How To's

On my google homepage I added a section for WikiHowTo - it has two links to a How To article everyday. Today's were "How to Hypermile" and "How to be Good".

Reading the first I thought, "How to what? Hyper..meaning, high or fast, mile..meaning..mile.. does this mean how to drive many miles in a shorter amount of time? Well, duh, I could tell you how to do that." No. Actually, what it refers to is how to drive many miles on a shorter amount of gas, which actually means, how to drive SLOW! The tone of the article I thought was really quite comical. It's advocating some techniques to maximize your fuel efficiency, and while this is a great thing, it's not the way most people drive nowadays. One quote was really great,

"Even if your brakes are perfectly fine, driving in this manner improves fuel economy because you maintain slower speed, reduce acceleration, and place fewer demands on the engine by going easy on the brakes. This may be frustrating and difficult, however, if other drivers keep cutting in front of you."

The funny thing about that is that... while trying to maintain better fuel efficiency by driving more slowly and farther away from the car in front of you, you're going to automatically put yourself in a position where the brakes will become more and more necessary than they would be regularly! [And, the first time I read this line, I thought that the link for 'cutting in front of you' would lead to a picture of someone cutting in front of you, just in case you didn't know what that meant. Actually it leads to an article about how to handle tailgaters... naturally.]

Here's the whole article:
http://www.wikihow.com/Hypermile

And here's the article on how to be good, just in case you're feeling really cheesy:
http://www.wikihow.com/Be-Good


In other, more relevant, news I've really been enjoying the Olympics! I'm looking forward to the track and field events, as well as more diving. These are the events I'm most anticipating:

high jump, pole vault, running relays (don't know why these are more exciting than just running), and high dive


Here's a lovely picture of mom and me from the last time she was in town: