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the problem with new manufacturers
Wednesday, October 12 2022
Today I finally had a few little breakthroughs in terms of my understanding of the code to which I was adding features in the remote workplace. I figured out how to make a JSON-producing endpoint and then use that data to determine whether or a grid of items contained any valid items or not. I'd previously implemented this functionality just using data within Javascript, but that data had turned out to be incomplete.
At the end of the workday, I made a big pot chili using black beans, green beans (the long skinny "blue lake" kind), refried pinto beans, tofu, mushrooms, red onions, ox heart tomatoes from the garden, and also canned tomatoes. I also added a single jalapeño pepper (according to Gretchen two jalapeños had made my last chili "too spicy").
Back in the spring when we took delivery of our two electric bicycles, I found that one had suffered damage in transit; its rear pannier rack had cracked in to places in the back, slightly folding down a horizontal pipe. This might not have been a problem had not the pipe's new position gotten in the way of inserting and removing the bike's battery (which is kept on its own shelf within the pannier rack). Gretchen had complained to the manufacturer, a company called Charge, and they said they'd be shipping a replacement rack as soon as their supply chain issues were resolved. Months passed, and I managed to use the bicycle despite this defect, and then the other day the replacement rack finally arrived. While waiting for Gretchen to get home this evening, I started work on replacing the damaged rack with the new one. It didn't take long, though, before I realized that the replacement was of a different design. Still, I soldiered on, only to realize that there was no way to attach the new rack with the equipment given. Not only had they failed to include any M5 metric nuts (fortunately I had a bag of those in the laboratory), but the front attachment arms, unlike the front attachment arms of the old rack, were not adjustable. And without adjustment, the rack couldn't be pulled back far enough to accommodate the length of the arms due to the length of the battery cable. Maybe I could figure out a way to use the front attachment arms of the old rack, but that would require improvising a tightening-bolt attachment system that the new pannier rack lacked. As I later told Gretchen, this problem is the sort of thing one can expect from a bicycle company founded recently. I'm sure, for example, Schwinn knows better than to change designs so substantially, and if they do, they know that older bicycles that they sold in the past need to have replacements parts that fit. They made all such mistakes a century ago and can be counted on not to make them now. (Similarly, it's likely Tesla is affected by a similar lack of deep manfacturing experience.)
When Gretchen got home, we ate the chili while watching Jeopardy! and another episode of Yellowjackets. But with each episode I'm finding Yellowjackets increasingly unbearable. The kids stranded in the wilderness aren't doing believable things. Why, for example, didn't the girl get the fuck out of the way of the found airplane that other stupid kids were somehow able to start? The part set in the present day is even more tiresome; neither Gretchen nor I understand what the handsome fender repair guys sees in frumpy old Shauna, and the antics of Misty Quigley and Nat Scatorccio are somehow even more tiresome despite a long-lost friend committing public suicide. As I write, it's as if I know whom I'm talking about, but this is only after consulting the Wikipedia entry for Yellowjackets; since different actors play the teenage and 40-something versions of characters, I have trouble telling which teenager is which adult, and the show makes this even harder by failing to have characters refer with any frequency to other characters by name. Showtime (the network behind the show) has always seemed to me like an HBO for a lower-functioning audience. This accounts for such things as a prolonged and unnecessary teenage-girls-splashing-around-in-a-lake scene in an earlier episode and, in all episodes, an underlying assumption of a deep-seated aversion to (and fundamental detachment from) nature in the intended audience. It's lazy and cartoonish. So for these various reasons, I probably won't be watching all the remaining episodes.
It warm enough this evening for me to sleep in the greenhouse, which I did.
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