Shallow Thoughts : : misc

QuizCross

Watching people weave into and out of our lane while they texted on the freeway (where are all the cops who are supposed to be cracking down on that this week?), Dave came up with an idea: a competition where you drive some sort of course -- start with an autocross course, or maybe add twists like parallel parking -- while simultaneously texting. Your score is a combination of your time through the course, fewest pylons hit, and the accuracy of your texted replies.

He was thinking of a show we used to see at a pizza place we frequented a few years ago, "Cash Cab". The premise: there's a special taxi that drives around New York City rigged with video gear, and if it picks you up, you get a chance to play a "Who wants to be a millionaire" style quiz show in the time till the driver gets you to your destination.

I have to admit, although Dave's combination of Cash Cab and autocross sounded intriguing, it didn't sound like something I'd actually want to do. Although I see plenty of drivers who seem to love the challenge of parallel parking or negotiating rush-hour traffic with one hand (or no hands!), it's not my thing.

But here's a modification that did sound fun to me: you wear a hands-free headset, and while you negotiate the course, someone asks you quiz-show type questions and you have to answer while you're driving the course. You can still use both hands to drive; just not your whole brain.

It's an exercise in concentration and filtering distractions. Can you figure out what part of the course needs your fullest attention, and which parts you might be able to take nearly as fast while thinking about the quiz question? It's a biathlon for motorheads.

The scientifically minded part of me wants to take a little extra time and add a free run through the course for each contestant at the beginning and end of the event, with no quiz questions. That way everybody gets a baseline time for the course, and it's easy to find out how much the distraction hurts our driving. Some studies say that a hands-free phone is just as distracting as a handheld one. Wouldn't you love to find out exactly how true that is for you?

I know it'll never happen -- it's hard enough to reserve autocross sites without the additional complications of an untried event format. But I'd sure love to try it. If any researchers with funding for distracted-driving studies are reading this and want to use the idea, count me in as either a helper or a study subject.

I'm calling it QuizCross. You heard it here first.

Tags: autocross, games
[ 19:55 Apr 05, 2013    More misc | permalink to this entry | comments ]

Our massive winter snowstorm

I keep seeing references to the massive winter storm that's on the way, but I thought they were talking about New York. And then it started to hail ... and kept it up, long enough that we actually got little lentil-sized hailstones piling up in the yard, looking almost like it snowed.

So of course we rushed outside to take pictures. For you folks outside California, hailstorms are something we see maybe every three or four years, and hail that doesn't melt immediately after hitting the ground is quite a bit rarer. So please excuse us our excitement over a little bit of frozen water ...

Here are a few photos: Hail in Burbank.

Tags: weather
[ 14:49 Feb 08, 2013    More misc | permalink to this entry | comments ]

Patricia Peck, Requiescat in pace

I haven't been able to write much lately. I have a good excuse. I was helping my mom through the last stages of lung cancer. She died early Tuesday morning, October 9, 2012.

She was in hospice at home for the last six weeks, and Dave and I moved in to take care of her and try to make her last days more comfortable.

Hospice takes care of the drugs and medical equipment, so pain wasn't a problem (at least up until the end). But they aren't big on explaining anything, so figuring it all out was quite a learning experience for us.

I may write about that some day, but it's too hard now. It's not just losing a family member; it's who she was. Someone, I forget who, said once that I "won the mom lottery." It's true -- I couldn't have asked for a better mother. In school everybody wanted to trade moms with me. (I said no thanks.)

And some day I may write about all the things that were so great about her, and how much I appreciated her. But I'm not ready for that yet. I'm just glad I had the chance to tell her in person while she was still here. Some people don't get that chance. If there's someone in your life you really appreciate, tell them now. Just in case you don't get a chance later.

Anyway, Dave and I are back at home, trying to recover some sort of normalcy after more than a month of being full-time caregivers. I'll probably get back to posting tech tips and silly humor items soon. But for now:

Rest in peace, Mom. You were loved and appreciated, and I wish I could have had a lot longer with you.

Tags: mom
[ 19:33 Oct 13, 2012    More misc | permalink to this entry | comments ]

Fireballs -- an easier variant on the paper brick

I wrote, some time ago, about making burnable paper bricks as an alternative to shredding sensitive paper material that also helps keep you warm in winter.

We recently got pulled in to help with disposing of quite a large cache of sensitive paper, and have discovered a much faster method than the "let sit and stir occasionally" technique.

The trick is to use hot water, ideally with a little soap added. Hot soapy water breaks down the paper quite quickly; the soap helps it break down, and may also help the paper stick together better as it dries.

Stir the mess around a bit, and in as little as a few hours you can fish up handfuls of paper goosh them into nice compact tennis balls. (Though if you can let it sit overnight, so much the better.)

Try to squeeze out as much water as you can, and keep the balls reasonably small, so they'll dry quickly. Ours have been ranging from tennis ball sized to softball sized.

Then put the fireballs out in the sun to dry. We have them on a tarp in the backyard. If anyone visits, tell them it's an art project.

They feel fairly dry on the outside after a day or two, but of course the insides are still wet -- I'd let them sit for at least several weeks before throwing them into the fireplace. Don't want to smoke up the house! Fortunately, with temperatures in the nineties, I don't think we'll be needing the fireplace terribly soon.

Do check first whether your bucket's in reasonable shape. The first bucket we tried turned out to be brittle, and the bottom exploded a bit after putting the paper in. Oops! Brittle Bottom Syndrome seems to be a common fate of buckets that sit out in the backyard for too long.

But at least this photo shows the state of the paper after a short time sitting in the soapy water. I don't think anybody's going to be reading names or credit card numbers off any of these documents, whether or not they're gooshed into a ball.

We're accumulating so many fireballs that I'm hoping to try burning a pyramid of them some time this winter.

Tags: recycling, privacy
[ 14:55 Oct 01, 2012    More misc | permalink to this entry | comments ]

A haunted clock

One of the local digital clocks has developed some odd behavior.

It's in a location where it doesn't get seen that much, so it never got reset to daylight savings time, and consequently has been off by an hour since the last time switch. But that's not the odd part.

The odd part is that some time in the evening, between 10 and 11 pm, it stops displaying 9:something or 10:something like it had been, and switches to 12:44. It will then stay on 12:44 for hours, usually all night and occasionally into the morning, before switching back to one-hour-before-current-time some time in the mid-morning. Then it stays at the (one hour off from) correct time all day -- it doesn't fail again in the afternoon to show 12:44 pm. It only does its 12:44 trick late at night.

Once I noticed it, I tried resetting it to daylight savings time, to see if that would kick it out of its old habits. After the reset, the time stayed correct through most of the evening (I had an insomniac night, so I had all too many chances to check it). But then in the morning, around 8 am, there it was, showing 12:44 again. It corrected itself before 10 am.

Definitely one of the odder failure modes I've seen in a while ...

Tags: misc
[ 14:55 Jul 27, 2012    More misc | permalink to this entry | comments ]

Extremely strange seatbelt warning sticker

I bought a Miata yesterday! My new baby. It's a 2000, in a lovely color Mazda calls "twilight blue mica". (You can see Miata pictures here, if you're so inclined.)

I'd forgotten how much nicer sports cars are to drive. I retired my last X1/9 more than a year ago, and have been driving mushy street vehicles since then. The Miata surprises me every time I get into it with its immediacy -- throttle, brake, steering, everything happens now.

It does have some used-car glitches that I need to sort out (some of them maybe even severe), but in general it's a great car: in stock trim it handles a lot like the street-prepared X1/9, even on crappy Kumho tires. Of course, that could be new owner infatuation talking. Ask me again in a few months. :-)

But really what I wanted to write about was the extremely strange warning sticker that came plastered to the driver's side window. I didn't really look at the sticker until the second day after I drove the car home, and then did a double-take. It says:

While use of all seat belts reduce the chance of ejection, failure to install and use shoulder harnesses with lap belts can result in serious or fatal injuries in some crashes. Lap-only belts increase the chance of head and neck injury by allowing the upper torso to move unrestrained in a crash and increase the chance of spinal column and abdominal injuries by concentrating excessive force on the lower torso. Because children carry a disproportionate amount of body weight above the waist, they are more likely to sustain those injuries. Shoulder harnesses may be available that can be retrofitted in this vehicle. For more information call the Auto Safety Hotline at 1-800-424-9393.

If you look at the photo I took of the sticker, note the shoulder belt anchor at the right edge of the frame. It's a normal stock shoulder belt, just like you'll find in any car -- this is a 2000 model, for crying out loud, not a 1970.

A web search on the error message led me to Section 27314.5 of the California Vehicle Code, which states that

27314.5. (a) (1) Subject to paragraph (3), no dealer shall sell or offer for sale any used passenger vehicle of a model year of 1972 to 1990, inclusive, unless there is affixed to the window of the left front door or, if there is no window, to another suitable location so that it may be seen and read by a person standing outside the vehicle at that location, a notice, printed in 14-point type, which reads as follows:

... followed by the text on my sticker. It goes on:

(2) The notice shall remain affixed to the vehicle pursuant to paragraph (1) at all times that the vehicle is for sale.

So the dealer must have put this sticker on. But why? Reading on:

(3) The notice is not required to be affixed to any vehicle equipped with both a lap belt and a shoulder harness for the driver and one passenger in the front seat of the vehicle and for at least two passengers in the rear seat of the vehicle.

The dealer must not have read as far as paragraph (3).

I also found that, despite the fact that the DMV's website still links to the page I linked above, that statute was in the process of being repealed by CA Assembly Bill 2679. Except that if you click on "Read latest draft", apparently they changed their minds again in the latest version of AB 2679 and are now going to keep the warning in.

Maybe instead of leaving it unchanged or striking it, they should change it to make it clearer that it only applies to cars without shoulder harnesses installed ... if there are any such cars. Haven't shoulder harnesses been mandatory in US cars since the early 1970s? Wikipedia says they've been mandatory in the front seat since 1968 ... but the citation they give for that goes to a page that no longer exists, so that may be off by a few years.

In any case, anyone buying a car so old it doesn't have a shoulder harness and only "may" be able to have one retrofitted to it probably understands there may be some safety issues in a 40-year-old car, and doesn't need a warning sticker.

Tags: cars, miata, warning, humor
[ 20:05 May 02, 2012    More misc | permalink to this entry | comments ]

How a bogus Wikipedia entry changed nationwide tire company policy

We had to get two tires recently, after the Civic got a flat. Naturally, we wanted the new tires on the front. That's where steering and braking happens, as well as the drive wheels and most of the car's weight ... so that's where we wanted the newer tires.

The shop (America's Tire) refused. They said it's a company policy that a new pair of tires must always go on the rear.

They've even printed up glossy signs explaining their reasoning -- a fancy poster image that is, unfortunately, wrong.

They show two scenarios. In the one on the left, the rear tires are losing traction, and the rear end of the car is sliding out. That's called "oversteer". The car might spin, especially if the driver has never experienced it before.

That part's all true. The problem with their diagram is the scenario on the right, where the presumably better tires are on the rear. In their diagram, magically all four tires are holding -- nothing ever loses traction. Good deal!

But what really happens if you put the bad tires on the front is that if something slips, it'll be the front. That's called "understeer".

Understeer can be just as dangerous as oversteer. With practice (I recommend autocross!) a driver can learn to detect oversteer and steer out of it before it gets to be a problem. There's an old saying among racers and performance drivers: "Oversteer is when the passenger is scared. Understeer is when the driver is scared."

Most passenger cars, especially front-wheel-drive cars like our Civic, are designed to understeer severely to begin with. Putting the poorer tires on the front makes that even worse.

And don't forget the importance of braking. Most of a car's braking ability comes from the front tires. Don't you want your best rubber working for you in a panic stop?

While I do understand why the default might be to put new tires on the rear -- it's better for inexperienced or panicky drivers -- to insist on it in all cases is just silly.

We drove the Civic home and rotated the tires ourselves.

How did the policy get started?

Dave and I first encountered this policy a couple of years ago. In the intervening years, it's become pervasive -- just about every tire shop insists on it now. How did that happen?

If you ask at the tire shop, they may tell you that it's a federal policy -- DOT or some such agency -- or even that it's a state law. Neither is true. It's merely company policy.

Some will also tell you that it arose from a lawsuit in which a tire company was sued after a customer spun out. So two years ago, we went looking to see if that was really true.

Back then, googling either "oversteer" or "understeer" led inexorably to a Wikipedia page with a reference to "San Luis Obispo County Court Case CV078853". Unfortunately, Wikipedia's link next to the court case reference actually led to a general page for a law firm that appears to specialize in vehicular personal injury lawsuits. (Nice advertising, that.) There was no information about any such case.

Nor did there seem to be any official records online of such a case; and the SLO courthouse didn't respond to an email request for more information.

Googling the court case, though, got lots of hits -- nearly all of them pasted verbatim from the Wikipedia page, then using that as "proof" of the supposed safety argument.

The test of time

Now, a few years later, it seems that nearly all tire manufacturers have adopted this as a firm, non-negotiable policy. Some shops are even using it as a reason to refuse to rotate tires! (See, the front tires wear faster on most cars, so if you rotate tires between front and rear, now you're putting the more worn tires on the rear ... which is dangerous! Better to just let those front tires wear out and make the customer buy a new pair.)

The news is better on the Wikipedia end. Someone eventually heeded Dave's attempt to fix the Wikipedia page, removed the bogus advertising link to the ambulance-chasing law firm, and added "citation needed". Subsequently, several people rewrote the page in stages, with comments like "This is a complete replacement. The existing version was wrong from the 1st sentence and has little relationship to the standard terminology." The page is much better now.

What isn't better is that the sentence from the old Wikipedia page is still all over the net, word for word. Google for the court case and you'll find lots of examples. Many of them are content mills copying random Wikipedia content onto pages that bear no relation to cars at all. But unfortunately, you'll also find lots of cases of people using this phantom court case to argue the safety point.

Sadly, it seems that once something gets onto Wikipedia, it becomes part of the zeitgeist forever ... and however wrong it might be, you'll never be able to convince people of that.

Tags: skepticism, urban legend, wikipedia, cars
[ 18:38 Feb 19, 2012    More misc | permalink to this entry | comments ]

Why shred, when you can make paper bricks?

What do you do about all that mail -- junk and otherwise -- with incriminating information on it? You know, the stuff with your name and bank account numbers and such that you don't want an identity thief to get? If you toss them in the recycling (or, worse, the trash), who knows what might happen to them between here and the recycling plant?

Some people buy a shredder -- an electric lump of a thing that sits in a corner and turns paper into streamers. I guess it sounds kinda fun, but it costs money, uses electricity and takes up space. Or you can take all the assorted bits of paper and burn them in the fireplace or barbecue, but that's kind of a hassle and it makes a lot of ash and smoke.

A few years ago, Dave came up with what we think is a better idea: we make the paper into condensed paper fire-bricks, which we then burn the fireplace. They burn much cleaner and more slowly than those bits of paper, and they're fun to make. Here's how.

First, you collect a lot of paper -- we keep a separate wastebasket where we crumple all the papers (no need to shred them).

When you have enough to start a batch, put the papers in a bucket or other container, and fill with enough water that the paper is covered.

Let that sit for a while -- a week or two -- stirring occasionally (maybe twice a day). Ideally, you want the paper to break down to a soup in which you can't read any of the incriminating text. But if you get impatient, you can move on to the next step little early as long as all everything has gotten soft and the paper is starting to break up.

Once everything's soft and soupy, you want a mold of whatever shape you want your eventual brick to be. Cardboard ice cream containers (pictured here) work nicely, or you can use a bowl, a small bucket, practically anything.

Transfer the wet mush into your mold, squeezing out as much excess water as you can. The drier you can get it, the less time it will take to cure. Pack it into your mold as tightly as you can (understanding that if you're using a cardboard ice cream container, it can't take much packing of wet stuff).

Put the mold in a sunny place in the hard to dry, if possible. You can speed the process along by using a mold that lets excess water drain, or by compressing the mush every so often (once or twice a day) and letting any water run out. Early on, we put weights on top to keep the mush compressed, but it doesn't seem to make that much difference.

When it seems quite dry, remove it from the mold. (This mold is an old microwave popcorn making bowl that cracked, so it's no longer good for making popcorn.)

Early on, we thought it might be interesting to pack in some other flammable material, like bits of wood and nutshells left over from feeding squirrels. That gives you a lumpy breccia (the lower brick in the picture) that doesn't burn very consistently, because it's full of holes. Not a good idea, as it turned out.

The upper brick in the photo is what you get if you let your soup dissolve for a long time and don't add any lumpy stuff to it: a nice smooth brick of pressed paperboard. It's okay to add a bit of small soft stuff like dryer lint. But skip the nutshells -- those can go in the compost bin or yard waste container.

Your final brick, removed from the mold, should be a nice homogeneous piece of paperboard. It's still fairly light and not very dense ... but it burns smoothly and cleanly, and doesn't send sparks up the chimmney like those original bits of paper would have.

Save on heating bills? Well, if you make paper bricks all summer, by winter time you'll probably have saved up enough to burn for ... maybe an hour or two. No, this isn't going to heat your home. Still, it's an amusing, inexpensive and electricity-free way of disposing of that pesky printed privacy-pilfering paper that plagues us all.

Tags: recycling, privacy
[ 09:43 Sep 13, 2011    More misc | permalink to this entry | comments ]