• a short handled snow shovel
• a wind-up or shake-charged flashlight/radio
• a heavy blanket
• a beach towel
• a bag of mulch, or top-soil, or sand
• dry gloves, scarf, and knit cap

When the weather says a storm is coming, I frequently add a long handled snow shovel and snow boots.

I rarely get to use any of them, but that is just using the power of Murphy in my favor. When I do need them, they are handy and where I need them. Last night would have been immeasurably better if just 10% of the cars on the road had similar equipment stowed in them.

I know I need a generator now, as we are getting more and more heavy snows and ice storms with warmer winters… You know you need to stick those things in your car now.

If you can afford it, switch from those Z rated, low-profile, high-performance racing tires and rims every winter for cheap, repairable, steel wheels and all-season tires. I passed a lot of fancy cars immobilized by just having street legal racing slicks instead of proper tires for winter driving. Heck, if you can’t afford the second set of wheels and tires, you should not probably have the racing gear on your car at all… but that is just my opinion. In some ways it’s a shame that manufacturers and dealers started including the slick racing gear as standard equipment… too many people don’t even think about it anymore.

How to Get Cheaper Hybrid Rentals (Bucks column at NY Times)

It’s sad that market economics are preventing the right thing from happening in the rental market right now.

Within the first year we owned my wife’s 2006 Prius, she ran out of gas and the car quit entirely. I hiked to a nearby gas station, bought an additional gas can and a gallon of gas, and hiked back to the car to get it running again so we could go fill up. I was surprised when my Prius did not simply quit and require the same treatment.

There was a bit of a hill, which was tough on electric only, but I was able to coast into the station with one horizontal bar left on the batteries, and fortune was smiling on me, a pump had just opened up (usually there is a line).

After filling up, I got terrible (~30mpg) mileage until the batteries were fully recharged, but have resumed normal (~50mpg) mileage since then and the car seems to be unaffected from my close call. I’ll have service check it out on next oil change (which is tomorrow).

I count myself very lucky I did not have to hike a mile and back in this heat, and end up with yet another gas can…

When it finally came in, I discovered that the old Becker required special removal keys unlike the standard keys I already had… so another few weeks for those special keys to be delivered went by.

Those keys came in and I could finally pull out the Becker only to discover that we don’t have a standard factory installed system I expected, and the wiring harnesses Crutchfield graciously supplied me don’t match (which is not their fault, it’s mine for incorrectly assuming we had a factory unit). The good news is there is an extra amplifier hidden somewhere in the car. The bad news is now I have to figure out how to bridge the harnesses to connect to the mystery amp. Sigh.

I have pictures of the wiring label on the Becker and the plugs that are attached to the car in case someone is interested in the project.

http://gallery.me.com/scottdavidnolan#100282

This weekend it went through a very frustrating fit of telling us it could not re-calculate a route we needed because “Route Calculation Error: Not enough memory available.” would pop up on the screen after calculating for minutes (by modern standards it is pretty old). Short routes could still be calculated on the fly, but long routes (we were on a long trip) were simply not working. I poked and prodded it for quite some time, resetting the device a dozen times. Finally I figured out an erroneous setting that used up all the memory in the little device… It was set to record our tracks. I am not sure what that is, but as soon as I turned off that feature, and purged the recorded tracks, route calculation – even for long trips – went back to normal.

I am only publishing this in case anyone else out there sees the same error – check to make sure you are not “recording tracks” and if you are, stop doing that and you may find you have plenty of memory again.

Hope this helps.

In case embedded does not show up for you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_KIqdS1SO0

LA Times Article, with pictures

I originally wanted an Insight, but I wanted it to be four passenger and four door; it was not… now it is.
Since I own a reasonably new Prius, I am not in the market now, but new car shoppers might want to compare this new model to Prius and/or Civic hybrid choices.

Guess there is no new Linux server in my immediate future.

At least it is getting fixed before the long drive to Rome, NY to see my Mom.

Ah, hint – if you owe me money, and have not been too worried about repaying me at all, could you at least worry now, or pay a little? You know who you are.

The drive along U.S. highway 29 is beautiful in light fog. Sadly, along the route somewhere a bearing in my driver’s side wheel hub gave out and it’s not under warranty…. $510.82 and several hours wasted at the dealer was how I got to start my Monday. Grrrr!

Reminder: in many, many states today is the last day to register to vote to be eligible to vote on November 4th. If you live in Virginia, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, or many other states; go get registered now.

Photos courtesy of Ed Thyberg:

CNet News Article of the Anthony Levandowski Prius

Driving, it’s what the hired help does.