I miss Car Talk with "Click and Clack the Tappit Brothers". Not sure if this was on the show, but seems like it could have been. Definitely check it out if you enjoyed this anecdote.
Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)
231–240 of 517 posts
Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)
#232We 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…
This happened to me in my first job and it took me weeks to figure it out. The penny dropped and I put tape around the thin gap in the casing where the top joined to the bottom and it fixed it immediately.
Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or that a store would put it's vanilla ice cream in a separate case in the front and all it's other flavors in another in the back, instead of putting all it's frozen foods together in the same area for logistical reasons.
Yes, now that you mention it, another part of the story that is suspect.
Hardly?
My local grocery store has a selection of ice creams in an end-cap cooler at the face of an aisle. The complete frozen goodies selection is down at the back end of the store. I almost always snag what I want from the up front cooler rather than making the trek to the back.
Plus the hand-held frozen goodies, like ice cream truck fare, are usually in their own cooler separately from the big stuff.
Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)
#234These 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."
these days it's "just buy a new carburetor" - i remember rebuilding a few like 20 years ago - on small engines, but now a rebuild kit is, say, $12 and a new carburetor is $20. For an extra $8 you only have to remove two bolts and fasten the new one in, rather than take a carburetor apart and replace gaskets and floats (or whatever, it's been 20 years).
word to the wise - never use the shutoff switch on anything with a carburetor - use the fuel shutoff valve. This prevents gasoline from varnishing your carburetor bowl.
I probably won't use that word again for a year, now, heavens.
Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)
#235Earlier 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.
Maybe experiment with filters.
Also it could be 'fun' to swap out the LEDs?
Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)
#236Reminds me of the 500 mile email (2002): https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html
Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)
#237We 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…
When it’s sunny, my wife’s car can’t open the garage door, and my car requires getting extremely close. Once the sun goes down, we can both open the door from the street. It turns out our solar panels (or the optimizers, or the inverter) emit radio frequencies that interfere with our garage door opener. When the sun is out and they are producing energy, the interference is stronger than the homelink garage door opene…
Just curious but did you try any bodged shielding?
Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Having had to debug many of such cable issues in the past, it's baffling to me that cable companies aren't proactively monitoring for things like this. They have all the data available on their end, as far as I can tell! (Unless DOCSIS modems somehow don't have a standard "signal receive report" functionality?)
In my observation, to a first approximation, cable operators take off-the-shelf equipment, connect it, power it on, and bill customers for it. They don't really have the r&d capability to innovate and create new monitoring solutions quickly.
It might happen that an equipment manufacturer sees an opportunity and builds something, but then they have to go into a long sales cycles to convince operators to use it. Operators are in a duopoly situation in most places, so quality of service is kind of a secondary concern for them - customers may get annoyed, but as long as the competition is not vastly superior, few actually switch. It is not a market prone to innovation.
Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)
#239My DSL internet would get incredibly slow at certain hours of the day when web traffic would be expected to be heavy (evening, as people are getting home, and around 10, as people are watching Netflix). AT&T refused to believe that the cause was congestion. No no, they said, it must be that there's a sprinkler that's going on at the same time each day, or a microwave that was causing a problem with your internet. Eventually they sent someone out and discovered that it was, in fact, a congested circuit that I was on. I couldn't believe they were so steadfast in claiming that it was some crazy-sounding external cause.
Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)
#240I find it incredible that not only a family would eat ice cream every, but that they would travel to get it everyday instead of just having it on hand in the house.
Or that a store would put it's vanilla ice cream in a separate case in the front and all it's other flavors in another in the back, instead of putting all it's frozen foods together in the same area for logistical reasons.
all (and i mean all 6) convenience stores around me have a separate "good humor" chest freezer in the front, directly adjacent to the entrance, and the rest of the ice cream (here it's blue bell invariably) is in a vertical case in the rear of the store. I can go take pictures, if HN doesn't believe the pervasiveness of this sort of thing!