There are engine block heaters (to the Americans: no, not all cars in Canada are electric, that cord dangling from the front of our cars is the block heater cord), and then there are battery warmers. They are two seperate things. The battery warmer is basically an electric blanket you wrap around the battery.
At -270C (a somewhat chilly day here), the battery often needs some warming. Liquids turning to solid and all that.
I've never had a problem with a modern lead-acid battery getting too cold (in the last 10 years or so), but in my teens, my brother's car would not start on the coldest winter days unless the battery AND the block heater were warm.
Could have been due to it being a cheap, old, worn-out battery (anyone remember when you had to add distilled water to your battery every once in a while?) A $10 battery heater is cheaper than a new battery.
What pisses my SUV driving ass off are people who claim that I am killing the environment in my SUV, while they are treading gently across mother earth in their tiny little Honda Civic or other such econo-box. Yet I pollute far less than they do every year. Why? Because I choose to LIVE CLOSE TO WHERE I WORK!
You can almost guarantee any idiot who bitches about the nasty, evil SUV drivers on the road is living in a house way the fuck out in the 'burbs and commuting 50 miles each way every day, while I'm a short 5 mile drive from work (or even better, a short 5 mile bike ride when the weather is nice.)
I pollute less, use far less fuel, and still have a decent sized vehicle I fit in comfortably, which can haul around a crapload of people and gear, not to mention my dogs, and can actually get out of my driveway in the winter when we get 30+cm of snow overnight.
If you really, truly want to save the environment, move closer to work and stop trying to make your pitiful, underpowered car seem responsible and cool.
[rant-mode=off]
If for some reason I had to commute an insane distance to work, I'd probably drive a Smart or a motorcycle, and then I could complain about all of those gas-guzzling, resource intensive Honda Civics clogging up the roads.
A few years back, I took an automotive welding class at the local community college (my formal training is a BSc. in Computer Science). I was the only person in the class who was not taking the course for credit as part of a larger auto-body diploma.
Sadly, I got the highest mark in the class. Welding simply isn't that difficult or complicated (well, auto-body welding isn't... I don't pretend to know the intricacies of deep-sea under water welding or anything exotic like that.) It just takes some practice, and the right tools. Hell, I think I was probably the only person in the class who found the first 3 weeks of "theory" lectures interesting.
I really hope that the students taking the mechanics diploma were a lot brighter than the students in the auto-body class...
I hate all the rich bastards who have cars given to them by their parents. When I turned 16, I BOUGHT a car from my mom... and it was a lemon! I spent endless hours and 2X the cost of the car fixing it up enough to sell the POS.
New car indeed. Take the bus to your part-time job and save your money to buy the damned car yourself!
In parts of Ontario and Quebec, you can get your TV signal from a company called LOOK. Full digital broadcast, but you have to have line-of-sight to their microwave tower.
For something like $18/month, you got the "basic" package, which includes all the typical networks and other stuff that basic cable has. That was a selling point right there, easily the cheapest TV package going.
Then, you could start adding additional channels for around $2/month each, or any 10 channels you wanted for $10. Of course, half had to be Canadian channels (stupid CRTC rules.)
My monthly bill was under $40/month, and that's in Canadian funds. Pretty cheap considering that to get the same channels from the local cable company, it was closer to $65/month.
It looks like they have moved to a tier-based system now, though. You get everything except the movie channels for $38/month. Still, that's less than half of what the average american cable bill is.
Sure, al-a-carte was nice, but when you can get -every- channel for the same price as just the ones you want, then you just block the channels you never watch and pretend that you have al-a-carte.
I moved a few years back to a province without LOOK, and I have missed them ever since...
Yup, the case fan is plugged into the variable speed case fan plug. But it almost always runs at full speed because of the Athlon 2400+ and the PVR-250 in there generating stupid amounts of heat.
I have the Sonata case, and the 12cm case fan it comes with is too noisy. Had to drop some cash on a quieter case fan.
The PSU fan is variable speed, and at top speed is also rather noisy. Adding a second case fan at the front helps keep the PSU fan spinning a bit slower.
And the rubber mounts for the drives were a bit dissapointing. I don't notice any difference between the rubber mounds and plain old solid mounts.
But the case sure is shiny, and I appreciate that.
I think for the same price, you could get a Zalman PSU, a couple of nice case fans, and a decent tower case that would be quieter than the Sonata out of the box. But it wouldn't shine as much.
I sure hope that Apple wasn't thinking that iTunes was a good sample of the ease of use of the Mac platform, because it's a pretty poorly designed piece of software. Slow, lacking critical features, and doesn't follow any sort of Windows UI guidelines (and yes, this IS important if it is running on Windows.)
On the other hand, the iPod is a great little bit of design and technology. I wish it did more, but it's pretty much the best player on the market right now.
I wouldn't say MythTV is better overall. There are some things MythTV excels at, and some things Beyond TV excels at.
For example, MythTV is completely hamstrung by its dependance on XMLTV. There is simply no way to know if a show is a re-run or a first-run using XMLTV, which is a serious pain in the butt. BeyondTV wins here, as it licenses the Tribune TV data (the same data that TiVO uses, the same data that is used to create zap2it.com, but zap2it only displays about 1/3 of the available data.)
BeyondTV has some very specific video card requirements, but it's not documented very well. Don't even bother trying to run it on a PC with an integrated video chipset. MythTV will run on just about anything that will work under Linux.
MythTV has a great web interface that allows you to schedule recordings when you are away from your PC. But that requires you to set up your home system to allow http connections. BeyondTV has snapstream.net, that also allows you to schedule recordings, but it's a service run by Snapstream, so no local admin is required.
MythTV has a lot of nifty plugins available, like weather modules and MP3 players that BeyondTV doesn't have. But those things are easily added with MyHTPC or BeyondMedia.
I tried out both (along with several other systems, like SageTV), and ended up going with BeyondTV simply because the guide data was better (and available in Canada!) Even though I had to fork out some cash to upgrade my video card, it was worth it in the end.
One thing that Outlook 2003 broke that was working great in older version is searches.
In the older versions, when you searched through your email folders, it would start with the newest messages first, and work backwards to the oldest messages.
Now, it starts with the oldest messages first, and works towards the newest ones. This is so very wrong.
My other pet peeve is with the S/MIME options. To sign/encrypt an email, I have to:
- Select View->Options - Click the "security settings" button - Toggle the encrypt/sign checkboxes - Click "OK" - Click "Close" in the options panel
I could set it so that all messages are signed and encrypted, but that's not what I want.
Why on earth are there not toolbar buttons for these options?
Other than that, Outlook 2003 is at least configurable enough to look and act like older versions of Outlook. I'd like to play with some of the "email management" toys they have, like read-only email and self-deleting messages, but that requires the use of a policy server that my company isn't going to deply anytime soon.
Same here. Even went with a metal enclosed filter instead of a cheap plastic one. It's a pain in the butt to change, but hey, the car only gets 500 miles a year put on it anymore!
The reason so many air-cooled VWs caught fire is because idiot mechanics installed the fuel filters completely wrong.
You see, the original filter is in the gas tank. You have to crawl under the car to get it out and replace it. No one ever does. Most mechanics expect it to be in the engine compartment. When confronted with one of those "damned german cars", the average american mechanic simply would cut the fuel line in the engine compartment and put in one of those cheap plastic fuel filters. If you were lucky, he also put on a couple of hose clamps.
The problem is, a lot of the time they put the filter on the PRESSURE side of the fuel pump (that is, between the pump and the carb.) Now if the fuel pump gets clogged, the pump keeps on pumping and eventually the filter explodes or just pops off the fuel line (due to no hose clamps). Engine fire follows closely.
Now, had they simply put the filter on the SUCTION side of the pump (that is, between the tank and the pump), when the fuel filter gets clogged, the engine simply stalls due to lack of fuel. No fire. No fuel all over the engine compartment.
The rubber grommet that the fuel line passed through in the firewall was also an item often not replaced when R&Ring the engine. Yup, sheet metal cuts through rubber hose in no time flat!
These are pretty much the same mechanics who would never clean the air filter or the oil filter when "servicing" an air-cooled VW. Yes, you have to change the oil in the air cleaner once in a while. Yes, you need to take the oil strainer out and clean it when you change the oil. You saved a lot of money on oil and air filters in an old VW since they were reusable.
With over 300,000 miles on my '71 Beetle, I've never had the brass tube on the carb come loose. Perhaps that was a flaw on the really old VW's?
But yes, a fire extinguisher in your old VW is a VERY good idea. In fact, at most of the VW shows I have been to, you get an extra couple of points in the judging if you have a fire extinguisher on board!
Ha ha, this reminds me of those Toyota mini-vans of mid 1980's vintage. I worked as a gas-jockey part time for a few years, and one day one of these things drives in. Guy asks to fill it up, and check the oil.
OK, pop the hood and look in... there is no engine up front. There is a place to add fluids, but no engine.
Must be rear-engined, like a VW. So we get him to pop the rear hood. There is a spare tire in here, but still, no engine.
WTF? This is a delivery van, and the guy doesn't own it. He has no idea where the engine is either.
OK, lay down on the ground and look underneath. WTF? The engine is directly UNDER the front seats. Hokay, how the hell do you check the oil on this thing?
To the owner's manual! Scan it for a bit, find the relevant section. You need to find a little level that lets you tilt the driver's seat back, and the open a hatch underneath. And low and behold, there is the oil dipstick.
I can't imagine how much engine vibration that driver's seat picked up on the highway. Maybe that was a selling feature...
OK, I was wrong. Suunto makes a couple of GPS watches now, and they look to be quite a bit smaller than the Casio, but also about 3X the price (the Casio is easily found for $200, whereas the Suunto models go for over $600.)
Check out the M9 for sailing, and the G9 for golf.
Phhhh! That Timex GPS watch not only comes with a huge external GPS box that you have to attach elsewhere on your body, but it won't even give you the GPS coordinates of where you are! It simply uses the GPS numbers internally to calculate how far you have run/walked/biked/whatever.
No, the only real GPS watch is from the fine folks at Casio.
Seeing as Disney is now making movies based on theme rides at Disneyland, I can only hope that a new Indiana Jones flick is close at hand (a movie based on a theme ride based on a movie... why not?)
But with my luck, the next flick will be "It's a Small World".
Actually, you can get an RCA Scenium 7000 (or whatever the new model number is) at FutureShop. It uses the free Guide+ data. It has a built-in progressive scan DVD player. It doesn't have the "smart" recording like TiVO and SageTV.
The catch is that you can't really use it with satellite (it grabs the guide data off the cable or over-the-air broadcast), and you only get 3 days of guide data at a time. But there is no subscription, and it works just fine all over Canada.
Don't want to pay the $700+ FutureShop is asking? Amazon.com has them for under $250 US.
As with most things Linux, your mythtv experience completely depends on what hardware you are using. For example, don't even attempt to get it running on an EPIA M10000 based system with a Hauppauge PVR-250 installed unless you are a serious Linux hacker. Wait another 4-5 months, then try it. The drivers might behave by then.
If you are building a box from the ground-up, it's best to copy what someone else has already built, or do some serious research into your hardware first. (The Asus Pundit system seems to be popular, and pretty inexpensive. Not to mention it's not much bigger than a VCR.)
My biggest concern with mythtv is the use of XMLTV for the guide data. You just know that someday soon, the websites that are being scraped are simply going to start blocking XMLTV (at least one website has started doing it already), and then you are left with a really expensive VCR and no guide data.
That said, once up and running, myth is quite nice. Sure, it could use a few tweaks here and there, but I'm sure those will be worked out eventually. If you don't want to keep updating the software, get a TiVO:-)
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There are engine block heaters (to the Americans: no, not all cars in Canada are electric, that cord dangling from the front of our cars is the block heater cord), and then there are battery warmers. They are two seperate things. The battery warmer is basically an electric blanket you wrap around the battery.
At -270C (a somewhat chilly day here), the battery often needs some warming. Liquids turning to solid and all that.
I've never had a problem with a modern lead-acid battery getting too cold (in the last 10 years or so), but in my teens, my brother's car would not start on the coldest winter days unless the battery AND the block heater were warm.
Could have been due to it being a cheap, old, worn-out battery (anyone remember when you had to add distilled water to your battery every once in a while?) A $10 battery heater is cheaper than a new battery.
[rant-mode=on]
What pisses my SUV driving ass off are people who claim that I am killing the environment in my SUV, while they are treading gently across mother earth in their tiny little Honda Civic or other such econo-box. Yet I pollute far less than they do every year. Why? Because I choose to LIVE CLOSE TO WHERE I WORK!
You can almost guarantee any idiot who bitches about the nasty, evil SUV drivers on the road is living in a house way the fuck out in the 'burbs and commuting 50 miles each way every day, while I'm a short 5 mile drive from work (or even better, a short 5 mile bike ride when the weather is nice.)
I pollute less, use far less fuel, and still have a decent sized vehicle I fit in comfortably, which can haul around a crapload of people and gear, not to mention my dogs, and can actually get out of my driveway in the winter when we get 30+cm of snow overnight.
If you really, truly want to save the environment, move closer to work and stop trying to make your pitiful, underpowered car seem responsible and cool.
[rant-mode=off]
If for some reason I had to commute an insane distance to work, I'd probably drive a Smart or a motorcycle, and then I could complain about all of those gas-guzzling, resource intensive Honda Civics clogging up the roads.
I like how the HowStuffWorks article has a "Shop or Compare Prices" link at the very end.
It doesn't come up with too many matches, though.
A few years back, I took an automotive welding class at the local community college (my formal training is a BSc. in Computer Science). I was the only person in the class who was not taking the course for credit as part of a larger auto-body diploma.
Sadly, I got the highest mark in the class. Welding simply isn't that difficult or complicated (well, auto-body welding isn't... I don't pretend to know the intricacies of deep-sea under water welding or anything exotic like that.) It just takes some practice, and the right tools. Hell, I think I was probably the only person in the class who found the first 3 weeks of "theory" lectures interesting.
I really hope that the students taking the mechanics diploma were a lot brighter than the students in the auto-body class...
I hate all the rich bastards who have cars given to them by their parents. When I turned 16, I BOUGHT a car from my mom... and it was a lemon! I spent endless hours and 2X the cost of the car fixing it up enough to sell the POS.
New car indeed. Take the bus to your part-time job and save your money to buy the damned car yourself!
In parts of Ontario and Quebec, you can get your TV signal from a company called LOOK. Full digital broadcast, but you have to have line-of-sight to their microwave tower.
For something like $18/month, you got the "basic" package, which includes all the typical networks and other stuff that basic cable has. That was a selling point right there, easily the cheapest TV package going.
Then, you could start adding additional channels for around $2/month each, or any 10 channels you wanted for $10. Of course, half had to be Canadian channels (stupid CRTC rules.)
My monthly bill was under $40/month, and that's in Canadian funds. Pretty cheap considering that to get the same channels from the local cable company, it was closer to $65/month.
It looks like they have moved to a tier-based system now, though. You get everything except the movie channels for $38/month. Still, that's less than half of what the average american cable bill is.
Sure, al-a-carte was nice, but when you can get -every- channel for the same price as just the ones you want, then you just block the channels you never watch and pretend that you have al-a-carte.
I moved a few years back to a province without LOOK, and I have missed them ever since...
Yup, the case fan is plugged into the variable speed case fan plug. But it almost always runs at full speed because of the Athlon 2400+ and the PVR-250 in there generating stupid amounts of heat.
A quieter case fan definately helps out.
I have the Sonata case, and the 12cm case fan it comes with is too noisy. Had to drop some cash on a quieter case fan.
The PSU fan is variable speed, and at top speed is also rather noisy. Adding a second case fan at the front helps keep the PSU fan spinning a bit slower.
And the rubber mounts for the drives were a bit dissapointing. I don't notice any difference between the rubber mounds and plain old solid mounts.
But the case sure is shiny, and I appreciate that.
I think for the same price, you could get a Zalman PSU, a couple of nice case fans, and a decent tower case that would be quieter than the Sonata out of the box. But it wouldn't shine as much.
I sure hope that Apple wasn't thinking that iTunes was a good sample of the ease of use of the Mac platform, because it's a pretty poorly designed piece of software. Slow, lacking critical features, and doesn't follow any sort of Windows UI guidelines (and yes, this IS important if it is running on Windows.)
On the other hand, the iPod is a great little bit of design and technology. I wish it did more, but it's pretty much the best player on the market right now.
I wouldn't say MythTV is better overall. There are some things MythTV excels at, and some things Beyond TV excels at.
For example, MythTV is completely hamstrung by its dependance on XMLTV. There is simply no way to know if a show is a re-run or a first-run using XMLTV, which is a serious pain in the butt. BeyondTV wins here, as it licenses the Tribune TV data (the same data that TiVO uses, the same data that is used to create zap2it.com, but zap2it only displays about 1/3 of the available data.)
BeyondTV has some very specific video card requirements, but it's not documented very well. Don't even bother trying to run it on a PC with an integrated video chipset. MythTV will run on just about anything that will work under Linux.
MythTV has a great web interface that allows you to schedule recordings when you are away from your PC. But that requires you to set up your home system to allow http connections. BeyondTV has snapstream.net, that also allows you to schedule recordings, but it's a service run by Snapstream, so no local admin is required.
MythTV has a lot of nifty plugins available, like weather modules and MP3 players that BeyondTV doesn't have. But those things are easily added with MyHTPC or BeyondMedia.
I tried out both (along with several other systems, like SageTV), and ended up going with BeyondTV simply because the guide data was better (and available in Canada!) Even though I had to fork out some cash to upgrade my video card, it was worth it in the end.
One thing that Outlook 2003 broke that was working great in older version is searches.
In the older versions, when you searched through your email folders, it would start with the newest messages first, and work backwards to the oldest messages.
Now, it starts with the oldest messages first, and works towards the newest ones. This is so very wrong.
My other pet peeve is with the S/MIME options. To sign/encrypt an email, I have to:
- Select View->Options
- Click the "security settings" button
- Toggle the encrypt/sign checkboxes
- Click "OK"
- Click "Close" in the options panel
I could set it so that all messages are signed and encrypted, but that's not what I want.
Why on earth are there not toolbar buttons for these options?
Other than that, Outlook 2003 is at least configurable enough to look and act like older versions of Outlook. I'd like to play with some of the "email management" toys they have, like read-only email and self-deleting messages, but that requires the use of a policy server that my company isn't going to deply anytime soon.
Same here. Even went with a metal enclosed filter instead of a cheap plastic one. It's a pain in the butt to change, but hey, the car only gets 500 miles a year put on it anymore!
The reason so many air-cooled VWs caught fire is because idiot mechanics installed the fuel filters completely wrong.
You see, the original filter is in the gas tank. You have to crawl under the car to get it out and replace it. No one ever does. Most mechanics expect it to be in the engine compartment. When confronted with one of those "damned german cars", the average american mechanic simply would cut the fuel line in the engine compartment and put in one of those cheap plastic fuel filters. If you were lucky, he also put on a couple of hose clamps.
The problem is, a lot of the time they put the filter on the PRESSURE side of the fuel pump (that is, between the pump and the carb.) Now if the fuel pump gets clogged, the pump keeps on pumping and eventually the filter explodes or just pops off the fuel line (due to no hose clamps). Engine fire follows closely.
Now, had they simply put the filter on the SUCTION side of the pump (that is, between the tank and the pump), when the fuel filter gets clogged, the engine simply stalls due to lack of fuel. No fire. No fuel all over the engine compartment.
The rubber grommet that the fuel line passed through in the firewall was also an item often not replaced when R&Ring the engine. Yup, sheet metal cuts through rubber hose in no time flat!
These are pretty much the same mechanics who would never clean the air filter or the oil filter when "servicing" an air-cooled VW. Yes, you have to change the oil in the air cleaner once in a while. Yes, you need to take the oil strainer out and clean it when you change the oil. You saved a lot of money on oil and air filters in an old VW since they were reusable.
With over 300,000 miles on my '71 Beetle, I've never had the brass tube on the carb come loose. Perhaps that was a flaw on the really old VW's?
But yes, a fire extinguisher in your old VW is a VERY good idea. In fact, at most of the VW shows I have been to, you get an extra couple of points in the judging if you have a fire extinguisher on board!
Ha ha, this reminds me of those Toyota mini-vans of mid 1980's vintage. I worked as a gas-jockey part time for a few years, and one day one of these things drives in. Guy asks to fill it up, and check the oil.
OK, pop the hood and look in... there is no engine up front. There is a place to add fluids, but no engine.
Must be rear-engined, like a VW. So we get him to pop the rear hood. There is a spare tire in here, but still, no engine.
WTF? This is a delivery van, and the guy doesn't own it. He has no idea where the engine is either.
OK, lay down on the ground and look underneath. WTF? The engine is directly UNDER the front seats. Hokay, how the hell do you check the oil on this thing?
To the owner's manual! Scan it for a bit, find the relevant section. You need to find a little level that lets you tilt the driver's seat back, and the open a hatch underneath. And low and behold, there is the oil dipstick.
I can't imagine how much engine vibration that driver's seat picked up on the highway. Maybe that was a selling feature...
OK, I was wrong. Suunto makes a couple of GPS watches now, and they look to be quite a bit smaller than the Casio, but also about 3X the price (the Casio is easily found for $200, whereas the Suunto models go for over $600.)
Check out the M9 for sailing, and the G9 for golf.
Phhhh! That Timex GPS watch not only comes with a huge external GPS box that you have to attach elsewhere on your body, but it won't even give you the GPS coordinates of where you are! It simply uses the GPS numbers internally to calculate how far you have run/walked/biked/whatever.
No, the only real GPS watch is from the fine folks at Casio.
I think that iFIT.com actually has stationairy bike races through their website. Not sure if they still do this, or how often it happens, though.
You gotta use IE to see the site, though.
You want to have a bike workout video game? Well, here ya go!
Not bad for under $120, assuming you have a decent bike and a PS2 to go with it.
Wow, I would never buy a CD at those prices. I can pick up most CDs locally for under CAD$20, most for under CAD$18 (or about 7.50 to 8.50 pounds.)
Even at the "we never discount" places in the mall, you hardly ever see a CD over CAD$25.
15 pounds (CAD$36) for a CD is insane. Then again, people in the UK are used to getting screwed by high prices.
Maybe you should start ordering from Canadian stores. (absound.ca, amazon.ca, chapters.ca, futureshop.ca to name a few big ones...)
Then again, you'll probably just get a 150% duty/tax slapped on it at the border.
The have had the same system (as the BBC) in several cities in Canada for several years now.
The US system is completely incompatible, of course. In 10 years when I drive my car across the USA/Canada border, my radio will stop working. Nice.
Seeing as Disney is now making movies based on theme rides at Disneyland, I can only hope that a new Indiana Jones flick is close at hand (a movie based on a theme ride based on a movie... why not?)
But with my luck, the next flick will be "It's a Small World".
Details? What company will sell this data to the general public today?
Actually, you can get an RCA Scenium 7000 (or whatever the new model number is) at FutureShop. It uses the free Guide+ data. It has a built-in progressive scan DVD player. It doesn't have the "smart" recording like TiVO and SageTV.
The catch is that you can't really use it with satellite (it grabs the guide data off the cable or over-the-air broadcast), and you only get 3 days of guide data at a time. But there is no subscription, and it works just fine all over Canada.
Don't want to pay the $700+ FutureShop is asking? Amazon.com has them for under $250 US.
As with most things Linux, your mythtv experience completely depends on what hardware you are using. For example, don't even attempt to get it running on an EPIA M10000 based system with a Hauppauge PVR-250 installed unless you are a serious Linux hacker. Wait another 4-5 months, then try it. The drivers might behave by then.
:-)
If you are building a box from the ground-up, it's best to copy what someone else has already built, or do some serious research into your hardware first. (The Asus Pundit system seems to be popular, and pretty inexpensive. Not to mention it's not much bigger than a VCR.)
My biggest concern with mythtv is the use of XMLTV for the guide data. You just know that someday soon, the websites that are being scraped are simply going to start blocking XMLTV (at least one website has started doing it already), and then you are left with a really expensive VCR and no guide data.
That said, once up and running, myth is quite nice. Sure, it could use a few tweaks here and there, but I'm sure those will be worked out eventually. If you don't want to keep updating the software, get a TiVO
Come on, we all know that future wars will be fought by giant robots.
To suggest anything else is just silly.