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Before filling the Mazda with gas, I figured I should have a range of about 360 miles on a tank of gas. That’s 30 mpg times 12 gallons of gas. But as the fuel gauge sunk down, it looked like I wasn’t going to hit 360. In fact I hit about 300 miles before the low fuel light came on. It took about 12 gallons to fill it which meant that I had only gotten 25 miles per gallon. I thought maybe the first tank wouldn’t get good mileage or maybe the dealer hadn’t really topped off the tank. But realistically I should have gotten much better mileage since a lot of the miles were on the highway between the dealer and on a trip to Athens for Michael’s birthday.

So I was antsy as I watched the progress of the second tank. When the tank was half empty I had gone less than 150 miles. Some fuel gauges are off. As I got to a quarter tank and with gas prices expected to spike soon, I went ahead and filled up. With 197 miles on the trip odometer, I was hoping for about 7 gallons of gas to fill the tank. But soon it reached 8 gallons (down to 25 mpg) and then didn’t stop until 8.8. I entered the numbers into my calculator right away and was disgusted: 22 miles per gallon.

Obviously from my posts on car shopping, mileage was very important to me. Based on user comments on internet forums, I was expecting 28 mpg and hoping to get 30 (the number Consumer Reports gave as the overall expected mileage), well above the EPA city estimate of 24. 22 is simply not acceptable (20% less than the 28 I expected), but I’m pretty much stuck with the car.

I think I will take it in for service and see if the dealership can find something wrong with it. Maybe one of the tires isn’t spinning or the brakes are stuck or they left the oil out.

This weekend I got a series of text messages from 678-315-xxxx. It started with “Hey what’s up?” Then I got two copies of the picture below (do you know this girl?). Then I got a longer message “Hey wesley its kirstin on ericas phone…im at the lake hizouse with her, and I don’t get service down here…sorry..iloveyou”

I have no idea who this person or this number is, so I can only assume it is some kind of spam. There may be a chance that it is not since it is a local number. I don’t know what Verizon charges for a text message (used to be 10 cents, now may be 25), but this spam has cost me (actually Jeb) from 40 cents to a dollar already.

I wanted to get a digital camera before my trip to Ireland this Summer. Susan has a compact camera, so I was wanting something with a powerful zoom. I narrowed my choices down to two cameras: the Canon SX100IS and the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ4K, both around $230. Neither has a viewfinder and instead rely on the LCD screen on the back. Both use SD cards. Both are 8 megapixel cameras with optical image stabilization and 10x zoom lenses. The Panasonic’s lens varies from 28mm to 280mm while the Canon was 36 mm to 360 mm. That means the Panasonic can take wide angle shots, but the Canon can zoom things in closer. I liked the wide angle feature because sometimes you can’t back up far enough to fit something in the frame. From reviews I found, both cameras were ranked pretty highly and people on Amazon liked them.

Continue reading “New Camera”

I’m back from the dealer and am the proud owner of a Mazda 3! Everything went pretty smoothly. I got there at 7:00 and was out by 8:30. They didn’t push warranties real hard or even explain a whole lot. The only glitches were the price was wrong, but we tracked that down to the car they were originally going to get that had the spoiler on it. Another glitch in the price was that $500 of the discount was a rebate, so they had to charge me a price $500 higher than I thought. While they would take the $500 off at the end (the dealer will actually receive the rebate), it meant I had to pay 7% sales tax on the $500. So that cost me $35. The last glitch was I wrote the check for the full amount I had to pay, forgetting about the $1000 I had already put down. The finance guy said I wrote the check for $1000 too much and I thought he was kidding. Eventually he said “No, really, this check is for the wrong amount.” They said they could put a credit on my credit card, but I said I could just write a new check.

Continue reading “Zoom Zoom”

When I bought my car in 1998 the salesman said that I should make sure I put a good coat of wax on it. I waited a while and then I got sap on it and the paint job was never the same. Even when I did wax it, there were bumps and rough spots. With a new car on the way (probably tomorrow) I wanted to see what I needed to do to keep the finish in good shape even though the car will be in the sun all the time.

The internet is full of people who are insane about taking care of their cars. There are all kinds of different products out there, but one new thing to me was the idea of claying a car. It consists of applying some kind of liquid to the car and then rubbing clay on it. The clay isn’t abrasive, but picks up specs of dirt that give a rough finish. It only picks up things that stick above the surface, so it isn’t intended to fix scratches. It seemed pretty extreme, but as I read about it, it started to intrigue me. There are How-To clay videos about how to do it on You Tube. Meguiar’s, a reputable “over the counter” car wax maker (as opposed to online only), sells a Smooth Surface Clay Kit that includes two blocks of clay (like modeling clay), the liquid, a buffing towel (it’s all microfiber these days, no chamois), and some cleaner wax. I wound up visiting AutoZone last night and picked up a kit for $18.

Continue reading “Car Clay”