Egregious Thoughts

car troubles and the olympics
For some reason my car's battery died today. This is in the Insight, Honda's first hybrid gas-electric vehicle, which has both a small 12 V battery and a much larger 144 V system for the electric motor assist. I drove it at lunch and everything seemed fine, but when I went to go home after work it wouldn't start. I called

decibel45 and a quick jump started it. My theory is that the 12 V battery has a problem and when it does, it also affects the larger assist system. I'll have to look into this further; fortunately there is an 8 year warranty on the powertrain (if it happens to be a powertrain problem).

Decibel was heading to meet

snaxxx and

dopplertx for dinner, so I decided to go too. I had turned off my car to fix something in the engine compartment that was not properly fastened, and then it wouldn't start again. So we ended up taking his truck instead, and came back for my car later.

After dinner we went to

dopplertx's place to watch the Olympic opening ceremonies on his HDTV system. There were some glitches in the broadcast, but it sure looked good!

For me, the most heartwarming scene in the opening ceremonies was not the lighting of the torch, nor the raising of the Olympic flag, nor the performance by Bjork, but the thunderous reaction of the crowd when the Iraqi athletes entered the stadium. Each of them looked extremely happy to be able to represent their country at the games, and they clearly had the support of the spectators. I think they got the loudest applause aside from the Greek delegation.

Other interesting entrances were Korea and Taiwan. I missed seeing it because I was out of the room, but apparently both North and South Korea entered together under the name Korea, and carried their flags side by side. Taiwan entered under the name "Chinese Taipei", at the insistence of mainland China, and were not allowed to carry their national flag (they carried the flag of their Olympic committee instead). The world is making progress, but still has a long way to go.