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Making lemonade from lemons, and sharing the refreshment as well!
My daughter (4) had her first soccer "practice" last night, and she loved it. It was hilarious to watch, but I'm glad she enjoyed herself. I honestly don't care if my children ever get competitive (skill-wise) in sports, I just want them to enjoy playing them as part of a healthy, active lifestyle.
I think my son will be the nut I have to crack as far as that goes, though. He is not one to enjoy putting effort into anything, which really infuriates a do-everything guy like me (which I'm sure you can all imagine).
Disclaimer: The preceding message does come from a "Pool parent" who is dropping $$ to fly with his son to AA Provincials this week. Oh, and did I mention that our kids are split amongst two different clubs? It's a long story....
* we communicated, early on, that our goal was to have the girls make the Middle School team when they entered 7th grade
* I stayed on as assistant coach for the rec team
* my daughter decided to stay and play on the rec team
Funny thing - she's on THREE (!) teams. Middle School, rec, and Rising Stars. It's a bit hectic, but she plays every day of the week and has improved tremendously.
I take my son to her practices and he's been improving steadily as well. :shades:
As for the movie rights, the funny thing is, I shared with someone here at work, and we might submit it for a story in an internal newsletter. Pretty cool.
First "official" report from FHI on the front/rear power split of AWD on the 4EAT and CVT models. It's 60/40, not 80/20 or 90/10 as had been long rumored.
Bob
Some cultural assistance is required.
My fifteen year old son is working his way through the ancient Peanuts comic books. There are references to "Pigskin" which I presume is football related and probably a kids game.
Any assistance gratefully received; he won't give up until he gets an answer (he is being very autistic about solving this one) and I'd like to do something else with my Sunday.
Cheers
Graham
Rumor is that they were once made of pigskin, but I don't think that is actually true...
EDIT: One minute response time.. LOL
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Thanks. That is the meaning in Australia as well.
I think I will have to ask him to find the individual Peanuts cartoons. Sometimes conducting this sort of conversation with someone on the autism spectrum is like playing charades, only harder!
Thanks
Graham
>>>>>
Seems this is a real award and there is a webpage about a comic that received this award (not Peanuts) ...but on the SAME page there IS a link to .... "The Complete Peanuts".
Is it possible that your son managed to land on this page when looking for information about Peanuts comics???? or even lead to a question as to whether Peanuts had ever won this award?
Solved it at last. It turns out that there is an XBOX game called Snoopy Flying Ace which involves various Peanuts characters flying First World War era planes in dogfights.
In an on-line review of the game, the reviewers mention a sub-game called Pigskin "...which older Peanuts fans will remember from the comic strip!" In good faith and relying on my childhood of reading Peanuts, Angus is confident that I will remember the details. Whilst I am pleased that he thinks his dad has some expertise in an arcane area, I have not been overly helpful.
On the up side, Angus has had definite ideas on what to buy for presents for the past few father's days; I have received several hardback editions of Peanuts strips, supplementing some paperback collections from my childhood; they are still funny after 60 years, especially Snoopy.
Further research shows that the Pigskin game on Snoopy Flying Ace is an aircraft and football multi-player game, sort of like rugby, which is played over the net with other gamers, up to 16 at a time. There are occasions where I feel very old!
It may also explain why someone called a radio station that I was listening to last night, asking them to play Snoopy vs The Red Baron recorded by The Royal Guardsmen. I have just been sadly let down to discover that these were in fact Florida based rock musicians.
Now Angus is searching for the 1950s and 1960s cartoon collections to see whether he can find any references to them playing football. As I mentioned, dealing with someone along the autism spectrum can sometimes be a bit wearing. If we could just channel that obsessiveness to something practical like school-work.
Cheers
Graham
Their lateral grip is the most impressive and even when their limit is exceeded, they drift very predictably without giving way and their feedback is great so you know when it's coming. Even when physics exceeds grip, it is only a matter of the least correction to bring everything on line.
They do cost a little more, but well worth it. Subie + Hakka R's = Ultimate snow driving experience.
This is my kind of winter! Thank you, La Nina. :shades:
Our winter has been one of extremes except for snow. In November we were setting record cold temperatures day after day, then we had record warm for a couple weeks in December followed by one of the coldest Januaries on record! Then, with the coming of February, the temperature jumped above zero (F), and has stayed there for weeks now. The light is coming back now, though, so spring cannot be long behind.
Perhaps I should take a look at the Nokian tires when I am ready to purchase my next winter set. The Ultra Grip Ice are so great on the Forester, I don't think I'll switch to a different brand next time around. But, I plan to replace my Escort after next winter, and its tires will be up for replacement at that point anyway, so Nokian might make for a good fit with my new car.
Volkov - how do the Hakkappelliittas wear?
Are you running the WRT versions? They were actually my second choice and couple of reviews said they tested much better than the older Ultra Grip Ice.
The speaker examined the risk factors in 6 categories of electronic products, from annual throwaways like cell phones, up thru aviation control system. Thanks to the tremendous cost pressures and relatively limited production runs, guess which side of the spectrum Automotive electronics tend to fall?
The results and photographs in the NASA report on the Toyota pedal was briefly mentioned, emphasised as nothing out of the ordinary, but noteworthy because it is maybe the first time that the average Joe has ever heard of a tin whisker.
In their review of the issue, a wide variety of products were examined, showing whiskers to be all too common. Fortunately, 99.9999% of them end up being simply pathways to nowhere, and thus go unnoticed.
These guys provided the venue:
http://smta.org/education/presentations/presentations.cfm
Lots of scary stuff out there, but it's thru these kinds of programs and information sharing that we engineers attempt to control the forces of nature!
We had big 3 day snow event this week and I have to say, my third Outback is the best in snow.
I started with a 1996 5spd, then a 2001 4EAT, and now 2008 H6 LL Bean. You can definitely notice the difference in the VDC and not having the tail end scoot out like my prior models. The 5speed was still very good in the snow with very little sliding, but the 4EAT had a hard time manipulating some corners.
Just putting a positive spin for a Friday afternoon
it was 70 degrees yesterday here. I went on a bicycle ride with a co-worker over lunch and we did 15 miles.
I'm glad to hear about our Outback doing you well for a change, Michael! Enjoy the snow while it lasts!
And tail end scoot is not necessarily a bad thing. My kids call it 'drifting'. :shades:
Having said that, the auto still plowed through even in snow-maggedon and I was able to pick up my kid.
I would LOVE to drive the MT Subies, but the options that I want/love are only found on the Limited...which is no longer offered in MT.
Now, if only they made the Limited once more in MT. Too bad that Americans don't appreciate the manuals. Of course, that is probably another whole discussion! :shades:
Just got home from an eighteen hour interstate trip. Good welcome from wife, kids and dog, then found my Garmin Ecoroute HD dongle has arrived. I am looking forward to playing with it.
Anyone had any experience with a data logger in the car?
Cheers
Graham
I've never really had the opportunity to look at a dashboard like the Garmin solution is providing through the GPS unit integration. You won't have the opportunity to tune, so I guess the real draw is learning how to drive efficiently and of course the overall 'gee whiz' factor.
What are you wanting to get out of it? I think it could be useful to help troubleshoot driveability issues, but for driving efficiently I would think that simply going easy on the right pedal will get you 90+% of the possible benefit.
The Tribeca averages 108 sales per month down under whereas the Exiga sells about 30 cars per month! I find that unbelievable.
Bob
Oddly enough, Tribeca is too small, and the Exiga looks ... too big? It's like a stretched Legacy. How 'bout one clean-sheet design for a true 3-row crossover?
After a week of using the Garmin Ecoroute, the fun bit has been the user selectable gauges and the very accurate real time monitoring of fuel economy. I drive economically in any case, but did a 600km trip the other day and found it informative to see how only minor modifications in driving pattern modified fuel economy. It does not mean driving any slower, but thinking more about acceleration. For this trip, I shaved about 0.5l/100km off usage. Okay, that is only 3 litres or about AUD4.50 on the trip, but it does add up.
I had worried that, when sitting still, the fuel economy would show as infinite, but it actually plots as zero. Of itself, that is interesting when looking at the proportion of time spent sitting in traffic.
One of the reasons for buying it (and I have to admit its mostly toy value) was the ability to read any stored OBDII codes as the Kluger is now seven years old with 180,000km on it. Nothing showing and all sensors appear to be good.
It is proving fun to play with
Cheers
Graham
http://automotiveiq.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/requirements-of-iso-26262/
The standard deals with a methodology for using redundancy, such as dual CPU's & sensors, as well as future error checking / error correcting plans. It should help systems deal with slow degradation (aging), 'hard fails' (shorts/opens) as well as one-time hits like alpha particles, cosmic rays, noise injection, and the like.
Lets face it, 99.999% reliability just doesn't cut it when your car is reliant on the power of a super computer installation from a mere 10 years back.
A car can suffer far more individual errors than that. Minor and transient issues in fuel mapping, throttle position, even ABS wheel sensor speed are not that impactful. I would think these things are functioning fine to the driver's perspective at their current reliability levels. And one error in 100,000 does not produce a crash or probably even in a hiccup in engine performance.
If the .001 results in a vehicle disablement, however, that's a different story. Five nines uptime results in over 8 hours of unavailability per year. I've not owned any modern car that was so unreliable. My current car has had no disablements of that sort in almost 8 years and 106,000 miles.
So there were failures even before the by-wire days.
My wife said, "is that your car?" I replied, "yes." She follows up, "aren't you going to do anything about it?" I said, "No, with any luck it will just pop the engine and give me a really solid excuse to buy a new car."
It's pretty annoying when driving, though. Sometimes I can go 70+ without any throttle input at all. Usually, if I toss the car in neutral while headed down the road, shut it off, then restart, it will work properly for a while again. Sometimes, though, that doesn't even help. I can go months with no revving issues, then have it happen for weeks with fair consistency, then only once in a while, then no problems at all for months again. I'm coming off one such "months with no problems" spell.
The biggest problem I have with it is the fuel economy hit. I can lose up to 5 mpg on a tank when it does this. At $4.20 a gallon, that just pisses me off. :mad:
If we could somehow freeze the automobile as it is today, we could possibly avoid the need for all of this. Gas prices, occupant safety & infotainment/telematics expectations will drive the end of the point-to-point wiring harness as we know it, with everything controlled by bus commands. Including brakes. Hydraulics & vacuum systems are rapidly disappearing. Hybrids will abound, mixing 600v systems with their huge electric fields with 1 V logic as traditional TTL (5 volt) all but goes away. Look at the cooling systems alone required for high discharge batteries. We deal with stuff in the lab (next gen) that separates a logic 1 from a logic 0 by a mere 100mv, because nobody wants to deal with microprocessors that dissipate 100 watts like today's stuff does under full load.
And it's not just the hardware. Have you thought about the operating system & application software? Can you afford a system crash and reboot, because some parameter came unexpectedly back wrong?
And all of this subject to the harshest conditions this side of aerospace, yet with only a fraction of the thought that goes into flying machines.
Honestly, I think part of the problem here is that we've done such a great job to date that we make it all look easy and relatively fool proof. You really have no clue how much we sweat the details to make all of this magic work as it should. But it sure ain't getting any easier. Standards like these are designed to help keep it all transparent to you end users that just want to turn the key and drive away!
And Colin, I mean this all in the most sincere way and in the spirit of friendship!
The only thing you said that I can connect to is the voltage issue. That seems to primarily affect the need for relays, which is a good thing. Separating single wiring and sensors from power wiring becomes more important but again I do not see this as a huge challenge. (Shielded conduit for the power wiring?)
I think you're fluffing this up just a tad. Since when has any ECU ever crashed? No doubt, I agree that they cannot be allowed to. But they're not now and never have.
Mobile entertainment, I can see issues there and certainly it is no surprise that Ford has seen the need to release several fixes for their Sync systems over the years. But the business of actually running the powertrain, braking and stability management of car, whether gas, diesel, hybrid or fully electric is just not a problem that needs solving.
This is a lot like your micro-whiskers thing from a few months back. Technically possible, statistically irrelevant.
As for vacuum leaks, well, I do have the hose that connects to the PCV valve disconnected. I think it is pushing too much gas through there, which is not venting fast enough and therefore causes pressurization of the crankcase. Ultimately, that ends up blowing the oil dipstick out of its tube and spraying a fine mist of oil into the engine bay. I was messing with it mid-winter last winter (2010/11) and the hose shattered in the cold, so I just left it since the car ran just the same afterward (and I don't have to worry about the pressurization).
This revving thing started about three years ago, though, which predates the crankcase pressurization issue by about a year and a half.
Initially, I changed the throttle position sensor and it worked perfectly for a couple months, but then came back as before. Last summer, it was running fine right up until July 4th weekend, when I did my annual maintenance. I replaced the oxygen sensors on the car at that time, and BOOM! That car was a rev-machine on the very next start. It did get better fuel economy, though, when not revving, than previously.
In an all drive-by-wire vehicle, if the brain fails you are SOL unless you happen to be at low speed or stopped. It is one thing to have an accelerator not do what you tell it to do, but still be able to steer, brake, and shift the vehicle to control it (if competent, mind you). It is something entirely different if the whole car becomes unresponsive.... No steering, braking, shifting... nothing.
Personally, I don't see why anyone would want cars to go there. Aircraft are meticulously maintained to keep those systems top-notch for years and years. Cars? I don't think I would want a car that requires that sort of maintenance regime. Talk about planned obsolescence; that doesn't sound like a good use of resources to me or an enjoyable driving experience. It seems like the engineers are looking for answers to problems that don't exist.
the PCV valve could be a factor. crankcase pressurization often is a problem with rings or head gasket.
sounds like a vehicle I'd be dumping.
completely agree. but here's the first test..
is this happening today? I do not drive a billion cars, I drive only 2. but I've never heard of this, nor of anyone I know having a problem.
I don't think Fibber's 99.999% is anywhere near close to correct for a major driveability issue. (Stall, loss of braking, loss of electric steering) If problems are impacting powertrain efficiency, ok, great. Let's go fix that and get a little smoother idle and another few MPG.
One example he gave as an area of concern was the ECU crashing. Never, ever heard of that. Scaremongering, or just simply incorrect?
Dump it? No, hell, I can rebuild that entire car for less than half of what it would cost to simply own a replacement for a year (let alone drive it). I could get another used car, but then I go back to square one in terms of known maintenance history. Economically, it just doesn't make sense, even if I sell the car for scrap in another year.
Honestly, if something goes seriously wrong with it in the next sixteen months, I'll probably dump it. I'd rather replace it on schedule, though.