TrickyBuddha Studios

RE: I’m a Convert

I wouldn’t even know where to begin to scientifically defend the move, but it looks like it has been a winner of a choice. I filled up with 93 octane gas back in early June and promptly scored my lowest recent mileage — 23.6 mpg. Since then, I’ve switched to 87 octane and have scored about a mpg (or two) better each fill-up: 24.7, 24.5, 25.9, and 25.2 in order. In fact, these are my highest mpg totals since 2007. Could be anything, but whatever. I’ll take the improved mileage.

In other gas-related news…

(The needle is now below “E”. Rick is looking at it)

RICK: Is it just the angle I’m looking from?
KRAMER: No, Sir. We are down there.
RICK: Oh, this is amazing! Oh, I’ve never felt so alive!

That fill-up back in June was also notable because I hit 575 km on a tank of gas, a personal best. But instead of satisfying me, it made me want more; I wanted to see if I could hit 600 km. I missed bettering my score on the next attempt, but the try after that I hit 585 km. Closer! Another miss on the next try, but then I hit 598 km! So close!

Finally, today, with no looking back, I aimed for 600 — and did it. I pulled into the gas station at 600.9. Fantastic. Maybe it’s a little less impressive when you convert to miles (373.4) but I’ll take it.

One more side note — on the costs of driving, per mile — I’ve mentioned before that my only fill-ups over 9 cents came in the summer. That trend has continued. My last 5 fill-ups, all this summer, have gone over 9 cents: 10.3, 11.2, 10.8, 9.2, and 9.9 cents per mile, respectively.

I stumbled across a message board post where people were asking one another how long was the longest period they’d gone without rebooting their computer. Some people were re-booting once or twice a day, others were re-booting once every couple of years (apparently ignoring every OS update because they generally require you to re-boot).

Since I noticed that thread I’ve been checking to see how long I could go with my two computers (a Vista desktop and a Mac OSX 10.4 laptop) – while always grabbing the latest updates. (For the record, my machines auto-suspend after about 10-20 minutes of inactivity because I care about the environment more than you do and I’m just a little bit better of a person than you are, *thaaannnks!*. If only they would invent an organic, free range power cord for me to use.)

The Vista desktop hasn’t lasted more than a week without needing a re-boot. Microsoft is pretty regular with their weekly Tuesday update – which is a good thing, I guess. Plus, I get random hiccups with my system now and then. Yesterday the USB ports on my monitor died and I re-booted to get it working again. A couple weeks prior, my CPUs were pinned at about 100% so I re-booted to get things back to normal.

My laptop has lasted much longer. OSX 10.4 is a very mature OS so it receives less updates. And the hardware architecture is pretty straight-forward so there aren’t usually any hiccups. My mostly-dead battery is the Achilles heal. The first run with my laptop was 30 days. The power cord came un-plugged and I didn’t realize it. Because the battery is so ancient, the power died and the computer shut down before the computer could even give me a warning. I re-started the “longevity challenge” but two days later there was an update that required a re-boot. From there, I lasted 18 days – to today. The screen brightness died and I had to re-boot to restore order. So here’s to starting again.

I doubt anyone else out there cares about these things, but I’m easily amused.

Thought of the day, taken from Lifehacker.com and a discussion on the activation code for Windows 7 getting hacked (already).

Person One: It makes me sick that some people think this is not theft. The people at Microsoft have worked long and hard on windows 7, they have listened to users, and implemented features requested. Just pay for the products you use…

Person Two: Microsoft is aggressive enough to break the rules first and if necessary pay fines after. It’s ironic that users that steal from Microsoft are following the same rules of conduct: they will break the rules and unless they are found guilty, it’s more money for them.