It's a good thing I work from home.
A couple of weeks ago we had a sudden bout of cold weather--cold enough that we actually had to scrap the car windows before driving in the morning. This is odd for our part of New Jersey in mid-October! On the second day of the cold snap, my husband returned home about half an hour after he'd left for the day. "I can't drive this car to work," he told me. "One of the dashboard lights is on and I think it's something critical. You need to take it to the dealership. It's time for an oil change too." 
After he took my car to work instead, I packed up my laptop and headed off to the car dealership with his two-month-old car. The technician at the service desk listened patiently while I described the signal that was appearing on the dashboard: "It looks like a horseshoe with an exclamation point on the inside."
"That's the tire-pressure indicator," he informed me. "When it's cold, the air pressure in your tires will go down. We'll check it out and also do the oil change."
Boy, did I feel stupid. But who knew that this car was smart enough to let me know when the tires need air?
Fortunately for me, the waiting area of this dealership offered a free wi-fi connection, so I was able to get some work done while I sat there and tried to ignore the conversations among other car-repair customers and the overly-loud talk show on the TV.
I also fired off an email to the car manufacturer, letting them know that it would really help to have a page in the owner's manual that shows all the dashboard indicator lights and their meaning. That would save the service technicians a lot of time, I'd bet!
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