Tips from a Prius owner

I've driven a Prius for the past four years, and I have these two tips for other owners.

Over the holidays one of my brothers left a reading light on in my car, and it caused my battery to die. Neither of my brothers admitted fault. I've jump started a few cars before, and so I wasn't worried about fixing it.

Some quirks about the Prius, when the battery is dead:
* The car can only be unlocked with the metal key, that is a part of the normal key
* The car will be stuck in park, and unable to change to neutral
* The trunk can't be unlocked, because it only has a power lock


So I popped the hood, and couldn't find the battery anywhere. Weird. I read some of the owner's manual, and I found out the auxiliary battery is located in the trunk. Weird. Since the trunk can't be unlocked, I tried crawling in from the back seat, and trying to jump start the battery directly. This just seemed really awkward to have jumper cables inside the car. So I googled "How to jumpstart a Prius", and I found this diagram. So the car has jump start hookups under the hood, even though the battery is located in the trunk.

Once I jumpstarted the car, I found out that all of my settings were erased. The most important setting being the beeping that occurs when the car is in reverse. One of my friends used to call my Prius a golf cart, and the car beeping in reverse was the punchline. So here is the link to disable that annoying beeping.


Disable reverse-beep in a Prius
Jumpstart a Prius

The Vanishing Point REMAKE

The Vanishing Point (1971)
The Vanishing Point (1997)

I have to rant about this, because it is really upsetting. When a classic movie is remade, it needs to be treated with care and respect. Whoever remade The Vanishing Point decided to burn it to the ground to collect on the insurance money.

Original Plot:
The main character, Kowalski is a car delivery driver. He bets his drug dealer some amphetamine pills that he can drive a car from Colorado to San Francisco in 15 hours. Car chases ensue.

Remake Plot:
The main character, Kowalski is a car delivery driver. His wife is pregnant, and in the hospital. He is trying to drive to Boise, ID to see her. Car chases ensue.

The original movie was about freedom, and the death of the 60s. It had an important statement. The remake has the camera work of a made for TV Lifetime movie. It is just pathetic.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies MOVIE

Today I read that there is going to be a "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" movie, and that Natalie Portman is going to star in it. I think she is perfect for the role.

CNN Article

Tron Legacy

Check out this movie poster.

http://www.heatvisionblog.com/2009/12/tron-legacy-poster.html

How could this not be awesome? I'm EXCITED!

Interview Question

A few days ago I went to an interview with Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems in LA. After the interview, there was a series of info-sessions, and then a bus ride to a tour of a manufacturing plant.

On the bus there was this girl behind me who kept talking about one CS interview question. She was so pleased to have gotten it right, and she really thought it was the best part of her interview. She thought the interview went great, and was expecting an offer. She went on and on about how hard the problem was to solve, and how she almost didn't get the correct answer. She got a hint from the interviewer asking what operations could help solve the problem. Then she explained the question, which happened to be fairly common. And then she explained her answer.

I didn't have the heart to tell her that not only was her answer absolutely wrong, but she demonstrated a profound misunderstanding of the actual problem. So much for her great interview...



The problem: Using C, given two variables a=10, b=15 swap the values without using any temporary variables or pointers.

Her solution:
a = a/2 * 3;
b = b/3 * 2;

Real solution:
a = a XOR b;
b = a XOR b;
a = a XOR b;

Zombieland

Hell yeah!

Syntax highlighting test

This is a test to see if I setup my blogger template correctly to preform syntax highlighting.

public static void main(String args[]){
  System.out.println("Hello World");
}

Edit: Success!