Author: chuck goolsbee

Ford. Chasing away their own customers with lawyers.

Long live the XKEdata.com calendar!

My friend Roger, who runs an enthusiast/community website for old Jaguars received a cease & desist letter from Ford asking him to stop selling calendars. Mind you from what I gather he sells only a few calendars a year. I buy a few myself, one for me, one for my dad, and one for Geoff, the guy who rebuilt my engine right (after the bozo’s in Texas bodged it.) It is just a cool little way to mark the passing of the year. The image above is actually on my office wall this month as it is “Miss October” this year.

Why would Ford want to shut this down? First of all, the E-type pre-dates Ford’s acquisition of Jaguar by a couple of decades. Nobody ever looks at an E-type and thinks, “Nice Ford!” Ever.

But Jaguar is a Ford asset (at least until they can find a buyer) and I guess they’d rather punish their enthusiast community rather than say… support it? Hello! Can somebody please tell me why threatening legal actions against your most ardent fans is a smart business move? First Ford destroys the Jaguar brand, now they are trying to destroy what little brand loyalty is left in their customers.

Smooth move guys!

Published (again)

I had an article published over at SearchDatacenter.com, a datacenter industry website. You can read it here:

1U Servers Do Not Provide Greater Density

My article has gotten a few comments already, but I suspect it will get busier tomorrow when their mailing hits. We’ll see.

In our facility a row holds twelve racks. Twelve racks can (theoretically) house five hundred and four servers. 504. If we used nothing but 1U servers, and they were all Apple Xserves or Dell 1950s, or similar length boxes, we would LOSE space for THREE THOUSAND TWENTY FOUR servers. You read that right, 3024 FEWER servers because we have to expand the width between ROWS of racks.

Note to the hardware designers at Apple, Dell et. al.:

RACKSPACE is cheap. Datacenter FLOORSPACE is expensive.
VERY expensive.

These nimrods need to pull their heads out and shorten up these boxes. 2U x 18″ x18″ is ideal, and far preferable to the 1U X 18″ X 30+” stuff they are selling today.

I want my floorspace back.

Lynn G Visits

Emmy the E-type

This past weekend we were paid a quick visit by Lynn G & his wife Jan, all the way from Boise, Idaho. I’ve “known” Lynn for many years via the Jag-Lovers E-type mailing list. We’ve both been through some engine troubles together, and misery does love company.

They were over in the San Juan islands for a wedding and stopped by our house on their way home. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t cooperative or I’d have been out in the 65E.

Above is their lovely ’68 OTS. The BRG paint is very nice.

Here is a pic of the two of them:

and just Lynn:

Lynn

It was a pleasure to finally meet them face-to-face. Thanks for stopping by! I’ll have to plan a trip through Boise soon to return the favor.

A bit of history…

retouched

The above is a photo I’ve retouched a bit to try and get it closer to the original. It is a scan, of a photo, of a photo. The original photo had been subjected to light, wear, and something like coffee spilled on it. You can see the original file I started with here.

This photo was taken at Wilmont Hills Road Course in 1963 (the year I was born… not far from where the photo was shot!) and the two cars in the foreground are the two Jaguar XKSS cars I recently saw at the Going To The Sun Rally. The (gasp) Opalescent Silver Blue one in the foreground is XKSS#16, the very car I rode in thanks to the generosity of Phillipe & Francoise Reyns. The maroon one in the background is XKSS#15, now owned by the Nells. Francoise Reyns sent me the scan, which I cleaned up in Photoshop this evening. I figured I would share.

GTTSR: Going Home.

Enough bugs for ya?

The rally is over. The participants are scattering in all directions. It is time for Shaun & I to head home.

We’re planning on taking northern route home, for the most part following MT 200 and WA 20 (aka The North Cascades Highway)… a nice route that stays in the mountains the whole time. The Rockies, Cabinets, Selkirks, the various Columbia sub-ranges… then up and over the wide part of the Cascades. This is the route that my son Nick and I drove in 2003 when we first brought the 65E home. It is my favorite way to traverse Washington.

Click “more” for the rest…

Continue reading “GTTSR: Going Home.”