At the only meetup I made it to we played a game of Northern Pacific. It’s a railroad-building game in which players bet on which cities the railroad will connect through and then try to steer the construction through the cities you bet on. It has some interesting game-theory aspects to it. It’s played in 3 rounds and each round was very different as players adapted their strategies. I won out in the end.
A look at how some common items have changed over time to meet needs or whims of the populace.
Petroski argues repeatedly that form doesn’t follow function because look at how many variations of X there are. But, at least the way I think of the concept, that proves the point. There are dozens of types of hammers with slight variations because each function requires a slightly different form. And all the forms have the same basic concept of a handle to conform to a users hand with a head on the other end to do the work.
Ubik by Philip K. Dick
This sci-fi story starts on one track and then goes an entirely different direction–almost to the point that it feels like the initial world building was wasted.
You’re meant to be left guessing which reality within the story is the real one–if any.
Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher
A fantasy story with significant world building and interesting characters. The beginning of a 6-book series.
Humans are part of a broader world of sentient creatures and have carved out an empire for themselves. But the emperor is aging with no heir. The empire is beginning to fray and the enemies of humanity seek opportunity in cracks.
Alden Lane Nursery had a crafting event to create a fairy garden or dragon den. The girls both opted for dragon dens. They had fun. The dragon dens live along the sidewalk up to the house now.
Corinne was excited that this year her birthday wasn’t on parent-teacher-conference week because it meant she’d get to spend more time with friends at school. Her school day went well and back at home she entered the land of Reveria from the Fantasy Life i which she had recently played.
Edward greeted her with urgent news: Trip, his bird friend, injured a wing while flying through the woods and needed help getting home. His path home was blocked by a golem, an orc, and some vines. She would need to practice her skills in many different “lives” in order to rescue Trip. In the game, your character takes on various lives to learn new skills (e.g., a carpenter, a wizard, a fighter, etc.).
The first task she decided to tackle was to take up the tailor life and make a dress for the golem’s doll. After cutting and sewing the dress she took up the artist life to decorate it.
The dress prepared, she took up the angler life to make a fish stew for the orc. She caught some fish in the pond and took them back to the kitchen where she took up the cook life to prepare the stew. In the game, many of the “lives” have mini games associated with their activities. So to be a cook Corinne needed to chop the fish on the cutting board (using her hand as the knife), flip the fish in the frying pan, and stir the fish in the pot–jumping from task to task as I called them out. She had a blast with this part.
With the stew ready she turned her attention to the final task: prepare a potion to pour on the vines to wither them up and allow her to pass. For this task she’d need to take up the carpenter life to build a box in which she could carry the three potions she would make with the alchemist life. The carpenter life had a similar mini game in which she needed to hammer, saw, or sand at the workbench. And as the alchemist she needed to mix up 3 potions of the appropriate colors from the available dyes.
She was now ready to head out to the forest, clear the obstacles, and rescue Trip. She gave the golem the new dress for its doll and it ambled off. She poured the potions on the vines and they withered up. And she fed the stew to the orc who settled down for a nap. She collected Trip and returned him safely to Edward who rewarded her with presents!
A birthstone necklace.Battery-powered string. A big hit.She’s been getting interested in jewelry, so a box to keep it in.She’s chewing right through this series.
After dinner we were off to Panda Express for birthday dinner then back home for a shower and cake. Heather decorated the cake after Jess frosted it.
With the very real possibility of oil/gas prices climbing to catastrophic levels due to absolutely stupid military activity by the U.S. against Iran I decided to snap up an old Nissan Leaf while the getting was good.
There were quite a few options available when I started my search on the weekend of March 7/8. I made a short list, but didn’t see a way to fit anything into our schedule until the following weekend. On the morning of the 14th I called the broker in Walnut Creek with our top pick, but they said they already had someone scheduled to look at it and were going to hold it for them for a few hours. A couple hours later they called back to say the first person was unable to get the financing they needed so it was available to us.
We went up and drove it around a for a little bit and dropped it off at a shop for an inspection. While we waited we walked down to a 7-11 to buy some snacks and shortly after, it was ready for pickup. No major issues. Some age-appropriate wear and tear. So we bought it. $4500. Still has about 65 miles of range on a full charge–which is plenty for our around-town driving.
After we already said we would buy it the employee was telling us that they had 4 calls about it just that morning. It had been on their lot for 3 weeks and they even dropped the price once. I guess we weren’t the only ones thinking an electric vehicle sounded increasingly like a good idea.
Remediations
The car didn’t need anything to be drivable, but there were some easily remedied issues I took care of. Wiper blades and cabin air filter needed to be replaced. The location of the cabin air filter is super obnoxious. Of all the work I did it was easily the most annoying.
A strut on the hatchback was leaking, $20 for a pair of new struts and replacing them took less than a minute.
The driver’s door must have had some work done on it at some point, though no accident appears on the vehicle history. One of the brackets that holds the door on wasn’t paint-matched and the door didn’t hit the strike plate quite perfectly. It was only barely offset and my regular shop adjusted the strike plate so that it matches up just right.
The cargo area has a cover which hooks onto the hatchback to lift it up when the hatch opens. One of the nubs which it connects to on the hatch trim had snapped off. You can’t buy the part anymore and rather than try to find one from a junkyard I made my own solution. I found something on Amazon described as a 10mm ball-head stud rivet with screw back. I pulled the trim off (very carefully) and filed down the broken nub. I drilled a hole just big enough for the screw on the back piece of the rivet. To fit a washer, in order to distribute the load across more of the plastic, I had to cut out a little rib of plastic, but it all went together beautifully.
OriginalMy replacement
The 2015 Leaf allows you to schedule when charging can happen, which is important for our electric metering which has peak and off-peak rates. When I went to set it up the computer was complaining something about the clocks being out of sync: “The clock used for the timers is different from the navigation system’s GPS clock. Please synchronize the timer’s clock with the GPS clock to use the timers.” Apparently, the car and the navigation system each have their own clock and if they’re out of sync it won’t allow you to set up schedules. Anyway, it then gives you a button to press to “resync the timers” and when I pressed it it threw an error and told me to try again or visit a service center.
After a few tries with the same result I turned to the internet to begin sleuthing out more information. I found a number of posts about the issue, with some guidance about using the secret, service menu to set the vehicle clock manually. The theory is that if the clocks are too far out of sync it will fail to automatically synchronize them when you push the button. Why that would be the case, who knows. It seems easier to say, “I got a reliable GPS signal, use that info to set all of the clocks!” but that’s not what it does.
The big question is, “How close do they have to be for the sync to work?” But first, how to access the secret, service menu: With the Audio Power off, press “Map” 3 times (waiting for the double beep each time), press “Audio Power” 2 times, press “Map” once. That should take you to this menu:
Go to “Confirmation/Adjustment”:
Scroll down to “Clock Settings”:
The “Clock Settings” page looks like this:
Based on my experience, this menu always shows Year 2006/8 and Date 26 when opened–regardless of what it’s actually set to. “Year” is “Year/Month” and “Date” is “Day of Month.”
So, we can use this menu to set the vehicle clock. But set it to what? When I set this information to the current date/time I saw the clock on the dashboard change…to something not what I set. There was something suspicious about the time it was showing, but after a couple of minutes it would update to the correct time (presumably after the GPS signal was processed). Regardless, I still couldn’t get it to “resync the timers.”
I then realized the key. One of the main forums on which I was reading about the issue is based in the UK and the time it was temporarily showing me was the correct offset from UTC (though in the wrong direction). The secret, service “Clock Settings” page must be set to the correct UTC time. It was working for the UK users to set their regular correct time because it just so happened to also be UTC. Once I set it to UTC, “resync the timers” worked and the charging scheduling is working beautifully.
I couldn’t find any documentation stating this anywhere on the Internet. So here’s my incremental contribution to the world’s knowledge.
Charging Stand
Finally, to make life a little more convenient, I built a little stand for the charger. I was going to use pressure-treated wood and paint it, but it was all in terrible condition. Corinne convinced me to buy the redwood sitting next to it instead. I like the color, so I’ll keep it.
I’m very pleased with the purchase. I like how it drives. I like how quiet it is. I like that I have a small sliver of the “future we were promised” of electric vehicles powered by sunshine–directly from the solar panels on our house!
