{"version":"https:\/\/jsonfeed.org\/version\/1","title":"My Feed Title","home_page_url":"https:\/\/matthewminer.name\/blog\/","feed_url":"https:\/\/matthewminer.name\/blog\/blog\/.json","description":"My Blog","author":{"name":"Matthew Miner"},"items":[{"title":"What Is the Second Drive for on My Automatic Gear Shifter?","date_published":"2025-08-25T15:15:00+00:00","id":"https:\/\/matthewminer.name\/blog\/what-is-the-second-drive-for-on-my-automatic-gear-shifter","url":"https:\/\/matthewminer.name\/blog\/what-is-the-second-drive-for-on-my-automatic-gear-shifter","content_html":"

On many cars you may notice that the gear shifter has two D<\/em>s. You know what park, reverse, & neutral are. You hopefully also know that the numbers are for explicit downshifting, but why does drive appear twice? <\/p>\n

The first D<\/em> with a white background is really meant to be a D<\/em> inside of an O<\/em> for \"overdrive.\" This enables all of the gears in your transmission and allows you to go into the highest gear, which is sometimes called \"overdrive,\" to optimize your MPG on the highway. The lower, plain D<\/em> essentially is downshifting as well, as it prevents your transmission from shifting into the highest, overdrive gear. <\/p>\n

When Should I Use Which?<\/h2>\n

For those who aren't gear heads, you may not intuitively grasp the benefits of each.<\/p>\n

If you are at highway speeds (like over 45 mph) for a significant period of time, you definitely want to use overdrive, as this will greatly improve your mileage. Every higher gear it can shift into allows it to spin its wheels more times for fewer engine rotations, allowing more fuel to be used actually moving you forward versus just spinning the engine with torque you don't need. Overdrive is so named because its the only gear that spins the wheel more than once per time the engine spins, so it increases their RPM<\/abbr> over the engine's.<\/p>\n

You only ever really want to use the non-overdrive drive when your vehicle is struggling. If you are pulling a trailer or going up steep hills at high speeds, your engine may try to shift into overdrive, realize it cannot power that, shift back, and then try again. Modern cars do their best to avoid such miscalculations, but if you are going up and down hills it can become able to upshift and then not be able to handle it back and forth frequently. It is something you literally have to play by ear and listen whether your vehicle is shifting back and forth often. If you notice such, you may wish to use the plain D<\/em> to maximize your transmission's lifespan by avoiding unnecessary high-speed shifts. The benefit in fuel savings gained by briefly shifting into overdrive in such situations is likely to be outweighed by the added wear on your transmission, causing an early very expensive repair.<\/p>\n

If you don't want to think about it and just want to stick with one, always use the overdrive mode, the first D<\/em> with a white background. While you may get some avoidable wear on your tranny, it is designed to be used and the gas savings will far make up for it. Especially if you avoid towing too-heavy loads with vehicles not designed for it, you shouldn't have to worry about using anything but the first, overdrive option.<\/p>","tags":["automobiles"],"image":"\/blog\/user\/pages\/01.blog\/what-is-the-second-drive-for-on-my-automatic-gear-shifter\/PXL_20250822_170848584.jpg"},{"title":"Cookie Confusion","date_published":"2025-06-03T11:09:00+00:00","id":"https:\/\/matthewminer.name\/blog\/cookie-confusion","url":"https:\/\/matthewminer.name\/blog\/cookie-confusion","content_html":"

The recent news that Mondel\u0113z International\u2014parent company of Nabisco and producer of Oreos, Chips Ahoy, Nutter Butter, and many other snack goods\u2014is suing Aldi<\/a>, popular budget-friendly grocery store. This is not for just copying cookies. There's nothing illegal about producing such similar products, or else Nabisco would itself be in trouble for cloning Hydrox. Instead, it is for allegedly infringing Nabisco's products' trade dress.<\/p>\n

Trade dress is a sister concept to trade mark which, instead of protecting a name or other mark, protects distinctive packaging. Like trademark, the test for trade dress infringement is likelihood of confusion<\/a>. If you saw store brand \"cr\u00e8me-filled chocolate sandwich cookies\" on the shelves, is it likely that you would think them to be genuine Oreos?<\/p>\n

Ultimately, this is a question for a jury, but I thought it would be interesting to present the following table of such packagings, along with other major store brands' so you can compare for yourself.<\/p>\n