plus 4, Health care for cars - Vanguard

Health care for cars - Vanguard
10 for 10 - Register-Guard
Prepare Your Car For Colder Weather - WYFF4.com
Upcoming Interstate Exits At A Glance With The New iExit iPhone App - PRWeb
BILL HASTINGS' INSIDE INDIANA - Indiana Gazette

Posted: 09 Jan 2010 09:55 AM PST

It is not what you don't know that can come back to bite you; it is what you know for sure that is not true. Misconceptions abound when it comes to maintaining your car.

And even the best intentions can lead you to spend more money than necessary or even compromise your safety. Here are common myths that can do more harm than good as reported in Consumers Union 2005-2009.

Myth: Engine oil should be changed every 3,000 miles.
Reality: It is usually not necessary.

Stick to the service intervals in your car's owner's manual. Under normal driving conditions, most vehicles are designed to go 7,500 miles or more between oil changes.

Changing oil more often doesn't hurt the engine, but it can cost you a lot of extra money. Automakers often recommend 3,000-mile intervals for severe driving conditions, such as constant stop-and-go driving, frequent trailer-towing, mountainous terrain, or dusty conditions.
Myth: Inflate tyres to the pressure shown on the tyre's sidewall.

Reality: The pounds-per-square-inch figure on the side of the tyre is the maximum pressure that the tyre can safely hold, not the automaker's recommended pressure, which provides the best balance of braking, handling, gas mileage, and ride comfort. That figure is usually found on a doorjamb sticker, in the glove box, or on the fuel-filler door.

Perform a monthly pressure check when tyres are cold or after the car has been parked for a few hours.
Myth: If the brake fluid is low, topping it off will fix the problem.

Reality: As brake pads wear, the level in the brake-fluid reservoir drops a bit. That helps you monitor brake wear. If the fluid level drops to or below the Low mark on the reservoir, then either your brakes are worn out or fluid is leaking.

Either way, get the brake system serviced immediately. You should also get a routine brake inspection when you rotate the tyres, about every 6,000 to 7,000 miles.

Myth: If regular-grade fuel is good, premium must be better.
Reality: Most vehicles run just fine on regular fuel. Using premium in these cars won't hurt, but it won't improve performance, either. A higher-octane number simply means that the fuel is less prone to pre-ignition problems, so it's often specified for hotter running, high-compression engines. So if your car is designed for 87-octane fuel, don't waste money on premium.

Myth: Flush the coolant with every oil change.
Reality: Radiator coolant doesn't need to be replaced very often. Most owner's manuals recommend changing the coolant every five years or 60,000 miles. Of course, if the level in the coolant reservoir is chronically low, check for a leak and get service as soon as possible.

Myth: After a jump-start, your car will soon recharge the battery.
Reality: It could take hours of driving to restore a battery's full charge, especially in the winter. That's because power accessories, such as heated seats, draw so much electricity that in some cars the alternator has little left over to recharge a run-down battery. A "load test" at a service station can determine whether the battery can still hold a charge. If so, some hours on a battery charger might be needed to revive the battery to its full potential.
Myth: Let your engine warm up for several minutes before driving.

Reality: That might have been good advice for yesteryear's cars but is less so today. Modern engines warm up more quickly when they're driven. And the sooner they warm up, the sooner they reach maximum efficiency and deliver the best fuel economy and performance. But don't rev the engine high over the first few miles while it's warming up.
Myth: A dealership must perform regular maintenance to keep your car's factory warranty valid.

Reality: As long as the maintenance items specified in the vehicle owner's manual are performed on schedule, the work can be done at any auto-repair shop. If you're knowledgeable, you can even do the work yourself. Just keep accurate records and receipts to back you up in case of a warranty dispute on a future repair.

Myth: Dishwashing and laundry detergents make a good car wash.
Reality: Detergent can strip off a car's wax finish. Instead, use a car-wash liquid, which is formulated to clean without removing wax.

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

10 for 10 - Register-Guard

Posted: 08 Jan 2010 09:50 AM PST

"Synecdoche, New York" is the best film of the decade. It intends no less than to evoke the strategies we use to live our lives.

After beginning my first viewing of it in confusion, I began to glimpse its purpose and by the end was eager to see it again, then once again, and I am not finished. Charlie Kaufman understands how I live my life, and I suppose his own, and I suspect most of us.

Faced with the bewildering demands of time, space, emotion, morality, lust, greed, hope, dreams, dreads and faiths, we build compartments in our minds. It is a way of seeming sane.

The workings of the mind are a concern in all his screenplays, but in "Synecdoche" (2008), his first film as a director, he makes it his subject, and what huge ambition that demonstrates. He's like a novelist who wants to get it all in the first book in case he never publishes another.

Those who felt the film was disorganized or incoherent would benefit from seeing it again. It isn't about a narrative, although it pretends to be. It's about a method, the method by which we organize our lives and define our realities.

But already "Synecdoche" has me thinking in terms of the film's insight. That is its power. Let me stand back and consider it as a movie.

It's about a theater director named Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who begins with a successful regional production, is given a MacArthur genius grant, and moves with a troupe of actors into a New York warehouse.

There, they develop a play that grows and grows, and he devises a set representing their various rooms and lives. The film begins as apparently realistic, but it shades off into — fantasy? chaos? complexity?

What happens in the film isn't supposed to happen in life. The membrane between fact and fiction becomes permeable, and the separate lives intermingle.

Caden hardly seems to know whose life he's living; his characters develop minds of their own. How many authors have you heard say their dialogue involves "just writing down what the characters would say"?

Kaufman has made the most perceptive film I can recall about how we live in the world. It is his debut as a director, but his most important contribution is the screenplay.

Make no mistake that he sweated blood over this screenplay. Somebody had to know what was happening on all those levels, and that had to be the writer. Of course he directed it. Who else could have comprehended it?

The other top films of the decade:

2. "The Hurt Locker" (2009). A film that concerns not the war but the warrior.

It's set in Iraq, and by nature we identify with the hero, James (Jeremy Renner). But it focuses not on the enemy but on the bomb disposal expert himself, who risks his life hundreds of times when the slightest mistake would mean maiming or death.

"War is a drug," the opening titles tell us. The man's fellow soldiers are angry with him for the chances he takes. He considers bomb disposal a battle of the wits between himself and the designer.

Yes, but the designer is not there if a bomb explodes. He is. Yet he volunteers.

Apart from this psychological puzzle, Kathryn Bigelow's film has a masterful command of editing, tempo, character and photography. She asks if a man like James requires such a fearsome job.

The film is a triumph of theme and execution, and very nearly flawless.

3. "Monster" (2004). An Egyptian film critic told me in disbelief that this film made him sympathize with a serial killer. I knew what he meant. We are enjoined to love not the sin but the sinner.

Patty Jenkins' film is based on the life of Aileen Wuornos, a damaged woman who committed seven murders. It doesn't excuse the murders. It asks that we witness the woman's final desperate attempt to be a better person than her fate intended.

Charlize Theron's performance in the role is one of the greatest performances in the history of the cinema. She transforms herself into a character with an uncanny resemblance to the real Aileen Wuornos — but mere impersonation isn't as difficult as embodying another person.

Aileen, abused all of her life, knows she is doing evil but is driven to it by her deep need to provide for another person, her lover Selby (Christina Ricci), as she was never provided for herself. This doesn't make murder right in her mind, but she believes it's necessary.

We disagree. But we're asked to empathize with her ruined soul, and because of Theron and Jenkins, we find that possible.

4. "Juno" (2007). One of a kind, a film that delighted me from beginning to end, never stepping wrong with its saucy young heroine who faces an unexpected pregnancy with forthright boldness.

To be sure, life doesn't always provide parents and an adoptive mother for the baby as comforting as Juno's. But Jason Reitman's second feature doesn't set out to be realistic; it's a fable about how the sad realities of teen pregnancy might be transformed in a good-hearted world.

Ellen Page creates a character to be long cherished — a smart, articulate 16-year-old who keeps a brave front and yet deeply feels what she's going through.

Juno's dialogue is so nimble and funny that some said no real person thinks that fast and talks like that. I was surprised how much I laughed during "Juno," and then surprised how much I cared.

5. "Me and You and Everyone We Know" (2005). Another extraordinary film centered on a woman. Is it possible that women in the movies more readily embody emotion, and men tend more toward external action? But women as wildly different as Aileen Wuornos, Juno and Miranda July's Christine are tuned to inner channels that drive them with feeling, not plots.

This first feature shows a certainty about the tone it wants to strike, which is of fragile magic. We don't learn a lot about Christine — more, actually, about Richard (John Hawkes), the awkward shoe salesman she likes. But the story's not about her life; it's about how, for her, love requires someone who speaks her rare emotional language, a language of whimsy and daring, of playful mind games and bold challenges.

July's film fits no genre, fulfills no expectations, creates its own rules, and seeks only to share a strange and lovable mind with us.

6. "Chop Shop" (2008). Here is the third world, thriving under the flight path to LaGuardia.

Ale (Alejandro Polanco), a 12-year-old boy, works for the owner of an auto repair shop in an area few New Yorkers know about: Willets Point, square blocks of auto and tire shops that hustle for business.

He's an orphan, dreaming of being reunited with his 16-year-old sister. He steals a little, cons a little, sells pirated DVDs and mostly works hard. He lives in a room knocked together in the crawl space of the shop. He's not educated, but is bright, resourceful and happy.

Ramin Bahrani, an Iranian-American born in Winston-Salem, N.C., has made three films (including "Man Push Cart" and "Goodbye Solo"), and all three have made my annual Best 10 lists. In my opinion, he's the new director of the decade.

7. "The Son" (2002). In a career filled with great films, "Le Fils" by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne is stunning.

It focuses intensely on two characters: Olivier (Olivier Gourmet), a Belgian carpenter, and Francis (Morgan Marinne), a young apprentice that a social worker wants to place with him. Olivier refuses.

The moment they leave, Olivier scurries after them like a feral animal, spies on them through a door opening and leaps onto a metal cabinet to look through a high window. Then he says he will take the boy.

That's all I choose to say. What connects them is revealed so carefully and deliberately that any hint would diminish the experience.

8. "25th Hour" (2003). A film about the last 24 hours of freedom for Monty Brogan (Edward Norton), a convicted drug dealer. He lives in a heightened state. He focuses on the remaining important things: his lover, his father, his best friends.

Spike Lee, working with David Benioff's adaptation of his own novel, gives adequate screen time to all the people in Monty's life; their lives will continue but, his friends agree, they will never see Monty again. Not the Monty they know.

Lee writes eloquently with his camera in strategies that are anything but conventional.

9. "Almost Famous" (2000). The story of a 15-year-old kid (Patrick Fugit), smart and terrifyingly earnest, who through luck and pluck gets assigned by Rolling Stone magazine to profile a rising rock band.

It's as if Huckleberry Finn came back to life in the 1970s, and instead of taking a raft down the Mississippi, got on the bus with the band. I was hugging myself as I watched it: This is my story. Well, except in the details.

10. "My Winnipeg" (2008). If I said "Almost Famous" was my life, would you believe "My Winnipeg" tells the history of my hometown? All except for the details — which, for that matter, don't particularly pertain to Winnipeg, either.

The city fathers of Winnipeg asked Maddin, their famous local filmmaker, to direct a documentary on their city. God knows what they thought of it. Now, they can reassure the taxpayers it's one of the best films of the decade.

Roger Ebert is the Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Prepare Your Car For Colder Weather - WYFF4.com

Posted: 08 Jan 2010 09:35 AM PST

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Upcoming Interstate Exits At A Glance With The New iExit iPhone App - PRWeb

Posted: 08 Jan 2010 08:31 AM PST

What if you knew at just a glance that an upcoming exit had a favorite restaurant, hotel, gas station and store? Maybe you would hold out a little longer to combine stops and enjoy it more.

Santa Fe, NM (PRWEB) January 8, 2010 -- Have you ever gotten off at an interstate exit only to later realize a much better one was a few miles down the road? If so, there's now an iPhone app that makes sure that never happens again. Or maybe you know that you can drive another 60-100 miles before stopping for food, gas and some sleep but you don't know if you can do it all comfortably at one exit. Now you can.

Many GPS systems make travelers search for one thing at a time. Gas. Food. Lodging. Supermarket. It can be tedious. It can also be difficult to find and search for other towns that may be two hours down the highway. The driver may not be able to carry the car GPS unit inside a restaurant and plan the road ahead. And one can't just push a button and call the establishment to ask about hours or make a reservation.

Travel website Allstays.com, in partnership with Atlanta-based software company Metrocket, has created iExit, a interstate-based travel guide iPhone app that takes care of all those issues. And it is already available in Apple's App Store at a reduced introductory price. It contains over 200,000 points of interest that range from the obvious like gas stations, restaurants and hotels to gourmet grocery stores, auto services and RV repair centers. More details can be found at http://www.iexitapp.com

iExit informs users which points of interest are coming up when driving on interstates in the continental United States. Using the iPhone's location, iExit determines what points of interest are coming up and displays them in several user-friendly formats. Users can see all upcoming exits in either a list view or map view. Users can also create a list of "favorites" and only watch for those places. You can also easily call most places listed in the data.

"I personally like knowing where the next Chick-fil-a is when I'm on the interstate," says Metrocket founder, Evan Metrock. "iExit is designed to give me this information within seconds of loading up without a press of a button." iExit stores its data locally on the iPhone, meaning it works even when the phone has no AT&T service. It also supports an offline mode that allows users to lookup points of interest at any exit on any interstate. This allows you to plan the road ahead in an easier way than ever before.

AllStays.com, a ten year old travel website with a focus on road travel, is trying to make it easier to enjoy the journey itself. "We've had data like this available on the website for years but it was always static. You had to look up where you were and where you were going," explains Adam Longfellow, founder of Allstays.com. "Because of the iPhone's location capabilities, we now have the ability to deliver precisely what users want to know at both their current and future locations."

Pricing & Availability
iExit will be eventually priced at $4.99 but for a limited introductory time, it is $2.99 on the iPhone App Store
at: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/iexit/id349052631?mt=8

Additional Information
For additional information about iExit, including screenshots, the
demo video, and more, please visit http://www.iexitapp.com

AllStays.com, based in New Mexico (US), lists all kinds of lodging, from primitive campgrounds and RV Parks to luxury hotels and spa resorts. AllStays also links directly to official websites to make sure you have the real scoop on the latest and most accurate information.

Metrocket is a software development company in Atlanta, GA specializing in iPhone and web development and is found at http://www.metrocket.com.

AllStays.com
PMB #466
7 Avenida Vista Grande B-7
Santa Fe, NM 87508
Phone (928) 727-1312

###

Post Comment:
Trackback URL: http://www.prweb.com/pingpr.php/VGhpci1Db3VwLVByb2YtQ291cC1TcXVhLVBpZ2ctWmVybw==