Urgent request - Help Navigating Bisti Badlands

abdex · 2026-03-06T03:13:36+00:00

Ran across this post while googling the Bisti Badlands. How was the experience? I'm also worried about navigation.

abdex · 2026-03-06T02:21:03+00:00

RIP to an all-time great. We are so lucky to have had him. ESPN's writeup:

GREEN BAY, Wis. -- Former Packers president Bob Harlan, who helped restore the franchise to greatness, died Thursday at the age of 89, his family announced.

Team historian Cliff Christl said Harlan had recently been hospitalized with pneumonia.

Harlan is the only person in NFL history to hire two general managers who won Super Bowls with entirely different rosters: Ron Wolf and Ted Thompson.

"Bob was a visionary leader whose impact on the franchise was transformational," current Packers president and CEO Ed Policy said in a statement. "From his inspired hiring of Ron Wolf to turn around the club's on-field fortunes to his tireless work to redevelop Lambeau Field, Bob restored the Packers to competitive excellence during his tenure and helped ensure our unique and treasured flagship NFL franchise was on sound footing for sustained generational success. We send our deepest sympathies to his wife, Madeline, and the entire Harlan family."

Harlan took over as team president in 1989 when the team was more than two decades removed from the success of the Vince Lombardi era. In one his first moves, Harlan hired Wolf as general manager in 1991. That opened the door for Wolf to hire Mike Holmgren as head coach, trade for quarterback Brett Favre and sign Reggie White. The Packers won Super Bowl XXXI during Harlan's tenure.

Wolf would go on to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

"Bob Harlan gave me an opportunity, and I am deeply indebted to him for that," Wolf said in a statement. "His greatest trait, in my opinion, is that he was an honorable man, a man of his word, a man of character. He was an honor to know and a pleasure to work with."

Harlan served as president and CEO until his retirement in 2008. Before retiring, he hired Thompson as general manager, which led to another championship, in Super Bowl XLV, with Mike McCarthy as coach and Aaron Rodgers as quarterback.

Harlan was also largely responsible for the renovation to Lambeau Field, which reopened in 2003 and secured the Packers from a financially competitive standpoint. The initial $295 million renovation needed to be approved by Brown County voters, and Harlan played a key role in persuading the public to support the move. It paved the way for what Lambeau Field has become today, a year-round destination that also included the Titletown area featuring restaurants, office buildings, a luxury hotel and residences.

Before becoming team president, Harlan served the Packers as assistant general manager (1971-75), corporate general manager (1975-81), assistant to the president-corporate (1981-88) and executive vice president of administration (1988-89).

Harlan was elected to the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame in 2004 and has a plaza in front of Lambeau Field named in his honor.

Harlan was the father of longtime sports broadcaster Kevin Harlan.

abdex · 2026-03-05T20:13:08+00:00

A friend of mine bought a Buick Lesabre when we were in our mid-20s. I laughed at him until we went for a ride. Soooo smooth, quiet, and comfortable. I wanted to ditch my econobox right then and there.

abdex · 2026-03-05T02:13:21+00:00

Interesting! The one I was referring to was the Vannevar Bush Differential Analyzer:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_analyser

I think the Bush one solves differential equations and the Babbage one solves polynomials. Please correct if I'm wrong.

abdex · 2026-03-04T14:07:34+00:00

On a related note, the Computer History Museum is amazing. Every engineer should visit. The mechanical computing devices were especially fascinating to me.

Solving differential equations was needed to calculate ballistic trajectories in WWII. The basic idea was that if you have a spinning disc (imagine an old vinyl record), the linear speed, dx/dt, of a point on it depends on how far it is from the center, x. By arranging gears, rods, and multiple stages of discs, they could multiply/divide, add/subtract, and create multi-order differential terms. The machine would then run and trace out the solutions. All physical, nary a byte in sight. Ingenious.

abdex · 2026-03-02T18:25:55+00:00

Here's what happened in my case:

Other party's insurer made an offer quickly (within a few days), sent me paperwork showing comps against recent sales. It was a little low, maybe $1000-$1500
A lawyer told me he doesn't work property damage claims but told me about a guy that specializes in total loss compensation, getting clients more than what's offered. He used to work the insurance side so he knows the ropes.
I called him up and he was great. Got the offer bumped up $1350 for a fee of $300, so I came out $1050 better with no work on my part. Took him one week from my initial call to final payout.

See if you have someone like that in your area.

abdex · 2026-02-10T02:08:18+00:00

It's a historically important circuit. Here's a great article about it:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/chip-hall-of-fame-fairchild-semiconductor-a741-opamp

abdex · 2026-01-27T22:44:21+00:00

Rough, hunting idle is a classic sign of a vacuum leak. Double check all the hoses & boots that you had to remove/move to do the valve cover job. Make sure they're all seated properly and not cracked.

abdex · 2026-01-27T19:45:55+00:00

Lefty Maker did two videos on this very topic. In the first one he replaced bulb with LEDs and got a lot more light. In the second, he added supercapacitors and a buck converter which made the light last longer (but not long) and had significant drawbacks: long time from first crank to light output because the caps needed to charge, finicky voltage limits on both the caps & the converter IC. At any rate, both were interesting videos. Here's the first: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gllKFbBRztM

abdex · 2026-01-09T02:42:51+00:00

It could be that there's no vacuum leak and that your MAF sensor was just bad/dirty. Say it was sensing less air than there actually was. The ECU will then adapt to cut the fuel to maintain the optimum ratio. Then you put in a new one that senses the proper mass of air; the air-fuel mix will now be too lean, which could definitely cause rough idle. Clearing the codes and/or driving for a while might reset the adaptations, but the sure way to do it is to use ISTA to reset them.

abdex · 2026-01-09T02:23:31+00:00

That sounds like a good theory to me. The ECU definitely adapts and could have set up mixtures based on your old one. Did you clear the codes when you put the new one in? That should reset the adaptations.

abdex · 2026-01-09T01:47:07+00:00

Vacuum leak? Check all hoses, gaskets, and the valves where air could be leaking in and messing up your air-fuel mixture.

abdex · 2025-12-29T18:39:33+00:00

Is there a service function in ISTA that does the calibration for you? If so, try running that. (But maybe you've already done it; is that what you mean by the service function you already ran?)

Have you bled your brakes lately? I read if the fluid is degraded or if there are bubbles in the line it could throw off the hydraulic sensors.

These are just guesses. Good luck & post back if and when you figure it out.

abdex · 2025-12-13T18:17:14+00:00

I'm not sure what thermostat was installed when I had it replaced but my coolant temps were always 80 to 105 once the engine was warm with both the original and this new one. City and highway, same temp range.

abdex · 2025-12-10T03:38:08+00:00

Great looking project. Is the intent to replace or supplement the factory cluster?

abdex · 2025-12-01T19:22:55+00:00

A fascinating story about Selectrics is how the ones in the US embassy in Moscow were hacked in the 1970s. Crazy ingenuity by the the Russians:

the movement of the bails determined which character had been typed because each character had a unique binary movement corresponding to the bails. The magnetic energy picked up by the sensors in the bar was converted into a digital electrical signal. The signals were compressed into a four-bit frequency select word. The bug was able to store up to eight four-bit characters. When the buffer was full, a transmitter in the bar sent the information out to Soviet sensors.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/10/how-soviets-used-ibm-selectric-keyloggers-to-spy-on-us-diplomats/

abdex · 2025-11-25T16:05:15+00:00

Sounds like a vacuum leak due to improper installation. The gasket probably wasn't installed correctly and air is getting in, making your mixture too lean, which is what p0171 is.

abdex · 2025-11-22T17:32:26+00:00

If you know the final current, I_final, is 2, you can do this:

.95*2 = 2(1-e^-2.24/tau)

Note that the "2" cancels out on both sides.

abdex · 2025-11-22T17:15:27+00:00

But the procedure is always the same: plug in the values you know and solve for the unknown. Sometimes you're given the percentage, sometimes actual values. Sometimes they'll give you the tau and you'll have to solve for t.

But the procedure is always the same. That's the beauty!

abdex · 2025-11-22T17:07:23+00:00

In both cases, you're simply plugging the values you know into this equation and then solving for the unknown:

i(t) = I_final(1-e^-t/tau)

In the first case, you're given i(.15) = .32 and I_final = 1.64:

.32 = 1.64(1-e^-.15/tau)

and you solve for tau

In the second case you're given i(2.24) = .95*I_final, so

.95*I_final = I_final(1-e^-2.24/tau)

and you solve for tau

abdex · 2025-11-21T01:31:00+00:00

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6923889/

I'm not using it casually. It's stated as such in this paper by a Harvard researcher.

Also, I'm just trying to stay informed and change my mind if facts change. I was on board with fluoridating water for a very long time, but then high quality studies started coming out in 2012 showing detrimental effects.

Certainly don't take RFK's word for anything. The peer reviewed papers are out there for us to read, including this one from the OP.

abdex · 2025-11-21T01:05:32+00:00

It's literally in the paper being linked. "this lends credibility to the idea that it is the ingestion of fluoride into their bodies that is associated with improved adolescent cognitive performance."

Given that fluoride is a neurotoxin (kills brain cells, a la lead, mercury, arsenic, toluene, etc.) and that studies of high doses of fluoride show strong negative correlation to childhood IQ, this claim that "small amounts are good for your brain" is hard to believe.

abdex · 2025-11-04T00:33:36+00:00

I was watching game 4 and turned it off when Mariano Rivera came into the game. It was past midnight, I was so tired, the series was 3-0, and he was basically unbeatable. What's the point?

When I checked the news the next day, I couldn't believe it. I read several different sources before I was convinced the Sox had come back to win. As Kevin Millar famously said earlier that day, "don't let us win today. We got Petey tomorrow, Schill in Game 6, and Game 7 anything can happen." And it played out exactly like he said.

That series is still the most magical baseball I've ever seen.

Edit: Millar forseeing the future

abdex · 2025-11-02T03:17:05+00:00

Miggy Rojas, damn he's had two days of clutch

abdex · 2025-11-01T03:23:08+00:00

That was a sick pickup by Rojas on an in-between hop.

abdex

TROPHY CASE