Shock Sensor Hell
I’ve posted about this once before, but I never posted a follow-up. Mazda did finally get my alarm system working, with the shock sensor. It took six months. Six months that were a pain in my arse. Here is how it went.
- I buy my RX-8, and order a shock sensor upgrade before I even left the lot.
- One week later the part is in, and I take my car in. They install the part, but it won’t calibrate. They order a new one and give me back my car.
- A week later the new one comes in. They install it. Still not working. Someone touches it and realizes it is hot to the touch. They yank it and call Mazda. Mazda says that they need to re-work the wiring diagram for my model of car. They give me my car back again.
- A few weeks later, they claim to have an updated wiring diagram. I take my car in. They install the sensor.
- I notice pretty much immediately that my car doors no longer auto-lock. (While this is not the default setting, it is an optional setting I had activated during one of my service trips.) The shock sensor is also so sensitive it goes off for loud mufflers and stereos.
- I took my car in to have the shock sensor sensitivity tuned down, and to have the auto-locking re-enabled. They tuned down the sensor, but could not get auto-locking to work.
- The car alarm would still go off at every rumble, which is a pain in the arse when there is a hangout for a local bike club just down the street. So, I take it in again and inquire as to why the auto-lock isn’t working still.
- Joe from the dealership tells me that Mazda engineers have installed a shock sensor into a 2007 GT model, and they have auto-locking doors working. They have advised/authorized him to replace the alarm module. I schedule to take my car in…
- I take my car in, they replace my alarm module, and auto-locking still isn’t working. Mazda decides to send an engineer to look at it later that week. They won’t let me take my car home in the interim. This is the first time I get pissed. My car had been in the shop more times than I could count, but being told they were not going to release it to me finally flipped my anger switch.
- Mazda engineer gets there. Does stuff… Decides it is the shock sensor, that it must have been damaged back at number 3. They are going to order a new one, and I can’t have my car back yet… This means I have a crappy rental over the weekend.
- They finally declare it to be fixed. Six months after the first attempt to install the sensor. Nine days after I brought it in that last time. All for a $60 part.
At least at the end of the ordeal the shock sensor now works correctly: if you thump the glass it goes off, but if five Harley motorcycles drive down the street it doesn’t even chirp, and the doors auto-lock again. Still, it was one hell of an ordeal to add a shock sensor.
Next up… All the fun and games of my passenger side air-bag system malfunctioning…
-Chris Knight
LOST: Damn, I hate being wrong…
The Wacky World of Chris Knight » LOST
Charlie doesn’t have to die!!!
Posted in LOST at 2:54 pm by ChrisKnightDesmond is wrong. Not because his vision was wrong, but rather because it was incomplete and therefore his interpretation was incorrect.
How could I know his vision was incomplete when we were not shown it? “Elementary, my dear Watson…†We have seen two of Desmond’s visions. One when he was thrown backwards into time, and one where he was thrown into the future. In both instances his journey was viewed from a first person perspective: his. At no time did he see things that were outside his own physical perceptions. He may be unstuck in time, but he is not omnipresent.
Desmond tells Charlie that he sees Claire and the baby get on a helicopter, so we know Desmond returns to the beach. He _knows_ that helicopter will never come unless Charlie goes to the Looking Glass Station. The plan was not for them both to go down, but for only one of them. While Desmond was willing to take Charlie’s place, he still never suggested they both go. So, if Charlie was meant to go alone, Desmond would not be able to see what happened after Charlie went into the water. Whether Desmond’s vision included Charlie wacking him with an oar or not, Desmond’s vision of Charlie ended around the point Charlie entered the water.
I do hate being wrong. Then again, one of the things I like about LOST is that it challenges me. I guess wrong about LOST all the time, and that doesn’t happen with other shows. They practice an artful misdirection that other shows just can’t master.
So, of course, they stripped away my wonderful logical reasons for thinking that Desmond was wrong. They sent him down into the water, where he could watch it all happen; and they did it in a way where Charlie floods the room he is in, and leaves Desmond safe to return to the surface. Bastards!!!
So, now I am going to nit-pick. I am going to point out a technical flaw in the way they killed Charlie. Why? because I can be a bastard too!!!
The Looking Glass Station was a pressurized under-water facility. We know this because it had an open-port entry point on the bottom. For every 33 feet of water there is an additional 14 PSI of air pressure, otherwise the Looking Glass would have flooded through the open entry port.
When Mikhail held the grenade up to the port-hole for Charlie to see, Charlie ran to the hatch, pulled in inward, and dogged the latches. Remember this…
The force of the grenade exploding shatters the porthole, and the room floods. And this is where they screwed up… It flooded all the way. This is a pressurized station. Charlie is in a sealed room. The water should have only risen to the top edge of the porthole. Charlie should have been left with breathable air. If Charlie’s room wasn’t sealed, and had an air vent connecting to the rest of the station, then the rest of the station should have flooded as well, but only to the height of the port-hole.
Now, assuming that the porthole was too small for Charlie to wiggle through, there were still options for him. The hatch closed inward, which means that even with positive water pressure in the room Charlie would have been able to open the door to escape. Desmond could have slapped regulators on a couple of tanks, strapped his on, and been ready to grab Charlie and hand him a regulator. He would have had plenty of time, because the station still would not have flooded above the level of the blown porthole.
So, damn them! Charlie still didn’t have to die!!!
-Chris Knight