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Diagnostics Addendum

Earlier this year I wrote about the shortcomings of on-board car diagnostics and how I was searching for a computer-reader that would provide more information in the event of a problem.  Like a fire extinguisher, it’s something that I had hoped to never need to use.

But I had to use it.  And I’m glad I had it.

Less than a year after purchasing the CR-V, it died in a grocery store parking lot.  I, being at work, dutifully responded to my wife’s texts in a most timely manner–an hour later–and was off to save the day…cursing and muttering the entire way.

The vehicle, refusing to start, notified me of such by informing me that the parking break was malfunctioning, as well as the antilock breaks, and the electronic break stabilizers, and the gate lift mechanism, and a number of other systems.  It was disconcerting, but not very helpful.

So I plugged in the OBDII device and waited while it ran a diagnostic.  It then informed me that two systems had insufficient voltage to operate.  I cleverly deduced that voltage insufficient to operate the breaking mechanism probably meant the starter wouldn’t work.  I’m a real mechanic I am.

So I jumped the car and it started, and it promptly died when it got home.  Presumably the battery was bad, but that seemed unlikely given how new it was.

AAA agreed, once they came out and tested the electrical system.  Surely the battery was fine, and something was drawing power when the vehicle was off.

Then the Village Elder came over and gave us a charger, and after manually giving the battery a full charge, I tested it an hour later and it had already been drained.  Ultimately, a replacement battery seems to have fixed the problem, though we’re still left wondering why the original died so quickly.  Maybe it was just a lemon.

I’m also left with the nagging irritation at Honda’s dash alerts.  While telling me that every electrical system was malfunctioning was technically accurate, it wasn’t very practical information, especially considering the error codes themselves had the information we needed.

Oh well, at least the computer reader proved its worth.  I can finally give it a solid recommendation now.

–Simon

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Bobbleheads

Fallout 3 makes frequent returns to my gaming sessions, as I’ve often discussed.  And it remains in my mind to be one of the few games that has achieved perfection.

And yet, it’s always bothered me that I had failed to collect all the in-game bobbleheads.  After all my praises for the game, I had still yet to honor it by achieving character perfection.  Well no more!  I set out to achieve this final task and remove the stain of incompletion from my conscience.

The problem with this task is that certain bobbleheads can be permanently irretrievable if they are not acquired at the appropriate time.  And my existing character had not collected one such bobblehead, rendering that character’s save forever exempted from finding it again (as the saves prior to this point were no longer stored with my cloud saves).  So I would be forced to start a new character–no small task for a Bethesda game.  But this year marks the 10-year anniversary of Fallout 3‘s inception, so it seemed appropriate–before the game was lost to the annals of gaming history (with Oblivion).

Of course, chronicling a 10-year old game would just be redundant to the Internet at this point, especially since it’s over 100 hours of gameplay.  So I will simply state that, I did it!

Proof:

And now, I have closure.

–Simon

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On Happiness

Its Pursuit, and the Unique Human Condition

Happiness is a Lie

One word defines a universal human desire, and no…it isn’t that.

Nay, ask anyone, and if the conversation goes on long enough, the human wants distill down to a state of being: happiness.  It’s a nice thought, to believe we could so easily be satisfied by an abstraction, but we’re not.  The human mind isn’t designed to operate under such a condition long-term.  What we inevitably achieve is equilibrium.  The happiness, once it endures, invokes an emotional tolerance, and the state of dopamine falls back to its basal condition.  We don’t remain happy–we feel it momentarily, then subside back to normalcy.  It’s why rich people complain.  They no longer appreciate the mansion–they feel the same irritations at trying to find a reliable pool boy who won’t sleep with their wife as a commoner would feel about an old car’s transmission giving out a week before Christmas.

Conclusion: we as a species cannot maintain a state of positive emotional elation.

The Uniqueness of Humanity

My father came down to visit, and as we often do, we concluded the day with a bottle of bourbon and a fire.  Such conditions, offering the momentary escape from distraction, invariably lead to philosophical pontification, partly due perhaps from my need to still irritate my dad, and partly because no one else will discuss such matters with me.

Dad, the professor ecologist; and myself, some type of amateur philosopher (or so he fancies himself) who found himself abruptly forced into the misery of underemployment–share a surprising amount of philosophical viewpoints.  But on this particular occasion, we were arguing over humanity and just how unique the species really was in comparison to the rest of the planet’s fauna.

I was under the belief that our uniqueness was based in our sentience, and that humanity’s existence was an evolutionary anomaly, mathematically so remote from possibility that, while I never seriously considered the validity of the Intelligent Design theory, found myself attracted to it perhaps due to the romance in believing we were special.

Dad, the pure scientist, disagreed, stating that my argument was flawed with my presumption that sentience was unique to humanity.  He argued that sentience was implied by an animal’s understanding of mortality, as an elephant visits the gravesite of another elephant.  I argued that since we’re limited in our capacity to communicate with other animals, we wouldn’t know for certain.  Dad argued that understanding death correlates to an understanding of the existence of the self.

I remained dubious, but it was the best argument I had heard yet for the defense of an animal’s self-awareness.

A New Definition

But regardless, there’s no argument against the uniqueness of humanity.  If dad was right, however, then what is it that defines us?  And if all animals are self-aware, why are humans the only ones who advance and adapt at such a fast pace, seeing as our survival no longer depends upon it.

Like all animals’ physical evolution, ours hasn’t proceeded at a drastically different rate.  And the brain size theory falls through, because we don’t posses the largest brains to body size ratio of all the known animals.  I can only conclude, therefore, that something in our physiology drives us to seek another emotional state.

And the desire for a different emotional state only makes sense if the current emotional state is undesirable–if it’s unhappy.

Conclusion: we’re all a bunch of miserable people, and that’s normal.

The Implications

I find this theory to be more relieving than disparaging.  It gives purpose to unhappiness.  Were I content at any point, I would have stagnated in my career and not started a family.  These are rather minor accomplishments in humanity’s greater history, true, but I find that autobiographers rarely dwell on  happy moments, and any such moments, when mentioned, never correspond to major events.  Happiness is an effect, not a cause.

The elephant, whether self-aware or not, doesn’t seek to become more than an elephant because it’s content with being an elephant.  My dog runs through the backyard, visibly happy with her present circumstances, and remains content to be a dog.

The human, on the other hand, is not content to simply survive as a human, but seeks self-actualization.  In our actions we are unique, and while it may not be a direct cause of self-awareness, I can most certainly attribute it to our general emotional unrest.

We’re unhappy, we’re supposed to be unhappy, and this unhappiness motivates us to accomplish the next best thing tirelessly.  Be happy that you’re unhappy.

–Simon

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Ronde De Nice

I had trouble with my starter seeds this year.  The Spring was so hot and dry that most of what I transplanted immediately died.  I also couldn’t get my squashes to germinate.

However, there was a single exception, and the vine quickly revealed itself to be of the summer squash variety.  After some time, it began producing fruit.  The trouble was, I didn’t know the cultivar, so I didn’t know when to pick them.

But the internet can be quite revealing, even with the super secret and obscure plant varieties, and I identified it as a Ronde De Nice–a French cultivar (go figure).

It’s supposed to taste like zucchini, probably my least favorite squash, so Liz made zucchini bread, and it tasted as such.  So I guess it’s a mildly interesting variety, but I doubt I’ll try growing it again.

–Simon