Can’t raise fold-down rear seat on 2010 Ford Escape because of stuck middle seat belt retractor

Ok quick break from tech to report on a known car problem and the fix. I have a 2010 Ford Escape, and put the bigger side of the 40/60 split rear seat down to fit a table in the rear. When I went to raise it back up, it wouldn’t move more than an inch or two.

After some investigation I determined the problem was that the middle seat belt, which actually retracts into the top of the seat, had retracted completely and then locked up, stuck.

I spent some time trying various things to get it to let go. I even had half the material off the seat so I could see up to the area where the retractor was mounted. Nothing I tried did anything but make it tighter.

I turned to the Internet, and found out this is a known problem with these Fords and perhaps other models going back several years. Argh! For instance, http://www.venturerider.org/forum/showthread.php?t=60783 

Then I found a site that seemed to have some solid advice - http://www.fixya.com/cars/t6637034-ford_escape_middle_rear_seat . This turned out to be fix for me.

Basically take out the 6 bolts holding the seat backs down (2 on each side and 2 in the middle). Then you can get to the Torx bolt that bolts the seat belt to the floor. Then take out the 60 part of the seat back completely, turn it right side up, click in the latch on the side, and the seat belt should retract normally with a couple of pulls. Then just put everything back together the way it was.

Save yourself wasted time trying other methods. They are right when they say this is the only way that works. And once you figure it out, it’s not that hard. Good thing, because I’ve got a feeling I’m going to be doing this again and again.

Well and pump problems

Found a great site today that helps with diagnosing water well and pump problems, called Inspectapedia:

http://inspectapedia.com/water/Water_Information.htm

Sounds like a great new word for Scrabble too!

Domestic Customer Support

Just called VZW (Verizon Wireless), and spoke to a domestic support rep, very knowledgeable, very polite, very efficient! What an amazing experience that makes me want to keep my business with them.

What a difference from other support calls to various big companies the last couple of years. The backlash against against “commodity” service is finally having an effect, as companies realize that customer service is not just a cost to be cut as close as possible to the bone, but a major component of their brand reputation.

It has always seemed crazy to me, to take a customer, who is already mad at you, and send them into a maze of button-pushing forwarding circular phone menus to eventually speak to unhelpful, untrained, un-empowered, un-friendly, unable–to-speak-English support personnel. Not only does the customer’s problem not get solved, but they now have another complaint. That is company suicide.

These people whose money you have or want, and who know the rest of the people whose money you have or want, they are the very ones who’s frowns you need to strive to turn upside down.

I’ve heard recently that good support is a “differentiator”. In other words companies who buck the trend to provide it really set themselves apart and make themselves attractive. Don’t be fooled. Your brand value is exposed to negative or positive opinion long after the sale. It is hanging out there, for anyone and everyone to ruin or build up, every day. Good support is one of your few defenses and offenses. I’d suggest in terms of your brand it’s more important than the sale, and up there with product quality.

Just to be clear, I’m not putting down offshoring support per se. But unless and until the quality of that support is a compliment to the brand, it’s not good enough.

Man I hope this is a trend.

Harry Potter and Doctor Who walk into a bar

Today I’d like to take a break from the tech topics I usually discuss, and veer into literary territory. Harry Potter and Doctor Who have two interesting characteristics in common, and I’d like to present them as a shared compliment and criticism.

Let’s start with the compliment. I believe the authors of these two media properties owe their success almost solely to their understanding of a key concept. We identify with the underdog. We invest in that plucky fighter who never gives up, who the odds are always against, who is always one step away from certain defeat and death. There are all these micro-cliff-hangers throughout because of these overwhelming odds, that juice us on adrenaline and keep us hooked.  And then, wow if that guy (or girl) somehow snatches victory at the very last second despite everything, that makes us happy. 

And if that every-man, rag-tag, too small, no skills, picked-on, kicked around, out-numbered loser does end up losing in the end, well don’t think about writing a part 2. We feel betrayed. But even worse is a heroes’ hero, strong physique, flies, every bad guy is two steps behind him. We don’t invest in him because we don’t identify with him. There are no challenges so we get bored. The only reason comic book super-heroes have hung around is because they developed weaknesses.

Speaking of comic books, they also illustrate my second point, my criticism, as do Harry Potter and Doctor Who. As I mentioned above, we invest and identify with these plucky underdogs. Therefore the one thing you cannot do is betray us. Besides having them lose in the end, there are several other “writing devices” which constitute betrayal in my opinion, such as having the character die and then bringing them back to life, or having the character lose and then turning back time, or saying it was somebody’s dream, or events in an alternate universe. These are cheap cop-outs. We invest in those events as much as the characters, and snatching them back like an “indian giver” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_giver kills an amount of trust each time. Sure I get writing yourself into a hole, when you have to up the ante each time, but I expect better.

PS. No need to comment that Doctor Who is a TV show not a book. I meant literary in the sense that each episode is written down before it is directed .

Is un-funding Nasa short-sighted?

When and if man truly "reaches the stars", and by that I mean is able to garner and consume non-Earth resources (and no, capturing the sunlight that falls on the Earth doesn't count, nor does mining asteroids), will the total wealth (in the "human economy") increase, especially in such a way as to make some of our current non-trivial problems of no import? Or is there some ameliorating effect whereby total wealth is fixed, even in a non-closed system? 

The discovery of "the new world" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World) seems like a relevant and useful analog. Certainly the initial costs of discovery and startup were paid back in spades. Whole countries (and plenty of individuals as well) got rich. It would not be stretching the analogy to say that all of the equity, goods, and services produced by the United States alone in it's whole history are net new value to the empires of Europe. 

But we can't be so hasty. Is Europe better off, on the whole, and in orders of magnitude dictated by this windfall of epic proportions? Bashing countries  is not in scope for this essay. And there are enough other vectors of intervening history so as to invalidate any detailed comparison. Suffice it to say that they did not all live "happily ever after".

So are we to conclude that investing in our long-term future is a bad idea? Going back to the New World, history teaches us over and over that even though literally doubling the size of our known and reachable universe is not a sure-fire prescription for the end of all human suffering, it does tend to lead to "progress" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress). Progress is not the same thing as ending starvation. It's an important component of resolving these big issues however.

The truth is, our nature makes solving these big problems hard. And that won't go away just because we find a new "unlimited free energy source" for example. I'm going to leave this open-ended, because I've got the question, not the answer. However I'll add one last thing, which is a favorite opinion of mine I like to think about, and a wider principle undergirding my argument here. And that is a principle I see demonstrated over and over again in the short history of our current technology acceleration. Here I will express it as, most likely, the myriad of crushing problems that we have no doubt directly created through our own ignorance, pride, and avarice, will not and cannot be fixed by anything currently at hand. However even though they should certainly easily and utterly destroy us, there's a very good chance that we'll come up with something else soon, that will allow us to easily circumvent them and continue on (to the next chapter, which will be the same as the last but bigger). I can put this much more succinctly, and perhaps I should have at first. And that is, our capacity for creativity appears to just barely outrun our capacity for stupidity, at least so far.

Surveys

(I’m providing the following information as a public service, but for the purposes of full disclosure I’ll note that I secretly hope it will result in less survey requests coming to me..)

1. There’s a type of person that likes to fill out surveys. Unfortunately they are not the person you want filling out your survey, as they don’t represent a cross-section of your target audience.

2. There’s a special case, whereby a person is not the type of person that like to fill out surveys, yet they are so ticked off at you, that they jump at the chance to lash out at you. Unfortunately they are not the person you want filling out your survey either, because they make you look really bad, and have trouble staying objective.

3. All the rest of the people aren’t going to fill out your survey. If you do force or coerce them, it is going to make the data obtained useless.

In short, if you think you need a survey, it probably indicates a deeper problem that a survey is not going to solve.

Ice Dams

I'm taking a little break from computer technology today to pass on what I have learned about ice dams. I own an older home which was not designed to keep the various parts of the roof cold. Therefore I have ice dams, which is when water backs up into your home when it gets trapped behind ice which build ups at the roof's edge because the eaves (edges) are colder than the rest of the roof.

I have had the home about 6 years now. Several years ago, I didn't know what ice dams were. I thought the hanging icicles looked great. Then some water backed up into the roof, along a seam and down a wall, across a poorly-grounded electrical switch and caused a house fire. Thank God there was relatively minimal damage. An electrician repaired the wiring. A roofer flashed and re-shingled half of that particular roof. I repaired and repainted the wall and ceiling damage.

I did a lot of reading about ice dams at the time, educating myself. In the end I decided to get a roof rake, to try to prevent ice dams from forming by keeping the snow off. It's literally too much work to clear all the roofs with it, so I try to get at least the last 4 feet, which is recommended for ice dams.

I thought that was working well until last year, when I again had some water leaking into my house, in a different place this time (right where the computer was!). Basically what had happened was that sometimes storms come in such a way (such as an ice storm followed immediately by snow) that even with roof-raking, the roof will not be clear at the eaves, and then the ice dam forms. I assumed as long as I kept the roof raked, thereby minimizing the material there, that everything would work out. I was wrong.

I ended up putting up a ladder in the snow in middle of the night in freezing weather, and climbing up to chip channels in various spots along the dam, letting the water out. Cutting channels was an emergency method my dad had heard of. It was supposed to be much more effective, easier on your roof, and safer, than trying to clear all the ice. Once the channels were clear and running I kept them clear with liberal applications of calcium chloride. (Sodium chloride should never be used for this by the way, as salt will damage your roof, your home, and any vegetation below.)

Fast-forward to this year. The ice-followed-by-snow scenario took place again last week. I had two leaks in the same week this week, one in the place where we had the fire, and one in the same place as last year. I handled both with the emergency channel-chipping method which so far appears to be successful in stopping any further damage or leaking. But it looked like it was time to re-google the current state of ice dam technology.

Here is what I have learned. There are several ways to go at the problem, all with pluses and minuses, which I will attempt to enumerate here. Suffice it to say the first ones are very expensive and intrusive, with the benefit of needing less or no maintenance. Effectiveness is really going to depend on specific circumstances as best as I can find out. If your solution is well designed, and implemented by an expert, you could have great results. However if either the architect or the builder is uncommitted or inexperienced, good intentions and lots of money mostly likely will not bring success. It has to be said that baking this into a new home is far preferable to retrofitting an older one. The last solutions are cheaper and less intrusive, however they involve lots of maintenance, and wear on your roof. As reactionary measures, rather than preventative ones, they are naturally less effective.

(1) Redesign your house. This is the only truly preventative measure, and even so it is not guaranteed to work. The idea is to create an area above your heated living areas that is unheated. Your new roof goes on top of that. Ice dams do not form because the roofs thaws evenly. Obviously the drawback is expense. The benefit is no further maintenance required. Theoretically there are weather conditions which are impossible to engineer against, but there are edge cases for everything, and emergency methods should help prevent permanent damage.

(2) New roof with a moisture barrier. There are standard products and methods available now to put a waterproof membrane under your whole roof. The drawback again is expense. The benefit is it should be cheaper than option 1 while still calling for no maintenance.

(3) New roof with a ventilation layer. The idea is this is a retrofit way to accomplish the best possible scenario, a cool roof. The technology appears to be fairly new, and fancy (as in perhaps a little complicated to implement effectively, in such a way that it would last). However I didn't look at it closely.

(4) Metal roof. I saw mentions of metal roofs, but no explanation offered as to why they would be effective in battling ice dams. I'll be keeping my eye on this, as I also like the sound rain makes on metal roofs! However I have one on my garage, and there are weird weather conditions where it leaks big time through every (rubber-grommeted) nail. This has happened a couple of times, I think usually when there are temperature extremes in the same day (going from way hot to way cold, or the reverse?).

(5) Heat tape. I know people who swear it works miracles. However the comments online and by professionals are universally against it. It wears out quickly, shortens the life of the roof, and while it does melt ice, the ice dam simply re-forms above it on the roof. It is put on in a wave pattern for some reason.

(6) Heat panels. This is something new since the last time I looked. Heat tape is run through aluminum panels attached to the roof at the eaves. I couldn't find any outside evidence of the success or failure of these products, nor could I find any prices. Until both of those exist I'd leave any recommendations to the experts. Here are a couple of examples:
http://www.bylinusa.com/roof_ice_melt/RIM1.html
http://www.thermaltechusa.com/

(7) Roof rakes. There are a couple of variations on the plain roof rake, including wheels and wires and slides. In general, at least in my experience, it is roofs with poor pitch that have ice dams, and I doubt any of these tricks would work on such roofs. One hint my Dad came up with is to buy thick (and lined for the cold) rubber (or plastic?) gloves. There is something about the wet aluminum that easily ruins any other type of glove in minutes. The drawbacks I am seeing with the roof rake are:
-It is ineffective (I am still having leaks).
-It damages the roof. It is amazing how much material I have lost off the shingles.
-It is maintenance-intensive. This easily adds an hour or two onto every snowstorm. And until you have to work with your arms raised above your head under load for an hour, you can not imagine the agony in your shoulder muscles. Then once you are done, all the snow you have brought down is now packed tightly by the fall onto your porch or walk, where it will take many times the effort of initially shoveling those areas, to clear them again.

(8) Ice dam sock. This is my new find! You take nylon panty hose, fill it with calcium chloride (18" long), and tie off the top somehow (velcro seems to be common for reuse). You place it on the roof at and perpendicular to the edge, every 10-15 feet. Refill roughly every 30 days. This creates the channels I talked about before, but instead of being an emergency afterthought, these channels are there draining the roof from the get-go.

Conclusion: I think I had two problem-vectors. The roof rake handled the simple task of clearing snow off of the lower part of the roof to prevent ice dams from forming in most cases. The more complicated vector however, was when despite my best efforts and sometimes as a result of mixed precipitation and weather, I would get ice dams anyhow. I plan to use the socks to handle that vector, creating relief valves in the dams even as the dams are forming. The only thing still to work out is how to roof-rake around the socks!

Northern Exposure quotes

We miss you Cicely...
http://homepage.eircom.net/%257Eodyssey/Quotes/Popular/TV/NExposure_s1.htm
http://homepage.eircom.net/%257Eodyssey/Quotes/Popular/TV/NExposure_s2.htm
http://homepage.eircom.net/%257Eodyssey/Quotes/Popular/TV/NExposure_s3.htm
http://homepage.eircom.net/%257Eodyssey/Quotes/Popular/TV/NExposure_s4.htm
http://homepage.eircom.net/%257Eodyssey/Quotes/Popular/TV/NExposure_s5.htm
http://homepage.eircom.net/%257Eodyssey/Quotes/Popular/TV/NExposure_s6.htm

Dave Winer - New York Times - River of News

http://nytimesriver.com/
http://nytimesriver.com/outline/

Scraping the NY Times to create a nice mobile news view..

Recycle your old cell phones

http://www.eco-cell.org/

Recycle your old cell phones and benefit the environment at the same time..

Information wants to be free

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_wants_to_be_free

Now that's a sound bite!