Tuesday August 29, 2006

There are days...

and then there are days.

I wake up crackling with energy. The sun is shining. Its time to go. I turn the key in the porsche and the engine roars. Its makes me smile.... you know that sort of evil smirk of a smile?

Back out and cruise politely (mostly) down El Camino. Head into the left turn lane for 237 and the light turns yellow just as I get to the end of the lane, so I stop. Of course stop - that puts me into prime take-off position.

The light turns green... and I am off! Take the corner at speed never letting off the gas pedal and maintaining the correct line throughout the turn.

Beings I am in front of the pack, take advantage and accelerate to cruising altitude rapidly.Stay to the left until the best possible opening and then zip over and head for the 101 off-ramp.

* Now the fun begins. Keeping the car in 3rd gear as I come around the curve, I look for openings and there is one. The universe shines upon me! Cars are clumping up ahead. Truck coming up behind. Accelerate while moving across the lanes. Give the truck driver something to curse about? Who me? Never.

Continue on down 101 keeping the car in 3rd gear with that absolutely gutteral roar which also keeps the RPMs in the appropriate power range for quick darts, dodges, and zooms.

Some days life just gives you wonderful little presents.

[evil laugh]

( Aug 29 2006, 12:44:12 PM PDT ) Permalink

Friday January 20, 2006

Back in Black.

Zoom Zoom, Thunk.

Ah. The sound of a well-tuned engine. Ain't nothing like it. Purring away like a leashed, rather large, cat. Yes, the porsche is back. Gleaming, expensive, and happy. There is however a story to tell about getting it back.

Yesterday I got the call that the car was done. We had checked in on Monday and the engine was in and running. A few more things had to be done and then the car was going to get detailed.

The car came back Thursday morning from being detailed with an "ouchie" as my daughter calls them. Whoever had done the work made the mistake of closing the engine hood in the wrong spot. Always close the engine hood by placing your hand on the grill and then pressing down. (What, there are no instructions on the hood to tell you this?) If you press lower down, then you leave a dent. Not the paint-popping kind, but a dent nevertheless. Well, car had dent.

My mechanic, who pays for the detail, got his dent person out who immediately removed said dent. Detail person got to pay for dent removal. Result, you can't tell the car had a dent. But the story doesn't end there.

[evil laugh]

We show up to get car. Daughter (think 4 years old), climbs out of Daddy's car shouting, "zoom zoom car, zoom zoom car!". She was very excited about getting my car back. She gets to ride in the front seat in my car (no air bags + no back seat = front seat).

I go off to pay for the beast (Arrrgh.). Daughter goes off with Daddy to inspect the bottoms of cars up on racks and get more ball bearings from big Dan, the mechanic who keeps a whole box of goodies for kids to take home.

We transfer car seat and momma bunny (NEVER leave home without momma bunny when going on adventures!). Momma and daughter jump in, buckle up, and fire up that engine! We are off.

We head down the alley and out to turn left onto El Camino Real. As we turn left, I accelerate. Er, um. Well, rather one might say, punch it! Zoooooom, THUNK. Red light on dash comes on, we pull over. Daddy pulls over behind us. I call mechanic and turn around and drive back.

Show up and mechanics descend on car. Pop hood. Lots of muttering. Turn off engine. Ahha! The remnants of a black glove are wrapped around the shaft that used to have some belts on it.

Remember the dent? Said dent person left their black glove somewhere they should not have. All the pieces were removed. Belts replaced and thankfully no damage to the car. My mechanic took all pieces of said glove and placed them in a zip lock bag. As we zoomed off happily into the sunset, he was evilly chortling about how many free dent jobs he was going to get out of his dent person.

( Jan 20 2006, 12:08:59 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [1]

Tuesday January 17, 2006

Zoom Zoom Update

Home Coming?

The tow truck came. The tow truck took the "zoom-zoom" car back to the mechanics. It supposedly has an engine in it! Going to come home this week!

[evil laugh]

Which means they are going to want me to pay them lots of money. AARRRGGGHH.

( Jan 17 2006, 02:30:43 PM PST ) Permalink

Wednesday December 14, 2005

Do not start?

Do not start.

Well, the process has started. Regardless of carefully placed sticky notes from mechanics. Amusingly, they put that sticky up and left the keys in the ignition - so they wouln't lose them. It's almost too tempting.

[evil laugh]

The car was towed home yesterday. Or at least what is left of it. As was pointed out to me by my 4 year old daughter, there is a big hole in the car.

sigh.

( Dec 14 2005, 11:30:42 AM PST ) Permalink

Thursday December 01, 2005

A sad day in Porsche land...

Its a sad day...

See that rocker arm. Its from my Porsche's engine. That shiny bar area on the right side is supposed to be nice and shiny and smooth. Its not. As you run your finger around to the right side, there are bumps. Big ones.

Arrrrrggggghhhh!!!

Thats the cry of anguish you hear when the mechanic calls you up and says, "Well, you have a decision to make..." Alas, my poor car requires an 'top end" engine re-build. Not a cheap exercise. (No, I am not telling how much but whatever you are thinking, double it.)

It takes a loooong time - 4 to 6 weeks. They have to drop the engine and transmission, take the valves and doohickeys apart, send it off to a machine shop for a month, bring it back and put it all together again.

One of the mechanics at the place I go recently got done doing this to his car so he knows in excruciating detail what has to be done and what to watch out for. And he has the pictures to prove it. And he said he would take pictures of mine as the work proceeds.

[evil laugh]

As the work proceeds! The evil laugh is on me this time. We will see if the work proceeds or not. First step is dropping the engine and taking a closer look at valves.

sigh. whimper. snivel. whine. sigh.

( Dec 01 2005, 02:15:08 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]

Wednesday October 26, 2005

getting out of the car...

People get into car just fine.

[evil laugh]

The door has several controls on it. Window go up and down controls. Knobby thing that locks and unlocks. [A picture will get added soon.]

But where the **** is the door handle? Remember the car is black, ALL black. Yes, even the interior. And, mostly importantly, the door handle.

Product design amusement then occurs. The door handle is just not obvious.

First, the handle is down lower on the door such that even with a smaller person in the seat, the handle is hidden down next to their leg. Its below where they expect to find it from a visual line-of-sight perspective.

Second, the door handle is integrated into the door panel design. There is a 'bar' (for holding on to when the driver accelerates) and a sort of bench to lay your arm onto when holding onto the bar. Under the bench and to one end of a carpeted area that is really a compartment, there is a square of plastic with lines on it. Thats the handle. Nice clean design. Few affordances.

8 of 10 times with a new 'user', I have to point out the handle. Then I have to tell them to pull on it.

( Oct 26 2005, 04:33:19 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Wednesday October 19, 2005

go fast or get warm?

Here goes the first installment on the design of my porsche.
1987 Porsche Carrera targa top. All black. All mine.

The 1987-89 models are considered by many fanatics to represent classic Porsche. The car has the 'great' transmission and a variety of other fun bits that translate into GO FAST euphoria.

However....have you ever tried to use the heating and air conditioning systems?

[evil laugh]

Keeping in mind the fact that heated air comes into the passenger compartment over the oil-cooled engine (and smells like it), there are three, yes 3, separate user interfaces to control the temperature in the car.

The first is the original user interface. Two levers on the floor between the seats. Pull a lever up, stinky warm air pervades your nasal space. There is a knob to turn on the annoying noisy fan. Dead simple design. Extremely functional. Good part is the car warms up fast; bad part is if you're barefoot your toes will be burned to a crisp after 5 minutes.

At some point, Porsche decided defrosting your windshield would be nice and added a bunch more levers on the dashboard. You move these back and forth to control defrosting, where the heat comes out, and the fan. Um, a different fan than the floor fan.

Unfortunately, it takes MUCH trial and error to figure out how to defrost your window. The worst part is that time in the fall when the weather actually gets cold in California (relatively speaking) and I have to remember how the damn system works. I have owned the car for several years and every year I spend 10 minutes to figure it out again. When I really can't remember I drop by my mechanic's garage and endure the chuckles as he walks me through the controls again.

Then Porsche decided to consider the comfort of their customers further and added an air conditioning system. Yup, even in a car in which one can pop the top off.

The air conditioning controls are on a console under the dashboard sort of behind the gear shift. These controls are knobs not levers. The user interface is pretty straightforward. Turn on the fan to whatever level you want, then turn the other knob to set how much cold you want. Adjust the vents and off you go. And its not even stinky air that comes out.

Of course, you have to remember to turn off the heating systems or both systems will run at the same time. Cold face, hot feet.

Porsche's user target with this car is very clear if somewhat stinky at times. You like car that goes fast, right? Its also very clear WHO designed each of the multiple systems in the car.

• The levers on the floor are clearly engineer driven. We got air coming in over engine already, lets use it. Stinky? Not an issue for the fanatic go-fast porsche owner.
• The dashboard controls clearly took a bit more thought - hmmm, or did they? Still based on stinky air. A good try but not actually usable.
• The last system, air conditioning, clearly had some design perhaps due to the fact that stinky air didn't have to be used. Still its a system thats far more functional than well-designed.

Would I give up the car due to the design issues?

Hell no. Me go-fast.

( Oct 19 2005, 03:48:27 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]