I posted a while back that my car provided me monthly metrics, but that they weren’t quite enough for what I really wanted out of car metrics. To try to get at what I was really interested in, I picked up an OBD-II scanner and grabbed the Torque app for my phone. With this combination, I was able to get very detailed csv exports of all kinds of cool information. With that I decided to put together my own metrics of my driving habits over the last couple of months.
As I’m getting used to my vehicle, I was pretty excited about owning it for a full month, and getting my first metrics e-mail. As you all probably know, I’m something of a data geek – I love my spreadsheets and I like good data collected and organized well. That’s why I was super excited about the possibility of getting a monthly report from my vehicle with usage metrics.
I recently bought a new vehicle, and one of the things that surprised me was the need to break in the engine and drivetrain for the first thousand miles. The salesman that sold me the car mentioned that I shouldn’t bring it above 3,000 RPMs nor use the cruise control for very long trips during the first thousand miles so that the engine could effectively break in. Continue reading Breaking In My New Vehicle→
I recently decided that it was time for me to get my own car. At 34 years old, I’d neither shopped for, purchased, nor owned a car, so this was all new territory for me. In starting to do some research for this purchase, my big hurdle has been vocabulary and metrics, specifically I’m trying to translate, “It duz wat I want” to specific horse-power, torque, and turn radius, as well as interior features like dash indicators and that whole interface in the center. Continue reading New Addition→
Thoughts are stripped of their texture to form words that they might be colored by the mind of another.
