Do I need therapy. Revisited
Toby Seckshund
Posts: 2,027
As we have has several snowflakes fall, here in the UK, and a near national disaster ensued....
I found my choise of essential survival kit in the car a bit wierd. You know, shovel, rope, extra coats, blankets, flask of soup, demoboard ,...
I found my choise of essential survival kit in the car a bit wierd. You know, shovel, rope, extra coats, blankets, flask of soup, demoboard ,...
Comments
Your forgot your soldering iron, solder, bit's of wire, junk box full of random components etc.
A few years back I was on a road trip around the lakes and forests of Lapland with my then twelve year old son. Dragging said kit with us amongst all the camping gear we managed to assemble a simple robot kit in a lake side cottage on the far side of nowhere.
More importantly, on the other side of nowhere the wires snapped of our USB/serial adapter. There went our laptop to GPRS modem connection. On finding a little hotel in the forest I was able to borrow some power for the iron and fix things.
Lardom,
It snows quite often in Britain. It's not so much the rash of car accidents. Just that 1cm of snow seems to bring on a week long national holiday:)
The welding kit is available at both end of the journey, I do have a battery powered "iron" that has a two part carbon tip. It works well but I wouldn't use it on anything silicon. It must generate the heat by stepping down the volts (2 x AA cells) and upping the amps.
Fuel shortages, food shortages, panic buying ... I bet you miss it all.
We had our first real snowfall here in NW Vermont and as I drove into the village an hour ago, there was a Subaru Forester and a Honda CRV 30 feet off the road in a half frozen muddy horse pasture, 10 feet below the road level ... the Forester was upside down with all its windows broken out ... and, no surprise, sported out-of-state plates! Nobody killed, just badly bruised and a broken arm.
We do love "flat-landers" here in Vermont, they provide relief from the quiet boredom of a relaxed lifestyle!
I've got a small bag with some munchies, caffene (because well, it might be late), the goodies, and some gum in the "work" laptop bag.
Also good for some ad-hoc show 'n tell.
I bought one of those a little while back, and find it to be almost useless. For wires and components, it might be ok (just barely), but as you said, I would not use it to solder any sensitive components.
I think You need some therapy.
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What Man would use a car for winter use?
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Get a 4 wheel drive truck for winter use.
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What is Your Wife thinking when You bring the car around the four foot snow drift?
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Man-it-up and never be stranded.
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Take a look at 1/2 ton Dodge Pick-ups.
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Look for 4X4
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The HEMI is standard 347hp
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2dr or 4dr.
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Theres still room for Your" essential survival" Stuff
It is funny to see the 'disaster' news on TV, though, when Oslo(our capitol) gets hit with the first snow.
Part of my job entails visiting road construction sites(To install networks for the offices), and on one, located UNDER a bridge(they were building a new bridge next to the old one) I had to drive down a 40degree slope and take a sharp lefthand turn. The manager told me before I drove out that if I drove a rear-wheel car, 'not to worry, if you have trouble with the road, we have a diver on-site to pull you out of the sea'...
Seems that they've had problems with rear-wheel drive cars not being able to get back up, and at least one 'almost accident'.
Seen the Mythbusters episode where they test if driving in reverse helps traction?
They got it wrong. The REAL reason why you drive in reverse is that when you attempt a steep incline and fail, you won't have to back down. It's almost impossible to back down a steep incline if it's icy without jacknifing your car.
My parents live at the top of such an incline. And to add to it, there's an awkward turn at the top, too.
So it's 'take a long runup on the main road, to get it up to max of what Reverse can handle, a sharp turn to get onto the narrow road, then frantic corrections until you reach the top'...
The local power company has a transformer station further up, and used to try the road with Rear-wheel drive cars...
They really should thank us for having a good tractor to pull them out...
My 'winter kit' consists of:
Shovel, snow chains, tow rope, jumper cables(all those should be obvious)
thick blanket, old military 'kapok' sleepingbag(just added. And yes, it's ex-military and so old it used buttons... Cheap, though)
a bunch of chem-lights, nearly a dozen reuseable handwarmers(the ones with a liquid and a metal 'clicker' floatinginside) and even a few 'shake'n bake' dispaosable handwarmers.(the reuseables only last 20 - 30 minutes, the disposables lasts for many hours)
There's headgear, sun-glasses and glowes, too.
All that stays in the car all the winter.
(I got the Kapok sleepingbag because Kapok still insulates when moist, and my car isn't parked in a garage... )
On longer trips, I always have a large thermos and food for 24Hours.
I also bring spare AAs for my GPS, camera and the emergency cell-phone charger.
If I'm heading over mountainpasses, I may add snowshoes, an alcohol-based cooker or other essentials, too.
(Then most is stuffed into a backpack.)
Not that I expect to be stuck on top of a mountain, but blizzards happens, and roads may end up being closed overnight.
Note that I've only driven off the road ONCE and that was when some idiot in a SUV was using more than his share of the road, and I had to avoid crashing into him. The b@stard didn't even stop to see if I was OK.
Anyway, back to computers...
I don't usually bring any Parallax gadgets with me, but when I was more into the BS2, I had one of those on a DemoBoard(with a 4xAA pack) mounted securely in a cardboard box and a HP LX200 DOS-based handheld computer with me.
The DOS-based PBASIC editor is just about the best DOS-based text-eidtor I've ever used, so it eventually found its way to my 'emergency diskette' at work, too.
(It was slightly incompatible with the LX200 though, as it would hang for minutes after downloading to the BS2.)
I loaded it onto my Psion netBook, too, in a PC-XT emulator running DOS, but never got around to testing if it worked.
(The netBook is StrongARM based, 190MHz, 32MB, so the emulator had to emulate all the HW of a XT-PC. Rumour is that someone actually got Windows 3.0 to run on it... )
I have a new 10" netbook, the spinneret and a prop-plug...
Maybe I'll bring that for late-night tinkering when visiting relatives this christmas?
(I'll bring the netbook anyhow. My brother has WiFi... )
Here in the UK we couldn't even dream of 4x4 2 ton trucks, with 300HP engines. We have to pay about $7 a gallon. So I'll stick to the wimpy 1.5L Diesel (70+ MPG)
Thanks for reminding why I don't live in the UK.
$7 bucks a gallon for fuel.
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A 2 ton truck with a 300hp engine-wimpy, A 1/2 ton truck with a 350hp engine-fun
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Hows the 1.5L diesel MPG at 80MPH? (will it go that fast?)
Is there any place in England that speed is allowed?
(Or in the states?)
Overtaking?
In most countries it's NOT legal to drive faster than the speed limit even when overtaking another car.
My 1.4L (Gasoline injection) Citro
As to the top speed possible, I would not know, I have a DemoBoard in the car to protect !!!