Since it’s been terrible to try to maintain a personal website, Flickr photo site, and Facebook site I have decided to eliminate the photo catagory on the site and just refer people to my Flickr site (http://www.flickr.com/ltparis).

Looking at the gathering crowds and the Main Stream Media (MSM) coverage of the event, it’s remarkable how much discourse the right can generate without many calling them to task. For starters there are a number of posters at the protests that speaks volumes that many of these people are not to be taken seriously, well seriously in the fact that they are against government spending or anything of that nature, but more so just against Obama and Democrats. Some of these photos can be found here at NPR, Think Progress, and searching through Flickr. Safe to say that a lot of what is making noise is straight up racism, bigotry, and quite frankly sore loser syndrome.

But to those that have a genuine gripe against Washington spending, a lot of those people identifying themselves as Republicans, where were you from 1/2001-1/2009? Where were you when the largest bureaucracy devised, the Department of Homeland Security, was formed? Where where you when we spent Billions of taxpayer dollars, dollars that the White House hid from the general budget, to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? And did these same people embrace Obama when he demanded cuts in useless military spending? Something tells me no.

No, these protests, are just a farce of the real issue, the bubbling turmoil from the right. The people that would take up arms against their fellow American because their person is not in office. These same people that idolize the likes of Limbaugh, Hannity, and Beck, and listen to their beckon call to protest without really understanding the specifics of their cause.

Civil debate in the country seems to be taking a turn for the worse. While there are legitimate concerns about the course of American political power, and that rings true for both parties, all that happens is partisan bickering, all that happens is shouting down your opponent when you don’t have the facts to back the screams, all that happens is soured relations between opposing ideals.

And it’s funny that these protesters are seemingly taking it out on a pragmatic president, one that is constantly reaching his arm across the aisle for bipartisan support, where the previous president snubbed any efforts of conciliation and just rammed policy through.

I fear that these protests will grow, that the bigotry that is starting to flow will come faster than people think will happen. I fear that ills of our nation will go unsolved because there are some that simply refuse to break bread with their political opponents. I fear that we will have more turmoil than the nation can truly handle.

Preface

For some time now I wanted to get a head unit that would be able to not only connect up my iPod, or any other external device, but I was in search for the elusive head unit that could control an iPod at the head unit itself. This search literally began years ago and there were only a couple units out there that could achieve this feat and for those that did they required an additional module to control an iPod.

Now that the demand for this feature is constantly increasing, many manufacturers were finally getting into the game developing head units that have a direct USB connection to their head unit. Some elected for a front panel solution, seemingly good if you wanted a simple way to plug an iPod (or flash drive which seems to be a good solution in this case) but that leaves for a somewhat unappealing dangling cord from the front. Others like Kenwood have developed a rear mounted USB solution which allows for a much more integrated solution if one wishes.

The other feature I was looking for was to have a lot of information from one’s iPod available on the head unit.  While there are a number of head units that have good displays that even show album art, if one was budget conscious you were delegated to 8-12 large LED-style characters.

So my goal was to find a unit that had all the above features, iPod control, rear mounted USB cords, beyond basic equalization, and all for a budget of less than $225. Sounds impossible? Think again.

The Kenwood eXcelon KDC-X693

I happened across this head unit by chance after posting to a couple forums to find a good budget head unit. There were only a couple quick reviews I could find on it but they all were positive. Additionally there were a number of good reviews for a close sibling of this head unit that had Bluetooth on board but it cost nearly $100 more. While the Bluetooth feature was nice, I opted to stay within budget and get the X693. If I would like in the future I can buy modules for Bluetooth, Satellite Radio, and other features which seemingly makes this a great base head unit to work with. So I took a chance and purchased it through Crutchfield for $209.00. While you can get it at Amazon for considerably less, you have to include shipping since it’s offered by a partner business and once you get the wiring harness for your vehicle the price becomes a wash.

Opening the box presented me with the box for the head unit, the cable to hook into the Infinity “Sun & Sound” system in my 2004 Lancer RalliArt, and instructions.

Shot of the head unit box

 While this might not be some exotic packing al la Apple, it at least seems they took a little care in packaging this. The head unit is covered completely in plastic so it won’t get scratched.  It also includes what you would expect; instructions, batteries, screws, and wire ties. One thing that I did not expect was a convenient plastic mount that you can secure your USB wire to so you don’t have to have the wire dangling around. Kudos to include something so simple but a very nice option to have for your installation. In this installation the only other things I had to buy was some connectors and some wire loom to tidy up the install.

Pre-wiring

Thanks to a bit more standardization over the years, almost anyone can wire up your harness adapter to your head unit harness. I have done a lot of installs in the past where you had to be performing all of this wiring inside the car so it’s nice to be able to literally plug and play and drive.

As mentioned above I own a 2004 Lancer RalliArt with the “Sun and Sound” system. I will be the first to admit that the stock system really does not sound that bad. While you don’t have discrete audio adjustments, the seven speaker system does an adequate job of reproducing sound at even fairly loud levels.  This is helped with the separate amp located under the driver’s seat pushing out a Mitsubishi reported 310 watts. OK so this is an exaggeration IMO, but it probably does push out a respectable clean 40-50 watts per channel.

One thing I was a little disappointed in with Mitsubishi is the amp only has four discrete channels. I had assumed given that it had a subwoofer that there would be 5 channels. I can only assume that they have some inline crossovers off the rear channels. No biggie in the end. If I really want to I can always remove the current sub and put a replacement sub in with a separate amp.

I spent probably 10 minutes wiring up the harness together. Since I am going to plug into the existing Infinity amp I only have to connect up 5 wires; constant power (yellow), power (red), “antenna power” (blue), illumination (orange), and remote power (blue-striped). Everything else will be connected via RCA to the head unit.

Wire Harness

One small nitpick in this was that the constant power and the main power lengths of wire on the Kenwood side of the harness was longer than the rest of the wires. No real biggie, just a nitpick. To tidy up the install I cut a couple lengths of wire loom and stuffed my wires inside.

Wire Harness with Loom

Installation

Installation was pretty much a breeze thanks to the wiring harness. It just takes four screws to get access to the radio. Another small nitpick thanks to the people at Mitsubishi is there is no ground wire at the OEM harness. I finally found a place to hook up the ground but it’s just a little burdensome that there would be such a glaring omission from a harness.

Head Unit Installed

There is a great spot in the Lancer to place a iPod or iTouch/iPhone and that is in the little plastic tray of the two-chamber center console. Again just two screws anchors it down and after about 20 minutes I fished through the Kenwood USB cable and coupled it with a standard Apple USB cable. The finished product looks like this.

iPod/iPhone "cubby" in a Lancer RalliArt

Once everything is snapped back together the installation was finished. I wish the head unit was flush, or that it was slight more risen so you can put the trim ring on. But otherwise this was a pretty easy install.

First Thoughts

My very first thoughts on the X693 is WOW, this thing has so many options, so many in fact that it took me a good hour plus to acquaint myself with all the features and nuances of the unit. Even things like setting the date took an extra minute because you have to set it in standby mode. That being said I would rather have to spend a little time on such a full features product than to have fewer features.

Everything is customizable. The head unit colors are customizable down to the left and right knob lights. The display can give you a number of different settings and text combinations. Sound is extraordinarily customizable with different EQs, cabin profiles, even speaker size profiles to maximize the sound from your head unit. Unfortunately I can only take advantage of some of the features since I don’t use the head unit amp, but right out of the gate it made the Infinity system sound better, and with some tweaks it sounded really, really good.

The Bad Things

So this is not far from perfect so let’s list out the imperfections of the unit. First the display reflects lot of glare, almost the point that it’s unreadable. Luckily there is a contrast option to help brighten up the display to combat the glare.

The radio presets have no direct input on the face panel. Now this isn’t a big deal since you just select the search function and it lists the six presets per bank (3 FM banks and 1 AM bank), but it is only listed as “Preset 1”, “Preset 2”. It would have been nice if Kenwood would have displayed the station and possibly call letters for each preset.

It would have been nice to have two small FF/RW buttons on the display. This is solved by the right jog wheel but it seems to take an extra push from time to time for it to register.

There might be a way to turn off some of the animation of the head unit but I have not seen that option yet. When you switch between menus or sources it goes through little short animation bursts that I could do without.

The Good Things

There are a lot of things to praise about this unit. The audio sounds above average especially with the price point of this head unit. The direct iPod control seems to be spot on only taking a couple seconds to register songs from a 80GB iPod Classic or a iPhone 3G v3.0 8GB. The radio turner is superb pulling in stations the stock head unit could not and its RDS tagging comes up quickly. There was a comment on Amazon that stated “this is the head unit for geeks” and I could not agree more. While I could see this being intimidating for some, for anyone with a grasp on technology can discover a treasure trove of features and dial in the head unit to act exactly as they want.

Conclusion

While I have only had this for a day now I am thoroughly impressed with it thus far. Far from perfect this unit has features that some units $100, $200, even $300 or more simply do not have, I have had Kenwood eXcelon equipment in the past, namely some V12 amps about 10 years ago and I was very impressed with those amps as I am now with the X693. I will have a longer term synopsis later on this after it’s broken in for a couple months, but for now I will be enjoying my long rides from NY to VA and back with an incredible new head unit.

This has been an incredibly busy year. First I left my job with Skip Barber Racing School and took my old position with the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance. That alone has been consuming a lot of my time with working, traveling back to NY on the weekends to see Danyelle, Xaia, and Kian, and then back to VA. Then of all things I started to get hooked on Facebook so I started making connections in that part of cyberspace.

Wow iPhone apps are fun!

So it’s official. As of this Monday, MLK day to be precise, I will be trekking down to the DC area (again) and go work for the government (again), taking my old position at the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (again).

There is a lot going on so my postings have been pretty erratic as of late. Hopefully I can get back into a continuous stream of information when things settle.

Last evening marked one of those very rare and historical events that will be talked about for generations. The “stain of our constitution” has given way to the ultimate manifistation of our political and social landscape. Day one has begun on a new journey four our country so let us make the most of this historic occasion.

I’ve grabbed a few screenshots of the morning after.

VOTE!

There is just about 17 days to go till we prepare for the first state precincts to go, and the quad-annual rush to various media outlets to see what the exit polls have produced, and soon a new president will be announced.

This has been at the very least an interesting exercise in our political process. From the underdog in the Democratic party taking on the inevitable Clintons’s re-ascension to the top post, to McCain getting written off every day by the MSM only to claim the crown of the Republican party, it seemed that we would have a relatively civil debate coming into the waning days till November 4th.

But civil it was not. Where Obama’s strategy seemed to be one on policy, the McCain strategy seemed to be one on the personal story. Even though all assurances were made that mud slinging would not happen, more than mud came out. Everything from the rehashing of the Ayres story to crowds chanting that Obama was a terrorist, the McCain plan was to try to install fear into those that might vote for Obama but it seems the plan has backfired.

With just a few days to go, Obama seems to have a much easier path to 270 electoral votes, where McCain needs to run the table in hopes of winning. As of 10/18/2008, thanks to the great minds of FiveThirtyEight.com the electoral map looked like this. Red designates McCain “safe” states of more than 7% of the average polling, Blue the same for Obama, and the rest are up for grabs.

So right now Obama has 259 “safe” electoral votes which means all Obama needs is 11 to put him over the top. As for these battleground states, they are:

MT: McCain +6.4 (3)
GA: McCain +6.1 (15)
AR: McCain +4.6 (6)
ND: McCain +3.9 (3)
IN: McCain +2.1 (11)
WV: McCain +1.1 (5)
NC: Obama +0.6 (15)
MO: Obama +1.4 (11)
NV: Obama +2.8 (5)
OH: Obama +2.5 (20)
FL: Obama +3.5 (27)
CO: Obama +6.0 (9)
NM: Obama +6.4 (5)
VA: Obama +6.5 (13)

Now as you see there is one state that is pretty safe for Obama in VA, and FL, OH, NC, and MO also individually can put him over the top. Even if McCain trends upwards it’s unlikely that he will gobble up all eight states that Obama has an advantage with right now.

Of course things can still happen. People can become complacent. There are millions of people being purged right now off voter registration rolls, there are plenty of problematic and hackable voter machines in service in key states. But one can hope that this election has a descent majority so we can exit this era of Bush quickly.

I recently purchased some new Dell Optiplex 755’s and ran into an issue with one of my most tried and true tools, Ghost. I have used Ghost for a very long time but there is a growing issue with SATA drivers that rendered using ghost useless since it wouldn’t recognize the DVD-R drive. In a quick rush I started to research alternatives and ran into Windows Deployment Services (WDS).

I used it’s predecessor (RIS) a couple times in the past and really didn’t like it, so I was walking into this project with the notion that I could dislike it. I can say that ended up being farthest from the truth. Since most of my machines are PXE enabled I can boot off the network, and with a couple tweaks to my boot image (I needed to seed some network drivers into it) I have a great WinPE booter to work with.

I’ve been transitioning my images to WDS now which was a great starting point since I needed to start creating images with XP SP3 and Vista SP1. I can honestly say I am not looking back at Ghost.