Call me kooky

Jrck

I took my car in for an oil change, only a few hundred miles over the mark this time. My car is old and beat up so oil changes probably make a whole lot of sense. Jiffey lube has changed the way they do the whole customer info bit and it always throws me for a loop but whatever.

So the girl taking all the info is a trainee and a bit nervous, I’ve been there and done that and due to unemployment have nowhere to be so I don’t care how long this takes.

I end up spending way more than I intended. Fuel system clean? sure! New radiator cap? It’s corroded, I can see that with my bad eyes. Lets get it now before I forget. New airfilter? I suspected it was getting dirty and since I’m here get that too. It ended up being over $150. An ounce of prevention and supposedly better gas millage? fuck it, why not?

Now, which part did I do wrong? The next monday I’m driving around and the check engine light comes on. Well, the weather is doing it’s normal rapid change bit and the car typicaly doesn’t like that…… but I just got the oil changed. Shit. So I’m thinking to myself, “I’ll have to go back to jiffy lube and be an ass. And ten to one it’s nothing they did and completely coinicedental.”. If it’s not something jiffy lube can fix that means I have to take it into the dealer. That’s at least 80 bucks for them to hook up the code reader, and the time to get shuffled back and forth. The dealer has been nice but they do have to make money somewhere.

After a lot of thinking something occurred to me, a nagging little thought. I checked my thought out and I was right. There’s a tube that comes off the engine block and plugs into the air intake tube. It doesn’t fit all that well and when you futz with the air intake, which you have to to get the air filter changed, it’s very easy to dislodge the tube that doesn’t fit.

Not jiffy lube’s fault, my own stupidity for not thinking about that. I know it’s an issue but didn’t think it would be a problem. Jam the tube back in and still have the error code. I still can’t remember how the dodge computers handle automaticly clearing the code. I have to clear the code so I can find out if the stupid tube was actually the problem or not. I end up pulling the fuse for the fuel pump.

Of course, it’s a mini fuse. Can’t grip it with my fingers and the fuse puller from the tracer is too big for the space. Yay for pliers. Computer reset and the car is running fine. God I love technology.

Call me kooky,
Phosphers

Came across this link this evening Hp company secrets.

Since I can’t comment there because of the closed commenting I’ll comment here. 
Print heads are reasonably precise.  With the known print head specs you can make a reasonable guess to how much ink flows through the print head to print a page.  To grab numbers, lets say it takes 1ml of ink to print a standard page full of unfancy text.  Do some math and a 20ml print cartridge will last for 20 pages.  ALL printers do this, to a point.  HP, and lately canon, have gotten bitchy about it on the latest model printers.  You got a fancy high end photo printer, you get to deal with smarmy design.  The HP 9x series of cartridges have a page/ink counter in the cartridge itself (I think).  The printer reads this and says “oh you’re out of ink, GIVE US MONEY!”.  Last I heard there’s still no way to reset these cartridges.  Canon has moved to “chipped” cartridges that do the same thing now, still higher overall quality.

Call me kooky (would have been more thought provoking if I hadn’t gotten distracted trying to find a signup for comments over there),
phosphers

Really I do. If I every become an international spy this will infuriate and annoy the evil villian to no end.

“Tell me the launch codes for the nuclear missles!”

“Uh….. Let me think…..er….<spits out some numbers>.”

“NO! THAT’S WRONG!”

“Shit, was that my bank account or my phone number?”

For the record, don’t give the evil villain your accounnt numbers.

Strangly enough I can remember a lot of odd things about my life, but not when I want to. Sometimes at night my thoughts will wonder and suddenly I’ll remember some wacked out event from early on. Scout camp, day camp, playing poker with the guys in middle school. It’s all random and does the weird flowy bit.

I’ve learned, much like my dreams, to just let it go. I could get into the illusion of control and all that but I won’t. As with the dreams I imagine there’s a point to what I’m remembering, some deeper meaning. Maybe it’s my subconcious trying to connect to something. I’ve always felt a little lost since I don’t remember the past very well. Yet, I can recall all sorts of information off the top of my head at odd times. I don’t remember how I know these things which is terribly frustrating.

It would be innteresting to “uncork” my memory and review everything. What would I learn about myself? What embaressing tidbits have I locked away? What have I blithly ignored?

Probably won’t ever find out.

Call me kooky (who are you again?),
Phosphers

Parade’s worst dictator list is out and I didn’t even make the bottom end. I’ll have to try harder.

Call me kooky,
Phosphers

Talking to a guy about video cards and how it was hard to tell his video card sucked today.  This is a common problem, tasty cpu, lots of ram, no video card.  And they do thier best to hide the suckatude in the specs.  What we need is a simpler system.  I call it the plain speak system.   Instead of “128mb yada yada” we’ll have “This video card can’t run shit” or “this video card will run everything but you’ll have to whore yourself out to afford it”.  Fuck fill rates and pixel clocks that’s usefull information there.

Call me Kooky,
Phosphers
(specifications subject to change at any time, wooka wooka)

Some panoramas from the PPAI show. The first is a shot of the mandalay bay hotel from the convention center, the second is a shot of the press a print exclusive look at the new product pavilion.

mandalaypano.jpg
orangepano.jpg

Sorry, no thumbnails. Convert/Imagemagick doesn’t seem to like such huge files. Not sure if this is WP or simply convert.

Call Me Kooky,
Phosphers

I mentioned the API error I get from perfomancing when posting in irc.  This was right after a comment about grilled monkies.  It got me to thinking “why don’t more programmers include a bit of comedy in error codes?”.  Seriously, why don’t they?
Imagine your next BSOD.  Instead of a bunch of indecipherable crap it could say something like “Grilled monkey fall down go boom”.  It may not help fix the problem but at least it’s a laugh.

Call me kooky,
Phosphers

Turns out the extra stick of ram was bad.  When the system starts throwing memory errors before it’s even past POST you know it’s bad.  And I think the nvidia mx2 I have is bad.  It gets really hot really fast and does other fun things.  It would’ve been nice to have a beefer video card for the netboot machine.

Call me kooky,
Phosphers

I was cleaning out the drawers of the desk in the other room and found an extra stick of 128mb pc100.  Now to find a use for it.