Sometimes you just have to wonder what happened
Category: Fnord!
Fnord! (you can’t see me)
Numerological Fnord
I’m not at liberty to say whose Crown this is but I’ll say this much, it makes the fact the voltage settled down at this level a bit hilarious.
Yeah… About that…
AT&T’s Small Business fiberoptic service is… not what I’d hoped… at least not initially.
So far, here’s what we’ve got:
- 90+ day installation time
- So far… one major complete outage of all services
- Technical support that you cannot call – they call YOU – and they’re located in random countries half a world away. So far we’ve had Czechloslovakia, Slovenia, and I think Thailand?
- A super easy to use trouble ticket system that….. takes two hours to figure out just what magic credential it needs to identify you as a customer and where you are
- Telephones that take 10 seconds to begin ringing.
- Or don’t. At all.
- Internet service that delivers about 60% of the promised speed. Consistency. At least it’s consistent and has immeasurably small packet loss.
And while I’m waiting for the ticket to update, I went back to charat.me and made a version with purple hair, because You Gotta Have Blue Hair. Or purple. And there’s an antenna accessory under the hats pages that I somehow missed before…. yes.
Also, the chibi version is fun too. Google Translate can’t pick the text out of the menus but it’s still usable. I have no idea what the buttons in the menu tab do. Late for RADIO with toast in mouth.
Guess I’m too easily amused
Hey everyone I just learned that the bizarre Bethel cult ministry here runs the… Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry.
Yeah they actually called it that and I am laughing my ass off in response. How perfectly pretentious and bizarre.
Apparently there are other Schools of Supernatural Ministry around too.
First image (from Bethel’s Facebook page) is what the second image immediately makes me think of…
(wait, invert that, WordPress is being a dong)
(Shitposting Resumes)
Two for two … Royal Purple Max-clean works.
I noticed last week the gas mileage was starting to get low on my Forester even when I wasn’t fighting a strong headwind up the valley (shake, rattle, and roll!). I also felt a couple of odd stutters on mild acceleration which I usually have come to associate with injector gunk.
Realizing it’d been probably 30k or so since I’d used any sort of cleaner on the fuel system, I did an MAF sensor cleaning for good measure, and tossed a can of Royal Purple Max-Clean in the tank.
Didn’t really notice a huge change until the next fill up for some reason, but the result is fabulous… up from 24 to almost 30.
The reason I say this is a two for two record is this stuff made my old Mazda behave itself after it’d gotten all fouled up. In that case it was a combination of the Max-Clean and running it like a madman on a trip on the more or less open highway to go work on a distant transmitter site. That poor thing literally generated a smokescreen the first time I got it to about 70 mph at maximum engine load— a friend of mine told me that was probably a large amount of soot and deposited oily junk in the muffler and catalytic converter. Faaarrrrt!
I’m not entirely sure how this compares to SeaFoam or other additives, but on the Mazda, I’d tried SeaFoam a while before Max-Clean and didn’t notice a difference.
At times I wish the hybrid version of this car had actually caught on, but when it’s running well, it isn’t exactly excessively thirsty.
WELL EXCUUUUSE ME PRINCESS
How. How can one little mic preamp card be such a pain in the ass??!!
This one didn’t work right at all- heavy distortion on Mic 2. The other one I have, paradoxically, will not drive a processor we have. It’ll drive a board input fine but not that processor, dead silence.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
The tiny dead mall in Willows
I have no idea when this would have been open but it now seems to only serve as access to a pharmacy inside. I want to know what the acoustics are like!
(Vaporwave music playing)
A strange epiphany.
This morning I was driving to work and just after I got off the expressway, there was someone sitting stopped at a green light for a long time, lost in whatever they were doing on their phone.
I politely gave a very quick tap of my car horn to hopefully direct their focus back on the important tasks of driving.
HOOOOONKKK!!! That thing came on what seemed excessively loud.
It was then that I realized that I never knew how loud my car’s horn was.
By extension, that probably means I’ve never blown my car’s horn. Never.
I’ve had it for several months now.
I’ve never needed to use it.
I guess I’m not in Florida anymore.
WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FCA ??!!
THIS BLOG POST MAY CONTAIN LARGE AMOUNTS OF AAAAAAAAAAA. You’ve been warned.
A day in the life at FCA – Fiat Chrysler America:
(BONG NOISES) “Hey, I’ve got a great idea, heh, what if we stack all this electrical junction box shit on top of the battery.”
“Oh, like the main high amperage starter and battery system fuses?”
“Nah man. Like, all of it.” (BONG NOISES)
“Duuude. Gimme a good hit of that and we’ll go design it right now. Hey, my Autocad is really colorful today.” (BONG NOISES)
Several months later, in a remote parking lot:
“Oh okay let me just see if this low battery just needs a jump and charge or replaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA WHAT EVEN IS ALL OF THAT OH NO NO NOOOOOOOPE NOPE NOPE AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
After seeing all of this I’m actually almost willing to call the GM vehicles that buried the battery under the entire air intake box an ACCEPTABLE design.
On the left (negative post) – the terminal is a soft alloy one. However, then, some kind of cupric-ish looking* mystery metal piece is permanently swaged into it. This is the baseplate to what’s probably a Hall effect battery current sensor. Congratulations, you successfully ripped off Honda’s battery charging system, and did it WRROOOOONNNGGGG. Bolted to that (why not put the bolted connector on the other side of the sensor so the terminal may be replaced??!!) is the post for the battery cable’s exceedingly strange quick disconnect.
This terminal fits over the post DISTURBINGLY loosely. Once you press the release tab at the top, it pulls off effortlessly. I didn’t actually have to press the release tab before I lifted it off for the first time. HMMMMMMM….
The post has a groove in it that something inside the terminal locks into. Barely. It attaches with an unimpressive, almost imperceptible snap.
The positive post. This goes to a very large plate that I’m guessing is tinned cuprimysteryassalloywhatever*. It looks like in this case, the plate can be unbolted from the terminal, but the terminal is totally custom and has those two bolts swaged into it.
Note the shape of the terminal. This terminal has been tightened by the factory to the point that the gap is entirely closed; the terminal is now stretched out of shape permanently and it is unlikely to be able to be transferred to a new battery.
Same deal over here on the negative post, though that has maybe a millimeter of life left in it. Maybe. Note that this trashed terminal is permanently attached to that current sensor, so both have to be replaced along with the battery. WHOSE BRILLIANT IDEA WAS THIS??!!
(BONG NOISES) “wooooow, that’s like, killer, now they have to buy like, a metric assload of proprietary parts to do a simple battery change.”
“duuuude, wait, it gets better, look at this amazing coolant hose system they’ll have to come back to us for! I based it off this tangled bunch of stems.”
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT
Recreational marijuana dispensaries will be legal under California state law come January 1. Recreational use has already been legalized at the state level. Check local laws for any restrictions, however – some municipalities have weird ones. Chico seems to want nothing to do with it (….and the potential tax revenue that would come from it but ok??!!)
HOWEVER.
Like any other substance that has the potential to slow down response of the central nervous system, use marijuana responsibly. Do not attempt to operate heavy machinery while under the influence. The designated driver system should be used if you’ve gotta get somewhere by automobile to a social gathering where you plan to use marijuana. Do not drive…. or design…. automobiles while under the influence. That means you, FCA Corporation. Thank you very much and happy new year!
* I pulled these made up words riiiiiight out of my ass to say, it’s either copper, brass, or bronze, some copper containing something or other.