Random Thoughts

There are days when I feeling like shooting whoever decided that it was a sensible idea to pop up a nagging dialog asking to reboot for a critical security update. Windows has always had a dumb preemptive way of window activation, so this prompt always pops up at the worst moment on top of any other window.

Michael Pietroforte has a tip how to get rid of this annoyance: Disable restart after Windows Automatic Updates. Three cheers for Michael!

Opt out of prescreened mail offers

Another annoyance of a more tangible type are credit card, insurance and mortgage offers. I get my mailbox stuffed with this junk on a daily basis. Incidentally, debt is the most profitable financial product, which is why millions of solicitations go out every week.

I was glad to stumble upon a site where you can request that the big three credit reporting companies not release your records for prescreened offers. It won’t kill all of junk mail (you’d want to contact DMA as well) but should limit it considerably.

Never get stuck on snow or ice again

A good friend of mine gave me a great advice: “If your car gets stuck in snow or on ice, put floor mats under the front wheels” (mine is a FWD car). By and large, you need just a little bit of traction to get going. Since I don’t have genuine Honda mats anymore, I went and bought a decent generic set: “carpet” on one side, spikes on the other. The kind that won’t do you any good is plain rubber on both sides.

Last winter, with this little trick I pulled a number of my neighbors and myself out of our iced parking lot.

The funniest thing was when my neighbor’s Acura got stuck because it was being too smart. One wheel was sitting on an ice sheet, the other—on wet snow, so the former was spinning like crazy, while the latter didn’t even move because—as correctly determined by traction control (?)—it had plenty of traction. Floor mats did the job of expensive electronics. And never mind the kids who were burning their Mazda RX for 40 minutes and didn’t move an inch.

Another thing I always do in the winter is park backwards, with front wheels closer to the road.

Stay warm and drive safely!