Carl Hutzler's Blog

From an email my father sent me….

How smart is your right foot?
1. While sitting at your desk in front of your computer, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles.

2. Now, while doing this, draw the number ’6′ in the air with your right hand. Your foot will change direction.

This will confuse your mind and you will keep trying over and over again to see if you can outsmart your foot, but, you can’t. It is pre-programmed in your brain!

And there’s nothing you can do about it! You and I both know how stupid it is, but before the day is done you are going to try it again, if you’ve not already done so.

Apple is an awesome company, but they have really been f-ing the consumer when it comes to their ipod dock connector. They have been changing the way it works and disabling many accessories that consumers have bought over the years. And for the most part and from what I can tell, there are very few legitimate reasons Apple is doing this.

I won’t go into every example (different charging voltage, different docks for different ipods/iphones, encryption chip to view video, etc) but I will tell you that it pisses this guy off. I have “fixed” my accessories several times to make them work again. And it is a pain in the ass that I don’t wish to repeat. Why does Apple insist on f-ing everyone who bought a car adapter for their expensive factory radio? How about those speakers with docks (BOSE, etc) that don’t work anymore? Special headphone jacks (original iPhone)? Why does Apple insist on making a simple USB charger not work unless certain other pins are held at specific voltages? This was the reason I will never buy Motorola phones again (they will not charge via USB 5V to a computer without a driver installed for that phone!)

Apple claims to be a “Green company” but the amount of material going to landfills because Apple wants more money from their accessory “Made for Apple” program is down-right criminal. The AG for California should look into it :-)

OK, enough of the bitchin’. I feel better now.

So on to the latest chapter in the refuse to re-pay Apple for a cigarette lighter adapter saga…. A number of years ago I bought a Belkin Auto Adapter. The adapter was nice because it was a single connection to my ipod and it allowed for line out as well as charging.

I ran a standard 3.5mm headphone to the back of my stereo in my car and I had a nice system for listening to music. Even better was that the Belkin had a special feature that would pause the iPod when 12V was cut to the cigarette adapter (so when I got out of the car, the iPod paused). This was a great feature which saved the battery on the iPod (from just running down) and also allowed me to start listening to the song or book on tape, etc where I had left off.

Two months ago I bought an iPhone 3g. I already knew there might be an issue with charging the phone as I had heard that for some time now, Apple had stopped supporting Firewire syncing and more recently did away with the extra circuitry for charging off of 12VDC (firewire). I did not know 100% if the Belkin would have the issue, but once I plugged it in, I got the warning that “iPhone will not charge” from this accessory.

So I did a little research and found a few places that sold a converter that had a female dock connector on one side and male on the other. You plug it in and it takes the 12VDC and chops it down to 5VDC (along with the various resistors you need to get the damn iPhone 3G to charge). So I spent $20 or so on a Griffin converter thinggy. I wasn’t happy about it but I had already looked inside the Belkin CLA (Cig Lighter Adapter) and did not see a way to fit a DC to DC converter inside. For $20, it also came with a little dock like thing which I plan on using in the car. So, I was happy.

But when I got the Griffin thing and tried it, I got another warning. The dreaded “This accessory is not made to work with iPhone”. It was charging, so I knew the Griffin thing was working. But what was this other warning? The Belkin lineout was working just fine as well…but ever time I plugged in my iPhone I had to clear that damn warning. Everything worked but the software on the iPhone 3G would always pop this warning.

After a search of the Internet, I found out I was not alone in my frustration. But I had trouble finding a solution until I found this forum. It was all about the issue and many people wanting to use the LOD (Line Out) feature on their iphone 3g but seeing this error. A number of people were saying that instead of the 1M ohm that the Belkin used to tell the iPhone what type of adapter it is (with that special pause feature), the iPhone 3g wanted to see a 68K ohm resister. And while a lot of people claimed it worked, others claimed it did not work…or worked sometimes.

So I tried it and found that it worked on my test bench. I was happy. I put the cig lighter back together and tested it in the car. It did not work in the car! I could not understand. So I went back inside and it was working/failing intermittently now back on my test bench with my 15VDC power supply. I tried a bunch of experiments. Finally I just hooked up a potentiometer to the accessory pin on the dock and tried adjusting the resistance slowly around that magical 68K mark. I found that 68K seemed to barely work on my test bench. But when I was actually testing in the car (which has a slightly lower voltage – most cars are around 13.5 volts) that 68K was not enough to get the line out to work and avoid the warning message.

What I found was that something around 75-85K ohm seems to work and be reliable. I ended up using exactly 78K and so far it looks happy.

I will post this link to the forum and see if this write-up helps some folks.

Yesterday my son told me that there was “one more thing” about the bike story. Not only did the boys who stole his bike get in trouble for the whole thing (police, parents, etc), but they also got fined $48 each for not wearing helmets while riding a bike!

Photographs are damning evidence, aren’t they ;-)

Thank you, Office Bacon. You rock.

It has been a week or so since my son’s bike was stolen so I decided to try and work the system a little. While the police have been very helpful, I was getting the idea that their priorities were getting in the way of my priorities…getting the bike back.

So I printed out a few 8×10 glossy photographs of the kids and brought them to the local middle school. The principal and security guard did not initially recognize the kids. On a whim, I went to the high school even though I thought the kids were not old enough to be in high school. Luckily, the “School Resource Officer” (SRO) was there. He is a Fairfax County Police Officer. I guess for a high school of 1800+ students, they need a full-time officer…sad but true.

Anyway, Officer Bacon was very interested in the photos and he thought he knew who it was. I left and he pulled a couple of kids from class and grilled them a little. But the kids flatly denied any knowledge and the officer believed them. He apologized to the kids and got them back to class.

He then went to the middle school where I had been earlier. This time, one of the staffers recognized the “other” kid as one of their students (the friend of the kid riding my son’s bike). They pulled him from class and talked to him. He quickly identified his friend who was riding my son’s bike as a student at my son’s school!! All the way back to Dogwood :-)

Officer Bacon, now hot on the trail, drove over to Dogwood and found the culprit who took him to the bike which was hidden in his friend’s back yard. The kid said he bought the bike from his friend for $5 (the friend who just ratted him out). The officer told him that he could write him up for possessing stolen property and gave him a pretty good talking to (I hope his parents were involved and I imagine they had to be).

The officer then showed the bike to my son who was in school and he was very happy to see it! And Officer Bacon drove the bike over to my house and dropped it off. A good guy and much appreciated.

Thus ends the tale of the stolen bike.

Oh, and I put a new lock on it!!

My son started riding his bike to school about 6 weeks ago. Two or three days ago he lost his bike lock and he asked for a new one. I did not yet get a chance to buy him a new one and today his bike was taken from the school bike rack. He was bummed but had the chance to report the crime to a police officer who was at the school on other routine business at the time.

When he got home, I had the car ready for a little “site seeing” tour of the neighborhood around the school. I mean, if I were a kid that just “acquired” a new bike and it was a nice day like it was today, I know what I would be doing!

The kids were excited at the chance to find the bike. Oh, and along for the ride was my 11 FPS Nikon D3 and 70-200mm f/2.8 lens. Just in case we happened to find the culprit enjoying my son’s ride. 12MP can be damning evidence indeed!

We drove around for about 15 minutes before we came to the end of a small townhouse cluster next to the school. We saw a kid getting on a bike that had been on the ground. We got a little closer and the kid started to ride away. I thought it might be my son’s bike and handed the camera to my son to try and get a shot. He fired away, but we only got a distant, blurry shot. I called the officer and left a message as to our location and that we might have seen the bike. But I was not 100% sure as he road away fairly quickly.

I parked the car and waited nearby. We saw the kid ride by on the path a couple of times. So we decided to get out of the car and go play on the little tot playground and wait him out. Sure enough, within minutes the kid and friend came by again. This time I got ‘em.

After the kids road past, my kids and I left and got in the car and drove out to the main road where we called the police officer again. She called back and said an officer had been dispatched to the location (she was busy and could not meet us). Within minutes the other officer came to our location and took a full report. She then went to stake out our man.

Hopefully we will get the bike back soon. I told the officer I did not want to press charges if she would promise to scare the stuff out of the kid. She smiled and promised.

I told my son never to take the law into his own hands…which we did not. And I told him to be careful pursuing a criminal…especially an older kid or adult who might retaliate. But for this this silly issue, I think we did the right thing and I don’t think the kid will have any idea how he got caught.

Is it not enough that the major airlines treat coach customers as third class citizens in the check-in line, the baggage check line, boarding sequence, and on the plane with a lack of leg room and service?

But now they are playing some really silly games by having separate “entrance ways” for coach vs business/first class complete with a red carpet. Keep in mind that these separate entries are not separate lines as they are not even open at the same time! Basically the first class people board first by walking across the red carpet. Then the airline employee closes off that path and opens up another path RIGHT NEXT TO IT! for the coach people to walk through. I mean it is right next to the other “red carpet” line!! :-)

I bet the first class people feel almost as silly as I did (as I am sure the employees do). For my part, I walked down the red carpet anyway just to viva la difference!

And can you imagine why everyone hates the old incumbent airlines?

(click to enlarge)