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Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

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Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#491

Post by genewitch »

mrguyorama wrote: post #309
genewitch wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've reflowed a GPU in an oven before, personally. with 5 little balls of aluminum foil as standoffs and monitoring the temp closely. It fixed it. I probably still have that - working - card somewhere.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#492

Post by mrguyorama »

Paul-Craft wrote: post #490
brabarossa wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The theory is that 'baking" it could reflow a bad solder joint and fix it. A popular fix of last resort.

I get that that could work and might solve the problem entirely. What I don't get is why you'd ever have to do that every few months.

Laser printers have parts that can get very hot. If their "baking" reflowed the parts, but just barely, maybe those hot parts would just cause the exact same problem all over again.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#493

Post by dotancohen »

Shorel wrote: post #460
dotancohen wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, I've heard that rebuttal, but I've been told this anecdote of the car's notoriety by family members from Columbia and more recently from a friend from Argentina. So perhaps "no va" and "Nova" are pronounced differently, and perhaps the car did sell well, but the Spanish-speaking peoples most certainly did find the term "no va" in the car's name. You should know what they say about the Mitsubishi Pajero, too…

It's the same difference as between papa and papá. We are trained to perceive different accented syllables as different words with different meanings.

Sure, we have these in my language as well. For instance, the car Kia should be written like "vomit" - so we have a convoluted spelling and say the name slightly wrong to distance the word from "vomit". But it's still clear to everybody how the name should be pronounced and spelled.

Doesn't seem to affect sales, though, probably like the Chevy Nova. Those Kia are everywhere.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#494

Post by thaumasiotes »

kawhah wrote: post #485
thaumasiotes wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the aisle caps are bid for, and then arranged by, the manufacturers. The store just sells them the space. The manufacturer is unlikely to see a problem with putting a display of very popular products right at the front of the store where people can't help but see it.

So you think Vanilla Inc, the company that only makes vanilla flavor ice cream, is paying for a whole chiller that they fill with vanilla, since all the other flavors are not as popular? Or perhaps, unbeknownst to everyone in the world who uses the word 'vanilla' to mean 'mundane', vanilla ice cream actually enjoys far higher profit margins than all other ice cream.

No, I think Dreyers, the company that makes ice cream, uses the limited space available in the aisle cap to showcase one or two of their most popular flavors. (Or one or two flavors that are seasonally relevant.) That's a totally normal use of the aisle cap, just like how a Triscuits aisle cap is all original Triscuits and the many secondary flavors that Triscuits come in have to be found in the crackers aisle.

It would be literally impossible for an aisle cap to feature every ice cream flavor available - there are so many that each flavor would have very little representation in the display, and the concept would fall apart as soon as anyone bought something from it. At that point, you're paying a bunch of extra money to send the message "check out our least popular flavors".

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#495

Post by _whiteCaps_ »

jonhohle wrote: post #462
_whiteCaps_ wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some clip on ferrites on the inverter cables might help. If you have any amateur radio neighbours they'd probably love to help you with a project like this.

On the cables coming in from the panels or wiring going back to the main panel?

I'd start with the wiring going back to the main panel first but be open to anything. Fixing RF noise is more of an art than science in my experience.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#496

Post by pests »

Animats wrote: post #378
swores wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you're really into telephony history, the Internet Archive has "The History Of Engineering and Science in the Bell System" (3 volumes) online. If you have to build reliable distributed systems, it's worth understanding how this was done in the electromechanical era of telephony, where the component reliability was much worse than the system reliability. "Number 5 Crossbar"[1] is worth reading, but hard to follow i…

> trouble recorders

This feels like a term a sci-fi author would invent in an alternate history setting to replace "error log" and I find it very humorous.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#497

Post by naikrovek »

this story has ALL of the hallmarks of an 80th+ generation tale, changed significantly in most generations.

The President/CEO would not have been given this to decide on, for one thing.

... if it were possible to prove that some event like this never happened, I'd put money on it.

my father would have eaten this story up and would have "improved" the tale, and then written it down for others, who would have all done the same.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#498

Post by Animats »

pests wrote: post #496
Animats wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're really into telephony history, the Internet Archive has "The History Of Engineering and Science in the Bell System" (3 volumes) online. If you have to build reliable distributed systems, it's worth understanding how this was done in the electromechanical era of telephony, where the component reliability was much worse than the system reliability. "Number 5 Crossbar"[1] is worth reading, but hard to follow i…

> trouble recorders This feels like a term a sci-fi author would invent in an alternate history setting to replace "error log" and I find it very humorous.

No, just practical.

The previous version was a panel of blinking lights called the "trouble indicator". When an alarm sounded, someone had to go to the panel and record by hand which lights were on. There were about 200 lights. So the trouble recorder, which recorded that info automatically, was added in larger central offices as an upgrade.[1]

[1] https://hackaday.com/2022/12/02/stack-trace-from-the-1950s-p...

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#499

Post by qup »

irrational wrote: post #352
qingcharles wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Argh. My own mouse not working one: - Use to fix PCs professionally in the early 90s. - Guy comes in with PC. Right-mouse button stopped working. - Replace mouse. Still not working. - Play with Windows 3.1 drivers. Nothing helps. - Pull HDD from another PC, install, boot. Mouse button still broken. WTF. - Pull whole mobo, put another spare mobo in, with replacement HDD and replacement mouse. Still don't work. - Repla…

I used to know an older woman who did trap and eat squirrels as her main source of protein, so... this isn't entirely unlikely.

What was her trap like?

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#500

Post by qup »

whartung wrote: post #478
dumbfounder wrote: post #66

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…

Similarly, we were just finishing up a project for a client and we’re just going through and connecting everything up. The hardware consisted of 6 color terminals (Wyse 350s I think), the server, and 10 PCs with large, 20” tube monitors. We had these all in my bosses office powered through assorted outlets and power strips. The room was wall to wall machinery. It was after hours when the janitor came in and plugged i…

This story is my favorite in the thread. Thanks.
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