Category: Life

One night a few weeks ago, we lost power briefly. And then apparently again that night, but while we were asleep. A couple of weeks after that, we had a strange occurrence during the day which I first noticed because I heard some relays click like when power is turned off on some appliances. I was sitting in the family room, and tried turning on the TV, but it wouldn’t go on. I looked at the power strip it was plugged into, and there was no light. Tried resetting that, but nothing improved. I then noticed that some other things lacked power as well. So I went to the circuit breaker sub-panel upstairs. Nothing looked tripped, but sometimes those things are subtle. So I tried resetting the likely candidates. Then the unlikely ones. Then I went to the basement to reset the breaker that feeds the upstairs sub-panel. Still no improvement. At this point, I realized that other things were without power as well. The only thing that all this stuff seemed to have in common was the main circuit breaker. While I didn’t trace everything out, it seemed likely that one of our phases had become disconnected within that main breaker. At least I can’t think of another explanation consistent with the observed fact of a subset of circuits being dead. As much as I dislike doing so, I reset that breaker, and then all was well.

I assumed it was a one-time bizarre event. Then about a week later it happened again. It still took me a bit to realize it was a recurrence of the same thing. After that, I began to make the possible connection to the power outage, and suspected that something had damaged our main breaker. I called an electrician, and left a message describing the symptom and my diagnosis. They never called back. Then this past Friday, it happened again. Then Saturday morning.

At that point, my annoyance outweighed my rational fear, and after some research into circuit breaker compatibility, I headed to Home Depot and bought a replacement breaker. Shortly after I got home, it happened again, which made for a fine opportunity to swap out the breaker. So I did my best to take all the precautions I could, like standing on a wooden platform, wearing rubber gloves, using a plastic handled screwdriver, I opened up the breaker box and pulled out the main breaker and replaced it.

That’s very easy to type, but in fact, after telling people it should be about 10 minutes, and that our internet connection should survive because all the essential equipment is backed up by UPS’s, two unexpected things happened. There was a weird bar blocking the breaker slot across from the main that was interfering with my removal, and about 3 minutes into the procedure, the UPS that protects the Verizon ONT gave out. In the end, it was about 20 minutes of sweaty, shaking hands work, but it seems to have been successful. Power has been stable for almost 72 hours now, which is a new record for the past week.

So that adventure, while apparently successful, has no photographic documentation, due to my anxiety level. But a couple of weeks earlier, I was busy taking pictures of another home repair adventure in anticipation of writing up a blog post about it. Our kitchen drain had, seemingly all of a sudden (or nearly so) was completely clogged. This was Thursday night, and I arranged to take the day off to deal with it. I had purchased a drain auger a couple of years earlier, and used it successfully on another occasion. So I tackled the problem with a certain confidence, documenting the cluttered under-sink cabinet, its subsequent cleared out state, my careful prep work to minimize any mess (drain cleaning is yucky business), first view inside the clean-out, etc. But then after a couple of hours with the auger, and another attempt in the basement, where the kitchen drain has a long, nearly horizontal run, things hadn’t improved. And of course, to check, you have to put everything back together, and run water through to see if it drains.

That took us to about noon time, and Susan and I had a planned lunch date. So I cleaned myself up, and we went to lunch. Then after lunch, I had to run an errand with Clara, and besides, I was tired and discouraged. So I gave Susan the number of our regular plumber and asked her to call. They came pretty quickly, and by the time I got home from my errand, the plumber had solved the problem, and was nearly packed up and ready to leave. I don’t believe he did anything fundamentally differently than I did, but he had a couple of advantages. Mainly, I think, is his experience with the feel of the auger, and knowing what’s likely a blockage vs. an elbow, etc. And persistence. Perhaps if I’d just kept at it a bit more, I’d have been successful. Anyway, the failure discouraged me from posting what was intended to be photos of my glorious success. But here, sans photos, perhaps that failure can be a footnote to my other, more successful endeavor.

I always enjoy Rhett’s articles. I rarely try to follow the math completely, but good stuff nonetheless. This one is pretty simple physics. I could probably still work out projectile motion problems like this. He often does nifty things with video analysis, although not in this piece. But what really struck me about this particular article was the secondary bits about traffic jams. The last video was cool, demonstrating just how little of a perturbation is needed in order to create a traffic jam of sorts. But the one before it, with Bill Beaty showing how to (help) defeat traffic jams was really awesome. I’ve done similar things in the past, trying to drive at the average speed, but I usually end up getting annoyed or frustrated when others cut in. His is a great reminder to have a Zen attitude about the whole thing. Imagine if everyone drove that non-competitively!! Spread the word!

I’ve posted before about buying American made jeans. I’ve come to like the All American Clothing jeans quite well, and so I’ve placed a number of orders there over the years. My first order was placed back on March 9, 2009, and was order #40208. It was for 3 pairs of jeans: one American made Carhartt black jeans, one pair of carpenter jeans, and one pair of their “AA101” jeans at $34.95. Curiously, the second order was 2 years to the day later, and included 2 pr of the AA101’s at $39.95. (Order 63502). I had accidentally ordered the wrong size of one type, but the person reviewing the order noticed the discrepancy and emailed me to double check. Score an A for customer service!!

At some point, they stopped selling the Carhartt, and then at a later time they added an AA101B in black. I’m not sure exactly when it was, but I did file this into their customer service website back on November 13, 2013:

Another abandoned cart. So, here I am with 3 pairs of jeans in my shopping cart, and I want to add a fourth — black jeans in size 37×32. But they’re not in stock. You don’t give me an option to back-order them, or anything else. I would backorder them. I’d be glad to wait for them to come back in stock, then have you ship the whole order. But I’m not going to buy 3 pair now, and have to pay to ship the fourth pair later. I’ve been waiting for the black jeans. One of my first orders with you, you still had Carhartt black jeans (I believe it was), and I ordered them. But then you stopped carrying them (perhaps it was that they were no longer made in America). So I ordered my black jeans from Diamond Gusset. But now I’ve been trying to place an order here for quite some time (not continually, mind you, just every so often when I think of it and have the time. Sometimes when you send an ad, I check out the site and try to place my order). But this is at least the second time that one of the items is out of stock. You also don’t offer me a way to be notified when an item does come back in stock, so it comes down to when I think of it and have the time. C’mon, now — you’re American! You can do better than this! 🙂

There was some back and forth in email, all very pleasant and thoughtful with their staff, but it wasn’t until 6 months later that I was able to order the jeans. So that was May of 2014 that I placed my next order, #112475, and the AA101’s were $48.99. They did give me a 20% discount on the black pair for having had to wait so long. At that time, they were promoting some concept of “traceability” and each pair of pants came with some little card with a unique number on it with which you could go to some website to look up the provenance of your jeans. I never bothered. Presumably, you could see pictures of the actual cotton plants that went into your jeans or something like that. And presumably, that was at least part of the justification for the big cost increase.

On the day of the last snowstorm of this season (fingers crossed…), I took a spill which ended up ripping my beloved AA101B’s, so that very same day I went to order a replacement pair. Another pair of blue jeans was getting a bit worn, too, so it was definitely time for an order. When I visited the site, I was dismayed to see that they were discontinuing the AA101B, due to lack of demand.

I don’t know, but it seems to me that demand would be pretty hard to measure if you don’t carry a product for 6+ months, and don’t allow people to back order it, and don’t provide a means for people to learn when something comes back in stock. Sheesh. So, not only that, but they didn’t have my inseam. Not only that, but there was no “sale” on the discontinued product. When I asked customer service, they said that I could get them hemmed for $10 more. After some email back and forth, they offered a 15% discount on the now $52.95 (!) jeans. So I bought 2 pair and had them hemmed. Order #205091 And now, what do I see a week later? Now they are selling them at $25/pair.

Thanks a lot, All American Clothing. I think that back when I initially ordered, the Diamond Gusset jeans were a bit over $50, so they were a lot more than the All Americans. But they have not gone up in price much, while the All Americans have gone up way faster than my salary. Not sure there will be a fifth order from me.

from the German fahren, to drive, and schaden, damage or harm. A play on the old VW slogan Fahrvergnügen: It's what makes a car a Volkswagen.

I wrote a while back about our most recent car purchase, a 2011 VW Jetta Sportwagen TDI. I confess I’ve really enjoyed the car. It’s fun to drive, it has enough passenger and cargo space to be useful, it gets very good mileage (so I don’t feel awfully guilty the vast majority of times when I’m alone in it), and it’s environmentally friendly, incorporating VW’s “Clean Diesel” (oh, the irony of that link bringing up a 404…) technology. Or so we all thought.

As it turns out, Volkswagen was pulling a fast one. Unfortunately, they couldn’t get the great mileage they wanted to provide at the same time that they could reduce emissions sufficiently to pass EPA muster. It was interesting for me to learn that there is a trade-off here. I would have thought that burning the fuel more efficiently meant lower emissions. And perhaps that is true, but apparently it can mean more of the emissions that are harmful. For a software engineer, it turns out the answer to this conundrum was straightforward — you don’t need to do them both at the same time. Apparently, according to someone at VW (engineer? management? the engineer in me wants to think/hope it was the latter), you can generally run dirty with good mileage, but when there’s no steering input, you can assume that emissions testing is taking place (or idling) and then you can turn on all the fancy emissions reduction equipment.

I must say, this is very distressing to me. The purchase decision was made in large part from an honest attempt to be environmentally conscientious. As outlined in the earlier post, we bought a used car intentionally; we didn’t buy a hybrid out of concern for the environmental impact of mining the metals that go into the batteries; also, diesel fuel is less refined from crude than gasoline, so my gut tells me (the same gut that tells me efficiency == less emissions) that there must be some environmental cost to the additional refinement of gasoline; diesel fuel is more energy dense than gasoline, so transporting it is more economical; and miracle of miracles, VW had solved the emissions problem. Hallelujah! Now, it’s pretty challenging to get a good, accurate, complete “cradle to grave” analysis of the environmental costs of one car vs. another, but what I’m hoping to convey here is that we gave it some considerable thought to the issue, and intended to do “The Right Thing.”

I have expounded to countless friends and colleagues on the virtues of VW’s “Clean Diesel” technology, the problems of other technologies (i.e. hybrids). I was a walking VW ad at times. I would gleefully point out how I could accelerate uphill at 70 m.p.h. and still get better fuel mileage (thanks, MFI!) than my previous vehicle (a Ford Ranger) averaged with mostly highway driving. I proudly drove this car. I even had mental plans for creating a special TDI badge for the back of the car that would recognize when it passed another TDI and “blink hello” in TDI solidarity and camaraderie.

Now, I confess to being somewhat ashamed about driving the car. I want to put a big “Sorry, I didn’t know!” sign on it. I used to always suggest to Susan that we take the wagon instead of the van when we didn’t have a van load of people, and especially for longer trips. Now all I can think about is the fact that I’m spewing up to 40x the EPA limit of NOx when I drive. And that hurts.

So what is Volkswagen up to now? I’d like to think that in the intervening years since they hacked the software in this engine, they’ve been working diligently to make the promise of Clean Diesel a reality. But if that were true, I think we’d be hearing something telling us they’re close. But we’re not. So I hope that VW has their best and brightest working tirelessly on this now, and until it’s solved. And by solved, I mean delivering on the original promise of Clean Diesel — EPA approved emissions under real world conditions while providing the power and fuel economy we TDI owners have come to know.

On the practical side, what will become of these cars? Will I be allowed to continue to drive it? Will I be allowed to sell it? Will I even be able to sell it? How much value has been lost? Will VW make us owners whole?

Besides which, now my father-in-law is now teasing me about (cheating) VW being the official car of The (cheating) Patriots. Ouch. But at least I can stand up for the Patriots.