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Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

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Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#211

Post by jeiebx83 »

98codes wrote: post #156
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…

I had a similar problem, but in the opposite direction. My cable internet speeds at home were fairly good (for the US, anyway), but sometimes would absolutely bottom out. Not dead, just glacially slow. After troubleshooting everything under the sun, I came to realize that the problems would happen not when it was raining per se, but when it was heavily foggy or misting. Normal to heavy rain was fine. Called the cable…

I ran into a similar issue, except internet and phone would get really bad on a cold morning.

Tech showed up around noon, saw I was indeed having a bad connection, went and checked the signal at the junction box for the street (can't remember what you call these) and everything was normal there, so he closed it back up again and double checks the signal at the house again, but it was fine. He walks the lines to double check but everything looked normal.

His best guess was that moisture was condensing ever so slightly inside the junction box that morning, and was let out as soon as he opened it at around noon, which fixed the problem.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#212

Post by valbaca »

kup0 wrote: post #149

This reminds me of the "my monitor blinks every time I sit down in my office chair" turning out to be EMI spikes from the gas lift affecting the signal traveling on monitor cables. A DisplayLink KB article even mentions it (and the associated white paper about the issue), stating: Surprisingly, we have also seen this issue connected to gas lift office chairs. When people stand or sit on gas lift chairs, they can gene…

got a link to the whitepaper? or name?

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#213

Post by genewitch »

valbaca wrote: post #207
ethbr1 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

Remember how old speakers would let you know if you were about to get a cellphone call. It was like digital precognition haha

you can still hear cellphone and wifi noise in crappy amplifiers - i have two sets of active muff hearing protection - the ones with microphones on each earpiece, and if you get inbetween a beamforming WAP or near any wifi antenna, or near a cellphone, you get "brrz bz bz bz bzzzzzz tiktiktiktiktik".

But this is different than the old this phone?" and your phone would max out it's tx and say "here i am!" and that's what you heard. This is probably incorrect, but based on my observations this is what occurred.

Remember the doodads you could put on your startac style phones on the antenna bit, with LEDs in them - they'd light up when you were about to get a call, as well, by design!

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#214

Post by guyzero »

hobomatic wrote: post #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 sou…

AM radio is a terrible transmission format in many ways but it's good because as you note it's extremely easy to decode into sound!

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#215

Post by kuroguro »

m463 wrote: post #144
MalcolmDwyer wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a countertop ice maker that gets jammed up and overloaded with ice on sunny days for a similar reason. There's an infrared beam and sensor. When the ice tray is full, it is supposed to block the beam, and then the machine stops making ice. On a sunny day, there's enough bright light in our kitchen to fool the sensor so it keeps making ice. We have a random magazine that we put on top of it to make it work cor…

I have a garage door that will not close on sunny days. Same sort of problem. The obstruction sensor at the bottom of the door is confused by the strong sunlight and the door stops closing part way and re-opens. I've tried a toilet-paper tube around the sensor but that isn't always successful. I really wish there was a laser sensor to replace it with.

The sad thing is there are certain IR wavelengths that are a lot less affected by the sun and nobody bothered to check for an outdoor product...

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#216

Post by valbaca »

rsynnott wrote: post #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...)

But I guess that would make the timing part be obvious and kind of ruin the "fun" of the story. Though I fully agree, the difference between "front of store" and "back of store" icecream couldn't be that much and also doesn't make much sense.

Or I could imagine something like a Sonic drive-through, where you often pull up in to a slot and turn off your car, but only until your order gets brought to you by a bellhop:

- works when I order a burger (burger takes a few minutes to cook)

- doesn't work when I order a hot dog (those are hot and ready to go)

or something like, works when I order a chili dog (because they have to heat up the chili)

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#217

Post by monitron »

mike_ivanov wrote: post #195

Hold my beer. I once had a fairly large CRT monitor which most of the time worked fine, but sometimes would show a warped, distorted image. After a while I noticed that warping was happening only on rainy days. I opened the case and discovered gooey stuff smelling cat urine on the monitor's electronics. Washing it with pure alcohol solved the problem. I have no idea what was going on there, but I consider my cat was…

Before you blame your cat, consider the possibility of an exploded electrolytic capacitor. Among many other foul comparisons, I’ve heard people say they can smell like cat pee after they die.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#218

Post by WirelessGigabit »

timmorgan wrote: post #146

My son's laptop screen kept shutting off while he was playing American Truck Simulator. His truck would drive off the road while the screen was black. Every time I played on his laptop, this did not happen. He swore he was cursed. This went on for many days, with many instances where it would happen for him but not for me. Then one day I just sat and observed him while he played, looking for any difference. That's wh…

And this bug made Apple move to a different sensor for the screen angle. And Apple being Apple they now had the excuse to serialize the sensor:

https://www.ifixit.com/News/33952/apple-put-a-hinge-sensor-i...

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#219

Post by hommelix »

xenadu02 wrote: post #155
pixl97 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a truck do this kind of behavior once. Finally figured it out after months when I moved a wire and it started, then move the wire close to another wire and it would no longer start. These were wires that would typically be close, so my guess is one of the wires was now generating enough noise that it was bleeding over into some other system and causing it to fail. As the car bounced around the proximity of the…

EMF can do some seemingly crazy things. I built a kiln controller and the initial version would sometimes randomly lockup, reboot in the middle of an operation, or do other seemingly "crazy" things. Sometimes even the hardware watchdog would stop functioning. Turns out contactors pulling in and out a 5000w load generates some strong EMF and sometimes that EMF is enough to cause random glitches to the CPU or other har…

Most likely this solid state relay has a builtin flyback diode that was not in the circuit of the contactor. The diode should be as close as possible to the load to reduce the EMF.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#220

Post by kyleee »

hobomatic wrote: post #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 sou…

Jesus works in mysterious ways
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