The Importance of Curing Hiccups

It was a beautiful warm spring night, and I was riding my trusty little Yamaha home from a church meeting on familiar but glorious country roads.   The flower-sweetened wind was in my face, the stars were bright in a moonless sky, everything was a dream of serene motoring bliss, and all of a sudden, I had the hiccups.

"You have got (hic) to be kidding me," I said, aloud, into the inside of my helmet.  How could such a sublime moment be interrupted every ten seconds by (hic) this incongruous and irritating spasm?

I couldn't, honestly, remember the last time I'd had the hiccups.  Many (hic) months?  A year or so?  

When I was younger, in my late teens and early college years, they'd (hic) show up on the regular.  Sometimes, they'd stick around for a couple of hours, which was as frustrating as any tic (hic) can be.

Fortunately, I knew how to fix it.  Not with that glass of water upside down trick, which 1) had never ever worked for me and 2) might be a little technical while (hic) riding a scooter at fifty five miles an hour down darkened roads.

Defeating hiccups is simple.  The trick, or so I discovered years ago after researching the mechanism causing the error, is control over one's diaphragm.  The hiccough itself is nothing more than a spasm of the muscles that control that membrane.  The semiautonomous organic subroutine that involuntarily breathes for us glitches out, and you get this (hic) twitch in the system.  It needs to be reset.

To fix it, I breathe all the way out.  Not just a little, but (hic) all the way, forcing every last possible cubic centimeter of air out of my lungs, putting intense and conscious demand on the processes that manage my breathing, flooding the system with demand input and the resultant neurotransmitters.  Then, with my lungs fully voided, I attempt to breathe in, while at the same time closing my mouth and not allowing air through my nose.  Again, I put as much effort into that as I can, while simultaneously resisting the intake of breath.  The nervous system that serves the diaphragm is overwhelmed with input, washing away the errant process with the outflow of conscious demands, and the glitching hic tic is...wait for it...wait for it...gone.  

Erased. Reset.  Fixed.

It works, thank the Maker, even when riding.   Before the lights of the next town came into view, I was fine.

Much of the anxiety that pervades our modern and technological existence comes from our overwhelming sense of that we can't fix anything or do anything meaningful, this gnawing awareness that we have no understanding of how even the most basic elements of our existences work.   

Every waking moment of our day, that ignorance is pressed upon us and whispered in our ears by consumer culture.  Do you really know how your phone works?  How does the fuel that comes to you get there?  How does your food get produced?  How are you warmed on a cold night?  And if any of the myriad socioeconomic processes on which we depend failed or glitched out, could you even begin to know how to fix it?  How would we even live?

That extends to the state of our souls.  Why do we struggle so?  Why are we so quick to anger, so quick to misunderstand, so paralyzed by fear, so overwhelmed by even the smallest thing?

Everything around us is obscured from comprehension by systems that have been designed to be irreducibly complex, utterly beyond our ability to influence or repair.  The box is closed and sealed, and we're not even allowed to see how it works lest the observer effect voids our warranty.  It sabotages our resilience, and undermines our sense of ourselves.

Which is why we need to, insofar as we can and wherever we can, reclaim our sense of agency.  Learn to garden or how to stitch a garment.  Figure out how to replace an outlet or a fixture.  Change the brake pads on your car.   Replace the wheels on your mower.

Or know, with certainty, that you can stop those hiccups.

Strange Rituals and Cheat Codes

This last weekend, my wife and I said goodbye to the aging minivan that had been a fixture in our family for the last decade.  It was a Honda Odyssey, of course, and just as it had replaced the decade-old Honda Odyssey that came before it, so too was it replaced by a decade-newer, lower mileage used Honda Odyssey.  

I mean, I'd been hoping for a midlife convertible, but danged if minivans aren't just so relentlessly useful.  Where once it was for carrying kids and stuff, now it's for carrying elderly parents and stuff.  

The Van is dead, long live the Van.

The new van is a 2023, with just under 31K miles on it, and that means...even though it's a lower trim level...that it's brimming with features that are new to us.  Like, say, auto start/stop, that unjustly maligned system that saves owners five to seven percent at the pump.  I mean, sure, if you've been bought by the oil industry, it's a bad thing.  But for anyone who cares about pinching nickels, it's a great feature.

If it works.  Which it did not, not for the first few days of driving.  

Every time the engine should have shut down at a stop, it didn't, and instead flashed an alert that the "system wasn't charging."  We'd noticed it during the test drive, but figured it would resolve.  It did not.  It kept flashing the error, even after forty minutes of driving.  Even after an hour.  The engine was warmed up.  The alternator should have charged the battery fully.  Which meant that something somewhere was wrong.

There's a warranty on the vehicle for the first month, but I really didn't feel like taking it in if another solution could be found, so to owner's groups I went.  There, I found the usual kvetching and complaining and frustrations with dealerships.  Mechanics seemed at a loss, as did the manufacturer.  

But in all of that, there were claims of a strange and magical solution.

An owner by the name of BadWolfOdyssey (A Dr. Who reference, I assume) had discovered how to get the system working again, without a trip to a mechanic or dealer.  Dozens of commenters sang the praises of the method, swearing it worked perfectly for them.  

Here's what they did:

1. Drive the Van for fifteen minutes.  
2. Stop in a parking lot, checking that as you do so the error message is showing.  
3. Turn off the Van.  
4. Pull the hood release latch and open the hood.  
5. Get out, and fully prop the hood.  
6. Then get back into the Van, close the door, and turn it on again.  
7. A "your hood is open" alert shows.  
8. Turn off the engine, get out, and go shut the hood.  
9. Return to the Van, close your door, start it.
10. Hey presto, the system will work again. 

That sounded as mechanical as standing on one foot with your finger on your nose and saying "Start/Stop" seven times while hopping in a circle.  It felt like a secret cheat code for a video game.   It was wibbly wobbly, as one might expect from a Dr. Who enthusiast. 

I tried it on the way home from church on Sunday, and it worked like a charm.

Why?  It's not clear.  It likely interrupts whatever software glitch causes the error code in the first place, in the same way that breath control exercises can prevent hiccups.  Some sensor doesn't pick up a necessary state for reactivation, and the system locks, until you do the silicon age equivalent of giving it a good whack in just the right place.

It was, whichever way, a little bit delightful.  

If only there were similar solutions to other problems, ritual movements and arcane positionings that would reset the deeper failings in our glitchy human code.

If only.

Father Timex

It's been just under two years since Dad passed away, and I'm still wearing his old Timex.

I took it off his cool lifeless wrist on the day that he died, and put it on my own.  It's told the time with reasonable accuracy ever since.  A simple mechanical watch serves many purposes.  Telling the time, of course, but other purposes that have value in our digital age.  It reduces the number of times per day I feel compelled to look at my magic devil box, which is a blessing.  It ticks audibly, as the mechanism physically marks away the seconds remaining in my own mortal coil.  This feels real and tangible, an analog actuality in a vaporware age.  It does one thing well, without distraction.  These are good things.  

That's not to say there aren't challenges with an old watch.

The watch will need a new battery soon, as the Timex IndiGlow (tm) feature for nighttime timekeeping has started to dim.  It's started slowing down a little bit, requiring readjustment through the little twisty knob on the side.  Again, a new battery is all that's needed. 

The primary fail-point, though, has been the band.  It's a simple leather thing, faded and worn.  The watch lug loops have given way multiple times, the leather yielding to entropy, the machine-stitching well past its functional lifespan.  I've been tempted, each time, to replace the band.  

I mean, it's a band.  Just a strip of cheap hide.  It's not expensive.

But like everything that matters, the watch isn't just about function.  It rested on my father's wrist for decades, and the band...being organic and slightly permeable...carries with it more of him than the metal watchbody itself.  It's stained and suffused with his sweat.  Some of his DNA, no doubt, is sequestered away in the folds and cracks of that old leather, as surely as it is in my own flesh.

Letting go of the band, or so my utterly illogical sentimentality dictates, is letting of a substantial portion of that intimate reminder of him.  So what to do, when that band fails?  

Given that my leatherworking skills are non-existent, I've taken the easy route, applying a classic Dad-fix to that memento of my own father: epoxy.  Just glue it back together.  It works, right up until it doesn't.

Last week, my most recent repair failed, and the watch fell from my wrist.  Undamaged, thankfully, but the whole leather lug-loop was gone.  There was nothing left to glue, nothing left to wrap around the bar of the lug.  This, I thought ruefully, might finally be the end of the band.  I let it set for a little bit, as I mulled my options.

A fierce sentimentality can be the mother of ingenuity, and time for reflection stirred a thought.  

The band was two stitched pieces of leather, and were I to carefully slice them apart and trim away one half, I could construct a new lug-loop.  Simply slice, apply epoxy, and boom.  It'd be back on my wrist.  Why not?  If it failed, I'd just sigh and get a new band.  If it succeeded, I'd still have that soft worn remembrance snug wrapped around my arm.

So I sliced it carefully, opening up the seams of the leather.  I whittled about the edges with the blade, and then...with vise and glue and time...remade what had failed.

This Father's Day, that old Timex still rests on my wrist.

The Van of Theseus

It was decision time this last week, as our aging Honda Odyssey sat in the shop.   

After buying it used in late 2013, we've had it for twelve years, and it showed every one of those.  There are minor scrapes and dings and divots on the exterior from our now grown boys bumping into things during the process of learning how to drive.  Inside, it's still functional.  No Nav.  No Carplay or Android Auto.  Just Bluetooth for audio.  Cloth seats, still fine but careworn.  It's gone from being our primary family truckster to our secondary vehicle, our utility people-schlepper, mulch carrier, and furniture mover.  At just under 90,000 miles on it, could go another 90K.  Hondas roll that way.

But not without major work.

The front axle was the reason I'd taken it in, grinding  more and more audibly as bearings and other internals failed.  Driveline losses meant we were seeing about a 20% decrease in fuel efficiency.   The rear suspension had been shot for a while, pogoing about and thunking as both springs and rubber mounts had given way.  But now the head gasket was leaking visibly. The timing belt was fraying. 

To be reliably drivable, it was going to need what amounted to an overhaul.  Thousands and thousands of dollars of work, getting perilously close to the value of the vehicle.  The shop where we've had it repaired before was not even faintly pushy about proceeding.  "This is a lot," they said.  We'd be replacing so much of the vehicle it would barely even be the same van when they were done.  A "Van of Theseus," so to speak, and that comes at a nontrivial price.  

But replacing it with a new-used van would be tens of thousands of dollars.  And it would add to our insurance bill.  And it would quadruple our county property tax.  

All around us, the local economy is beginning to fray.   The tens of thousands of jobs vanishing from the DC job market wasn't going to have an instantaneous impact.  But now, as those who've been jobless for months are starting to burn through their emergency reserves?  Now things are shifting.  More houses on the market.  More people preparing to move to greener pastures in search of work.

The markets, in which our retirement savings are invested?  They're not lookin' so hot.

We're fiercely conservative financially, and so could afford either, right now.  But keeping that cash around for the famine years approaching seemed like a prudent idea.  Dropping thirty two grand on a used van that we'd only infrequently use seemed unwise.

So the choice was to repair and restore, and to take the less expensive course.

The Ape and the Machine

A while back, my phone stopped charging.  I was on a road trip with family, and though the phone was plugged into a 12V to USB connector, it just wasn't taking a charge.  I'd watch it struggle, the charging graphic flitting on and off as I navved our way home.  It didn't lose charge, but neither could it seem to bump up above 65%.

It's a cheap refurb Samsung, because that's how I roll.  Sure, it was a hundred and seventy five bucks, but it still chugs along nicely at a fraction of the price of new.  Refurbs do that, right up until they don't.

It was, rather obviously, something to do with the connection between the phone and the charger cable, which is the increasingly ubiquitous USB-C.  Either the phone was dying, or my cable had given out.  When I got home, I slotted a USB fast charger into the phone, and that worked like a charm.

So the issue was the cable, or rather, the pluggy bit.  Well, good, I thought.

Cables are cheap, and we dispose of them much as we dispose of things we perceive of has having little value.  This was the same one that had come with the phone when I bought it, so it wasn't exactly built to last.

I could just order another one.  It's what we do.  You don't bother fixing such things.  

Only, looking at it, I found myself wondering what a fix would entail.  Did I really need to add more waste to the world?  Here, an object so complex that for most of human history, creating it would be beyond the ken of even the most skilled artisans or scientists.  It is capable of transferring both power and gigabits of data, carrying as much information in a second as all human writing from our first scratches on cave walls through to the founding of the American republic.  Why dispose of it?  What was most likely wrong with it?  

For the twenty four pins on interior of the two-sided USB-C connector to work, they've got to come into contact with the pins on the receiver.  The connector, being made of inexpensive metal, is entirely capable of deforming over time, loosening to the point at which connections are inconsistent.  That diagnosis exactly matched the nature of the failure.  

So fixing it should be straightforward.  Just apply force.  But how to do so without breaking it?  I have no pliers that are adequately delicate, and the odds of just mashing it into uselessness seemed high.

Then I realized, well, no, I did have what I needed.

I picked up the cable, and delicately placed the connector in between the canines of the right side of my mouth.  I touched the tip with my tongue, feeling the coolness of the metal.  A tongue is a remarkably sensitive organic instrument, really rather excellent at perceiving small things and infinitesimal variations.  

Then I bit down, applying a tiny but slowly increasing amount of force to the center of the connector.  A moment passed, and another, and then my tongue felt the metal give, ever so slightly, the very smallest of movements. 

I held it up and peered at it through my reading glasses.  No visible change.  Good.

When I plugged it into my phone, it worked perfectly.

A win for the higher primate, I suppose.

Kintsugi and Kraal

In a metaphor

That has launched

A thousand feelgood sermons

And a thousand thousand feelgood memes

There is a technique in Japanese pottery

Kintsugi

In which a shattered pot is repaired

With molten gold

And becomes a thing

Of even greater beauty

Broken and

Beautiful

We sigh

Which makes me think

Being the sort of idiot I am

Of Maasai houses

In Maasai villages

Kraal, they are called

And Kraal are made of 

Mud and

Sticks and

Grass and

Bullshit

Because that is what is there

So when your home breaks

Or falls apart

You can always

Just patch it up

Good as new

With more

Mud and

Sticks and

Grass and

Bullshit

And I think

Being the sort of idiot I am

Hey

Whatever works.