Ted's Blog

Today, the head of General Motors, Barack Obama, announced an exciting new vehicle that will be offered soon. He expects millions of Americans to buy it.

Q: Mr. Obama, what type of vehicle is this? Is it a car?

A: We’re not sure yet. We are pretty sure that it won’t be a car. If you have a car today, you will not need this vehicle. We do not want to compete with automakers.

Q: Will it use gasoline?

A: No. It will be a clean vehicle.

Q: Will it be solar powered?

A: Maybe. Whether we use solar power, gasoline, or any other means of propulsion is still to be decided.

Q: I thought you said it won’t use gasoline?

A: Look, gasoline has served us well in the past and you can get it just about anywhere. You can’t really have a car without gasoline.

Q: Have you done any market research to see if people are interested in this vehicle?

A: We expect to sell 45 million of these vehicles. Because we are going to sell large numbers of vehicles, it seems pointless to do any market research. We will spend several months, if necessary, coming up with the design of this vehicle and then produce millions of them. There is no reason to try out different versions of the vehicle in different markets to see if any improvements can be made to it.

Alan Mullaley, the CEO of Ford Motors had this to say about GM’s new vehicle: “Clearly this is a dangerous vehicle for both its driver and anyone close to it. The government wants to take away everyone’s cars and force them to use these government cars which, as I understand it, will fueled by the blood of retired people. Although I have no information about this car, I am telling you now that it will destroy America.”

To do the Palm repairs I wrote about, I needed some smaller Torx screwdrivers. Ace Hardware had size T3, T4, and T6, and above that, but I needed size T5. I went to Home Depot hoping I could get a set of driver bits or an individual screwdriver for five bucks or so. For $4.87 they had a set of 36 driver bits, an extension arm, and a screwdriver handle. It is called the Husky 36-Piece Precision Screwdriver Set. In addition to Torx sizes T5, T6, T7, T8, T9, T10, T15, and T20, it had 6 small slotted head bits, 4 philips heads, 3 pozi heads, and 8 hex heads. At that price, and with a lifetime guarantee, how could I go wrong? Besides, that was the only way I saw to get a Torx T5 screwdriver.

The set is in a nice plastic case with each bit held in place and a clear front cover. But as soon as I put one of the bits in the screwdriver, I saw what horrible product design this is. The driver bits don’t snap into place, they just slide in and are fairly loose. So if you hold the screwdriver with the point end down, the bit just falls right out. Put in the extension piece and they all fall apart. They’re not even magnetized or anything. It is such a poor design that I am tempted to take the set back and get my money back (scratch that, I figured it out in Comment 4 below). The good thing is that I needed the T6 size too, so if I had just bought a T5, I would have been out of luck.

Today at work I won an award for being a “Clean Air Champion” (I got a certificate and a coffee mug). As part of the Clean Air Campaign, I have been logging the days where I do a clean commute. And since I take MARTA every day, then pretty much any time I go to work is a clean commute day (twice actually, since I go to work and then go home). The advantage of logging my commute is they have a monthly drawing where you can win a $25 gift card if you participate. I have won at least 3 times, but nothing in the last year.

So I got an e-mail this week saying to meet in the lobby with the other 25,000 pound champions. By their calculations, I have saved 25,000 pounds of pollution with all of the clean commutes I have logged. I did a similar calculation when I wrote about 10 years of MARTA cards, coming up with 2,000 gallons of gasoline saved in 10 years. Now a gallon of gas only weighs 6.3 pounds, so if all of that turned into pollutants, it would only be 12,600 pounds in 10 years. But I found a government website that says one gallon of gasoline actually produces 20 pounds of carbon dioxide when it burns because every carbon atom in the gasoline is combining with two heavier oxygen atoms from the air. So that means in 10 years I saved 40,000 pounds of CO₂. And with the time I rode MARTA before I started collecting cards, and the time since I wrote that blog entry, I am probably up to 16 years or more of clean commutes.

So I really am a Clean Air Champion.