It won’t be an easy blog post for me, as it will require actually writing tests, which goes against my nature. This old dog, however, is ready to learn some new tricks.

• Get stuck behind a driver going 5 to 10 miles per hour under the speed limit.
• Be in line at a fast food drive-thru with full car lengths between each car in front of you.
• Be stopped at a stop light with the guy in front of the line two full car lengths short of the stoplight.
• Narrowly avert an accident with someone driving diagonally across the parking lot.
• Narrowly avert an accident with someone drifting happily across the double-yellow line.
• Have someone smile at you and wave you in to traffic that you are trying to merge into.

So you would think it would be really hard to drive in any way that would get these people into a frenzy. Well, I’ve discovered it, and it’s called hypermiling.

In short, hypermiling is a way of driving that increases your miles per gallon. There are all kinds of techniques to make this happen, and most of them seem pretty logical. Stuff like not accelerating too fast, keeping at the speed limit, taking advantage of gravity and coasting down hills. You can find several articles and tips on Google.

Slow acceleration and going at or below the speed limit are great ways to piss off even the most patient driver.

Using this technique, I managed to get 21.5 miles per gallon out of my minivan, which when driving normally gets 18 MPG. I am hypermiling on my Civic this week, and don’t yet know what kind of results I will get, but I’ve used somewhere between 1/8 and 1/4 of a tank of gas, and have gone about 100 miles. It looks like I will be getting between 35 and 40 MPG, where I normally get 28 to 32.

Here’s to saving a few bucks.

So, guess what!?! You can post these public journal entries (blogs) to...you guessed it...your blog.

So I’m going to give that a try. If this looks weird or doesn’t work, blame MacJournal.

I haven’t figured out how to use them yet, but apparently MacJournal also supports goodies like smilies ☺ and wiki text as well (not sure what that means yet.)

Looks like you can set tags. It seems to know something about categories, though I can’t figure out how to set it. Maybe it will do that when I upload it to the server.

EDIT: Just tested editing an existing entry from MacJournal as well. Pretty cool.

As I create more entries in MacJournal, it will automatically link to them. That’s sweet.

This affliction of which I speak is the dreaded Xbox 360 "Ring of Death". A problem so serious that Microsoft extended the Xbox 360 warentee to 3 years, but only if you get the ring of death. And so serious that the box needs to be sent to Microsoft for repair. Good bye, old friend.

What makes this particularly sad is that yesterday was my birthday (happy birthday to me!) and I had gotten the go-ahead to play Rock Band as much as I wanted. 2 songs is all I got. Boo hoo. Poor me.

On a happier note, this will make Christmas considerably cheaper. Both of my kids...and, yes, me...all had Xbox 360 games on our Christmas lists. No need to bother with those if it's going to be 6 to 8 weeks before we are able to play again!!!

Now you'll excuse me while I go back to feeling sorry for myself.

Doing commercial consulting, you're given a really huge toolbox...and a Sears credit card. See a new and shiny tool that's perfect for the job you're trying to accomplish? Super! Go out to Sears and buy one! (But not everyone needs a cherry stoner.)

Doing DoD consulting is a bit different. Our toolbox is roughly the size of a shoe box, and consists of a hammer, a few screw drivers, a couple of Vice Grips, and if you're real lucky, some spackle. Every once in a while we get the opportunity to buy a new tool, but we don't have a Sears credit card, we have a WalMart gift card that is usually delivered at about this time of year. What do we usually buy? Stickers to put on our hammer.

Is it possible we are to comfortable with that hammer? It feels so good in our hands. It is such a versatile tool. Not only can I hammer nails like the tool was designed to do, but if I'm real creative, I can screw in a screw...or hammer in a screw, or pound the crap out of the square peg until it fits into the round hole.

People love their hammers. Just try to take one away and see what happens. They'll kick and scream and tell you, "All I need is a hammer!"

Ok, I'll admit that the hammer is a very versatile tool, and you really can accomplish almost any job with that hammer. But when you start to try to paint a fence with that hammer, it's time to pull out that WalMart gift card and buy yourself a power sprayer.