And, one of the main N/S pathways thru the city from the GGB to a nearby freeway (I-280) is via 19th Ave, which has timed stop lights to facilitate traffic flow.
Filling-up today at the gas station, I pondered why my car has the fill on the passenger side, and why other cars have them on the driver’s side. Once in a while if I am driving someone else’s car I may pull-up on the wrong side to fill. I recall many years ago when you would occasionally see one that was filled in the middle, just above the rear bumper, maybe behind the licence plate. Seems like a good design but now no cars that I know of (that are not exotics) have the gas fill in the middle. Perhaps it was a dangerous design somehow.
Also, USB plugs - I know they are meant to go a specific way, but I get it wrong 90% of the time and have to flip it over. I would have thought it would be more like 50/50.
I folded a cardboard banker box today at work. I wanted to put stuff in the box, not seal it (at least not right away).
First, the instructions were almost easy to follow. It kept saying fold panel A or panel B, which was partly obvious from the design, but the panels weren’t labelled. I didn’t really find that to be a problem, but I could picture people having problems with that. The instructions were written on the inside “bottom” of the box, so at some point I would fold so many things I could no longer read the instructions! There were at least two steps to go. Sigh
I completed the box, but it would unfold itself if I didn’t close it completely. I had to literally staple it in two places to keep it open. That’s probably not the box design’s fault, but … seriously, shouldn’t the testers have thought of that?
You do? Go to Europe and try their mayonnaise (and mustard and ketchup if they have it) packaged in toothpaste tubes. Perfect.
My pet peeve is that, AFAIK, no car manufacturer has figured out to make rear seat belts that a normal person can fasten. I hate to take a taxi for that reason.
Considering the modern, absolute phobia about germs, I would think most right-handed folks love that they normally flush with their left hand, so their dominant hand has one less thing to touch in the bathroom.
IIRC, the reason we shake hands (greet, do business, etc.) with the right hand is that the left is reserved for wiping our behinds. So, your logic makes sense.
I meet a friend for dinner on most Saturday nights. The restaurant has a door that leads to the restroom and the door can only open in. So people needing to use the restroom must push the door.
However, the door has a bar on it. The type you use to pull a door. There aren’t any signs indicating you need to pull. The majority of people approach the door, grab the bar and try to pull.
Bad designs are allowed to continue because once you get used to them, then you can life with it.
I created a bad design once. I had used macros on Excel to do some custom tasks and made my own keyboard shortcuts. I assigned the macro for saving the results as Apple key + Shift + S and the macro for deleting as Apple key + Shift + D. As the designer, I never made that mistake, but when I had someone else do it, they would sometimes hit the wrong key.
Fortunately, that was an easy thing to change.
A traffic engineer explained it once to me that while people think that having the traffic lights synced is more efficient, it’s not necessarily the case. They try to maximize overall traffic flow and having lights in sync doesn’t always do it.
Skip this post if you don’t have ice maker problems.
OK, I was a bit surprised that a few others here had issues with the Whirlpool ice maker. So I’ll explain of couple of the fixes that I have done to keep the ice maker working.
First, the fix for the dumbest design issue. The wire bail that rises with the ice level and turns off the ice maker when the bin is full. The wire bail has two ends. One fits into a slot on the back of the timer, when the slot turns the ice maker is turned off and on. The other end of the wire bail simply fits into a hole at the other end of the ice maker. The design flaw is that there is nothing to keep the wire bail from easily being knocked out of the slot and the hole because they both go in the same direction (facing the front of the ice maker). Reach in with your hand for ice, hit the wire bail with your hand while reaching in, and the wire bail is knocked out of the slot. Here is a photo of the unmodified wire bail. The fix is to take advantage of he springiness of the steel to hold the bail in place. Using a butane torch, heat the bend near the far end of the wire bail until it is cherry red, and then using pliers slowly turn the end 180 degrees so it points toward the rear of the ice maker. I took my time to be careful not to break the wire bail, it probably took 5 or so minutes, only bending the wire when it was glowing. The finished product looks like this. The spring in the wire will hold it in place. There is zero reason Whirlpool couldn’t just make the wire like this to begin with, other than they can’t be arsed to do it.
The other fix involves a bit more disassembly of the ice maker. At some point the ice maker will stop working, and this is because the controller has stopped turning due to poor electrical connections in the controller. The ice maker comes out of the freezer easy enough that I won’t bother explaining how to do it here. Once it is out, you can remove 4 screws from the front of it and remove the controller. The part you want to get at is under the little white wheel. Take a photo of it before you go any further so you can put the wheel back in the same location. Using needle nose pliers, squeeze the tabs in the centertogether and push out the plastic piece from the rear. Then the wheel will be free. Turn it over and you will see copper tracks on the back of the wheel and four little copper contacts that protrude from the back of the controller. During normal operation, these copper surfaces make and break contact. Over time, the small amount of arcing as electrical contact is made will deteriorate the surface of the copper. Use a pencil eraser or fine sand paper to gently clean up the surface of the copper. Once done, put it back together and the controller should work again. The copper in my photos is clean, but what you need to clean up will be obvious.
Oh, that’s not what I was thinking of at all, though we do have some areas like that here too. I have to go by a segment like this on Wednesday, and it’s really stressful.
But what I thought was meant is IMHO even more insane and fortunately being phased out in New Hampshire as they do road renovation: picture, if you will, an on ramp, or an off ramp, but wider than they typically are, and for some reason also more curvy, oh and inevitably up a hill. There’s a yellow line running down the center of this, and it is all that separates cars as they rush past in one direction getting on the highway, and the other getting off the highway. Because they’re curvy, on a hill, and people don’t ever really go 25mph on 'em, they tend to host a fair number of head-on collisions.
Parking lots where the spaces are at right angles to the lanes rather than obtuse angles. Other than having room for maybe one extra spot at the end of the line, I don’t see what the advantage is to the right angle spaces.
There are lots of sidewalks near wear I live that are wholly or partly comprised of shiny, marble-like stone.
If you’re wondering “Won’t they be slippery when it rains?” congratulations; you’ve just performed a more thorough analysis than the local highway administration.
It is insane finding something that works correctly and helpfully for left-handed people.
As a right-handed person you don’t understand this. You just accept that most stuff seems to work, and some stuff doesn’t work well. But as a left-hander, lots of stuff works badly just because it’s on the wrong side. Every day. All the time. Finding something that is always set up correctly for left-handed use is OMG strange when you think about it.
And it’s here in this thread because it’s set up incorrectly for right-hand use.
Take a towel with you to wrap around your hand when you open the door. Hold the door open with your elbow or foot as you turn to throw the now useless towel towards the bin. Someone that gets paid to do it will pick it up if you miss.
I used to love this idea. I think the tire and trunk are now in the way though.
After having my driver’s license and being the owner of many vehicles over the last 32 years of my life someone finally pointed out to me that on pretty much every car’s dashboard display there is a small triangle indicator next to the gas icon that points to the side of the vehicle where the gas cap is located. I had never noticed this before but once it was pointed out I could not believe I spent all those years looking in my side mirrors to try and visually figure out what side the gas cap was on (I drive a lot of rental cars due to business travel).
