My Brother From Another Mother and the FBI Is Hacking You

Are there a few of us out there?  Sure. Many moons ago when the "Toaster" came into my family I embraced it and joined up with a group of similarly minded individuals called the Element Owners Club. There I met others who loved E's as much as me and a few that were even lucky enough to grab the personalized plates "TOASTER" in their respective states.  I, of course, am that lucky guy in Maryland. About 5 years ago I got to meet the DC plate holder and today I met my New Hampshire Brother from another mother (dealership/state/etc).

I was on my way back from claiming my free doughnut over at Krispy Kreeme in honor of International Talk Like a Pirate Day. I was very happy to receive something for virtually nothing but the deal was if you talk like a pirate, you get a free doughnut. If you wear pirate costume you got a free dozen. Unfortunately I'm a little short on pirate gear since I donated my puffy shirt from the Idiot-rod a few years back but I did have my Brother-in-Law's Derrick Brook's Tampa Bay Buccaneer's jersey. I think if I went with a matching hat I might have had an outside shot at the free box but alas.

Back to the Toasters, I saw "New Hampshire" one car up on my right and I pulled in behind him and tried to get a shot of his license plate (in full violation of Maryland law) but to no avail as the sun was still on it's way up. But he must have saw me since he signaled for me to pull up next to him. We chatted for a minute at a stop sign and pulled into a parking lot to take a picture. His has about 60,000 miles on mine (his is an '04 and mine an '07) but he gave me some good advice on the belt clamps that I'll bring to my mechanic's attention.

Once I got over the excitement that is my life, I made it home to finish cleaning off my parent's computer. It was infected with malware that makes it look like the FBI has locked your computer for illegal activity. Of course it's a scam and because they lock the OS the only way to shut it down is to do a hard reboot. I eventually found a good explanation of what the scam is and how to fix it (hint: you need to go into the registry and some other stuff). But my folks were concerned and even though they talked to me and I told them it was a scam, they went home and called the FBI to check. Cute right? I ended up cleaning it up for them and reinstalling the Anti-Virus software but they also called the Geek Squad at Best Buy who wanted $200 to clean up the damage. Damn...maybe thats where I need to be looking for work.

Finally a Car Made Just For Me

So Hun are you sick of me constantly pulling over when we go for a drive so I can drain ye ol' weasel? Well those days are done. (Cue infomercial music)

For the low, low price of a large jug of green tea I can drive for hours at a time without having to take a potty break. Oh and forget about paying your hard earned dollars on gas and padding the pockets of those fat-cat oil companies, because now I'll power the car.

Get those Fred Flinstone running around on his bald feet images out of your head becuase I'm talking major-league science here. Researchers (who research this kind of thing for a living) have developed an engine that runs on piss. Yep, peepee, yellow lemonade, snake juice, tinkle, whatever you want to call it this engine runs on it much the same way a hydrogen engine strips away the H2 molecules away from the O.

Ariel Schwartz writes for fast company.com on the "Piss Powered Car" and I can only "hold it in" until this car comes to market.

Is it here yet?

Damn...what about now?

Use Your Wings Young Man

Cool story out of Atlanta and in honor of my upcoming trip there I thought that I’d share. According to the story a few days ago in the Journal-Constitution, two restaurateurs who started the Wing Street franchise have found the cost of gas used to deliver the roasted chicken flesh too expensive and found a better way.

The guts of the article are here. But they’ve outfitted one of their Jeep Liberty delivery fleet to run on recycled cooking grease. Each location produces about 36 gallons a week which is then strained cleaner then some of the gas we use in our cars today. Plus the cost (after the $5,000 outlay to retrofit the car to use the oil) is only $.67/ gallon. Note: this doesn’t include the cost to buy the oil “Fresh” which is about $6/gallon

The question is if they can do it, why can’t I? First off they get between 20-25 miles per gallon which is roughly what the E gets now (22-27 MPG). Second this stuff is supposed to be cheep…I mean at less then a dollar a gallon it’s a regular bargain.

But there is always a catch; First off the car has to already be running off a diesel engine. Regular unleaded won’t cut it at this junction (I’m screwed #1). Oh and unless you run a restaurant or can find a restaurant that will allow you to carry 30+ gallons of used oil off their premises you’ll have to buy your oil new. That’s where you really run into a problem. Even wholesale 48 oz of cooking oil will run you about $2-$3, that means that a gallon of “fuel” will cost about 3 times that or $9 a gallon. So you’ll actually end up paying more then the Europeans do. Not such a good idea after all is it?

With that said, I encourage Wing Street to turn more of their nationwide fleet over to these “grease” jeeps and other restaurant chains that offer delivery should do the same. While it won’t work for me it will work for them and that’s a little less pollution and a bit more exhaust smelling like fried chicken, which in my book is OK! Now did anybody see that car that was running on used watermelon seeds???