All posts by Gina Kleinmartin

Maintenance, Safety, Vehicles, Winter

Quick checkup for your car’s health

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Regular maintenance to keep something running smoothly often slips our minds, whether it is for us or for our things. But sometimes just checking things out to make sure they are ok can save you money and keep you safe. Especially when you are checking your vehicle.

 

This is a quick checklist that if preformed often will let you know if there is a problem and stop them from showing up, keep you safer, keep your fuel consumption lower, and keep your car on the road longer. And it’s easy enough to teach your teenager to do.

 

Windshield Washer Fluid

Check: monthly or if you use it a lot.

How: Check the reservoir located in your engine and marked with the universal wiper fluid icon. Keep some in your trunk or (if there is room) hooked in your engine compartment.

Why: grime, insects and rain can impede your vision and add glare at night. Your wipers can’t do all the work themselves, but like a dishrag with no soap won’t really clean your dishes.

wiper-fluid

 

Windshield Wiper Blades

Check: with each oil change and if you notice them not clearing rain in a single swipe, or leaving streaks or vibrating against the window.

How: Look for worn cracked or stiff areas. They ought to be smooth and flexible. Remember, they only last 6-12 months, depending on use and conditions, so purchasing a pair to keep in the garage or in the trunk is not a bad investment.

Why: Just like with fluid, if you can’t see, you can easily be extremely unsafe while driving.

 

Tire Pressure

Check: Once a month before driving.

How: Use a simple mechanical gauge to compare the pressure with what your car (not the tire) recommnds (this is located normally on a sticker in the glove box, door jam, or trunk.

Why: Over inflated tires wear the center of the tires faster and will give you a less than smooth ride. Under inflated tires wear the edges of the tires faster and give you less control of the car and worse fuel mileage.

 

Brake Fluid

Check: Every 3-6 months, or if your brakes feel odd. Replace completely once every two years.

How: Check the reservoir located in your engine and marked with the universal brake fluid icon. Keep some in your trunk or garage to top it off.

Why: Brake fluid allows your foot to communicate with your brakes to come to a smooth stop when you need to. If your fluid is low, or old, it can allow air bubbles to enter the fluid, causing you to brake unevenly or lose your ability to brake completely.

brake-fluid

Power Steering Fluid

Check: Every month, or if your steering feels stiff. Unlike brake fluid, you probably will never have to replace it, only add to it. Check your car’s manual for this.

How: Check the reservoir located in your engine and marked with the universal steering fluid icon. Keep some in your trunk or garage to top it off.

Why: Checking if your fluid is low will alert you to a leak that could potentially cause serious steering issues when you don’t expect them. Just like brake fluid, steering fluid helps you communicate with your car. If your fluid is low, you can suddenly lose your ability to steer.

power-steering

 

Belts

Check: Every 4-6 months.

How: Look for worn or cracked edges. These need to be replaced every 3-4 years. Look for specifics in your car’s manual.

Why: Belts help your engine control your car’s varies parts. If the belts are too lose, they will slip and waste efficiency. If they are too tight, they can cause permanent damage. If they are too old, they can snap and leave you stranded.

 

Battery

Check: every 4-6 months

How: The battery’s cables, clamps and connections ought to be checked for corrosion at least twice a year.  If the battery is showing other signs of weakness or age, like dim lights or slow engine cranking, you can have your battery checked. That’s actually a service AAA will provide for free.

Why: No one wants to be stuck with a dead battery.

 

Lights

Check: every 4-6 months

How: Simple enough if you have a partner to walk around the vehicle and check if lights are out. If you don’t, check while stopped in front of a glass window and you can see your own reflection.

Why: It’s way safer to have working lights, and you can avoid a ticket.

Safety

Phishing Scams- will you fall for one?

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It’s easy to think that only newbies and innocents will fall prey to a phishing scam, and that you are safe. After all, you know better than to believe there really is a Nigerian Prince who wants to give you free money.

But it’s not just the ‘send me your bank account information’ that can cause issues. Phishing scams can include password captures and sabotaging systems, among other malware. It’s estimated it costs one trillion dollars worldwide.

Part of the problem is that there really is little proof that training and explaining what the threats look like actually helps prevent the crimes. There is a chance, actually, that by ‘knowing what to look for’ and feeling confident you won’t get scammed, you are actually more likely to be a victim. (This has actually been common for centuries, and played on by confidence artists and magicians both.)

So, while I do not want to contribute to this ‘I know more therefore I am immune’ idea, here are some things modern research are showing that allow otherwise smart people to get scammed.

The belief that email is pretty much safe. It leads people to think that that their email is perfectly safe and to ignore red flags within messages. I’m writing this partially because I got an email from someone I knew asking me to open an attachment because it was what I had requested. I had recently asked for a file to be sent to me, and I gleefully went to open it, before I noticed the spelling was atrocious. Two days later came the message ‘don’t open any attachments from me!’

Being on autopilot. You know, you aren’t really paying attention because you are checking email while doing something else and you are clicking on things before you even realize what it is you just clicked on. I know I have done that, and close out of it very quickly, hoping no damage done.

And checking your email constantly actually contributes to this. If you do it all the time, like a habit, you can easily simply ignore red flags and click where you shouldn’t.

So your best bet is to remember all the signs you already know and all the ways to verify that an email is from who it says it is, that links go where they say they will, and that it hasn’t been hacked. And to be aware— it’s still a dangerous thing. If you are just cleaning up email in between other jobs and not paying real attention, you can get burned. No matter how smart you are. Because, in the long run, we users are the weakest link in security.

Homeschooling

Kids Today

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I recently read a book that had been circulating in my face book feed called ‘Where Did You Go?’ ‘’Out’ ‘What Did You Do?’ ‘Nothing.’

At first I thought it was going to be a self help for finding balance and a chance to minimize and simplify a life, but it when it came in from the library it was labeled a ‘memoir’ in the vein of Mark Twain.

A disappointment in the self-help part, but still, oh my yes! I wanted to read this!

Most of the book seemed to be comparing the author’s childhood with modern children, and how different they are. Let me summarize what Robert Paul Smith has to say about modern children vs. his own youth.

He complains about school conferences- that school is school and home is home and teachers and parents ought not be expected to do each other’s jobs. He complains about what is commonly called ‘helicopter parents’ (he never uses the term himself), the people who follow their kids around and fight their battles and protect them from everything. He says we are teaching our children too early- that learning ought to wait while kids get to be kids. He says that modern kids spend too much time on their gadgets and not enough time playing and inventing their own games. He also says they waste too much.

Smith says that kids get too much assurance that they are doing well, and get pleasant smiles from parents when they used to get discipline. Sex and scantily clad women are now everywhere. And he says, “these kids are getting into so much trouble with the cops because the cops are the first people they meet who say and mean it ‘you can’t do that’.

When he was a kid, kids had ‘nothing to do’, unlike today, where adults keep kids on a frenetic schedule to keep themselves and their kids too busy to do nothing. Which was exactly my problem that I went to this book for!

There is no more distinction between the good and the bad, the respectable and the disrespectable. And when he was a kid, America was GOOD. Smith assumes that this is because modern grownups are so childish that there is no room for a kid to have a secret life, or even a separate one.

Not all is horrible, though. He thinks the modern idea of not always resorting to violence is a good one.

So now, I can only assume that you are nodding along and agreeing with him. Yes, let’s go back to the way things were when we were kids!

Hang on a sec. Let me show you the copyright date. He was 46 when he wrote this book, and the copyright is 1957, so….

copyright-394

He’s talking about a childhood in WWI and the turmoil beyond.

The more things change, huh? The ‘kids today’ he’s ranting about are the baby boomers.

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