Something Odd

There was an article in a local paper about the tragic death of a young man.  One paragraph in the article immediately struck me as odd.

"The pedestrian has been identified, but his family has requested to not release his name. Friends have identified the man killed by a train early Sunday as Brendan Swanson." -- thespec.com

Perhaps odd isn't the most accurate description, but these two sentences definitely felt dichotomous or incongruous.

For now, ignore the question of whether the identity of this particular individual was of sufficient newsworthiness that the release of his name overrode his family's request for anonymity.  Why even mention that the family had requested to not release his name if in the following sentence you identify him by name?

It feels like the author is flaunting the fact that he has ignored the family's wishes.  That probably wasn't the author's intention, but that was the impression I had while reading it.  Maybe I'm thinking too much.

Still, it's... odd.

Garmin GPS: nüvi Battery PCB Recall

I was concerned when I read that Garmin is recalling certain Garmin GPS models (nüvi 200W, 250W, 260W, 7xx, 7xxT) because of battery over-heating posing a fire hazard, as I purchased a 755T a couple years ago.  Fortunately, when I visited the Garmin website directly I learned that only those models falling within a certain date range were actually affected.

Here's what Garmin had to say on their website:

Garmin is voluntarily recalling certain nüvi devices that contain a specific battery that was manufactured by the battery supplier within a limited date code range. Garmin has identified potential overheating issues when certain batteries manufactured by the third-party battery supplier within a limited date code range are used in certain Garmin nüvi models with a specific printed circuit board (PCB) design. It appears that the interaction of these factors can, in rare circumstances, increase the possibility of overheating, which may lead to a fire hazard. Although there have been no injuries or significant property damage caused by this issue, Garmin is taking this action out of an abundance of caution.

The recalled devices include a small subset of the following nüvi model numbers:

• nüvi 200W, 250W, & 260W
• nüvi 7xx (where xx is a two-digit number)

Conveniently, Garmin lets you check whether a specific unit is affected by the recall by checking the unit's serial number.


Luckily mine is fine... at least in regards to posing a fire hazard -- I've posted previously about some of the issues I've had with my Garmin  nüvi 755T.

PS3: NHL 11

I'm still debating whether NHL 11 for the PS3 is worth purchasing.  So far NHL 11 is
definitely an improvement over NHL 10, but is it enough of an improvement to merit its
price?  In my case, I'd have to say "yes", but not by much.

NHL 11 addresses and fixes some issues I've mentioned before that irritated me with NHL
10.  I've only started NHL 11, recently, so it's still wait and see for some longer term
issues, but here's what has been immediately noticeable (to me) in NHL 11, both good and
bad, compared to NHL 10.

• The garish, colour-blind and ugly upgrade equipment is gone in NHL 11.  You can still earn and use boosts to your player's attributes, but the terribly awful-looking equipment in NHL 10 is no where to be found in NHL 11, thank the hockey gods.
• It remains to be seen whether NHL 11 fixed the bug where unlocked attribute boosts spontaneously re-locked.  This next point requires some context.  One of the selling points EA Sports has been pushing strongly, to convince NHL 10 owners that it's still worth purchasing NHL 11, is a new physics engine.  I won't get in to too much detail here other than to say that it does make the game look more interesting and realistic, perhaps most noticeable with body checks.  My issue is that it feels like EA Sports has fell a little too much in love with it.  What do I mean?  Well, during stops in play the game plays short video replays of recent on ice action.  Theoretically this is a good idea, though even in NHL 10 the game often didn't show the play I actually wanted to see.  In NHL 11 it's even worse.  NHL 11 just loooves to replay body checks.  Goalie just make a save that necessitated a face-off?  Forget replaying that.  Replay a body check.
• Also on the naughty list:  home goalie make a spectacular glove save?  Instead of playing that, let's see a video of the other goalie drinking out of his water bottle.
• NHL 11 has shortened the video where you watch your player skate on to the ice prior to the start of each game.  I miss the longer version in NHL 10.  If you didn't want to watch it you could end it at any time by pressing a button so I'm not sure why they decided to short change it.
• NHL 11 has stopped providing the seating capacity and name of the arena prior to each game.  Not a biggie, but something I appreciated in NHL 10.
• I've just started a career as a goalie in Be a Pro mode and I'm already wondering what the GM AI has been smoking.  After a 4-0 record in the pre-season, with a save percentage of 0.947, 2 SO, and a 0.500 GAA, what does the GM say to McLean?  "The only reason you're not going down to the AHL is because you were drafted 9th overall".  Eh?
• It's early days in the season, but I'm already worried McLean's Wild won't even make the playoffs.  Why?  Because to date the Wild have never managed to win a game McLean did not start, and the Wild coach insists on giving Backstrom, who has yet to win a game and has much poorer stats than McLean (in NHL11, obviously), the majority of starts.

UPDATE 2:  Over-reaction over.  With calm, clear mind, I realized my issue with the inability to turn off the auto-save feature is easily solved.  Start with two game saves pre-draft.  Take saved game #1 through the draft.  If I get drafted by one of my unacceptable teams, then quit the game and load saved game #2.  Save over saved game #1.  Then take saved game #1 through the draft again.  Repeat as necessary.

This way saved game #2 is always maintained at the pre-draft point.  Once I load saved game #2, it's critical to remember to save over saved game #1 before going through the draft.  Else the auto-save will re-write over #2 and I'd no longer have a save point prior to the draft.


UPDATE: I've just discovered what I think is a major disappointment with NHL11.  Unlike NHL10, in NHL11 apparently there's no way to turn off the auto-save feature.  Majorly frustrating.  In my futile search for method to turn it off, I read in some forums that EA Sports did this to prevent cheating of some kind for online play.  I never play online so I can't confirm it, but it sounds reasonable.

Unfortunately, this inability to turn auto-save off is a source of major irritation for someone like me who doesn't play online.  I would like the ability to re-do drafts in Be a Pro mode just in case my player gets drafted by a team I out right refuse to play for.  The way NHL11 is set up now, any save game prior to the draft is automatically overwritten with post-draft data.  Ugh.  I really do not want to have to play through the Memorial Cup tournament over and over again just because I get drafted by one of the handful of NHL teams I dislike.  Which just happened, now.  Ugh. 

I'm going to put NHL11 back on the shelf until I recover from the frustration.  What a waste of my time.

Star Wars Blue-Ray Announced

Good news, bad news from /Film.  George Lucas announced all six Star Wars movies will be released in a blue-ray box set in Fall 2011.

My first thought:  No way in heck am I going to spend my money on the prequels, even if they are bundled with the original trilogy.  If I'm willing to wait for The Matrix to come out on blue-ray by itself and not bundled in a trilogy, I can wait for the original Star Wars movies. 

My second thought:  I still won't spend my money on anything except the original theatrical releases of Episodes IV - VI.  No special editions.  Heck, I'd even buy unremastered, VCR-quality original versions on blue-ray. No extras required.

Hear that, Mr. Lucas?  I bet you'd make even more wads of cash if you release the original theatrical release versions, too.  I'm patient.  I'm hoping your plan is to make all the money you can with selling the prequels and special editions before offering the original release versions, and make even more gazillions.

Garmin Nuvi 755T

I purchased a Garmin Nuvi 755T two or three years ago and for the most part I've been fairly satisfied.  I even bought a life-time map subscription for it, though recently I've been wondering if that may have been a mistake.  Why is that?  Read on!

First, I have to say that 90-95% of the time the 755T does what I want a portable GPS to do... give me driving directions.  I forget whether the 755T has additional features like playing music or showing pictures, features I could care less about.  I picked up the 755T because it came with both Canada and U.S.A. maps, had a decent screen size (at the time) and had reasonably positive reviews.

Unfortunately, the map updates haven't been entirely successful.  I say that because I know of three different big-chain, international retail store locations in my area that the 755T places on the wrong side of the street.  This despite updating my maps less than a month ago and the locations being there for years.  I know a Sony Style location where my GPS takes me to the completely wrong exit with no Sony Style in sight.  No shopping mall, either.

All of the above I can live with.  What now has me doubting the longevity of the Garmin Nuvi 755T are two incidences which I describe as epic fails.  Actually, perhaps I should say three instances, though the third may be partly my fault, too.

1. Last year sometime I was in Niagara Falls, NY little more than one hour drive from my home in the Land of Tim Hortons.  The 755T had been completely successful guiding me there.  The EPIC FAIL occurred when I tried to get the 755T to guide me back home.  The route calculation stopped at 99% and no further.  I turned the GPS off, waited a couple minutes, turned it back on, and it still wouldn't work, still stuck at 99%.  In disbelief I repeated this process with no improvement in outcome.  It was quite a quandary.  Since I'd followed the GPS directions to get there I hadn't paid particular attention to the roads I'd taken, making back-tracking problematic.  Anywhoo, to cut this particular story short, I eventually managed to find my way back, though along a different and longer route than I'd hoped.  Once I got home I was so frustrated I ignored the 755T for a while, and when there was a firmware update the 755T worked again, so I thought the problem solved.  Not quite.
2. Fast forward many months and full moons.  My 755T FAILED AGAIN in the exact same city.  I was once again in Niagara Falls, NY, and once again when trying to get directions home the 755T route calculation stuck at 99%.  AGAIN.  Something very strange is happening with Niagara Falls, NY.  I purchased the 755T when I was still living in the U.S.A. and it worked (except for a time in the dead of night somewhere in PA where I lost all satellite signal for a critical 5 minutes or so, sending me off in the completely wrong direction).  So... something odd with Niagara Falls, NY.  This incident wasn't quite so stressful because I had a clearer memory of how to get back to Whirlpool Bridge.  This time I managed to "recover" my GPS while on the QEW.  Simply powering off, waiting a couple minutes, powering on again still didn't work.  Here's what did work for me:  My GPS was powered up and plugged in to the 12V outlet.  I pulled out the 12V adapter and let the GPS shut itself off automatically after the 30 second countdown.  I left it off for at least 10 minutes.  I turned it back on and the 755T was back to normal, no longer stuck at 99% and I could now successfully get new directions.
3. This last incident I'm going to relate was partially my fault.  I was on the U.S.A. side of Niagara Falls.  I was 10 minutes away from Whirlpool Bridge, my preferred border crossing.  I asked the 755T for directions to the bridge and was on my way.  This is where blame rests partially on me.  I glanced at the "time to destination" on my GPS and saw "10" so I thought, good, it's correct.  I should have looked more closely but I was on the road for about 20 minutes before I realized the indicator was saying ten HOURS and not ten minutes.  Eh?  What had happened was that the 755T was guiding me to the Canadian side of Whirlpool Bridge without actually taking me across Whirlpool Bridge.  Mind boggling.  As far as I could gather in my stressed out state, it was taking me far, far, far north to cross the border, then all the way back south to reach the Canadian side of Whirlpool Bridge.  Turning off the 'avoid toll roads' feature didn't do anything.  No amount of swearing and re-routing fixed the problem.  Nowadays I have two addresses programmed in for Whirlpool Bridge -- one for the Canadian side and one for the U.S.A. side.  If I'm in NY going to Canada I get directions using the latter, if I'm in Canada heading to the U.S.A I have the 755T use the former address.
4. Oh, yeah.  I updated maps plus firmware several days ago.  Yesterday, in the midst of a single trip the 755T asked me to input my PIN... TWICE.  What's even more odd is that the audio directions apparently still worked; it was just the map/picture that was kaput until I re-input my PIN.  Not the most convenient thing to do while driving at highway speeds.

The 755T works adequately in the Land of Tim Hortons and Toronto,  It worked fine in the Washington DC beltway and surrounding environs.  It worked fine for two round-trips driving from DC to Canada, but as I said something strange is going on with Niagara Falls, NY.  All of this has made me start wondering whether I should get a new portable GPS, and if so whether getting another Garmin (but different model) would just be asking for trouble.

Gas at the Pump, or Not

There's something odd happening with some gasoline stations.  I think it has to do with the pump pressure detector/setting, whatever it is that detects a full tank and makes the nozzle "click" and stop pumping gas.  I've discovered that with certain gas stations the nozzle "clicks" even though I know the tank isn't full.

Example.  I was at a Sunoco with about 1/5 left in the tank.  The first "click" happened after 2 gallons.  A full tank is 14-15 gallons.  From 2 gallons on filling up was torture.  Every couple seconds another click.  It didn't matter how much pressure I applied.  Click click click click....  I took the nozzle out and put it back in again.  Click click click click click click....  More pressure on the lever, click click click click....  Less pressure, click click click click....

At least for Sunoco this only happens at certain locations, and some worse than others.  I completely refuse to go to any Petro Canada these days because this problem happens to me at all their locations in the Land of Tim Hortons.

I lived in the U.S.A. for several years, and this only happened to me at one particular Shell station and at Sunoco a time or two.  In the Land of Tim Hortons I've found one Shell station where this problem never happens.  So I don't believe it's a problem caused by how I pump gas.  It's not rocket science.  At least, I hope not.

Windows 7: Let There Be Sound

A week or so ago I finally got around to clean-installing Windows 7 on to my desktop.  It was fairly painless and seemed to install quicker than previous O/S installations.

All was fine for about a week when my audio abruptly died.  In the morning it was working fine before I shut down my computer.  That evening when I turned on my PC there was no more sound.

This was especially strange since literally nothing had been done between the time I turned the PC off and when I turned it back on to hear only silence.  No plugging or unplugging stuff at all.

Hovering the mouse over the speaker/volume icon on the taskbar gave me the message "No Audio Output device is installed".  My PC came with an Avermedia M780 PCIe NTSC/ATSC Combo sound card and according to both the manufacturer website and Windows Update I had the latest drivers installed (ver 2.5.0.32; date 11JUN2009).  Device Manager said "This device is working properly".

The audio-out/headphone jack wouldn't work, either.

The Windows 7 Playing Audio troubleshooting wizard couldn't identify the problem.  All my web searches basically ended up talking about Windows 7 compatibility and installing the latest driver -- nothing that solved the sound of silence emanating from my PC.

I checked my PC speakers on my Netbook and they worked fine.

I thought perhaps the sound card drivers had been corrupted or something, so I installed an older driver version (which still didn't work), then re-installed the updated drivers.  Reboot.  Nothing.


So... instead of wasting any more time I went to Best Buy to buy the cheapest PCI sound card I could find compatible with my computer and Windows 7.

Opened CPU, 1 minute.  Bemoaned the fact I didn't have an empty PCI slot, 5 seconds.  Wondered what the cable that was attached to the Avermedia sound card was for, 10 seconds.  Removed telephone/fax PCI card, 1 minute.  Installed new sound card, 20 seconds.  Reassembled CPU and reattached plethora of cables, 30 seconds.  Turned on computer, installed drivers from CD, rebooted, 5 minutes.

Sound, sweet sound.

Anywhoo, my Avermedia card is still installed so if I ever get bored maybe I'll continue trying to figure out how to fix it, or perhaps Windows Update will come out with new drivers in the future.  For now, though, I'll let it be.