tatethatcher.com
…My humble slice of the Internet
Archive for July, 2007
Cool new tool – mymilemarker.com
Jul 29th
UPDATE 4.8.2008: For those who are reaching this page while searching for an explanation of what’s going on with MyMileMarker, I’ve written a new article which gives an alternate address for reaching MMM. Rest assured, they’re working on restoring the original address!
When I purchased my FJ Cruiser, I was very adament about keeping good mileage records. I had a little spreadsheet set up on my PPC-6700 PDA cell phone that I’d update every time I filled up. It had columns for current odometer reading, number of current trip miles, how many gallons of gas were refilled, cost of gas, and a column to add miscellaneous info such as “changed oil” or “mountain driving.” Based on those criteria, a little bit of simple math enabled my spreadsheet to spit out the total cost of the fill up (so I could compare to the pump receipt), total cost of fuel since purchasing the vehicle, and fuel efficiency on both a per-fill and YTD basis. Unfortunately it got to be kind of a pain in the ass, updating the spreadsheet and then manually FTP’ing it to my home server all the time. I began to wish there was some sort of PHP + SQL solution I could employ which would not only track my data but would organize it for later review. Not being very good with PHP, I searched around the ‘net for something that I could modify and host on my own home server, for my own private use. My search never really turned up anything, until yesterday, when I stumbled upon mymilemarker.com, a website that does pretty much everything I originally wanted to do and more. It even gets the job done with nice shiny graphics, and allows you several different methods of uploading your fuel information. For those of us with data capable cell phones, the site has a mobile interface located here, which is optimized for mobile browsers. That’s the method I’ll be using. No data plan on your phone? No problem. If you’re a Twitter user, you can simply SMS text message the fuel and trip info to mymilemarker.com’s database. Lastly, for those of you who live in a cave and have a “Zack Morris” style brick phone lacking SMS and browsing capabilities, you can always just write down your information at the gas station and log in to the site from your home PC.
Signup for the service is very simple. Just head over to their main page and supply your e-mail address as a user name, then select a nice secure password (wouldn’t want anyone to steal your precious fuel stats!), agree to their terms of service, and you’re in. They even let you set up different databases for different cars, so you can keep track of your Ferrari AND your humble daily driver Porsche if you want!
Enjoy!
Farewell Hawaii
Jul 22nd
As you can infer from the title of this post, I’m back from my Hawaiian vacation. I had a great time! My only wish is that I could have stayed longer, but escaping from work is not easy. The trip home was much better than the one to Hawaii, save for a little turbulence. This time around I didn’t have to switch planes twice; I flew from Honolulu to Seattle to Detroit (vomit). Unfortunately the plane from Seattle to Detroit was delayed by over three hours, and by the time I got my luggage and drove home it was 1:30 in the morning. 24 straight hours of travel is not much fun. Luckily I had my laptop and EVDO connection, so my 9+ hour layover in Seattle was much more tolerable. I’ll never fly through Detroit again though. God, I can’t stand that place. I heard somewhere that the Detroit airport has a terrible 60% “on time” rate, meaning 40% of all flights going through it are significantly delayed. I guess that’s what happens when you employ a bunch of shit heads.
I’d like to say thanks to everyone that has checked out the photos I’ve taken from the trip. I received a lot of compliments on them, which of course is a wonderful ego stroke. In total, I shot around 500 photos (over 1.5GB worth), and uploaded about 450 to my gallery. If you haven’t seen them yet, please take a second to check them out here and let me know what you think!
The Great Escape
Jul 11th
Well kiddies, I know I’ve been kinda quiet for a few weeks but life has been a little crazy. Not crazy as in killing hookers and getting rid of the evidence by submerging their bodies in a tub of acid, but crazy as in a lot has been going on lately. Mostly I’ve been on pins and needles regarding a job I’ve interviewed twice for (still have my fingers crossed). I’ve also been counting down the days until my much needed vacation begins. Technically it began Monday, but I won’t actually be leaving town until tomorrow morning. Early. 4:30am early.
What could get me out of bed at 4:30 in the morning? What could make me voluntarily drive to Detroit, one of the dirtiest and most ghetto cities I’ve ever had the misfortune of encountering? Simple — Hawaii. Yes, tomorrow will be the first time I’ve set foot on ground west of Chicago. I’ll be hopping on a plane and jetting all the way to the capital city of Honolulu on Oahu Island. I’m pretty excited for many reasons. First, I can’t wait to get out and swim in the Pacific. Up until now I’ve only had the pleasure of swimming in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic, and the displeasure of wading through Lake Erie. Second, the whole trip should make for some interesting photo opporunities. Last and most important, Honolulu is roughly 1,240,515,669.55 miles from Toledo (give or take).
So, stay tuned. If possible I’ll try to upload a few photos here and there during my vacation. I don’t know if I’ll be bandwidth challenged though; I checked Sprint’s coverage of Hawaii and it appears that much of it has been upgraded to EVDO or EVDO Rev A, so at least I’ll have that to fall back on if I’m not able to get decent WiFi signal from my hotel room.
Rock on!
…
Update 1: I made it safely to Honolulu. Each of my flights was delayed, but for the most part my trip was uneventful. I even had some fun flirting with a geeky Macbook wielding chick while we were waiting for our flights in Minneapolis.
I went online and got the official distance from Toledo OH to Honolulu Hawaii. It’s approximately 4,462 miles. That’s based on a calculation of latitude and longitude. For comparison, Toledo to Los Angeles is 1,959 (as the crow flies), and Toledo to Naples is about 1,075 miles. I know that Toledo to Naples is closer to 1,200 miles when driving, and I’d guess LA is probably around 2,500 or so.
So far I’ve managed to get a little sun while walking around. I hope I don’t come back looking like a lobster or looking too pale still. Somewhere in between would be very nice.
Yesterday my father and I went to breakfast at an awesome beachside buffet. While there, I snapped some photos of a Hawaiian-style wedding (these photos are in my photo collection). It was actually really neat to watch! I hope the poor guy had her sign a pre-nup before he made the big mistake. After breakfast we walked around and did some sightseeing, and finally ended up seeing Harry Potter: Order of the Phoenix at the amazing theatre here in Honolulu. Although I enjoyed the movie, I was much more impressed with the theatre itself. I’ve never been to a theatre where they have you dispense your own fountain drinks (free refills anyone?). Also, for some reason what they consider a “medium” popcorn here in Hawaii is easily larger than an Ohio “large.” The place was clean, the staff were all extremely friendly (actually, it seems like EVERYONE here in Hawaii is friendly and personable), and the architecture of the building was completely bad ass. I have a photo or two of the exterior posted in my photo collection.
Today we’re heading back to the same seaside breakfast place, then off to the local zoo. According to my father, the zoo here is one of the best in the world, so I may have some more good photos to share this afternoon. In the next day or two we’re going to hit up Pearl Harbor, and I’m really looking forward to that.
Be sure to check out the photos!