Jamcleat

I was alerted by a  Groklaw to an MSNBC article on the Ig Nobel awards. I really appreciate the folks who do these as it really is an award that truely extends the bounds of human knowledge.

The award for Medicine made me think that it would be interesting to do a 4-way double-blind study with a non-generic drug, its generic equivalent, and the non-generic in a different form.  The purpose of the study is to evaluate the effect of marketing and price.  High and low price the real thing and the imitaion.  What if it turns out that price improves the performace of the drug, regardless of composition.  Would this make the ethical drug companies more ethical if they raised prices?

About a year ago, the ice maker in the fridge died. Since my brother and his family were on the way from where-ever to visit and spend the night, ice was vital. I went to the part store and got a new ice maker and put it in.
Recently when the ice maker started making no ice and an annoying clicking noise in midweek, no panic but genuine annoyance. There is good new and bad news. I can look at it on the weekend but the parts store is open week days. I unplugged the plug and my wife put the ice tray in the freezer.
On the weekend, I had time to look. The ice maker has a white cover on the end. It has some catches on the side away from you that you understand once you have it off. Slip a flat-blade screwdriver under middle of the lower edge and work it in a bit until you release the catches. Gently but firmly. The plastic cover comes off and reveals the motor unit. The shaft of the motor (on the side away from you) turns a shaft with a set of paddles on it. There is a metal mold to form the semi-circular-segment prism ice “cubes”. There is also a heating element and a thermal sensor. The underside of the cover has the a sticker with some clues to as to how it works.
The next post will discuss the fix.

A neighbor followed my wife into the neighborhood a few nights ago. Actually he was driving a car following her car as she drove into the neighborhood. He saw that some of her lights were out and should be replaced.

My son pointed out that unless you have someone walk around your car regularly while you signal and tap the brake, you never really know what lights are working.

So Phillip and I did a light check on each of the cars and made a list. I took the list to — and got $28 worth of bulbs. Then I spent the afternoon replacing bulbs.

First the Buick – The Buick has a lighted trim strip in the back. What appeared to be 1 light out on the left was actually 3 – 2 bulbs on the left and one on the right. The bulbs are inside an assembly that is held on with 6 wing nuts. These nuts are a neat design that you can use a socket wrench on with an electric screw driver but you can get them off by hand. This job would have been straight forward except for the broken bulb that crunched when I tried to turn it. Careful work with a soft-jaw plier did the trick. The other bulb was one of two high brake lights. These are easy to reach from inside the trunk.

Then the Cavalier – Two high brake lights out. Again easy to reach. The right turn signal light requires removal of the entire headlight assembly. Remove the bulb holder, change the bulb, and put it all back.

Then my Olds Cutlass Cruiser – The problem here is that the dashboard light was out on the left side. This kept the engine temp gauge in the dark. I am a bit paranoid about the engine temp since a bit of overheat cost be about $1200 a couple of years ago. Getting at the bulbs requires removing all of the dashboard trim (6 screws), the instrument cluster (4 screws) only to find that the bulbs that the store computer called out were just the bulb. For the dashboard, you need a special assembly of the bulb and its mounting plate. I re-arranged the bulbs so now the dark part of the dashboard is from 60-120 MPH. Not a part of the speedometer that I use a lot.

I apologize to anyone who got a virus from this site. I normally never use Windows at home as it is unsafe to use except in a corporate environment where you have experts and firewalls and such. Never buy a computer for your home that includes Windows. As such I got the virus from my own web site, this one. The problem has been corrected. My webmaster son noted that there was a vulnerability on Feb 3 and had it on his list of things to upgrade. Too late. Again I apologize.

I’ve imported all your old pages and re-formatted them a little bit to work with this thinner layout.

I hope you like it!