Velcrometer
Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks
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M. Giant's Velcrometer Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks |
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Sunday, December 05, 2010 Start Me Up I've been having some minor car trouble the past few weeks. I don't know what it is, but I know how to fix it -- at least in the short term. What happens is this: I go out to my car, get in, turn the key, and nothing happens. Except that if the dome light is on it goes out, and if the clock is showing a time it goes blank. Like the whole car was just unplugged, or hit with an EMP. Like I said, I know how to fix it. I pop the hood, wiggle one of the battery cables until the dome light comes back on, then get back and start it right up. It takes me an extra minute and it can't help my car's resale value, but I'm kind of starting to get used to it. At first it was incredibly annoying. My clock would always go back to 1:00 and my radio stations would get wiped so I'd have to reset them again. And that still happens. But I'm learning that this isn't necessarily bad. For one thing, a lot of Twin Cities radio is kind of boring, so I don't generally want to leave it on one station anyway. Finding and reprogramming all the stations I used to have takes me long enough that it keeps me occupied more effectively than listening to another ad for carpet cleaning. And it used to be that the clock thing was annoying, too. Looking at my watch or my cell phone becomes kind of a production at this time of year in Minnesota, so I would miss having a clock I can just glance down at while driving. But with the time getting wiped every time I leave the house, I can now look down and know exactly how many minutes I've been gone. It's like having a trip stopwatch. And of course the kludgy starting method provides triple redundancy to my anti-theft system, the first redundancy being the car alarm that came with it, and the second redundancy being the fact that it's an eleven-year-old station wagon. And it doesn't happen every time. It seems to take a few hours for whatever happens to happen, so if I go on an errand I know I'll be able to get home safely. The outer margin of the time that it can sit and then start right up again appears to be equal to the running length of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 plus trailers and the amount of time it takes to buy an ICEE. Don't ask me how I know this (because you probably already figured it out). But what about Trash, you ask? Well, she refuses to drive my car except in the most dire emergencies anyway, so it's immaterial. I could probably go on with the car acting like this indefinitely, but the other morning when I had to use the key to open the door (glad to see that the old-school key slot hadn't grown over in years of disuse like an earring-hole). For some reason, the car thought I was trying to steal it, because the alarm went off and it ignored all the buttons on my key fob like you ignore a drunk uncle at a wedding. So now I think I need to use the spare key fob from now on. But that problem now seems less urgent than the reek of gasoline that's now inside the car. Different story, that. posted by M. Giant 10:06 PM 1 comments 1 Comments:
I have never considered myself a diehard Harry Potter fan but I have enjoyed watching the movies over the years. "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" has always been my favorite, until now.
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