They don't seem to have solved the problem that replacing the O2 sensor was supposed to be for - an erratic idle and occasional stalling out when in neutral - but I'm happy just to have my car out of there. Going straight to the top works sometimes, I guess - I got the general manager of the dealership on the phone yesterday, and he straightened things out.
I spent an hour making phone calls this morning, and got almost exclusively answering machines; I scheduled one kid to come in for my study. Ah, well. Back to it.
About a month ago, they look at my car and tell me I need to replace an 02 sensor; the initial estimate they give me is $700. This is way, way too much. When I check prices, and call them back, the guy says "oh, gosh, I don't know what happened, I must have hit a key twice . . ." and lowers the estimate to about $400. I still don't bite, and a couple days later I find out the sensor had been replaced by another dealer last November (before I owned the car) and is still under warranty. So I make an appointment to bring my car back in, since I can get it done for free.
Great. I take it in, and I get a call later that day, saying "we don't have that part in stock; we'ver ordered it but it will take a few days. Okay, that's a drag, they're idiots for not having ordered it, since they knew what needed to be done, but not a huge deal. Three or four days pass, and I get another call . . . saying "The parts have come in, please call us back to make an appointment to bring your car back in." They still have my car. I call back and leave a message telling them this. No reply. I call back a couple days later, get no pick-up from service, and leave another message. No reply. I call back today, finally get through to the guy in service . . . and he says "well, who's going to pay the bill for the week's storage?" WHAT?!? He says when they realized they didn't have the part, they left a message telling me to pick up my car. I say "I have the message, that's not what it said." "Are you calling me a liar?!?" he demands. "That's not what the message said, no one told me to pick up my car." "Your car will get done, we'll call you when it's ready." Abrupt. Rude. I check my voicemail when I get off the phone. All the message asked was that I return the call.
Now I'm left paranoid about them having my car, and potentially having a grudge. The last time I argued with a mechanic (who'd tried to gouge me) my car developed serious (and its last) problems about a week later, unrelated to the repair it was in for.
Jess noticed my old company making biotech news yesterday. Seeing that made me go check to see what they've been up to lately. It looks like the product I worked on my whole year there is finally on the market! In fact, maybe I just missed it for a while because they've kept the "joint venture" LLC that it is being produced "by" carefully separated from IGEN itself. It's a joint venture between (cough, impropriety, cough) IGEN's director and majority shareholder and his son & wife, called "Meso Scale Diagnostics"; IGEN pours money & employee time in, the accessory Wohlstaders provide the "key patents" & reap at least half of any money the LLC ever makes.
Anyway, that's not the point. Point is, the product I worked on is actually out! This is cool because nothing else I've ever worked on, scientifically, has actually come to fruition (with one exception); my high-school spinal neuropathology work never got published, the sky survey and the CMB polarimetry project I did my thesis on at Caltech both, I'm pretty sure, got "scooped" by other research teams, and - until now - it looked like the year's work I put in in Gaithersburg three years ago had disappeared into a black hole, too. But no!
Look at the "Sector HTS", under "products"; that's the device I was primarily involved in the engineering of, though I worked some on the lil' one (the "PR") too.
(Portions of this post shamelessly cut'n'pasted from an email I wrote earlier to Jess.)
It was pointed out to me once that the Rockies, playing in Coors Field with its famously thin atmosphere (the ball carries really well when hit) have a built-in home field disadvantage, since their pitchers will, over the course of a season, have to throw a lot more pitches (in all those 9-7 Coors Field games) and will wear down. It occurs to me today that they should really be able to take advantage of their field - in terms of pitching - by dealing for sinkerball and split-finger fastball pitchers. These guys specialize in groundball outs - and grounders do pretty much the same thing in a thin atmosphere that they do in a soupy one. So I look to see who the leading groundball pitchers in the majors are (look at the G/F ratio) and . . . the Rockies have none of them. Or, no starters anyway; their closer does come in 24th. I wonder if this has never occured to them, or whether it just wouldn't be as big an advantage as I think it would be.
I went to the Red Sox game at Fenway, last night, with a couple of friends from the department. It was maybe the most ridiculous, action packed game I've ever seen . . . starting in the 9th inning. The Sox had nothing happening for the first 8, and were down 3-0. Then in the bottom of the 9th they rallied: Varitek hit a 2-run HR, Walker got a hit, and Nomar nailed a game-tying triple to dead center. Awesome; they left the bases loaded, but hey, we were headed for extra innings.
Then the Cardinals scored 2 in the 10th. Doh! All that comeback for nothing.
But.
With 2 outs, Johnny Damon barely beat out a drag bunt, David Ortiz blasted a double high off the Green Monster, and Nomar got another game-tying hit. The Sox then loaded the bases again, but couldn't bring home the game-winner. The 11th and 12th passed without any scoring, and little drama. Then in the 13th the Cardinals got a runner to 3rd with two outs, and for some reason the Sox decided to intentionally walk Pujols. Up steps Jim Edmonds, and the next pitch lands on Landsdowne St, way, way outta' the park. Cardinals up three, both those comebacks all for nothing.
But.
Bottom of the 13th, the Sox started out with a walk and two singles, scoring one and putting runners at 1st and 3rd. Mueller grounded into a double play, but got the Sox within one run again. Giambi walked; the Varitek was intentionally walked. Then Johnny Damon lofted one down the very short right field line; it was caught a few feet from the wall. Game over.
Ooof.
That was NUTS, though. I decided an analysis was necessary. Based on two days of action, I obtained the following histogram of runs-per-inning:
The simplest analysis is this: given the Cardinals scored what they did, how improbable is it that the Red Sox came back to tie, to extend the game to 13 innings? Teams score 3 runs in 2.3% of all half-innings; teams score 2 runs in 6.6% of all half innings; teams score 0 runs in 76.3% of all half innings. So, the chances of the Sox exactly matching the Cardinals' scoring of with {3,2,0,0} in the 9th through 12th were (p3*p2*p0*p0) = (.023*.066*.763*.763) = .00088, or a little under 1 in a thousand. Nutty.
I'm headed up to Vermont to spend my 25th birthday with my dad. Vacation! Alright! So, possibly no blogging for the next few days.
I got "The Great Gatsby" from audible.com to listen to on my iPod during the bus ride up, tonight (as my Scirocco is coughing and choking and shouldn't go out without the treatment it's scheduled for next week) so I can be entertained without getting motion-sick. Alright, technology overcomes, again.
You feeling alright?
I'm not feeling too good myself
You're feeling alright . . .
I woke up this morning just feeling out of place.
Alright.
Time to go get packed. Time away can only do me good.
I feel like an old man, today. My body aches. Spent the best part of the weekend helping Jess move into her new place, which was a lot of fun, but also a lot of backbreakin' work, since her new place is a fourth floor walk-up. It all got done, though, and despite my initial feeling of claustrophobia when I saw the place empty (it's a studio - big, but still a studio) I think it looks great, set-up. Check her blog soon for pictures. Wonderful light, especially in the morning - the sun just comes streaming in, and there's a view of the Boston skyline.
I had a 3+ hour practice with my new softball team, the "Gorilla Fingers", Saturday. We were then supposed to play a doubleheader to kick the season off, on Sunday, but the all-day downpour put that on hold. I'm looking forward to it, though; the team Dave and Neal and I were assigned to is mostly BU law-school students, and it's a very laid-back "dude!" kind of group. I think we will lose a lot of games (this is a relatively competitive league), and have a lot of cook-outs on Sunday afternoons. And, uh, apparently the team name is from a cigar frequently used for rolling blunts. So. Anyway, should be a lot of fun. Also, Boston is such a small world kind of town - by total coincidence Dave and I already knew one of the guys on the team we were assigned to; Josh, who's the husband of Anna Shusterman, a third year grad student in Spelke lab. Cool guy. Wacky.
Jess and I saw Finding Nemo on Friday night. Go see it; it's absolutely amazing.
Arrest This Man, He Talks In Maths 
Thursday, June 19, 2003
