Last month, I challenged myself to drive with ninja-like tactics to get as many miles per gallon that my four cylinder, ‘04 Honda Accord could get.  It gets 32 Hwy and 23 City and about 28-29 combined.  With my “ninja driving,” I got around 33 mpg combined!  Not bad!  With gas prices rising, this is a sensible thing to do in order to save extra money/go more places. With a gallon of gas up to $3.70, that roughly translates to 11 cents a mile (3.70 dollars per gallon divided by 33 mpg).

How much is it per mile to take the Metrolink and how does that factor into my overall cost per mile?  Well, to take the Metrolink from my home to work, it’s four dollars round trip.  Now, here’s my dilemma:  do I figure out the cost per mile as if I was driving from work or do I compute it as actual distance on the Metrolink?  The Metro is a bit more direct than driving, but I don’t think it’s not too far off.  Since I drive to the Metro station, I’ll compute it from the driving distance from the Metro station.  That sounds like a reasonable compromise.  21.7 miles each way from the station versus 24.5 miles from my house.  At 43.4 miles, the cost per mile is 9 cents (4/43.4).  It would take $4.77 in gas to travel 43.4 miles (43.4*.11).  It would cost 5.39 to drive from my house (49 miles * .11).  Factor in that I travel 4.4 miles round trip to and from the station, an extra 48 cents, it costs 4.48 (metro fare + (4.4*.11)) round trip:  a savings of 91 cents!  Basically, I save a buck, every time I take the Metrolink.  That’s easy math.  Take the Metro 10 times a month, I save 120 bucks a year.    If I continue to ninja drive and take the Metro, then I’m easily saving over $256 a year doing this (If gas stays at 3.70 per gallon).  That’s basically a car payment for me.

But I think it’s more than that.  Not only am I helping the environment by not driving my car, I’m also getting more exercise (I walk a fair distance from the metro to work), and plus, I’m extending the life of my car and keeping it’s value up.  It’s a win/win situation!

I just want to lament the fact that Bill Moyers doesn’t get more widely distributed.  It seems that not having a profit-driven agenda (like CNN, FOX, and MSNBC) means your message is less important.  Disinterested examinations of a topic have little validity in the mainstream media:  when in fact, the opposite should be true.  I just watched Bill Moyer’s report and interview with Jermiah Wright, Barack Obama’s former pastor, and it was as evenhanded as possible.  He had a civil discussion with Wright, and wanted to understand him and his views.  If this had happened on one of the cable news stations or major networks, they would have been focused solely on “gotcha” questions and not delved into any substance.  Our news media is in a sad state.

This also leads me (well, actually it doesn’t) to a short review of the lastest version of Ubuntu Linux Hardy Heron (apparently Ubuntu likes to give thier operating system versions animal names).  Ubuntu is one of many flavors of Linux, an open source, free operating system.  The problem with Linux in general is that it’s hard to use:  only hardcore geeks need apply.  The latest version of Ubuntu has lowered the bar significantly in terms of ease of use.  To use isntall it and use the preloaded programs (like Firefox, OpenOffice, etc), you just need to be comfortable using a computer, but if you want to install new programs, there might still be some snags.  One might need to delve into the command line, fix some permissions, or search for hard to find drivers.   But, overall, it’s a solid, stable platform that made a nice leap forward in ease of use!

Last week, I went to Atlanta for the FIRST Robotic’s World Championship at the Georgia Dome.  If you’ve been following my tweets, you should already know this.  It was a wonderful time!  I was head referee for the Curie field (at the World Championship, there are four fields with 80 teams per field and then the winners from each field go to the championship “Einstein” field”)  There were teams from all of the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Israel, and Brazil.  Next year, there will be teams from New Zealand too!  The competition was intense, but as a ref, very challenging to referee.  If you want to view some matches, go to thebluealliance.net to see some.  I recommend the championship matches.

I also want to thank Paul for being a good travel buddy, Ian from Phoenix for being a good head ref mentor and new friend, same with Aidan Browne, and Hogan Eng for being an all around nice guy (and picking up the tab at Morton’s!).  Oh, and shout outs to Terell and Roxie for being being funny and cool to work with.  That also includes the others on my ref crew:  Chris, Alan, Michael, Michael, Brandon, Steve, and Liz.

I had an interesting experience the other night:  I was invited backstage to Steve Job’s keynote announcing the 3G iPhone.  It was really exciting!  I’ve had my iPhone since the day it came out last June, and honestly, it feels as if I’ve had it for a lot longer!  I guess my constant use of the iPhone prompted my invitation backstage to get a first look at the 3G iPhone.  It was about the same thickness of the original iPhone, but the face was black and a bit of a vshape at the bottom where the home button is located.  It was just absolutely exciting to be there backstage.  I took in the nighttime scene behind the stage:  the tall redwood trees were swaying behind the outdoor ampitheater, while off in the distance, the Ewok village rested peacefully.  So yea, I must really want the next generation iPhone because I was dreaming.  Dreaming!  It’s my subconscious telling me to save up for the next iPhone, and that Steve Jobs uses Ewoks to build and design the iPhone.  Interesting insight.

With gas at 3.25-3.50 a gallon, it’s getting really expense to drive back and forth from work five days a week.  So, I decided to see how much gas I save by driving a certain way:  ninja driving.  According to maps.google.com, the trip is exactly 24.5 miles which is 49 miles round trip.  According to www.fueleconomy.gov, my car gets about 31 mpg highway, and 23 city.  It’s four cylinder, manual, Honda Accord Coupe.

According to the way of the ninja…driver, there are certain techniques one can use to maximize your fuel economy:  this is especially true for those of us who drive manuals.  For example, on relatively steep inclines, you either put the car out of gear or push in the clutch.   When getting off the highway or stopping for a red light, I also do this.  I use the car’s natural momentum and friction to get me to the light, yet slow me down enough to minimize wear on the brake pads.  However, there are two things that I think really help:  1) when I accelerate, I make sure I don’t get above 2000 rpms.  By doing this, my acceleration is slower, but accelerating too aggressively burns a lot of gas!  Acceleration and deceleration are the reasons why city driving burns up so much gas.  2)  I either go the speed limit or just five miles above it.  I keep it under 2k rpm as much as possible, but this isn’t possible for safe driving on highways: thus my five mph rule.  When it gets up to 65 or 70, I try my best to stay at the speed limit.

With this in mind, here are the results of my “ninja” driving.  I topped off my tank, set my trip meter to “0,” and I drove for about a week and a half on one tank of gas.  That doesn’t say much, but after filling up my tank with 13.119 gallons of gas and the trip meter at 437.8 miles, with ninja driving, I was able to get 33.17 mile per gallon!  Keep in mind this is a combined result!  The combined result of my car for “normal” driving is 26 mpg, but this assumes 50/50 highway/city driving.  I probably do 80/20, and so, my combined mpg should be closer to 30.5 mpg.  So, basically, I got an extra 2.6 miles per gallon.  On a 13 gallon tank, that’s an extra 33.8 miles!  If I’m buying a tank of gas every week and half, that’s 36 tanks of gas a year.  By ninja driving, I can go an extra 1216.8 miles at no additional gas costs -or- save $117.36 a year on gas (at 3.26 a gallon).  That’s nothing to sneeze at!

My new project is to see how much money per mile I spend to get to and from work by using a combination of the Metrolink and driving!  We’ll see how that turns out!

I’ve added a lot more photos to my Flickr webpage!  A lot of old school kooz and some Truman State U pics!  Lots of old and good memories!  Yea, I sure was a cute kid then an ugly teenager.  But, I don’t regret it because that’s what made me who I am today!  Enjoy.  You should have a big laugh.

It was quite the marathon, but I posted every kooz.net post ever!*  There were 153 posts in all, and as the title says, it spanned eight years.  I’ve tried to retain the original spacing/paragraphing (is that a word?), and I think I largely succeeded.  I didn’t correct any spelling errors or re-format a page.  The only thing I did do was put notes in brackets [like this] with a today’s or yesterday’s date if a picture link needed to be added later.  I also added titles to my posts:  I think 2007 and 2008 already had titles, but from 1999 to 2006, none of my posts had titles.  I tried to capture the spirit of the post without being prescient (too much).  Also, for the first 7 to 8 months of kooz.net, I updated everything purely by straight html, and the date was part of the post:  I kept it in for nostalgia and to keep, as I intoned earlier, “it real.”

Also, if you have at least one working eye, I have added a picture of my roommate’s dog, Snickers, at the top of the webpage.  She is an awesome Chocolate Lab, and I thought it would be cool to have her looking down on my webpage.  In fact, I think you might eventually see me up there with my legs hanging over the “ledge.”

I’ve also added a Twitter updater on the far left right (oops!).  Twitter, for the uninitiated, is a social networking website that allows your friends to keep tabs on you.  If you don’t have too many Twitter friends, you can get these updates via a text message/SMS on your phone (or you can choose who you get updates from).   SMS is limited to 140 characters and so are Twitter posts or “Tweets.”  Due to this, you need to keep your updates short and pithy.  I recommend it to everyone, because it’s just a simple way to keep up with people and to also coordinate a group of friends/people.

*Footnote:  I don’t have posts from July 2007 to Jan 2008 due to the lack of a backup database.

Once again, I have re-invented kooz.net!  I love this new style of blog!  I hope you all like it!   My last Content Management System was called Joomla.  It wasn’t all that bad!  It did what I wanted it to do, which was to blog, add some links, and have up to the moment updates, but it wasn’t always that easy or seemless.  If you can wrestle with a metaphorical bull whose horn is stuck up your pants and you’re about to show everyone your junk, then Joomla is not so bad.  Oh believe me, I like airing my stuff out just like the next person, but the bull and that horn complicates matters.  I just don’t have the time anymore to deal with it.

And so, I’ve chosen Wordpress as my new blog CMS.  I couldn’t be happier.  It’s easy to use and post content.  Unfortunately, as these CMS’s get more robust, it’s harder and rather time consuming to create your own look and feel.  So, what you’re seeing here is a reflection of an aesthetic choice than a creative process:  I just don’t have the time to create my own “kooz” themed website.   I chose this one called, “”SoSuechtig 2.9,” and I really connected with it because it’s minimal, classy, and easy on the eyes  It was also designed by some dude from Germany.  A hearty, “Gutentag!” to whoever designed this!  If you’ve noticed, some of the descriptive elements are written in that lovely Deutsche language:  I’m debating whether to keep it or not!  I think it adds to its kitchy appeal…we’ll see.  I also like it because us English speakers in the Midwest probably don’t go trolling German websites.  Ergo, my website, for all you know, is unique!  Language barriers FTW!! 

What you will see are more posts, and I’ll be importing old posts in an archive.  Unfortunatley, I lost about 10 months of posts due to a mix up with my web host:  even though they did botch it up, it is squarely my fault because I didn’t maintain backups.  Any web person worth their salt should frequently back up their database.  I had only one database/website backup, and that was from June of 2007.  The good news is that I probably only lost about 4 or 5 posts at most!  W00t for being lazy!

Update: 11:21pm  I’ve disabled registering/being able to leave a comment, even though you think you might be able to (In this case, if you can read German, you might be even more suceptible to this.).

Well, my site went down because my web host said I was using too much of the server’s resources. OK. Hopefully, the database it was connected to will be restored. So, I’m going to take the next couple weeks to evaluate my hosting situation, and then I’ll probably redesign it anyway. I might use Wordpress instead of Joomla… Click here to go to the flickr.com site I created: I’ve uploaded some cool pictures! Peace!

It was actually one of the most fun and challenging semesters I’ve had while at SIUE. From the orginal research to starting sciencecentr.org and creating a design document for a history simulation game based off of the Sims, I was on my toes, but it paid off! Now I need to figure out what I’m doing next semester…

The Nintendo Wii: I have found another new addiction. The Nintendo Wii is digital crack…especially, Wii Bowling. It’s just as delightfully frustrating as real bowling! Changing your technique, consciously or unconsciously, messes up your game just as it would at a smoke filled bowling alley! One moment your slapping down the pins, getting Turkeys left and right, the next thing you know: you’re struggling to knock 8 pins… If you’ve never tried one out, you had better! Plus, it’s great for all ages. Seriously, from a five year old to ninety-five: anyone can do it!