margin on them, they end up giving away $200,900. Instead,? they are charging $199 for 500 units, which is about $100,000. That means they are really only giving away about $100,000 of true dollars…a savings of $100,000.

If you haven’t already done so, get over to the Amazon Customers Vote page, and vote for each of the 6 days to try and get some deals of your own!? If you happen to win, make sure and post in our comments to let us know.

ClickTale has a free package that offers 100 recordings every week (400/month). Simply sign up, place some code in your header and footer, and you’re good to go. Anything over that will cost you…but if your site isn’t very big, it’s more than enough.

Keep in mind there are some privacy concerns regarding this. According to ClickTale’s own terms of service, you’re required to disclose in your privacy agreement that you’re using it.

Give it a shot and let me know what you think. Did you find out anything new about your readers/customers?

http://www.davepit.com/2008/11/17/2009-nissan-370z-first-thoughts/

Now it is:

http://www.davepit.com/2009-nissan-370z-first-thoughts/

The new domain name is part of the migration that I had announced when I launched this new design. My next task will be to work on cleaning up all of the categories, and the posts within them.

For those interested in how I did the migration, in case you are interested in doing the same…I will provide the steps I took:

Backup Files

The easiest/fastest way for me to do this was to login via Telnet/SSH (I use Putty as the software to do this). Go to the directory you need to backup, and then type

tar cvf filename.tar .

This will back everything up in the directory to a .tar file. Simply download that tar file and reupload to your new server. On the new server, you’ll want to untar it by using this command in the same directory:

tar xvf filename.tar .

This will untar all of your files onto the new server. Trust me, doing this is MUCH faster then downloading all of your files via FTP.

Wordpress Configuration

I was doing everything on the same server, so I didn’t have to do anythign with the database. If you are using a different server, you’ll have to backup your database, and then restore it on the new servers database.

Since I was doing everything on the same server, I simply logged into Wordpress, went to settings, and changed the domain names to davepit.com. This changed the database config to the new domain, and automatically started calling the files on the davepit.com domain.

While in the Wordpress admin, I also updated these:

• All In One SEO Tool plugin - Renamed everything as needed
• Sitemaps plugin - Rebuilt the sitemap for the site to map the correct domain

Update Template Files

Go into all of your template files, and make sure to change any references you have from the old domain to the new domain.

Update Old Domain References In Content

You could go through your SQL database files and replace any references of your old domain to your new domain…but an even easier way is to use the search-regex plug found here. The plugin once installed allows you to search for anything in your content and replace it with something else. I simply searched for all the references to images using the old domain, and replaced them with davepit.com. Same thing with links. Now all of your content is calling the right files.

.htaccess Configuration

You’ll want to update your .htacess configuration on both domains to make sure you’re URLs are doing what they are supposed to. To get all of the old url schemas shorter, I added this line (Thanks WPRecipes!):

RedirectMatch 301 /([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/(.*)$ http://www.davepit.com/$4

This will ensure any links that are going to the old URL’s automatically redirect to the new ones. Plus, it will allow the search engines to know the pages have moved, and start indexing the correct new URL’s without punishing me (since there is no page not found errors). While I’m at it, I also set the domain up to always redirect to www.davepit.com, even if you go to just davepit.com. The code for that is below:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^davepit\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.davepit.com/$1 [L,R=301]

Now we’ve got DavePit.com all setup…but we want to make sure people that are still going to DavidPitlyuk.com get redirected. Simple!? I setup a .htaccess file on davidpitlyuk.com with the following code:

Redirect 301 / http://www.davepit.com/

Perfect!? Now our URL’s are going to the right places!

Google Webmaster Tools

You’ll want to setup the new domain on Google Webmaster Tools so Google can appropriately crawl and index your content.

Thanks to Mubs from Suffolk Software for some of the help in figuring out the above work.