Blessed by the Potato

Well, my ScanGauge arrived today. That was incredibly quick since I only ordered it on Tuesday, and all the good things I’ve heard about the service from Tom Gifford (who resells the ScanGauges in Canada through Gifford automotive) is certainly true — he was quick and friendly to respond to emails, and had shipped my ScanGauge the same day I ordered it. The ScanGauge II was incredibly easy to hook up and pull the codes from my car — just plug in, turn the car on, wait ten seconds, press “scan” and voila! The hardest part was finding my ODBII connector in the first place. Turns out it was hiding behind the ashtray. Unfortunately that means that if I’m going to use the ScanGauge on a daily basis (as a fuel consumption gauge), I’m going to have to do without my ashtray/coin collector. I’ll put up another post in a few weeks after I get some more experience with the ScanGauge as a fuel consumption/extended gauge.

For now, I can just say that it was such a piece of cake to pull the codes out of the computer that it’s downright criminal of the dealership to have charged me $90 just to do that at one point — two codes cleared and the ScanGauge will pay for itself. The code is, once again, P0133 — O2 sensor/air flow sensor “slow response”. So from what the mechanic told me last time, this will eventually need to get fixed, but “slow” is not yet “none” — and indeed, it took 8 months for the code to be set again after it was cleared in January. The repair estimate was $365, so I’ll just take my chances at the Drive Clean test, and if it doesn’t pass, I’ll just have to pay up then.

Of course, I knew about the ScanGauge long before I had to deal with trouble codes because of it’s reputation as a fantastic fuel consumption meter. I think all cars should come with a fuel consumption meter, but unfortunately they don’t. I’ve been tracking my fuel consumption by the tank every time I fill up with the help of the database at GreenHybrid.com, which certainly helps with giving me an idea of how I’m doing and factors (speed, cold) that can affect fuel consumption. However, it’s still a pretty rough guide, and a tool like the ScanGauge can hopefully offer some feedback to improve my driving even more (if only to remind me those rare times when I am in a hurry how much it’s costing me). It can also display other information contained within the car that the stock gauges don’t show me, such as battery voltage and fuel range remaining.

Picking where to place the ScanGauge is a bit tricky, since I want somewhere that’s not in my way, but also immediately visible, and I have to manage the cord. It needs a decent contact with some surface in my car for the velcro, and also has to point somewhat towards me so I can read the screen. On top of that, I have to try to angle the pictures so that everyone doesn’t see just quite what a disaster my car is these days. Right now I’m thinking either on the steering wheel column in front of the dash display (and despite the angle I took the picture at, I can see over the ScanGauge to see all my instruments when sitting in the driver’s seat), or just above the radio, fastening the velcro to the dummy switch beside the clock. On the steering wheel is of course the best visibility, but it’s a little harder to hit the buttons (I have to reach through or behind the wheel). Beside the clock it’s kind of low and out of sight, and it’s also just a bit too wide for that space so it looks a little goofy. It does fit really snugly into the space left behind by the ashtray, which also makes the cable a non-issue since it’s all just coiled in behind there, but it’s barely visible there — in park, I can’t see half the display, and it’s low enough that it’s a head movement when driving, not just an eye-movement glance. Other options are between the clock and air controls, but that space is not very flat.

I figured what the heck, glue-backed velcro is not all that expensive, and put it beside the clock/above the radio for now. It’s not the most professional looking installation, but I also didn’t drill any holes in my dash to run the cord. I then took it on a short spin to see how it would do. It’s a pretty decent spot: I can glance down at it quickly while driving, but it’s out of the way enough that the light doesn’t really bother me while I’m driving (though if it does, I can always just turn it off). I got about 10.5 L/100 km according to the ScanGauge in a 10 km drive around London in light traffic, which is about what I expect in those conditions. Next up will be seeing how I can use it to improve my driving (e.g.: finding how much of a fuel hit driving 100-110 km/h on the highway takes).

Oh, did I mention it changes colours?

I picked up a new chinup bar a few weeks ago from the fitness source (? — can’t remember the exact name of the store, but it was on Doncaster across the street from Cayne’s). I had gone in there planning to buy one similar to what Netbug has: something that screwed into the doorframe, since 6 screw holes is a lot less damaging and secure than those compression-fit bars can do. The guy ended up selling me on this one though, a Forza Door Gym, $50 with a $10 off sale. It’s kind of neat: it has handholds sticking out so you can position your hands in different ways in the pull-up, and supports itself partly on the top and partly across the door frame. Chin-ups, I’m finding, are a lot harder than they used to be. I think that’s got a lot to do with the fact that I used to be 120 lbs.

I’ve put it up in the doorway through to the kitchen, which is a good place for it because it means I do a chin-up or two every time I go in for a snack (I’ve heard it said that abs are made in the kitchen, so hopefully that placement will help). It’s very picky on how thick the door frame can be though, so this is also the only doorway in the whole house that this will work on! The other doors in the house are either too wide so it’s at too much of an angle for the part that goes over the top of the door frame to be at a good angle, or the top trim pieces are too tall: notice in the pictures that on this particular doorway, the wood piece over top of the door is smaller and plainer on the kitchen side (where the chinup bar is going over the top) than on the living room side, where the bar is. The bar only fits on this one doorway and only in the one direction: that fancier wood trim piece on the living room side is too tall for the supporting piece to hook over. I think I would recommend it as a neat, very easily removable chin-up bar (though I don’t remove it since it’s high enough that I don’t fear hitting my head, and will actually use it if it’s out all the time), but you should definitely check your doorways to see if it will fit. My parents’ house, however, seemed to have a lot more doors that fit. For reference, that doorway where it does work is 7″ thick, and the top trim piece is 2.5″ tall. A doorway 9.5″ thick is too much for it to fit, and likewise a top trim piece of 6″ was too big.

Note that it is not completely damage-free: after just about a week of use, there is some damage where the ends have dug into the trim (partly due to the trim coming out at that point so it takes a lot of weight on one small spot). I don’t think that our landlord will get too pissed off about that minor damage though, and it’s still less than I’ve seen compression-fit bars do.

Just as I was getting to the Park ‘n Fly the check engine light came on on my car, which is not what I need right now. I’ve got my license renewal/drive clean test coming up in October, and you can’t pass with a CEL on. It used to be that the mechanics would hook up the scan tool and read/clear the codes for free as long as I was in for something else, since of course if the code was something that required fixing, I would then likely fix it there as well… but last time they charged me $90 just to read the code about my O2 sensor starting to go (and I think as long as it hasn’t gotten worse I should still be able to pass). So I’m thinking about getting a scangauge, which can read the OBD-2 codes as well as having some other fuctions such as serving as a fuel consumption meter. It’s pretty expensive at $170, but it would be worth it if I could clear a few codes that I can safely ignore (in my experience with this car, that CEL goes on for a lot of ignorable reasons – including single engine pings).

Chicago is a much bigger city than I had imagined before coming here — bigger than Toronto, even.

The time change has already had one “gotcha” for me: I went down for the opening reception and was an hour early.

From walking around, I can see that Chicago is a city gone mad in a number of ways. The roads and trains and whatnot are all over the place: above ground, at grade, and underground. It still doesn’t seem to make the traffic any better. People honk all the time. Every single light change there’s someone honking somewhere. With all that honking I think the drivers here must just tune it out, so if someone tries to drive into them by changing lanes without looking (which happened to me on the way to the airport — time to take the license away from somebody’s granny!) they probably wouldn’t even react to the warning honk and just plow on through. Last night I saw 15 cars run a red light. A number of them were still running the red when the light for the other direction had already turned green. At that point, the cars running the red were all honking at each other, and some people were honking at the cars that did finally stop for the red!

That said, Chicago does have some nice architecture, as I recall reading about in The Time Traveller’s Wife.

I went out last night (Saturday night) looking for dinner around 11 pm, and almost everything was closed down. Today was no different, with most stores and restaurants being closed for sunday. The famous Uno and Due pizzarias were open, but had lineups spilling out onto the sidewalk.

The internet is working, and there are no cockroaches, which is a huge step up from San Diego. I should mention that the wired internet keeps crapping out, but there is wireless that seems to be working better. With a US IP address, I can finally check out hulu.com, which is how I spent my Saturday night here :) The hotel room is quite nicely furnished and laid out, however there’s no sound insulation from what’s going on in the hallway, so I could hear the maid knocking on everyone’s door in the morning. I think I’ll have to break out the earplugs tonight.

People don’t like to be wrong. I don’t like to be wrong — on the one hand I’m doing all this extra schooling so I can be Mr. Dr. Smarty-pants and be wrong less often, but on the other hand I’m a scientist and science is all about being told you’re wrong and learning from that. Occasionally the social situation crops up where a friend is doing something that I think might be, you know, not perfect, and I really don’t seem to handle telling them that very well. I nearly lost a good friend over something like this “Dude, guess what, I’m doing X.” “Man, it’s your life, do what you want… but I think that’s not going to work out the way you think it will. Seriously, rethink X.” “You’re a rotten friend, I’m not talking to you for a year.” “…but I was right…”

While I can be a bit of a loner, Dottie, a rebel, I do have enough of a clue to just bite my tongue when there’s nothing that can be done even if I am right. For example, I currently think this is a fairly terrible time to go off and buy a house, in a financial sense, yet a few friends and acquaintances have done it anyway, and I didn’t find out sometimes until the housewarming party. By that point there’s obviously nothing to be done. Now I just found out another set of friends is out there looking for a house, and I don’t know what to say, how much caution to give them. So far, I’ve just said “oh, you might want to look into maybe waiting or at least offering below asking — the days of bidding wars seem to be over…” The decision to get a house in particular can be a very emotional one, doubly so if you’ve just spawned and need more space for the rapidly growing F1. I really don’t want to be seen as the one shattering “the dream” with my damned Vulcan logic. Simply keeping my mouth shut to avoid an awkward situation isn’t really an option for me — they’re my friends. And isn’t putting your foot in your mouth in the best-intentioned way what friendship is all about? So how do you go about telling people they’re wrong?

…in person, that is. Of course here in the blogosphere you can just call people to the mat, pull out charts and references, and just generally make an arrogant intellectual ass of yourself :)

[Admin aside: I’ve stepped up my posting schedule the last few days as you may have noticed, and now I’m going to take the long weekend off. Rest those eyes!]