Dead Battery

This morning I had a very important doctor's appointment that involved being put to sleep for the procedure. I have never had any serious surgery and being put to sleep was a first for me. Needless to say, I was a little nervous but am happy to report that everything worked out fine. Last night I didn't know how it would turn out and found it tough to fall asleep.

I awoke at 3am but didn't know what time it was. I heard my dog get up and walk down the stairs. Normally that means she wants me to let her out. It didn't take long for me to figure out why she left the comfort of her dog bed: she was hiding. A battery in one of our smoke detectors had died and now the detector was chirping. Since I was awake, there was no way I could get back to sleep until I fixed that high-pitched beep.

I went down to where we keep the spare 9-volt batteries and grabbed a handful. Then I headed to the central part of my house where most of my smoke detectors seem to be located. I replaced one battery but the chirp continued. I replaced the next one with the same result. Then I started going through the bedrooms. I could still hear the chirp in the first bedroom, but it wasn't from that smoke detector. I finally heard it in the second bedroom and could confirm I found the bad battery. I put in a new one but the alarm chirped again. My replacement battery was also dead. I was out of batteries at this point and so I returned to where we kept extras. I pulled one out of the packaging and put it in the offending detector. Once again, it chirped.

At this point I was getting ready to pull the smoke detector from the ceiling but decided to hold out for a minute or two more. It must have taken a bit for the smoke detector to figure out the battery had been replaced because the noise it was making stopped. I could finally go back to bed. I tried to coax the dog to come back upstairs but she was comfortably asleep under the desk in my office and didn't trust that the painful noise was silenced.

Sometimes it is easy to fix technology problems. If the designers of smoke alarms had put in a simple red light to indicate which alarm had a dead battery, my searching would have been much more simple. In my case, I had to pull an "Edison" and test a number of devices before the problem was solved.

Stupid Technology

Last week I was riding from the office back to my sailboat when I passed a fellow cyclist on the bike path. As I rode past him, I noticed he had earphones on and a mobile phone mount on his handle bars. As he was on a bike path, I didn't fault him too much for the earphones. Then I noticed he was watching a movie as he rode down the bike path. At that point I was extremely glad to get around him. What kind of moron rides his bike in public and watches a movie at the same time?

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy watching a movie and riding a bike. In fact it is the only way to get through a workout on my indoor-stationary bike. When I am on a real bike and I am out in public, I feel it is critical to my health to devote 100% of my attention to my surroundings. It keeps me from getting hit and hitting other things. I'm sure this guy justified his actions because he was on a bike trail. The problem is that the bike trail is used by people walking, runners, rollerbladers, and other cyclists.  It is not a question of if someone will get hurt, it is a question of when.

Computers and technology have a place in our lives. Let's be sure to use them appropriately and not to create any unnecessary hazards.

Report from the Tokyo Game Show

I have been in Tokyo, Japan all week and was able to attend the Tokyo Game Show today. This is the first time I have ever attended the show and I am glad I didn't make the trip just for this show. Don't get me wrong, it was good to be there, it just wasn't very large. I was glad I had very productive meetings earlier in the week to justify the trip.

I got to the exhibit hall a little after the show opened and so the floor was not too crowded. The first booth I saw was from Electronic Arts (EA) and was for Battlefield 4. I am a big fan of Battlefield 3 and am looking forward to the next version. There was a lot of information about the new Frostbite 3 engine and it looks to have some great improvements that are especially nice for online play.

My next stop was the Microsoft booth where I was able to play with the XBox One. There were a number of games available which should put to rest any fears XBox fans have about not having a lot of game titles. I'm not sure how much of what I saw will be available at launch but they seemed in a playable enough state that if they aren't available on day one, they will be shortly after.

It was only fair that my next stop was at Sony's PlayStation booth. Microsoft's booth was a ghost town compared to Sony's booth. There were a number of lines, each containing an insane number of people wanting to play the PlayStation 4. There was also a healthy mix of Vita and PlayStation 3 games to sample. In all fairness to Microsoft, the XBox is not nearly as popular in Japan as it is in the United States. For every XBox 360 sold last week in Japan, there were 70 PS3's sold.

I enjoy a limited time spent at tradeshows in the United States and also enjoyed the day at the Tokyo Game Show. The one big difference between the two countries is the number of scantily-clad "booth babes" in Japan. It was not uncommon to see a crew of bikini models running around the exhibit hall. One unusually small booth had an equally unusual large number of models in their booth. I have no idea what game they made even though I passed that booth a number of times. I could probably pass it a dozen more and still wouldn't have any idea what they do.

Home Auto Repair

Last week I got an emergency call from my 17-year-old son. I was in the middle of something very important and so at the next available moment, I stepped out and gave my son a call. He told me that the horn on the family Jeep had just started beeping. He first assumed it was related to the car alarm. He went out and unlocked the car but the horn kept making noise. He then tried to start the car only to have it run roughly and not stop the racket. My son is a smart kid and so his next trick was to turn the car off and disconnect the battery. The horn stopped but it also meant the car was unusable until we could fix it.

The family Jeep is a 1998 Jeep Cherokee. If you are a Jeep fan, it is better known as an XJ. My wife and son only paid a couple thousand dollars for the vehicle but it came with a 3-inch lift kit and a sweet set of tires. It makes a great car for the kids even though it has a tendency to break down on a regular basis. Having it break down is part of what makes it a good car. I use it as a teaching tool for basic automotive mechanics with my kids. The XJ is incredibly easy to work on and tons of them are still on the road, making replacement parts extremely inexpensive.

Unfortunately automobile electrical problems are sometimes the most difficult to track down and fix. When my son turned on the car, the check engine light came on. I plugged in my OBD-II computer that I picked up many years ago and saw that the car thought it had a bad throttle position sensor (TPS) based on the P0123 code it was throwing. I then did a careful Internet search using the following, "1998 Jeep XJ P0123." Why did I use the term XJ instead of Cherokee? Jeep also makes the Grand Cherokee, which is a completely different SUV. Besides anyone that knows how to work on Jeeps calls them by the car's 2 letter code instead of model name.

The Internet search yielded a number of stories about people replacing the TPS only to have the problem still exist. Most had better luck replacing the clock spring which is part of the cruise control, horn, and TPS electrical circuit. Thinking about how the horn started going off while the car was just sitting in the driveway and the TPS is only engaged while the car is running, I decided to look for a quick check to verify it was the clock spring. Pulling off the steering-wheel shroud and unplugging one of the connections to the clock spring (it is located just above the turn-signal lever) fixed the P0123 code. The horn and cruise control no longer work, but the rest of the car does.

Now that I knew the real problem, I went back to the Internet and ordered a new clock spring for the Jeep. This is not one of those parts that auto stores keep in stock. Until then my son can drive the car to school and back with the help of an inexpensive air horn resting in one of the cup holders. 

Text Messages at 4am

I was rudely awoken this morning at 4am from a text message claiming that Chase approved me for a $1000 instant loan. I had a similar message yesterday at the same time. Yesterday's message said I could stop these text messages by replying with the word, "STOP". As it was 4am, I stupidly sent the message. This is always a bad idea because then the company knows there is a real person connected to the number.

Both Android and iPhones have a "Do Not Disturb" function that I decided to investigate today. As I have an iPhone, I played with those options and recommend anyone with a smart phone do the same. The first thing I did was turn on the Do-Not-Disturb feature in my phone's settings. Then I went into the notifications section and turned on the "Scheduled" function. That means my phone will not ring, buzz, or turn on the screen should I get a call or text message between the hours of midnight and 7am.

My reluctance to set this up in the past has been in case there is an emergency and someone needs to get a hold of me. There is are 2 ways around this. The first is to populate my "Favorites" list. Anyone on the list will cause my phone to notify me during the Do-Not-Disturb period. If you are not on the list, your first call goes unnoticed. If you call back immediately after, it will ring through.

My hope is that I will be able to sleep through the night without getting another notice that I am approved for some high-interest loan I don't really care about.

Finally, A New Mobile Phone

I really beat up my mobile phone when I went backpacking back in July. I made sure to get a new one when I got back to civilization after spending only slightly less than a year in a state of indecision. There were a number of features I was using as criteria for the new phone:

1. Waterproof/Dustproof - There are a number of manufacturers making phones that are waterproof. Seeing as I spend a fair amount of time in snowstorms, having a waterproof phone was kind of important to me.
2. 4G LTE - It didn't make sense to have an unlimited smartphone data plan only to not have the fastest speed possible. Ideally, I would also like to have it usable as a mobile hotspot, but not having it was not a deal-breaker.
3. Size - While most people are looking for the largest screen possible, I wasn't. I prefer something that doesn't look like an aircraft carrier stuck to the side of my face.
4. Cost - Nobody wants to pay full price for anything, especially me. I wanted a deal and wasn't going to spend North of $400 for a piece of electronics that could easily fall into the toilet.
5. Android or IOS - In case you haven't figured it out over the past couple of posts, I really hate Windows and refused to buy a Windows phone. There is a huge ecosystem of applications available for both IOS and Android, most of which are not available on Windows phones.
6. Ease of Upgrade - Moving the data from by antique iPhone couldn't be a lengthy process.

Unfortunately I could not find a phone that had all of the features I wanted, as some of them (like waterproof and ease of upgrade) were mutually exclusive. In the end, I had to pick a phone that was a compromise of features. I decided on the iPhone5 after getting one for my wife when her old iPhone died. So far I am happy with my decision. Sure I had to lock myself into my current service provider for the next couple of years to get the price I wanted, but the ease of upgrade made up for that. The size was what I was used to and felt natural.

I'm sure I will find something to complain about in the near future. Until then, I am happy to have a somewhat newer phone that does everything I need it to. I was even able to load some new applications that wouldn't work on my other phone because it was so old.

A Laptop is Not a Tablet

My son was able to solve a number of his problems with Windows 8 today. It turns out that the designers at Microsoft want their users to have the same experience on laptops, tablets, and phones. What a stupid idea. Hopefully Apple never stoops to such a moronic idea.

I thought touchscreens were really cool when they first came out. That lasted about 10 minutes. After that, my screen became so covered with fingerprints and body oils that I came to my senses and realized a mouse or touch pad is a much better interface. Sony figured that out with their PlayStation Vita. In addition to having a touchscreen, the back of the Vita works as a touch pad. Why? They realized that if your finger is on the screen, you might be missing something taking place in the game. Not having your fat finger obscuring your vision very important in first-person shooters.

About as near as I can figure, the guys who came up with the idea that we would all want to treat our laptops the same as our tablets, spent a little too much time sniffing model airplane glue as kids. A touch screen is a compromise in a tablet so you don't have to carry around a mouse. I only hope that the public doesn't try to embrace laptops masquerading as tablet computers. Sure there is a place for tablets, just don't try to make my laptop or desktop computer behave as one.