BerthaBlog

It tells me when it needs service.

I’m not good at remembering maintenance details. Most of my plants die because I forget to water them. With critters, I do quite well. A critter will come up and tell me his water dish is empty. A plant will just suffer quietly, and typically I don’t notice until it’s in dire straits. I prefer to have the critters, who are more proactive in these matters.

Which is another good point about my Honda Fit—it tells me when it needs something. It has a little wrench-shaped light on the dashboard that lights up when the car wants service.

The wrench-light isn’t the best part, though. A lot of cars have little lights that come on to let you know the engine needs service. Some of them are shaped like tools, and some actually have words that say “service engine soon.” And that’s all you get, a vague suggestion that the car needs service. It might need minor routine maintenance, or the transmission might be about to drop out onto the road. There’s no telling; you just get the one light for everything.

My Fit gives me more useful info. When the little wrench light comes on, the car also replaces my digital odometer display with various codes to let me know why. Last week the light came on, and the codes said “Oil life 15%,” and “B 1.” The owner’s manual translates these codes for me:

Oil life 15%: Well, that one’s pretty self-explanatory. Change the oil.

B: While you’re at it, the oil filter needs replacing, and you should check my fluids, brakes, and a few other things.

1: Also, it’s time to rotate my tires.

This afternoon I took her up to the friendly Honda dealership where we bought her, and they performed the maintenance requested by her little dashboard lights. I love that. It’s so much easier to take care of a car that tells you exactly what it needs.

McD’s is doing their Monopoly game again—you collect your little game pieces, and if you manage to score one of the rare ones you win some money. The game pieces also have codes on them; you enter the code online and “play” a web version, nominally to increase you chances of winning.

I figure if we’re going to McDonald’s anyway, we might as well collect the things. My youngest son is in charge of that, because he loves collecting and sorting things. I believe he can tell you, without looking, which pieces we have and which ones we’re lacking.

This morning I went to the McD website to enter the game piece codes—again, might as well since I’ve got ’em. And I observed an interesting thing:

My little dog started out on Pacific Avenue, nine spaces away from the Go corner.

I rolled an eight, which should have landed him on Boardwalk.

The game moved him nine spaces to land him on Go.

Humph, I say.

I suspected the web version of the game was crooked, or a lot more people would be winning. With an honest pair of dice you can only go around that board so many times before you’ve landed on all the squares. Now I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

“You should report that!” declared my son.

“How would I prove it?” I doubt my screenshot would provide court evidence. I doubt we’ll even stop going to McD’s, since we weren’t going there any more or less for the game pieces. But just for the record, their web game is rigged.