Steve and Judy's Travels!

 

…just because I match the pattern when putting away dinner plates; or make sure all the labels are right-side-up and facing out when restocking the pantry or the refrigerator; or lining up all the Keurig cup labels just right when I put them in the holder.  Branding me as compulsive though, that might be an overstatement.

 

Now my daughter, that’s a different story.  Her family discovered uneven wear of the patterns on her dinner dishes.  Not only does she stack them the same way every time she puts them in the cabinet (and who wouldn’t), but she loads them in the dishwasher the same way every time, and if someone else loads the dishwasher she waits until they leave the room then turns all the patterns to face the same way before she turns it on.  The spray from the dishwasher on the same part of the plates every day is unevenly wearing off the pattern.

 

I rest my case.

 

 

I read up on my cruise control glitch.  Jeep isn’t the only one.  All the car companies; Chrysler, Tesla, Volvo, every manufacturer that offers adaptive cruise control, have the same problem.  Carmakers have to program their adaptive cruise control to not be sensitive to stationary objects.  Otherwise cars would brake for every stationary object ahead.  Imagine a car going around a long gradual turn, braking for every power pole, sign post, fence post, and mailbox that appeared to be in its path.  Adaptive cruise control is a giant improvement over fixed cruise control (or no cruise control at all), but cars can never be fully autonomous with the radar technology they use today.  They’ll need to use the next generation of imaging technology, which is called Lydar.  Lydar uses lasers to create 3D images to allow completely autonomous driving, but it’s a young technology and still too expensive to put into mass produced cars.

 

So in the meantime, we get semiautonomous adaptive cruise control that works great in most situations, but you still have to pay attention.

 

 

As good as the adaptive cruise control is in our Jeep, I notice a flaw.  It will take over the throttle and brakes and maintain a safe distance on the highway or around town.  It will go from zero to sixty and back again in stop and go, or slow and go, traffic, with no human intervention.  What it won’t do though, is recognize a stationary object as a hazard.  Activate cruise control while there is no car in front of you, or while there is a moving car in front of you, no problem.  But if you and the car in front of you are approaching a stoplight, and there are cars stopped, waiting for the light to turn, and the car in front of you pops over to the next lane, the cruise control doesn’t see the stopped cars as a problem.  It starts to accelerate back up to speed.  When that happens, presumably the next safety feature, collision avoidance, would apply the brakes at the last moment and avoid an accident, but I’ve chosen not to test that system yet; I apply the brakes instead.

 

 

 

I made a drive up the Angeles Crest Highway into the San Gabriel Mountains to get to the right habitat.  Then I took off into the woods walking.  I could hear one; it was chipping and drumming.  I knew it was there, but it seemed to take forever before I finally spotted one.  Then.  Finally.

 

A White-headed Woodpecker.

 

 

We don’t get to see them very often.

 

They’re a Western thing.

 

 

Maybe it’s time for a haircut.

 

Off we go to the groomer.  Now, the back end of this one isn’t nearly as big anymore.

 

And this one has eyeballs again!