Well, the results are in. Driving an average of 7mph slower for an entire week did show and increase in fuel efficiency from 36.2 to 37.5 mpg. In fact in the year and a half I have tracked my car it has never reached 37 mpg. So what does that translate to in cents per gallon? My math may be a little rusty but I came to 13 cents. Not quite the 20 cents mentioned in the previous post but still not bad. 13 cents per gallon translates to 1/3 of a gallon less per week, or a dollar less per fill up. Put that way it doesn’t sound drastic, but I know people who will drive out of their way for a station that charges 2 cents a gallon less.

This experiment also taught me a few unexpected things about the mentality of drivers in my area. For one, a driver literally sandwiched his car between 2 semi-trailer trucks just to get around and exit exactly 20 feet in front of me. Another driver seemed to think that driving at the speed limit in the slow lane is inappropriate, and signaled me to move out of his way. Having grown up on Long Island I am used to such things, however I do tend to expect better from the semi-rural setting I live in now. I’ve heard rumors of a return to the federal speed maximum of 55 used during the 70’s gas crisis. This past week has made me doubt such a law is possible today.

I’m going to continue my hypermiling experiment. The next step is to shift into neutral when stopping or going down hill. That’s about the most I can do with an automatic transmission. They also say you should turn off your car if you will idle for more than 30 seconds, this includes going downhill. I’m not sure if I’m ready for that. However I have set a goal, to reach the 40 mpg advertised on the sticker when I bought my car. If that happens I will post it here.

I watched an episode of Systm the other day where the topic was hypermiling. Patric Norton, the host, said a line that really piqued my interest:

“Every 5 miles per hour you go over 60 is like paying an extra 20 cents per gallon.”

I’ve heard that driving faster reduces your miles per gallon but that sounded a bit extreme. So, being the nerd that I am, I decided to set up an experiment.

I have already tracked fuel efficiency over a year with MyMileMarker.com. My 2002 Civic has been averaging a solid 33.4 mpg over that entire time, fluctuating anywhere between 30 and 36 as the seasons change. Since last week was a pretty normal spring week, and prospects of this week being the same, I decided that now was as good a time as any to try my experiment.

The Control:

• Fuel Efficiency for the week of 5/12: 36.07 mpg

The Rules:

• At no time will I ever accelerate with the gas past 65mph, coasting over 65 is allowed.
• Keep the engine under 2000 rpms on the streets as much as possible.
• Use A/C as little as possible ( which I do normally )

It’s hard to tell looking at the gas guage but the needle does seem to be higher than normal. I will report back next week with the hard numbers.

Back in the 80s and 90s Apple produced quite a few commercials attacking their windows using brethren. I guess not much has changed. Though the past commercials didn’t have iconic personifications of the parties involved, they were equally memorable. One commercial always stuck out in my mind. It involved a dad who brought home, for his son, a CD-Rom about dinosaurs. CD-Roms were hot shit back then because no one knew what to do with 600 megabytes of storage, but I digress. Dad tries futilely to get the CD-Rom to run. Eventually the son walks out on him, proclaiming his friends are better people for having a Mac. The moral? Only bad parents run windows.

This commercial is fresh on my mind because I found myself, last weekend, living it. Substitute “Windows 3.1″ for “XP” and “CD-Rom” for “Netflix”. Regardless of the specifics, I am a bad parent because my Mac is 10 years old and in the basement. Just like the commercial, my son is huge into dinosaurs right now. We’re slowly working our way through the first 700 volumes of the Land Before Time series. I thought it was time he saw some realistic looking dinosaurs. He’s still a little young for Jurassic Park, but there is an excellent BBC series with CG dinosaurs. I went to add it to his Netflix queue when I saw it was available for download.

I used Netflix’s movie download service when it first came out. So I thought nothing of telling my son that he could watch it right now. Big Mistake… I can hear a few parents chuckling right now because you know what’s coming. The thing I don’t understand is why Netflix can’t just jump on the Flash bandwagon when it comes to streaming video. For reasons I can only assume are related to DRM BS, I had to install the latest Windows Media player. Fifteen minutes I waited for this beast to download and install. Then I had to reboot. Why the hell do I have to reboot just for installing a media player? Anyway, this is the point where my son walked out on me like the dad in the commercial. I began to hate commercial software vendors for requiring me to use Windows, and Apple for pointing out that I am a bad parent.

Of course, after the reboot I still wasn’t done. Now the Netflix player had to be updated as well; another five minutes. Being the tech god that I am, the thing did eventually work. The point is, that old apple commercial still holds true. This post is already getting too long so I’ll spare you my rant on why this would not happen in any other operating system. I just wanted to share this little anecdote with the world. It’s the little things that impress me, which is why Microsoft never fails at letting me down.

When I originally read the news, I knew it had to be a joke. I knew it had to be an article from The Onion. Then I looked at the link, and it came from TechCrunch. My reaction can best be described in three letters: WTF? What could Microsoft possibly want with Yahoo.

Microsoft and Yahoo have a lot in common. Mainly, both companies are failing miserably in the internet. Yahoo has been taking the Google approach of buying up existing properties. Microsoft has been taking their typical approach of making bad copies of existing properties. While both approaches have been immensely successful in the past, now the barrier to entry is so low on the web it simply doesn’t work. The point here is that neither company has been nearly as successful as their competitor, Google. Do they honestly think that mixing two rotten lemons will produce refreshing lemonade?

There are only two possible explanations for this: Either the decision makers at Microsoft are incredibly ignorant or stupid or both. Or, this is just an elaborate April Fools joke. Personally, I don’t think the Microsoft people are that dumb. So I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict the most elaborate April Fools joke ever. I guess we’ll find out in two months, because I really hope I’m right on this one.

The smart move for Microsoft would be to buy up all the small web 2.0 companies before Google. Then provide these companies with unlimited funding from their massive treasury. Leave them completely alone to produce top quality web products, thus gaining the users to profit from through advertising and subscription sales. Microsoft’s failure to see this, either through ignorance, or blinding hatred of all things Google, will prove to be one of their biggest blunders. As they loose traction in the desktop market, and fail to gain traction in the web market, I see tough times ahead for Microsoft.