Check ‘em out, yo.
My dad still tells the story today: I was born a tinkerer. At age four, I was drawing pictures of electric fans (a youthful obsession of mine) and by first grade I was scrawling the word “osalating” across the top. By my eighth birthday, I was wiring together light bulbs, battery clips and switches from Radio Shack. Faced with a shortage of flashlights and candles during the upstate NY ice storm of 1991, I wired together “electronic candles” for my parents and brother to use during the 6-day-long blackout.
At twelve, a neighbor gave me a copy of the 1980-edition Engineer’s Notebook by Forrest Mims, and I launched into tinkering with microchips and logic gates. By this time, I had also discovered relays and reed switches, buzzers and beepers, and I had “wired” my bedroom with battery-powered intrusion detection… I was definitely hooked. Is it any question why I got my degree in Electrical Engineering? Or why I got a late start on that whole dating thing? I wired everything – my bicycle (complete with turn signals and a backup beeper) and the lawn mower (wired for sound) couldn’t escape. I spent summers mowing lawns for spending money with a childhood friend – and thanks to CB radios bought at the local flea market for $10 each, we could chat while we cut.
So it almost seems natural that when I got my driver’s license, the car would end up being my next victim. Since the house rules strictly forbade modifying mom or dad’s vehicles, I had to wait until I had my own set of wheels to do any serious mobile tinkering. My chance came after I had gotten involved at the local ambulance, and received my own ’95 Ford Taurus. The first project? A series of control boxes to handle my lights for me when I responed to calls from home.
Since then, I’ve sold the Taurus and moved out of our ambulance district, so I don’t do much responding from home any more. A suction-cup LED dash light with a cigarette lighter plug more than meets my needs – it’s there in the back seat foot well if I need it. But now there are new and exciting electronic things to do on four wheels…
Ever since I read about the Microship, a “technomadic” marvel from engineering-hippie Steven Roberts, I’ve had a teensy technical itch to extend my tinkering into the realm of the mobile. After reading about projects like the Mobile EVDO StompBox, the InDash PC or the Toyota Prius graphical interface, my desire to play gets even stronger. Seeing fun toys out there doesn’t help, like GPS and mobile phone modules from Sparkfun Electronics or cheap PLCs and PC/104 computer modules on eBay.
Of course, shortages of available time and fundage, and the presence of far more important things to do make good balms for this technical itch … but it’s fun to dream! I’d love to be able to start the car with a phone call from my desk at work, or e-mail a destination address to the car so that turn-by-turn directions and GPS guidance are waiting for me the next time I start the engine. It would be cool to automatically sync my MP3 library with the car while it sits in the garage each night, or to have the car call our house to turn on the lights and adjust the thermostat as we approach. There’s all sorts of fun stuff one could rig up…
I guess it’s another proof of the old platitude: old habits die hard! Maybe someday, when leisure time permits and I have a vehicle worthy of the project, I’ll try my hand at mobile geekiness. But for now, I’m happy just to get where I need to go…
Bearing in mind that I do not consider myself a republican, I think it’s fair to say that there are plenty of well-educated, articulate republicans out there with good things to say. Evidently, “Shelly the Republican” and her contributors are not among them:
Linux: A European threat to our computers (by Tristan)
If ever there were a piece of writing worthy of being stamped as outright unabashed hogwash, devoid of research and thought, and completely motivated by ignorance, this would be it. (Oh, can’t leave out everything the Brady campaign has ever published, too. My bad.) In reading this piece, and the comments that follow it, I found myself hoping it was meant to be satirical – that it was a big humor piece that was a little late for April Fool’s Day this year. I only got about 1/3 of the way through the comments (before excusing myself to go throw up) but I’m pretty convinced these people are actually serious.
What. The. Hell. Are. They. Thinking?!
If you listen to any campaign speech by a republican, or any episode of the Rush Limbaugh show, you’ll hear just how important “Freedom” supposedly is to republicans. There are some notable (and major and in my opinion egregious) exceptions to the republican platform’s stance on freedom for the American sheeple (that I won’t get into here for reasons of brevity) but by and large they seem to recognize its importance.
So why is it such a bad thing to Shelly and her friends that I have the freedom to put whatever operating system on my computer I want? And why is it such a bad thing that a group of coders around the word (a large portion of which are located in the US) should get together and exercise their freedom to write code that’s superior to Microsoft’s and then give it away?
When liberals call republicans ignoramouses who can’t see beyond the tips of their own noses and the edges of their own trust funds, I usually disagree. But when it comes to “Shelly the republican” and her blogging buddies, the lefties have it pegged.
“I’m hungry. Let’s get a taco.”
Which is exactly what I just did for dinner.
That is all.
If you get into a discussion of home ownership with most folks, you’ll hear about lots of benefits: you can decorate however you want, paint the walls, try your hand at all manner of home improvement projects, put in a hot tub! Today, however, I finally got to enjoy an entirely different side-benefit of home ownership: working on your car somewhere other than an apartment complex parking lot!
The Intrigue has needed a rear brake job since … well … maybe February? The squealer bars on the pads just started to rub a little after Valentines’ day, and by mid-March both sides were in full-squeal mode. Today, the equation was finally complete: decent weather, a few free hours and a stack of parts – I finally had the makings of the perfect mastercard commercial!
Brake pads from Napa: $26
A shiny new set of rotors: $50
A pair of work gloves to cover up your partially-sliced-up and bandaged left thumb: $3
Replacing your car’s brakes in your very own driveway: Priceless
Oh, yes, the whole thumb thing: Forgot to mention that I got a little too excited on Sunday while slicing onions and ended up taking a quarter-inch slice out of my thumbprint! As one might predict, onion juice makes a deep cut hurt a lot. After pacing around the kitchen yelling obscenities for a minute or two, I managed to click into medic mode and (a) wash the onion juice off my hand, and (b) put some pressure on it to stop the surprisingly profuse bleeding. Fortunately, it doesn’t hurt anymore – now it’s mostly just annoying when I try to put on socks or button up a shirt.
Now, on the cusp of a four-day holiday weekend, the next order of business is greasing all the spindles in the lawn mower, so we can cut the grass for the first time on Saturday!
As promised, it’s time to post a few more details about this past week’s trip to Germany…
GM’s standard policy is to fly all International travel in business class – which was a treat for myself and our other relatively-new engineer, Ken… Neither of us had ever flown bizclass before. We left Rochester on Sunday afternoon after an uneventful check-in. We flew through Washington-Dulles, and spent a few minutes in the international lounge before heading for the 747 that would take us to Frankfurt.
The experience on the plane was in large part very nice. The food was nice, and the staff was top-notch. Two glasses of red wine and one big meal later, we switched off the lights and I managed to nab a couple hours’ sleep before the breakfast cart was wheeled out and hour prior to landing. Unfortunately, as I mentioned before, our luggage didn’t quite make the connection in DC. We spent a few minutes at the airport arranging for it to be delivered to the hotel, and we were assured that our bags would be on the next flight over.
After renting a car and finding an ATM (and thus some cash for the week), we made our way to the hotel and checked in. Fortunately, there were rooms available, and we all got to clean up a bit before heading for the office. Within the hour, we ended up there, meeting our german counterparts and colleagues at the Adam-Opel fuel cell facility. Lunch was found at a nearby Turkish sit-down fast-food eatery.
Turkish Kebab meat cooks on a rotating skewer…
After spending the afternoon touring the labs and running a few tests, I went out to find some dinner with our manager. We ended up finding a nice German restaurant, not far from the hotel, where the wait staff was friendly and helpful in deciphering the German-only menu. After a delicious meal and a quick stop for dessert at a near by confectionary, we headed back to the hotel.
The next day took us to neighboring Russelsheim, a city about 40 minutes from Mainz, home of Opel’s main design and manufacturing facilities. We spent the morning hearing presentations from various higer-ups in the GM Fuel Cell chain of command, and then headed to the Opel EMC chambers for the afternoon. This was a treat – for the eyes and the geek-at-heart alike. We toured giant anechoic radio-isolation chambers where cars are tested for interference and emissions, and we met some extremely talented EMC engineers.
After returning to Mainz Tuesday evening, Ken and I headed out in search of some good food – and found ourselves at Incontro, a high-end Italian restaurant in Mainz’s restaurant-row. While we ate, we met a trio of Hewlett-Packard salesmen at the neighboring table, one of which actually serves our division at GM! Our “small world” factor satisfied for the night, we continued to chat with the gentlemen, enjoy a few glasses of Chianti, and even spend some time with a dog that was along for dinner at another neighboring table! It would be nice if well-behaved pets were allowed to join their owners for dinner-out here in the ‘states…
A four-legged friend who joined us for dinner…
Wednesday brought more fun and excitement at work: we spent the day at the Adam-Opel vehicle testing facility in Dudenhofen. Surrounded by camouflaged cars (some of which were being driven very fast), we performed a variety of tests on our own hydrogen-powered masterpiece. After a few harrowing hours of coding and recoding in the morning, we finally hit the ring-shaped track after lunch. The track was graded and separated into lanes according to speed – the faster you drove, the higher up the banked ring you went. Unfortunately, cameras of any kind were forbidden (verboten!), so we couldn’t take away any fun “look at us posing with the fuel cell!” photos. Not that we could post them here if we had them!
Wednesday evening found us dining at another great Italian restaurant, where Bob (another of our engineering cadre) managed to translate enough of the menu items for us to land some great food. On Thursday, we headed back to Opel-Mainz, where we worked in the labs through the day and enjoyed another delicious Turkish lunch.
On Friday, we spent a few minutes at Opel saying our goodbyes, then headed back towards Frankfurt to catch our flight home. We arrived a bit early, so we ended up having a little more time at the gate to marvel at the plane. I never cease to be amazed how incredibly freakin huge a Boeing 747 is. Just the landing gear alone are a marvel, and I ccould stare into the bell of those giant GE jet engines a hundred flights over and not shed that little-kid awe blended with engineer’s curiosity.
The flight home was uneventful, but I managed to contract some manner of bug at some point between Frankfurt and DC. Three days later, they’ve got me on Zithro to stomp out a nice little case of bronchitis. But overall, the trip was a success: we got all the data we needed, had a grand time meeting our fellow engineers at GM-Opel and driving fun vehicles, and even managed to enjoy ourselves the rest of the time, too… All that said, I’m glad to be home, reunited with my family. In the end, that’s whats most important.
The trip gallery is Here…
Why is it that people think that when fire alarms go off, sprinklers also go off?! I can’t think of any reason for this popular misconception other than movies, where fire sprinklers seem to be able to trip themselves as soon as the alarm goes off.
Lets get this straight: fire sprinklers work by using a small wax or alcohol-filled glass bead to hold back the pressure of the water in the sprinkler pipes. If the temperature around the sprinkler head gets hot enough (usually 120-140°F), the wax melts or the alcohol boils and breaks the bead, allowing the water to flow.
The only way fire alarms and sprinkler activations happen simultaneously is if there is a water flow sensor in the sprinkler line, which trips the alarm after a sprinkler head has opened.
There now – that makes a lot more sense now, doesn’t it?
[More Germany stuff is coming! I'm feeling the jetlag right now, since it's about 3AM in Germany...]
This is just a quick update while I have a few free minutes in the lab here at Opel Mainz-Kastell:
We arrived in Germany after an uneventful flight on Monday, though our luggage didn’t quite make the connection in Washington. After checking into the hotel, we spent our first day here touring the facilities and labs, and laying out the plans for the rest of the week.
Tuesday was spent at the Adam Opel facility in Russelsheim, attending meetings and visiting some of the labs. Wednesday, we headed out to the Opel rural test facility in Dudenhofen.
Today has been another day of testing, and tomorrow we head back to Frankfurt to catch another 747 home. There will be lots more to post once I get back, including plenty of photos!
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