Hey all. Been awhile since I posted in the iMiEV forums (or even visited the forums). Been preoccupied with various other life distractions. I originally planned to post this under the “PREPARATION FOR COLD SEASONS” thread, but by the time I had gotten to my sixth paragraph, I started feeling empathy for anyone who had to read through my post just to get to the juicy stuff in the rest of the thread. So, I decided to start a cold weather thread of my own and add to it as I experience my first winter with my i-MiEV, which was purchased in July 2013.
For the past three weeks, we have finally been experiencing very cold weather here in the Chicagoland area. So, I thought I would post an update on my experience with my Meepster thus far and thoughts I have on cold weather driving. I'm the one who has been so OCD concerned about range and comfort during cold weather. So, now that it's here, it's time to talk from personal experience.
I have definitely noticed a significant decrease in range in the cold weather. When it first started cooling down a bit in mid-autumn, my average RR after a full charge dropped from 78-83 miles RR to around 68-73 miles RR. During this time, I didn't really need to use climate control (CC) much. So, I can safely assume this decrease is due to lower ambient temperatures, and thus, lower battery capacity.
The past three weeks, we have seen daily high temperatures range between 10°F - 45°F, with it seeming to average right around the 30°F - 38°F range. During this time, I have noticed a very significant decrease in RR after a full charge, as would be expected. These mornings, the RR has been ranging between 58-61 miles. However, I need to put a big ol' asterisk next to those numbers. Those numbers are with the CC already turned on at my default settings when I first start the car. If I'm paying close attention, when I first turn on the car, the iMiEV will briefly flash the non-CC RR before immediately recalculating and posting the RR with CC factored in. The non-CC RR usually appears to be somewhere in the 68-72 range. So, pretty close to my mid-autumn RR numbers. I am sure these RR numbers will continue to drop as we move deeper into the winter season and start getting our daily highs in the teens and single digits.
Now that range numbers are out of the way, let me get to my initial experience and thoughts on cold weather driving in the iMiEV. First I will describe our SOP with regards to CC during the regular work week. Many, if not most, of you have seen my frenetic posts in other threads regarding range anxiety and comfort during the cold weather season. If you recall, my daily round-trip commute during the workweek averages around 35-40 miles or so depending on any running around I need to do during lunch or in the evenings. This includes: 1). Leaving our house and dropping the kids off at their grandparents', which is roughly three blocks away; 2). Driving my wife to the commuter train station, which is about 4 miles into the drive; and 5). Finally arriving at work, which is almost exactly 15 miles from start to beginning. Sometimes I run local errands during lunch and maybe a couple in the evening.
My SOP these days is to use the remote to pre-heat the car about 20 minutes before we leave in the morning (if I remember). Plugged into an L2 EVSE, pre-heating the car gets it very nice and toasty, as long as I start it well before we plan to leave. I am quite surprised at how warm it gets; almost as warm as any ICE I've driven. I then get everyone and everything packed and buckled in the car and only unplug the Meepster immediately before I get in and take off. My standard CC settings that I leave on almost all of the time are the temperature turned all the way up, the fan speed right in the middle of the dial (dial indicator is perfectly horizontal and pointing at the driver), and the vent dial set to feet/defrost. With pre-heating and these settings, the iMiEV stays nice and warm for the first part of the commute. We lose a little heat when we drop off the kids because all the doors and the hatch get opened and closed. However, the car is still comfortably warm-ish during the drive to the commuter train station. I lose a bit more heat when my wife gets out of the car. During the remaining drive to work, with my standard CC settings, the climate stays... meh. It's not warm but it's not cold, either. It is comfortable enough to drive without my gloves and my hands don't freeze.
Another thing I should mention is the driver's seat warmer. Whenever I have passengers in the car, I DO NOT use the seat warmer. This is mostly out of solidarity as I feel it gives me an unfair advantage. Why should I have a nice toasty bum while everyone else has to just suck it up?! Secondarily, it allows me to experience the climate just as everyone else does. I can make adjustments to the CC if needed. However, once I have dropped everyone off, I turn on the seat warmer for the remaining drive into work. If the outside temperature isn't too bad and if the sun is out, I may drop the fan speed down to the very first click to save range.
Once I get to work, the car is parked outside unprotected for 8.5 hours. Sometimes I run errands at lunch. So, it gets a little use then. But most of the time I work through lunch, and the Meepster will have to sit in the cold the entire duration of the workday. Unfortunately, my work does not have any charging stations, and they will not allow me to plug in anywhere. So, I do not have the convenience of recharging during the day and pre-heating my car before leaving in the evening. So, every night, I have to start with a thoroughly chilled iMiEV. If the daytime temp wasn't too low and the sun was shining brightly, the cabin temp may be bearable. However, as it keeps getting colder and the sun keeps setting earlier each day, my car is going to be chilled to the frame everyday when I leave work. If it is exceptionally cold, which it has been a few days already, and depending on my RR and the anticipated drive time home, I may turn on MAX heat for a few minutes to get things warming up a bit faster. But then I immediately turn off the MAX and go back to my usual middle fan speed setting.
Here are the RR numbers I am seeing for my commute. In the mornings, with the CC set to my usual, I am starting off with 58-61 miles. By the time I get to work, I usually have around 35-39 miles left on the RR. By the time I get home from work and pick up the girls from the grandparents', but before picking up my wife from the train, I usually have anywhere from 12-20 miles left, depending on traffic. Since I still have to go pick up my wife from the train, I always plug the iMiEV in right away when I get home to give me a little more juice. I can usually get about 30-40 minutes of extra charge time before we leave to pick her up. Also, this lets me pre-heat the car again before we leave. This extra charge time and pre-heating is very important because we have to get to the train station about 10-15 minutes early in order to avoid a cr@ppy traffic situation that occurs if we leave any later. So, this means we are usually just sitting in the car with our heat running waiting for my wife. No driving. No chance for regen. No plugging in. Just sitting there using precious RR to keep us all mediocre-ly warm. Unfortunately, due to the sometimes unreliable nature of our particular train line, my wife's train could be running a little late. So, we sit there even longer using power to keep from freezing. From past experience, the unreliability of the train ALWAYS gets worse as the winter season gets colder, and we can sometimes experience SIGNIFICANT delays. I am going to have to devise an emergency plan for such situations as we could seriously run the risk of going “turtle” sitting there trying to stay warm. And, of course, once my wife arrives, we still need to keep warm on the drive home.
Now I will express my opinions and/or concerns about the iMiEV during the little bit of cold weather driving that I have experienced to date. So far, we have not really had any weather that has caused hazardous driving conditions. So, I will not cover the iMiEV’s handling in such weather as I have no experience with it yet. This is purely related to range anxiety and passenger comfort. Here goes:
1). I love the remote pre-heat feature… as long as I remember to use it! Now that cold weather is here, and I have the iMiEV plugged into my L2 EVSE pretty much whenever it is not in use, I can pre-heat the car anytime I need to use it! As long as I remember to start it well in advance of my departure, it can get very warm and toasty; on par with an ICE.
2). On the downside, once you unplug the iMiEV, the inside cabin temp can start dropping pretty quick depending on the outside temp and your use/non-use of the CC. One of these days, when it is really chilly out, I’m going to test just how long the cabin temp stays warm enough to keep us comfortable. Unfortunately, I have my doubts about it staying warm for long, and I don’t think my wife will let me carry on the experiment for very long!
3). With that said, the iMiEV seems perfectly capable of maintaining a comfortable interior temp after unplugging; even maintains a WARM environment for a brief time. But by comfortable, I mean it keeps you from freezing or wishing you had multiple layers of thermal undergarments. By no means does it keep the cabin nice and WARM for an extended period of time. Of course, I may not be giving the iMiEV proper credit as I have not had the bravery to put its full MAX heating capabilities (unplugged) to the test for an extended period of time. As it is, I’m just barely making it home at the end of the day with the minimal of amount of heat I’m using. I would not dare attempt to use the MAX heat setting during the entire trip to work unless I had a charging station at my disposal once I got there, which I don’t. So, I don’t use MAX.
4). My experience with using MAX heat while driving is very minimal. The few times I have used it were on exceptionally cold days when I was leaving work. The Meepster had been sitting outside in the cold all day. I wanted to warm her up as quickly as possible. With the temp setting at full heat, I pushed the MAX button and let ‘er rip! However, as soon as I felt warm air starting to blow, I turned off the MAX heat and went back to my usual CC settings. Watching the RR miles getting chewed up with MAX heat running is enough to make me fear the turtle and become quite miserly with the heat.
5). I have noticed that the fan speed seems to have a greater effect on RR than the temp setting. Here is my half-baked, nonscientific experiment with CC heat settings. With the temp on full heat and starting with the fan on click #1 (lowest speed), my RR drops one mile for each increment of increased fan speed. If I start with the fan speed on my usual middle setting and the temp on full heat, turning the heat DOWN from full heat to the midpoint between full and the green dot (neutral), I gain at most only 1 mile on the RR. It’s not until I move the temp past the midpoint and closer to the green dot that I see a marked effect on the RR.
6). So far, as long as I keep the temp setting at full heat and the blower on (even on its lowest setting), I have no problems keeping the windshield and front windows clear of fog. The back windows tend to fog over a bit if I have passengers, but nothing too bad. Since we have not yet had ice/frozen snow on the windshield (Meepster is garaged at night), I have not been able to test its efficiency at defrosting the windshield. However, since it doesn’t have a heated windshield at the bottom to de-ice the wipers, I have a feeling it would take much longer than what I’ve become accustomed to with my other cars.
7). The driver-side heated seat cushion is a nice little featurette, but hardly a major selling point. While it is nice, I don’t know why they even bothered including it if they weren’t going to make it a full-seat warmer. I like having nice, hot buns as much as the next guy, but my back would appreciate a little sugar, too! What I don’t understand, and something that kind of angers me, is there are Mitsu dealers who still have iMiEVs in their inventory and they are listing the driver seat as having both a heated cushion AND a heated seatback. So, either the dealers are outright lying (no, couldn't be that) or my heated seatback is not functional. Also, why did they stop with just the driver’s bum? What? Passengers don’t like warm bums???
8). Another annoyance to me is the windshield washer fluid dispenser. While this is not a complaint specific to cold weather, it is definitely exaggerated in the winter due to the more frequent necessity of washing the windshield. The location of the dispenser is very inadequate for washing the entire windshield. I would much prefer the usual location of the sprayers mounted in front of the windshield. Also, the washer fluid dispenser freezes up at even the slightest whisper of the word “cold”. I bought some de-icing washer fluid today, though. I hope that will help at least the freezing problem.
9). (Also not specific to cold weather) It is annoying that they included only one 12-volt power outlet in the front dash. At the very least, they should have one in the rear of the armres... oops, sorry. There is no armrest! I meant the center console. ;-) My daughters sometimes need to plug in their iDevices, and they do not reach to the front. Also, since I may likely get 12-volt heated blankets for my passengers’ comfort, it would be nice to have the added accessory outlet for the rear passengers.
Okay, enough of my numbered points. As it currently stands, my main concern is still keeping myself and my passengers comfortable while still having enough range for my daily commute. So far, this seems to be working out just fine. The Meepster is perfectly capable of keeping my passengers comfortable, even toasty, for the short duration they ride with me in the morning. And the Meepster still has the range to get me to and from work with a little slack, even if just so. However, as the weather continues to get colder, my anxiety will continue to increase. I’m hopeful that there will come a point (sooner than later would be best) where any further decrease in outdoor temperatures will not have any discernible effect on my range or climate comfort.
Since it is already winter, if not according to the calendar, and already very cold outside, it is too late for me to get under the car to try and insulate the i-MiEV’s heater core and plumbing. Not that I really wanted to take on that task anyway. So, I am keeping an eye on alternatives to staying warm and extending range. I’ve already started wearing all my usual winter gear including my insulated boots, which I wear to and from work and then change into my dress shoes that I keep at work. Today at Wally World, I picked up one of those 12-volt plug-in car heaters. I don’t have any delusions that it is going to keep the car warm, but I’m hoping it will help keep the windows defogged with minimal use of the CC. The heater has a timer on it that I can set to start heating the car before I leave work. However, since the accessory power outlet is turned off when the car is turned off, that feature is useless to me.
Another Item I have picked up with high hopes for staying warm are these “Click Heat” http://www.clickheat.eu/ instant-heat thing-a-ma-bobbers. Has anyone else seen these? I bought them at one of those center-aisle kiosks at the mall. They are pretty amazing and get really, REALLY warm! I haven’t had a chance to use them in practice yet, but I’m hoping for the best. The only other thing I’m considering at this time is possibly ordering a couple of those “Cozy Car” 12-volt heated blankets to keep in the trunk for times when additional heating may be really necessary.
Anyway, thanks for your attention if you actually read through this entire treatise! I will add any additional comments to the thread as I think of them. Feel free to add your own comments, suggestions, advice, opinions, or criticisms!
For the past three weeks, we have finally been experiencing very cold weather here in the Chicagoland area. So, I thought I would post an update on my experience with my Meepster thus far and thoughts I have on cold weather driving. I'm the one who has been so OCD concerned about range and comfort during cold weather. So, now that it's here, it's time to talk from personal experience.
I have definitely noticed a significant decrease in range in the cold weather. When it first started cooling down a bit in mid-autumn, my average RR after a full charge dropped from 78-83 miles RR to around 68-73 miles RR. During this time, I didn't really need to use climate control (CC) much. So, I can safely assume this decrease is due to lower ambient temperatures, and thus, lower battery capacity.
The past three weeks, we have seen daily high temperatures range between 10°F - 45°F, with it seeming to average right around the 30°F - 38°F range. During this time, I have noticed a very significant decrease in RR after a full charge, as would be expected. These mornings, the RR has been ranging between 58-61 miles. However, I need to put a big ol' asterisk next to those numbers. Those numbers are with the CC already turned on at my default settings when I first start the car. If I'm paying close attention, when I first turn on the car, the iMiEV will briefly flash the non-CC RR before immediately recalculating and posting the RR with CC factored in. The non-CC RR usually appears to be somewhere in the 68-72 range. So, pretty close to my mid-autumn RR numbers. I am sure these RR numbers will continue to drop as we move deeper into the winter season and start getting our daily highs in the teens and single digits.
Now that range numbers are out of the way, let me get to my initial experience and thoughts on cold weather driving in the iMiEV. First I will describe our SOP with regards to CC during the regular work week. Many, if not most, of you have seen my frenetic posts in other threads regarding range anxiety and comfort during the cold weather season. If you recall, my daily round-trip commute during the workweek averages around 35-40 miles or so depending on any running around I need to do during lunch or in the evenings. This includes: 1). Leaving our house and dropping the kids off at their grandparents', which is roughly three blocks away; 2). Driving my wife to the commuter train station, which is about 4 miles into the drive; and 5). Finally arriving at work, which is almost exactly 15 miles from start to beginning. Sometimes I run local errands during lunch and maybe a couple in the evening.
My SOP these days is to use the remote to pre-heat the car about 20 minutes before we leave in the morning (if I remember). Plugged into an L2 EVSE, pre-heating the car gets it very nice and toasty, as long as I start it well before we plan to leave. I am quite surprised at how warm it gets; almost as warm as any ICE I've driven. I then get everyone and everything packed and buckled in the car and only unplug the Meepster immediately before I get in and take off. My standard CC settings that I leave on almost all of the time are the temperature turned all the way up, the fan speed right in the middle of the dial (dial indicator is perfectly horizontal and pointing at the driver), and the vent dial set to feet/defrost. With pre-heating and these settings, the iMiEV stays nice and warm for the first part of the commute. We lose a little heat when we drop off the kids because all the doors and the hatch get opened and closed. However, the car is still comfortably warm-ish during the drive to the commuter train station. I lose a bit more heat when my wife gets out of the car. During the remaining drive to work, with my standard CC settings, the climate stays... meh. It's not warm but it's not cold, either. It is comfortable enough to drive without my gloves and my hands don't freeze.
Another thing I should mention is the driver's seat warmer. Whenever I have passengers in the car, I DO NOT use the seat warmer. This is mostly out of solidarity as I feel it gives me an unfair advantage. Why should I have a nice toasty bum while everyone else has to just suck it up?! Secondarily, it allows me to experience the climate just as everyone else does. I can make adjustments to the CC if needed. However, once I have dropped everyone off, I turn on the seat warmer for the remaining drive into work. If the outside temperature isn't too bad and if the sun is out, I may drop the fan speed down to the very first click to save range.
Once I get to work, the car is parked outside unprotected for 8.5 hours. Sometimes I run errands at lunch. So, it gets a little use then. But most of the time I work through lunch, and the Meepster will have to sit in the cold the entire duration of the workday. Unfortunately, my work does not have any charging stations, and they will not allow me to plug in anywhere. So, I do not have the convenience of recharging during the day and pre-heating my car before leaving in the evening. So, every night, I have to start with a thoroughly chilled iMiEV. If the daytime temp wasn't too low and the sun was shining brightly, the cabin temp may be bearable. However, as it keeps getting colder and the sun keeps setting earlier each day, my car is going to be chilled to the frame everyday when I leave work. If it is exceptionally cold, which it has been a few days already, and depending on my RR and the anticipated drive time home, I may turn on MAX heat for a few minutes to get things warming up a bit faster. But then I immediately turn off the MAX and go back to my usual middle fan speed setting.
Here are the RR numbers I am seeing for my commute. In the mornings, with the CC set to my usual, I am starting off with 58-61 miles. By the time I get to work, I usually have around 35-39 miles left on the RR. By the time I get home from work and pick up the girls from the grandparents', but before picking up my wife from the train, I usually have anywhere from 12-20 miles left, depending on traffic. Since I still have to go pick up my wife from the train, I always plug the iMiEV in right away when I get home to give me a little more juice. I can usually get about 30-40 minutes of extra charge time before we leave to pick her up. Also, this lets me pre-heat the car again before we leave. This extra charge time and pre-heating is very important because we have to get to the train station about 10-15 minutes early in order to avoid a cr@ppy traffic situation that occurs if we leave any later. So, this means we are usually just sitting in the car with our heat running waiting for my wife. No driving. No chance for regen. No plugging in. Just sitting there using precious RR to keep us all mediocre-ly warm. Unfortunately, due to the sometimes unreliable nature of our particular train line, my wife's train could be running a little late. So, we sit there even longer using power to keep from freezing. From past experience, the unreliability of the train ALWAYS gets worse as the winter season gets colder, and we can sometimes experience SIGNIFICANT delays. I am going to have to devise an emergency plan for such situations as we could seriously run the risk of going “turtle” sitting there trying to stay warm. And, of course, once my wife arrives, we still need to keep warm on the drive home.
Now I will express my opinions and/or concerns about the iMiEV during the little bit of cold weather driving that I have experienced to date. So far, we have not really had any weather that has caused hazardous driving conditions. So, I will not cover the iMiEV’s handling in such weather as I have no experience with it yet. This is purely related to range anxiety and passenger comfort. Here goes:
1). I love the remote pre-heat feature… as long as I remember to use it! Now that cold weather is here, and I have the iMiEV plugged into my L2 EVSE pretty much whenever it is not in use, I can pre-heat the car anytime I need to use it! As long as I remember to start it well in advance of my departure, it can get very warm and toasty; on par with an ICE.
2). On the downside, once you unplug the iMiEV, the inside cabin temp can start dropping pretty quick depending on the outside temp and your use/non-use of the CC. One of these days, when it is really chilly out, I’m going to test just how long the cabin temp stays warm enough to keep us comfortable. Unfortunately, I have my doubts about it staying warm for long, and I don’t think my wife will let me carry on the experiment for very long!
3). With that said, the iMiEV seems perfectly capable of maintaining a comfortable interior temp after unplugging; even maintains a WARM environment for a brief time. But by comfortable, I mean it keeps you from freezing or wishing you had multiple layers of thermal undergarments. By no means does it keep the cabin nice and WARM for an extended period of time. Of course, I may not be giving the iMiEV proper credit as I have not had the bravery to put its full MAX heating capabilities (unplugged) to the test for an extended period of time. As it is, I’m just barely making it home at the end of the day with the minimal of amount of heat I’m using. I would not dare attempt to use the MAX heat setting during the entire trip to work unless I had a charging station at my disposal once I got there, which I don’t. So, I don’t use MAX.
4). My experience with using MAX heat while driving is very minimal. The few times I have used it were on exceptionally cold days when I was leaving work. The Meepster had been sitting outside in the cold all day. I wanted to warm her up as quickly as possible. With the temp setting at full heat, I pushed the MAX button and let ‘er rip! However, as soon as I felt warm air starting to blow, I turned off the MAX heat and went back to my usual CC settings. Watching the RR miles getting chewed up with MAX heat running is enough to make me fear the turtle and become quite miserly with the heat.
5). I have noticed that the fan speed seems to have a greater effect on RR than the temp setting. Here is my half-baked, nonscientific experiment with CC heat settings. With the temp on full heat and starting with the fan on click #1 (lowest speed), my RR drops one mile for each increment of increased fan speed. If I start with the fan speed on my usual middle setting and the temp on full heat, turning the heat DOWN from full heat to the midpoint between full and the green dot (neutral), I gain at most only 1 mile on the RR. It’s not until I move the temp past the midpoint and closer to the green dot that I see a marked effect on the RR.
6). So far, as long as I keep the temp setting at full heat and the blower on (even on its lowest setting), I have no problems keeping the windshield and front windows clear of fog. The back windows tend to fog over a bit if I have passengers, but nothing too bad. Since we have not yet had ice/frozen snow on the windshield (Meepster is garaged at night), I have not been able to test its efficiency at defrosting the windshield. However, since it doesn’t have a heated windshield at the bottom to de-ice the wipers, I have a feeling it would take much longer than what I’ve become accustomed to with my other cars.
7). The driver-side heated seat cushion is a nice little featurette, but hardly a major selling point. While it is nice, I don’t know why they even bothered including it if they weren’t going to make it a full-seat warmer. I like having nice, hot buns as much as the next guy, but my back would appreciate a little sugar, too! What I don’t understand, and something that kind of angers me, is there are Mitsu dealers who still have iMiEVs in their inventory and they are listing the driver seat as having both a heated cushion AND a heated seatback. So, either the dealers are outright lying (no, couldn't be that) or my heated seatback is not functional. Also, why did they stop with just the driver’s bum? What? Passengers don’t like warm bums???
8). Another annoyance to me is the windshield washer fluid dispenser. While this is not a complaint specific to cold weather, it is definitely exaggerated in the winter due to the more frequent necessity of washing the windshield. The location of the dispenser is very inadequate for washing the entire windshield. I would much prefer the usual location of the sprayers mounted in front of the windshield. Also, the washer fluid dispenser freezes up at even the slightest whisper of the word “cold”. I bought some de-icing washer fluid today, though. I hope that will help at least the freezing problem.
9). (Also not specific to cold weather) It is annoying that they included only one 12-volt power outlet in the front dash. At the very least, they should have one in the rear of the armres... oops, sorry. There is no armrest! I meant the center console. ;-) My daughters sometimes need to plug in their iDevices, and they do not reach to the front. Also, since I may likely get 12-volt heated blankets for my passengers’ comfort, it would be nice to have the added accessory outlet for the rear passengers.
Okay, enough of my numbered points. As it currently stands, my main concern is still keeping myself and my passengers comfortable while still having enough range for my daily commute. So far, this seems to be working out just fine. The Meepster is perfectly capable of keeping my passengers comfortable, even toasty, for the short duration they ride with me in the morning. And the Meepster still has the range to get me to and from work with a little slack, even if just so. However, as the weather continues to get colder, my anxiety will continue to increase. I’m hopeful that there will come a point (sooner than later would be best) where any further decrease in outdoor temperatures will not have any discernible effect on my range or climate comfort.
Since it is already winter, if not according to the calendar, and already very cold outside, it is too late for me to get under the car to try and insulate the i-MiEV’s heater core and plumbing. Not that I really wanted to take on that task anyway. So, I am keeping an eye on alternatives to staying warm and extending range. I’ve already started wearing all my usual winter gear including my insulated boots, which I wear to and from work and then change into my dress shoes that I keep at work. Today at Wally World, I picked up one of those 12-volt plug-in car heaters. I don’t have any delusions that it is going to keep the car warm, but I’m hoping it will help keep the windows defogged with minimal use of the CC. The heater has a timer on it that I can set to start heating the car before I leave work. However, since the accessory power outlet is turned off when the car is turned off, that feature is useless to me.
Another Item I have picked up with high hopes for staying warm are these “Click Heat” http://www.clickheat.eu/ instant-heat thing-a-ma-bobbers. Has anyone else seen these? I bought them at one of those center-aisle kiosks at the mall. They are pretty amazing and get really, REALLY warm! I haven’t had a chance to use them in practice yet, but I’m hoping for the best. The only other thing I’m considering at this time is possibly ordering a couple of those “Cozy Car” 12-volt heated blankets to keep in the trunk for times when additional heating may be really necessary.
Anyway, thanks for your attention if you actually read through this entire treatise! I will add any additional comments to the thread as I think of them. Feel free to add your own comments, suggestions, advice, opinions, or criticisms!
