Getting an accurate reading
Last week I bought a neat little gizmo for my desk at work. It tells me the temperature inside and outside, and it gives the time and date - synchronized to the NIST atomic clock in Colorado. I can now see the exact time, date, and temperature with a glance. Pretty neat, huh?
A few years ago, I was driving a beat up old pickup truck. It was the first car I’d ever owned, and I loved it, but it was far from trustworthy. In the last few years I drove it, anxiety welled up in me every time I got behind the wheel. In one short period I replaced both drive shafts and the clutch - which needed to be replaced again, and I spent a ton of money on the transmission. And that’s not counting the body work I was putting off. I spent two or three thousand dollars in just over a year just keeping the thing on the road. When the mechanic said the engine was next in line to be replaced, with the transmission not far behind, I happily gave the truck a goodbye party. Coincidentally, I lucked into the option of getting a ‘94 Subaru through my family, for practically nothing.
For the first time in my life, I had a car that got better than 14 miles a gallon. And I could actually talk in the Subaru while cruising at interstate speeds. And best of all? The car didn’t require expensive fixes every three months.
But one fix I never could justify for the car was getting the speedometer working. I discovered after a few months that I wasn’t necessarily going the speed I intended. On a flat stretch of the interstate, the car reads about fifteen miles an hour faster than it actually goes, but if you go down a big hill, it doesn’t really respond. I had a friend report to me once that I had been driving over a hundred miles an hour - and I thought I hadn’t strayed from ten miles an hour of the speed limit.
Now that I know the car has this problem it’s fairly easy, albeit frustrating, to work around. I just have to keep an eye on other traffic and be extra cautious when my radar detector goes off, because I can’t really tell if I’m speeding.
So here’s the thing: sitting at my desk, I can tell you the exact time with a glance. Without standing up, I know the temperature outside and in, all from a fifteen dollar toy from amazon. But when I get in my car, I can’t even tell you how fast I’m going.
Oh well.
February 27th, 2007 at 9:41 am
A former coworker had a Subaru wagon with no working gages, except maybe the odometer. He had to keep track of his mileage between fill-ups so that he would not run out of gas. That car would not die. It had well over 200k miles on it when finally a large tree fell on it during a storm, crumpling the roof down to the body. He crawled in it hanging out the side, started it up, and drove it to an area where it could be towed away. It was a fitting end.
February 27th, 2007 at 9:47 am
That’s awesome!
And I believe it, too. Those cars run forever.
February 27th, 2007 at 10:11 am
When I was a kid, every three months, my dad would spend about 15 minutes synchronizing his watch with WWV, the National Bureau of Standards shortwave channel in Fort Collins — “bong…bong…bong….bong…at the sound of the tone, the time will be 15 hours 27 minutes, Universal Coordinated Time…bong…bong…bong…BEEEEEEP…bong…bong..bong”. It wasn’t so much that he wanted correct time — he had this burning desire to know exactly how many fractions of a seconds his watch was gaining or losing every day.
Life’s gotten too easy. It’s hard finding a way to be obsessively geeky anymore.
February 27th, 2007 at 10:23 am
I remember that station. My dad set his watch to it twice a year and then would go around the house resetting all the clocks. My dad likes clocks.
It’s not really getting harder being obsessively geeky. It’s just getting more expensive. I think.
February 27th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
I like it when our temperature gizmo makes a little snowman icon when the conditions are right for snowfall.
February 28th, 2007 at 9:15 am
My temperature thingie doesn’t have a snowman. Sadness. But it does tell me when it’s too dry in the room, which I think is kinda neat.