Well, my new car is here. I picked it up from the dealership two weeks ago, and traded in my old car of 14.5 years and 195,000+ miles in the process.

Fuel efficiency is the primary reason for buying this car. The first tank got me around 42.5mpg, already better than my old car, which got me around 36mpg when it was brand new. With the second tank, I am getting around 49mpg. So I am getting better at driving my new car. Since I do a lot of combination driving (city and freeway), the ultimate goal is to get the advertised 55mpg.

I read an article recently where the owner of a silver Prius named it Silver Bullet. I think I shall name mine ... White Shadow.

Here we are in 2005, and a sixth beta for Freeciv 2.0.0. The game client still indicates a release date of December, however, which is obviously out of date.

In any case, here is my package for it. Mac OS X Panther is required. Enjoy!

The version of Simple PHP Blog I had been using had some significant problems, the worst of which is that it doesn't want to recognize entries since January of 2005.

I was glad to see, however, that the author had released a fix to the problem very quickly, so I've upgraded. One unfortunate side-effect to the upgrade is that all comments are lost. For now, I've kept an archived copy of the blog here.

One of the few things I like for breakfast is bread. So much so that I started making my own breads using a bread machine years ago.

I was recently encouraged to eat more healthily, so I've begun to make multi-grain breads. Here's a recipe that I like.

Ingredients
10 oz. of warm water
4 tbsp. of sugar
4 tbsp. of olive oil
1 tsp. of salt
2 cups of white bread flour
1 cup of whole wheat flour
1 cup of multi-grain (or ten-grain) cereal
3 tsp. of gluten
3 tsp. of yeast

Add ingredients to the machine in the order I've laid up above. Put the machine in a two-pound cycle.

You might need to experiment and adjust the quantities of the ingredients to get the desired results.

After eight months of waiting, I finally got the phone call. There is a Prius due to arrive at a local dealership in town, the lady on the phone said, and my name floated to the top of the list.

From the research I did, a lot of people seem to go for the highest end option. For me, this will be a Monday through Friday, get me to and from work car. So things like DVD navigation, voice recognition, etc., are not important to me. As cool as these features may be, I am just not willing to fork out the extra money for them. The important things to me are comfort, safety, and fuel economy.

The car that will be mine has the middle-of-the-road package featuring the smart keyless entry, which is the one cool, convenient, and practical feature that I want. There is no anti-theft system, but the dealer will add one for me, at a cost. I wonder if it integrates well with the smart keyless entry system such that it won't be a nusance, or worse yet, negate the convenience of the smart keyless entry system. Perhaps more research is warranted.

If you know something about what I am talking about, feel free to enlighten me with a comment.