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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)

#161

Post by kup0 »

c22 wrote: post #5
PaulHoule wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GM cars are notorious for (sometimes) developing strange problems that would have you think they are possessed with the devil. (Despite post-1990 GM cars being near peers to Japanese cars for reliability overall)

I had a 1989 Chrysler LeBaron that developed insane electrical issues. Windshield wipers would randomly turn on, the radio would change stations by itself. It really did seem possessed.

When I was a kid my (not wealthy) family had a Lincoln Towncar that was probably purchased used and fixed up and it ended up with some freaky electrical problems like you describe- most notably (because it freaked me out as a small child) I remember the automatic door locks would start locking/unlocking themselves rapidly, and they were big chunky metal switches that pop up and down and made an awful sound when this happened

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#162

Post by hinkley »

BoxOfRain wrote: post #71
hinkley wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned a lot of things from my father. Unfortunately a lot of them were what not to do. Don’t buy cheap tools that you’ll have to replace three times in the lifespan of one that costs 50% more. And don’t buy GM. Mechanically they may be reliable, but 90’s GM forgot how to make paint stick to metal and had to pay to repaint a massive number of vehicles that simply pealed if parked outside for too long. How? And the…

>I joked when I moved to Seattle that the main problem is since there is no salt, there are still Citations on the road and that is unnatural. Their place in the natural order is the junk yard. This was the fate of many British Leyland cars, even the ones that people genuinely liked such as as the classic Mini and the MGB were practically hygroscopic.

I will say I was somewhat delighted by the number of good looking mustangs and british roadsters there were. And so many Beetles. My roadster had a little too much bondo for my liking.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#163

Post by m463 »

dylan604 wrote: post #47

These are the kinds of stories that made Car Talk so much fun. It was so much more than just hearing about mechanics repairing cars. It was the fact that the situations were so odd and unusual that the stories were interesting. It was also fun hearing how these mechanics had been around so long and seen so many of these unusual situations that they became normal to them. It didn't hurt that they were good story telle…

"Go to your mechanic and find the oldest guy in the shop. He might be able to work on a carburetor."

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#164

Post by dotancohen »

joshmarinacci wrote: post #25
hinkley wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned a lot of things from my father. Unfortunately a lot of them were what not to do. Don’t buy cheap tools that you’ll have to replace three times in the lifespan of one that costs 50% more. And don’t buy GM. Mechanically they may be reliable, but 90’s GM forgot how to make paint stick to metal and had to pay to repaint a massive number of vehicles that simply pealed if parked outside for too long. How? And the…

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

  > Are there any good connotations of that word?
A few other GM vehicles have this issue, Chevy in particular. A well known example is the market failure of calling a car Nova (No-Va) in South America.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#165

Post by ethbr1 »

asddubs wrote: post #148
jjbinx007 wrote: post #49

We had a similar problem at work in the late 90s. A member of staff reported that their mouse would stop working between certain hours of the day. It had apparently been okay in the morning, stopped working over lunchtime then started again later. On some days it would work perfectly all day long, but on others it would stop working between those hours. The biggest clue was it would always work perfectly on overcast…

Another similar anecdote I heard before was related to a wireless device, and some employees flying a drone during their break, generating interference.

My parents have some old Gateway amplified computer speakers. Came with the 386!

They still work perfectly... except for a regular pop of noise every few seconds that would intermittently show up, that scaled with the volume setting.

It turned out, their portable phone (read: landline with short-distance wireless RF handset) would ping from the base station to the handset, if it were off the cradle, which was being picked up by the unshielded line-level audio cable and amplified.

Moved the base station further from the cable, pop disappeared.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#166

Post by dotancohen »

hydrok9 wrote: post #70
joshmarinacci wrote: post #25

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?

Citation just means to be noted for something ("Cited for valour.")

But in the context of motor vehicles, the term is highly associated with infractions and monetary fines.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#167

Post by m463 »

deelowe wrote: post #20

Reminds me of a short book I like that talks about these sort of tings titled "An Engineer's Guide to Solving Problems." It starts with a similar situation - "The Dog Barks When the Phone Rings." Eventually, you get to a section called “If I Could See it, I Could Fix it!” which discusses the importance of understanding the problem before attempting fixes.

> "The Dog Barks When the Phone Rings."

Went to a friend's house years ago, and knocked on the front door. Loud running, then BOOM door moves as dog jumps up onto other side. After some finagling, my friend finally gets the door open and says "Use the doorbell next time, he hasn't figured it out"

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#168

Post by rectang »

freedomben wrote: post #154
reedf1 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell me you only use memory managed languages without telling me...

please expand to include more explanation for why you think this is a memory managed lanugage problem. I used C and C++ professionally for years and ran into all sorts of issues like this. Interaction between subsystems doesn't care at all what language you're using inside each component, they care about design patterns and architecture.

GP is correct that I generally prefer memory managed languages, I just think it’s right to emphasize that this preference is informed by experience. I’ve spent large amounts of my career writing C code, and now when I have a choice I’d prefer Rust for systems projects.

The higher-level point is that Heisenbugs are an emergent phenomenon of complex systems when fundamentals are lacking.

* C systems are lacking because the language is very old and we’ve learned that we need additional infrastructure to avoid memory errors.

* 1980s GM systems were lacking because of a management culture which didn’t value reliability, leading to inevitable issues in e.g. poor grounding and electrical isolation.

It’s my belief that many contemporary tech companies have management cultures similar to 1980s GM, and subsequently waste tremendous resources when troubleshooting complex systems which are not designed to facilitate troubleshooting. That’s why the original article resonates strongly with me.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#169

Post by gav »

dkarl wrote: post #122
iforgotpassword wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 inco…

It is a common story and sometimes those get put in the collective blender and we get apocryphal stories out of it. Here's two stories of my own:

Back in the mid 90s, I built out a system that gave every school in a district their own webpage that was carved out of some government funding for providing internet access. There was no budget for hardware though, so it ended up running on a repurposed workstation in somebody's office. One Tuesday even the cleaners unplugged it to vacuum and it didn't power back up after being plugged in. On Wednesday somebody helpfully stuck a piece of paper saying "don't unplug" to it, which seemed to solve that problem until the whole project was mothballed.

In the late 90s, I worked at a company where we started getting complaints from the staff about machines being getting slower over time. Nobody took it seriously until there was an inventory of machines taken and we found that a large amount had significantly less memory installed than they should have, somebody was stealing half the memory sticks from each. Hidden cameras were installed in the office and it turned out that somebody on the cleaning crew came with a screwdriver and ESD bags and knew how much to take to leave the machines working.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#170

Post by dotancohen »

aidenn0 wrote: post #111
vGPU wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with having a bunch of experts is that experts usually forget to check the basics. I’m sure we’ve all been caught trying to troubleshoot a problem where the actual issue was a loose cable.

I worked tech support that included a device for software developers that had Ethernet connectivity. I learned very quickly to say "Try reseating the Ethernet cable" because if I said "Is the Ethernet plugged in" about 1/3 of the people would respond very negatively (e.g. "I'm not a fucking moron") but by having to reseat the cable, they would sometimes discover it's not plugged in.

The classic way to get the consumer to power cycle the hardware is to ask them which color ring is at the base of the DC plug. It doesn't really matter what color it is, what matters is that it was removed and the hardware definitely restarted.
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