Josh Bryan

According to a CNET article, a Journal of Personality and Social Psychology often misinterpret the tone of email messages about 50% of the time and believe they have correctly interpreted it 90% of the time.  This just goes to show how careful we must be as both readers and writers of communications.  As writers, we must take the extra step and try to clarify even seemingly obvious ideas.  As readers, we must try to put ourselves in the writers position and give them the greatest benefit of the doubt.  I can’t count the number of times I’ve been misunderstood or that I’ve seen people on the same side of an issue start arguing over some percieved ‘tone’ of voice.

Today, I found a useful tip about my newly aquired 2005 Toyota Corolla. Dave’s BLOG: Hacking my Camry (sort of) is an article that explains how to turn off the MAINT REQD light when the mainenance people forget to. The manual and all of the docs I found say that this light only comes on when the car thinks it is due for an oil change. So, if the oil change shop forgets to reset it , it will come on an warn about nothing. The solution:

• Turn key to Acc
• Hold odometer push-button in
• Turn key to On
• Watch the odometer reading turn to dashes
• Watch the dashes slowly disappear
• When the dashes all go away, and turn to zeroes, release the odometer button

Hope somebody finds this useful…thanks dave.