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Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

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Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#301

Post by fragmede »

yamazakiwi wrote: post #188
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, conf…

If I tell you something I believe to be true, but actually isn't, I'm not lying, just wrong. Lying involves an intent to decieve, so if I don't know the truth, it's not a lie.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#302

Post by amluto »

amluto wrote: post #110
LanceH wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long slow bend on completely flat road, 40mph. No braking or acceleration for a quarter mile each direction. The road is like that for miles with some lights, traffic circles, etc... Only warnings in one spot. I really didn't believe my wife, or thought maybe it was happening a few times when she made a regular trip like getting drive thru coffee and coming right back. But then we ran a bunch of errands all afternoon…

> Long slow bend That’s probably it. If I were designing a wiper fluid warning, I would use some sort of fluid level sensor and I would denounce it aggressively: the indicator would only light up if the sensor detected a low level for more than a couple seconds. That way traffic circles, bumps, etc would not cause many false positives. I might even couple it to some kind of acceleration sensor so a warning would not…

edit that’s too late to edit: debounced, not denounced.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#303

Post by fragmede »

genewitch wrote: post #226
heywhatupboys wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In the US the "winky" receptacles that go (-|) or (⊣|) - except the T faces the other way - are 20 amp outlets, 120 volts. every receptacle that differs from the "shocked face" means something. Our standard shocked face receptacles are 15A. In hospitals, you need a guarantee that your monitors or assistive devices aren't going to trip a breaker somewhere if someone plugs in a vacuum; making it impossible to use the r…

In hospitals, they're colored differently to denote which sockets are on backed up lines vs not.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#304

Post by giraffe333 »

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.

I have this exact problem and (mostly) fixed it by swapping the sensor and transmitter. I just cut the wires and spliced with electrical tape. Now the problem still happens but only sometimes in the fall and spring when the sun's angle is just right. This is with a west facing garage about 41°N latitude USA.

But yeah, why this isn't laser based, or using a light frequency that is less affected by sunlight? Probably cost, or ignorance.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#305

Post by abofh »

creeble wrote: post #256
genewitch wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

on dslreports or broadbandreports there's at least two instances of me complaining about two cable companies because, at last, it was figured out there was moisture ingress in the LE (line extender, usually on cable lines on poles). The only common denominator was it happened during prime time, every night, and went away around midnight. The other common denominator was the cable company refusing to believe it was an…

Interesting, I wonder if I’m experiencing something a little bit similar that Comcast can’t seem to debug. Almost every day, in the heat of summer, I get one to five 10-minute outages as soon as the temp gets over about 80F. More when it’s hotter, usually. Usually it results in a modem reset, so it’s hard to tell how long the actual outage is. Been happening for going on 5 years. They replaced the under-street cable…

Yeah, probably very similar thing if that pattern is true. It's the shift forcing your modem to change speeds, but neither side being willing to accept it.

If you can, try forcing a level at/below the speed you get during the breakage and see if it just rides it out. If it does, shift it back up and plan your coffee breaks around it. Or don't, I'm not your mother

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#306

Post by grecy »

taejo wrote: post #90
bell-cot wrote: post #2

This reminds me of a GM minivan that my youngest brother-in-law drove, back in the '80's. He'd gotten it from his father, who was a career GM automotive engineer - and complained that, occasionally & randomly, it would not start. It seemed like the minivan's whole electrical system was dead... Brother-in-law was known to be "not so good" with cars - so his automotive engineer father didn't take the complaints serious…

Plenty of cars that intermittently won't turn on in this thread, but I once had a car that intermittently wouldn't turn off... or at least the headlights wouldn't. I assume a relay somewhere was overheating and that was making it stay closed, but I never debugged it, and nor could my cousin who was an auto mechanic. We never tried too hard, though: I would just take the fuse out if it happened and put it back the nex…

The radiator fan in my Jeep did that in Sudan when it was 48C. Better to have it stuck on that stuck off in those temps!

I just tapped the relay with a wrench and it un-stuck and turned off.

Funny enough that was almost 5 years ago, and it hasn't done it once since in more than 80,000 miles of driving. Not in -35C, not in +45C. Odd little relay.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#307

Post by swores »

Animats wrote: post #227
lxgr wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?)

Telcos used to monitor their copper outside plant for moisture. This was called Automatic Line Insulation Testing in the Bell System. The ALIT system ran in the hours before dawn. It would connect to each idle line, and apply, for tens of milliseconds, about 400 volts limited to very low current between the two wires, and between each wire and ground, measuring the leakage current. This would detect moisture in the c…

Great comment, thanks!

(I've sent a quick email suggesting it be added to https://news.ycombinator.com/highlights :)

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#308

Post by grecy »

m463 wrote: post #163
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."

> He might be able to work on a carburetor

I'm absolutely a car guy, and I'm 41 years old.

Strangely enough, I've never owned a carburettored engine, and it seems unlikely I ever will (except, maybe, for a chainsaw)

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#309

Post by mrguyorama »

genewitch wrote: post #245
djmips wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I worked my first job in retail in the mid eighties - we were selling Atari ST and there was an official Atari bulletin to do exactly that. It would reseat the socketed chips.

interesting; i doubt my memory is that faulty, so it's possible the story went through some iterations, making it an apocryphal story about apple, instead. Or, possibly, the major pick and place manufacturer had a slew of alignment issues in the 80s!

I thought the apple "lift and drop the computer" story was about the Apple 3. It had no vents, so it was always overheating and "unseating chips" like the Xbox 360 heat issues.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_III#Design_flaws

And so it doesn't become apocryphal but stays a real story, there 100% were people who "Fixed" their RRoD Xbox 360s by wrapping them in towels for an hour so they cooked themselves even more, or they put the mobo in the oven on a low temperature. That fix was also 100% used for fixing certain graphics cards unseating in the mid 2000s as well.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#310

Post by fragmede »

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 other technique is to ask the customer to turn the cable around.
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