FORTH GO

Scott Adams discusses the value of experience in presidential candidates, and while I agree no job really provides relevant experience at being a head of state, I do have a solution. Just pick a leader the way sports teams do it: hire a head of state away from a smaller, successful country.

Is there any system of rating heads of state? I see Denmark is atop one happiness index, and Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen is in his third term, so he must be doing something right. I bet he’d like to move to a bigger stage.

There is the minor issue of the constitutional requirement of natural citizenship. First of all, the constitution can be amended, and I know Arnold Schwarzenegger would be for it and probably Panama Canal Zone native John McCain. Second, the wording in the constitution is not completely clear. Section 1 of Article II states:

No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; …

It’s hard to parse that in a way that makes all the commas meaningful. The common interpretation is what you get if you omit the second comma, but what makes that comma ignorable? And even without that comma, the first “citizen” is not qualified like the second one, so technically one just has to be a natural born citizen of some country.

Three years after getting new countertops, we finally got around to replacing the vinyl backsplash with tile. Though we hired someone to install the tile, we still had to do a lot of prep and clean-up work ourselves.

The first problem was that earlier electrical work had left a channel cut out of the drywall and stray wire for the under-cabinet lights.

I placed nail stoppers where the wiring crossed the studs and rerouted the wires to exit the wall underneath the cabinets where it would be hidden by the lights. I repaired the drywall with nylon mesh over some thin metal sheeting sold for roof flashing. The rest of the existing backsplash had to be removed, too, because it wasn’t flat everywhere. Removing it caused more damage to the drywall, which I smoothed with drywall mud.

Finally we were ready for the installers, who did a good enough job, but had to come back to fill in some gaps in the grout.

Here’s the final product after reinstalling the under-cabinet lights.

I noticed that all current Ford cars have “us” in their names. Are they trying to subliminally suggest their patriotism? The current Ford cars are named Focus, Mustang, Taurus and Fusion. They even renamed the Freestyle cross-over vehicle to Taurus S.

I couldn’t find any other support for my theory. Only that a few years ago, Ford started using names that started with F, but backed off recently, such as in renaming the Five Hundred back to Taurus. Maybe they should have called it the Five Thousand.

Here are some other “us” names:

• Allusion
• Busy
• Crush
• Custard
• Dusk
• Facetious
• Justice
• Luster
• Mouse
• Muse
• Nervous
• Rusty
• Trust
• Unusual

Which one will Ford use next?

Is there a new trend for mailing lists to stop supporting unsubscribing?

I don’t like that Seapine added me to their mailing list, but it’s most annoying that I can’t unsubscribe from it. There appears to be an Unsubscribe link at the bottom of the message, but it doesn’t link to anything:

<A href=”">Unsubscribe</A> if you do not want to receive email communications from Seapine.

I’m also getting weekly updates on sports news on South Carolina Gamecocks, and those message contain no mention of unsubscribing. For Seapine, at least I did get a eval product at some point, but I can’t figure out how I got on the Gamecocks list. Maybe it was a practical joke by someone who knows I’m a Clemson graduate (archrival of South Carolina).

I’ve been trying to Bounce these messages, but they haven’t gotten the hint, yet.

One of the perks of Apple’s WWDC is the unlimited supply of Odwalla fruit drinks. I like to see how different foods try to mask sugar in their ingredients list. The most common ploy is to split it up into several kinds of sugar so it doesn’t appear so high in the list, but Odwalla raises the bar with “organic evaporated cane juice”.

Our 2005 Prius has just passed 10,000 miles, and we’re generally very happy with it. We made it to 5000 in only 3 months, but 10,000 took another 5 months thanks to our use of the vanpool to work.

Mileage
Gas mileage is the most prominent feature of the Prius, so I’ll start with that. I didn’t expect the 60/51 EPA estimates and have been pleased to average around 45 MPG. Since the Prius gives you per-trip historical mileage information, you can see some trends in mileage, and the main trend is that the mileage sucks when the engine isn’t warm. That’s likely true of all cars but may be more pronounced on the Prius since it has to warm up the engine so it can be turned on as off on short notice. As a result the first five minutes or so of any trip generally produces only 25 MPG or so. And if you’re making a lot of of short trips, it brings down the average. Highway mileage is pretty consistently been around 50 MPG.

However, on my last trip to Florence, SC, I got the 97.6 MPG on flat surface streets for the first 7 miles after filling up. I have to be suspicious that the fill-up may have interfered with the mileage computation. But maybe the route was particularly suited to the engine battery usage—it must have been similar to the EPA test course, at least. For the next 200 miles, I got 56 MPG, mostly on the interstate.

Driving
Engine performance and handling have been fine. I thought I would have to give up some acceleration with such a small engine, but I haven’t noticed any problems. Seems as zippy as our 150 HP Passat. My only complaint is that the traction control is not as good as on my 1995 Saturn, but it’s only kicked in a couple of times, and maybe I’m just not used to it. The engine’s ability to switch between power sources smoothly is still amazing.

Controls and Gauges
While the engine computer is impressive, the user-side of the computer and the interface in general is a bit of a let down. The LCD screen is excessive without the GPS option and the trip computer has fewer features than the one on our 2000 Passat. And it doesn’t have a “miles remaining before empty” indicator that many cars have these days.

The controls aren’t that great either. Take a look at some of the steering wheel controls. The notion of up and down are represented in three different ways. Vertically with dimpled “+” and “−”, horizontally with flat “â‹€” and “⋁”, and diagonally with dimpled “â‹€” and “⋁”.

The mostly annoying gauge is the digital fuel gauge. I don’t think I would mind it being digital if it were linear. As it is, the first bar lasts about 100 miles, and each subsequent bar lasts 20-30 miles. I don’t know how long the last bar lasts, but when I fill up I can only add 8-9 gallons to the 12 gallon tank. So either the tank isn’t getting full or there’s plenty of gas left when the gauge gets down to one bar.

Air Conditioning
The temperature control can be manual or automatic. The manual is inconvenient to use since the controls are virtual buttons on the LCD panel instead of knobs you can feel. The automatic works well, but you can only set one temperature for both heating and cooling. You can’t set a range or tell it only heating or only cooling. So if I leave it set at 70° in the winter and the car gets warm from sitting in the sun, when I turn it on, it will start cooling the car to get it back down to 70° even though it’s 50° outside.

Controls aside, the air conditioning works really well. It heats up and cools down quickly without any noticeable affect on the mileage. (I’ve read that the air conditioner is more efficient than most since it runs directly off of the battery.) As a nice touch, when it needs to heat up a cold car, it doesn’t start the fan until it can actually blow warm air.

Interior Room
I’ve always liked the utility aspect of the hatchback form factor, and the Prius lives up to that expectation. We’ve been able to carry some pretty big items with the back seat down. For seating, the interior is pretty roomy. The backseat has lots of legroom, but it’s lacking on headroom because of the sloping roofline. I don’t think passengers over 5′8” or so would be happy for long in the back seat.

Bottom Line
Still fun to drive and performing well.