Problems with Blogger

Mutterings continued.

I have been having a lot of problems with Blogger lately and am looking for somewhere else to transfer this blog. I wrote this lot on Wednesday night but Blogger managed to lose it and this is the first time I've been able to actually write anything.

From Wed:

Not too bad out there, pretty warm inside - looks like I'll be sticking the fan in the doorway to get some cooler air in here. And it's not even summer, whine, whine.

The mailbox was full again today - set of brochures from Ford about the car I want to buy (Fiesta LX, Five door hatch, colour Aquarius, interior Ebony Twill), the Foxtel guide for December (it gets bigger every month), loads of junk mail.

We had a bit of excitement in the flat last night. As I was going to bed I noticed a very large moth fluttering and flapping its way around the bedroom. Milo and Gus wanted it! They were following its every move, demanding that I get it down from the ceiling for them. I finally got it cornered near the window, threw a shirt over it, bundled it up and threw it outside. I hope it's ok. I'm not frightened of big moths. Spiders yes, moths no.

This afternoon was spent in the Animal Ethics Committee meeting. I took the boss's new laptop on which to take the minutes, put all my necessary files on a floppy and discovered 10 minutes before the meeting was due to start that modern laptops don't appear to come with floppy disk drives. Seems they're an optional extra. *sigh*

From the It Had to Happen files, from the New Scientist:

"A COLLEAGUE recently bought a new VW car and was very pleased with it,` until the engine suddenly stopped on a busy main road, with the dashboard showing the cryptic error message "EPC". An emergency call brought a helpful service engineer, complete with laptop. He plugged it into a socket hidden down near the pedals, then waited while Windows crawled into life and diagnosed the fault.

EPC, it seems, stands for Electronic Pedal Control. Instead of a mechanical linkage between the accelerator pedal and the engine, the car has an electronic sensor that detects the pedal's position and sends it to the engine. There had been a "communication problem" between the pedal and engine, the engineer explained, which the laptop had now reset.

"It should be fine, but take the car to a garage for a permanent repair as soon as you can," he advised.

Our colleague agreed to do exactly that, but for peace of mind he asked what to do if the engine stopped again before the car had reached a garage.

"Turn off the engine, take out the ignition key to shut down the electronics, and restart", the engineer explained. "That should do it."

Feedback has been driving cars for over 30 years, many of them old bangers, and never once has the mechanical link between a pedal and the engine broken. The same goes for our colleague. Is it really progress if a vital link breaks down in a brand new car and can be repaired only by shutting down the electronics and rebooting? Perhaps "close all windows" should be part of the recovery procedure."

Remember the "If Windows Made Cars" email doing the rounds??

Can't remember if I've posted this before. If I have, well, it's worth another look. The Nigerian Bank Scam draw.