Stoopid Humanz (Rant)

"functionoverfashion" (functionoverfashion) 08/15/2018 at 08:30 • Filed to: None

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But first, our loaner Mini:

That’s right, we had our new-to-us, 8k mile 2015 Mini for exactly something like about 10 days before we noticed water on the floor in the rear footwell. Not a little water. Enough to keep a youth soccer team hydrated for a whole season. Enough that they’re replacing the carpet under warranty and hopefully finding the source, and fixing it. My wife and I are both calmly accepting this as a Thing That Happens Sometimes and really hoping it’s not a recurring issue with this car. Please, no.

Meanwhile, the loaner is of course a fully-loaded 2019 and it’s making me want one even more (this is. of course, no accident).

Oh yeah my rant:

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you a modern marvel: the motion-sensing light switch. This is a delightful invention, one that should be deployed to every public restroom, first of all, and also to any room that you frequently enter with full hands, such as our laundry room. I did that a few years ago, and I LOVE how the lights come one when I walk in with arms full of laundry, then it just turns off on its own when I leave. Especially c oupled with LED bulbs, these are energy-saving and brilliant.

That is, u nless you put it in the shared “kitchen” in my current office space. There’s a little room with a sink, fridge, microwave, toaster - but oddly, no table or chairs - and I walk in every day with my dishes from lunch (I just eat at my desk so I can Oppo work through lunch). And nearly every day, I have to walk past the light switch into the dark room, put my dishes down in the sink, then go back and hit the on/off button on the light switch.

PEOPLE. The motion sensor turns the lights on when you walk in the room AUTOMATICALLY. And even more importantly, it turns them OFF after a few minutes of inactivity. WHY are you turning this OFF every time you leave the room. IT DEFEATS THE WHOLE PURPOSE.

A minor annoyance, it is. No doubt about that. But come on.

bhtooefr > functionoverfashion 08/15/2018 at 09:00

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There’s a few of those where I work, although they only have one button, and the button basically says “toggle the state now”, rather than disabling it entirely. So, you can turn it off as you’re leaving a room if you remember, but when someone else comes in a couple minutes later, it’s forgotten that it was turned off, and it works normally.

...of course, another site where I worked for a couple weeks, we found out that the lights automatically shut off at 18:00 , and the switch did nothing until you called a phone number to activate them. In the dark.

TheRealBicycleBuck > functionoverfashion 08/15/2018 at 09:04

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This is clearly a design flaw. The switch in our office has one button which will turn the lights on or off, but it’s really just manually tripping the sensor, not deactivating the switch . Humans have a difficult time making sense of the kinds of things.

LOREM IPSUM > functionoverfashion 08/15/2018 at 09:05

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I’m betting on the common BMW issue of the drain hoses for the sunroof cassette dislodging themselves. Instead of water draining to below car, it half asses it and drains it under the carpeting. Assuming this thing has a sunroof anyway, but should be interesting to find out wat they report as the cause.

Also, installed one of those sensor switches in the kitchen of my last place. The house had electrical issues though. Whenever it was set to motion mode and it activated, the light would strobe.

Chuckles > functionoverfashion 08/15/2018 at 09:09

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Putting these in public restrooms is fine as long as the shut off timer gives you sufficient time. I don't want to be sitting on a toilet in the dark just because I've been in a stall for more than 90 seconds.

functionoverfashion > Chuckles 08/15/2018 at 10:17

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haha, yes it should be something like 15 minutes to be safe. These are in most of the bathrooms around my work, and I’ve never had one shut off.

functionoverfashion > TheRealBicycleBuck 08/15/2018 at 10:18

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That’s how it should be designed!

functionoverfashion > LOREM IPSUM 08/15/2018 at 10:31

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I’m really, REALLY hoping they find a sunroof drain hose dislodged. Or something like that.

On that motion sensor: what kind of bulb was it? I’ve had issues with using a CFL for a motion sensor because the circuit had to pass a small amount of current through the light bulb itself in order to power the motion sensor, if that makes sense. So the small bit of current would cause the bulb to light up for a very brief moment every few... seconds? Minutes? I can’t recall the exact behavior and timing but it was weird, until I changed out the CFL.

LOREM IPSUM > functionoverfashion 08/15/2018 at 11:53

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In the kitchen I was actually using cfl’s at the time, which very well may have had something to do with it. I t may have been damaged because of that, because I ended up relocating it to the hallway and stuck an incandescent night light bulb in the overhead fixture for night time bathroom runs for kitty safety, and it was doing an odd pulsating there as well. Or maybe those weren’t a great bulb choice either, lol.

Good luck on the mini. Hopefully whatever it is they're able to easily and accurately locate and resolve it.

facw > functionoverfashion 08/15/2018 at 12:02

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With the ones at my office, hitting off seems to disable them for some amount of time (don’t know if it is strictly time based, or if there is a motion component too). Its a little tricky because if you’ve turned them off to lower brightness in a room, you don’t want them coming back on just because someone moves, but you also don’t want the next person to have to manually turn on the light after you’ve left. Whatever they do though, they seem to work pretty well for our conference rooms.

Highlander-Datsuns are Forever > functionoverfashion 08/20/2018 at 14:20

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I’ve had the light turn off on me while on the toilet. Thank goodness for back lights on phones.

functionoverfashion > Highlander-Datsuns are Forever 08/20/2018 at 14:43

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hahaha, oops on the timer for that one. I seriously think the ones in our bathrooms at work are 15 minutes. That’s a LONG time if you’re not showering