Trouble with E-Bikes

Generally I tend to have a favorable view of e-bikes (electric bicycles), but as an increasing number hit the city streets I have picked up on a safety issue that hadn't occurred to me previously.  The issue that worries me is that most of the e-bikes I've seen appear, to my eye, remarkably similar to real scooters.  The only sure way to identify them is to look for pedals or lack of a license plate.  Unfortunately, I'm not always in a position to have a clear view.

Why is this a safety issue?  When I see a car, bicycle, motorcycle, scooter, or pedestrian on the road I automatically expect certain probabilities of behaviour they may take dependent on what category they're in -- and in response to likely behaviour I can take certain defensive or cautionary actions to minimize the chances of an accident.  The safety issue comes up because it's too easy to confuse e-bikes with scooters.

This wouldn't be so much a problem if e-bikes stuck to one set of 'rules of the road'.  Legally, e-bikes are required to behave like normal bicycles but, people being people, I've all too often witnessed e-bikes driving like scooters one moment, and then abruptly acting like bicycles the next, and vice versa, making their actions appear surprising and startling.

And from a mutual safety perspective, one thing to avoid on the road, whether you're a pedestrian, bicycle, motorcycle, scooter or car, is surprising or startling the drivers around you.

VW Service and Tire Pressure

The Volkswagen recommended tire pressure for the 2004 VW Golf R32 is a little unusual in that it's different for the front (35 psi) and rear tires (44 psi).  These VW bona fide manufacturer recommendations are described in my owner's manual and on the driver door jam sticker.

What puzzles me is that in the past seven years of R32 ownership, whether it be VW service departments in Maryland or Virginia, whether in the United States or Canada, they without fail under inflate the R's rear tires.  I long ago gave up mentioning it because it never makes a difference.  VW service invariably deflate my R's rear tires before returning it to me, setting all four tires at 35 psi.

Maybe they know something I don't?  If so, it would be nice if someone from VW would inform me that the tire pressures in the owner's manual and door sticker are incorrect.

Personally, I think there must be a gap in their training somewhere; or perhaps more likely that some computer R32 maintenance file doesn't match the tire pressure information in either the owner's manual or on the door sticker.

Close Call

I was almost run over on my way to work, this morning.  I'd reached the middle of a crosswalk when I noticed the driver of a car rolling forward had his head turned to his left towards traffic (and away from me).

I stopped, but he didn't.  From at least twenty feet out not once did he turn his head as he continued to roll forward, at a good clip, too.  When did he finally stop looking to his left?  After he came to a full stop well over the crosswalk.  Which, of course, was when the driver, with a look of surprise, finally saw me.

If I had been only half a step further the driver would have nailed me clean before he even noticed me.  I bet we both would have been pretty surprised, then.  Idiot.

Mutual Respect: The Lost Skill of Being Punctual

When did punctuality become a rarity rather than the norm?   I've long grown accustomed to it, but I can't remember the last seminar, speech, or talk that started on time, whether it's late by five minutes, fifteen, or longer.

Being punctual is more than just a matter of courtesy, it's a matter of mutual respect:   the audience's respect for the speaker's time and, vice versa, the speaker's respect for the audience's time.

The most common rationalization I've observed is the 'wait a few more minutes for those who are running late to trickle in'.  Why is *their* time more important than the speaker's or than everyone's already in the audience?  Needless to say I'm not talking about specific individuals or VIPs whose absence necessitates waiting, whether by virtue of their position or connection to the occasion.

There are numerous and legitimate reasons to be late.  I've been late, but not once did I expect the speaker or everyone else to wait for me before starting and I suspect most people feel the same.  So why do it?

Purolator

A few weeks ago I received shipment notification and Purolator tracking number for an item I'd ordered online.  After 3-4 business days there was still no status information on the shipment.  The only information available using Purolator's online tracking tool was "there was a problem with your request, please phone...."

When I phoned Purolator I didn't learn very much more.  All they could tell me was that the item had not yet reached the border (it was shipping from the U.S. to Canada).   Purolator told me to wait a few more days.  Okay, fine.  It was only standard shipping, and I hadn't been expecting to receive a tracking number to begin with.   But here's the rub.  When I returned home the very same day I'd phoned Purolator, lo and behold, my shipment had arrived.

On a whim, a week after having received the shipment, I decided to check the tracking number with Purolator's online tracking tool, and the information still hadn't changed, "there was a problem with your request, please phone...."

Providing tracking numbers that can be checked by customers online is a great convenience.  There's no point to it, however, if the online tracking information is never updated.

BCCode 116: Nvidia GeForce 7650GS video card

This is an update from my previous post, where I mentioned some problems I've been having with my desktop.  To briefly recap, I'd been getting video crashes with the error message "Nvidia kernel 266.58 stopped responding and has recovered," or words to that effect. Reinstalling the latest driver didn't turn out to be a permanent fix.

In fact, in the past 3-4 days it became progressively worse, where instead of a straight-forward crash I'd get incorrectly displayed displays (odd colours, horizontal lines, etc.), then crashes and then blue screens of death (BSOD).  The upside, however, was that I finally managed to catch the phrase "BCCODE 116" somewhere among all the funky graphics, crashes and BSODs.  I couldn't research this at home, of course, since my desktop was fairly unusable at this point.

Anywhoo, BCCode 116 turns out to occur when the video card malfunctions for whatever reason, one potential reason being the video card processor running at too high temperatures.  I found a free utility that reported current temperatures of hardware components, and lo and behold, at "idle" my GPU went from 78 to 95 degrees Celsius in a matter of minutes.  The temperature reached 102 degrees Celsius before I shut down my computer.  According to what I read, at idle it should be in the range of 50-70 degrees Celsius.

The cause of this elevated temperature?  The video card fan was no longer working, which I confirmed visually.  Cleaning up the dust (how does that much dust get in there, anyway?!) didn't help.  The video card is a Nvidia GeForce 7560 GS that came with my desktop.  It must be four, maybe five (or more?) years old, now.

I removed the video card, plugged my monitor via the basic D-SUB port, uninstalled the Nvidia driver, and now I can use my computer comfortably once again.  The only question I have now is whether I should buy a new video card.  I probably will, since I can already tell that videos run a little slower than they had previously -- not by much, almost negligible, but nevertheless noticeable.

Nvidia Kernel 266.58

For a good long while I'd been having video problems with my PC desktop. The monitor would freeze, go black for a second, and pop back up with the error message, "Nvidia kernel 266.58 stopped responding and has recovered," or words to that effect.

There never seemed to be a specific reason for it -- I'd just be surfing the internet, reading the news, and I'd get the identical crash and error message several times in a 30 minute span, regardless of website, not watching videos or playing games. It even happened when I was simply working in Excel or Word.

When it first happened I tried "rolling back" to the previous driver version via Device Manager, but it didn't help. At the time I gave up and decided to live with it... until a couple days ago.

Here's how I fixed this issue, on a Windows 7 32-bit desktop with a Nvidia 7650GS graphics card:

1. Downloaded latest driver for my graphics card (which still happened to be 266.58) from the Nvidia website.
2. Used "add/remove programs" in the Control Panel to uninstall Nvidia driver.  Do not use the "roll back" feature in device manager.
3. Restart computer.
4. Used ccleaner (free software) to clean up the registry (this step might have been superfluous but I did it, anyway).
5. Installed newly downloaded Nvidia driver from (1).
6. Restarted computer.

To date (knock on wood) following the above steps has completely stopped my monitor from crashing.

UPDATE:  Ugh.  Looks like the above "fix" wasn't successful.  The same error message started reappearing a week or so ago.  It does seem to occur less frequently than before, but perhaps it's only a matter of time.

UPDATE 2:  I think I've finally found the root cause of my video troubles.  More information in this post.