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“My Car does not start when I buy Vanilla Ice Cream” (2015)

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Re: “My Car does not start when I buy Vanilla Ice Cream” (2015)

#51

Post by mrandish »

TorKlingberg wrote: post #22
bambax wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed! From the article: > In 2010, the Pontiac Division of General Motors received... > This was a cool act by General Motors especially in this world of Internet when news can go viral in matter of seconds From Snopes: > This legend surfaced in print in 1978, but an anecdotal sighting places it even earlier than that, in 1971.

Yes. It's a neat story, but it has that smell of an urban legend. What engineer would come back for four nights in a row rather than just figuring out why the car didn't start the first time?

I agree only because just reading the problem description I guessed that it was a difference in distance or sitting time and I don't even know anything about car engines. I assume any automotive engineer would have been ahead of me on that and already looking for differences that could matter on the first trip.

Re: “My Car does not start when I buy Vanilla Ice Cream” (2015)

#52

Post by loco5niner »

TorKlingberg wrote: post #22
bambax wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed! From the article: > In 2010, the Pontiac Division of General Motors received... > This was a cool act by General Motors especially in this world of Internet when news can go viral in matter of seconds From Snopes: > This legend surfaced in print in 1978, but an anecdotal sighting places it even earlier than that, in 1971.

Yes. It's a neat story, but it has that smell of an urban legend. What engineer would come back for four nights in a row rather than just figuring out why the car didn't start the first time?

Do you figure out every bug the first time you see it?

Or do you have to look into it for a while

Re: “My Car does not start when I buy Vanilla Ice Cream” (2015)

#53

Post by TorKlingberg »

taneq wrote: post #32
TorKlingberg wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. It's a neat story, but it has that smell of an urban legend. What engineer would come back for four nights in a row rather than just figuring out why the car didn't start the first time?

Why do you think he came back four times in a row? Not everyone has a complete and accurate physical model of their car in their head.

The story, as written, says that the engineer want with the father on four different nights. I would expect an engineer to at least try to diagnose the problem rather than spending all the effort of coming back on four different nights outside of work ours. Basically the story feels made up.

Re: “My Car does not start when I buy Vanilla Ice Cream” (2015)

#54

Post by amai »

I once had the strange problem that shaking my Apple Magic Mouse helped to reestablish the lost blue tooth connection to my Mac. This happened quite often. It took me quite a while to figure out, why shaking the mouse should help with the bluetooth connection:

The reasons is simply that the batteries in the Magic Mouse are often loose and so shaking seems to help moving the batteries around: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/15709/magic-mouse-...

Re: “My Car does not start when I buy Vanilla Ice Cream” (2015)

#55

Post by taneq »

ralfd wrote: post #3
haecceity wrote: post #2

If the car didn’t start then how did he come back the next day to get more ice cream? Surely he waited a bit and the car would start. And the timing issue would be obvious from here? I’m also worried about his health. Should he really be having ice cream everyday?

The engineer also wouldn't wait until the next day to test again.

One of our bug reports was "if we leave the machine for more than two weeks it doesn't deploy correctly." Sometimes you can't test again until the hardware is ready.

Re: “My Car does not start when I buy Vanilla Ice Cream” (2015)

#56

Post by danaliv »

cafard wrote: post #46
danaliv wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Fuel-injected aircraft engines get vapor lock—shutting down to refuel and then restarting can be a serious pain—but I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a carbureted one doing it.

In Jefferson County, Colorado, the stretch of US 40 up into the foothills from the plains used have a lot of cars stalled by vapor lock along the shoulders. But I don't think I've seen a car stalled by vapor lock in forty years.

Neat. Sounds like I’ll be jumping down the rabbit hole to figure out why carbed cars vapor-lock but airplanes are the reverse. :)

Re: “My Car does not start when I buy Vanilla Ice Cream” (2015)

#57

Post by andreasley »

nottorp wrote: post #48
andreasley wrote: post #44

My first car (bought used) had a weird bug: When it had been parked overnight on a steep slope facing downwards, the driver's electric window sometimes wouldn't go back up. Rain would increase the chance of the bug occurring. All other windows were fine and the problem would go away after a few hours of driving. The bug never occurred if the car was parked on a flat surface. The mechanics were clueless. I've found th…

You parked your car and left the windows open?

No; after letting them down the following day, the one on the driver's side just wouldn't go back up again or would even go down by itself once the car was started.

Re: “My Car does not start when I buy Vanilla Ice Cream” (2015)

#58

Post by perl4ever »

lordnacho wrote: post #27
orrymr wrote: post #14

Correlation vs causation, eh?

There is causation, just not directly from ice cream to vapor lock. It's a diagram with three entities, ice cream -> time to cool -> vapor lock

That's the nature of all situations in which "correlation is not causation".
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