The Wizard of Osborne

I was raised by a pack of nerds

I don't have a post to go with this title yet, but it's something I'd like to write about someday.  My Mom is a college-level math teacher, my Dad has undergrad and master's degrees in electrical engineering (plus an MBA), and their group of friends (who I strangely hung around with a lot when I was in high school) consisted of an odd mix of folks who had all built their own experimental aircraft (and came from a variety of rather technical backgrounds). 

I know being raised by this pack of nerds shaped me in special (?) ways and made me who I am today.  For example, I am strangely comfortable sitting in meetings primarily attended by very technical guys, even when what's being discussed sounds to me like, "If we can regulate the flam-jam in such a way as to recombobulate the sendetertiary frimgigger, we'll be totally good to go." 

And as soon as I figure out where I want to go with all of this, I'll write more about it.

My car knows it's raining

I continue to be amazed by my 2006 Audi S4.  Tonight I realized that it's smarter than me, which is sad, though not surprising.

Since I bought this car used and somewhat on a whim, I hadn't done my typical gnat's-ass detailed research about all of its features, specs, etc.  So while I still knew far more than the salesman did about it, I didn't know the (typically embarrassing for my spouse) level of information I usually would pre-purchase.  As a result, some of the car's features have come as a bit of a -- fortunately pleasant -- surprise.

Take this evening, for example.  I was on my way home and it started to rain.  Magically, as if they knew it was raining, my windshield wipers began to sweep.  I thought, "Did I turn those on?" I was pretty sure I hadn't.  Once I reached my destination, determined to figure out whether or not I'd just lost my mind, I pulled out the manual and did a little reading.  Sure enough, if you leave the wipers in intermittent mode and they sense that it's raining, they'll run on their own, at a speed appropriate to the car's speed.  How fantastic is that???  Surely psychic wipers should be considered one of the great wonders of the world, right behind the Grand Canyon and four-cheese ravioli from the old Figlio's restaurant in Kansas City.

But it gets better!  (...for the car, at least.  Not so much for me.)  There's a fancy little flipper knob embedded within the wiper control stalk that, I thought, controlled the speed of the intermittent wiping feature. It always perplexed me, to the point where I was pretty sure a German hadn't designed it, that the diagram next to the knob didn't seem to correspond even remotely to the resulting speed of the wipers.  I'd convinced myself that it was broken.  Thanks to my little stroll through the manual, I learned that the flipper knob actually regulates the sensitivity of the rain sensor, not the speed of the intermittent wiping. Of course it does!  DUH!  It all makes sense now...though that does not make any of these revelations any less embarrassing.

I really do love the features on this car, but I really hate how much smarter it is than me.  Friggin' bright red smarty bitch...