terrill.ca

It's not what you drive

Yesterday I drove from Waterloo to the border of Ontario and Quebec and then back to Hanover. That's 1300 Kilometers, or about 800 Miles. We piloted the Ford Focus carefully because we were making a point - a 46.7 MPG point. According to the EPA the Focus gets 28 MPG on the highway, we squeezed 80% more out of it.

It meant driving at 100km/h on the 401, using the slow lane a lot, and being gentle pulling away from stoplights when they happened to stop you. I say 'when they stop you' because most of the time you can plan far enough ahead to avoid actually stopping. Seriously, that's all there is to it.

Top Gear pitted a Prius against a BMW M3 recently and guess who won? The M3. Besides being a knock to the pride of all Toyota engineers, this should be a wake up call to everyone. "It's not what you drive, it's how you drive it".

It's still no excuse good enough for driving a Hummer, or any Dodge vehicle (because they're all ugly). This also invalidates all arguments that gas is too expensive.

He called it, years ago

I have a fascination with Microsoft (well really with Bill G). And even though he's gone now I still read about them, especially when they're compared to the other camps. But this isn't about M$ –

In my 1B term at UW a professor of mine liked to mock Google stock like nobodies business. Part of me wanted to deny him, to hold out hope that somehow we CSers could overcome the 'laws' of past companies. But something specific he said stuck with me; "When an economy tanks, the first thing that's cut is the advertising budgets". And now, with America suffering from a few ridiculously bad terms of Government, a series of unfortunate natural disasters, and a seemingly insaciable lust for debt (both personal and as a nation), their economy is reeling. Lo and behold, Larrys words are ringing true.