Some Blog Site

For a long time now, I’ve wondered about the effectiveness of the Mystery Machine’s headlights. It seems to me they are not aimed very well. Let’s get to the bottom of this. Here is my analysis of the van’s headlight distance.

Exhibit A: the old-school show.

You can see how far (or not) the headlights project down the road. Let’s zoom in and take some measurements.

From this image, I count the wheelbase as 83 pixels and the headlights distance as 185 pixels for the right side and 161 pixels for the left side, an average of 173 pixels.

The actual make and model of the Mystery Machine are not known, but it turns out it doesn’t matter. The top 2 options (Chevy G10 van (first or second gen) or Dodge A100) both have a wheelbase of 90 inches (or 108 for the long wheelbase version, but looking at that screenshot of the cartoon, I say it is the short wheelbase version).

So 83 pixels = 90 inches -> 171 pixels = 185 inches of headlight distance (AKA 15.4 feet).

I found this table of recommended sight distance for various speeds (look for Table 4.2) and the ratio of speed per headlight distance is about 0.205 mph/foot.

Based on that, 15.4 feet * 0.205 mph/ft = 3.16 mph. So the maximum speed the Mystery Machine can safely travel is 3.16 mph.

I have not gone through the cartoons and calculated the maximum speed the Mystery Machine is seen to have attained, but I will say it is at least an order of magnitude more than that.

Perhaps the more modern Mystery Machine will fare better?

Exhibit B: the new-school show. Definitely not the old cel-based animation

You can see how far (or not) the headlights project down the road. Let’s zoom in and take some measurements.

From this image, I count the wheelbase as 92 pixels and the headlights distance as 147 pixels for the right side and 137 pixels for the left side, an average of 142 pixels.

I’m assuming the make and model of the Mystery Machine hasn’t changed, so it’s still 90 inches.

So 92 pixels = 90 inches -> 142 pixels = 139 inches of headlight distance (AKA 11.6 feet).

Hmm… the vehicle in the more modern show has worse headlights. My guess is that the show illustrators took into account the degradation of headlight lenses for the years elapsed (yet somehow not aging any of the characters), and the output is thus lower. Or perhaps they’re thinking the front suspension got a lot of wear and tear over the years so the front is sagging more than it used to. The rear suspension doesn’t get beat up as much because the back of the van is usually empty, so a lower front and unchanging rear suspension height would result in a worse headlight angle.

Anyway, the new show has a recommended max speed of 11.6 * 0.205 = 2.38 mph.

But since I saw them driving much faster than that, I can say they are driving very unsafely. I’m surprised the were able to even make that turn since they would have had to turn the steering wheel before they could even see the curve in the road.

In conclusion: make sure your car’s headlights are aimed better than the Mystery Machine’s headlights.

Here are some thoughts I jotted down that aren’t quite sufficient for their own individual blog posts. If you’re the type of person who likes Twitter, pretend each of these is a tweet.

• Why do only certain ingredients get an explanation for why they are there? Ascorbic acid is there for freshness – okay, good to know. But why is xanthan gum there? Why is it only the freshness ingredients that get an explanation? I’d like to know the purpose of each ingredient.
• Aloe is the houseplant equivalent of sourdough starter. You take care of it, and it multiplies, and you give it away. You never use it for the purpose you got it for, it’s just something to give away to friends.
• Shouldn’t the mean person be the “buller” and the picked-on person be the “bullee”?
• How does anyone move, if their house is contingent on sale? It seems like an endless loop – the buyer is waiting for their house to sell, whose buyers are waiting for their house to sell, whose buyers are waiting for their house to sell, etc.
• It seems to me that law firms and accounting firms should have a level higher than “partner”. Everyone tries to make partner, but I never hear about what comes after that. My proposal: spouse.

I had a blogging emergency last week. I went to write the blog post and WordPress wasn’t working. The page I normally use to sign in to write things was broken – it just said “Error establishing a database connection”

I had gone through a similar problem a few weeks before when a client requested a PHP update, which I did and then her WordPress blog stopped working so I had to revert PHP back to 5.x that we were using.

So I went into my hosting configuration and saw that they had updated everyone’s PHP to 7.3.

Ugh.

No choice to remain at 5.x.

I do not like automatic upgrades. I do not like updates in general. I keep an old phone and I decline any updates – my phone’s performance never slows down and I never have any problems with things not working like they used to.

Anyway, I got updated and now I had to deal with it. Because reverting PHP was not an option, I figured I must have to update my WordPress version. Since, you know, I turned off automatic updates and kept it at the version I liked. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Well, now it’s broken so now I have to fix it.

Most of the “how to update WordPress” sites let me know that I can login to my blog and then click the Update button. Those were not helpful because I couldn’t get into my blog. But one of sites was actually helpful and I followed their instructions to download the WordPress install zip file, remove the wp-content directory, then upload that modified zip file into the website and it would be good.

I did that, and tried again. I know the update worked because now the error message had a new font. But it was the same error message. My new WordPress version is now 5.7, and I think the old one was 4.something.

So all that investigating and updating did nothing for me.

I found a handy thingy that let me check what the connection problem was. It involved making a test PHP file that returns mysqli_error, and that told me “The server requested authentication method unknown to the client”

So more Google-fu and the main thread seemed to be with the username and password. A suggested fix was to either alter the current username’s authentication method or create a new username with a different authentication method than the old username.

I created a new username in my host server’s MySQL setup, but I didn’t see anywhere to modify the authentication method. But it kind of worked. Now when I went to the login page I got a notice from WordPress that my site crashed and I’d get an email with some help.

So I checked my email and, sure enough, there was a helpful email that gave me a link to log into my WordPress with safe mode. I guess that was one advantage of upgrading my WordPress version.

I logged in using safe mode and I disabled the offending WP plugin and then everything was magically working again.

Moral of the story: if your WordPress installation stops working, don’t just upgrade things. Check what the problem is with mysqli_error and go from there. New MySQL usernames are free – accidentally overwriting files or losing settings during an update is not free.

I’ve heard the response before for people complaining that they’re stuck in traffic: no, you’re not stuck in traffic – you are traffic.

My response to that response is something like this: But I’m not the slow traffic – it’s the slow guy in front that’s backing everyone up.

But I suppose the main point holds – people who are in traffic are also the traffic.

I was reminded about that the other day when I read some complaint about capitalism. The person was treating capitalism as if it were behaving badly, but that person was actually part of capitalism. If people don’t like what a company is doing, they don’t have to buy from that company. If people don’t like what capitalism is doing, they really have a problem with the general population.

And I don’t see that going away. Really any system put in place for any country or region will have problems because there are people involved. The problem is that people are naturally not good, and I think people who complain about the system are assuming that people are good and therefore the badness must come from the system.

With the way technology is progressing, someone might be tempted to setup a financial/governmental/societal system run by machines not people. But I don’t want that as the solution either – that setting is always the start of a dystopian novel or movie.

So what is the solution? I think there isn’t one that people can devise. Nothing is going to be perfect until God replaces this world.

Not so unusual: last month I ordered something online.
Quite unusual: it took a month to be delivered.

There has been a bit in the news recently about how slow the USPS is, due to more packages being shipped and lack of staffing due to COVID-19.

But my experience tells me that some of their problems are self-inflicted. I don’t know how typical my situation is, but if it happened to me I imagine it’s happening to others too.

When the package first shipped on Jan 25th, the tracking website gave an estimated delivery date. I forget exactly what it was, maybe 3-4 days out from there.

But then that date came and went, and the tracking page just said “In transit”.

After a couple of weeks of that, I submitted an inquiry via the USPS website form. I got a response the next day that said basically “Don’t worry, we still have your package and it will still be delivered. It’s in transit to the next stop.”

Which wasn’t helpful, because it had been in transit for a while, and didn’t seem to be getting any closer to me. At this point, the package had started from PA, went to AL, then IN, then AL, then MI, then back to AL. And it was sitting there for many days.

It seems my inquiry spurred some action, because the package then went back to PA. And then over to NJ, and then back to PA. And then nothing, so all that action was useless.

So I confirmed the seller had both tracking and insurance on the package, and I told him that it’s been almost a month and my parcel hasn’t arrived yet, so let’s get going on that insurance. He put in the claim on Feb 22, and magically the package found its way from PA to MI and to my mailbox in 2 days.

My purchase spent a month travelling the country. Nice little vacation at someone’s expense. Not sure whose expense, but I’m guessing USPS didn’t come out ahead on that deal.

So far, I’ve been attributing this mishap to incompetence. Were people scanning it wrong? I can understand going to a central distribution point and then out from there. And if they’re overworked, I can understand it sitting somewhere for a while. But PA to AL to IN to AL to MI to AL to PA to NJ to PA is neither of those situations.

The alternative to incompetence is malice or causing the problem intentionally. Maybe someone didn’t like the look of the box and sent it the wrong direction. But everyone at every location?

Once they were going to have to pay a chunk of money for their delay, there was no problem sending it the right way, so I know there was not problem with the shipping label.

Maybe their tracking system is broken, like the package didn’t actually go all those places. In which case the problem at USPS are not so much a personnel problem as an equipment problem. But if the equipment is bad and the package wasn’t where the tracking said it was, how did they find it so quickly?

‘Tis a puzzlement.

In summary: if you ship something via USPS and you care at all about it, make sure it’s insured. I hate to think how much longer my purchase would have been in limbo, taking the scenic route, had it not been insured.