...at least somewhat. It was a bit quieter.

Weather alternated between gray sky and sun, but wasn't as hot and humid quite. No rain, which we could probably use, but if it stays dry maybe the mosquitoes will die.

I went out after dinner to water the newly planted tomatoes and was nearly carried off and eaten by hordes of the nasty little bloodsuckers. Most of the tomatoes look OK, though the cherry tomatoes are a bit wilty. If even half the plants make it, we'll have plenty of tomatoes though.

Took the Escape to Ford because the ABS warning light was on. They replaced a broken "tone ring" in the left front brake, which solved the problem. Of course that leaves the question of why it was broken, as I'm a very gentle driver. The repair was covered by warranty, no charge. Now let's see if the other side goes out or if the same side goes again.

Tags: car, gardening, weather
Current Location: Home in the oak grove
Mood: busy

You may remember that after a trip to Michigan last year (April it was I think) I discovered that my aging Jeep had achieved absurdly unbelievable fuel economy of 38 mpg running on Michigan gasoline. This last weekend I made the same trip in the Ford Escape that replaced the Jeep last fall. The Escape has a smaller fuel tank and is more fuel efficient to begin with, so I didn't really empty the tank or have to refill it all the way with Michigan fuel. That makes comparisons tricky. The only gasoline I purchased on the trip was just over half a tankfull, and that was on the way home, but it was still in Michigan. Calculations show that I had reached 31.2 mpg on the drive there and partly back. Today I topped up the tank again just to see what the figures look like.

Running on a tank that was roughly 60% Michigan and 40% Illinois fuel, the Escape reached close to 35 mpg (34.8 to be precise) in highway driving (plus the trip to work this morning.) I maintain that it would improve by at least 2/5 of the difference in economy if it were running on all Michigan formulated fuel under the same conditions, which again yields about 37 mpg. Now that's not quite as impressive for a year-old Escape as it was for a nine year-old Cherokee, but it sure beats the EPA estimates by a significant amount.

Once again I suspect that ethanol is being pushed on us only to help control wealth redistribution in ways favored by the oil companies and politicians, rather than as a real boon to air purity, farm economies, or consumers. BTW, I was told that farmers in Michigan have not succumbed to "ethanol madness" and have continued to plant their normal crop rotations rather than plowing up everything, including winter wheat that was within a month or two of harvest, in order to plant corn.

I found my desk buried this morning, of course. I could really use a two or three week vacation. I have the time coming to me, but it's just impossible to schedule.

Oh, and if anyone was wondering about the outcome of last week's "interview" for the local library board openings, I was NOT invited to take a seat on the board. The interview was in fact rather perfunctory. There were apparently four candidates for two openings. I expected to be asked questions either about my experience or how I would propose to handle specific issues or problems. Instead, I was apparently expected to "campaign" for the position. One would normally mount such a campaign by pointing out failings of the sitting board and offering alternatives to improve the library's situation, services, or performance. Obviously such an approach is unlikely to succeed when the audience is in fact the sitting board members, so I declined to jump for that bait. I was asked why I hadn't run in the election, and gave the obvious answer: I had no idea that there were fewer candidates than there were openings. I didn't mention the fact that spending a lot of money to run a campaign for office when the office doesn't even offer any stipend is rather self-defeating. I believe the candidates that were selected probably were known to board members prior to the interview. I was not, and did feel that the whole proceedlings largely consisted of a "Who are you and why are you poking your nose into our affairs?" attitude. Ah well.

P.S... Happy birthday, lobowolf! Don't forget we all want to see photos of this year's surprise. XD

Tags: car, politics
Current Location: Home in the oak grove
Mood: blah
Music: Mate practicing (eeeee!)

Gasoline prices have dropped a bit here this week. While Harvard (where I work) only went down five or six cents, Marengo (nearest city to where I live) has dropped by 24 cents a gallon in a week. This leaves a 14 cent discrepancy between Harvard's prices and Marengo's, for which there can be no justifiable explanation. The two towns are both located at the intersection of major highways, and have roughly the same amount of competition on gasoline prices (if it is competition at all.) They are in the same county, and just 15 miles apart.

Anyway, I filled the tank in Marengo today, and when I plotted the mileage even I was surprised. For this most recent half tank, the Escape has exceeded 30 mpg. The previous one came in at 29.05 and this one was 30.02. That's significantly better even than the EPA ratings for this car, and finally proves that I was right when I said I could squeeze better than EPA economy out of most vehicles. Whether there will be further improvement on Illinois-blend fuel is doubtful, but I'm hoping to make a trip to Michigan soon... The overall average for the entire time since I bought the car is now better than 28.

Of course, the price drop in fuel is a response to consumers finally starting to rein in their consumption enough that the producers and retailers noticed it. This is a standard scenario that has run a couple of times a year ever since the 1970s: slowly crank the price up until sales drop significantly, then drop it back down but never as low as where it started. After a few months, when people have lost it all in their swiss-cheese memories, repeat the process.

Tags: car
Mood: pleased

Gasoline prices here in the immediate area have now reached the same level they were at just after hurricane Katrina. This time there is no apparent reason for that. Crude oil prices are not that high. More curiously, one county over they are selling fuel for a full 40 cents less per gallon. There is in fact a slight tax difference between here and that locale, but it amounts to something more like 2.5 cents per gallon, and nothing to justify that difference.

What is going on? I can only conclude that it's reckless and willful profiteering and gouging somewhere in the supply or retail chain. On Wednesday I paid $3.06 for gasoline, in Rockford where sales taxes are similar to what they are in Harvard, and higher than they are in Marengo. The price in Harvard was $3.36 the same day. The distance from Harvard to Rockford? About 30 miles. As of Saturday, the price in Marengo is $3.46. I don't know if Harvard has increased, but Friday evening it was still $3.36 there. Distance from Marengo to Harvard? About 15 miles. Distance from Marengo to Rockford? About 28 miles. So in a distance of 28 miles, we have a price differential for the same commodity of nearly 15%. Something is very fishy here, and it definitely smells bad.

Tags: car
Current Location: Home in the oak grove
Mood: angry

What a concept. I'm turning the computer off as soon as I post this.

Spent much of the morning battling a recalcitrant Travan tape drive. I picked that machine for the mail server specifically because it had a backup drive on board. Linux recognized it, the commands that should be able to use it make a valiant effort, but... it keeps getting I/O errors. Tried several tapes with similar results. I'm hoping it's just dirty, since it's been sitting unused for several years. Couldn't find a cleaner cartridge, so I have to order one. Meanwhile, backup is by making tarballs and storing them on another machine that does daily backups to tape.

Script kiddies and spammers are still after the machine, but I'm more confident now that it can resist them. The one who keeps trying thousands of usernames and passwords against ssh is certainly never going to get in that way, but I'm about ready to close the ssh port to outside traffic entirely in any case. The spammers in Taiwan and Norway who keep trying to use it as an open relay are getting dumped each time. I ran the prescribed checks against sendmail and it passed them all. So, I'm going to turn down the concern and get my other work done for a while.

Tess was frantic to get to the grass yesterday, but today she was better behaved mostly. She got 45 minutes and came back in without too much urging. (Well, I waved a peppermint alfalfa treat under her nose, but she had to come all the way in to her stall before she got it.)

Car report: Gasoline prices are back up. In fact, they are now the highest they've been in almost a year, higher than when I bought the car. Filled the tank this evening on the way home, and when I ran my spreadsheet, found that for this tank I got 28 mpg, including the day of that awful slushy snow storm. My running average for the last five fuel purchases is 27.05 mpg. As the weather improves, the mileage is climbing again. Hit 6000 miles at the end of last week, though, so I've got to take it in for maintenance.

Weather has been threatening all day, but no rain. Now they seem to have dropped it from the report, but it is still air and damp, with looming clouds. If it were a little warmer I'd be expecting tornado watches.

Anyway, off to do other things.

Tags: car, horses, linux, weather, work
Current Location: Home in the oak grove
Mood: tired

Some of you will remember that I traded my 9 year old car last fall, and one of the reasons was that it needed all new wheels. They were beginning to leak air, and I had to top up the tires weekly. It had a lot of other nagging maintenance issues too.

Well, I thought I'd be avoiding the tire problem at least for a couple of years. Nope. Last night I left work to go home and just as I got outside of town I started hearing that thumping sound that usually means a tire is flat or at least headed for flat. Sure enough, the tire pressure warning light came on and I had to hunt for a safe place to pull over, not easy on most of our roads. I found one after about a mile, and got out in time to see the right rear tire gradually descending into collapse.

Thank the gods the weather has moderated and it wasn't raining. There was an hour of light left too. I used the cell phone to call home and leave a message, then set about figuring out how to unstow the spare and change the tire. The Escape has one of those tires that is stored under the back end, pulled up against the body by a cable and winch. While I was trying to figure out the way to put the jack together, Gary called me back to find out where I was, and said he was on his way with the big lug wrench and jack. OK.

However, other than some difficulty operating the tiny toy jack, I had managed to swap the tire by the time he arrived. The lug nuts were not frozen, and came right off. The wheel was not seized to the brake drum, and came right off. The spare descended smoothly from its cubby under the car, once I figured out how to crank it down. It wouldn't have been fun in nasty weather or in the dark with cars rushing by, but I guess it was a good rehearsal for the more difficult situation.

Gary arrived as I was heaving the flat tire into the rear compartment. He had called the Ford dealer, just a couple of miles back up the road in the direction I had come, and they said I could drop the car and tire off there and they'd repair the tire in the morning. Because of the pressure sensors in the wheel, you are supposed to have only a dealer fix flats. I know, some will say that's a rip off, but our dealer is quite reasonable and very helpful about rushing a job or squeezing you into the schedule. Went back, left the car and keys, rode home with Gary in his car.

This morning the dealer called to tell me the tire couldn't be repaired. The leak was a puncture all right, but it was a nail in the sidewall, perpendicular to the wheel and parallel to the road surface. I don't see how that could be an accident. It appears that someone deliberately drove a nail into the side of my tire with a hammer or mallet while it was parked in the library lot on Friday. Why? I don't know. It will cost me about a hundred dollars to get it fixed, plus being without a vehicle for at least three days because of the weekend.

Tags: car, work
Current Location: Home in the oak grove
Mood: bitchy