my prius’ check engine light

so my prius check engine light came on the other day. now, i knew from the internet that the most common cause of this is a loose gas cap.

so, i promptly unscrewed my gas cap and re-screwed it in. tight.

i started the car again. light still on. went to bed. started the car again this morning. the light was still on. drove to the dealer. light was still on.

i told the dealer the light came on, and i had checked the gas cap, and it was nice and tight.

a couple hours later they called me back. i was right. sort of. the thing is, at some point, the gas cap had been loose, and the car’s computer noticed it. according to the dealer, i have to drive the car for at least 20 minutes 2-4 times for the car to believe the gas cap really is fixed.

stupid computer!

$36 later, the sheet they gave me read:

HAS CODE PO440, GAS CAP WAS TIGHT, CAP PASSED WITH TESTER. EVAP VSV & CCV OPER. OK. PULLED EVAP SYSTEM INTO VACUMN, HOLDS VAC. DID CUST FIND GAS CAP LOOSE & TIGHTEN?

at lunch, a coworker informed me autozone lets you borrow a tester that reads the codes from the car’s computer and allows you to reset the systems as needed. hmmmph.

in a way, i was punished for attentiveness. had i procrastinated and waited a few days to go to the dealer, the light would have magically fixed itself.

CMU prof tells RIAA off

Cary Sherman weasled an op-ed out of the Post-Gazette where he spread the usual BS. CMU Professfor of Computer Science and art Roger Dannenberg told the RIAA where to go:

Mr. Sherman, you say that stealing “is not OK,” and yet I have musician friends who cannot get RIAA members to pay them the royalties they are due. While you are asking universities to address your problems, please don’t forget that you too can be a “powerful leader in curbing theft of copyright materials on campus.” If you’ll stop your members from stealing from my friends, and then study some history, maybe I can help you.

applied moneyball

Michael Lewis, who wrote Moneyball, has a nice piece in the New York Times illustrating the principles behind his book:

He finished his career at Notre Dame with the third-most hits in N.C.A.A. history, the second-highest batting average and the most stolen bases ever at Notre Dame, and he led his team, in 2002, to its first College World Series appearance in 45 years. Notre Dame’s baseball coach, Paul Mainieri, called him the finest defensive center fielder and the ”winningest” position player he’d encountered in his 20 years as a college coach. Still, as Stanley entered the market for professional baseball players, his value appeared to collapse. Baseball scouts looked at him and saw a body unlike any in the big leagues. Scouts from two major-league teams told Stanley that, if he was lucky, he might be selected in the 15th round of the ’02 draft, which is to say he’d be handed a thousand bucks, a plane ticket and a recommendation letter that told everyone in baseball not to pay him any mind. A scout from one big-league team told Coach Mainieri that his team couldn’t draft his star center fielder at all, for fear of embarrassment.

But in June 2002, the Oakland A’s shocked a lot of people, including Stanley, and took him as their second-round pick — the 67th of 1,482 players drafted that year.
…
and succeeded well enough to be promoted, in 2003, to the Double-A team in Midland, Tex., where he made the all-star team. Heading into spring training in 2004, Steve Stanley was named the starting center fielder in Triple-A Sacramento, one rung below the major leagues. ”That almost never happens,” Keith Lieppman, who runs the Oakland farm system, says. ”That we get a guy who starts in high A, goes straight to Double-A and then to Triple-A without a pause. You just don’t see it.”

yay tsa

your tax dollars at work:

A uniformed pilot waits impatiently at a checkpoint for 10 minutes while two screeners from the Transportation Security Administration scrutinize every item in his carry-on bag.

After he was allowed to go on his way, he explained why it took so long.

“They told me they had to make sure I wasn’t carrying anything that would allow me to take over an airplane,” he said, rolling his eyes.

heather combs kicks ass

heather combs had a gig at the hotel saturday night. they were impressed:

Somewhere between the new songs and the old favorites she was strumming so strong that the G string went flying. Noticing that, the crowd came alive encouragingly clapping to the conclusion of the song. Then, to the amazement of everyone, in one motion she reached into her guitar case and pulled out a pack of strings opening it with her teeth while removing the broken string with her hands. In the next instant she plucked on the E string a couple of times then broke into the John Prine classic “Angel from Mongtomery” a capella, singing two of the three verses while simultaneously stringing up the guitar and tuning it. All this, without skipping a beat! The guy sitting next to me, a regular at this popular club, said, “Not that’s somethin’ I’ve never seen before.”