Rough Rider

After our little MINI came back from Seattle MINI, it seemed a little rough when idling.   It seemed otherwise fine, and we motored down to California and minor adventures public and private.

When we got back to Seattle, we took the car in to the dealer to check the idle.

It wasn't the idle.   After they replaced clutch, due to dealer error the engine mount was loose.   And it was driven 1700 miles with it like that.

We're not at all happy.

Motor On!

I had the carburetor cleaned and checked

    with her line blown out she's hummin' like a turbojet

Propped her up in the backyard on concrete blocks

    for a new clutch plate and a new set of shocks

Took her down to the carwash

    check the plugs and points

I'm goin' out tonight

    I'm gonna rock that joint

-- Bruce Springsteen, "Open All Night"

It was 19 years ago this month we leased our first Miata; we're now on our third rag top, our 2006 MINI Cooper S.

The MINI now is eight and half years old with 67,000 miles on it, and it still hasn't been driven by me in the warm California sun despite our living on the West Coast seven years.   We're going to fix that this spring.  But first things first.

Before we motor out into the wildness between Oregon and the Bay Area, we took it to our local dealer to have the clutch (which they've been warning us about for couple of years) and few other things looked at.   They looked.  They said it was time.   

It took three days and an American Express card in good standing.

And yes, it was time.   Sometimes one wonders if the repair shop actually did any work.    Not this round.

Katherine drove the MINI out of the dealer yesterday, and the first few times she shifted the transition slapped me against my headrest.    Likewise, when I took it out this morning,  I discovered for myself how tight the MINI shifts now.   That's a new clutch.

California ho!

Insert Tab A in Slot B

TL;DR: You too can lose a weekend troubleshooting computer hardware, just like the old days.

Back in 2003, I got a Dell Pentium 4 computer that lasted me five years.  It was the last machine of two to three year upgrade cycles I had been doing since 1989.  Even with the five year gap, it would have lasted even longer had I not wanted a HP LP3065 30" monitor to match what I used at work; the video card in the Dell wasn't worth upgrading, especially since by then I preferred Apple machines.

So in March 2008, I replaced the Dell with my first new personal Mac, a high end Mac Pro.   The machine, a real beast, supports up to four 30" monitors, four internal hard drives, and two hardline Ethernet connections. They don't build 'em like that any more. Literally.    

(Don't drop it on your toes.  The case would survive having an anvil dropped on it.   I'm not sure how the anvil would fare.)

With a solid state boot drive added a couple of years ago, the Mac Pro has held up well, and even at six years old I am in no hurry to replace it.  So for its birthday, I had the flaky second video card serviced, and also ordered a couple of drive upgrades.  I got the machine back, installed Mac OS on a new bigger SSD drive, generally futzed with an almost-but-not-quite-perfect user migration, and I was back in business. 

Almost.

Checking the machine out, I realized I couldn't get the machine to accept the magic key to select the boot drive at startup.   Maybe it did accept the key -- but there was no screen to see the results.  I realized there are subtle evil technical reasons this could be a video card problem, which would require a trip back the Apple store.   

I prepared the machine to go back, including building yet another virgin boot drive (my third in a week) so I didn't take my data to the Apple store ... and the pre-boot screen started working.

After checking alternative keyboards, unplugging and plugging in monitors, swapping cables and reinstalling my real drives, I got it down to if my older HP 30" monitor was in the plugged into the lower video card and my newer Dell U3011 30" monitor was plugged into the upper one, I didn't see the Mac pre-boot screen -- the OS had to boot up before I saw anything. If I swapped them, the pre-boot screen did show on the old monitor even though it's dumber than the newer monitor.   Not optimal, but acceptable.

Mostly, just weird.

Much Ado About Nothing

Among my more subtle talents is my innate sense of direction, also known as Hobbit Inertial Navigation. It is far from perfect, but I think I've got higher batting average than +Katherine Derbyshire, who is actually pretty good herself. We're both lazy in our old age, smartphones and dedicated Navigation Systems do that to people, but I like to think I know where I've been and where I'm going.

Well, physically, at least. Until today at lunch. And the problem wasn't where I was going.

With Katherine traveling, I headed out solo for lunch to the Mill Creek Blazing Onion. I'd never been there (only its sibling a few miles west), but it's a straight shot north, and armed with the address, I headed up in the freshly fueled MINI Cooper S equipped with a nav system. All well and good ...

... until I noted the MINI, fueled yesterday morning on the way back from breakfast, had only seven-eighths of a tank. I had driven home and then fetched a pizza in the evening, and I knew I had driven less than 10 miles total. I may have failed to top off the tank, but the trip odometer, normally reset by hand after fueling, matched the gas gauge with 67 miles gone.

I started wondering how the car was driven without my memory, either by a very neat thief or me having a blackout worthy of Stephen King. About the only suspects I could eliminate were Katherine (in a different timezone) and the cats (they hate riding in cars, and I don't think letting them drive would change their minds. There's also the thumbs issue, but anyway ...)

Finally, I was sitting at lunch when I realized it wasn't the MINI that I fed yesterday morning. Rather, it was the Audi, the day after it was used to take Katherine to the airport. I specifically had gotten the Audi fueled and ready to go back to the airport for Katherine's return, and then switched to the MINI in the evening both to balance the use of the cars and to play with a new Bluetooth hands free unit we bought last week.

And I did personally fuel the MINI, but it was on Friday before a weekend of errands.

I guess the breakfast run wasn't a very memorable drive.

Oops.

I almost prefer the blackout theory ... it's less embarrassing.

Old School Home Defense

Sometimes I claim to be old school.   Sometimes I live it:

New Mac-ready USB Keyboard for my home office(click for larger photo)

My (physically) largest Christmas present, above, is basically the grandchild of the the original IBM Model M keyboard, the classic quality PC keyboard.   (I still own two classic Model M units, with each with a PS/2 connector and no annoying Windows keys.)

Differences compared to the Model M aside from the color include that it has a USB connection (not PS/2) and plays well with my Mac computers.

My favorite quote on the IBM Model M is from a co-worker:

"... the type M is also incredibly sturdy.  My personal feeling is that if you can't use your keyboard as a weapon to defend against home invaders and still have it work as a keyboard afterwards, it's obviously not a good design."

One down side: I need to lower my desk to offset the height of the unit.   It was at a borderline height before, and this makes it uncomfortable.

One other downside: If I take it to work, my co-workers may kill me because of the noise it makes.

The Sound of Music

"The drummer boy from Illinois went crash, boom, bang,
    the whole rhythm section was the Purple Gang.
 Let's rock, everybody, let's rock.
 Everybody in the whole cell block was a dancin'
    to the Jailhouse Rock . . ."

-- Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller

Making a short story long ...

I'm not an audiophile. For starters, my hearing is crap, with both moderate hearing loss and tinnitus going back years, and my brain has never been wired for parsing spoken English well. (I didn't figure out why Andrew had an "R" in it until around first grade. I could always spell it fine. Go figure.)

But I like music, and I especially like while I am at my desk. My audio toys have grown over the years from the family cheap all-in-one stereo (sorry, Dad) to my own first radio (a Radio Shack Astronaut-8) and on to my own successive stereo components. Unlike the 13 different desktop computers I've bought and surplused over the years, we've still got most of the audio components. Those go back to a cassette deck and a pair of Boston Acoustic speakers (now in the library), acquired before the close of the first Reagan administration. The stereo receivers in our home offices are relatively new -- they date only from early in the second Clinton administration. The living room is more modern; all the gear down there was bought for this house except the previously mentioned cassette deck, a CD player, and a second, larger pair of Boston Acoustics speakers dating from the first Clinton administration.

The speakers, alas, have not held up as gracefully as the solid state electronics. In early September a grill got knocked off a living room speaker, and the material around the woofer looked abused enough to have been assaulted by feline claws. On second look however, while it torn up enough, the damage was too specific to the rubber gasket -- a feline assault would have nailed the inviting felt cone as well. The final verdict: old age. This was confirmed by looking at the older pair of BAs in the library, and while their shelf location makes them inaccessible to the cats, age had no trouble reaching them as well.

Repairs were in order. This required a bit of a shuffle of our remaining toys. Katherine's office and the bedroom kept their speakers, the library was silenced, and the bookshelf speakers in my office went to the living room. My office fell back to my cheap Altec computer speakers.

Fortunately, Seattle has a repair shop called speakerlab, so both pairs got to go the spa for three weeks for professional TLC.

Parts issues turned the three weeks into five.

Finally, this our speakers came home this week, and my office got its speakers back.

It's good thing Whitey can sleep in my office with the stereo cranked, because he is and it is.

There But For the Grace of God ...

I had jury duty most of this week, a civil trial regarding a minor vehicular accident.  When the case went to the jury on Thursday, things didn't go well for the plaintiff: We awarded most of various contested medical bills, and $3000 for non-economic damages, which effectively is nothing at all.

The problem was that the plaintiff was obese with a sedentary lifestyle, diabetes, high blood pressure, and on disability from an old foot injury.  To us, the "Preponderance Of Evidence" standard was not met that his lingering pain was from the accident.  Quite frankly, with one party clearly at fault for the actual accident, the aftermath was amazingly murky.

Friday I was back at work at Google, where I had lunch guests of a high school classmate, her high school-aged twin sons, and a friend of the sons.   I wowed them all with our free food, climbing wall, foosball tables and other amenities.  When the boys all announced they wanted to work for Google, I gave them the lecture:  First, most of the employees we saw were not using the amenities, but rather sitting at their desks quietly working, and second, to be good enough to work where you want, one has to both embrace and command your field.  I also pointed out the physical plant was effectively a big parlor trick:  The real Google shows in how the company treats us, which is in fact pretty good.

I skipped the part about pure luck being involved, I didn't need to depress them.   But I did  think about my own luck, especially with the contrast of Thursday.  I am (still) obese and have various aches, but I have an interesting and well paying job, and I've avoided the abyss of declining health.

I've glimpsed the ghost of lifestyle future, and I dearly reminded why my self-improvement efforts this year are important.