Engineering (2 comments)
I tried to go to work this morning, but found that my car wouldn't start. I'd noticed it was slow turning over yesterday, so it wasn't a complete shock. I went through the normal tests to determine that my battery was weak. The problem became pretty clear when I had the radio and radar detector going and I hit the emergency flashers. As many have heard, when my radar detector turns on, it speaks "testing *beep* *beep* *beep* system ready." In this morning's testing, I found that every time the emergency flashers went on, the radar detector flipped off, so I heard a loop of "testing *beep* testing *beep* testing *beep*."
I popped the hood to check on things. The fluid levels in the battery itself were low, so I asked the internet what that meant. As I'd expected, the problem could be fixed by adding water -- the more purified the better. I figured that the water from the brita pitcher should be fine, but I was at a loss as to how to get it into the six fill holes on the battery. I asked mel, and she's pretty sure she used the only funnels she had for candlemaking a few years ago and then threw them away.
I've been known to say "I've got an engineering degree and a pocket knife; I can do anything." That in mind, I decided to engineer something. I went with a drill to make a hole in a Za's cup, as the wear on my knife edge and my arm would have been annoying otherwise. But after mutilating a cup, stabbing it with a straw, and making the whole underside sticky, I came up with this:
It worked wonderfully, but the battery was still too far gone to start the car. Having already been clever, I took the coward's way out and bought a new battery when Jeff took Mel and me out for lunch (coincidentally at Za's).