Entries tagged with car

Entry tags:

car,
usability

driving UX

When driving to work I pass a couple of those digital highway signs that tend to say things like "est. travel time to downtown: N miles, M minutes" or "stadium parking use exit X" or "accident slow traffic ahead". When they have nothing better to say, they dispense pithy advice.

This morning's message was "click it or ticket". Setting aside the cries of linguistic outrage from unbalanced conjunctive operands, I found myself thinking about why, these days, anybody doesn't use a seat belt. I've lived through the progression from "not always present" to lap belts to those two-part (front-seat) belts where you clicked a lap belt and the shoulder piece slid into place when you turned the car on to today's norm of a single belt with two parts (lap and harness). The current ones are easy to use. I always use a seat belt and expect drivers to wait for me to fasten it when I'm a passenger. And yet, there's a problem.

An article in Consumer Reports not long ago noted that while people say they don't wear them because they're uncomfortable, their testers were able to find comfortable positions "so long as you're not a short woman with a large bust".

Um, yeah.

So how do you address that? I always fasten my seat belt, and a part of me wonders, were I to get into an accident that wouldn't have been fatal, if my seat belt is going to snap my neck or something. The height of the anchor point for that upper part is adjustable -- and there is no setting that gets it low enough to sit on my shoulder rather than alongside my neck. I don't have this problem when I'm a passenger; the seat is usually pushed back farther. (Which you would think would make it worse because the belt goes up, but it's hard to inspect while using it.) But when I'm driving I've got to be able to reach the pedals, so the seat is fairly far forward.

Is there some safe way I can hack this aspect of my car? I wondered about sitting higher (I don't think I can raise the seat, but maybe a cushion?), but if my legs are higher the seat needs to be even farther forward, and we're also trying to not be right on top of the airbag.

Entry tags:

car,
tech

oh, right...

When I returned to my car tonight with groceries (on the way home from work), my car didn't respond to the key fob. No light -- presumably a dead fob battery, with no warning signs beforehand. (I've never had this happen before.) As I was calling Dani to ask him to bring the spare from home, it suddenly dawned on me that I didn't need to. Oh yes, that's what that projecting metal piece is for -- it's not just an ignition key! Right...

I spent way longer owning cars with plain old keys than owning ones with fobs, but I guess the memories of How Things Used To Be fade quickly. Except when talking to young'uns about how we did things in "our day", of course. :-)

I wonder if replacing the battery in one of these fobs is relatively painless. (It appears I can't do it myself, or, at least, there's no obvious way to open the case.) I know that if you lose one of these a replacement costs something like $150 (!), but I hope repair is cheaper. If it's not, I won't bother -- if the second one also dies while I still own the car I'll just use it the old-fashioned way.

What do Prius owners do, I wonder?

Entry tags:

that was premature

This morning I found my 2008 Honda Fit unable to start. After checking for obvious problems I called AAA. It turned out to be a dead, not just drained, battery; a jump would get it started but it wasn't going to recharge. (The symptoms suggested battery and not starter, but while waiting for AAA I called around to find a place I could have it towed to and repaired today if needed. The nearby Honda dealership was unable to help me with that, but Mark's Auto Repair in Greenfield was happy to oblige.)

Now my car only has 11,000 miles on it, so a dead battery came as something of a surprise to me. I think I replaced the battery in my Mazda (15 years, 75,000 miles) once. Maybe I got a dud, I figured -- but it's out of warranty, so what can you do? I paid Honda to replace it. (Aside: it is a non-standard size, so the AAA guy didn't have one on his truck. I didn't know "normal" cars had unconventional batteries.)

But then I did some Google research, and it turns out that lots of people have had this problem with the 2007 and 2008 Fits. One of them also reported it happening at 11,000 miles. Most of them encountered it while still under warranty, but I wasn't so lucky. (Hey, I cherish my 4.2-mile commute, ok?) But this is clearly a known problem, so I called the service manager at Honda and left a honey-laden message saying that I've been a very happy Honda customer except for this little blip, and I got bitten by a known problem, and is there anything he could do to lessen the sting of that repair bill? Now I wait...

To add insult to injury, today's mail (which arrived after all this happened) contained a 15%-off-service coupon from Honda. :-(

Entry tags:

car,
pittsburgh

Mark's Auto Repair in Greenfield: two thumbs up

Several weeks ago somebody hit my car in a parking lot and was decent enough to leave a note. (Scuffed paint, hit by a car of a contrasting color, but no dents.) We were going to resolve it privately until the sticker shock set in (it was her first accident), so I set off to get an estimate to send her. My regular car guy does innards, not body work, but I've been driving past Mark's Auto Repair and Service in Greenfield (Beechwood near the bridge to Squirrel Hill) every weekday for something more than a year, so I figured I'd see what they had to say. They were friendly, IT-challenged (they were having fax troubles possibly at the hand of Verizon, and they don't seem to have a web site), smoking like chimneys (ugh), and kind of casual -- when I stopped by a couple days later for the written estimate to follow up on the verbal one (because the fax was still out) Mark typed one up on the spot with the actual work summed up in one line-item. (Plus there were a couple standard add-ons, including tax.) But they sounded like they knew what they were talking about, the place is always busy, this was pretty safe work to try them out with, and they assured me that they never smoke in people's cars. So a few weeks ago, once I had the check from the insurance company, I went back to Mark's instead of accepting the insurance adjuster's offered repair service.

They do body work on weekends, so Mark suggested I drop the car off on a Friday and get it on Monday ("possibly Sunday afternoon"). That sounded optimistic to me, but I could drive Dani's car to work Friday and Monday -- and, if needed, longer -- so I did that. They were very good about giving me rides between my house and their shop to facilitate this. When I dropped the car off I asked how much extra it would cost to also fix another ding (not that driver's fault), and Ken (the body guy) said "I was already planning to do that; no charge". Bonus! Then on that Monday morning when Ken came to pick me up he said he'd noticed some scratches on the front bumper (nowhere near the other damage), so he took care of that too.

It turned out that the timing was optimistic; there hadn't been enough time for the paint to fully dry so he could buff it. He apologized and asked if I could bring it back on Friday for that, which was fine. He did a very nice job with all of this work; I don't think anybody who didn't already know would be able to say where the damage was. And he washed and vacuumed the car -- washing didn't surprise me, but cleaning the interior did.

In talking with both Mark and Ken I learned that it was just the two of them until the week they were doing my work, when they hired a third guy. They are looking for property nearby so they can have separate places for the body shop and the repair shop. (I didn't ask, but I infer from the scheduling that they interfere with each other somehow.)

If you're looking for a place that will specify all the work in glorious detail in advance, this might not be your place. (In contrast to their one-mostly-empty-page estimate, the insurance adjuster gave me a five-page bid. I gave it to Mark to make sure that was the work he was planning to do and he said yes.) But if you're looking for a place that will treat you well and do more than was promised, give Mark's a look. I'll be going back there in the future.

Entry tags:

good experience: Shadyside Honda

I have a mechanic I like but scheduling routine stuff like inspections with him is kind of tricky, so last week I called the Honda dealership in Shadyside and made an appointment for this morning (confirming that I would wait for the car and they could do it quickly enough that that would work, oh and that they have free Internet access).

I was ten minutes late getting there this morning; traffic was worse than I had expected going in that direction, plus finding the service entrance was challenging and involved a trip around the block in said traffic. Nonetheless, Greg took me right away and was still done before the time he'd predicted. He also took care of two outstanding recalls he'd noticed I had not responded to, and washed the car squeaky-clean. (Aside: why is "squeaky clean" a positive thing? I'm glad the squeak went away after a mile or so. (Between shoe and pedals, in case you're wondering -- nothing I should have been concerned about.)) Greg was exceedingly polite in all of my interactions with him, from the initial phone call onward. I will be asking for him by name in the future.

In addition, they had a range of drinks in their waiting area, not just coffee, and also pastries. There was a TV going, but it was possible to retreat to another room and not be bothered by it.

I felt well-treated by the folks at the dealership where I bought my Honda (Monroeville), and am glad to have another very positive data point.

Entry tags:

random bits (and browser-tab-cleanup day)

Query to the brain trust: I have USB headphones that include a microphone. What free software can I use to record voice from that microphone (preferably on Windows XP but I also have an iBook with OS 10.4 available) and produce something like WAV files? (I know I'm not going to get stellar audio quality from this setup; that's ok. The immediate goal is to record torah chanting -- think "teaching tapes", except no one uses tape any more.)

Followup on UJF: I spoke with the campaign manager on Friday and she was very apologetic. She promised to take appropriate action. (I've updated the original entry to reflect this.)

This week my employer's landlord started giving preferred parking spots to people driving green vehicles (definition not provided). Not that I'm going to turn down the convenience (my Honda Fit qualifies), but as one of my coworkers pointed out, are those the cars for which they want to minimize driving? (Should we try to get the gas guzzlers to stop on the first floor instead?) I used to always park on the top indoor floor, mostly so I could park in the same place every day and not have to worry about remembering at the end of the day. Now that I think about it, that decision represented about 2-3% of my commuting distance.

You know that "25 things about me" meme that's been going around? Maybe it's older than you thought. Or maybe not. :-)

The local SCA got some decent TV coverage recently.

Via

jducoeur: Facebook company secrets were revealed by someone who applied paper analogies to digital media. Oops. No, white-out doesn't work on bits. (From the news story it sounds like it might have been the court that screwed up, which presumably means they can't sue anyone for the leak.)

Birkat ha Chamah is a once-every-28-years observance, and it's coming up this April. I wonder if anyone local is doing anything for this. It sounds kind of peculiar, but it'll be a while before I could next satisfy my curiosity. (The timing is inconvenient with respect to Pesach, however.)

Glow-in-the-dark body cream, pointed out by

browngirl.

Thanks to

xiphias for pointing out this comic to me: ( moderately-large image )

Entry tags:

car,
weather

applied physics

Dear certain drivers I had the misfortune to be near today: Write "momentum is not always bad" 500 times or until you learn that on icy uphill stretches there is such a thing as "minimum speed", whichever comes second. Having to plan around your antics is a PITA. Thank you.

Driving this morning was "interesting". Nothing had been plowed when I headed out to the morning minyan, which wasn't too surprising (barely past sunrise). Nothing in my neighborhood had been plowed an hour later either, which was cranky-making. They had managed to plow in Greenfield and the south side, but Forbes Avenue (Forbes Avenue!) and Beacon Avenue were untouched when I left for work. I got up Beacon with a running start, but I had to delay until someone got out of the way and that made the guy behind me initially cranky. I think he figured it out as he followed me up, though; that looked like a wave at the top of the hill.

I got stuck on the way to minyan. I could see that I was going to have to stop on a slight incline; I had enough warning to try to aim for the least-bad spot, and it would have worked if someone hadn't decided to pull up right behind me (so no "roll back slightly" option). When traffic moved I couldn't go forward, and I had to wait for the guy behind me to conclude that I wasn't going anywhere and back up himself before I could move. I was wondering if perhaps my tires are just crap (how are Hondas for that in general? it's not age; the car only has 4000 miles), but on the way back later I saw two accidents in that block, so maybe not. On the other hand, I did some unexpected sliding in other places. I think of myself as an average driver; there are undoubtedly things I could learn that would help in situations like this, but I think I mostly do ok.

Things were better tonight, but parts of Beacon still hadn't been plowed. I guess they're just waiting for next week's thaw.

Entry tags:

they really ought to update their database

Last fall I got a recall notice for my Golf, and dutifully mailed the "I no longer own this car" card back to VW (the day after I bought my Fit, in fact). That, however, does not seem to have had any effect on mailings from my local dealership. These letters are usually good for a snark or two; they are written by either an optimist or someone who is blissfully unaware of problems in his dealership. Today's mail brought a good one:

( Read more... )

Entry tags:

interviewed by steven

( Read more... )

For the two or three people reading this who haven't already seen the interview game, here's how this works:

If you want to be interviewed, leave a comment saying so.
(I will probably fail to get back to you for some time, because this is a busy time of year.)
I will respond, asking you five questions.
You'll update your journal with my five questions and your five answers.
You'll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.

Entry tags:

new car

I bought a car tonight. The Honda salesman had called me last week to say that he now had a manual-transmission Fit for me to look at. It's their only one and he was holding it for me, so I went on the first possible night (Friday and Saturday being out and dealerships being closed by law on Sundays).

When I got there he said he had some "bad news"; they had sent a 2008 rather than the 2007 we had discussed, and was I willing to pay $60 extra for this? I said "get me the cable for the iPod and it's a deal". He said (after some looking) that they didn't have a cable; I said mailing one to me would be fine. He said I could probably get one at a store (though mentioned in passing that there are different sorts); I said we were talking about hassle factor here. He said ok, he'd send me a cable. Sometimes it's the little things. (He said the difference in trade-in value would be more than the $60 by itself; I said I hoped to drive the car into the ground. He said he was sorry to hear that. :-) )

As I suspected, the manual behaved better for me than the automatic I'd driven before. I attribute some of that to skill; I think there is skill involved in driving an automatic too, and if I ever acquired it I lost it by always driving manuals. I mean, I can make an automatic go; it's just that I don't have the nuance to get a smooth ride that never feels under-powered.

The Fit is not as powerful as the Golf, but I expect that given the difference in engines. The Fit is fine. Its visibility is rather better than the Golf's, and of course its gas mileage is significantly better. And let's not forget the reliability difference between Honda and VW. (Hmm, I'm going to need a new car icon now.)

The Fit is a very comfortable car to drive. In some small ways it is a step down from the Golf; for all its flaws VW does understand the user experience. On the Golf all controls are lighted; on the Fit the ones on the doors are not. On the Golf the inside light comes on when you stop the car; on the Fit not until you open the door. In the Golf I can reach into the bottom of the driver-side door bin from driving position; in the Fit it's a little deeper and I have to lean. (That's where I keep the sunglasses -- the only reason I care.) Stuff like that. Not enough to change my decision, but areas where Honda could improve things in ways that make people say "hey, nice design!" instead of "yeah sure, whatever".

From what I've seen so far, the Fit has good documentation, including a quick-reference card. This might sound frivilous, but for the number of times I had to dig out the full binder of VW doc to figure out what an idiot light meant, it's a good thing. Of course, I hope not to need that kind of reference for the Fit nearly so much.

The salesman was very easy to work with, and I complimented him on being straightforward and helpful. I have every expectation that he will take calls from me next week or next month or next year; that wasn't true at VW. Completing the transaction was easy and not nearly as tedious as with VW.

The car was not the originally-promised blue, but silver seems an acceptable color. (They call it "storm silver", which sounds ominous.) It's smaller than the Golf by about a foot in length and several inches in width, but it still seems to have lots of room inside. And that highly-configurable back seat could occasionally be a real win.

I doubled the car's mileage by driving home from Monroeville. Ah, two-digit numbers. :-)

Entry tags:

car shopping

With six months to go on my warranty and a desire to do test drives in daylight, I figured it was time to go check out the Honda Fit. I've been somewhat admiring this car from afar, but I'd never driven one (nor even sat in one). So tonight, armed with a dealer referral (thanks,

ralphmelton; he says you two are a lovely couple :-) ), I set out to remedy that.

The visibility is rather better than in my Golf, though still not as good as in my old Mazda 323. (Nothing else has come close to that, alas.) The interior is comfortable, and I was able to find good positions for the seat and steering wheel. (I like to sit up in a car, not slouch; many cars don't support that well, but the Fit and Golf both do.) The instruments are easy to read. The rear seat folds sensibly, which was not the case in the Civic I looked at three years ago. (Transporting my hammer dulcimer would be a piece of cake.)

They didn't have a manual transmission on the lot, so I had to drive an automatic. For an automatic it seemed fine, but I'll want to drive the manual before committing. The car I drove had a smooth ride but was a little sluggish on hills and while accelerating; I think that's the transmission type and not inherent, but I want to make sure.

The steering and braking were smooth. I obviously couldn't do a skid test in summer, but I'll trust. The turning radius felt nice and tight.

The Fit comes in two flavors, basic and sport. While I flinch a little at the "sport" name and note that the engines are identical (I expect "sport" to mean "vroom!"), the latter is the only path to some features I've become fond of, so I'll probably spring for it. Not sure yet. I'm trying to decide if keyless entry, intermittent wipers, MP3 support, and the rear wiper are worth the $1200 difference. That's steep, but I've undervalued the annoyance factor in the past, too. (There are other differences, but they're things I don't care about.)

The salesman offered me less for my trade-in than I (and Edmunds) think is called for, but he's going to try to improve on that. Since I told him I wasn't going to make a decision tonight anyway, that's fine. He was not drastically out of line, but it was enough to be worth pushing back.

Of course I knew, and he knew I knew, all the pertinent data about pricing, invoices, supply and demand, and so on. He commented that the internet makes things much easier for all concerned; I would have thought it would make it harder for dealers, but maybe it depends on the car being sold. We both know that there's only a $500 markup built into the price for this particular car; maybe if we both knew that there was a large profit built in that would be different.

Our conversation was pleasant and low-pressure, in both directions. I loathe the high-pressure slick-salesman situation; while I'm not particularly intimidated by it, I find it distasteful. It's possible that, if I buy this car, I will overpay by $100 or so, but I consider that to be the price of the experience.

There's enough demand for the Fit that they're being doled out to dealers; this dealership can get four per month, filling out the matrix of {basic, sport} {manual, automatic}. The next sport manual is due in a week or so and is an acceptable color.

I'm positively inclined, but I want to sleep on it (and see if he can improve the price).

Entry tags:

random bits

( Read more... )

Entry tags:

car,
links

short takes

I hope the owner of Penzoil is making good money from the venture. For a cost of $30 and 15 minutes of my time (10 for them, 5 to drive there), I can have other people change my oil, replenish all other fluids under the hood, check and adjust the tire pressure, vacuum the carpets, wash the windows, and take a quick look for incipient problems with belts and stuff. I could do all of that myself, but certainly not in 15 minutes. And the oil itself is, what, $10 of that $30? So for about $3.50 a month, I can have someone else take care of most of the nit-picky aspects of owning a car. What's not to like?

If I understand correctly, credit-card companies instituted that extra 3-digit number on your card to cut down on fraud from stolen card numbers. But more and more online transactions now require that I enter that number. Have we just moved from a semi-secure 16-digit number to a semi-secure 19-digit one? How does this help?

A few links:

Does the first amendment ban public schools? (David Friedman). While intelligent design is a religious teaching that is rightly barred from public schools, he argues, so is evolution -- or history.

Everyone needs Panexa. Ask your doctor for it. Well, maybe you should read the ad first. (Thanks to jducoeur.)

cvirtue asks: how many partridges in pear trees by the end of the song?. I seem to be in a pedantic minority.

American Yule, by siderea is a cogent essay on what this season is and what it could become.

Put the Saturn back in Saturnalia, from goldsquare.

Entry tags:

form versus function

On my way home tonight someone backed into my cursed car. I'm fine, and damage is minor -- might be non-existent, but I'll have to scrub the area to be sure there are no scratches and I don't have time to fuss with that right now. I have the guy's information and I told him it would be a couple days before he hears from me.

The only reason I'm writing about this at all is to comment on a user-interface decision by VW.

The biggest, most visible thing on the face of my steering wheel is the VW logo. I know, without thinking about it, that that's not the horn. The second most visible thing is a raised area that, on closer inspection, says "airbag" in non-obvious lettering. Elsewhere and barely visible -- a mere blip in the molding, with no contrast at all -- is a little "horn" icon.

I knew all that in theory, but it's possible that under the gun I might have been able to get the guy's attention before he hit me -- if I hadn't been pounding on the airbag thingie.

For people who use their horns all the time, this wouldn't happen. But I'm very moderate when it come to that, and I just haven't internalized the "the thing that looks like a button isn't" rule. I wonder if the people who designed this are the sorts who use their horns liberally (and so have adapted to the interface), or if they just didn't think about it.

Entry tags:

short takes

I don't (yet) use Firefox as my main browser, but the password-managing extention mentioned in Security Mentor sure sounds handy.

Who will be eaten first? Not your usual Chick tract.

Today's letter from Rohrich VW informed me that it's time for scheduled maintenance and I should call them at my convenience to schedule it with them. I won't actually do it, but the candidate response that brought a smile to my lips was "my investors inform me that the time is not yet right for that diabolical ice-skating project, so I will have to decline". I do get my scheduled maintenance, but those guys are not going to touch my car again.

On a more serious note, with all the bad news about what's going on in the wake of Katrina, especially how the problem was foreseen and yet the government diverted most of the levee funding to Iraq (link from brokengoose), it's great to see that people from all over the country are offering crash space and sometimes travel assistance (link from browngirl).

Entry tags:

random bits

Great. My car has a heisenbug. The pesistent warning light failed to persist through today (it cut out on the way home from work on Friday). I called the dealership to ask if my inability to demonstrate the problem would preclude their exam, and they said yes. So I didn't have it looked at tonight. And I have no idea if the problem is gone temporarily, gone never to return, or a sign of a burned-out indicator. I'm going to assume not the last, for now.

Speaking of bugs, the cable connecting the DVD player to the TV is not at fault. Drat. The guy at Radio Shack, after applying a testing gadget, described it as "astonishingly good". I don't have either a spare TV or a spare DVD player to debug with, but the DVD player is more portable so I'll start there. Aside: the set of connections on the back of the TV only slightly resembles the picture in the manual, and they're not labelled. Whee. I might have noticed that earlier had the folks who delivered the TV not also wired everything up for me.

My new SDK developer started work today (yay!). I anticipated and planned for a bunch of possible problems. The only one I missed was network failures with the computer she'd be using. Oops. It's kind of hard to fetch things from various internal web sites without a good network connection. Fortunately, we got that fixed before I resorted to burning CDs. (This is a temporary, floater, machine, as the one we actually ordered for her is apparently still on a truck somewhere.)

sanpaku on a certain class of PS2 games: Honey. You don't really think that fantasizing about blowing people's heads off in the mall could ever take the place of you, do you? Just wait over there while I run over this hooker.

Entry tags:

GIP

I'd like to thank

cahwyguy for creating the perfect userpic for posts about my car.

Early data suggests that Day VW in Murrysville (their address says Monroeville but I don't believe them; I've been there) is much better to deal with than Rohrich (spawn of satan). They actually have evening appointments! Ok, the latest appointment is 6:30 and they're on the other side of rush hour, but at least it's possible to get service without losing half a day from work.

Entry tags:

my lemon-scented Volkswagen

"Malfunction indicator light" is an awfully general indicator, don't you think? The manual reports that it's probably engine-related and important but not absolutely time-critical -- unless it's blinking, which it's not (yet). (Blinking means the catalytic converter.) Oh goodie.

That's the third failure in under a year, though the PA lemon law applies only to failures in the first 12 months. I've had the car 17 months, so I'm out of luck there.

Now, to see if a dealer other than the one I bought it from will do the work under reasonable conditions. Reasonable conditions include either a specific appointment time or transportation to and from work. (Sunday hours don't exist.) It appears that the closest non-Rohrich dealer is in Murrysville, which is kind of far from the South Side. My new developer starts Monday, so I'd really like to put this off a few days.

By the way, I never did get any response from the national office of VW after last year's problems. I know they received the letter. So even if I got unlucky with a specific car (and most Golfs aren't lemons), and even if I got unlucky with a scumbag dealer, VW itself has demonstrated a lack of concern for its customers. They will not get my future business.

Entry tags:

promotions

Today's mail included an exclusive offer for a heavily-discounted trip to Orlando, just for me. It came, of course, by bulk mail.

The Ford salesman called me a couple days ago (didn't expect to hear from him again). He said they're now giving away trips to Orlando or Las Vegas, and would I come up to [ridiculous price] for that? I said that was a disincentive; if I want to buy a trip I'll buy a trip, but when I want to buy a car I'm interested in dollars, period.

In neither case did I hear details like black-out dates. This doesn't strike me as the time of year to promote trips to Florida, but maybe if travel is restricted to this coming July that makes sense.

Entry tags:

one last fling with a new car

( Read more... )