Posts tagged ‘AM’

Why Modern Car Dashboards Suck

The WSJ has an article today about digital dashboards in cars, focusing on how software glitches are making cares undriveable, the motoring version of the blue screen of death.  I have no particular comment on the reliability issue, but the article reminds me that for a while I have wanted to post a rant about modern car electronics.

Specifically, my issue is with the user interface, and that user interface sucks.  I have a 2007 model car and am in no hurry to replace it in large part because I cannot find a car with a user interface for the sound and climate systems that I can tolerate.   I will illustrate this with a look at my wife's car, a Mercedes that is a couple of years old.  Her radio still has 10 preset buttons (actual physical buttons, thank god for small favors) but for them to work, her radio has to be in radio preset channel mode.  So let's say it is there and I get in the car and want to listen to Sirius channel 80 (ESPN).  That is not one of her presents,  I have to get out of preset mode and get into satellite radio mode.  To do that I have to hit the back button, then with this dial thing I have to bump the dial up to get the top menu, turn the dial to get audio options, click the dial to select audio options, then turn the dial again to select satellite radio (vs. other choices like FM or AM) and then click the dial to select.  Now I am in satellite radio mode and I can twirl the dial to go up and down the stations.  I have to do similar contortions navigating layers of menus to get into navigation mode or pull up a map.  All while I am trying to drive.

Compare this to my 2007 car.  If I am in some other radio mode, I jam the physical button marked "sat" and I am in satellite radio mode.  No layers of menus to navigate.  I can hit the FM or AM buttons to immediately reach those.  If I want the map, I hit the physical button marked "map" or the button marked "nav".  No navigating through layers of windows while I am trying to drive.  Some of the rental cars I get are even worse.  They have integrated systems that cover not just the sound system and navigation system but the climate control.  It is incredibly irritating and distracting to have to try to navigate layers of menus just to change the fan speed on the A/C.  My wife and I have had whole trips where we never discovered how to do certain things in the car because we couldn't figure out the obtuse interface.


Postscript:  And don't tell me "well, you can use voice commands."  The voice interface in my wife's Mercedes is still unreliable and results in her yelling at it a lot.  And while they have a lot of upside, most voice interfaces still have the same problem that Alexa has, which is that you have to memorize a syntax for each command.  You can't say natural language, "Alexa I need lights" or "turn the lights on Alexa" it has to be "Alexa, bedroom lights on."  Sort of the verbal equivalent of WordPerfect, where users had to memorize what cntl-alt-shift-R does.

The Complete Klutz




JetBlue is Awesome

If the DirecTV at every seat (no extra charge) and extra leg room (extra charge) were not enough, it turns out JetBlue has a great ticket change policy.

We had non-refundable tickets on JetBlue for today that we really wanted to move to an earlier time.  Normally, on about any airline, that would be at least a $100 per ticket fee plus the difference in fair.  The latter portion can be substantial, as the early rate we first received almost certainly is not available today.

But JetBlue has a special policy that on day of travel, you can change coach tickets for $50 each - that's it.  No matter what the fair difference is.  So I waited until 12:01 AM to call and change my flights.  Totally awesome.

Disney Princess Half Marathon






Hotel Selection Fail

I had an early morning flight out of Louisville today, and so stayed in a hotel near the airport to maximize my sleep time.  Usually this is fine, as most airports are dormant from 10pm to 6am.  Unfortunately, I failed to remember that Louisville is the main air-hub for UPS (like Memphis is for FedEx) so a big bank of planes was landing around midnight, and more noisily, taking off between four and five AM.






Great Moments in the Defense of Free Speech


A few snippets:

10:16 AM
professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Victoria, to show
that Steyn has misunderstood the relationship between the Koran and

10:57 AM

11:04 AM
or responsible journalism.

Or in other words, there is no defence.

Great Moments in the Defense of Free Speech


A few snippets:

10:16 AM
professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Victoria, to show
that Steyn has misunderstood the relationship between the Koran and

10:57 AM

11:04 AM
or responsible journalism.

Or in other words, there is no defence.

Licensing Update

Awesome!  Via TJIC:

only does it allow me to collect above market rents"“which lawyers need
because law school is so damned expensive"“but it also keeps those who
can't afford law school or Barbri from practicing law. This is good
one week in college I ate Ramen noodles for a week, and that's the week
fit into a decent suit"¦

one to finish the New York Bar exam, and though I probably didn't get
you've got the choice between an attorney who will show up at 7 AM
jogging fifteen minutes behind him while pulling on a shirt and
guy's smarter, of course, but I'm still competent. And a lot better
rested. Plus I'm not going to judge you for running that red light and
hitting that old lady"“that's what this case is about, right? Or was
that my other client?"“because chances are I nailed two or three myself
on the way over this morning.

More on licensing

I Can Fix the Water "Shortage" in Five Minutes


The growing human population is creating cities where desert or scrub





City Monthly cost for water service of 8,500 gallons
Memphis, Tennessee $14.16
Phoenix, Arizona $16.27
Charlotte, North Carolina $17.52
Dallas, Texas $20.04
Austin, Texas $23.15
Portland, Oregon $23.44
Louisville, Kentucky $23.47
Houston, Texas $26.49
Milwaukee, Wisconsin $27.86
East Bay MUD, Oakland, California $31.13
Atlanta, Georgia $33.60
San Diego, California $37.52
Seattle, Washington $39.75







allowing prices to provide signals to the participants, they have
decided to run our lives for us.

and Thursday.

government, rather than allowing prices to rise to account for the

is higher.


Five Years Ago











Politicians and Prioritization








Blogging Officially Declared Mainstream on August 11, 2005 at 07:23 AM

OK, an event has occurred that tells me that blogging is officially a trend.  My mom has actually trolled my blog with her first blog comment.

Let Down by FedEx

Most of the facilities we run are concessions on government lands. To get these concessions usually requires a bidding process, where the government authority evaluates qualifications to run a quality operation as well as the amount of rent (usually as a percentage of sales) "bid" by the concessionaire. Like most government contracting processes, proposals are usually due by a hard deadline (say, 2:00 Tuesday on X date). No proposals are accepted at 2:01 (unlike some arbitrary government regulations, this is actually for a good reason - there is plenty of history of late proposals coming in based on some insider knowledge of the contents of other proposals that have already been opened).

Anyway, we had such a deadline in Florida on Tuesday of this week. Normally, to make a Tuesday deadline, we will ship overnight on Friday, which gives us a buffer day in case of problems. This time, because we only got the RFP last week, we had to work through the weekend and ship Monday.

So we shipped FedEx for 10:AM delivery on Tuesday (paying $155 for 38 pounds, ugghh). And, of course, since this is the one time we had no margin for error, the box ends up sitting in Memphis for a full day, due apparently to excess demand for Florida that day, and arrived a day late and after the deadline. So all the work we did, all went to waste. Bummer (I have cooled down, I was using much worse words than bummer with FedEx this morning).

I learned this lesson once before about 8 years ago. FedEx is NOT for things that absolutely positively have to be there overnight. They are for things that would be best if it were there tomorrow but the world won't end if it is not. In a case like this, where we miss out on a big contract and we could waste hundreds of man-hours of work, I should have gotten on an airplane myself, checked the box as baggage, and taken it to the door. Yes, it would have cost me a few hundred dollars more, but we already had thousands of dollars in time and effort invested in it.