Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Mensa called...

...and they're revoking my membership.

I had a lunchtime appointment at Elizabeth Grady today. I went out to my car, and used my remote starter before ducking into it. However, it did not start up. So I used the key. All the lights and the radio came on, but it still didn't start. I tried starting about five times. Nothing. Then I went to remove the keys. They would not come out.

So at this point, I know there's enough juice to play the radio and turn on the lights. I figured the starter must be gone or something. I reached for my cellphone, and discovered I had of course forgotten it today. So I bolted back out into the rain and into MITRE, where I cancelled my appointment and told John about my car problems.

John figured it had to be my battery. So he grabbed his coat, and we ran for his car. He drove up to my car. Unfortunately, I was boxed in on all sides, so we figured we were going to have to put it in neutral and push it out for the jump. We parked his car and got into mine, with John in the driver's seat.

He looks down and asks, "Doesn't it have to be in park first?" Yes, it does. He put it in park and it started right up. Yay!

I wish I had done a complete Design on Experiments. Perhaps I would have found the flaw myself ;)

3 comments:

Dingo said...

That's my Moose

Unknown said...

Funny ;) Yeah, DOE would have solved your issue right away. While you're at it, model the entire situation using System Dynamics and analye on your modeling process using DSM. But before you start all this, use COSYSMO to estimate the cost of the above.

Ilana Reeves said...

(Matt L.)COSYSMO!(/Matt L.)