Sep
11
2007
|
Written by Kacey Green
|
|
Tuesday, 11 September 2007 |
 Those readers that know how much I like Woot.com will understand the posting goodness in store today when I say Two 4 Tuesday (refering to the number of posts)! First, up, while running errands today I crossed paths with Jason Benns, a local Prius driver. Seeing two marked Prius from different companies is about as common as seeing two Prius together a gas station. Jason drives a CoStar Group branded 2006 package #7 NL Prius wrapped with the CoStar Group branding. Jason says his company bought 120 of these, some of which have XM radio. Three of these vehicles travel throughout South Carolina: there are Jason's in Columbia, one in Charleston, and one that travels between north and South Carolina. There is also one in Florida. These Prius are equipped with an extra antenna, which the company uses to track their drivers. After the jump is a photo gallery of the CoStar Prius. Underneath the wrap, the Prius' paint is white. Jason gets about 50MPG city, the people that gave him the vehicle said to use B gear, I suggested he not do that unless descending a mountain, remember B is the same as L in a regular automatic transmission.
Costar handles commercial real estate in the United States and United Kingdom.
Continue to the photo album.
|
Sep
10
2007
|
Written by Kacey Green
|
|
Monday, 10 September 2007 |
Superstar of SuperStar blog has reviewed us. Here's what she had to say:
GRLT.com website review
I like to judge what a website going to be about by the title. I know, it's a bad case of "judging a book by its cover" but it's just something I do. So the judgements I had for "Tech with a twist of lime!" were:
The design of the blog is a nice clean three column layout with the content in the center and other links on either side.
The information presented in the blog is very good. It brings news of what is going on technology world (fuel economy hybrid cars, and environmental issues, are the primary discussion topics). I was very pleased with the presentation and how organized and detailed it was.
Usually, when reviewing a weblog, I skim through the archives, dipping in occasionally to figure out more about the writer and where they are coming from. In this case, I sat and read through the entire archives and before I knew it, I was hooked.
Overall I this blog is done exceptionally well. I do not feel this is a perfect blog, and I don't think its one that everyone will enjoy, but overall this blog is one of the best of its types. Even if you aren't into reading up on technology, this blog is worth checking out.
by SuperStar
I want to thank SuperStar for taking the time to review our site.
Kacey Green
www.grlt.com
"Tech with a twist of lime!"
Express yourself by posting a comment below.
|
Sep
09
2007
|
Written by Kacey Green
|
|
Sunday, 09 September 2007 |
|
Another publisher and I worked with one of the developers of
the Content Management System (CMS) that this site uses and over at my test
site we now have full RSS feeds! As the
version of the CMS that the test site is using gets closer to completion I will
start upgrading this site, right now it still needs more testing.
I promised my readers would get full RSS feeds, and I did
not let you down. If you are still using
the old RSS feed, now is a good time to switch (the links are at the top of the
page and in your browser's feed notification area). When I upgrade this site to the new version,
I'm not sure that I will remember to mention the feeds in all the commotion.
I will
make an announcement before upgrade time comes, and will do my best to make the
transition as smooth as possible. Over
at the test site upgrades take about thirty minutes, I figure from what I have
seen this site will take the same 30 minutes for the files, but migrating the data
and all of the enhancements will take longer.
Currently I expect the upgrade to take about three hours, I will do a full
backup and a dry run, if successful the changes will stay and I'll work on
ironing out the small bugs that will surely crop up. If the test isn't successful, I'll restore the
backup and make an announcement. Nevertheless,
that day is at least another month away, I'll bring the topic up again as we
get closer to the upgrade or if there is another feature you have been asking
for that has been finished.
Kacey Green
www.grlt.com
"Tech with a twist of lime!"
Express yourself by posting a comment below.
|
Sep
08
2007
|
Written by Kacey Green
|
|
Saturday, 08 September 2007 |
|
I just updated the program that handles URLs here, and I have found that the site seems snappier and all the old URLs still work! However, I have managed to break the custom Google search feature. I have contacted the developer of that program and I will make post a comment to this post once we fix Google searches. All of the other search features on-site are working.
If anything related to URLs seems amiss, please post a comment here so I can fix it.
Update: I had missed one small setting and the sytem was making URLs the Custom Google program didn't understand.
Kacey Green
www.grlt.com
"Tech with a twist of lime!"
Express yourself by posting a comment below.
|
Sep
08
2007
|
Written by Kacey Green
|
|
Saturday, 08 September 2007 |
 On Wednesday, I
stopped for fuel and the Prius reported something odd, it showed 25 watt-hours regenerated
during the fill-up. If I am 100 percent
sure the engine will not be starting during the refueling process, I don't shut
the car down. However, there were only energy
expenditures during this block of time you can see it at 25 minutes ago on this
screenshot of the consumption graph. I'd
call several gallons of gasoline more than 50WH :). I'm not sure what happened there but I've
seen it before and it is unrelated to the fuel stop. When I refuel it usually shows an empty five
or ten minute graph (depending on how long I take with paperwork after the fill
and how slow the pump is).
A month before I traded my Civic, it shut down all power while
going down a large hill, but by about 100 feet from the bottom of the hill
(where I then needed to go up another hill) everything powered back up, all
with no intervention on my part. This
was weird I had power steering, zero RPMs and no electricity. I usually build up speed on a down slope so I
had enough momentum built-up to continue without incident. It never did it again and I saw it in town several
times after the trade, still looking good and clean (but with dirty tires).
What weird things have your vehicles done?
Kacey
Green
www.grlt.com
"Tech with a twist of lime!"
Express yourself by posting a comment below.
If you liked this post, share it! (Digg is up top, Stumble, Tencorati and
others below [on this post's page], or tell a friend)
|
|
Sep
07
2007
|
Written by Kacey Green
|
|
Friday, 07 September 2007 |
|
 Several weeks ago, I got tired of the HomeLink mirror taking
too long to respond when a vehicle was behind me with its brights on, or if a
vehicle with poorly adjusted headlights was following me, I thought back to
something I read a few years back on one of the Prius forums. Their solution was to flip the mirror over, but
when I tried it last time it just didn't feel right, they said it would better
match the shape of the rear window as well as putting the light sensor in a
more optimal location. The problem was I
did not adjust the mirror vertically, because when the mirror is out of its
factory orientation the mirror mount adjusts differently.
The reason this trick works is, the light sensor for the
rear window sits in the bottom edge of the mirror along with the buttons, to
the left of the on switch as pictured above, right in line with the spoiler. The
spoiler blocks the glare from the headlights of the car behind you, so the
mirror does not adjust correctly or quickly.
When you invert the mirror, the sensor is now at the top and no longer
blocked by the spoiler's shadow.
I tried it again and had much better results for your
benefit I will give you what I didn't have, a pictorial tutorial, I had to rely
on the vague text descriptions, which can be frustrating. So here in pictures, I will explain the
process of successfully adjusting the HomeLink mirror 180°.
See the pictorial, and read about how adjust the
side mirrors to eliminate blind spots after the jump.
|
|
Sep
06
2007
|
Written by Kacey Green
|
|
Thursday, 06 September 2007 |
 Especially
if you drive an Audi, BMW, GM, Honda, Toyota, or Volkswagen vehicle.
Since the summer of 2004, I have been recommending top tier
gas to everyone I knew who drives a BMW, GM, Honda, or Toyota product. These manufacturers got together with oil
companies and created a fuel standard, in response to the damage poor quality gasoline
was doing to their customers' engines, the companies had been replacing engines
under warranty and it was getting expensive.
Toyota even has set their fleet maintenance interval to 5000
miles; many of their vehicles such as the Classic Prius (NHW11) were sporting a
7500-mile maintenance interval. But for
2004 the new Prius, which has the same engine(1NZ-FXE) as all previous Prius,
they ratcheted that down to 5000 miles between servicing, because that's what
the fleet standard is (I'm sure it doesn't hurt that they stand to make money
off every oil change).
Three cars have worn the Prius name badge:
Toyota Prius NHW10 (1997-2001) |JDM Prius, Original Prius, First Prius
Toyota Prius NHW11 (2000-2003) |Classic,
1.1, or 2nd Gen, First US Prius
Toyota Prius NHW20 (2004-Present) | 2nd
Gen, 3rd Gen, 2.0, or Hatchback
Anyway, the automakers got together and set a standard for
all fuels to meet in order to carry their certification, the first retailers to
meet the standard were Chevron and Quik Trip.
For short while Shell was promoting the Top Tier Gas initiative in their
television, print, and radio advertisements; later they started promoting it
has something unique to their own brand, dropping the Top Tier label.
Continue reading this article after the jump
|
|
|
<< Start < Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next > End >>
|
| Results 22 - 28 of 146 |
