Ivan Kowalenko's Less-Serious Blog

Adventures in Car Repair, Part 27: "Well there's your problem!"

Two of the nagging issues with my car have been the cold starts, and the fact that the cooling fan doesn't kick on automatically.

The Fan Problem

The fan issue was one of the first issues I was aware of. If the car sat too long, while running on a warm day, the engine would gradually hit a point where it would start to overheat. However, this issue didn't come up if the car was moving, or if the air conditioning was on. Both situations forced air through the radiator, and the air conditioner proved that the fan actually worked. The previous owner thought the radiator was cracked, and bought a new one. They never installed it, and now it's sitting in my garage. One of the things I had found out in experimentation was that the radiator was not leaking, and through discussions with our family friend (who is a mechanic) and the good folks at Saturn Fans, it was suggested that one of the possibilities was a bad engine coolant temperature sensor (in fact, it's a rather common thing). Well, I finally got around to replacing the ECTS sensor, and this might just explain what was going on:

From the condition of the sensor, I'd say it hadn't been replaced... ever. Probably an original component with the car. The intake air temperature sensor was in a similar condition, and crumbled as soon as we tried to mess with it. This explains a lot. After replacing it with a fresh, brass enclosed sensor, we ran the engine right up until it kicked over the fan. Great success!

The Cold Start

The cold start issue is not a deal breaker for me. The car starts reliably as any other car I've ever driven on a daily basis, it just doesn't seem to like the cold, and it runs an occilation through the entire car. But it's not super violent. It had been suggested to me that there was the possibility my engine mounts were shot. Entirely by accident, we may have discovered the issue: all the engine mounting bolts were loose! Not a single one was even snug! We also discovered this:

One of the bolts was broken right off! So for now, I'm riding around with two tightened bolts, which seem to be holding just fine.

Epilogue:

On the drive home, I noticed the car seemed to be driving a bit better, despite the snowy conditions. Even weirder: my idling issue seems to be resolved! The car has always idled high. When I got it, it idled between 2,500 and 3,000 RPMs, which seemed to be resolved by fixing some vacuum leaks. However, the car still idled around 1,000 RPMs when not moving, and 1,500 RPMs when moving. The car should have been idling around 700 RPMs. Guess where it's sitting now! 700 RPMs while sitting, and 1,000 RPMs while in motion. Maybe it was the fact that we ran the engine temperature up so high, maybe it's the ECTS. Either way, all I know is that this is the perfect time of year for the car to be performing properly.

Anyone else find it interesting that all the political debates thus far have been exclusively on Cable?

So far, all of the Republican debates have been aired live, but only on cable networks. Fox News, CNN, Fox News, now MSNBC. I find it curious that in the department of politics, a topic that will eventually have an effect on every American living in the country (and probably a few living outside of the country, to say nothing of legal/illegal aliens in the country and anyone else who has any interest in the United States) isn't being broadcast in a medium that is accessible to all Americans for free?

Yes, it's early in the political season, and it makes some sense that only political junkies are interested in this, thus I doubt it would pull the ratings of The X Factor, or Parks and Rec, but we live in 2011. There is no reason that such a thing couldn't be made available on a digital sub-channel (the local NBC affiliate, KARE, runs 24/7 weather on their sub-channel, though I do know that some NBC affiliates carry Universal Sports, so that could potentially be a problem).

The issue only gets worse if you aren't near a TV. To the best of my knowledge, there will be no terrestrial radio broadcast of the debate either, meaning that the only way to listen if you're not near a TV with cable is a satellite radio.

If you own neither of those, there's the option to live-stream the video via Politico, but that still requires you to have a computer (or a Flash-enabled smartphone), and an Internet connection.

Let's try ReactOS! What's the worst that can happen?

For a while now, I've had this junk laptop I've kicked around. As my experimental box, I've nicknamed it Kefka. One of the things I've wanted to do with this is repurpose it as an emergency StarCraft player for friends who don't have laptops, and in the past, this required a machine running Windows. Unfortunately, Windows is rather heavy handed on the old hardware, and I've tried repurposing it as a very basic MythTV back-end machine, and running StarCraft in Wine (which had a lot of potential). However, this ended up being quite a disaser. Then along came ReactOS.

A lot about ReactOS had promise for me: It is basically a Windows NT clone (StarCraft runs fine on Windows 2000 and XP, which are consumer versions of NT), it's light weight, and the CD image was under 100 MB (important because the CD-ROM drive in Kefka is tempermental, meaning the more reading/writing I have to do with it, the more likely it is I will see errors). And indeed, the install went off without a hitch! Not only was it an easy install, it was one of the fastest installs I've ever done to boot! Not even installing iOS updates on my old iPod Touch went this fast.

But from here, everything went down hill, and fast. The system boots (and but quickly!), but then I'm stuck. It has no default drivers to speak to the network card, the CardBus subsystem, or the USB system proper (so no USB Mass Storage access for moving files). This meant that the only way to throw files around was either the unreliable CD-ROM drive, or the floppy drive. Just my luck that the official driver for the network card was a scant 902KB. That's how I discovered that ReactOS couldn't actually work the floppy drive. It could just make it spin and throw out errors. Magically, the machine decided it did like reading CD-RWs (for once), and things just continued to be bad.

Smartly, I thought I'd copy the drivers to the hard disk, rather than risk potential trouble from the tempermental optical drive. But ReactOS seems to treat the hard disk like a read-only filesystem, restricting my ability to copy files... anywhere. It didn't help that ReactOS Explorer is completely useless. The address bar doesn't actually go anywhere, nor do the navigation buttons. They simply do nothing. Which is irritating. But not nearly as annoying as the fact that I can't get the driver tools to work correctly.

Running the Toshiba LAN Driver extractor pulls up the installer automatically (but of course), and lands me here:

You can't tell from the footage, but that nice red "DO NOT INTERRUPT!" warning is flashing at seizure-inducing rates (far greater than 30FPS, which the Flip shoots at). It's been sitting like that for the past ten minutes or so, and trying to bring up the task manager is not as straightforward as you'd like it, because it opens under the installer.

I ended up resorting to using the command prompt to copy the files, but still no results. Executing from the command line gets me nowhere. But here's the most irritating part: ReactOS thinks its Ethernet driver is installed properly and working fine. But it's not. I have zero network connectivity, and it can tell me absolutely nothing about the hardware it's claiming to drive.

So one OS reinstall later, and after mangling up the Self-Extracting EXEs that Toshiba politely provided (with my Mac, making this officially a non-one-machine solution), I managed to get the network card theoretically working, and the Smart Media card reader, but the software (and most of the hardware) is still mostly useless. Then again, I oughtn't be surprised: ReactOS calls the current build an Alpha, so it makes sense that there would be some problems.

And this isn't too surprising. Windows NT is a vast and complex thing, and to try and recreate it from scratch, and I suppose I was too ambitious to think it would work right out of the box. Still, it was worth a try, and proves that even thought something says "alpha," it's probably not ready for you to work on it, unless you know how to fix it already.

Places I have heard Foster The People's “Pumped Up Kicks”

Not yet (but may cause people to drop the word "Indie" when describing Foster The People): 94.5FM (KS95) and 96.3FM (96 Now!)

On TechCrunch's redesign, people's reactions to it, and TechCrunch's reactions to peoples' reactions

OK, so the new TechCrunch redesign is out, and people dislike it. And that's nothing new. There's been backlash against Digg redesigns, Gawker annoyed many people, and Facebook is notorious for user riots against redesigns and feature change roll-outs.

And that's not too surprising: sometimes people don't like change. In some cases, I agree with them. I am not a very big fan of the new design and some of the design ideas. However, I do like the additional white space, and the much cleaner, simpler design aesthetic. It's things like the missing feature bar that I'm not so gung-ho about, but I don't often visit the website, and I'm willing to try this one out for a while before I give a final verdict on it. But the 8-bit thing, not so big a fan. First off, the 8-bit idea for visual design feels very much like a gimmick and almost like a fad, especially when everyone made their Twitter avatars 8-bit. In some cases, 8-bit works exceptionally well, like chiptunes and Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Game, game design, and things having to do with video games. I just don't like it for TechCrunch.

I have expressed my opinion in what I believe is a sensible way, and I hope most people agree with me on that. Maybe not my opinion (everyone is entitled to their own opinion), but at least that I'm trying to be sensible in expressing it. TechCrunch's reaction to their readers' opinions on their redesign, however, doesn't jive so much with me. When the three sites mentioned above (Digg, Gawker, and Facebook) redesigned their websites, they let the users revolt, wait a few days to see what happens (do they calm down, do they stop using the site, or do they just keep complaining about a few specific things?) and then respond to it. Historically, the changes tend not to roll back, though minor tweaks to performance and UI may take place.

TechCrunch's editors, however, didn't go that route. There are two posts on the website that attempt to explain why the redesign occured, and to specifically respond to criticism of the changes. My problem isn't that they responded so quickly, but the tone of the posts. Both seem very condescending. Take the first post:

And no, we didn’t build [the new logo] in Minecraft. We used AOL Paint, which comes free on the AOL CD and has this sweet UltraLogoMatic2000 feature.

The overall look & feel reflects the bold, sometimes irreverent nature of TechCrunch. It doesn’t hold tea parties in the backyard or hang out with the black turtleneck crowd at the hippest art galleries. It’s a design that breaks more news than its competitors, that loves the code junkies working 22-hour days to build world-changing products.

That seems almost to say that if you dislike the current logo, you dislike everything they mentioned, and you want to be a stuck up, Steve-worshipping conformist. Maybe I'm overreacting, but when the title of the post has the phrase "We Picked This Logo Just to Piss You Off" as the substance of its headline, it makes the entire post seem so defensive. It seems almost like they are telling us that we are wrong for disliking something.

The second post, a "Copy-And-Paste Hatemail Template" doesn't help maters. The first portion of the post seems just fine, but it's the literal template for hate mail that give the entire thing an air of "all you people do is complain."

It's fine to say "look, people, we worked long and hard on this, so give it a chance. Here's why we made these changes, and we hope you will come to like them." It's not so fine to do this as if to say we're all whining and being immature. I'm not expressing my opinions with the intent of personally insulting anyone at TechCrunch (or anyone who worked on the redesign). I'm expressing it because I have an opinion I wish to express, and because, having designed a few things, I find feedback important, even if it all ends up being negative (but in a constructive way). Immature, unrealistic, and irrational comments are ones I'll ignore, and come back to later once the shock is worn off.

Of course, feel free to react to this and tell me I'm off my rocker and reading too far into this. It's your opinion about my reaction to a reaction to other peoples' reactions (and probably is too meta to really be worth getting bent out of shape over) and I'd like to hear it, even if you disagree with every word I've said. Just try to be rational about how you express yourself, please.

ARM — Windows 8's possible secret weapon

Microsoft announced a long while ago that Windows 8 will be able to run on ARM systems. For those who aren't aware, ARM processors are the ones typically found in portable devices, like smartphones and gaming consoles. There was a lot of speculation that when the ARM compatibility would lead to a wave of Windows-armed tablets, fulfilling the promise that Windows 7 slates never delivered.

This got me thinking: a netbook, an iPad, potentially even a Chromebook, could serve my purposes pretty well. However, the multitasking isn't quite up to what I want. I keep coming back to my MacBook for the things I do. But a laptop made using inexpensive, low-power components, perhaps an overgrown ARM system with a full desktop OS on top, could make its mark, perhaps even upsetting the tablet market by providing many of the features many people say they can't get in the iPad alone: a physical keyboard, a form of multi-tasking people are used to, and many recognizable system components and applications.

Granted, Windows 8 apps would need to be built to run on ARM, but Windows 8 (or, I'm sure eventually Debian and severa other flavors of Linux would wind up on these ARMbooks) with ARM-compatible copies of a browser (Chrome, Firefox, or IE), Office (probably even OpenOffice, or something of the like), a music player (or at least Flash so people can access their Google Music or Amazon CloudPlayer accounts), and perhaps even enough hardware to drive a second screen, and you've got a blogger's best friend.

Granted, there are a few tablets that fall into this category, but none are running an operating system that multitasks the way power users (and old school PC users) are used to: with windows. None seem to compare with what people can get done with desktop operating systems. It would be something like the best of both worlds.

Or at the very least, Microsoft may have saved a lot of people oodles of cash with low-power data centers. Perhaps that could even push the desktop market away from the x86 architecture (which is over 30 years old) towards something more efficient (which Apple tried, and was unable to do with PowerPC). Either way, it will be interesting to see what happens, and hopefully this doesn't go the way Alpha, MIPS, PowerPC and Sparc support did in ye olde Windows NT days.

Google+ — What Google has gotten wrong

Why I won't be buying a Chromebook any time soon

I could lie and say that ChromeOS doesn't fit my needs, that it's too limited, and I need more raw power and native apps for the majority of my day to day work. But that's wrong. Between Dropbox and all of Google's apps, I can get away with doing a lot in the cloud. No, the truth is that it's the cost. iSuppli recently outed the cost of parts for a particular Chromebook at about $322 (http://dthin.gs/j1UQ4n). Plus overhead and whatever Google owes their wireless partners, and the thing costs more than $400. That means I would be paying more than $400 for just a browser. Which seems foolish when I can get a more functional netbook for around $300.

This raises a big question for me, as a consumer: why is the Chromebook so expensive? Does a browser running on a stripped down Linux OS need more power than Windows XP? A smarter investment, for me, would be to buy a netbook and install JoliCloud's JoliOS on it. It does essentially the exact same thing as ChromeOS, but the cost is lower, and I still get some native apps I'd actually use (like The GIMP).

Also, if I was in the market to spend $400 on a portable browser, I'd probably be better off buying a second hand iPad. It's more portable, has better support, and has better battery life. If I need a keyboard, there are several options open to me as well.

Granted, with both those options I lose the free data promised to me by Google, but I almost never need mobile data for my laptop, and I've got wifi tethering with my Nexus S. And let's face it: most people who are buying Chromebooks probably have some kind of mobile data setup already too.

That's why I won't be buying a Chromebook. It doesn't make economic sense to me. Love the idea, but every model costing more than a netbook makes no sense to me.

On Portal 2, Xbox Live, and coercion

Unless you've been living under a rock, don't watch TV, and haven't seen a bilboard recently, you know that Portal 2 has come out, and is available for Windows, Mac OS X, PlayStation 3, and Xbox Live. I have to be honest: I want this game. I really do. But aside from the fact that I remember Portal being so short, I'm not sure if the game has enough to offer that makes it worth the full price tag (so I'll wait on that to hear more), and I don't know which version to get (I'll exposit on that here).

First off, I want the Mac OS X version. I own my MacBook Pro. I do not own my brother's Xbox 360. No one in the household owns a PS3. This narrows down my choiced to two versions, but these two choices make my decision harder, not easier.

Almost all my friends own Xbox 360s, including my friends I see on a near-daily basis. They either don't own PCs that meet Portal 2's requirements, don't have a high speed connection at home, or just prefer console gaming. This means if I want to play any Portal 2 Co-op with them, I need the Xbox 360 version. This seems to make sense, I guess.

However, I have friends in New Jersey, however, who think exactly the opposite, and went with a PlayStation 3 and PCs in their household (and friends who simply don't play on consoles period). Because Valve and Sony decided to play nice with each other, they can have either version, and I can have my Mac OS X version, and we can all have a lot of fun, because I can do cross-platform matchmaking, sync my games, and have access to all the community maps without having to rely on Valve to approve them, or Microsoft getting in the way and saying "YOU PLAY IN MY SANDBOX OR YOU GO HOME."

But co-op is a big part of Portal 2. And the friends I'm most likely to play with are in Microsoft's barbed sandbox. And so the problem goes on. The big problem is that the PC/Mac version is better in every way than the Xbox version:

• Portal 2 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 is $60, $50 on PC/Mac.
• Xbox Live Gold costs $9.99 a month (or $5/mo if you pre-buy a full year), Steam is free.
• Level creation tools are exclusive to Windows (I can set my Mac to dual-boot, and I can install Portal 2 on both OSes), Xbox gets none of that.
• Orange Box for PC got all sorts of fun toys, including a huge variety of maps, weapons and expansions for Team Fortress 2. The 360 version doesn't have that yet, though it's been promised since before July of 2009. Will that happen to Portal 2?
• My brother's Xbox is tied to the family TV: if someone else is using either one, I can't play Portal 2. My MacBook Pro, however, is extremely likely to be only used by me, or be unused in general.
• Portal 2 for Xbox 360 will work only if I never lose or damage the disc. The OS X version will live in the cloud and on my hard disk. (Note: yes, I know I can install Xbox 360 games to the HDD, but I still need the disc to start the game, and it still needs to be readable enough for the console to recognize it, and if the disc gets damaged, and the game ever gets deleted off the HDD...)
• If I ever need to go somewhere to play Portal with my friends (someone else's house, for example), my laptop is much easier (one laptop + one AC adapter vs. TV + Xbox + disc + controller + cables for both) and convenient (the family likes having the TV at home, and my brother likes playing his 360) to take from place to place.

The 360 version has one advantage over the Mac version: I can play games on the Xbox without burning the flesh off my lap.

And again we come back to co-op and how Microsoft's walled garden is coercing me to spend more (a lot more once you factor in Xbox Live). This is why I rather dislike Xbox Live, despite how well constructed it it, how perfectly Microsoft has built a multiplayer system (I do love Live parties so much), has made a unified online experience, and convinced me to pay for it. It's almost enough to make me buy the Mac OS X version just out of spite. But then I'll have few friends to play Portal 2 Co-op with (and none to play with in person). It's coercion, and it's using my friends as the hostages.

I have finally worked my way through my ReadItLater list

Prologue: I had been using my BlackBerry for a while, and I had started following news more and more on media sources available on my BlackBerry, like e-mail newsletters and Twitter. The problem with this is that the BlackBerry has a pretty bad browser, which makes for a very bad reading experience, and it was stuck on a poorly managed EDGE connection (that frequently was idling while Javascript ground the entire phone to a halt), which meant it took forever for a page to load. To cope with this, I had started to just send documents to ReadItLater. This process continued after I switched to my Nexus S.

So last night I started poking through my reading list, and discovered I had more than eighteen pages of links stored! So it became a goal of mine to clean this out. And now I have. I'm down to four links, which are videos I'd rather watch later. Now all I have to do is keep this from happening again.