Live from Austin!

The "cell phone electromagnetic fields are giving you cancer" people have a new target: now it’s hybrid cars that are going to kill you. The NYT gasps:

While Americans live with E.M.F.’s all around — produced by everything from cellphones to electric blankets — there is no broad agreement over what level of exposure constitutes a health hazard, and there is no federal standard that sets allowable exposure levels.

Yeah, that may be because nobody’s ever managed to reliably, scientifically demonstrate a negative health effect from everyday electromagnetic fields applied to human beings.

Testing with a TriField meter led Brian Collins of Encinitas, Calif., to sell his 2001 Honda Insight just six months after he bought it — at a loss of $7,000. He said the driver was receiving “dangerously high” E.M.F. levels of up to 135 milligauss at the hip and up to 100 milligauss at the upper torso.

Who is this Brian Collins? Given the way the NYT quotes his verdict that 135 milligauss is "dangerously high", I hope he’s a scientist. Wouldn’t want to think the NYT was scaremongering, eh?

Let’s go back to 1995 and see what the NYT had to say about electric fields then:

The world’s largest group of physicists, the American Physical Society, has taken a stance on a contentious public health issue by saying it can find no evidence that the electromagnetic fields that radiate from power lines cause cancer. [...]

By comparison, at a distance of one foot, home appliances radiate fields from about 1 to 280 milligauss, the highest figure being for an electric can opener. [...] The earth’s magnetic field, which humans are constantly exposed to, is about 500 milligauss.

Oh well. I guess that means Brian Collins is just a random crackpot with an EMF meter then.

So, if you’re worried about the electric field given off by a hybrid car, make sure you do all your laundry by hand, leave the planet as soon as possible, and for god’s sake don’t use an electric can opener.

Me, I use the phone in the car. I’m crazy that way. Yet my blood pressure has dropped over the last few years. You know what raises it, though? Stupid scaremongering.

Last night, the spouse hit a kerb. Didn’t think anything of it.

This afternoon, she went to drive to the museum, and discovered we had a flat tire.

I tried re-inflating it to see how badly punctured it was. Once the pressure reached around 10psi there was an audible hissing noise, and the tire went flat in about 5 minutes. So, no going anywhere on that. Hence, I have just changed a tire on a car, for the first time in my life.

It turns out that car wheels are really rather filthy things, and so is the floor of our garage. Given that I’m not exactly the beefiest guy, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get the nuts loose, and it was touch and go on a couple of them. However, I exceeded my own expectations and got the job done without any mishaps, using the mini jack and wrench supplied with the car.

It’s probably time for a new set of tires anyway. We’ve done over 30,000 miles on the factory set, which I gather is pretty typical for a Prius.

Check the second of today’s new GTA IV trailers.

GTA IV has Prius!

It wasn’t too bad when the wind stopped–only about -3 to -6 Celsius. When we arrived in Minneapolis, it was actually slightly above freezing.

I managed to screw up my back somehow en route. I’m not sure how. I think it was a combination of nasty airplane seats, improvised pillows, five hours of journey, and cold gray weather.

We managed to rent a Prius. The logic was that although it isn’t 4 wheel drive, on icy roads it’s better to know exactly how the car will handle and how effective the brakes are.

I can’t help wishing that the in-laws lived in one of the pretty parts of Minnesota, like the north east. Down in the south east it’s basically flat and empty.

There are quite a few Mexican businesses. What must it be like to move from Mexico to Minnesota?

On Christmas Day I was laying on the sofa at sara’s grandmother’s house. In my head was “Nation” by Colourbox. I remembered buying the CD in London, sitting on the train at Baker Street and unwrapping it. It must have been 20 years ago. Why remember it now? I have no idea.

At the weekend I cleaned the windows. A downside to a 2-storey house that I hadn’t considered is the difficulty of cleaning the windows on the upper floor. Rather than clamber on the roof or try to handle an 8m ladder, I bought a dispenser of window cleaner that attaches to the hose and sprays suds quite a distance. You then leave them for 15-20 seconds, and hose off. It did an adequate job. The ground floor windows I cleaned the old fashioned way, so we now have a much clearer view of passing arboreal rodents.

One day I may be rich enough that I’ll be able to buy furniture that doesn’t come in flat cardboard boxes and doesn’t need assembly. Not yet, though. So I also assembled our last remaining major piece of furniture, the sideboard for the dining room. The individual pieces were heavy enough that I had to be careful lifting them, so I carefully built the thing already in its final resting place. I also modified the assembly instructions to build it from the ground up, rather than build the entire thing and then have to flip it over to put the feet on the bottom.

As a result, pain. My back’s OK, but my legs are sore, which suggests that I’ve at least learned to lift things properly now.

Then on Monday, a woman in an SUV reversed into the Prius. Apparently her truck has a proximity sensor to stop you reversing into things, and it didn’t beep, so she assumed the coast was clear and carried on reversing. A great example of how a supposedly safety-enhancing feature can reduce safety.

So, tomorrow we need to go have the car looked at, and find out how much it’s going to cost us. I’m guessing it’s safe to assume a minimum of $500, as that’s our deductible. Also on Monday, rothko found out she needs some cracked teeth seen to.

So it’s basically been ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch so far this week.

Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender folks are more likely to drive hybrid cars, according to a survey.

Because, you know, wanting to save the environment and reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil so we can save the lives of troops abroad is so gay.

Looked at the air conditioner filter in the Prius. Saw that it was encrusted with filth, covered in tufted seeds (dandelions?) and had collected a few leaves too. Checked the price of a replacement filter: $19 for a regular one, $35 for an electrostatic.

Went to Target, got a 3M electrostatic filter for $4, cut it to fit the Prius’s filter holder. Job done.

Surprisingly, Reader’s Digest ranks Austin as the 8th cleanest city in the USA. (Just don’t drink the water.) I say surprisingly, because it seems like the pollution here is dreadful–it’s almost like they don’t bother with vehicle emissions standards at all. (Oh, wait, who was the last state governor? Which state went straight to #1 in pollution levels? Never mind.)

Thinking about it more, though, the streets are clean. And whereas Boston/Cambridge/Somerville had various areas that always smelt like rotting garbage (for instance, the intersection near the Twin City Plaza mall), I’ve not encountered any skunk-gaggingly stinky places in Austin. Yet.

Chicago is ranked the dirtiest major city in the US. Looks like I’m going to be there at the start of next month, so maybe I’ll get a chance to see if it’s true. Right now, the sum total of my knowledge concerning Chicago is what I learned from watching The Blues Brothers and playing SubLogic Flight Simulator (in which Meigs Airfield was one of the key locations).

It appears I have located another job within IBM. What’s more, it’s one that’s entirely suited to my skill set, in the technical sales part of the organization. My appetite has come back with a vengeance.

On Saturday we went on a day trip to Dallas. Kind of insane if you look at the map, but [rothko] had a business meeting, and I didn’t want her to have to drive for 8 hours given her tendonitis. Plus, I needed some distraction from my work situation.

We met up with [stick_figure] and had some lunch; then [rothko] took the Prius to Arlen—er, Garland—and [stick_figure] and I went to the aquarium.

If you know me, you can probably guess the big appeal of the aquarium: otters. In fact, the Dallas World Aquarium is the only place in the US to have el lobo del rio, the Giant River Otter of the Amazon. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a 5′ otter.

Dealey Plaza was a strange experience. It’s more or less exactly as it was in 1963. The picket fence is still there, with the car park behind it.

I decided it was time to wax my Prius. No, that’s not a euphemism, though I sometimes use it as one. The poor car had become really dirty, so I lovingly hand-washed it, dried it, polished a few small scratches, waxed it, cleaned the windows, and used some other cleaner on the black plastic bits.

It’s odd to have an ongoing relationship with a car; even odder than owning one, which in turn is somewhat stranger than driving one. I really never thought I’d feel this way about a car, of all things. But hey, Prius was #1 in customer satisfaction last year, so I’m hardly alone.

Also odd is finally having a legitimate interest in power tools, paint, ladders, sandpaper, and all the other equipment necessary for house maintenance. I think my parents are secretly a bit disappointed that I haven’t begged them to fly over and help fix things up.

The ugly hole with cables snaking out is now a neat rectangular hole with cables snaking out. Hopefully during the week I’ll find time to gently sand it, texture it and paint it; then by the time we’re ready to unpack the TV and speakers and I’ve replaced the busted amplifier, we’ll be ready to call someone about getting DirecTV.

We replaced some 75W floodlights in the kitchen with energy efficient bulbs today. One of them failed almost immediately, so I’m going to have to contact the manufacturer about a replacement. We also discovered that the ceiling fan lights in the living room and bedroom were using 3 25W “candle” bulbs, which explains why they were so completely useless at illuminating anything. Replaced those with energy-efficient 40W-equivalent bulbs. The dimmer functionality no longer works, but we didn’t want it anyway. In fact, I’m going to try and find out how to disable it, as it’s a pain.

I also started the long painful process of getting organized (again). The amount of paperwork that had piled up while we were in the hotel was amazing. Now almost all of it is dealt with, filed and indexed.

This is how the universe works: The day when you decide “Oh, to hell with it, I’m not going to bother shaving!” is the day when the VP will decide he wants to meet you.

I’m back in Austin. The second flight was delayed, but not too badly. I sat and listened to This American Life, which I had downloaded to the Zodiac 2. One episode was about people who love their cars entirely too much, and I’m starting to understand that—it was good to see the round butt of a Prius again. The car says it needs its 5,000 mile service, so I’d better get that sorted out.

Private Eye refer to “The Curse of Gnome“: they note that companies that manage to screw them over generally came to a nasty karmic end soon afterwards. For the record, I haven’t been sticking pins in a Brad Fitz voodoo doll…but I can’t help feeling a little schadenfreude at the entire LiveJournal system going down, redundant backups and all. It couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch. If you’re one of the affected, now would be a great time to plan that migration and work out how to use an RSS aggregator instead of a “friends” page.