Last week, while driving to my old home town, my car died. Luckily, it didn't die in the middle of nowhere, but it did go in the second worse place - a town in the middle of nowhere. I had stopped to go the the restroom, turned my car off, completed my business, and got back into the car, turned the key, and nothing. No explosion, no clanking or grinding, no whirs or hums, not even a click. The only light on the dash was the amber seat belt light mocking me at a dim 1/5 power. After several more attempts came a calm and sincere WTF. OK, troubleshooting mode. Headlights: negative, radio: negative, interior lights: bright as a Irish moon. OK, two out of three (???) says battery. Looking around the gas station i decide on the stranger most likely to have battery cables and ask for a jump, he does. Out come the cables, up go the hoods, tac-tac, tac-tac, on go the clamps, jump in the car, turn the key, the dash lights up and then... a series of clicking noises that sounded suspiciously like laughter. Now a more traditional and irate WTF. After more trouble shooting, with the help of the gas station Samaritan, it was determined that the car needed to be service, more as a default conclusion than any kind of mechanical knowledge either of us possessed. Best guess, the alternator or the starter. It's 9:15 pm on a Sunday in a small Texas town, looks like i get to spend the night. Being nearly true to his namesake the Samaritan offered to drive me to a motel, which i accepted. He asked me how much i wanted to spend, and i told him, half jokingly, as little as possible. Wrong answer, the dive he took me must have been the local haunt for druggies and, if the town had them, prostitutes. The man thankfully asked me if i was sure, to which i responded a little more specifically this time. Well maybe not this cheap. I would like clean sheets and can go as high as $40. The second place he showed me seemed reputable enough from the outside so he dropped me off. He was certainly some kind of motel finding maven, because the cost was $39 dollars and change after taxes and you could smell the detergents on the pillowcases.
Day two. Need phone book and phone. Check and check. Three places to take my car to be fixed, place number one wouldn't answer the phone, place number two couldn't fix a Ford Focus (???), place number one still wasn't answering their phone, place number three was actually in the next town over, place number one's owner must be sleeping off a hangover at motel number one from last night- still no answer. Now came a nonplussed and heartfelt WTF. So, i called place number three again, a Ford dealer, and after a couple of transfers, got a number to the Ford place in the town i was at! This called for your run of the mill WTF, oh well, at least i got a new lead. Called the number, someone answered, and they would be able to fix a Ford Focus 'electrical problem'. They would send a tow truck to pick me up then my car and take us to the garage. $80 bucks for 15 minutes of work, and that includes picking me up, getting my car and dropping it off - fucking scam (right ojo?), but that is another post. I describe the problem to the mechanic and what i have tried, the mechanic acknowledges with a nod. The garage then spends the entire morning with the car, thankfully this place had the best selection of magazines i have ever seen in a waiting room, there was at least fifty, mostly current, running the gamut of men's and women's interests. Lunch time has arrived, and the mechanic comes in to give me the diagnosis, it's the battery, it's dead, really dead, completely dead, won't hold a charge at all. Well, that's actually good news i think, despite the fact that it took them all morning to discover this, but that should have been a clue that is was worse. And it was, come to find out there was not a battery for my car within a 80 miles. Apparently each year of the Ford Focus, even different engines of the same year can use different and specific batteries, and i guess being stuck in F-150 country, they had to go all the way to big ol' San Antone for my particular piece of rare technology. The mechanic took my stunned silence to quickly drop the other size 15, the battery wouldn't be in until tomorrow. Here comes the big gut-wrenching, deep down, soul searing WTF as the whole scenario comes into focus. The car that has started perfectly for me since i have owned it, dies with out warning, no sputtering, no dying only to be restarted, not even a warning light to ignore. Now, the part i need, a battery, the second most common part a car needs after an oil filter, is no where to be found, especially injurious considering that one of the main reasons i went with a common American made car was for the supposed ease and economy of repair. Now I'm a hundred and twenty dollars and twelve hours into this damn thing and i still haven't gotten to actually fixing the fucking problem. I tell the mechanic that I want to think about it, as it was way past time to take more of a hand in this destiny of errors. After getting the information I needed as to which battery, exactly, i needed for my car, I called my father, who lives in a sizable city an hour away, where i know they have Ford Focuses since that's were I bought it, and asked him if he would find the appropriate, if offending, part and bring it to me. Suffering the typical parental barrage of questions and incredulity, it was agreed that my mother would run this atypical errand.
Day two, PM. Instead of waiting in the 'visitors lounge' I went directly to the mechanic and let him know the plan, that the battery was on it's way. As I was now in the garage he took the time to show me the 'work', i guess you could call it, on my car. He pointed out that an otherwise acceptable battery would not fit in the place established for it, even going so far as to try again to place the rectangular component into the rectangular cavity, with no success. It would go in but would not sit flat, which would not allow the hood to close. He was called away for a moment which left me to examine the problem first hand. The battery would not sit right because there are two 'feet' running along each of the longer sides of the bottom of the battery, and a matching lip along the bottom of the longer sides of the recess. No, please, no, don't let it be this simple. I lift the battery up slightly and angle it just enough to get one of the feet under one of the lips and let the weight of the battery do the rest, but it didn't go in. Relief and disappointment fought for the dominant feeling. But wait, that wire bundle... is in the way... just need to move... phlump, problem solved, 30 seconds, didn't even get my hands dirty really. When the mechanic returned it was his turn to be stunned, I didn't know what to say other than, uh, i got it to fit. He asked if i wanted to use that battery, but seeing as i already had the 'recommended' battery purchased and on it's way, I declined. Soon enough the battery arrived, it was placed in it's housing, the bill of $40 dollars was paid (I think he cut me deal considering I did most of the work really), and i was on the road again. This is the kind of shit that lends credence to the stigma that mechanics are out to screw you, either intentionally or by not being competent enough to warrant their prices. Now that the dust has settled, the $40 bill goes a long way to countering that contention. Still, the total cost to me was $255 and almost a full day of work because a lot of little things, out of my control, added up in just the right way to test me, and it really makes me wonder sometimes, what the fuck?
Piet Hein was a Danish mathematician, writer, philosopher, inventor, even poet. And when Stockholm, Sweden had need of a new design for Sergel's Torg, an open space in the town center, Piet answered the open challenge with the superellipse. The problem for Stockholm was that the space could not be rectangular because they wanted traffic to flow around the space, neither was an ellipse acceptable because the pointier ends would not allow 'smooth' traffic to flow. To further complicate things the design need to be nested. Piet's solution was simple really, he settled on a subset of the Lamé curves which were a generalization of the ellipse. He then choose one particular curve which he thought the most pleasing to the eye and called it 'the' superellipse. The superellipse hit all the right criteria for the design, not too square, not too round, could be of any length, any width, it was nestable, and subtle differences from a rectangle with the corners rounded off gave it a simple beauty.
If a superellipse is revolved around the major axis a superellipsoid is formed, also called a superegg. Unlike a real egg, the superellipsoid can stand on either of it's ends, note the ends are continuously curved and not flat. This gives the balanced shape the appealing appearance of being both stable and unstable, resolutely standing yet looking as if it should fall.
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