I only used the coffee mug because it was something handy with which I could block the sun. Still, I kind of like the “Behold…Coffee!” effect. OK, it’s not quite on a level with Heterodyne Coffee, but what is?
Fighting Vampires in Office Max
CBR’s coverage of the WildStorm panel at Emerald City Comicon yesterday includes a great bit in which, due to technical difficulties with the slide show, CBR’s reporter was put on the spot to ask the panelists a question:
“If you were stuck in an Office Max during a full scale vampire attack, what would you use as a weapon?”
They rolled right into it. Phil Hester would use a T-square, Kurt Busiek claimed that despite his best weapon foraging attempts he would end up with a stapler and go down quickly, Ben Abernathy would break some broom handles to use as stakes, Darick Robertson would use two drafting triangles as punching daggers, and Francesco Francavilla would assemble a cross out of whatever he found.
My first thought was actually the classic chair leg, but then I realized that Office Max would mostly have swivel chairs on plastic bases, and of course desks made up of sheets of particle board. Technically wood, but nothing you could easily turn into a stake.
Runaway Thoughts of a Prius Driver
I’ve driven a 2007-model Toyota Prius for two and a half years, so you can bet I’ve been following the news over the recalls and reports of uncontrolled acceleration. Monday’s runaway Prius incident, which involved a car that looks exactly like mine, has made me think even more about the problem.
Now, I’m not overly concerned, because the number of incidents is still small compared to the number of cars out on the road. And in the entire time I’ve been driving it, I can only think of two circumstances in which the car accelerated in a way I didn’t expect, both of them when driving on an incline:
- The transmission has been kind of sluggish a couple of times when starting, causing a slight lurch once it switches gears.
- Hitting an incline with cruise control. The car has to work harder to maintain the same speed, so it feels like it’s accelerating.
From what I’ve heard previously, the acceleration problems have had to do with malfunctioning cruise control, and I don’t really use cruise control anymore. (Not since I realized that it wasn’t a good fit for actual driving conditions.) Annoyingly, none of the articles I’ve read about James Sikes’ experience say whether he was using cruise control at the time or not.
They do say that he wore out the brakes, but refused to turn off the car or put it in neutral (as the 911 dispatcher advised him during the 23-minute call), and finally got it under control when a CHP officer had him apply both the regular and emergency brakes together.
So, what to do in this situation?
- Brakes aren’t enough, but they’re a good start.
- Turn off cruise control if it’s on. Some reports of cc-related problems have said that tapping the brakes didn’t disengage it as it’s supposed to, but manually disabling it did.
- Putting it in neutral should cut off the engine from the wheels and still leave you steering. Sikes’ reason for not doing this when the dispatcher told him to — that he was afraid the car would flip — doesn’t make any sense to me.
- Turning the car off locks the steering wheel, or at least turns off power steering. Not ideal for 90 MPH, so I understand Sikes’ reluctance here, but if the computer has essentially hung, push-and-hold for a hard shutdown might be the only thing you can do. I’d rather skid to a stop with minimal control than slam into a wall at 90.
- The parking brake can double as an emergency brake. It might not stop you completely (it didn’t for Sikes), but it should help get the car under control again.
I don’t expect any trouble, just based on statistics, but at least now I have an idea of what to do if I ever do find myself in this situation.
Follow-Ups
Update (April 14): Toyota finally settled on a fix for the Prius stuck-accelerator pedal recall beyond “remove the floor mat”…five days after I took mine in to get the alignment and 30,000-mile maintenance done. (Also: After driving a Prius for 2.5 years, driving a normal car is weird!)
Update (April 15): Prius recall dealt with. Free fix, free rental, and choice of a $50 service coupon or $10 Starbucks card. Easy choice there.
Update (July 16): A U.S. Department of Transportation investigation of Toyota crashes blamed on sudden acceleration has implicated driver error in nearly all cases. Of the 75 fatal crashes investigated, only one could be verified as a problem with the vehicle: the Lexus crash last August in which the accelerator was caught on the floor mat, leading to a recall. Of course, the court of popular opinion has already made up its mind.
Update (February 2011): Even NASA engineers didn’t find any electronic problems causing sudden acceleration in Toyotas. It looks like the sticky pedals and floor pads were it.
I’ve pulled in a few updates from my social media archives and from round-up posts I made here. It seemed the best way to consolidate the story into one place.
Cloud Puffs Over Saddleback
I’m going to have to start taking my regular camera with me to lunch. Yesterday I looked out and saw a huge, puffy cloud, virtually alone (beneath a thin layer of wispy cirrus), hovering above Saddleback.
When I stopped to take a picture, I realized that there was a whole line of little puffball clouds, tracking the mountain range exactly, but not appearing anywhere else in the sky. It really shows the effect that mountains have on cloud formation!
I decided to try for a four-shot panorama of the whole range.
It came out better than I expected, actually. I believe this is the first time I’ve stitched together a panorama using phone pictures. I used Hugin, which was a little hampered by the fact that I couldn’t find specs on the G1 lens type, focal length, etc., but it seems to have done reasonably well.
Putting the Post in Post Office
A few weeks ago, I stopped at the post office on the way to work. As I walked to the door, my eye was immediately drawn to the big hole in the wall where, apparently, a car had crashed into the building while trying to park.
Whatever vehicle had done the damage was long gone, and the area around was cordoned off with yellow caution tape. Since I like to take pictures of weird stuff, I snapped a photo with my cell phone. (No, I didn’t cross the tape; it’s just not visible in the frame.)
This morning, I stopped at the same post office again. This time, my eye was drawn to a new addition to the facility:
One of these bright yellow posts stood in front of each parking space along the building. You can still see where the concrete has been spread around the base, and absolutely no paint has worn off. Clearly someone decided not to take any more chances with wayward cars!
Inbox 50
Slowly but surely, my email cleanup continues.
After paring my inbox down to 100 items in mid-January, then 75 by the end of the month, I set my next goal of getting it down to 50 by the end of February. I just made it. I managed to hold in the 60-65 range for most of the month (after going through each day’s new mail), and decided to make an extra effort on the last day.
I’ve gotten a lot better at dealing with new stuff, whether answering it, filing it, taking an action elsewhere online or in the real world, or (in some cases) just deleting it. I’ve only got about 10 items from the last two months that I still need to act on in some way. The rest are older, mostly Flash-related info or to-do items. A lot of them are going to take longer since they involve research, or scanning, or writing.
So instead of aiming for 25 by the end of March, I’m going to aim for 30.
Who knows? By summer, I may actually have only new messages in my inbox!
G1 Will Get Android 2.1 After All (Update: No)
Android and Me is reporting that all Android phones in the U.S. will get Android 2.1 updates — even the G1 — but that they may be missing some features and some models will need to be wiped as part of the installation.
That makes sense, because it would allow developers to reassign some of the space set aside for over-the-air updates and use it for a larger system instead — and maybe more space for apps.
The possibility that the G1 was headed for obsolescence before my 2-year contract was up didn’t bother me much at first, but I’ve watched as even Google has released high-profile apps that required Android 2. Sure, I doubt the hardware can handle Google Earth, and Buzz turned out to be a dud, but they’re signs that Android 1.6 isn’t going to cut it for much longer.
If it does require a wipe and re-install, I can deal with that. A lot of the key data is either synced with the cloud or stored on the SD card. With luck, T-Mobile and HTC will build a decent backup and restore into the process and I won’t have to reinstall all my apps, bookmarks, etc.
Update August 2010: This is looking less and less likely as time goes on.