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Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

cs.cmu.edu

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Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why in the world did GM make a car with the name Citation? Are there any good connotations of that word?

I think it's funny how GM came out with the "Cavalier" to compete with Honda's "Civic". Or that matter, there was a Chevy Cobalt (e.g. a "Kobold" is a demon that causes mine accidents) or an AMC Gremlin.

...But cobalt is both a color and an element...?

Sure, the name is derived from "kobold", but that's like saying you should never call anything good "terrific", because it derives from the root "terror". Etymology isn't destiny.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#122

This is a secondhand anecdote, but it’s pretty funny. Back in the days of server rooms, a friend’s server for his company would reboot every day around 5pm. They checked everything they possibly could with the OS, they would be logged in and running checks on it and it would spontaneously go offline for about 5 minutes and reboot every day. Finally they decided to go stand in the presence of the server around the tim…

Man I've heard this story so many times, this guy must have a million friends in a hundred countries he's told this story to. :-)

I think it's more like a common experience. My wife and I both work, so we have cleaners come in every two weeks for a deep clean. We've used several different companies, and apparently it's standard practice to unplug things when a power outlet is needed. They don't unplug computers that have monitors, and they don't unplug things with visible clocks that would need to be reset, so they do take some care not to inconvenience us, but they'll unplug anything else, including NAS appliances, DVRs in the middle of recording shows, etc. When we hire a new company, we make sure they mark down a special request that they not unplug anything, pointing out that we have ample outlets and can help them find one or free one up if necessary. I also replace any network connectors that lose their little plastic locking tabs, because they're likely to slip loose when things get jostled around during cleaning.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#123
When I moved into my last house, I had a fun electrical problem. We moved in October and I would end the day by taking the trash out. Now, my garbage can was outside the door from my garage to the backyard. One night the light outside that door didn't go on. It was late, so I figured I'd look at it the next day. Worked fine all day, then at night it didn't work again. It was a new house, so I called the builder.

The electrician came out to check it and gave me the most incredulous look when I told him it didn't work at night. But he went to take a look. Came back later and said that the wire was barely touching the light fixture. So, at night, when it go colder it would slightly pull back and no longer be touching. During the day it would warm up, expand and would work just fine.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#124
post #58

Why did the car only fail to start in front of the ice cream shop? Surely there are more occasions where you turn off the engine and turn it back on again within a short time?

Because the story is fiction. There are so many variables that would change the amount of time the engine is stopped: where you parked, how long the line at the register is, whether you had exact change or not. Also the ambient temperature would change both the likelihood and duration of vapor lock.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#126
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a 2009 Mercedes SLK that had the same symptom. It was absolutely fine 99.9% of the time, but one time in a thousand it wouldn't even try to start. No clicks, no indication that it even knew I was in there turning the key. Just dead. And then seven or eight hours later... it would start fine, as if nothing ever happened. Couldn't correlate it to anything. Had it towed to a service center a few times when this h…

I have seen similar behavior on vehicles that have a dying alternator. The issue is that one vane of the rotor (or maybe stator?) has shorted and no longer functions. If when the car is shut off and the rotor stops in a particular position the alternator won’t work. Give it some time and with heating/cooling moving things around just a bit plus the act of repeatedly trying to turn it on potentially making it move jus…

Alternators aren't needed for starting. Perhaps a similar issue with the starter motor? But even then you'd hear the thunk of the starter solenoid. Any audible clue definitely makes root-causing simpler.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#127

This is a secondhand anecdote, but it’s pretty funny. Back in the days of server rooms, a friend’s server for his company would reboot every day around 5pm. They checked everything they possibly could with the OS, they would be logged in and running checks on it and it would spontaneously go offline for about 5 minutes and reboot every day. Finally they decided to go stand in the presence of the server around the tim…

Oh I have a similar one. This one is first hand, I was in the room when we were debuging the issue.

We were developing a smart camera product which were counting traffic on a road. So for example a city council would install this camera somewhere on a road and it would generate statistics of how many lorries, and passenger vehicles, and motorbikes used that road.

One of our cameras exhibited a problem where it restarted every day around roughly the same time. It wasn't exactly the same second though, in fact there was a clear pattern to it. One day it would restart at 19:12:10 and the next day two second later, then again the third day two more seconds later. (not the real timestamp and i don't remember the real time deltas either, but there was a clear progression)

After much debuging we learned that the issue was that as the sun was settling some street furniture projected a shadow in front of our camera. Our software wrongly concluded that it is a vehicle and started collecting information about it for classification. But of course shadows creep a lot slower than real vehicles so it run out of memory before the "shaddow vehicle" has passed out of the frame. And once we run out of memory the system froze and then got restarted by a watchdog.

Turns out the pattern we have seen in the timestamps was caused by the angle of the sun changing which made the shadow trick our algorithm just a little bit later every day.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#128
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a 2009 Mercedes SLK that had the same symptom. It was absolutely fine 99.9% of the time, but one time in a thousand it wouldn't even try to start. No clicks, no indication that it even knew I was in there turning the key. Just dead. And then seven or eight hours later... it would start fine, as if nothing ever happened. Couldn't correlate it to anything. Had it towed to a service center a few times when this h…

Interesting that your car is a Mercedes... I know an older guy at church, whose kids all graduated college - except for one. His "failed" son is the top mechanic at a Mercedes dealership. He does some supervision, training, etc. But the reason the dealership is paying him $200K/year is his skill at figuring out and fixing problems like that, for the dealership's most desirable and profitable customers. (That I've hea…

Troubleshooting can be a very valuable skill.

I know a story of a certain large engineering firm, dating back to the second World War. They had a senior engineer who habitually came to work drunk and slept through meetings. Every once in a while, they'd wake him up, and he'd save them a couple of million dollars. He had a gift for finding clever solutions.

He probably would have had a better life if he'd gotten his act together. But knowing how to fix subtle issues, or how to design good processes, can be a ridiculously valuable skill.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#129
> Vanilla, being the most popular flavor, was in a separate case at the front of the store for quick pickup.

This feels very contrived; who organises a supermarket like that? "Where's the ice-cream?" "Which flavour? We keep them separately, to make an anecdote work."

(Like, the moral of the story still works, but the specifics feel very dubious...)

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