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Progress?

I found this in a file save 10 years ago.

If Oracle made toasters…

They’d claim their toaster was compatible with all brands and styles of
bread, but when you got it home you’d discover the Bagel Engine was still
in development, the Croissant Extension was three years away, and that
indeed the whole appliance was just blowing smoke.

If Hewlett-Packard made toasters…

They would market the Reverse Toaster, which takes in toast and gives you
regular bread.

If IBM made toasters…

They would want one big toaster where people bring bread to be submitted
for overnight toasting. IBM would claim a worldwide market for five, maybe
six toasters.

If Xerox made toasters…

You could toast one-sided or double-sided. Successive slices would get
lighter and lighter. The toaster would jam your bread for you.

If Radio Shack made toasters…

The staff would sell you a toaster, but not know anything about it. Or you
could buy all the parts to build your own toaster.

If Thinking Machines made toasters…

You would be able to toast 64,000 pieces of bread at the same time.

If Cray made toasters…

They would cost $16 million but would be faster than any other
single-slice toaster in the world.

If The Rand Corporation made toasters…

It would be a large, perfectly smooth and seamless black cube. Every
morning there would be a piece of toast on top of it. Their service
department would have an unlisted phone number, and the blueprints for the
box would be highly classified government documents. The X-Files would have
an episode about it.

If the NSA made toasters…

Your toaster would have a secret trap door that only the NSA could access
in case they needed to get at your toast for reasons of national security.

If Sony made toasters…

The ToastMan, which would be barely larger than the single piece of bread
it is meant to toast, can be conveniently attached to your belt.

If Timex made toasters…

They would be cheap and small quartz-crystal wrist toasters that take a
licking and keep on toasting.

If Fisher Price made toasters…

“Baby’s First Toaster” would have a hand-crank that you turn to toast the
bread that pops up like a Jack-in-the-box.

If Microsoft made toasters…

Every time you bought a loaf of bread, you would have to buy a toaster. You
wouldn’t have to take the toaster, but you’d still have to pay for it
anyway. Toaster’95 wouldweigh 15000 pounds (requiring a reinforced steel
countertop), draw enough electricity to power a small city, take up 95% of
the space in your kitchen, would claim to be the first toaster that lets
you control how light or dark you want your toast to be, and would secretly
interrogate your other appliances to find out who made them. Everyone would
hate Microsoft toasters, but nonetheless would buy them since most of the
good bread only works with their toasters.

If Apple made toasters…

It would do everything the Microsoft toaster does, but 5 years earlier.

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Car Repair II

My Check Engine light has been on for some time.  I read it out with the scanner and it says “EGR #1 Error”  or perhaps #2 or #3.  I took the EGR valve off and it may be OK or it may be bad.  I replaced it a year ago but that did not fix the EGR indication.  I cleaned out the port underneath where the exhaust would go to the manifold. I put it all back together and it seemed to be OK. But the light comes on again after not too long.  I guess I will have to keep messing with it.

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Rain

It rained overnight here. This is remarkable in that this is the third week in a row that we have had rain. Not a lot this time but some. Before the drought began, we would get a decent rain every 6 days or so. This summer, it did not rain but once or twice from 1 June to 30 September. Maybe three times.

As I went out to get the paper yesterday, the rain had stopped. The nuthatches were in the leaves of the mimosa tree, scooping beak-fulls of water from the fronds of the leaves and shaking the leaves to catch the water on their feathers.

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Car Repair

Several weeks ago I drove to work in a heavy rain. On the way, I went too fast through a deep puddle. I stayed on the road and nothing seemed out of whack with the car. But when I started the engine that evening, there was definitely something amiss. A loud rattling sound came from underneath. There were no warning lights and nothing else seemed wrong, so I drove home. After the engine was warm, the noise stopped.

That is until, I reached the driveway. Going over the bump at the end of the drive caused the noise to return. Once parked, I looked underneath. I saw nothing obvious. I checked again later after the car had had time to cool. I shook the catalytic converter and the tail pipe. It was clearly making contact with the heat shield. But I could not tell where.

This last weekend, I borrowed a pair of the small ramps and got a good look underneath. Where the exhaust pipe made a bend in front of the rear axle, the heat shield was bent just enough to contact it when it was cold. Some light finger pressure and a shake to check the clearance was all that it took to straighten the heat shield. No more noise.

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My Friend John McCain

I listened to the the so-called debate between the Presidential candidates.

It seems that John McCain has a similar problem, my friends, to Gov. Palin, as regardless of whether or not I am actually his friend, he, my friends, repeated that phrase frequently, my friends, also.

An associate at work said that Sen. Obama had a similar repeated phrase. I do not doubt it. I re-listened to as much of the debate as I can stand but, practically speaking, I did not notice a repeated phrase.

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Ig Nobel awards

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?

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Debate? What Debate?

I listened to Obama and McCain spar on the radio the other night. I guess I still enjoy a debate. What I heard was way too much like two kids fighting. You kids want to fight – then go outside. I guess expecting intelligent discourse from two Senators is expecting too much.

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Icemaker Repair II – part 2

The previous post talks about the problem with the ice maker. This is about the fix.
Basic ice maker theory. 1. Put water in a container. 2. Put it in a cold place and 3. wait until it freezes. 4. Warm the container until the ice is loose enough to come out. Repeat.
Automatic ice maker theory. Actually begins with step 3 since this is where you will find the automatic ice maker most of the time. There is a thermal switch that detects when the container (and the ice inside) is at a frozen temperature. When this happens, the switch closes and the motor rotates the paddles. A switch turns a heater to warm the ice mold to loosen the ice. The paddles push against the ice.. The motor will push the paddles against the ice until the ice releases. When the ice releases, the paddles continue around and push the ice into the catcher. At some point the heater turns off and the water is turned on to refill the mold. There is a small slotted adjuster on the side of the unit that sets the amount of water and hence the size of the ice chunks.
My unit was somehow jammed. I poured about 1/8 cup (.03 liter) of water to get the cubes loose. The paddles rotated and the cubes came out. It refilled normally. The water going in made a noise like the mold might have been really hot. The ice made in about 20 minutes and came out normally. I reduced the cube size slightly (clockwise 1/16 turn of the slot with my thumbnail) to reduce the force required to push out the cubes.
It is still working a week later.

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Ice Maker Repair II

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.