Cars, Money, Fame and Glory
Various thoughts on the aforementioned topics.
My first automatically scheduled car loan payment went through on Monday. I must say it was a bit terrifying to see that of the 495 dollars, 188 dollars went just to the finance charge. Freaking ouch. I did the math quick and (duh) it worked out correctly but it was still rather surprising. Interest is nuts.
I just got my debit card for my ING checking account. I didn't sign up for one when they first sent out the blurb but then I talked to Chris (he knows him his moneys) and thought about it some more and went for it. The big advantage is that it's still better interest than my Hudson Valley account, and since transfers between ING accounts are instant (and ATMs are everywhere), I can effectively get to all of my money immediately, as opposed to having to wait for it to transfer back from ING to Hudson Valley, which takes nearly a week. So that's cool.
I decided to try a slightly different driving style with the Prius and it's worked rather well for my mileage. I start stopping a little later and thus have to break a litter harder. This engages the larger of the two electric motors as a break/generator and still places little to no load on my physical breaks. The upshot is that my battery is fully-charged more often and thus the computer runs the car on pure battery more often. Since it does so mostly during acceleration (the worst part of driving in terms of gas mileage) it's been a big benefit.
Today Matt, Greg and I were interviewed by the Poughkeepsie Journal about our work on ConsensusBest. Greg, for those that don't know, is the poor guy that was hired and put in charge of being Managing Editor of the site. He's very nice and rather competent. The whole idea was amusing to Matt and I, since neither one of us was particularly thrilled about the idea of advertising our involvement (even though it's really not that bad) and the Poughkeepsie Journal is not exactly the epitome of journalism excellence. We did get to point out that none of us were involved in the graphic design of the site ("We can't take credit for the design, we were given that and put the guts in behind it.") so that's a good thing to get out there. Anyway, I'll try to get the article text posted here for posterity/amusement when it goes out. Their site is awful so I might have to just get a real copy and transcribe it.
My first automatically scheduled car loan payment went through on Monday. I must say it was a bit terrifying to see that of the 495 dollars, 188 dollars went just to the finance charge. Freaking ouch. I did the math quick and (duh) it worked out correctly but it was still rather surprising. Interest is nuts.
I just got my debit card for my ING checking account. I didn't sign up for one when they first sent out the blurb but then I talked to Chris (he knows him his moneys) and thought about it some more and went for it. The big advantage is that it's still better interest than my Hudson Valley account, and since transfers between ING accounts are instant (and ATMs are everywhere), I can effectively get to all of my money immediately, as opposed to having to wait for it to transfer back from ING to Hudson Valley, which takes nearly a week. So that's cool.
I decided to try a slightly different driving style with the Prius and it's worked rather well for my mileage. I start stopping a little later and thus have to break a litter harder. This engages the larger of the two electric motors as a break/generator and still places little to no load on my physical breaks. The upshot is that my battery is fully-charged more often and thus the computer runs the car on pure battery more often. Since it does so mostly during acceleration (the worst part of driving in terms of gas mileage) it's been a big benefit.
Today Matt, Greg and I were interviewed by the Poughkeepsie Journal about our work on ConsensusBest. Greg, for those that don't know, is the poor guy that was hired and put in charge of being Managing Editor of the site. He's very nice and rather competent. The whole idea was amusing to Matt and I, since neither one of us was particularly thrilled about the idea of advertising our involvement (even though it's really not that bad) and the Poughkeepsie Journal is not exactly the epitome of journalism excellence. We did get to point out that none of us were involved in the graphic design of the site ("We can't take credit for the design, we were given that and put the guts in behind it.") so that's a good thing to get out there. Anyway, I'll try to get the article text posted here for posterity/amusement when it goes out. Their site is awful so I might have to just get a real copy and transcribe it.
posted by SomeJerk at 9:11 PM
3 Comments:
What the heck is ConsensusBest? Also, how the hell did it just sign KingOfMalkier for this comment? I didn't even know I had an account.
Heh. Well, ConsensusBest was our work-study project for something over a year, maybe a year and a half. It can be found at http://www.consensusbest.com, and let me reiterate that we did not come up with the design.
As for how it signed that for you, I have no idea, but it seems to think you have an account of some sort.
If you sign under a name (like Nina for me) it will just assume thats what name you want. It says that mine's a account too but i think its just a minor glitch.
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