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August 18, 2018

Indicator Lights on BMW X3

There's a lot of warning/indicator lights on the BMW X3 dashboard that are lit up, and I'm trying to get them to go off. I was able to get some of the lights to go off on the X3 as follows:
1) Added a quart of oil to make the oil light go off.
2) Added water to the radiator to make the radiator light go off.
3) Added water to the windshield wiper reservoir to make that light go off.
4) Put on my seatbelt. That made the seatbelt light go off.
5) The Tire Pressure indicator is on. It's hard for me to even grasp how this would work. Like....are there tire pressure sensors in the tires sending data via Wifi to the car's computer? This one is difficult for me to grasp. This video explains how to reset it, so I'll try this tomorrow.


Posted by Rob Kiser on August 18, 2018 at 12:44 AM : Comments (0) | Permalink

August 15, 2018

The Shortest Summer of my Life

Jennifer went to summer school this summer, so that means that she had about 2 weeks off before summer school started. And maybe 2 weeks off before the fall semester started back up. So, all summer, I thought about things we could do that would be fun, so we wouldn't waste our time together. I thought we'd go white-water rafting and things like that.

On Saturday 8/11, Jen called me in a panic. Somehow, she was supposed to be check out of her place in Boulder by 12:00 noon, and was somehow unaware of this. So, I hopped in the Tahoe and pulled the army trailer up to Boulder. We loaded everything into her VW Tiguan, my Tahoe, and the army trailer. Then, rode to her mom's place. Jen spent the night there, and I drove home alone with the Tahoe and the army trailer, with expired plates on the truck and trailer. Somehow, I made it through the canyon to my house. Put the army trailer in the barn. So, we'll store her stuff there until she moves into her new place in Boulder in a couple of weeks.

Then, I'm not sure when she came back up...maybe on Sunday night?

This is what we did:
We couldn't go white-water rafting because all of the water was gone from the melted snow and Clear Creek was just a trickel.

Mon 8/13 -
Every time we leave the house, we have a little ritual where she puts out a bowl of dog food for Clifford and he used to eat the food, instead of chasing us as we left the house in the car. But now, he's older and smarter, and he watches us as we leave, instead of eating the dogfood. Like...we're not fooling him at this point. He's well aware we're leaving.

On Monday, we did BEAU JOS and Baskin Robbins.
We went down to Lakewood and got mani-pedi's at INail & Spa. Then we hit the Pacific Ocean Int'l Marketplace. On the way home, the Tiguan failed to proceed and, with a carload of melting groceries imported from Asia, we used Uber or Lyft to get home, and had the Tiguan towed to Grant's Automotive Monday night.

Tue 8/14 -
In the morning, we learned that Grant's Automotive doesn't work on VW's, apparently. So we had the Tiguan towed to My Auto Service Center down the hill.
We ate at Yianni's Gyro Place in Lakewood.
Then, we rode horses down at Bear Creek Lake Park.

I was able to get some of the lights to go off on the X3 as follows:
1) Added a quart of oil to make the oil light go off.
2) Added water to the radiator to make the radiator light go off.
3) Added water to the windshield wiper reservoir to make that light go off.

Wed 8/15 -
We went to the Colorado Adventure Center in Idaho Springs, and did the SKY TREK.

Then, we dropped off my AT to put the 4th set of tires on it. (Came w/ new tires in July of 2017, then new tires before I left on my trip in Nov. Then, new tires again earlier this year. Now, smooth as a baby's ass again.)

Then, we left the AT at the shop in Evergreen and rode down the hill in the BMW X3 and picked up her VW Tiguan at My Auto Service Center. It had thrown the alternator belt, apparently. She rode to her mom's place in her VW Tiguan, and I rode home in the X3.

And when I got home, I couldn't help but see how Cliffie felt. Finally, I grasped things from his perspective. He knew we were leaving him whenever we put food out on the patio. But he didn't chase us when we left. And he knew we were leaving.

Now that I'm looking at his bowl, I see that he never even ate the food we put out to trick him when we left.

And now, it dawns on me....in the end, Clifford wasn't the one that was fooled. Clifford went with her. He's with her now. And I'm all alone, looking at his bowl of dog food he didn't touch.

Continue reading "The Shortest Summer of my Life"

Posted by Rob Kiser on August 15, 2018 at 7:42 PM : Comments (1) | Permalink

August 9, 2018

Garmin Montana 600

I'm going to copy my tracks off of the Garmin Montana 600, but first I want to just connect the unit to the PC via USB and see what's on there:

In the Garmin GPX Archive, I see the following:

J:\Garmin\GPX\Archive\2018-07-18 16.31.51 Auto.gpx
J:\Garmin\GPX\Archive\2018-07-18 18.29.43 Auto.gpx
J:\Garmin\GPX\Archive\2018-07-18 22.00.46 Auto.gpx
J:\Garmin\GPX\Archive\2018-07-21 06.49.15 Auto.gpx
J:\Garmin\GPX\Archive\2018-07-27 12.04.03 Auto.gpx
J:\Garmin\GPX\Archive\2018-08-09 09.28.33 Auto.gpx

So, today is 8/9/2018. So, it looks like I have some tracks on here. A few anyway.
So, my assumption is that it's automatically archiving these tracks, and storing them in this directory.

I'll copy them off into the following directory: S:\_2018\Garmin\GPX_Archive

Now, I'll use my old tried-and-true method of copying the gpx tracks off of the Garmin Montana using EasyGPS.

Launch EasyGPS.
Click "Receive From GPS"
Check the boxes for "Tracks" and "Saved Tracks"
Now, I see my tracks in EasyGPS listed as follows:
Current Track 09 AUG 2018
2018-07-18 16.31.51 Auto
2018-07-18 18.29.43 Auto
2018-07-18 22.00.46 Auto
2018-07-21 06.49.15 Auto
2018-07-27 12.04.03 Auto
2018-08-09 09.28.33 Auto

So, it looks like today's ride was broken into 2 tracks for whatever reason:

Current Track 09 AUG 2018 12:00 163.27 miles 7346 trackpoints.
2018-08-09 09.28.33 Auto 76.24 miles 2700 trackpoints

So, it looks like the "Current Track" wasn't copied over when I did my export initially above.
So, I'll try to graph out my ride from today.

https://www.relive.cc/

Relive is absolutely useless. They don't explain how to upload my gps tracks to relive for graphing. Well done.


I managed to save off my tracks from today as follows:

s:\_2018\garmin\2018-08-09 09.28.33 Auto.gpx

Somehow, I did manage to merge all of my tracks from today into this one file. not clear how.

It would be nice if I could upload the gpx tracks to Relive, but I'm not clear how to do this.


Posted by Rob Kiser on August 9, 2018 at 7:53 PM : Comments (0) | Permalink