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For a trip earlier this year we ended up borrowing a vehicle. The vehicle and I got along in most things, but we did not get along in one particular area: the door kept attacking my leg.

After a week, I ended up with 3 gashes in my leg.

The reason was that the door had a bottom section that curved, so there was a sharp edge protruding. Anything that is right next to the door while it is moving will get sliced.

Here is the offending part of the Ford Expedition:

For contrast, here is what the doors look like on the vehicles I typically drive.

As you can see, the door does have a corner but the corner is in the same plane as the rest of the door edge, so it’s not going to catch your leg as you’re standing next to it. Maybe if you angle your leg under the door, but that’s not normal.

What happens is that the part of the door that deviates from the vertical ends up sticking out as the door moves, so anything right next to the door edge will be fine when the door edge goes by, but then it will be caught by the protrusion. Here’s a diagram that shows it.

No one else in my family – or in the family that owns the vehicle – got their leg scraped. I must be the most impatient one of the bunch, closing the door before I’ve moved far enough away from it. Ah well, I still say it’s a poor design, and if I actually owned the vehicle I would be modifying those corners somehow.

I was poking about the website of Cedarville University and came upon this.

Apparently when your child is applying to go to college there, you have to know which of you is the better parent. Maybe the kid gets to decide. Who is the best parent – mom or dad?

I recommend putting in the house phone number, to avoid conflict.

A lot of newer vehicle now come with Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), which uses radar to follow the car in front of you. So all you have to do (in general) is steer, as your car will automatically slow down if you catch up to a slower car. And it will automatically speed up once the coast is clear.

I’ve had a rental car or two with the feature, and I preferred normal cruise control because I zoned out too much with the ACC.

But I now have an idea of a new feature which will improve my life. I got this idea when I was going 55 mph down a road and came upon someone going 42 mph.

My idea is this: cars should have a radar facing backwards. Then a slow car would get notified of traffic coming up behind them and the cruise control could kick in and accelerate the car to a reasonable speed.

This is, of course, the desire of all tailgaters. And as such it would probably be abused. And the driver of the slow car might not know what was happening. It’s probably a bad idea.

Alternate method: instead of accelerating the slow car, the rear radar would put on the hazards and pull the car onto the shoulder, allowing the faster traffic to pass.

That’s probably a bad idea too.

When I am walking somewhere, whether it’s in a store or an amusement park or just about anywhere, I walk faster than most people (“I walk with purpose” is my usual phrase).

If I end up stuck behind someone who is ambling or meandering, and I am forced to walk at their pace, I will amuse myself by pretending to go in slow motion. Maybe “pretending” is the wrong word, because I really will be moving in slow motion. But it takes my mind off the problem at hand (slow moving people blocking my way) and it’s usually only for a few steps (say until we get to the end of the aisle and the path opens up).

What I need to do is find the vehicular equivalent of moving my legs and arms in slow motion. What could I do with my car to pretend to go in slow motion? I haven’t come up with any good ideas. The only options are slowing way down then speeding up, which might come across as too aggressive, or weaving back and forth, which might get me pulled over for DUI.

What usually ends up happening is my wife sings the “Herbert the Snail” song at me. Not to me, at me.

Why does someone else’s spot seem warmer than your spot? Like sitting on a couch or whatever, if someone leaves and you move into that spot, it feels warmer.

I propose that we can get free energy that way. If you trade seats with someone, you’ll each feel warmer. Then trade again, it’ll feel warmer again. Keep going back and forth, and the seats will keep heating up.

The only problem is how to harness that energy before the couch catches on fire.