For a while back, the Prius had been giving us sporadic error lights. Usually would go away and run fairly normally after a few restarts. Finally it stopped and was towed to Toyota. After being taken back twice, Toyota finally replaced the main battery pack. A sizeable cost if not under warranty. Since then it seems to have been running ok. Until last weekend when my mom picked me up from airport. I got in to drive it home, when cranking it gave the array of check engine and warning lamp. I tried power of and on cycles three times. Still had warning, and drove it home ok on surface streets. Next day it seemed normal. But my parents were worried of more problems cropping up, so there was talk of replacing it. I suggested they look at the 3 door Yaris. Continue reading ‘Bye Bye Hybrid’
Author Archive for taro
Page 74 of 88
Sorry, wanted to write a longer post on this past Sunday where Derek and I had a snowboard waxing session. I stopped at the India Market on Beretania St. and grabbed a jar of tamarind chutney and some papads straight from the enpowered Indian women. These commercial versions are paper thin, spicier, and saltier than our previous from scratch experiment. Oh, and they have a demented creepy bunny on the package, had to get it! And what does this have to do with waxing? They go hand in hand as we discovered cooking the papadums with a heat gun leads to more even results than trying to cook them over a propane burner.
 Anyway, gotta leave for the airport! Will try to add more later!
I’m really getting mixed feelings about my iPhone. It’s a nifty device and has proven to be pretty useful in additional to the entertainment options. The 3G network seems to have improved some since my first post, but it still shows problems. So what’s my complaint now? I guess with the complexity and the loadability of software, it’s not as stable as an appliance. I had one instance a couple weeks ago of losing phone service entirely. Thought it was network problem, but doing the reset on phone fixed it. Now today I’ve lost phone service, and it seems wifi. Put a call in to tech support. Ran through the reset I already did, then a reset through the phone setting. Finally am doing a larger scale reset that is still running on my phone and will erase everything. Hopefully that will get the phone back running, we’ll see. So maybe it’s not such a great idea to have one device try to do so many ‘smart’ things if you rely on your phone as a phone. To their credit, there was no wait to get a binder reading tech on the line, but is this a case of product getting a high satisfaction rating because even though the product gives problems, the customer support is good?
Ugh, so that reset seems to have zapped the phone and the only thing you can do with it is call 911. I have to restore it from my iTunes, which is on my machine at home. So I’m without a phone today. Needless to say, I’m quite annoyed. The monkeys are getting angry that they have no cake and the forehead veins are begining to swell.
Ooops, I’ve just been informed that AT&T in Hawaii just went down, so it seems it’s not a fault of the iPhone. I wish tech support was aware of that before we erased my phone. I suppose I should have checked AT&T. Veins have subsided, but the monkeys still want their cake!
I’m amazed there aren’t more disasters in this world. Last week filling gas was the second time I’ve seen someone smoking at a gas station. The passenger was puffing away, hanging cigarette hand outside of window which happened to be the pump side. Previous instance a few months ago dude did stop smoking, by flinging the the still smoldering cigerette onto the ground of the filling station. Luckily I was done and I bugged out as I watched the smoldering stick rolling along the concrete.
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Dave had gotten the sudden mysterious urge for okonomiyaki, I guess that happens to all of us. We know Okonomiyaki Chibo in Waikiki, and excellent as it is, we decided to look into alternatives. But where? One place Derek knew of is closed. I learned of a small place in Waikiki next to a shop I did some work for, but there’s no parking. Then Derek mentioned a new place, Shouchan, in Puck’s Alley. Isn’t that near Kohnotori that we reviewed a few weeks back? Yes, and it’s not really an accident that a lot of places we go to are in this general area, it’s where we are at this time of the day. Anyway, we decide to check it out. It’s located on University, across from what used to be Varsity Theaters, up a few shops from Cocoichiban. I find Derek waiting outside. I look at the cloth banner and the first thing that comes out of my mouth is “Hiroshi”! It takes a while to realize it’s not Hiroshi Mayaki. Hiroshimayaki is the style of okonomiyaki served here. Continue reading ‘Hiroshi Mayaki, Shochan’
So, one of my left side rear brake lights has been out for a while. Been lazy, but safety is this month. Got home early tonight and checked it out as I was unloading cargo. Pull the socket out of light assembly. Hmm, the bulb is shattered, and the socket is rusted. Use a rag, crack of most of the other jagged bit of bulb left, and managed to extract the bulb. There’s water in the socket. I pull the other bulbs out, there’s moisture inside the lower housing, the other bulb and socket is rusted together. Continue reading ‘The Rice Lives’
I was going to rant earlier about the guy yelling out his car window calling me an a-hole for not letting the car in front of him turn into building driveway when there was no car behind me for the rest of the road all the way back to traffic light. But that annoyance went away already.
Instead, I’ll say, WTF? As I was going to leave Los Chaps after having dinner, my drivers side headlight was out. That wasn’t the one I messed with to put the zip tie on. Aw heck, that’s what I get for reusing old scavenged bulbs from the time both bulbs went out simultaneously. Such is life.
And so it starts, ever so popular with the “dorifuto” and wannabes, zip ties to hold together various car body trim bits. I just did my first one on the FX. The other night after I got in car to leave work, I turned on the headlights and something didn’t look right. Why was the office wall lit up. I take a look up front and my passenger headlight is cockeyed. WTF? I take a closer look and see that at one corner there is a plastic ball and socket joint where the light pivots about to aim, except its not a socket anymore. The plastic has cracked letting the ball free and the spring has pulled the light into a funky angle. For the time being I jammed a rag into the opposite corner to wedge the light closer to normal. Continue reading ‘Zip Zip’
I get home fairly early today, so decide to go out on a road spin on the 10th Anniversary Fat. It’s a nice night, temp is actually a bit warm, I’ll discover later that the winds are strong. I’m on skinny tires and spinningaway on the road like a roadie, it feels good. There’s early evening traffic out, but I’m fairly comfortable with it. I plan to just do some loops in Hawaii Kai. I pull over at the Hahaione 7-11 to adjust my seat height and angle. I’d earlier swapped saddles so needed to shake things down a bit. That done, I saddled up and headed back onto the road. I turn onto Keahole-Hawaii Kai intersection, prob the one portion that is a bit dicey. There’s a lot of traffic from Safeway and Cosco, it’s on an outside curve so cars want to wander to the right into you, the road surface is terrible (any surprise there?), and no one heeds the 25 mph speed limit. Coming from Hawaii Kai Drive and crossing with the light, it’s not too bad as you can usually get a fair way down the road before the bulk of distracted drivers from the shopping center catch up. Continue reading ‘Direct Hit, Tailgunner Daimler’
Past thursday culinary caper was Hale Vietnam at the top of Kaimuki. Been there a couple times in the past and the experience was good. Pretty good stuff at decent price was my memories. Continue reading ‘Hale Vietnam’