Fog Light DRLs

I managed to get my hands on a copy of the wiring diagram for the fog lights and as a bonus the headlight circuits.* I’ve had it for a while, but today I decided to attempt the mod again (my first ended in failure.)

With careful study of the circuit wiring diagrams it looked like for the fog light relay to trip, turning on the fogs, it needed +12v coming from the headlight relay and a ground available when the headlight switch is in low. My ideal situation would be to have an ignition on twelve volts applied to one end of the relay and a ground applied to the other whenever the lights are off. This would disable the fog lights as fog lights, but make them daytime running lights – always on when the car is running and off at night.

First thing I decided to do was cut the red/yellow wire. I really didn’t want to, but I could never get the relay loose from the connector, so snip I did. Hooked up the barrel splice to the +12v wire I found in my original attempt and the red/yellow wire running into the relay connector. Figuring that this would not change any operation as the ground from the headlight switch was still missing, I tested the setup. Much to my surprise when the key was turned to IGN the fogs came on. Not only were they on, but the light in the switch was on, even though the switch was not depressed. I tried turning the lights on, another surprise awaited, as when they came on, the fogs went off (along with the light in the switch.) So I pushed in the fog light switch and the fogs came on, they also went out when I turned on the high beams, just like they are supposed to.

Following the diagram out, I must be getting a ground from somewhere I’m not supposed to be, through either the left front low beam or somewhere in the instrument cluster. Seeing as my +12v is only applied when the ignition is on I won’t be running down the battery or anything. The current draw to trip that relay is probably small enough that I won’t do any damage to anything, but I would still like to know where it is coming from. When we go for a drive tonight I’ll see if I can figure out which one by looking at the headlight and the instrument cluster in the dark.

Where Did The Pictures Go?

Just back from a Master’s Miata Club function. I took a bunch of pictures, but when I stuck the card in the reader, Windows Explorer showed no files. The root directory pie chart thingie showed that the drive was nearly full, yet there were no files to be found. Crap! Google searched for smart media file recovery. The seventh one down on the page led me to PC Inspector Smart Recovery 4.44. Not only did it work like a charm, it was FREE.

The day was saved, too bad not many of the pictures were worth saving. A couple did go into the Picture Pile (a folder kept on my desktop) and might show up if they fit a theme from an upcoming photo meme.

Finally, Portable Sunscreen

Saw a display in the supermarket tonight that proclaimed, “NEW! Portable Sunscreen!” Thank god, I was tired of having to schlep back to the car to dispense more sunscreen from the 50 gallon drum the stuff usually comes in.

Hello G Force Cable

On the night I had cable internet installed I had to call the tech support phone number to set up an email address. Some one helped me nearly right away. The next two times I called, I gave up after waiting 5 or so minutes. The paranoid side of me figured that they know when somebody is being installed so the first call get answered. After that they’ve got you, so you can be safely ignored. The other 2 times were evenings, which I figured were peak times, so I thought I might try in the day. This call would be the proof or dis-proof of my theory. I guess I’m just paranoid, I got a quick answer today.

As if I must always have set amount of email addresses, to replace the recently departed Brian_the_Red@bigfoot.com address, I almost signed up for one of these, world’s longest alphabetical email address. Instead I opted for Brian_the_Red [at] gforcecable [dot] com.

Bye-Bye Bigfoot

Way back since whenever I’ve had a bigfoot.com email address. It was a thing of beauty whilst ISP hopping in the beginnings of the internet revolution. It was free and I could forward and distribute and all kinds of other helpful stuff. Over the last decade bigfoot?s free services have dwindled, a victim of their own success. For about a year or so now I have been limited to 25 pieces of email a day. Trouble with that is, with the increase in spam a person had to be lucky to be in the top 25 to get a message to me. I stopped using the address, but kept checking for old times sake. Today I terminated my account. The end of an era.

While following the steps to end my association with bigfoot, not once, but twice I had to click OK on a screen that warned: “By terminating your Bigfoot For Life account, you will no longer receive offers from Bigfoot’s Promotional partners. However, you will also have to forego the benefits of using any of Bigfoot’s services which are available only to those with active Bigfoot for Life accounts.” Did they ever think that maybe it was those promotional partners junk mail that made the service unusable?

Happy Birthday Diane

My little sister is 47 today. Hope you got our silly little card. Hope you didn’t eat too much cake and ice cream. Hope you celebrated more than I do for my birthday. Usually the day itself it is no big deal for me because it is near the end of a month long holiday that Donna and I call birthanniversarydaymonth. It runs from Donna’s birthday at the end of August, through my birthday towards the end of September to our anniversary at the end of September. It is 30 days of hijinks, dining out and rampant spending on ourselves and each other. I can hardly wait until it happens again….

Palace Coup

In the little over a week since Tech Day and my bemoaning the lack of sound improvement the new muffler made, it is starting to come around. Getting just a little throatier. Still dead quiet at idle and cruise (which is good,) but it sounds a bit better under acceleration now. If it improves just a bit more I can forget all about that intake business.

On that very same day I named the car, The Emperor, but have not been able to refer to it as such since. My guess is that it may now be what the car calls itself, but to me it has no name. I’m just not the type of person to name inanimate objects. I feel that this is my biggest failure in Miata geekdom, on par with my inadequacy to obtain sci-fi geekhood because I haven’t been able to read (nor watch the movie of) Frank Herbert’s Dune.