As I was flipping through the latest issue (August 2008) of Road & Track, I couldn’t help but to notice all the mention of power and speed throughout the pages. While I understand car magazines naturally lean towards performance car coverages, it is in stark contrast to today’s reality. I for one restrain from even forcefully tapping (and not stepping) on my G35’s gas pedal for fear of upsetting the mileage gods.

There is an article in this issue related to car gas consumptions though. Titled “The Fast and The Frugal”, it’s a round up of fast cars with ‘good’ gas mileage. Unfortunately ‘good’ means 16 (Corvette Z51) to 26 mpg (Mini Cooper). By that standard, my G35 is pretty ‘frugal’ as well.

For the past week I have been driving my Civic around fueled by Costco gas. It didn’t feel right - Costco’s variety didn’t deliver as much power or zest compared to Union 76’s that I usually use. Today I topped up my Civic with Union 76, and I could feel the power surge right away as I drove away from the gas station. Mind play? Perhaps.

Arco’s gas was worse than Costco’s. My wife doesn’t mind Costco’s gas, but she does of Arco’s.

(All brands of gasoline mentioned above are of regular unleaded.)

In programming we have the term cache, which is a storage buffer that programmers use to speed things up. During debugging we always say remarks like “clear the cache”, “throw away the cache”, “flush the cache”, etc.

Cache, cash, cache, cash… Cash shouldn’t be cheapened this way just because cache and cash sound alike. (Yeah yeah, a bit flat, I know. )

Today on the way home from work, I noticed that a local gas station has increased their gas price by 1 cent per gallon. I know gas prices are constantly on their way up, but does 1 cent really bring that much extra profit for the station? Or do they just do it because it symbolizes their ability to shove bigger gas price tags in our faces?

Apparently there is a Canada goose over population problem in the Bay Area. Goose problem? There wouldn’t be such a goose problem in Asia.

Yesterday I drove my Civic Si for the first time since the third member joined our carpool last Friday. I was reminded again how weak the Civic’s 2-liter VTEC engine really is.

This is how I would rate my Civic’s acceleration in terms of number of occupants it has:

Driver only: Might outrun a van at full throttle.

Driver plus 1 passenger: Hopefully can keep up with the van.

Driver plus 2 passengers: Will gracefully let the van overtake in front.

Driver plus 3 passengers: Pull over and give way.

I wanted to say the above was just an exaggeration, but frankly with today’s vans sporting 3.5 liter V6s, my ‘racing’ Civic Si is kinda sad.

A current Dell XPS One commercial reminded me of a NS song that a NS friend taught me during NS. The song is a parody of Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be) but at a faster pace:

Here is the Dell XPS One commercial for your reference:

Some Facebook apps are like pyramid schemes. These apps ask you to battle your friends for points, but winners of these fights are typically determined by how many points they had prior to the fights. So in order for some one like me who doesn’t regularly play these games, the only way to win is to prey on more friends. It would go something like this: I invite friends who have not yet used these apps. My friends accept. I get more commission points. I then duel them, win, and get more points for myself.

Yes, I am one of those altruistic pyramid bottoms - I accept Facebook app invites just to harvest more points for my friends.