Author: kpcnsk

It is what you think it is

Me: I don’t mind paying a premium for things I want, but every time I deal with Bank of America I feel like I’m being ripped off.

Kevin: That’s because you are being ripped off.

In February I owed $450 and change. I paid $200 of it that month, and in March I owed the remainder plus a nominal interest fee. That’s fine. I didn’t pay my bill in full that month, so BoA has every right to hit me with that fee. So in March (a few days after I received the statement and well before it was due) I paid the remainder plus the new interest fee. Done. Credit card balance $0.00.

Wrong.

April statement says I owe $1.50, a “Minimum interest charge.” I’m not sure this is legal. It smacks of dirty.

Update: I called Bank of America and pointed out that I had paid my balance in full. The customer service representative checked my account, reversed the charge, and apologized for the error. Still, apparently this kind of thing happens all the time.

Sliding Door Lighting in the Vanagon

I’ve always thought that one oversight of the Vanagon is a lack of lighting in the passenger cabin. Obviously in Westfalias there’s the galley lighting, but that’s not triggered by opening the door. A closer inspection of the B pillar and the sliding door revealed that clearly it isn’t a complete oversight of VW: there is a cutout for the door switch, indicating it must be an option somewhere.

Adding the light wasn’t overly difficult, but did require a bit of experimentation. First I ran wires, tapping into the existing cabin lighting so that all the lights would be on the same circuit. This was made easier by the fact that I have already installed a light over the front passenger seat. Ultimately I got the wires in place using string and some bailing wire. That done, I had to engineer the trigger for the switch, since the door doesn’t fit flush where the switch mount point is. This I accomplished with a hex bolt and few nuts which allowed a fair amount of precision adjustment.

After that, it was just a matter of cutting the hole for the new light fixture in the right side air duct. I used the standard VW dome light for uniformity of appearance. Now I can see what’s going on when I open the sliding door, and the dome light provides some additional lighting when camping. Easily one of the best mods I’ve made on Olly so far.

The pieces of the adjustable trigger.
The pieces of the adjustable trigger.
The trigger installed, making contact with the door switch.
The trigger installed, making contact with the door switch.
The hole cut.
The hole cut.
And then there was light!
And then there was light!

Further reference in the great iCloud debacle

Apple’s great. iCloud still sucks. Especially since they clearly have only one engineer working on the project. Apple, I understand you want to sell new phones, new computers, and the whatnot. And trust me, us folks who love Apple products will buy them, eventually. You’ve got us hooked. But stop making the iCloud service so closed that I can’t even use the iMac I bought last year to access the service.

Here’s another workaround, in case your mail is broken:
http://www.macstories.net/news/configure-an-icloud-email-account-on-snow-leopard/

For quick reference, the mail server name is p02-imap.mail.me.com, because I suppose mail.me.com would have been too obvious. Fuckers.

Vanagon Instrument Cluster Rewire

A couple of weeks ago I managed to fry the dashboard light circuit on the instrument cluster. Not that it wasn’t in sad shape already. I had patched various sections of the both the light circuit and the ground on the circuit sheet where the copper wiring was damaged. As a result, the need to replace the circuit sheet wasn’t a surprise, and I had been thinking about it for some time. I figured I could create a replacement wiring harness, using connectors from the original and sold 24 gauge wire instead of the plastic circuit sheet. First, though, I had to map out the circuit.

That took the longest, even with Bentley’s assistance. Eventually, using my digital camera, a lightbox, and Omnigraffle, I managed to create a circuit map which would serve as a guide for my new wiring harness

With that as my guide, I began using a DB25 connector and 24 AWG wire from Cat5e cable. The idea for using a DB25 connector came from a fellow Vanagon owner’s solution (link updated! Thanks Edward!). When complete, the new connector looked quite good. I was quite happy with my soldering.

Moving on, I used ring connectors for the fuel and temp gauges, and actually used the connectors to the tach, voltage regulator, clock, and oil pressure control unit by removing them from the original circuit sheet. This meant that I wouldn’t have to come up with adaptations in order to make the connections. On the original circuit sheet, there are a number of capacitors and resistors. These I decided to move to a circuit board, which I bought at Radio Shack. Finally, I soldered the lights (which I changed to LEDs) into the harness.

Overall, the result is quite good, and preliminary tests seem to indicate that I got the whole thing right. One thing I don’t like is that the dash lights are not easily serviceable. I may have to revise that to use some wire disconnects of some sort. For now, however, I can once again see my gauges at night.

ADDENDUM 03/08/2013

I’m clearly not alone in that I have received a number of requests to build something like this for other Vanagon owners. Unfortunately, while this is in concept a relatively simple wire-up, there are a number of complications which prevent me from being able to take on such projects at this time. First of all, I used parts from my old flexible circuit to manufacture the new wiring harness. I don’t have a stock of these parts, nor are many of them commercially available. Secondly, this isn’t a drop in solution, as I had to cut off the existing plug in the van to install the DB25. Unless you want to transport me directly to your house, you would have to do this yourself, and that requires a certain amount of wiring skills. There are other minor reasons why I can’t build these for others.So while it would give me great pleasure to help my fellow Vanagon owner out in this regard, I have to decline such offers. 

I will happily answer any questions you have, should you decide to undertake this yourself. I am currently investigating the possibility of producing these commercially, but I cannot guarantee anything will come of that at this time. Thanks, and good luck.

-J

Steve Jobs Resigns, Jarrett Kupcinski Reflects

Steve Jobs has resigned as CEO of Apple Inc. today. That’s noteworthy for me because Mr. Jobs is one of my all-time heroes, although I didn’t always hold him in such high esteem.

My family’s first computer was an Apple IIc, purchased in 1985. It wasn’t my first computer experience (that honor goes to a Texas Instruments TRS-80), but it was transformative. I spent many hours on that machine, writing programs, playing games, writing school papers, and even making art. I learned about word processing, spreadsheets, databases, digital art, and desktop publishing. That was our family’s main computer until around 1991, when we upgraded to a Macintosh LCII. But that IIc still works as of this writing, and is in my brother’s keeping.

In those early days, I learned that Apple computer was founded by the two Steves. In fact, those were probably the first corporate personae that I knew of by name, and Wozniak was my favorite. How could he not be? He was a goofy nerdy guy who loved the Apple II’s, just like I did. He was Polish. He was the Woz. Supercool. Jobs was too… serious.

Fast forward to the year 2000. I was then teaching computer science, and a favorite part of the course covered the history of computers. I learned exactly how innovative and important Apple had been in the early days of the personal computer industry, and about Steve Jobs’ role in that innovation. He was serious, but I then recognized that was what made the Apple, and then the Macintosh, great. He was, apparently, also an asshole, but I was fine with that. My students just thought he was crazy. They probably thought I was crazy, too.

One year around this time, one of my students (no idea who) printed out a picture of Steve Jobs and drew devil horns on it. They cut this out and pasted it to the back of my inbox in the school office. It was, I’m certain, intended to be a malicious prank, but I saw it as high praise. I left that picture there for over a year. No other teachers got pictures of famous people pasted to the back of their mailboxes.

I currently use an Apple computer at work and at home. I own both an iPad and an iPhone, and the latter is rarely out of arm’s reach. I’ll admit that I’m a fan of Apple products, but that’s because they do what they do so well. And I recognize that while their success is the result of many individuals’ efforts, those efforts coalesced because of the vision of Steve Jobs. And my life would certainly be different if that vision was absent. Thank you, Mr. Jobs.