Well I've gotten my city mileage down to 10.1L/100km (~23mpg) over a total measured distance of 1450km. I'll attribute this to 5W30 oil in warmer weather and a lot of driving in non-stop and go traffic. There may be a very minor amount of help from the battery change and sparkplug change. Also, the tires aren't plowing slush everyday. So, it's probably a bunch of really small savings coming together.

I switched today from 5W30 to 10W30 for the summer months. I'll report back with whether it's had any kind of effect. My goal is 9.9L/100km city driving, but that's purely a psychological barrier because getting below 10L/100km is only a difference of .75mpg.

At the end of April I drove to Traverse City (525km total) and got 7.4L/100km (~32mpg). That was lower than my trip to Wiky because I was going much faster this time (130km/h average) and there was a fair amount of city driving as well.

Well, it finally happened.. I applied a patch from MS that broke a system - IE specifically.  A user came to me complaining that every time she went to gmail.com IE would crash.  Sure enough it did, and it did with any user that was logged on including Administrator so I knew we had an issue.  Unfortunately my maintenance routine went like this:  apply patches, reboot, run CCleaner, and shut down.  The thing that bit me, and it's partially my fault, is that CCleaner is set to remove MS patch uninstall directories - you know those $KB123413 under the Windows folder... the ones that let you back out if MS b0rks your system.

It turns out that a lot of people are having troubles with KB942615.  It doesn't apply properly and then IE crashes urlmon.dll when visiting certain pages.  No amount of re-registering dll's will fix this, the only fix is to remove KB942615 - or move to Firefox or Opera. 

If you've never heard of The Creepshow, you need to familiarize yourself with them.

I got the itch to do something new on Sunday.. so I did.

Wish me luck!

These two have been clearing up a lot of Windows problems for me lately:

1. Unregister then reregister cryptographic libraries:

regsvr32 /u softpub.dll
regsvr32 /u wintrust.dll
regsvr32 /u initpki.dll
regsvr32 /u dssenh.dll
regsvr32 /u rsaenh.dll
regsvr32 /u gpkcsp.dll
regsvr32 /u sccbase.dll
regsvr32 /u slbcsp.dll
regsvr32 /u mssip32.dll
regsvr32 /u cryptdlg.dll

REBOOT

regsvr32 softpub.dll
regsvr32 wintrust.dll
regsvr32 initpki.dll
regsvr32 dssenh.dll
regsvr32 rsaenh.dll
regsvr32 gpkcsp.dll
regsvr32 sccbase.dll
regsvr32 slbcsp.dll
regsvr32 mssip32.dll
regsvr32 cryptdlg.dll

2.  Un/reinstall MSXML libraries

This is on top of the usual diagnostic steps of cleaning temp files, disabling unecessary services and startup items, deleting prefetch files, and deleting service pack uninstall folders.

I'm going to have to create a set of scripts for #1.

"His dick's just for pissing."
-- Ted Barbet (deadpan voice)

"Excuse me, Janis. I have to take some medication, do you think I could get a pitcher of water?"
-- The Queen

So, it's mostly been city driving with a smidge of highway driving since my drive to Wiky and I've been keeping track of my economy. I started around 11.5L/100km (20.5MPG) and since then I've changed the oil to Mobil1 5w50, inflated the tires to the Volvo max pressure specs, and installed new Denso Iridium IK22 plugs. On top of that I've also changed my route from stop and go traffic which is shorter in map distance to a longer route but with NO stops. My city mileage has gone as low as 10.7L/100km (22MPG), which is very close to what the US gov't says my car should get on the highway.

The next change that's going to happen is to switch back to Mobil1 5w30 (car seems sluggish with 5w50). I just had the battery fail - it was the original, or 5+ years old, so it was time. It's possible that a very poor operating battery could put extra strain on the charging system, thereby using more fuel. Right now I'm at about 9.9L/100km, but that's with less than 100km since the new battery - statistically insignificant.

I can't say that the switch to the IK22 plugs made any difference in fuel consumption, but it made a very noticeable difference in the sound of the engine and it's responsiveness. The engine used to second guess my right foot, now it's in full agreement.

Oh, and BTW, the "S" in S60 is for smooth. :-P

When you install a new anti-virus program you expect that when it installs a base set of definitions are included and that you have at least some protection.  After installation, you'd expect it to attempt to contact their update server and get the latest set of definitions and have you completely protected.  This is the way most AV programs operate - Norton, McAfee, AVG.. they all do this.  Not, on the other hand, Microsoft Live OneCare.  A wonderfully executed product from Microsoft.  Can you hear the sarcasm dripping in that statement?  If not, it was.

So, the MS designers thought that instead of giving the user a basic level of protection that they'd just start you off with complete protection.  Sounds good, huh?  Yup, good concept, poor execution.  What Live OneCare does is, start installation and then check the installation site for updates, the achilles heel being that if the site is down installation does not, and will not continue.  If the site is down, of course it's not MS' fault so you have to go through their diagnostic steps of removing MSXML, .NET, disabling all startup items and non-MS services, reinstalling MSXML, reinstalling .NET and trying again only to find the same cryptic 14-80072EFE error.  Which, at the time of this writing, MS does not have listed as an error code.  There is a similar 14-80072EFD error code.

Great, so you're left with an unprotected computer and can't install Live OneCare because you're either not on the internet, there's a routing problem, or their installation site is down.  The first two problems are out of MS' control so you wouldn't expect them to deal with them, but the last error IS under their control and they should deal with that properly.  How would you deal with that properly?  Hmmm, first thought would be a message stating "Sorry, the installation and activation server is down please try again later."  You could even go so far as to offer to install with an old, but a base set of virus protection definitions.  Producing an error code that has no knowledgebase article is senseless, it gives the user NOTHING to go on.  That's the MS' solution - give an error code that blames the user and puts the onus on them to fix it.

It's never our fault.