The Daily Peeve / Rant

I am struggling to understand why keyless car ignition is an improvement to old technology. In skimming the car manual for my new-to-me car, there is much reading matter devoted to how I have to maintain the key “fob.” I am bored with this feature although I will admit to liking punching the ignition button.

Already too much technology in this car for me.

Someone please tell me why key fobs are good.

esited to ads: oh never mind, there are many articles that come up on Google about keyless auto starts that I will have to read.

IL, I have not driven the new car my hubby bought. It is way too complicated. Keyless ignition, blue tooth, cameras all over, etc. I am resisting getting rid of my Civic. It seems to have the right amount of "things" for me and I am comfortable in it.

I went somewhere with a friend and she could not even get to the radio station she wanted, her car was so complicated. A coworker just decided to give up her truck with over 500,000 miles on it. I want to be like her.

I will probably never experience having to learn all the new technologies on cars as my 2008 Toyota has 53k/miles and 2010 Honda has 80k.

Speaking of trees, I've been watching ID's The Wonderland Murders, and the intro goes on about "the pine forests" in the area, or similar. And this is far from the first time I've heard the area characterized this way. It's not like there are NO pine trees around here, but they aren't particularly common on this side of the mountains. We have fir trees, and plenty of them:
Douglas-fir is the predominant species, and therefore forest type, in the Oregon Coast unit. Other common tree species in this area include western hemlock, red alder, bigleaf maple, and western red cedar. (Federal document) Not a mention of pine trees...

I guess it is time for another rant about technology so here goes: I have this new car that has non-simple things with it. No small key to start it now, that would be too damn simple, it has an electronics device called a “fob” to start the car which is three times as heavy as a key ( oh! And it also contains A KEY) and it doesn’t fit onto a key ring plus I have to carry the garage door opener with me because it’s now parked in our garage at night because it’s too fancy to park on the street.

So I have this heavy key Fob, And even bigger garage door opener to carry. I cannot keep the garage door opener with the car because the top is down on the car and it would immediately be stolen when I park it on the street as I do each day, before I put the car to bed at night. I could lock the garage door opener into the glove box. I may do that in the future but it’s a lot of fussing as I have to use the key it is contained in the fob.

It is all very complicated and yet the damn technology doesn’t do what I want to do because if it did, I would not need a key to lock the little glovebox compartment, it would lock with the fob. That way I can put the garage door opener into the glove box and lock it all with a fob in one motion. So the only thing I would have to carry would be the fob. Now that would be a technological improvement. But our world is not advanced like that and what I want doesn’t exist. I wonder if Mercedes is making a fob locking glove box?Or just using my fingerprints at this point would be a good thing for locking and unlocking the glove box.

So I guess I will be locking the garage door opener in the glove box with the key that sits inside key fob. For those of you who think this is a lot of fussing, I can assure you that IT IS!

I’m sure anyone who is reading this has crossed eyes by now because it is crazy boring. Ugh.


I bought a lanyard to hold a tiny bag for the key fob and the garage door opener. They are still much bigger than I want them to be around my neck. But that is my solution right now.

PS not that anyone cares but I also looked into tiny garage door openers while I don’t know that technology it doesn’t seem there are such things. I can’t get anything significantly smaller that seem to work than what I have now, a 4” x 3” opener.

Yesterday I read about a woman who bought a Tesla and then removed the tiny chip from the fob and had it inserted under her skin. So now she can use her car any time she has near it.

So is building a garage door opener into a button near the sunvisor on the car a dead technology? Or has Daimler decided that's not The Right Way To Do It?

I've always just carried the fob in my pocket (my wife keeps hers in her purse) and we use Homelink (built into the vehicles) for the garage.