Mad Skillz [Sarcasm]

I'm currently wrapping up a trip to New York for the holidays--some time with the family, and a trip into NYC, which warrants an independent post. But this post is just about replacing the battery in the family car, my parents' reaction to it, and musing on my mechanical abilities. Plus audio-visual hackery.

When I came home, mom & dad told me that the new car (Honda Accord) wasn't starting--when you turned the key, it made some type of clicking noise.


So I did the following on Christmas Eve:

• Tried starting the car. A brief bit of motor cranking, and then it started going "click-click-click-click-click" when I tried to start it.
  
• A quick look on the web--huh, looks like that's consistent with a dead battery. Otherwise, it's probably something annoying like a starter solenoid, charging system, etc.
  
• Pushed the car out of the garage, hooked up jumper cables to my car. VROOOOOM. Yep, guess it's the battery.
  
• Unbolt the terminals and the battery hold-down
  
• Go to the auto parts store. "I want one of these, except not dead." "Here ya go." "Thanks, buddy. Merry Christmas!"
  
• Install the new battery. VROOOOOM. Done.

The only thing that slowed me down was that I only had a selection of tools with me on this trip--I brought my SAE (Imperialist) combination wrenches, but not metric. Grr! Undoing the battery clamp with a crescent wrench was annoying.

Anyway, I thought this was a completely unexceptional bit of car repair. But my parents were completely effusive with their praise for "fixing the car"--"Oh, we would have had to have it towed to the garage after the holidays, so they could take a look at it." Really? Wow.

Do people think it is rare to have a household where nobody (except for their visiting engineer son) could have done this repair? As a guess, I figure that the vast majority of my friends would be able to puzzle this out--perhaps not as quickly, but they wouldn't have to resort to getting the car towed. I admit that I have a fair amount of experience with dealing with dead cars (um, yeah, owned a 1970's Ford)--I've maybe replaced half a dozen car batteries, so the unmount/dismount was pretty quick. This might also be a blue collar vs. white collar thing--I can't imagine that there are many working class families who wouldn't have somebody who could do this--the whole car/macho thing. Or maybe I'm just projecting.

Or perhaps this is a demonstration of that once you learn something, you start to believe that everyone else in the world probably finds it obvious as well (i.e., devaluing the information you have gained)--is there a name for that effect?

One thing that makes me think that my family is a bunch of outliers was "fixing" the television remote at my sister's place. My dad said, "I replaced the battery, but it still didn't work." Huh, really? I don't know if I've heard of a remote just up and dying. Let's check it out.



New batteries + cleaning off the leaking battery cruft = back up and running. Huh.

Another amusing fixit story from this trip--I realized that I set up three (3) DVD players on this visit.

One was the Christmas present for mom and dad--an upsampling (1080p) DVD player to go with their new ridiculous LCD TV. The straight digital HDMI connection was nice--just one plug, with a cleaner signal. Also, that freed up an AV port--so I switched over the VCR from coaxial input to composite video (nope, no S-video out on this VCR). Yeah, enough jargon, thanks.


Second: taking the old DVD player, and connecting it to the upstairs TV.

Third: my sister's CD player stopped working, so she needed a replacement. A wander through Best Buy revealed that nobody really sells single-disc players anymore--they're all 5 or 100 disc changers, or ridiculous $400 audiophile/reference player models. But wait... I now have an unused DVD player, after getting myself a Blu-Ray. So my Christmas gift to her:

"Here's a DVD of the Metropolitan Opera's production of La Boheme--the Zeffirelli version."

"Um... that's nice... but I don't have a DVD player."

[Pulls out box]

"Nope! Now you do!"


Successfully set that up during my visit to the city; works both as a DVD and CD player. Not a bad AV-heavy Christmas visit.