When to update your BIOS

For about a week I've been trying to correct a problem with my desktop PC. I had updated it to Ubuntu's Hardy Heron, and suddenly I couldn't reach the network anymore. Hmmm. That was surprising. So I spent a week chasing down all the possible reasons. I decided it was the driver for my nforce chipset. The version changed in the new kernel, and when I booted to the old kernel everything worked fine. So I'm researching how to downgrade driver versions and trying to get the kernel source, etc, etc. Finally, on a whim, I check to see if there's a new BIOS for my motherboard. And there is! And it fixes the problem! I feel pretty stupid.
I overclock to get a few more frames for my games, and any BIOS change can mess up a good overclock. So I never update unless there's a problem. I just wish I would remember to try that sooner.
Moral of the story - any time you have a weird driver or hardware problem, check your BIOS revision right away.

Hypermiling?

I drive a 2002 Subaru Impreza Outback Sport. I drive mostly to work during the summer, and I drive a ways further during the school year (working on my masters). Up until a few weeks ago I averaged about 21 mpg. I wasn't careful at all about how I drove or what route I took. I had heard of hypermiling, but I didn't really know anything about it, or if it would make much difference. A friend of mine pointed me at CleanMPG.com, and I started doing some reading about stuff to do. Most of it is fairly obvious, but it takes a lot of focus - not necessarily a bad thing while driving! :) So here's what I did:
- Go the speed limit.
- Keep my RPMs below 2250 when not on the highway. That happens to be 55mph for my car. Even on the highway, I keep my RPMs below 2250 until I get to 55mph, then I accelerate to 65.
- Coast whenever safely possible - I've found that if I take the highway, I can coast for over a mile going downhill to both exit ramps I use, and I don't impact traffic at all.
- Never accelerate toward stop-signs, red lights, or stale green lights

My commute is ten miles, so I drive twenty miles a day. Now that I can coast for two miles, there's ten percent of my drive where I use almost no gas. Altogether, with these few changes, I have improved my mileage to 26mpg, which is better than 20% improvement. Nice.