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Heiwashin wrote:

At the end of the work zone, i try to get off the bump strip only to discover my power steering has totally failed and has hard locked

Was it an actual mechanical failure? Or was it the vibration of the bump strip doing something nasty to the pump reservoir so it sucked air in to the power steering lines?

just brew it! wrote:

I wonder if something was about to go, and the vibration of driving on the bump strip was the last straw.

That's also a possibility.

I once owned a Saab 900 Turbo 16 S which developed an issue where as it warmed up it would lose the idle RPMs. This meant you would be driving along in gear and need to slow or stop so you press the clutch in and the engine dies with immediate loss of power steering and only a couple of brake applications before you lost power brakes as well. Had a few interesting moments with that! Of course it only did it when starting from cold as it warmed up and once it did it, you just restarted it and it would idle fine. Never got to the root cause before I moved countries and sold it. That was bad enough, can't imagine what a big rig like yours is like when it loses the power assist.

Passenger vehicles generally remain drivable without power steering, especially if already moving, provided the driver can keep their wits. Heavy equipment is a whole different category of scary.

Wow. Glad you're ok!

From what the tow truck guy quickly glanced over, he believes my pump failed. Peterbilt will get the full diagnose done tonight I hope.

On the mobility, when i got out and demonstrated the degree of the lock to the tow truck guy, i got out the door and put my entire body pulling out on the steering wheel. It deviated maybe a cm or two, and bounced itself right back when i let go. I'm lucky i have enough weight to have gotten that much turn out of it.

ludi wrote:

Passenger vehicles generally remain drivable without power steering, especially if already moving, provided the driver can keep their wits. Heavy equipment is a whole different category of scary.

Can confirm. I've done it. It's certainly not easy if stationary, but manageable when moving.

As you explained and Heiwashin demonstrated, a CDL rig is an entirely different story. You essentially just don't have steering anymore.

Glad that everything lined up perfectly and you're OK Heiwashin

Glorious wrote:

ludi wrote:

Passenger vehicles generally remain drivable without power steering, especially if already moving, provided the driver can keep their wits. Heavy equipment is a whole different category of scary.

Can confirm. I've done it. It's certainly not easy if stationary, but manageable when moving.

Yeah, the time it happened to me I concluded that it was still driveable (wouldn't have wanted to try parallel parking it though...), so I turned off all of the electrical accessories to preserve the battery, and headed straight for the nearest repair shop (about 2 miles away). If you're not using the headlights or A/C you can drive surprisingly far with no alternator... I once went like 20-30 miles on a car with a dead alternator.

This also reminds me, a couple of times I've had the power steering on our mini-van cut out after driving through high water. It came back after just a few seconds. I've assumed (but haven't proved) that it was from the belt getting really wet, and slipping as a result. Hasn't happened in years, so I'm assuming a belt replacement somewhere along the line took care of it.

Sounds plausible to me. They confirmed a pump failure and I'm hoping to have it fixed today. Two days ago the turbo actuator failed. It's a good time not to be an owner

I have a new peeve. People on TV or radio that, instead of just quickly listing a list, repeat the first half of a sentence with the next word in the list replacing the end. Some people do this 10 times in a row. It's not dramatic and emphasizing at this point, it's just annoying.

Anyone else following the latest volcano news from Hawaii? Two more subdivisions wiped out, one of the few naturally occurring freshwater lakes in the Hawaiian islands completely vaporized and filled in with lava, and the Kapoho area now has a new peninsula instead of a bay.

Fortunately no fatalities and only one major injury. But lots of people homeless.

Kind of crazy that my wife and I were in the area when this was all starting. (We were on the island when the 6.9 earthquake hit about a month ago and NPS closed Volcano National Park due to earthquake and eruption related hazards.)

just brew it! wrote:

Anyone else following the latest volcano news from Hawaii? Two more subdivisions wiped out, one of the few naturally occurring freshwater lakes in the Hawaiian islands completely vaporized and filled in with lava, and the Kapoho area now has a new peninsula instead of a bay.

Fortunately no fatalities and only one major injury. But lots of people homeless.

Kind of crazy that my wife and I were in the area when this was all starting. (We were on the island when the 6.9 earthquake hit about a month ago and NPS closed Volcano National Park due to earthquake and eruption related hazards.)

Yeah, luckily volcanoes show signs that they're going to erupt and lava moves relatively slow. Still pretty devastating though.

There was also one more guy who refused to leave the evacuation zone. He ended up getting arrested and held on bail of $3750. No "lava bombs" for you.

Whelp, time to start arguing with the HOA, which is now trying to prevent me from doing any work whatsoever in our attached, permanently-assigned carport. Apparently the malcontents in the neighborhood (three out of about 103) are trying to weaponize the townhome covenants against other residents after having recently lost a frivolous lawsuit (which one of them initiated) as an outgrowth of their multi-year, blatant, malicious infractions.

I like living in a quiet neighborhood where the HOA does a pretty good job of managing the common property, but if this garbage starts up, it might just drive us out of it.

The HOA thing is definitely not for me.

Definitely not for me either. When we were looking for a home to buy, being part of an HOA was a big negative. Fortunately, they're much less common here in the northeast than in other parts of the country.

Just seeing the morning's news, and that Anthony Bourdain died. I am legitimately saddened by this - I think he did a fantastic job in his television programs of introducing viewers to different cultures, giving background on the current events in those parts of the world, and most of all emphasizing the common humanity of everyone he met. I will miss seeing him on the TV.

I was just on a conference call with around 20 that we had to abandon because someone was driving around with their speakerphone unmuted and another person had incessant barking dogs with, again, the speakerphone unmuted. Not muting yourself on a conference call is one of the more inconsiderate things that you can do. There's a very special destination for people who do that.

It's not just HOAs; my brother lives in a small suburb without an HOA but with a real bastard of a city code guy. I keep telling him to run for council (it's Fate, TX, not a big city, he could probably win). Then work to fire the guy. Made some home modifications hellaciously hard over the (undefined) definition of "matching style".

Derfunk; there's ways in most conference call software to set up participants as muted. 10/10, best way to do it. Then have the presenters unmute as needed.

derFunkenstein wrote:

I was just on a conference call with around 20 that we had to abandon because someone was driving around with their speakerphone unmuted and another person had incessant barking dogs with, again, the speakerphone unmuted. Not muting yourself on a conference call is one of the more inconsiderate things that you can do. There's a very special destination for people who do that.

Hey, at least your conference bridge worked; I am envious!

We use WebEx (aka intercall) here for all conferences and the meeting organizer can mute or kick people at-will.

just brew it! wrote:

derFunkenstein wrote:

I was just on a conference call with around 20 that we had to abandon because someone was driving around with their speakerphone unmuted and another person had incessant barking dogs with, again, the speakerphone unmuted. Not muting yourself on a conference call is one of the more inconsiderate things that you can do. There's a very special destination for people who do that.

Hey, at least your conference bridge worked; I am envious!

I don't know who provides it, but yeah, it seemed to work.

We also have GoToMeeting available, but we had been instructed to (where possible) use our conference number and not GTM's, for whatever reason. The guy in charge of the meeting sent an email saying that future calls will use GTM's audio capabilities specifically so he can mute/kick people, as Usacomp2k3 mentioned.

The worst one is when someone on the conference puts it on hold instead of mute. Then everyone gets the elevator music!

I think I've just found my midlife-crisis machine. I'm bucking tradition on this one as it's not a Harley or a go-fast car, it's something much more prosaic (and actually useful).

Test-drove a John Deere X758 garden tractor (3-cyl diesel, 4WD w/diff locks, front/rear/mid PTO, all-hydro controls) this AM and I think I'm hooked. Now how best to explain this one to the Boss.

Captain Ned wrote:

I think I've just found my midlife-crisis machine. I'm bucking tradition on this one as it's not a Harley or a go-fast car, it's something much more prosaic (and actually useful).

Test-drove a John Deere X758 garden tractor (3-cyl diesel, 4WD w/diff locks, front/rear/mid PTO, all-hydro controls) this AM and I think I'm hooked. Now how best to explain this one to the Boss.

Well, don't start with the price

Our country church has an entry level Deere, something like the 42" E100 or E110 IIRC, for taming the 1-acre yardspace during the summer. It's a bit spooky to cut parallel rows along the 15-20 degree incline of the country road's drainage ditch out front, but the low CG keeps it stable.

Usacomp2k3 wrote:

The worst one is when someone on the conference puts it on hold instead of mute. Then everyone gets the elevator music!

Someone did that one once, too. We just all called back in on a different line. No idea what the person thought when they came back and everyone was gone. Now the "waiting for meeting" music warns people not to put calls on hold to "prevent introducing music to the meting"

I just got a spam e-mail for Zune repair. I don't know if that is targetted or not. While we still have 4 of them in working order, we haven't used them in years. Very curious if it was just lucky, or targeted. Or maybe Hotmail is specifically letting those through the Spam filter

Usacomp2k3 wrote:

I just got a spam e-mail for Zune repair. I don't know if that is targetted or not. While we still have 4 of them in working order, we haven't used them in years. Very curious if it was just lucky, or targeted. Or maybe Hotmail is specifically letting those through the Spam filter

Been getting those for a month or so, offering to replace the HDD in 80s and 120s with an SSD. I pitched both of my 120s some time ago after HDD failures, but would have used this service if I still had them. Rapid Repair (the source of the e-mails I received) is a legit company selling repair parts and hosting disassembly guides for many such devices. I've used their products to replace the front cover glass on the daughter's HD64.

Well targeted then.

Usacomp2k3 wrote:

The worst one is when someone on the conference puts it on hold instead of mute. Then everyone gets the elevator music!

I like Webex, you can go to the list of participants and the person talking / making a noise has an icon next to their name - very easy to find out who to mute!

Amazon sellers are getting particularly bold with sending tons of emails after you place an order through them. I've gotten to the point where if an email isn't explicitly about my order I report it to Amazon. Not that they're going to do anything about it, because they're apparently getting away with it.

I sometimes get multiple emails asking for reviews. Guaranteed way to not get one.

Heiwashin wrote:

I sometimes get multiple emails asking for reviews. Guaranteed way to not get one.

Guaranteed way to get a bad one. "Won't stop spamming me after the sale"