The 12 finalists for American Idol were chosen last week. Antonella Barbara was rightly sent home, surprisingly Sabrina Sloan had to leave as well.

This week's show brought few surprises. The ladies are consistently better than the men, with LaKisha Jones and Melinda Doolittle taking the lead. Both are extremely strong singers, but I think Doolittle is more likable and has a better chance of becoming number 1.

Somehow Sanjaya Malakar made it through this week to the next round, perhaps because of his new hairstyle. He and Phil Stacey are probably next to go.

Tonight I noticed that the website was very slow so I checked if there was enough free space available. And the /var partition was 100% full again, while I had just cleaned it up yesterday.

So I did a quick sanity check and quickly found that I had left MySQL logging on "verbose", with this result:

A 2.5 GB log file on a 3.0 GB partition... So there is clearly no need for a new hard disk yet.

The plane landed in Newark on schedule this morning. At the airport we went to National, a car rental place to pick up our car. We got a Toyota Corolla... so small! I could hardly fit in the driver's seat. Later I adjusted the wheel so at least it wasn't on my knees anymore but it was still pretty tight. Last summer when we were buying our car we were also considering a Corolla; I'm glad we went with its bigger brother, the Camry.

From Newark it was a 20 minute drive to Secaucus. It took slightly longer because I took a wrong turn, but over-all the trip went smoothly. We met with Jonathan, Irena and Ilana and spent the late morning together. In the afternoon we all went to New York, and I drove!

It was really nice to drive in New York City, and it was very different than driving at home. I quickly got used to it and I enjoyed it a lot. The distance between cars, I learned, should be as small as possible ("bumper to bumper") and the horn is there for a reason. I think I managed quite well to adjust and also kept the car and everybody in it safe. We went for a walk in Soho and we had a good time together. We parked 2 hours and payed $24.00... another difference with North Carolina.

In the evening we went to Kitchen 22 where we celebrated Sasha's birthday and closed a great day.

It's 6.20 am on Saturday and we're getting ready to leave to the airport.

Sasha had her last mid-term exam yesterday and now it's spring break! Time to enjoy and to celebrate her birthday with Irena and Jonathan.

Our plane is at 8.40 am, and we plan to be at the airport around 7.30 am so we'll leave in 45 minutes or so.