I like to leave plenty of following distance on the road. Many drivers American* drivers don’t seem to understand that it makes traffic much safer and, coincidentally, better-flowing when you leave a minimum of two seconds between your front bumper and the rear bumper of the car in front of you. They also don’t seem to understand that leaving a safe distance isn’t the same thing as driving slowly. Once I’m at a safe distance, I drive the same speed as the car in front of me – up to a safe speed which may or may not be over the speed limit.

You know the saying, “sometimes it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission?”

My new saying is, “only ask permission for that which you know is already approved.”

Not unlike the trial lawyer’s axiom of not asking questions you don’t know the answers to.

As I was plugging in the Leaf at work this morning, a contractor commented that he “should petition his work to give him free gas.” Then he used a mocking tone to make a remark about how he knows it’s really about helping the environment and all that.

I commented that it’s more about helping my pocketbook and about how cheap it is to operate.

He said that he didn’t understand why that was the case, seeing that we have to get the coal and burn it in a power plant; that gas should be cheaper.

Lately when I go through the McDonald’s drive-through near my work, they seem to guess correctly on what I want to drink with my breakfast combo meal. I almost always order the same combo and I always order the same drink: a small orange juice.

But today they got it wrong. They assumed I wanted a coffee.

Why was that? Just an off day? What’s different about today? The only thing I can think of is that I was driving my wife’s car.

I will have to test this theory, of course, but I think they use some kind of vehicle recognition, perhaps by scanning the license plate, to determine what you want. They already use remote order-takers who may not even be in the building. It would not surprise me if they start to use facial recognition to guess your order even before they greet you.

It would appear to be the golden age of new, innovative products. Companies and startups nobody’s ever heard of promise to deliver technological marvels. Sites like Kickstarter help connect these companies with masses of interested people, who pledge to fund the product if they reach a certain mass. I eagerly await products like WigWag, the Lit Motors C-1, and a bunch of other neat things.

Unfortunately, this may all eventually backfire. If enough companies fail to deliver on their promises, the fountain of money from the fickle public will quickly dry up. There’s a reason that venture capital firms exist. They have experience in this kind of stuff. The average person does not. But the average person gets excited about a single device that promises to unite all of your disperate home automation technologies, or an electric two-wheeled gyroscopically-stabilized electric car that gets 200 miles per charge. It’s one thing to promise these inventions. It’s another thing to actually deliver. Call me a cautious optimist.

Our EV has been great. It’s cheap to operate; smooth, quiet, and fun to drive; and helps us feel better about our environmental impact. There’s just one problem with having one: you want two.

Gasoline is expensive and it pollutes more than electric. So we want to drive the Leaf as much as possible. If we could have two EVs, we would do it (correction: affordable EVs, not the current Tesla offering). But one EV isn’t enough to cover all of our driving: we still need one petro-powered car for longer trips and for when our activities diverge.

This guy has a great philosophy. I couldn’t agree with him more. Have I been doing this all along without knowing it? Hmm. Probably not. But now that I’ve ingested it through my conscious mind, I will.

The difference between being good with money and bad with money.

I just read that Hamburg’s average temperature is 9°C.

And now I just figured out how to get Americans to use the metric system for temperatures. Climate change. As the Earth heats up, Americans will want to use the Celsius scale to make things seem colder. 100 degrees (F) outside? Not a problem! It’s actually only in the upper 30s!