Accidestiny

This is the second notice that your vehicle warranty is about to expire.

2009-03-28T00:08:06Z

Ah, scam artists. I've been called twice today by what has appeared like some kind of shadowy organization, not unlike the white-van-speaker thing, trying to sell me an extended automotive warranty. They've called my cell phone incessantly for the past year, which is illegal, and though they'll promise to take you off their call list (they have to me twice), they don't. They spoof the caller-id from a variety of different numbers, some are not in service, some belong to random innocent people who have no idea what's going on. I was going to do some research on the subject, but I've discovered someone already has.

I'm going to reproduce a forum post I got from here, and encourage anyone who reads this to do the same. Reproduce this or link to the original, so that the word gets out about this organization and the FCC and FTC get enough complaints to take action.

YOU MAY WONDER WHO IS CALLING YOU.

IT IS NOT A PERSON. IT IS A KNOWN SCAM COMPANY CALLED "VP MARKETING" ALSO KNOWN AS "VERSADEBT."

THEY HIDE THEIR TRACKS BY SPOOFING SOME VICTIM'S PHONE NUMBER ON A CALLER ID.

Important message to all those that have received a call from this number:

The company making this call with an auto dialer is a known scam outfit. They spoofed phone numbers of victims all the time. Sometimes, they spoof non-working phone numbers. The phone number 800-219-7425 is just another victim of these scumbags. I've done a lot of research of this company. Actually, there are several affiliated companies, owned by the same people that try to scam innocent victims. One scam is about auto warranties. The other is about credit card debt relief. Their MO is the same. The use an auto dialer, and call thousands of random numbers. They have no regard to the do not call lists. Your demands or complaints are worthless. They will continue to call you.

They will not remove you from their call lists. Why? BECAUSE THEY DO NOT MAINTAIN ANY. THEY ARE CROOKS. THEY HAVE NO REGARD TO THE MANY LAWS THEY BREAK.

If they call about a car warranty, the message says something as "This is the second notice on your extended vehicle warranty. Press one now to speak to a representative..." The message about credit debt mentions "This is Account Services. We are calling to lower your credit card debt. Press one now to speak to a representative..."

Here are the details of these do***ebags:

Car Warranty Scam (two potential addresses):
VP Marketing
4501 Circle 75 Parkway
Suite #A-1225
Atlanta GA 30339

They also show a new address in their help wanted ads:
1820 Water Place Pkwy
Ste 255
Atlanta GA 30339
678-741-3188
678-741-3189

Credit Card Scam:
Versadebt Corp.
4501 Circle 75 Parkway
Suite #A-1225
Atlanta GA 30339
678-238-1300
678-238-1349
678-238-1351

Both companies are listed with the Georgia Department of State. Here is how you can lookup their information:
http://corp.sos.state.ga.us/corp/soskb/CSearch.asp

You will find that the "Registered Agent" for VP Marketing is Kelly Lonas, 224 Ripple Creek Drive, Marietta GA 30060. The listed "Member/Manager" is James A. Schoenholz at the 4501 Circle 75 Parkway address.

Versadebt's Registered Agent is the same James A. Schoenholz at the 4501 Circle 75 Parkway address. There is one additional name listed for Versadebt. The listed CEO, CFO, and Secretary is named Marvin Cox, Jr. at the same address.

In fact, Marvin Cox may be the owner of all of these related companies.

Here are some links to prove my research:
Job listings for VP Marketing:
http://www.careerbuilder.com/JobSeeker/Jobs/J ... p_marketing"_at

Notice the job listings for "Appointment Setter," "Qualification Representative," "Auto Warranty Specialist," and "Financial Representatives." Those are the idiots you get on the phone when you press "1" to speak to a representative after receiving their ILLEGAL recorded phone calls. Also, you can see many other job listings with similar titles.

Interestingly, if you view these help wanted ads, you will notice that their address and phone number are different from what is listed with the Georgia Department of State. They now list 678-741-3188 and 678-741-3189 as the phone number of Human Resources. IT IS PERFECTLY LEGAL TO CALL THEM AS THEY LISTED THEIR NUMBER IN A PUBLIC FORUM. Call them to find out more information about this company. You will need this in your complaints to the FCC, FTC, and your state Attorney General.

You can call them to see if they offer Car Warranties or tell them you are interested in a lower interest rate. It is quite humorous to listen to their answers!

Here are some details from RipOff Report. Pay particular attention to these as ex employees detail how they operate and how their scam works:
http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/312/RipOff0312307.htm
http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/301/ripoff0301144.htm
http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/276/RipOff0276693.htm
http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/301/RipOff0301861.htm

You can learn much more about these do***ebags by performing a web search for "versadebt," and "vp marketing," or "heather from account services."

NOW, WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT THIS? You have two solutions:
1) Speak to one of their customer service representatives. Pretend to be interested in either lowering your credit card interest rate or a car warranty. DO NOT GIVE THEM ANY REAL INFORMATION. Give them a fake credit card number, a fake name, and a fake SS#. Tell them you own a Ferrari, or a 1937 Dodge (however, if you really own one of those two, tell them you own a Buick). Give a made up VIN number. If they ask for your name and phone number, give them the info for the person you hate the most.

Your goal is simple. Keep them on the phone for as long as possible. Be friendly. Your goal is twofold. You want to learn as much as possible about them. They will refuse to give you a website, phone number, or maybe even a real company name. They will attempt to give you a generic name such as "Account Services," "Financial Services," or "Dealer Services." This is done for a reason, to throw you and the government off their tracks. Do not accept this. Keep pressing for info. You will need this (see below).

EVEN BETTER IS IF YOU CAN RECORD THE CALL.

Also, the time you take from them means them have less time to steal from someone who is unknowledgeable about their scams. They get paid to rip people off. Take away their time, and they make no money! I have kept them on the phone for up to 20 minutes! I realize that many of you do not have the time? But do you appreciate being taken advantage of?

Ever hear of Scambaiting? That is what you are doing!!! There are many entertaining web sites on this topic. For example, see:
http://www.419eater.com.

2) YOU MUST REPORT THEM TO THE AUTHORITIES:

FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION!
Here is the link to file a complaint: http://esupport.fcc.gov/complaints.htm

FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION:
https://donotcall.gov/complaint/complaintcheck.aspx

You must also file a report with the Attorney General of your state. See the last link below to see how effective this can be.

I file complaints against Versadebt and VP Marketing every time I receive a call. If everyone that received a call from these low-life scumbags does the same, then the combined action of thousands of us can stop these crooks from scamming innocent people out of money. You may also try to write your congress person.

Additional information: This is what can happen if everyone were to complain!
http://ago.mo.gov/newsreleases/2008/TRO_again ... all_violations/

See the following press releases to see how effective your complaints can be:
http://ago.mo.gov/newsreleases/2008/030608.htm
http://ago.mo.gov/newsreleases/2008/National_ ... filed_by_Nixon/
http://ftc.gov/opa/2008/05/telephoney.shtm

Considering how easy it is to use VOIP to spoof the outgoing number when establishing a phone call, I'm surprised that more illicit organizations haven't started doing this. Or maybe I just haven't landed in the right database yet.

Still alive, but not for lack of life-ending events

2009-01-17T08:08:18Z

Today was one of those "this would make for a great Livejournal post!" days. I had a service consultation with a customer who wants me/us/Revolt to look over his recently purchased electric car and perform certain upgrades and modifications. He bought the car (a recently built/converted Bradley GT, Beetle-based kit car) knowing it was a bit "rough around the edges", and I've been tactfully honest with him about my opinion of it. Today was the second time I'd seen the car in person, and my first chance to drive it.

I'll just put it this way. The car was not well built, and appeared to have been worked on by people who didn't know much about cars, or about building things. The problems with it would certainly overwhelm this post, so I'll leave most of them out, and I'm saving the best for last. :-)

I was going to drive the car a couple weeks ago, after riding in it as a passenger for a bit. Didn't end up in the driver's seat, since we discovered after a short time that its weird speed-dependent grinding noise was actually a screwhead from one of the battery boxes rubbing on the inner sidewall of one of the rear tires. It had literally dug a gouge about 5 millimeters deep into the side of the tire. When I realized that's what was happening, I also realized that the weight of 2 people in the car was making it worse, so I spent 10 minutes walking back to his house.

So today, I figured I'd give the car a test drive, with the hope that all the immediate, certain-death problems had been solved. Sure enough, the rubbing had been resolved (he removed part of the battery enclosure, since it wasn't really structural anyway). Overall experience started out okay, the Curtis 1231C controller giving quite a bit of pep at the lower end of the speed range. First gear had a bit of a low-pitch hum with some vibration, but higher gears were smooth and quiet.

First problem was the brakes. The car has 4-wheel drum brakes, which just by itself is inadequate for stopping an EV. I'm pretty sure the lines needed bleeding though, as the brakes were even softer than they should have been. Braking was something you had to plan way, way in advance. If you had to brake suddenly, the emergency brake could add a little more stopping power, but not much.

As we were driving around, I got the car up to about 35mph, and really didn't dare to go any faster, not only because of the brakes, but the suspension was in terrible shape as well. Bouncing off the bump-stops, with too little damping to keep the car from oscillating repeatedly after every bump. On approach to one T intersection, I neglected the brake situation for a second too long and found myself applying the brakes too late to stop. As I got close to the intersection, I noticed a car coming from the left, but it looked like it was going slow enough that it was going to turn. It didn't have a blinker on, but I decided the safest thing to do was to take the chance and turn right quickly (instead of stopping in the middle of the cross street) and get out of the way if needed. Fortunately luck was on my side; I was right, and the car happened to turn.

Next was the throttle. There was something gummed up in the linkage that caused the pedal to stick if depressed past a certain point. I discovered this (he didn't know about it) much to my temporary terror as I realized the pedal had not lifted when my foot did and the car continued to accelerate. We happened to be on an empty road, and I had enough time to get my foot under the pedal and lift it back up, which fortunately was enough to unstick the linkage. We found out later that the linkage was separate, and didn't have to come up with the pedal at all. Luck saves the day, again.

As we were returning to his house, I hit the brake early to start to slow down. Not long after I did, I lost braking almost completely. I jammed down on the pedal, and got almost no deceleration at all. Pulled up on the handbrake, and heard something pop, and the handbrake was useless. We zoomed past his house, and started to hear something clanking around, at this point it seemed like it might be something brake related. At any rate, despite having roughly ten percent of our original braking capacity remaining (which of course was about 10% of what it should have been), we had enough road left before the fairly busy T intersection ahead of us to bring the car gradually, eventually to a stop. I waited for the traffic to clear, and then slowly turned the car around and crawled it back to his driveway.

What we then discovered was that the car had suffered multiple simultaneous failures. The main brake failed because the piston in one of the brake cylinders burst out the end. We discovered this after following a trail of brake fluid from one of the wheels, after noticing the small but growing puddle it was sitting in on the driveway. We're not really sure what happened with the handbrake, though the linkage was seriously compromised due to a loose bolt (no loctite, no nylock, no lock washer, basically ready to fall off).

The best part though, was what he found after he popped off the wheel cover, to look at that wheel's brake assembly. The rattling sound was due to a nut that was bouncing around under the cover. We're not talking about a lug nut. This was the axle nut. For those not versed in automotive terminology, this is the single nut that holds the entire wheel and brake assembly onto the axle. Suffice it to say that without this nut there was utterly nothing at all holding the wheel on the car. Nothing, except my conveniently persisting streak of good luck.

The G1 is shit, long live Android!

2008-10-24T16:28:04Z

Just wanted to register my opinion on something amid all the banal, trivial bullshit passing as "relevant, topical news" these days about the election, global warming, water shortages, energy, terrorism, etc.

For all of its incredibly awesome, kick-ass features, the verdict today is pretty clear. The T-Mobile/Google/HTC "G1" phone, the first device based on Google's open-source Android operating system, is an immense, heartbreaking failure.

The main thing that kills it is the battery life. With a real-life standby time that's measured in HOURS, I can literally see the battery discharging as I hold it in my hands. This is with the screen brightness turned all the way down, Wifi turned off (since it has so far failed to connect even with my completely open, unsecured access point at home) and with the internal GPS chip disabled. There are some cool GPS and compass-enabled apps like Google Maps and Wikitude, but any actual use of these applications outdoors (exploring, traveling) will without question take more time than the device will provide on its battery while the GPS function is enabled. In this way, it's much like my TomTom GO720 GPS, which includes a battery as some kind of moronic joke. You wouldn't dare take it out of range of a power outlet, certainly not on a hiking trip.

The battery life is so poor, the G1 pretty convincingly fails to be dependable simply as a phone. And this is when the battery is new. A year from now, will it be functional at all?

Say you're an engineer for HTC. How would you deal with an enormous problem like this? I can think of a couple ways that have been applied by the industry in the past -- make the batteries accessible and easy to swap? I might not mind having 2 or 3 in my pocket. Design the phone to allow larger optional batteries? No-go on either of these. Getting to the battery requires a surgery-like operation of removing the rear case cover, which has no obvious features to make it doable without a sharp fingernail or a small blade; it's clear they don't want you doing this often. And of course, there's no room under the cover for a thicker battery.

There are other examples of simple, basic usability issues that HTC and Google completely missed -- in such a way that could legitimately make a person angry (especially one who just spent $350 on a phone), since the "right way to do it" has been well established in the mobile phone industry for YEARS now. I'll list some.

* Alarm

I'm the sort of guy who uses his cell phone as his only alarm clock; I've been doing this for about 12 years now, since I first owned a cell phone with an alarm that's loud enough to do the job. In that time, I've noticed a certain treatment of the alarm function on every cell phone I've had. Namely, that it's important. Several phones I've had will actually turn themselves on from a fully powered-off state in order to sound their alarms, even if the SIM has been removed. I recall one even did so after automatically shutting off hours earlier due to a low battery.

This morning, I woke up to find that my G1 had launched the alarm application, but was making no sound. It was apparently "ringing" because it displayed the "snooze" and "dismiss" buttons, but hitting them had no effect. The application appeared locked. I happened to unplug the charge cord (of course I wouldn't leave the phone to die overnight) and the phone immediately began ringing and I was able to press "dismiss". Was this application ever tested?

Also, I found no way to adjust the alarm volume independently. The alarm should make noise independent of any other setting. I should be able to put the phone on silent, and at my option, allow the alarm to still make noise.

* Voice Dial
For those who haven't used it and can't imagine why this is important, let me explain the virtue of Voice Dial, which has been a feature of mobile phones for at least a decade, in various forms. Voice Dial is a feature that allows you to dial a phone with your voice. By doing this, you can make calls without touching the phone. This is important in situations where handling the phone could be distracting or dangerous; for example, the somewhat common situation of operating a motor vehicle.

With the prior 4 phones I've owned (from Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Nokia, Blackberry), it follows the same basic procedure. I press the button on my Bluetooth earpiece. A voice prompt follows from the earpiece saying "Say a command" or perhaps just a tone that indicates it's time to say a name. Either by comparing against recorded voices or by phonetically decoding your speech (the latter being more advanced), the phone figures out what person you want to call. It may prompt you again with a question or a second beep, for you to say something like "Home" or "Mobile". You then say that, and it dials. With more recent phones, you can even pronounce digits.

The G1 has the difficult parts worked out -- it can recognize your pronunciation of names and choose the correct person from your contact list. However, it requires that you:

1) Activate voice dial ON THE PHONE. Yes. That's right. You have to handle the phone to start the voice dial process! I push the button on my earpiece and it does nothing. EPIC FAIL.

2) Once you've pronounced the name, you have to confirm .... (wait for it....)

ON THE PHONE.

This means I can't make phone calls in the car, as by this point I'm very much accustomed to doing, without digging the phone out of my pocket or belt pouch and looking at it.

Folks, there's been a standard way to do voice dial for years now. Anyone who can't get this right needs to stop making phones.

* The camera

Ok, so this is not exactly a "basic phone function", but it's so common these days, and the camera in the G1 performs so poorly, I had to mention it. The G1 is advertised as having a 3 megapixel camera -- not too shabby for a cell phone; definitely competitive with the latest devices out there. Sadly, the quality of the pictures taken with this camera is unfathomably
low. Dark, blurry, red-cast, and essentially unusable in a room lit with incandescent light. You either need to be outside in bright sun or with lots of windows around before the camera will take pictures with anything approaching "good" color. And I'm not talking "accurate" color; I'm talking about just being able to tell what you're looking at. The camera has no flash, and won't take video either.

The lack of a standard headphone jack, or an adapter to convert to one, is also a pretty basic blunder, but I've been told that eventually the phone's lack of bluetooth stereo audio support will be resolved in software, and after that I won't care much for wired headphones anyway.

I could spend a lot of time on the more high-tech failures of this device, like the absence of a multi-touch interface, extremely limited on-board RAM, no flash video (so you have to go to a separate app to watch Youtube clips, and you're SOL if the clip you want to watch is not from Youtube), lack of decent Facebook and Skype clients (the available Skype client actually uses cell minutes to make voice calls! What's the point?) but these are hashed over in plenty of other places online.

What I'm most pissed about is the failure of the basic traditional features of a cell phone. We have proof that HTC can do better than this -- why did they produce such a rotten product for Google?

In the end though, there's a ray of hope -- to some extent for the future of this device itself and in reference to some problems I've listed above, at least beyond those problems that are permanent due to the hardware design of the G1. That ray of hope is the Android OS. What I've seen is very impressive, and the open market that Google is creating for 3rd party developers to add applications and even improve upon the OS itself is in my opinion nothing short of a wholesale game-changer for the smart phone industry, though its effects make take years to become fully apparent. It's a shame that Android had to launch on a phone with so many initial disappointments, but I believe Android itself is entirely worthy of the hype.

Verdict: I look like a dork.

2008-09-23T18:04:27Z

I think it's important for me to see this now while things are still small. The video shows that I seriously need to work on my poise and delivery, and have an awareness about factors that make me look like a dweeb (squinting into the sun, etc).

I'm not really happy with the way it came out but I'm not blaming the station or the editing. I think that the problems are fixable if I can learn from the experience.

Escher's Belvedere, in Lego

2008-09-18T19:15:39Z

This is absolutely awesome. With only 3 dimensions to work in, he had to use a perspective gimmick to get it to work, but regardless, this is just cool.

More fantastic Lego creations here.

Back on 2 wheels

2008-08-08T03:26:28Z

The other day, I took a couple bicycles to the shop, which have been sitting around in disrepair for a while. My mountain bike has had a slow leak in both tires, and a problem shifting that only allowed access to half the available gears in the rear. I'm glad to have it back again, as it opens the possibility that I may get back into doing some light technical trail riding, as is available within walking distance from my house at Walnut Creek Park. I could have done these repairs myself and used to do them routinely, but these days with so little free time, it's hard to motivate myself to get stuff like that done.

But this post isn't about that bike. The other bike I got back home today is special.

Back in an earlier era of my life, in the days when I'd just gotten my first vehicle (a beat up Chevy pickup truck that only barely ran) and couldn't afford to drive it everywhere, I was still riding a bicycle and walking most places I went, which wasn't too hard in Bryan, Texas. The bike I rode was a road bike I had bought used when I was in high school, a Schwinn Aluminum 594. The apex of Schwinn's product line when it was new, it was by no means a Ferarri among bikes, but it was very well made and counted among my most prized possessions.

While riding it to work one morning, I was riding close to a wall that surrounded a raised strip mall parking lot, going down a long hill. It was my routine to take full advantage of the hill, which allowed me to get up to pretty good speeds. Suddenly, a car appeared in front of me from behind the wall, I had about a half a second to brake before my front wheel made contact about at the center of the car's front wheel. I recall I never touched the car with my person, flying in front of the windshield and landing a good distance on the other side. At the time of impact, I figure I was going about 30mph. My helmet broke when I landed. The girl in the car was understandably in shock and horrified after seeing someone sailing over her hood, but I picked myself up and told her everything was cool. I was pretty sure I was at fault but she was sure it was her, so we ultimately agreed to part ways and cover our own damage. Of course, I couldn't afford to fix the bike, so I ended up walking a lot after that.

Fourteen years later, the cobwebs and dust are now cleaned off and it's back on two wheels and rolling again. I took the opportunity to ride the 22-year-old bike around the neighborhood, and remembered some of the things I love about road bikes. For one thing, unlike mountain bikes that have a lot of tire noise and often a pretty loud clicky freewheel, a well-maintained road bike is truly and absolutely silent. Unlike a dual-suspension mountain bike, the bumps are a bit harsh, but the bike is so light and has so little inertia that it doesn't pound on you as much as you might think. You can accelerate faster with the same amount of work, and you're a lot more maneuverable.

I'd forgotten how much I loved this bike. It's been a long time.

Linksys WMP54G in Windows XP x64 Edition

2008-08-03T18:17:42Z

So, you're running Windows XP x64, perhaps after a disastrous stint with the 64-bit Windows Vista, and you're happy except you want to add a wireless card and you're finding that most on the market don't support your OS. I had a similar experience recently that had me buying 2 different cards, only to find that they aren't supported. First was a D-Link WDA-1320, and after the experience of being told by support that they simply won't ever provide a driver, I was a little more careful in choosing the next card, a Linksys WMP54G. I'd read several reviews of people who'd gotten it to work, so I bought one.

So, I get the thing home, and I try to do an install, and I end up in the same spot as before. Software didn't install, no driver offered for XP x64. After getting a nearly identical brushoff from their phone support, I go back and read some more posts online about the issue. It seems that people are recommending the driver supplied by the card's chipset manufacturer, RALink. I grab the latest RT61 driver and try to install it, but the Windows install routine can't find the card.

What really pisses me off about this is that anyone who's actually gotten this to work has to have known that this is not all there is to it. I looked at the RT61.inf file that comes with the driver, and found that no Linksys cards were listed among the supported devices. I know my card is based on that chipset so I know it will work, and so I added my card to the list. Here's what I did, specifically.

Went to the Device Manager, and found my still-not-installed Wifi card under Network Adapters. It was obvious, since it has a yellow question mark symbol on the icon. I right-click the entry and select Properties. On the properties dialog, I selected the Details tab, and the one visible property shown under that tab is "Device Instance ID". I clicked on the value and hit Ctrl-Ins to copy it. The line looks like (all on one line):

PCI\VEN_1814&DEV_0301&SUBSYS_00551737&REV_00\4&14A7D9B9&0&4840

I then closed this dialog and opened C:\Program Files (x86)\RALINK\RT6x Wireless LAN Card\Driver\RT61.inf in a text editor, and made a couple insertions.

First, under the section [Ralink.NTamd64], I added the line:

%Linksys_0301.DeviceDesc% = RALINK_0301.ndi, PCI\VEN_1814&DEV_0301&SUBSYS_00551737

Notice that this does not contain all of the line copied from the Device Manager. The driver install routine is not concerned with anything from the &REV tag onward, so paste in what you copied and then delete from that point to the end. The line you paste should be the same length as the others in the file. If the DEV tag says something other than 0301, then I believe you'll want to use the corresponding "RALINK_xxxx.ndi" value.

Second, near the bottom of the file in the [Strings] section under "Device Description", add the following line:

Linksys_0301.DeviceDesc = "My Hacked Entry For Linksys WMP54G"

Save the file, and then make another attempt to install the driver for the device (right click on the device in Device Manager and select "Update Driver..."). Don't try an automatic install; you'll want to browse to the directory (C:\Program Files (x86)\RALINK\RT6x Wireless LAN Card\Driver) specifically. The install should work correctly from this point on, and the RALink software should then be able to find the card. In fact I'm using mine as I post this.

Let me also add that this sort of thing makes me even more ticked that Linksys does not support XP x64 with this card. It would have required no extra software development on their part; RALink has obviously done all the work already.

Arms depot explosion in Sofia

2008-07-07T04:15:47Z

There's not really all that much that's remarkable about this video. Just your typical massive exploding stockpile of aging soviet era weapons and explosives, stored (of course) near the capitol and population center of a major eastern european country.

At approximately 1 minute and 33 seconds in however, there's a pretty cool moment in the video. Watch carefully, and you'll notice a shockwave radiating outward through the surrounding clouds of smoke. A couple seconds later, the wave hits the camera and only then do you hear the "BANG".

Temporarily losing a friend, perspective of a teetotaler.

2008-07-02T18:24:43Z

I've got something in my head today that I need to get out, and after a quick epiphany ("Hey, that's what LiveJournal is for, remember what it was like to post to LiveJournal?") I figure I'll just lay it out here.

Last night I went to sit and talk with an old friend who'd recently been dumped, suddenly and as I would learn, very coldly and harshly by his girlfriend of a year and a half. I'd only intended to be there for a couple hours at most, since I have a lot of EV design work to do and I really couldn't even afford the break yesterday at all.

I get to Opal Divine's Marina, expecting to commiserate over food and drinks on the unpleasantness of being dumped (it's been a very long time for me, but I still remember my similar experience like it was yesterday), and I find that he's invited a bunch of other friends and it's turning into a sort of happy hour party. This was a very good thing, as it would not have been as positive and upbeat had it just been the two of us. There isn't a chair at the table next to my friend, so I sit at the other end of the table, and get into a conversation with a couple other people there.

During this time, he has a few beers, as does everyone else at the table except me. People are having a pretty good time, and in a circumstance I can only define as rare, I'm doing pretty well too. I do eventually get to talk with him for a moment, and though it was short it was good to exchange notes on how things went down. It was especially good to see that he doesn't seem to be letting it ruin him, as my experience did to me.

After a few glasses of beer he moves to a drink that's mostly bourbon in a martini glass, and I then watch him gradually tip back four or five of these. I listen as his speech starts to slur, his sentences start to make less sense, and his evaluation of the humor in his expressions begins to outpace ours. Of course I realize that this, for many out there, is a pretty common routine and that a lot of people do this pretty regularly. But for me, it was weird and depressing, to see my friend basically "going away" and not being able to do anything about it. I couldn't really talk to him anymore and so for me, the whole occasion became a lot less fun. I ended up staying really late, because I wanted to be there at the end of the evening so I could be there to drive him home if no one else could do it.

This reminds me of a couple events in the past; of course the first being how my stepfather (a reformed alcoholic when my mother met him) ended up almost killing himself twice during my childhood by chugging straight Everclear, and how he was a different person in that state and how much damage it did to my family and his career.

The second event, which I hadn't thought about in years, involved a coworker to whom I was really strongly attracted, back when I lived in College Station, working for CableMart. She wasn't quite my type, but she was sweet and attractive and would actually give me the time of day. I went to a birthday party one evening for another coworker Ryan, and noticed she was there. I'd tried to figure out how I could get a moment with her to talk and possibly ask her out. Unfortunately, I'd confided my interests at some point previously to Ryan, and therefore ultimately to his somewhat psycho girlfriend. I never resolved whether or not she did this on purpose, but that night she proceeded to convince the object of my interests into getting very drunk, and the poor girl (who hadn't previously been very experienced with liquor) was out of her mind and hurling into the bushes by the end of the evening. I never did get another decent opportunity.

I don't drink. I find it physically difficult to tolerate the sensation of drinking alcohol, and with only a couple exceptions I can think of, I can't stand the taste of substances that contain it even in small quantity. Obviously I have some emotional baggage that precludes any interest in overcoming this default impression. However, I do indeed understand why people drink and to some extent it seems like a reasonable thing to do. It makes a person relaxed and loosens inhibitions, and thus makes it easier to socialize and enjoy time spent with friends. Sometimes for this reason I wonder how different (and almost certainly better) my life would be if I consumed a little alcohol from time to time.

But what I don't understand is why people like to get drunk. What benefit is to be had in smothering your consciousness and perception, and your control over your surroundings? What is the good side of poor decision-making, embarrassing behavior and risking the lives of everyone on the street if your friends don't stop you from driving yourself home? Where is the enjoyment in doing something that makes you sick when the buzz is gone?

Someday I may force myself to get drunk so I can understand it a little better. I don't know if I'll find wisdom, or just a headache and a bunch of unexplained messes to clean up afterward.

The manufacturing force powering modern society

2008-06-27T20:24:28Z

Found a brilliant and insightful article, detailing the realities of manufacturing in China -- what it's doing to us, and what it's doing to them.

Something rotten in the state of Denmark

2008-06-10T20:52:15Z

I probably should just let this sort of thing go, but I find such developments deeply troubling, on a moral and ethical basis.

How on earth are they going to fairly and accurately judge and rate the contestants' competitive performances, to assure an unbiased decision is made? The mens' efforts yield a very obvious, visible manifestation that can be easily quantified and compared. But for the women it seems like it's going to amount to little more than an acting contest. Just think of the accusations, the anger, the sweaty, inadequately-clad retaliatory catfights...

Of what further lapses of fairness and sportsmanship shall we find humanity to be capable? It's distressing, I tell you.

Eh, it's in there.

2008-06-09T04:18:33Z

Managed to "finish" the mounting base I've been building this weekend, for mounting our digitizing arm in arbitrary positions in and around a car. It actually needs a lot of improvements (lockable ball joints being one of the most important), but for the moment we have it set up in the engine bay of the Mazda 3, and it appears to be stable enough to provide reasonably good measurement data.

Yep, pretty ghetto. Those are indeed Vise-grip C clamps welded to the ends, and the rest of the apparatus is made from aluminum plate and extruded aluminum L-channel. Aaron admitted he didn't think it was going to work :o)

You ever have one of those days?

2008-06-08T04:26:32Z

One good moment today, getting to drive the 2002 Saturn SL we've been working on converting to electric power, for the first time.

With its 144V pack, it performed pretty strongly, though not as strongly as I'd hoped. Still, it's not a bad car, and low-end acceleration is actually pretty brisk. 1st gear is a bit too low to be practical, and it's pretty easy to spin the tires so we normally start out in second gear instead.

The rest of the day wasn't quite as good. Had a guy stop by during my open garage session today, talking about free energy and over-unity devices; I let him know that this stuff is not kosher for pleasant, fruitful conversations with most EV enthusiasts, and certainly not with me personally. I need to develop a more effective routine for efficiently, cordially, and non-combatively extricating myself from such conversations. As it was, I ended up gabbing for a couple hours and not getting much done.

After the open garage session, back to Aaron's for more work on the mobile mount I'm building for our CMM arm. I should be *using* the arm this weekend to start getting 3D scan data from the inside of the Mazda3 engine bay, but because mounting the arm base on a tripod turned out not to be stable enough, I'm having to make a mount that can be clamped in various orientations to the car body itself. A better solution than the tripod in my opinion, but one I was hoping not to have to do now. Yet another setback in a timeline that just doesn't have room for any more of them.

Meanwhile, Aaron was busy fabricating a sheet metal bracket for the new electric air conditioning compressor for the Saturn. We haven't found anyone who will waterjet these for us for cheap enough, so for the moment our technique is totally ghetto. I have managed to get our [also somewhat ghetto] CAD program to print out a flat, unfolded image of a sheet metal part at a fairly accurate 1:1 scale, so we can then tape the separate sheets of paper into a single drawing if necessary and then use a low-tack spray adhesive I found to basically turn the paper into a big post-it note. It then goes onto the sheet metal, and we run the result through the bandsaw and drill press to cut out the outline and drill the bolt holes. Time consuming, but we've found it works pretty well. The results show some small signs of being "handmade" due mostly to our crappy Harbor Freight brake, but the parts are functional and holes line up.

This morning I'd told Aaron "all folds go down," when asked how the flat pattern was supposed to fold into the finished bracket. As it turns out, this was wrong. He set the bracket aside after finishing it this evening, and while I was admiring what a great job he did, I decided to take it over to the car where I noticed that it was all wrong. Nothing lined up at all. After a minute or two a rare burst of spatial/topological competence clued me in that it was folded up completely inside-out. All the folds were supposed to go *up*. So, I ended up wasting an entire day of my business partner's time, with one tiny, completely incorrect piece of advice. He took it really well.

It was nice to have a positive experience after that, of driving the car around on the highway and not being horrendously disappointed. Aaron's driven it a few times, but it was the first time for me since I was in San Jose when it first left the garage.

It's Hot Steamy Food In Your Face, Right Now.

2008-06-05T03:41:53Z

Yum Brands' latest innovation, the Feed Bag.

Disappointing tactics

2008-05-02T19:50:58Z

I don't know what good it could do to post this here, but this sort of thing pisses me off enough to say something. Plus, it goes along with a conversation I was having last night. Maybe it will be helpful just to have another page out there with a link.

That they bask in their own ignorance and don't really bother to understand what they're arguing against is one thing, but resorting to actively deceptive practices and lying to the public is something worse -- with which I'm beginning to strongly associate at least the central proponents of Intelligent Design. This article about Ben Stein's new movie Expelled is a good summary of some stuff I've read in the past couple of days, put together in a handy list. The first item (which I hadn't seen before) is the smokiest gun in the lot, I think. For no really good reason, I'll quote it here:

1) Expelled quotes Charles Darwin selectively to connect his ideas to eugenics and the Holocaust.
When the film is building its case that Darwin and the theory of evolution bear some responsibility for the Holocaust, Ben Stein's narration quotes from Darwin's The Descent of Man thusly:

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

This is how the original passage in The Descent of Man reads (unquoted sections emphasized in italics):

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

The producers of the film did not mention the very next sentences in the book (emphasis added in italics):

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil.

Darwin explicitly rejected the idea of eliminating the "weak" as dehumanizing and evil. Those words falsify Expelled's argument. The filmmakers had to be aware of the full Darwin passage, but they chose to quote only the sections that suited their purposes.

I mean, what were they thinking? Did they think no one would notice?

unsettling

2008-04-11T18:45:51Z

This is one of the most depressing things I have read in a long time.

I vehemently disagree with its central concepts and I believe the author has made some profoundly foolish choices -- her situation is in large part the fruit of her own hubris. Some of this she acknowledges but of some of it she seems to remain self-righteously ignorant. Due to the problems that her distorted worldview has helped her to create for herself she's obviously become very bitter, and flavored by this her article comes across more as irrational, unfocused invective than sound relationship advice on which a reasonable person would base their most important life choices.

What really depresses me however is that not everyone will agree with me whether they've read her article or not, and that I am at this stage in my life undeniably the broken and deeply flawed creature she recommends to her readers. Her friend who is waiting for his dream girl to change her mind and come back to him, he confuses me especially. He seems happy to think that eventually she'll be forced by circumstance to settle for him, despite his knowledge that even after a concerted effort she's failed (repeatedly) to find a sufficient emotional connection with him to provide fulfillment in her life. Am I just wired differently, that I find such a situation to be tragic? The absence of hope is a far more comfortable thing to me, than hope of that kind.

For a more analytical (if perhaps not very scientifically rigorous) treatment of the situation, this is the article that lead me to the one above.

Fixing the Neptune

2008-03-27T06:28:19Z

Due to my grandfather's failing health, I'm soon to have my mother and my brother, and possibly his wife staying with me at The Projects (aka. my house). This is a situation I've always sort of known would happen. Not the very unfortunate cause, but just the sudden need to get my house in order such that it's livable to those who have not been gradually indoctrinated into the domestic chaos that surrounds me despite my best but largely ineffectual efforts to subdue it.

Apparently, the powers that be (the ones in which I continue to decline to specifically believe, yeah those) have decided that the herculean task of getting this place clean and in shape is not difficult enough. So, a couple of days ago, memos were sent, Murphy was summoned, my record was reviewed, and it was decided -- it's time for an appliance failure. My Maytag Neptune clothes washer, previously perceived to be of "high quality", decided to stop spinning between rinses or at the end of the cycle. Clothes removed after a wash ended up sitting in a puddle of water at the bottom of the tub.

I've discovered that this failure is typical of these early-generation Neptunes, and eventually it will happen to most all of them that aren't modified to prevent it. Worse yet have been reports of Maytag's response to this problem and some others, denying that they've heard of it and refusing to support customers who stumble on the results of some pretty serious design flaws. Apparently there was a class-action lawsuit about it a couple years back. In retrospect I kinda wish I'd known about it, though I guess I probably wouldn't have cared much since I wasn't having a problem then.

At any rate, armed with a bit of information from others who'd had this happen to them, I decided to check mine out and see if I could find the problem.

I posted a few pictures here and the descriptions show what I've done so far. I'd replace the blown resistor, but the scorch is pretty bad and the circuit board has been redesigned, so it's probably going to be a better deal to get the improved version.

A great speech today

2008-03-19T02:51:53Z

Over the past few years, I've gathered a sort of reflex reaction to presidential speeches; whenever I think about the president giving a speech I invariably cringe inside, and honestly I can't bear to listen to them. I read summaries afterward, but actually sitting through them makes me embarassed, as I think about how people all over the world can listen in and wonder what on earth we were thinking four and eight years ago.

Today, I listened to a speech that contrasts so completely, it gives me hope for the future. Apparently there are indeed still some intelligent, articulate people in politics these days, and one of them is even running for president. I can only hope.

I haven't been able to sit through more than just a few minutes of speeches like these in a very long time. Tonight, I listened to the entire thing.

A single neutrino penetrates the skull...

2008-03-13T04:55:21Z

Have you ever had one of those moments when a long-unresolved mystery suddenly becomes clear? With no additional information, just a random connection in your mind of different pieces of information -- not even necessarily something you're thinking heavily about at the time, but just something that clicks .... ?

Unfortunately, it happened to me on the topic of something a bit silly and mundane, but it was pretty cool to see it happen anyway. Almost like some part of my brain was on autopilot for a moment, and came up with the answer without my asking it to.

Several years ago, I had roommates, and a couple of those roommates had some mutual friends between them. On one evening there was some kind of small party going on, with a bunch of people I hadn't met hanging around, and at one point they were doing board games or something similar and sort of had stuff sprawled out on the floor. I don't remember anymore if the particular person I'm thinking about was one of Shawnasee's friends or Skyler's or both, but at any rate I remember at one point he asked if he could borrow my KitchenAid stand mixer. As I recall he'd been taking cooking classes and wanted to demonstrate for some other people there how to make pizza dough.

Some time later, the mixer stopped working. I wasn't there to see it happen, but I was there shortly afterward, and I remember fiddling with it trying to see if it was just a transient problem. No luck.

Fast forward about 4 years; after several false starts over that period of time, just this afternoon I managed to get it fixed and running again. The failure was a thermal fuse, which "blows" like a normal fuse except it happens at a certain temperature (140C in this case) instead of a certain electrical current. The motor had overheated, and the thermal fuse saved it from burning out. I finally spliced in a replacement I picked up at Fry's and put everything back together.

What's been bugging me though, is how/why it happened. I've been telling myself it happened because he must have been kneading the dough with the dough hook above speed 2 (which the manual warns you not to do). I wasn't there to see it, and he said he wasn't running it too fast, but I never did think of a better explanation. He said it had been kneading for a while, and it just stopped. If he had been running it at the proper speed (going faster doesn't make much sense, for kneading dough), it certainly wasn't doing anything beyond its capabilities.

This evening, a couple hours after I'd gotten the mixer put back together and used it for the first time in years, the answer hit me. When I took the mixer apart a while back (it's been sitting in pieces in my garage for at least a couple years), I noted its interesting cooling strategy -- the exhaust vent is at the back, and the cooling air is pulled up through the hollow body of the stand itself. Within seconds, that thought and all the rest started to self-assemble in my head:

They'd been playing board games on the living room floor

He'd put the mixer there on the floor with him so they all could watch it working while they were playing

The air intake is literally underneath the foot of the mixer

Back then, I had carpet.

Ding! It was choking for air, while kneading heavy pizza dough. Ordinarily, the machine has more than enough power to do this sort of thing (475W) but in that case, it's easy to see why it failed. Easy enough, in fact, to wonder why it didn't occur to me sooner.

When Holmes or Poirot put all the pieces together and find the murderer, I bet it feels something like this. Except that it's about something a little more important, and makes a better story. :o)

Random thought, perspective on oil usage

2008-03-06T07:13:44Z

While reading about the current record-breaking price of oil, I started thinking about how much petroleum we pump out of the ground and use every day. Just for the US, daily petroleum consumption is over 20 million barrels.

In the petroleum industry, a barrel is a unit equal to 42 US gallons. 20 million barrels therefore is equal to 840 million gallons. These are really big numbers, and it's kinda hard to visualize what exactly these amounts mean.

In agriculture, ecology, and similar fields there is a somewhat popular unit of measure for large quantities of liquid that would help wrap our minds around exactly what kind of amounts we're talking about. The unit is called an "acre foot", typically used to measure the amount of water in a lake or passing by a certain point in a river over a given measure of time. It literally refers to water at a depth of one foot, covering an area of one acre. That's a lot of water -- 325,851.429 US gallons in fact.

So for those like me who can't do the math in their head, that gives us approximately 2,578 acre feet of oil.

Let me say that again. 2,578 acre feet of oil. 2,578 acres covered by a standing foot of oil. Or put another way, a 257.8-foot-tall container of oil, with a bottom surface that's 10 acres large. The US uses this much oil every day.

Participatory Democracy

2008-03-05T04:28:32Z

Wow, what a process. I've voted in the Democratic party primary today, and I attended the caucus this evening.

The voting went pretty smoothly, despite that they'd misspelled my last name in the registration. I was given a card to correct it (of course, someone's going to have to read what's on the card and type it in somewhere, which means they'll probably get it wrong again), but I was allowed to vote anyway. Voting was disappointingly still electronic. I guess that's probably the way it will be from now on. I still don't know who made the system, but at least it didn't appear to be Diebold.

The caucus, on the other hand .... was a mess. They were "Unprepared" for the turnout; they'd apparently expected between 20 and 30 people, and they got somewhere between 200 and 300. Our precinct's election activities are always carried out at the junior college near my house, and they'd picked out a room for everyone to gather. I got there at about 7:10 and the room was full; the long hallway outside it was about half full of people standing around. The hall is probably about a couple hundred feet long, and there were people lining the walls and standing in the middle. A half hour later it was completely packed, and then someone stepped out and told everyone in the hall to go to one end or the other depending on whether they were supporting Obama or Clinton. I didn't have to move, but probably half the people in the hall did. Lovely.

About 90 minutes after I arrived (and about 30 minutes after the announcement was made that sign-ins had started), the mass of people finally started to actually *move* perceptibly. I eventually went in, put my name and my choice down, and went home. I figured I'd probably regret not sticking around for the rest of it, but I figured I'd achieved the main thing I'd gone to do and I really was really getting tired of standing around rebreathing other people's exhaled air.

All in all, a pretty cool evening.

Carbon fiber ... shortage?

2008-02-26T04:02:28Z

I've been spending part of this evening trying to help someone out, who is trying to build a carbon fiber shell for a solar race car.

I wanted to get some ideas on prices for various dimensions, weights and weaves of carbon cloth. What I discovered is that several sites are mentioning a global carbon fiber shortage. Apparently, word got out that carbon fiber kicks ass, and now people with deep pockets are starting to design everything out of it.

Of course that page seems a bit old and apparently this thing has been going on for a couple years now, but enough sources for carbon fiber are still mentioning this shortage that it seems it may still be a problem. I've found some hybrid weaves of Kevlar and carbon, that are just a little cheaper, and actually a little lighter as well. Undoubtedly not as strong, but perhaps the difference in strength won't be important. I am no expert on building solar cars, but my guess at the moment is that the strength of the frame is going to be the most important thing; the skin only needs to be strong enough to withstand handling and road vibration; it shouldn't be counted on to support loads.

Hope they have better sources than I've been able to find; $25-35 per square yard seems like a lot of money, especially given their need for about 100 square yards of the stuff.

WANT.

2008-01-28T18:25:53Z

There's something cool about riding a powered skateboard that looks like a normal board, but I think this is how all powerboards should be designed, from a practical perspective. There are so many places I'd like to rid my Exkate X24, except that it doesn't have the wheels to go over even smooth, flat unpaved trails. With large tires, problem solved. Any surface these wheels can't handle, I don't want to be riding on without handlebars.

Apparently the same motor and controller as on my board; good that they're putting a heatsink on the motor end bell now. I'm going to guess there's a nontrivial efficiency loss from the tires which might explain why the battery pack appears significantly larger on this board.

V14gr4? c14li5? Ah, the nostalgia for times gone by

2008-01-25T07:49:48Z

Recently, I started to use Thunderbird as my mail client, and after a while I've gotten more used to its features. One of these is that as it learns about your incoming spam, it doesn't delete them, it just flags them and gives you a function (which really should be on a hotkey) to delete all items so marked.

Because I'm actually *seeing* my spam now before I delete it, and I'm forced to see it each time, I am better able to catch false positives before they get deleted. I'm also able to see the breathtaking algorithmic somethingorother of a certain variety of penis enlargement spam I've been getting lately (and possibly for a long time).

Consider the following subject lines, from two days ago:

RaySignificantSchlong
DeanaTremendousBodypart
ManstickProdigiousMarty
MableJumboCock
ColossalWinkyStewart
HoracePipeCapacious
VoluminousSausageSally
AnnabelleProminantCock
PhallusSignificantJuliana
AshleyMemberSpacious

After briefly glancing at this stuff day after day I'd decided to gather some up to make a note of them, amused by the grinning don't-give-a-shit attitude of whoever wrote the code that generates them. Only a dipshit would respond to emails like these, but their dollar is just as green. Male names, female names, clinical jargon, vulgar porn slang, doesn't matter. Mildred and Hubert be getting them some Colossal Cock, and now you can too.

I haven't seen enough of them to have a full idea of the number of [random name] ["penis" word] and ["big" word] values there are, but I was disappointed that I didn't get one of my favorites.

Sure enough, early the next morning, I got some Fuckstick in the mail. And it was Huge.

ClevelandBodypartGreatest
FuckstickHugeJonathan
SpaciousPenisSydney
HulkySchlongDee
JeanOverlargePhallus

Obviously they're shooting for the permutations here, mixing up the order to keep it fresh for the weaker, dumber spam filters.

Somewhere in here, I think there's some Vogon poetry to be found.

Now it's really stuck in my head

2008-01-22T05:07:29Z

As getting back to writing in my journal here is in itself a return to the past (sort of), it seems (sort of) appropriate to post about a concert I went to this weekend. I've only been to 3 concerts in my life due to reasons I don't really even understand. In what might seem like a waste of these few experiences, the first and latest have been for Information Society, which was influential in my late high school and college days. I don't think it's evident from their popular songs, but there is definitely a geek element to the band, and that was definitely still present on Friday night.

It was really cool that the original 3 members were together again for the tour, but a bit strange that Kurt Harland was on stage singing songs from their latest release when in fact he only sang for one track on that album. Hearing the old material in the original voice was definitely stuff of nostalgia though, as the sound of it brought me back to my freshman dorm room, cranking the stereo to 11 and feeling the thumping against my ribcage while earplugs kept my ears from rupturing. Basically the same thing as at the concert -- without the plugs, I probably would have had some temporary deafness, and maybe a little permanent damage. I'm grateful to errantember for having remembered to bring them.

Note: Say you're wanting to buck the trend and protect your hearing at a concert, and you don't have any of those fancy clear hidden earplugs. Suppose also that you don't want to look like a responsible, self-respecting dork with bright blacklight-illuminated orange tufts hanging out of your ears. Handy tip: cut off the 1/4 inch "bell" at the end of the plug (you brought your Leatherman or Victorinox, right?), and insert normally. There will just be a dot at the end of your ear canal, yet enough to remove easily. Not a perfect solution but you'll feel less self-conscious, if you're that sort of person.

As the last item for this post, I have to mention ... there's one (actually, several) of their songs that's sticky in a strange way, it gets stuck in your head invariably in an alternative form. It's juvenile, but it's pretty unavoidable.

I want to know
What you're drinking
Those are piss stains you can't hide

I want to know
What you're smoking
Tell me what's blown your mind