This Old Blog

On Friday 30 January I stopped by a local Orlando BP gas station (rather rare these days) and filled up my 2012 Prius with $1.91/gallon gas. Spending nearly $2/gallon is still a lot of money to pay for gas, coming of age as I did in the 1960s when gas was around 25¢/gallon (that's a quarter). As a middle-schooler I can remember filling up my gas can for my neighborhood mowing service for $1 (four gallons in a five gallon container), then spending the weekend earning that back at roughly $2/yard. That low price stayed pretty much the same when I bought my first car in 1971 before I graduated from high school. Gas stayed relatively cheap through 2003, when I purchased my first and only mini-SUV, the Kia Sorento. When I bought it gas was 88¢/gallon due to a local gas war (remember when gas wars were only about selling cheap gas?) Gas mileage on the Kia was round 20-22mpg, and filling its 20 gallon tank cost me less than $20/week. Then in August 2004 Hurricane Charlie hit centr...

Daughter #2 deep in thought Molly the guard cat This weekend was another world-wind trip, from Orlando to Gainesville to Tallahassee on Saturday and then back home again today. We hired the same house sitter we'd used on our road trip so that we could leave the Labs and make as efficient use off our limited travel time as possible; that means very few stops along the way and thus the shortest travel times possible. The biggest amount of work was in Tallahassee. We transported a queen-sized bed purchased at the Orlando IKEA up to daughter #2. To get it there I had to put down the right back seat and push the front passenger seat up as far as possible. There was enough room to put everything in. My wife and I sat on the driver side. In spite of all that material loaded in the Prius, we still managed 52MPG, which is more than double what the much older Kia Sedona van was able to get when it was brand new. Granted, the van was much larger, and had a much larger engine (3.5L v...

Toyta 2012 Prius 3 (what I got to be practical) So I went back to Courtesy Toyota today and traded in my 2009 red Prius with 76,000 miles for the gleaming pearl white machine you see in the top photo, another 2012 Prius 3. Why? Because the 2009 Prius had 76,000+ miles on it. I've used it as my commuter-mobile since I purchased it, commuting back and forth between my home near Universal Studios and where I work near the University of Central Florida. I've also used it for those quick trips up to Tallahassee and Florida State University, as well as other spots around central and northern Florida up and down I-75. There's also an 80,000 mile maximum limit where you can trade in your existing Prius and get the best trade-in value. I got a little more than half the value of the 2012 which made it possible to get the 2012 without a down payment. A lot has advanced in the last three to four years between the 2009 Prius and the 2012 Prius. While the 2009 is a great car, the 20...

The soon-to-be-ours 2013 Prius 3 Since early February my wife and I have been car shopping, looking ot replace the 2002 Kia Sedona EX she purchased late 2001. We've been to nearly all the representative local car dealerships and looked at the cars we'd narrowed down from our research on the web. After what many might consider too much for too long we suddenly decided on the Prius. What pushed us to buy the Prius was the 2013 Hyundai Elentra GT we looked at last Thursday . We were close to Holler Hyundai in Winter Park that Thursday evening, so we drove over to look at the Elantra GT. We'd read a lot about the GT, much of it very good. What we saw Thursday made us even more predisposed towards the GT, so we made an appointment to go back over Saturday for a test drive. We drove it, liked it, and then put together a single-page straw man payment plan. With that payment plan in our hip pocket we drove over to Courtesy Toyota to look at the 2012 Prius 3. Earlier in the w...

Today was another trip to the Toyota dealership to turn off the "maintenance required" light that lights up every 5,000 miles on the Prius' dash. I have officially put 73,285 miles on the 2009 Prius at this point. It lights up on the Prius for no other reason than for me to drive to the dealership so I can pay to have it turned off until the next 5,000 miles are driven. Which, I suppose, is  a bit snarky; I do have regular maintenance done to the car and it has managed to keep the vehicle in pretty good shape. But the next time it goes off I'm going to follow the directions in the 2099 Owner's Manual, page 365, to reset the light on my own. Total spent this trip was about $68, which is reasonable considering it included an oil change and tire rotation. Rotating the tires allowed my original 40,000 mile tires to last nearly 50,000 (with tread left). I replaced them with Michelins rated at 85,000 miles. I'm hoping I can push those to an even 100,000 miles before...

Chasing the ball It's superbowl Sunday. I have no idea who's playing, no idea what time the game starts, so I won't tune in. I didn't go out and buy empty-high-calorie food and beer to consume like some Conehead. Instead my wife and I went out on a few errands just to get out and enjoy the wonderfully mild winter weather in Orlando. First stop was downtown at city hall. I intended to re-photograph the sculpture I'd written about in the post about depth of field and subject/scene separation . Matthew Robertson'd sent me an email asking an interesting question about one of my assertions in the post. I went back to city hall, cameras in tow, to prove which of us was correct. I used the E-P2 with the 20mm and the 45mm, and for good measure I took the E-1 with the Sigma 30mm along as well. After taking multiple photos with all three lenses and two bodies, and after looking at everything back home, I decided I didn't like anything I'd taken. Maybe it was...

My wife drove me up to see a hand specialist this afternoon. I've got something else on my body that's failing, and this appointment was set up long before my left knee went all to hell. On the way back I was playing with the E-1 at the shotgun position the way a five-year-old plays with a favorite toy so he'll keep quiet while the grownups drive. Taken through a very dirty front windshield. The bottom one was taken from the passenger side earlier in the day. I just like the little bit of chrome and white lettering against the broad grays and blacks. Nothing fancy. Just black and white with with the KT E-1 and the Sigma 30mm. Post processed in Lighroom 3.6 and Special Efex Pro 2.0.1.

So here I am, helpless in the face of extreme stupidity in Washington and abroad, desperately wanting a ridiculously simple solution to an overly complex situation. So what do I do for comfort and solace in such a trying moment? Watch Predator. In particular, Old Painless. A supposed GE M-134 minigun. And fantasize about mowing down all the Enemies of Amerika. The weapon of choice of Blaine Cooper (Jesse Ventura), this little baby could wipe out an entire guerrilla base or acres of jungle growth in mere seconds. I start to fantasize I have one of these little babies with me. Until reality sets in. It fires 7.62mm rounds at 50 rounds/sec. Simple math shows that every 10 second burst requires 500 rounds. Between the firefight with the guerrillas and the emotional firing by Mac (Bill Duke), Blaine's buddy when Blaine was done in by the predator, there's no practical way a normal human being could have carried that much ammunition. I counted at least 60 seconds of combined fi...

My new lil' Prius, March 2009 The last two posts have been pretty negative, so I fell the need to bring balance back to the force by writing something positive about someone, somewhere. That actually turns out to be rather easy. Background Over the past month the air conditioning blower in the Prius had been getting worse over time. At first I chalked it up to the unusually hot weather we've been having until around the first of July when I walked out to the car and started it up. The car started fine but the blower refused to start blowing air. The first failure seemed like a short delay; about 30 seconds after the car started then the blower started operating as well. I thought it was some sort of unknown "feature" in the car. I even hit the car manual looking for it. But it was a slow failure of the blower. The blower failures continued intermittently. As each failure occurred they lasted longer and longer before the blower started to run. And the volume o...

There's an interesting story on CNN Money about the 10 cars that are a disappointment to their manufacturers for 2011. The list of 10 disappointments for 2011 are: BMW X6 Mercedes-Benz R-Class Ford Flex/Lincoln MKT Mercedes-Benz Smart fortwo Toyota Tundra Nissan Quest Mercedes-Benz Maybach Honda Insight Acura ZDX Subaru Tribeca The car that caught my eye on that list was the Honda Insight. I used to want to own a Honda Insight, but not anymore. CNN Money had this to say about my former automotive infatuation: The Insight went on sale in March 2009 in the U.S as a 2010 model with prices starting at $19,800, making it the least expensive hybrid vehicle available in the United States. That should have boosted sales but didn't. Blame part of it on a drop in gasoline prices of over one-third over the past year that eroded demand for fuel-efficient cars. Blame the rest on excessive enthusiasm for cost-cutting. Embarrassingly for Honda, the more expensive Prius continues ...

Waiting I'm writing Thursday's entry with Thursday's photos today because Google had a hard time performing "scheduled" maintenance in a timely fashion. Starting sometime around 4pm Orlando Daylight Time on Thursday the 12th, and lasting for over 20 hours (nearly a full day) into Friday the 13th, Blogger was down , and so were a lot of bloggers if the twits on twitter were any indication. I guess you could say that Friday the 13th started early for some of us. Thursday's special speedtrap photo was taken just down the street from my subdivision. Another Orange County Sheriff set up a radar speedtrap aimed at the northbound traffic comming up Apopka/Vineland. He was sitting in the driveway of the Christ Community Church. I pulled into Bay Ridge Blvd and walked back enough with my trusty E-3 and 50-200mm zoomed out to 200mm (400mm effective focal length) and fired off a few exposures. He never saw me as he was too busy checking his PC and his radar gun. ...

Hummer vs Prius Olympus E-P2 w/M.Zuiko 17mm 1/1600s, f/4, ISO 200 There's nothing more illustrative of our gross consumption than the American SUV, and no SUV stands out quite like the Hummer. This particular one is a "slimmed down" Hummer h3, the last model to be designed before General Motors discontinued the brand in 2010. As I watch regular gas prices creep above $3/gallon here in Orlando, with reports that the price will hit $4 by mid-2011 , I have to wonder if the rest of the Hummers (and many other equally consumptive SUVs) will be swept from the roads. Additional link: A Road Less Traveled - Have we hit peak travel?

Like everybody else in the world I've been listening to the drama unfold around the Big Three automakers; Form, GM, and Chrysler. Chrysler has already traveled so far through bankruptcy that it's preparing to come back out as a "leaner" automotive company. GM has just started it's tortuous walk through the process, with GM's spin twisting reality so much they're claiming this " isn't about going out of business - this is about getting down to business. " Horsedung. GM had the EV-1 in the late 90's. They then worked to destroy the car and any ability to manufacture more, turning instead to SUVs and big trucks. My wife and I wanted an EV-1 in the worse way, regardless of the warts. And we lived in Florida, not California. For normal small cars (i.e. non-hybrid or pure EV), GM had not one but two high-mileage brands, the Geo Metro (via Suzuki) and the Saturn. The Geo Metro was an inexpensive car with gas mileage that stretched up to the mid-...

It's the middle of the second week since I drove off with the 2009 Prius, and I finally had to purchase my first tank of gas. The Prius fuel gauge is a digital display located to the right of the digital speedometer at the very top edge of the dash. It's divided into tenths. I knew I needed a fill up this morning because the last tenth was lit. But the Prius (or the Prius designers) are a little more insistent that you know you need a fill up. As I started to work this morning a little chime was emitted by the car, and that final lit tenth started to flash. I kept on going, first up I-4 and then onto the 408. The more I drove the more frantically the final tenth flashed. I managed to get to work on that flashing tenth, filling up at a BP on the work end of town. I filled the tank with a little less than ten gallons, or $20 total. The last time I filled a car for around $20 was when I first bought the Kia Sorento in 2003. Gas was selling for 88 cents/gallon (there was a local pr...

I've had a solid work week to drive the new Prius around Orlando (hereafter referred to as the "Red Rocket", so named by of my friends and former co-worker). It's been driven up and down the freeways (I-4, the 408, and the 417), as well as up and down surface streets from my neighborhood to the area around U.C.F. and points in between. Average MPG since the day I drove it home from the dealership stands at 46.2. I actually had a 5-minute slice hit 100 MPG today while driving around my neighborhood, something I probably won't see very often. Driving the Red Rocket and watching the Consumption meter out of the corner of my eye, I've come to observe the following. It costs fuel, and lowered MPG, to overcome inertia and get the vehicle up to speed. How much? MPG drops down to the teens when getting started. A similar effect occurs when going up a hill, though not nearly as bad, unless you combine the two, and they MPG drops down to single digits. You get that init...

It's amusing to watch the Flickr view counts go up on the recent Honda Insight images I shot on Saturday. Flickr does a pretty good job of tracking daily hits and of tracking back to who looked. While some of the hits came from my Saturday posting link, the majority seem to have come from folks searching for the Insight. One track-back in particular seemed to be an automated collection of anything posted about the 2010 Honda Insight. While comments will always vary, the general consensus seems to be how hot the new car is. I don't disagree with the sentiments over the exterior styling of the car. I think it looks pretty sharp as well, better, perhaps, than the Prius. But that doesn't mean the Prius is ugly by any stretch, at least not to these jaded eyes. Perhaps the 2010 Prius will will excite the New Hotness crowd when it finally comes out. According to most who've test driven it the new 2010 Prius is even better than the 2009 Prius (of course!), but with the New an...

After spending the night debating the merits of purchasing the Honda Insight, Jude and I decided to go to the Toyota dealership just down the street from the Honda dealership and look again at the Prius. The last time we'd checked Prius prices was back in mid-2008. At that time they were carrying a premium (some might say exorbitant) price, a price we weren't ready to pay. This time around it was far different; not only where there models on the lot to choose from but they were willing and eager to deal. That's why I now own one. It took us three hours from test drive to final purchase, but the time seemed to fly by, and we were treated quite well. What sealed the deal for us was the lower interest rate (less than 5% from the same bank Honda was supposedly using) as well as the drop in price of the Prius from where it was just nine months ago. Simply put, the Toyota dealership negotiated, the Honda dealership would not. And so we pulled the trigger on the Prius. I drove ba...

Back in January I went to a local Honda dealership and put $500 down on the then-unreleased Honda Insight . While in Kansas last week I got a call from the dealership telling me they had a silver one for me to look at. So today, after unpacking and general cleanup, the wife and I went over to take a look at it. When we got there there the Honda dealership had a black Insight in the showroom. Judy and I went over and started looking at it, sitting in both the driver and passenger side to get a feel for it's fit and finish. It is built with typical Honda quality, which is to say it's overall fit and finish are excellent. When I finally got a chance to look at the engine it looked like a minor engineering masterpiece. The Insight was sitting next to a Honda Fit Sport; the Fit seemed to tower over the Insight. But that's due to the Insights stronger aerodynamic shape, which reminds you a lot of the Toyota Prius. At $20,000 with nothing special it's a tad expensive, unless y...

Earlier in January I read an article about the upcoming re-launch of the Honda Insight on Wired. According to the article, the Insight turned in some pretty impressive mileage numbers in real world driving: During a day behind the wheel last month, we managed an impressive 42.4 mpg without even trying. When we pushed the Econ Mode button and used Eco Assist to mind our hypermiling P's and Q's, the Insight returned an amazing 65.6 mpg. That's on par with the best figures we've seen from the Prius. That's all I needed. So the wife and I drove down to a local Honda dealership on Highway 50 and I put a deposit down on an Insight, even though they won't be released until late April at the earliest. That's due, in part, to Honda promising that a base-line Insight will cost $18,000, which in this day and time is actually pretty darn cheap for a hybrid, especially compared to the Toyota Prius. Of course, Toyota announced that the 2010 Prius, which will also be rele...