• If what you are doing isn’t working, don’t do it harder.  Stop and try again.  This is especially true for breaking and accelerating.  If you push down on the accelerator and you aren’t moving like you should, don’t press down harder.  Lift your foot up and try again.  If you push on your break and you don’t stop, lift your foot up and try it again.
• Only do one thing at a time.  Don’t try to change your speed while turning.  Don’t speed up or slow down while turning.  If you know your turn is coming up, slow way down before you even start your turn.  Complete your entire turn before speeding up again.
• Use your headlights.  While you may be able to see just fine, other drivers might not have entirely cleaned the snow off their windows, and your lights will help them know that you are there

And the most important thing about driving in the snow, is knowing when not to drive in the snow.

While I support the idea of creating a cleaner environment and reducing our dependency on foreign fuel, I think this is a bad move in this economy for two reasons.

First, this would give single states too much power over the U.S. economy. Auto makers cannot simply create a version of their product lines for California–they would have to drastically revise their products for the entire country. This gives California too much power and leverage over the entire U.S. economy, which is currently very delicate.

Secondly, requiring automakers to research and develop more fuel-efficient cars would place additional burdens on a fragile auto industry. Just last fall, the U.S. auto industry asked the U.S. government for a $25 Billion bailout. Placing further restrictions upon the American automakers will only cause them more trouble, to the point where they will need even more bailout money.

I want a cleaner environment, but I don’t think it is worth the cost of bankrupting the auto-industry, possibly causing the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs. Creating tougher environmental regulations may be a good thing, but only on the federal level, and only when the economic conditions can support additional auto industry restrictions.

Obama’s request for these regulatory changes is careless and irresponsible. The number one problem in America today is the economy. But instead of working to correct the economy, Obama is trying to please too many special interests, which is instead causing further harm to the economy. It seems like Obama is trying harder to polish his democratic public image than he is to fix a failing economy.

Last Friday I was driving to work…. I was about a minute away from my home, stopped at a stop sign in the neighborhood, and when I started to accelerate again, my car stalled, and wouldn’t start again.  When I tried to start the car, it would just turn over and over but without starting.

At first I thought that I might be out of gas, since I knew that I was low and while the gas gauge hadn’t quite hit the E, I thought it was the easiest thing to try.  So I got a gas can and put an extra couple of gallons of gas in the tank, and it still didn’t work.

After a little research, I figured out that it had to be that either the fuel or a spark wasn’t making it to the engine.  I thought it might be the gas pump, but after talking to my friend Steve, he suggested that it was less likely to be the fuel pump and more likely to be the ignition coil.  I read a bunch of other storeis on the Internet about similar problems with Honda Civics, and I decided that I would replace the coil and see what happened.

On my 1994 Honda Civic, the coil is located inside the distributor.  Three screws attach the distributor cap which were removed.  Then I was confused because the rotor part of the distributor wouldn’t move at all, and I knew it had to come off so a cover part could come off so I could get at the coil.  After more Internet searching, I found that there was a screw holding the rotor on, and that it was only accessible when the screw was at the 10 to 11 o’clock position.  After a couple of tries of cranking the engine a bit, I found the screw, removed the rotor and the cover to the coil.

The biggest problem with removing the cold coil were the wires that were screwed into the coil.  The screws weren’t moving, and I broke one of the wires.  I eventually had to put a new spade lug back on the wires and get new screws (that had to be just about exactly the same size, and metric) but by that time, the wires were maybe a little too short.  But after tugging and pulling on the wires, I was able to connect them to the new coil. 

I screwed everything back together, said a little prayer, and my car started right back up.  

Before this, the most I had ever done to my car was re-install the radio and change the battery.  Certainly taking apart stuff under the hood was beyond prior experience, so I was quite happy when it actually worked. 

All in all, it took about 4 hours of getting my hands dirty (an expert with all the tools could have done in maybe an hour) a couple of hours for buying parts and tools, a few hours of Internet research, and about $90 for the new coil.   If I had to tow it to a mechanic, I would have expected that it would have cost me 3 or 4 times as much, and still had a lot of the hassle. 

Special props out to Sandy, my amazing girlfriend.  She helped drive me around to stores, took me to work for a couple of days, and helped me with my Internet research.

You’ve heard the one about the woman who locked herself inside her car with a dead battery and phoned for help to get out of the car, right? Well, it really happened in Orem Friday. The woman called police on her cell phone after her car battery died and efforts to unlock the doors to let herself out proved futile.

“Occasionally, a mother or father will accidentally lock their small child or children inside the car and urgent help is needed; however, we don’t often get these kind of calls for assistance,” Lt. Doug Edwards said in a news release. “I’m just glad she had a cell phone to call for help.”

Police arrived and tried to assist the woman, but she couldn’t understand the officers outside the vehicle. Using hand gestures, the woman instructed them to call her on her cell phone. After getting the woman on the phone, police instructed the woman how she could manually operate the lock mechanism on the inside door panel to free herself, police said.

“I’d hate to think that people could actually put themselves in jeopardy because they didn’t remember or understand that car door locks will work manually,” Edwards said.

June 27 :
A radar detector worth $140 was stolen from the owner’s car in the Wymount Terrace parking lot. The owner claims the car was locked.

If this was your car, how would you explain to the police why you would even have a radar detector in the first place?

June 28 :
Two juvenile offenders were arrested for marijuana possession and use in the Helaman Halls dormitories. The police received a call that someone smelled something suspicious. When the officer arrived he said he smelled something burning and a strong chemical smell. The young men attempted to deodorize the room with air freshener spray, but the officers were still able to make the arrest. The two juveniles were promptly dismissed from the EFY program and sent home.

Yup, it is EFY season again. It amazes me that they really thought that they could get away with smoking pot in the dorms. On the other hand, they were probably high and not thinking.

June 30 :
An 18-year-old student was arrested, cited and released for stealing a bottle of water worth $1.19. BYU has a zero tolerance policy for theft, regardless of the value of the goods. All theft will be charged as a Class-C Misdemeanor.

I’m not sure what is more shocking, getting arrested for stealing a bottle of water, or the fact that a bottle of water costs $1.19. The report didn’t say where the bottle of water was stolen from, but there are many free drinking fountains all over campus.

May 27 :
Someone called in about a suspicious male in the WSC. The suspect had long, blonde hair and a goatee. It turned out he had lost his camera and came in to see if it was brought to the Lost & Found, police said.

Just because someone on BYU campus doesn’t look like they are following the BYU dress and grooming standards, doesn’t mean they are suspicious. On the other hand, it doesn’t hurt to check.

May 31 :
A student called and reported suspicious behavior at 11 p.m.. A car had been running around the law school parking lot for 30 minutes, police said. When the officer arrived the male explained he was teaching his girlfriend how to drive.

I’m not sure what to say about this one, but it is kind of funny.

The University and Utah and BYU teamed up about a month ago to work collectively on their entry, and now they will compete in October for one of the 20 finalist spots.

I participated with the team up until a month ago, when my classwork and finances dictated a smaller contribution of time to the project.

You can read the slashdot news article about it.