Your Today in Pictures...

[Steve Klare]

WHAAAAT THE…….?!
.

“Radar…Obstructed”???

What on EARTH is this about? This is NOT a fighter-jet or an airport: it’s an SUV! -basically an oversexed Station Wagon!
Why does it even need RADAR? (Can I fire a missile at the guy that just swooped into the parking space I wanted?)

I tell you: the complexity of modern cars will be the death of me! I have metric socket-wrenches and I have SAE socket-wrenches. I have breaker-bars and torque wrenches. I have disc-brake compressors, coil-spring compressors, drum-brake spring tools, an engine-analyzer and an ignition timing-light. I have a mechanic’s creeper, a floor jack, jack stands and ramps. For Heaven’s Sake I even have an air compressor and an impact wrench!

With all this I have NO “Radar-Wrenches”. I haven’t the remotest clue how RADAR works and I’m afraid if I spend too much time standing in front of it, it just might give me a sunburn!

We ALL KNOW where this is headed: we’ll take it to Honda for about $350 in diagnostics (-they’ll plug it into a computer and then go drink coffee!), and they’ll say we blew some circuit board, but we’re beyond warrantee. The good news is the part is “only” $1,200, but the bad is they’ll need to pull the engine out to get access!

(“-We really should replace all the gaskets and the timing chain while we have it out!...and it would sure be a shame if we find something else wrong in there…it happens sometimes…just saying!”)

-Just then someone in a bad suit will beam-in from the Showroom and propose a deal involving a new five years of car-loan payments and offer us yesterday’s table-scrapings for our used one!
.

It’s outrageous, it’s infuriating, it’s,…it’s,...it’s:

.

-Oh!…Welllll!,…OK then!…never mind!

.

Merry Christmas!!!
.

This Yule-Tide Rant is more than a little bit…exaggerated…

(-mostly for entertainment purposes)
-but it’s also loosely-based in recent events!
(Rudolf’s nose DID jam our RADAR!)

Still the same, Scotty WAS right: "The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop-up the drain!"

[Graham Ritchie]

Radar...I can understand it on aircraft and ships, but a car, what does it do? I come from much simpler times working on cars with no computers everything easy to fix. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but a engineer who came out on a new ATR72 from France was telling me, that while flying over the Indian Ocean at night they were talking about how, the on board computer was great at doing so much. At the same time as there chat one of the two engines shut down with no apparent reason. The pilots could not try to restart the engine, the computer would not allow this. Anyway the landed on one engine, the engineer checked all the electrical connections on that engine. and by magic got it running again. That aircraft went into service and that problem re-appeared with engine shut down at least twice, but this time with a plane full of passengers.

I cant remember if they ever got to a exact fix, but I did hear they suspect the fault was somewhere in the software. The thing is no matter what, the pilots should have some kind of manual override to re-start and not some computer saying sorry I can't let you do that.

On a brighter note and talking about simpler times when I used to work on such cars as this one below. This photo was taken in Glasgow and as you can see, there was no need for expensive alarms back then...PS the occupant in the back is real.

[Steve Klare]

Hi Graham,

The Radar is part of a collision-avoidance system. If the car senses it's in danger of crashing into something, it will flash "BRAKE, BRAKE, BRAKE" on the dashboard and if it comes to it, apply the brakes too. (-but there was a reindeer nose in the way.)

(Good thing the Luftwaffe never found out about this: -all those Messerschmitts with huge reindeer noses!)

The groundwork is being laid for self-driving cars even in cases where the manufacturer isn't fully ready to launch a system like that. My own car (2013 Honda Civic) has electric power steering instead of hydraulic. Even though nothing controls it but the steering wheel, it makes it much easier to add other controls in when the time comes. For example, this one (2017 Honda CR-V, my wife's car) will jiggle the wheel if you drift out of lane and is actually capable of steering back into lane if this goes too far.

When Honda launches their own self-driving cars, they will go into cars that can already sense what's happening around them, can steer and stop too. With cruise control, they have been capable of setting their own speeds for decades now. (All of the other manufacturers have these too.)

I have mixed feelings here. It could really cut down on things like drunk driving fatalities and other accidents, but then again for myself I would drive a car with a stick-shift if it was just me! (I like to be one with the car!)

All of this stuff leads me to believe there is a new possibility in the service lives of cars. It used to be cars met their fate in these ways: collisions, mechanical wear, structural failure, theft, fire, storm damage. I think we can add "Electronic Systems failure" to the list now. A lot of these cars will self-destruct because some expensive module will fail without warning, and then go to the junkyard with serviceable drive-trains in decent bodies.

Apparently there are some very nice-condition used Mercedes Benzes out there, available waaayyyy cheaper than you'd expect. (-software issues!)

(Some days I want to go off-grid and get a car with breaker-point ignition!)


As for the "reindeer thing": once again, it's my wife's car! My car is a tiny brown coupe, she's wanted to reindeer it since I got it, yet I have resisted!

-Dignity is something that can be easily taken to excess, but I'd like to have at least...a little!

My wife works in a pre-school, and the little kids just love her reindeer-mobile!
If it was my car, the grown men I work with would say "What's wrong with you, Dude?".

[Ed Gordon]

Visualizing each US state's most popular holiday dessert:

Note the absence of Fruit Cake. The first Fruit Cakes were baked in 1206 AD, and these same cakes have been passed around the world ever since then. The are rarely consumed but given as Christmas gifts every year. It is estimated that there will be no need to increase the supply of cake for about another 500 years.

[Brian Fretwell]

I bake and eat a large fruit cake every Christmas and small ones throughout the year (with less fruit so they fon't have to mature),

[Douglas Meltzer]

I guess I'll have to travel to a tiramisu state for Christmas!

[Graham Ritchie]

I remember my mother in Glasgow long ago, used to make a Christmas pudding steaming it in a pillow slip and putting small change in it. I have no idea where placing money in it came from, but it was good.

PS I think its nice to see stories like this on you-tube so thought I would link it here.

[Graham Ritchie]

A bit hard to imagine putting up a Christmas tree being summer, with today temp outside around the 30C or 86F, but Yvonne and managed it, even though we have the Daikin A/C next to it keeping the lounge nice and cool.

[Douglas Meltzer]

Walking along Fifth Avenue...

The main branch of the New York Public Library at 42nd Street.

The 74 foot tall Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center.





The Louis Vuitton building is under renovation and they came up with a clever facade to cover the construction.

[Graham Ritchie]

Hi Doug

I remember your public library featuring in the film "The Day After Tomorrow" we ran the feature when it came out, good movie.

[Douglas Meltzer]

Graham,

That was a pretty memorable scene!

[Ed Gordon]

This is the one has become iconic: