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Wednesday, March 26, 2008

 
Experiment

So I have to eat my words from yesterday as I decided to try traffic wave experiment aka "traffic jam reduction". I was convinced it wouldn't work in Sweat Sock City because honestly, whether it's a car or real estate, every free space in this city must be occupied; no two molecules of oxygen may flit and float without hindrance. I intentionally left about 15 seconds between my car and the car in front of me; my driver's ed teachers would be so proud. So I drove the speed limit, all the while maintaining the space. The space never really disappeared. It got smaller sometimes as I got closer to the traffic, but it never was less than 6 to 7 seconds in size. For the first time in months, I didn't need to apply my brakes at all on my commute home.

What fascinated me most was the fact this space was rarely taken advantage of by other drivers on the road. Even an 18-wheeler in the lane next to me didn't seem interested even though he could have easily fit. On the 25 miles to downtown, I saw maybe 5-6 cars take advantage of the open space and for the most part, they came from the lane on the right. It's as if the wide open space scared the other drivers; we're so used to being a culture where we try to jam as much as possible into a tight space that this concept of a 15-second space was foreign.

Of course this is all unscientific, based on one trial, and traffic for these past two weeks in Sweat Sock City has been light. I will continue to experiment and monitor. If this is indeed a true phenomena, then... WOW. Never (well, almost never) get stuck in traffic again.

LotD: Here's the article on the guy who got something like 150 miles to the gallon. King of the Hypermilers.

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| 9:31 PM |

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

 
More for less

I'm intrigued by this concept of hypermiling -- getting the most possible out of a gallon of gasoline. I read a story over the weekend where one guy got something like 150 miles per gallon, which completely blows my 32 miles per gallon right out of the water. Of course, he probably takes 80 million hours to get to work, and some of the techniques are not safe on a 70 mph (ha!) interstate, but I've been attempting some when it seems feasible, such as cruising to a red light or letting my foot off the gas on a "potential" slope. Since I drive about 50 miles RT a day, even a 10 percent reduction would be of benefit to me. I haven't tried reducing traffic jams yet, but boy if that works...*

* It's a fact that here in Sweat Sock City any open space, regardless of its size, will be immediately filled with a vehicle. If the vehicle is larger than the space, then tough cookies to the vehicle just to its rear. Passing on the right is also acceptable when a space immediately opens up, especially if it means crossing across four lanes of traffic at 80 mph.

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| 9:12 PM |

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

 
Uh...

Flags at half-mast for Jerry Falwell? Seriously?

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| 9:47 PM |

Monday, February 12, 2007

 
Little Miss Sunshine


I finally got around to seeing this movie this past weekend and it was a delightful treat, much better than "Thank You For Smoking", which I'd originally been more interested in. "Little Miss Sunshine" is the most dysfunctional family movie around, but it's charming and sweet and funny in its own idiosyncratic way. The movie takes the old convention of a family roadtrip and spins it around, populating its yellow VW bus with a stressed out housewife, a failed motivational singer, a gay scholar who just tried to commit suicide, a Nietsche fan who doesn't speak, a grandfather with more than a few vices, and of course, Little Miss Sunshine herself, the effervescent Abigail Breslin.

The humor in the film starts out on a subtle note and becomes more and more slapstick and more predictable as the movie progresses, but somehow that didn't bother me. On the contrary, my amusement level grows as the roadtrip from hell means these disparate characters are forced to interact with each other on levels they're not used to, and how their relationships change and how they work together to get Olive to the Little Miss Sunshine pagent is wonderful. The acting is very good, the dialogue is sharp and funny (though a note here on some bad language and adult humor -- despite the young main character, it's not a children's movie). Definitely one of my favorite movies of the Oscar season.

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| 8:53 PM |

Saturday, February 10, 2007

 
My hips don't lie

In December, my aunt and I were having a conversation about taxes and I said that I was planning to do my own and then have my dad check them over. I've been doing my own taxes since I graduated from college. I first started using the workbooks and worksheets and have since gone on to software. I equate the process to how you have to learn how to add and subtract on paper before you move on to the calculator. During the course of our conversation, I mentioned to my aunt I was compiling a list of things every woman should know.

A lot of the things we came up with seem self-explanatory but it's amazing to me how many women will flinch from doing them or even learning how to do it. Knowledge, I think, is just as important as experience. I know the process of how to change oil in a car but that doesn't mean I'm going to change the oil in my car. It simply means I know what the mechanic ought to be doing and how to check his work and make sure that he did install a new oil filter. It's nice to have someone else to depend on who knows how to do some of these things or to pay someone else to do the work, but it's not always possible or affordable. Plus, I think there's a special kind of pride that comes with independence, the knowledge you can depend on yourself no matter what.

Most of the things we came up with fall into typical male gender roles -- finances (taxes, investing in the stock market), car related (Jump-starting a car, changing a tire, putting air into a tire) or yard work a(mowing the lawn). Those are the big ones in my mind because so often I hear other women telling me they leave those kinds of things to their significant others. I hate to be a downer, ladies, but what happens when the SO is no longer around? Women outlive men and tragedy is not the time to start learning some of these things that we traditionally delegate because it's not what we women traditionally do.

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| 12:48 PM |

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