by Pocus

I saw something today that didn’t look quite right.

I was just driving (actually, I was stopped at a stoplight) and I saw alongside me a Ford Focus with a trailer hitch. I had my camera with me, so I snapped a snappy snap.

I had to take a picture, because who in his right mind would use a Focus to haul anything? Here’s another shot, closer this time.

Once I got home, I checked my extensive resources (i.e. Google) and found out that the Focus can tow up to 2000 lbs. That’s a whole ton! Who’d a thunk it? But the tongue weight is limited to 200 lbs. So I couldn’t step on the hitch if anything is being towed.

I know I can tell when there’s extra weight in my Buick (no diet jokes please). Throw several 40-lb bags of salt in there, and the 200 horsepower seems rather sluggish, not to mention the braking. The Focus is somewhere around 140 hp, and is only 2500 lbs. Almost doubling the weight that a car’s engine and brakes handle has to have significant effects on the vehicle’s performance.

I’m sure there’s some good reason for putting a trailer hitch on a Focus, but it sure looked odd.

During one of the many interactions that occur on a family vacation, a relative had to apologize to me. I am keeping it vague, because I don’t remember which niece or nephew it was, or even what the infraction was.

Somebody did something innocuous such as run into me because he wasn’t watching where he was going, but that happens a lot when there are 13 mobile children in one house for a week. I didn’t think much of whatever happened, but that child’s father saw it and then told the child to apologize to me. The child apologized rather well, considering how some apologies can go, but I was momentarily (that’s for a moment, not in a moment) stymied about how to respond.

It shouldn’t be that hard to respond to an apology. My normal without-thinking reply is “That’s okay“. But just before I was going to say that, my brain stopped me. I couldn’t say that, because that phrase implies that the infraction was not worth an apology. “That’s okay” really means “You shouldn’t have bothered apologizing because I wasn’t bothered by what you did”, at least in my mind it does.

In this case it was true, but I wanted to reinforce the father’s lesson he was trying to teach his child. And I thought that “That’s okay” would undermine that lesson. In trying to help my relative, I had to abandon my casual response and actually had to think about what reply to give.

What I said at that point was “Thank you for apologizing“, but I think “I accept your apology” or “I forgive you” (not “That’s okay; I forgive you” but a simple “I forgive you”) would also work. I didn’t want to keep the child and father waiting too long for me to say something, so “Thank you” was it.

Also, “Apology accepted” and “You’re forgiven” are true, but less direct than they should be. They may have been fine for a while, but in today’s society of weasely apologies (“mistakes were made”) I think I’m leaning toward putting pronouns in there: I accept, I forgive. Maybe that will encourage pronouns (and active voice) in the apologies.

I heard a conversation today, and I will share part of it with you.

Person 1: “Do you have any more surprises coming up?”
Person 2: “No, none that we know about.”

Two things: Yes, they were serious and no, I was not one of the people.

I find that concept to be related to another popular concept at work, the “what don’t we know about this issue” concept. It’s too easy to answer “I don’t know” to that phrase, but after thinking about it for a second, I do know. It’s everything. Because there is an infinite amount of stuff that we don’t know, about any topic, so it could be a very long process to detail what is not known.

The June 2009 edition of my IEEE magazine arrived, and it had interviews with the candidates running for election for president of the organization. The interview contained various questions. About half were related to engineering, and the other half were get-to-know-the-person questions, such as “What is your favorite movie?” The one that piqued my interest was “If you were stranded on an island, what one thing you would want to have with you?”

The answers that the three candidates gave were these:

• A solar-powered iPhone with lots of books stored in memory
• A solar-powered laptop with Internet access
• A Crocodile Dundee-size knife

(Note: I assume he meant a knife that is the same size as the knife that Crocodile Dundee had, not a knife that is the same size as Crocodile Dundee himself.)

After reading the third answer, I thought the first two sounded like cheating. How many qualifiers can you add to an item and still have it count as only one item?

I pondered for a little while and decided on my answer, should I ever be asked what is the one item I would want with me on a deserted island.

• A fully-furnished house

I suppose I could embellish it a little: a fully-furnished, solar-powered house with working water and sewer. But I like the simplicity of my original answer.

I got to drive a Mercedes S-Class last weekend.  One of the features is a nice screen in the middle of the dashboard. It is the multi-function display: it shows the radio, navigation system, rear-view backup camera, DVDs, and live TV. The live TV comes from the over-the-air broadcasts, like any normal TV.

While that is a fun feature, I wonder how many vehicles have been sold with televisions in them.  Because some of those are going to be obsolete in June, when the analog broadcasts are disabled and only digital remains.  The converter boxes won’t work very well in the cars either.  The Mercedes TV tuner is supposed to handle both analog and digital, so it shouldn’t be affected by the transition.

The analog tuners would have been obsolete this month (February 2009), but the digital deadline got moved back, yet again.  Now it is in June, although stations can start dropping analog broadcasts now. But I wonder how many cars or aftermarket TV tuners will be affected. That would not be fun for someone who spent a boatload (or carload perhaps) of money to add TV reception to his car a couple of years ago, only to discover that he’ll have to upgrade it.

One other thing I noted from my afternoon in the car was the radio controls. The radio (and climate control and TV and nav system) is controlled by a single dial thingy. On my drive home, I usually switch between one AM station and one or two FM stations. To change from AM to FM took 3 presses (back, down, down) and to change from FM to AM took 4 presses (back, down, back, down).

As it is frigid outside and the furnace is running much of the time, we use humidifiers.  We have a couple of stand-alone units that spend most of the year in the garage.  But they are back in the bedrooms, helping keep people from drying out.

Just about everyone has at least one humidifier in his house.  It’s called a shower.

I leave the bathroom door open when taking a shower.  What do we want in winter?  Warm moist air.  What is in the bathroom during a shower? Warm, moist air.  Why run the bathroom fan and send all that good air outside, just so you have to run the furnace some more to replace that warm air that left the house?  Send all the humidified air to the other parts of the house instead.

On a somewhat related note: why does the garage freezer run when it is below freezing outside?  We have a freezer in our unheated garage.  The temperature in the garage has been well below freezing during the previous two weeks, but I would go into the garage for something and the freezer would be running sometimes.  I’m tempted to unplug it and leave it open during the winter.

It used to be that my bad dreams would be that I was late to class, either because something happened to make me late or, worse, I couldn’t find the room.  As far as bad dreams go, that’s not too bad, I suppose.  And I have that type of dream only once or twice a year.  Most of my dreams are either innocuous or bland enough to be forgotten rather quickly.

I suppose they would be classified as annoying dreams, not bad dreams or nightmares.  The most annoying variation of this theme is the dream where I am at school, know I am supposed to be in class, but can’t find the paper with my schedule printed on it.

I am officially getting older now.  My last bad dream had to do with being late to a meeting at work.  I hate being late to things, but work?  A meeting?

I am approaching, but have not yet reached, the point at which I will have been at my job for longer than I have been in formal schooling.  There were 12 years of elementary, middle, and high school, plus 4 years of college = 16 years.  And I have been in my job for only 11 years.  So I should have 5 more years of school dreams left before my mind switches over to work dreams.  Maybe it’s a gradual transition.