Muttroxia

The bug wasn’t in the car, it was in the service manual. My car tells you how much oil life is left. When it gets down to 15%, a message is activated. This message displays every time the car is on and stays on until you tell it to stop. It is very annoying. That’s the point.

Today I got the oil changed. It didn’t turn off. I took out the service manual and read how to reset it. It said to get the screen that displayed the oil life, hold down that button for 10 seconds, then follow the prompt to reset. I did it. Nothing happened. I did it again. Same thing. I turned the car off and on. I turned the car off and turned the electrics on. I pressed some different buttons. No change.

I came home and got out my error code scanner so I could reset the error codes. It said there were no errors.

I sat looking at the display for a while. Annoyed. I decided to experiment some more. What if instead of holding down the button on the screen that talks about the oil life, I do it on the screen that has the error code? Yep, that was it.

** ** ** ** ** **
Here’s another pet peeve. In every other industry they are putting service instructions online. Want to know how to assemble your pre-made furniture? Want to know how your computer works? Want to know why your lawnmower is making that funny noise? Just head to the internet, it’s all there.

Want to know how the lights on your car work? Good luck. Pay $20-$60 for a hard printed version from Ebay. Why don’t the OEMs make the information free? Why shouldn’t I be able to go to Acura’s website and see everything in every manual for all the cars they’ve every produced. C’mon! They don’t make much money from manuals. There’s no reason to keep their customers ignorant about their products they bought. It’s ridiculous!

One of the sad parts about living in the endless sprawl of Atlanta is the light pollution. I am a low-grade astronomy buff, but you just can’t see very much here.

Our children know Polaris, the Big Dipper, Venus, and Orion’s belt. That’s about it. We miss part of the richness of existence when we aren’t connected with the heavens. This old story made me sad exactly because it’s so easy to believe.

In his book “Nightwatch,” the well-known Canadian astronomer Terrence Dickinson comments that in the aftermath of the predawn 1994 Northridge, California earthquake, electrical power was knocked out over a wide area. Tens of thousands of people in southern California rushed out of their homes looked up and perhaps for the first time in their lives saw a dark, starry sky. In the days and weeks that followed, radio stations and observatories in the Los Angeles area received countless numbers of phone calls from concerned people who wondered whether the sudden brightening of the stars and the appearance of an eerie silvery cloud (the Milky Way) might have caused the quake.

“Such reaction,” notes Dickinson, “can come only from people who have never seen the night sky away from city lights.”

I’m not a huge Bruce Springsteen fan. He’s overrated. I want to like him more. I like his story, I like his attitude, I like his subject matter, hell I like him. He’s a charismatic likable guy. But I just don’t like most of his music. Once you get past the best four songs or so there’s a whole lot of blech.

Nevertheless, he a good performer. I saw him live once, and even freezing my buns off from a seat directly behind him and not liking the songs I liked the show. Last years Tom Petty show featured better songs but this was a much better show. Even with each song was worse than the last it was still good entertainment. 10th Avenue Freezeout is a great tune, Born to Run is good, Dreaming (or whatever it’s called) is ok, and Glory Days is wretched. I wish the ref really had given them a penalty and shut the whole song down mid-chord.

My biggest beef with Springsteen live is the guitars. How many guitars do you need? Seriously. Bruce, Steve, Nils, Patti, that’s four. There was a blond girl and another guy – at one point I counted six guitars. It’s ridiculous. It’s even sadder because you can’t hear any of them. Sometimes you hear one, but there’s no way to make out more than that. And that’s on the records, never mind the live mix. What is that point of all those guitars!?

I am always more impressed by the logistics than the music these days. To get at entire working rock act up and running in 5-10 minutes, complete with a light show and fans and TV cameras and everything else is simply incredible.

And for no reason, one of my favorite songs from way back. Funny stuff from Rick Springfield.

(I just found this in my drafts folder. Somehow I never hit publish. Believe as you will.)

Steelers by 13. I am not a believer in Arizona.

I’m turning 40 next month. To mark this blessed/cursed occasion, I have chosen to celebrate/mourn in Las Vegas.

If you’re reading this the odds are good that you are also right around that age, or fellow gambling addicts, or just generally fun enough that I want you along.

We’re going March 6 – March 8th. There’s somewhere between 4 and 6 of us right now. If you’re interested, drop me a line, I’d love to have you.

Vegas.

Being a buyer in this economy is amazing. Talk about having “hand”.

Want to learn more? Feast your eyes on these specs (click through for details).

It’s bloody indecent. Oh, will delivery day never come!?

The Muttroxia family is into puzzles these days. Every few years we have a brief surge of puzzlemania. Puzzles takes some effort, but are relaxing enough to be able to talk to each other. At least that’s the idea. I have a hard time with that, I get involved in the puzzle too much. As we’ve recently upped the ante by not allowing ourselves to look at the picture on the box, it requires that much more concentration.

We had a 500 piece puzzle. As any normal people would do, we looked to connect the corners and sides. We finished the top row. While she was talking about someone’s mother who was in the hospital or something, I counted that the row was 31 pieces long.
I interrupted, “Something’s wrong, the top row is 31 pieces. That’s not right.”
“What?”
“It can’t be 31 pieces long. This puzzle is a grid and 31 doesn’t divide evenly into 500.”
“She had to go back to the hospital!! She’s going to be a in wheelchair the rest of her life!”
“Oh, right. Yeah, that’s really sad.” (said while I rearranged some pieces.)

Update: We finished the puzzle a couple days after I drafted the above. The final count was 18 rows and 28 columns. That’s 504 pieces. I am really annoyed. If a puzzle says 500 pieces it should be 500 pieces! First of all, the dimensions of the puzzle give you a clue – knowing that there have to be 10, 20, or 25 pieces in a row is a big clue. You can usually figure it out by counting the pieces and figuring out a perimeter that’s roughly in the golden ratio, but still. Second, it’s false advertising. The box should say what’s in it!

The inauguration music was not actually live.

The inaugural photo. Zoom to your hearts delight, 1,474 gigabytes of picture.

Philadelphia Eagles trophy case

Tibbles the cat, history’s greatest killer.

That’s why they call him The Magician (pool shot). But I like this one’s tricks better.

Hacking programmable road signs

Street racer pwned by ticketing cop

How Not to be a Key Online Influencer

46 things that never happen on Star Trek

This looks like a very very very good movie

Google Maps rocks

Clever teenage hockey player: use camouflage

You can’t fight City Hall. Reduce waste to zero, get sued.

Cockpit of the Space Shuttle

Hover dogs

Yes, it’s flooding here also.

Pit Crew Fail

Class differences

Quality spam

The thumb man

10 sexual anomalies

Star Trek plot generator

Interactive Jacuzzi Girl. Awesome.

Very clever music video. I smiled the whole time.

Seig Fail

Funny graffiti

Coloring Love

Classic support ticket

The energy scale

New mathematics from Archimedes. Seriously.

This is just very sad

Frustrated with customer service? Use the “Get a Human” database.

Myron Rolle, a true student-athelete

John Thain’s greatest moments (worst CEO evah)

This is not my top Beatles songs in order. But it will give you some idea of the Beatles music I like. Here’s what currently on my playlist:

• A Day in the Life
• Across the Universe (two versions, plus a Rufus Wainwright cover)
• Because
• Day Tripper (plus a Jimi Hendrix cover and a ripping Oasis/Paul Weller cover)
• Don’t Let me Down (plus a Black Crowes cover)
• Fixing a Hole
• Get Back (two versions)
• Getting Better
• Golden Slumbers (the Ben Folds cover)
• Helter Skelter (the Aerosmith cover)
• Hey Jude
• I am the Walrus
• I Feel Fine
• I Should Have Known Better
• I Want to Hold Your Hand
• I’m so Tired
• I’ve Got a Feeling
• In my Life
• Let it Be
• Mean Mr. Mustard
• Norwegian Wood
• Penny Lane
• Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band (reprise)
• She Came in Through the Bathroom Window
• She Loves You
• Something (plus a George Harrison/Eric Clapton live version)
• Strawberry Fields Forever (Ben Harper version)
• Ticket to Ride
• Two of Us (soon to be deleted, plus an Aimee Mann/Michael Penn version)
• When I’m Sixty Four
• With a Little Help From my Friends
• Yesterday (plus a Michael Hedges cover)
• You Never Give me Your Money

Let’s get right into the hands o’ interest (not to be confused with the Links o’ Interest).

With 9-10, I limp as the big blind. The flop is 7-8-J giving me the nut straight. I check. I call a moderate sized bet. The turn is a Q. I check. He bets, I go all in. He calls with two pair (Q-7) and I double up. The river was 6, giving me a 7-card straight.

I gave a lot of that back in the next half-hour. I limped into a lot of pots with suited connecters, low pairs, K-6 in the small blind, hands like that. None of them connected. I think I was still right to play them each time, but after a while I stopped just to keep my stack at strength.

Blinds at 100-200. I’m dealt J-J in the big blind. There are three people in the pot. I want them out, I bet 4x at 800. Two of them call. The flop is K-x-x. Urgh. I feel like I have to bet again to see if anyone has a king. I throw another 800 in. The player to my left goes all-in, another 2100 to me. I grudgingly fold. Interestingly, no one can understand what I had to fold for a good 30 seconds, and then one of the players suddenly realizes, “High pocket pair, but below kings? Queens or jacks?” Guessing people’s hands is a good exercise.

We are now down to four-handed. The top three finish in the money. One player has an enormous stack, the rest of us are all fairly even. I get K-A with first action. I raise the 200-400 blinds to 1000. The other non-blind calls and both blinds fold. The flop is Q-x-x. I bet another 1000. He goes all in, another 3200 to me. This is a tough situation. I don’t have a made hand, plenty of hands beat me. If I lose I am essentially out (I have 3300) and finish just out of the money. He called me pre-flop, he probably has something.

And yet… I have a lot of outs. And this is the same guy who went all in with my J-J hand earlier. He pulled a similar move later. Maybe he just figures that he push me around with overbets post-flop. Maybe he thinks I am unwilling to risk my full stack at the bubble. Something doesn’t feel right. I don’t have a true tell I can point to, but something about his body language feels wrong. I call. He has A-10. My A-K holds up and I double up. I’m proud of that play. It was a gutsy call.

The third player falls soon after and I go to heads up. I am down 7-1 or so. The very first hand I get A-2. My all-in is called and he turns over A-7. I’m knocked out for a second place finish.

Tonight: $58
Running Total: $587

This link deserves it’s own post. This person counted down every single Beatles song from worst to best. Truly gutsy.

And so wrong! Dear Prudence at #11!? All you need is love at #6? She’s Leaving Home at #3? Are you insane? Of course a friend says that Tomorrow Never Knows should be at #1, so I’m obviously never talking to him again.

(The consolidated list is here.)

I am a notary. (Why? Why not. It’s cheap and it’s kinda fun.) My commission is about to expire. I downloaded the forms I need for renewal. They’re very simple. Send in a check and a copy of your drivers license and this form. The form has two lines that need to be filled out. One is a spot for my signature. The other is a spot for another notary to affirm my signature.

I have to find a notary so I can renew my notary license. I wish I knew another notary. This is all vaguely ridiculous.