Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Ask Jeeves
Do you think Acura drivers have a certain haughtiness to them? I don't think so. I think Acura drivers are people who like the reliability and user-friendliness of Hondas but don't want something as generic as a Honda, so they step up to the luxury division. But maybe I feel that way because I own one.
I need new wipers desperately. Mine are squeaking and streaking and the right one is doing that shredding thing where it looks like it's one or two swipes away from disappearing and scratching across my windsheild with the metal arm.
So we stop at Wal-Mart on the way home last night to remedy this situaiton and I go in there figuring they'll have a computer at the auto area and will be able to tell me which wipers I need, size-wise. Well, that desk was closed. So my lovely wife manages to find one of those little books near the wipers that supposedly has every make and model car so you can do it yourself. We study the book and learn that the earliest pages are tattered and the soonest car, alphabetically-speaking, that we can find is "AM General." Acura would come before that, for you slow-learners.
Shit.
So I go back out to my car and dig out my manual and head back in, lipping through the index looking for wiper info. I find the pages for windsheild wipers and turn there (in my 300-page manual, by the way). And do you know what's there? Step-by-step retard directions for changing the wipers, including how to pull the arm away from the windsheild, but nothing about the size. I check elsewhere and there are two pages on, I kid you not, the wiper control stalk.
Seriously? Nowhere are we going to tell people the size wipers they need to buy? Is it expected that Acura owners will simply take the car in -- or have the butler do it or something -- and let the blue-collar service people handle it? So frustrating.
I wound up searching Google via by blackberry and found a page for my car that said the size was 600MM. Of course, here in America, they're generally measured in inches. So I bought the inches equivalent, 24, and headed home.
And they were wrong. Both of them. One is 22 inches and the other is 19.
I'm an idiot.
I need new wipers desperately. Mine are squeaking and streaking and the right one is doing that shredding thing where it looks like it's one or two swipes away from disappearing and scratching across my windsheild with the metal arm.
So we stop at Wal-Mart on the way home last night to remedy this situaiton and I go in there figuring they'll have a computer at the auto area and will be able to tell me which wipers I need, size-wise. Well, that desk was closed. So my lovely wife manages to find one of those little books near the wipers that supposedly has every make and model car so you can do it yourself. We study the book and learn that the earliest pages are tattered and the soonest car, alphabetically-speaking, that we can find is "AM General." Acura would come before that, for you slow-learners.
Shit.
So I go back out to my car and dig out my manual and head back in, lipping through the index looking for wiper info. I find the pages for windsheild wipers and turn there (in my 300-page manual, by the way). And do you know what's there? Step-by-step retard directions for changing the wipers, including how to pull the arm away from the windsheild, but nothing about the size. I check elsewhere and there are two pages on, I kid you not, the wiper control stalk.
Seriously? Nowhere are we going to tell people the size wipers they need to buy? Is it expected that Acura owners will simply take the car in -- or have the butler do it or something -- and let the blue-collar service people handle it? So frustrating.
I wound up searching Google via by blackberry and found a page for my car that said the size was 600MM. Of course, here in America, they're generally measured in inches. So I bought the inches equivalent, 24, and headed home.
And they were wrong. Both of them. One is 22 inches and the other is 19.
I'm an idiot.
Labels: being an idiot starring ME
Thursday, December 20, 2007
The Weather INSIDE Is Frightful
I've never had a central air system at my disposal before. Oh, sure, I've been in homes that have it, but I've never owned one or really even had an apartment that had one. So our dual-zone system in our new house is pretty nifty to me.
Last night, in fact, we had nothing turned on (no heat or cool) because it had been 75 degrees here and so it wasn't needed. However, as we worked into the night on our house and on unpacking, etc., and all that goes with it, we got warmer and warmer. At one point, I checked the thermostat and it was 76 degrees in the house and feeling stuffy. So I went in to where Watersyne was picking through a huge box of bathroom goodies and I said, "I know this is crazy in December, but I think I'm gonna turn on the A/C." Sweatily, she just nodded. (You know, if you only picked that sentence out of the middle of this post, you might think it was about something else entirely.)
So I switched on the "Cool" setting and set the temp at 74, simply so that some cool air would blow and circulate, etc. You know the drill.
At about midnight we finally quit for the evening and went upstairs to our guest room where we're currently sleeping until we get a bedroom set in our downstairs master bedroom. The upstairs zone was also on and I set that one at 73. Basically, I just wanted the place not to get too hot and to circulate some cool air while we slept. Off to dreamland we went.
When I got up this morning and padded downstairs at 6:45, it was quite an odd experience. First, it felt like, as I went down the stairs, that I was entering a really cold swimming pool. I could literally feel the cold air right at ceiling level as I descended the stairs. I looked around and the windows were all wet with significant condensation moisture. What the hell was going on? It was freezing!
I went to the thermostat and looked and it was.... 57 degrees on the first level of my home.
Times when 57 is nice:
-outside in December
-at night in the summertime
-when it's a Merlot
Times when 57 is not nice:
-when you're in an ocean at that temperature
-if your coffee dips to this temp
-when you're in your boxers and need to shave and are somewhat confused about things
I couldn't figure out what was going on until I checked the setting of the A/C...
What had happened was the upstairs zone had continued to obey my commands and kept the temp at 73. The downstairs one, for some reason, made the unilateral (and unauthorized) decision to switch to it's "program" setting... you know, where you can have it be warmer when you wake up and cooler when you're gone, etc. However, nobody had ever set the program temps. Do you know what the default program temperature is for the air conditioning system?
50 degrees. Yes, fifty. That makes perfect sense, right? The default should be twenty-two degrees below room temp...? I'm sure an engineer decided that.
So for some portion of the night -- most of it, I would assume, judging by the fact that my shaving gel was almost frozen -- the downstairs system was trying to makethe house 50 damn degrees, while it was no lower than 65 outside all night. It's definitely a weird feeling to realize that on December 20, it makes sense to open the front and back doors and let the outside air in so your inside air will be semi-normal again. I'm not even kidding -- I opened the back door and went outside and it felt warmer and much more inviting than my living room. Ridonkulous.
I can see now it's going to be a battle of wills with the thermostat. It better not disobey me again. You know what happens when brainless object disobey me.
Last night, in fact, we had nothing turned on (no heat or cool) because it had been 75 degrees here and so it wasn't needed. However, as we worked into the night on our house and on unpacking, etc., and all that goes with it, we got warmer and warmer. At one point, I checked the thermostat and it was 76 degrees in the house and feeling stuffy. So I went in to where Watersyne was picking through a huge box of bathroom goodies and I said, "I know this is crazy in December, but I think I'm gonna turn on the A/C." Sweatily, she just nodded. (You know, if you only picked that sentence out of the middle of this post, you might think it was about something else entirely.)
So I switched on the "Cool" setting and set the temp at 74, simply so that some cool air would blow and circulate, etc. You know the drill.
At about midnight we finally quit for the evening and went upstairs to our guest room where we're currently sleeping until we get a bedroom set in our downstairs master bedroom. The upstairs zone was also on and I set that one at 73. Basically, I just wanted the place not to get too hot and to circulate some cool air while we slept. Off to dreamland we went.
When I got up this morning and padded downstairs at 6:45, it was quite an odd experience. First, it felt like, as I went down the stairs, that I was entering a really cold swimming pool. I could literally feel the cold air right at ceiling level as I descended the stairs. I looked around and the windows were all wet with significant condensation moisture. What the hell was going on? It was freezing!
I went to the thermostat and looked and it was.... 57 degrees on the first level of my home.
Times when 57 is nice:
-outside in December
-at night in the summertime
-when it's a Merlot
Times when 57 is not nice:
-when you're in an ocean at that temperature
-if your coffee dips to this temp
-when you're in your boxers and need to shave and are somewhat confused about things
I couldn't figure out what was going on until I checked the setting of the A/C...
What had happened was the upstairs zone had continued to obey my commands and kept the temp at 73. The downstairs one, for some reason, made the unilateral (and unauthorized) decision to switch to it's "program" setting... you know, where you can have it be warmer when you wake up and cooler when you're gone, etc. However, nobody had ever set the program temps. Do you know what the default program temperature is for the air conditioning system?
50 degrees. Yes, fifty. That makes perfect sense, right? The default should be twenty-two degrees below room temp...? I'm sure an engineer decided that.
So for some portion of the night -- most of it, I would assume, judging by the fact that my shaving gel was almost frozen -- the downstairs system was trying to makethe house 50 damn degrees, while it was no lower than 65 outside all night. It's definitely a weird feeling to realize that on December 20, it makes sense to open the front and back doors and let the outside air in so your inside air will be semi-normal again. I'm not even kidding -- I opened the back door and went outside and it felt warmer and much more inviting than my living room. Ridonkulous.
I can see now it's going to be a battle of wills with the thermostat. It better not disobey me again. You know what happens when brainless object disobey me.
Labels: being an idiot starring ME, thermostats
