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Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

cs.cmu.edu

181–190 of 517 posts

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#181
This reminds me of a strange recurring experience I used to have with electronics in my house.

In that house,on certain days of the week at midnight, something that sounded like recordings of political speeches from WW2 would be audibly (but faintly so) from all of stationary electronics. It was so faint, that it was usually hard to pinpoint any one source, and the words used weren't understandable, so it usually sounded like it was coming from everywhere all at once, and like it was an old recording.

This would happen even if they were unplugged. Even if my power went out.

I though I was either going crazy, or my house was literally haunted by hitlers ghost.

Well one day I was in my car and recognized something on the radio that reminded me of this spooky problem I had.

It was the signon of a Catholic am radio station that opened up with Gregorian chanting, and a sermon. This signon happened at the same time on the same days of every week.

Turns out, the wiring in that house was somehow functioning as an am radio receiver, and some common components would vibrate out the audio encoded in the radio signal.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#182

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?

> 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.

Except that's not actually true: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chevrolet-nova-name-spanis...

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#183
Fabricated anecdotes like this miss the point: debug is a multi-layer approach, not a think-it-through logic puzzle. In reality, the driver would have encountered vapor lock in multiple situations, not just shopping, and as a result I think this example does more damage than good by promoting a furrowed-brow approach.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#184
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?

Of course there are: "a mention of a praiseworthy act or achievement in an official report, especially that of a member of the armed forces in wartime" Don't focus on the North American usage of "a traffic citation". Citation is almost a contranym, which is a word that has at least two meanings that are opposites of each other, i.e. bolt, bound, buckle, cleave, clip, consult, ...

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:English_contranyms

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#185

One night while in the computer science lab doing a Java assignment, my professor for that class happened to walk by the lab and quipped to me, "oh, good luck on _that_ machine." He explained: once upon a time, the machine refused to run _any_ Java programs, and would spectacularly crash and burn instead. C++ fine, python fine, anything Java was a hard nope. He didn't believe this at first until his program also star…

> At this point, there are two natural conclusions: either I have a severe hardware issue, or there is a wild memory corruption bug in the binary.

https://marcan.st/2017/12/debugging-an-evil-go-runtime-bug/

I won't spoil the conclusion. It's a long and winding path to get there and a good read. HN discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15845118

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#186
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.

I once has this happen with my father's new standing desk. He, PhD with an Electrical Engineering degree, couldn't get it working. Turned out the C13 power cable was only 90% inserted, and felt firmly in place but did not have enough connector to power the desk.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#187

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…

this is why denmark has an additional slanted plug for IT equipment and a winky one for hospitals

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely an urban legend at this point. A reddit thread[0] mentions it being collected in 1990 from computer stories going around in the 80s[1] [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/5yrs1... [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3227607-the-devouring-fu...

Essentially all these stories are apocryphal. Even this vapor lock story. Sorry but even before today, having a automotive engineer sent to a random person's home over what clearly sounds like a quack letter seems implausible to me. The dictates of capitalism, human resources, and the politics of the workplace would make this difficult if not impossible. Even in the past when there was more human capital in support p…

Without vast knowledge, many unreasonable things are seen as reasonable. How much of our history's truth is based on what was told to the gullible majority? Should we not talk about Mythology because a skeptic questions it's authenticity?

Comedians make up stories all the time to entertain audiences. These stories don't require accuracy, they are more about delivering specific results; a laugh, a story to share, confirmation bias, etc.

Many people lie, believing they're telling the truth. I think you will have a hard time truth policing people who don't and won't care, but focusing on truth and validity is probably a useful skill for you in many parts of your life.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely an urban legend at this point. A reddit thread[0] mentions it being collected in 1990 from computer stories going around in the 80s[1] [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/5yrs1... [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3227607-the-devouring-fu...

Essentially all these stories are apocryphal. Even this vapor lock story. Sorry but even before today, having a automotive engineer sent to a random person's home over what clearly sounds like a quack letter seems implausible to me. The dictates of capitalism, human resources, and the politics of the workplace would make this difficult if not impossible. Even in the past when there was more human capital in support p…

Your lack of faith is disturbing, specially when there are first hand accounts of [Apple/Microsoft/Insert Co] sending engineers to people's houses to diagnose unique problems. This could be a perfectly real story, a different thing would be that you choose not to believe it.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely an urban legend at this point. A reddit thread[0] mentions it being collected in 1990 from computer stories going around in the 80s[1] [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/5yrs1... [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3227607-the-devouring-fu...

Essentially all these stories are apocryphal. Even this vapor lock story. Sorry but even before today, having a automotive engineer sent to a random person's home over what clearly sounds like a quack letter seems implausible to me. The dictates of capitalism, human resources, and the politics of the workplace would make this difficult if not impossible. Even in the past when there was more human capital in support p…

It's a fun story to read, whether it's fact or fiction. We are not too concerned about whether a large company would really send an engineer to investigate a seemly absurd claim, in the same way that we are not too concerned about whether one single shoe is able to uniquely identify Cinderella and no one else.
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