Poor Ol' Rooster

[MN-Skeptic]

I typically download the owner’s manuals for any new purchase. That’s especially good for cars because they don’t always organize them the same way I would, so the search feature is very handy.

[qbawl]

I typically download the owner’s manuals for any new purchase. That’s especially good for cars because they don’t always organize them the same way I would, so the search feature is very handy.

Also too since the manuals are designed to fit in the glove box the font size is not optimal for and the printing can be very light for highlighting. Downloading the PDF version solves these issues quite nicely.

[keith]

No, I can't.

But I might learn something new. Lemme read the manual. I'm still in the stuff about how the car uses cameras and radar to avoid collisions. I think it will punish me for tailgating, but I never tailgate anyone ever, so I'll probably never find out.

There's a whole separate manual, not the main, 664-page main owner's manual, but a 323 page thing called NAVIGATION AND MULTIMEDIA SYSTEM OWNER'S MANUAL.

And I'll get there.

It makes sense that Widnows would write stuff in the order you tell it to. If you tell it to copy the 'Music' folder to the USB it should write ...\music\beatles\... before ...\music\zztop\... right? See right there on the File Explorer beatles comes before zztop! Well no, it doesn't (necessarily). That's just the sort order that Widnoze File Explorer displays it. The copy function doesn't pay any attention to that whatsoever. It writes stuff in the order it wants to, and that is the order that it appears in the underlying file system table of contents, which is, in the simple general case, the order that it was originally written.

And that is also the order that my car's audio system reads it back out. So if I have 470 albums, and all I see is the album name, and I'm currently playing, say Deep Purple Live in Japan and I wanna play Mike Oldfield Tubular Bells next, and my dashboard only shows 3 titles at a time, how many spins do I have to go through to find it? And is it closer to go up or down? So I specify exactly what order I want to write out the artists folder (I don't care about the artist/album order - Santana is my longest list and thats only 25 or 30) and get a report that tells me what album is which number.

There are 477 albums in this report:


This is the most detail my dashboard shows me:


(sorry about the sideways photo, I couldn't be bothered to rotate it)

[tek]

Off Topic

sorta offtopic..
I was psyched that the new chariot has Android Auto, but after the first few times I pretty much stopped using it.
The problem is that, at least in the implementation in this vehicle, when Android Auto is running that is ALL that is running.. it takes over the screen UI and fudges everything else up.

OTOH, the new chariot has a passenger-side screen with an HDMI input.. jack in a firestick, connect it to my phone hotspot, and ms.tek can watch netflix while we're tooling down the road - provided we have decent cell service.

[Foggy]

If you can put music on your phone you can probably play it on android play (most new cars support apple or android play).

This car has neither ... yet. I'm working on that. It was a rental car, and won't let me install software because it thinks I'm a renter.

[Maybenaut]

If you can put music on your phone you can probably play it on android play (most new cars support apple or android play).

This car has neither ... yet. I'm working on that. It was a rental car, and won't let me install software because it thinks I'm a renter.

That’s a bummer! I hope you can get that worked out.

[pipistrelle]

Off Topic

sorta offtopic..
I was psyched that the new chariot has Android Auto, but after the first few times I pretty much stopped using it.
The problem is that, at least in the implementation in this vehicle, when Android Auto is running that is ALL that is running.. it takes over the screen UI and fudges everything else up.

OTOH, the new chariot has a passenger-side screen with an HDMI input.. jack in a firestick, connect it to my phone hotspot, and ms.tek can watch netflix while we're tooling down the road - provided we have decent cell service.

I think you can download some content for offline viewing.

[Foggy]

Nobody is watching video in this car unless they do it on their own device, because there's only one screen and I'm driving.

[Foggy]

Amazon has several things it is recommending for me. This one is worrisome: a movie (or series?) called The Summer I Turned Pretty. Amazon is really getting pushy about telling me to watch it.

Why is Amazon so invested in making me watch this? Is it because I'm 70 and they think I must be a lecherous old geezer dreaming about the high school girls out there in the world? If I want to watch pr0n, I know how to do that now. What does this show have that's better?

[Foggy]

Yep gotta be careful with straw hats.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_Hat_Riot

Okay, that was weird. Earthlings are so crazy, so dangerous.

And I could never wear a straw boater. That's just not my look.

[sugar magnolia]

Yep gotta be careful with straw hats.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_Hat_Riot

Okay, that was weird. Earthlings are so crazy, so dangerous.

And I could never wear a straw boater. That's just not my look.

And how perfect that the judge was named Hatting!

[Foggy]

I did a lot of testing yesterday - I do my own research AND my own testing, that's where most of these scars come from - and I give up on the USB stick approach.

1. The car doesn't have a way to disable autoplay. If you put a USB stick in, it plays the first song it finds, which in 99.99999% of cases, is not the song I want to hear.

2. It didn't recognize my 125 GB thumb drive, had to use something smaller.

3. Using the interface to choose a song I want to hear would require me to pull over to the side of the road for safety. I don't want to have to pull over after every song. It's annoying.

4. I have a wonderful tool, a combination 4 GB flash drive and beer bottle opener, on my keychain. Solution: copy 20 or so songs to my keychain beer opener, stick them in. They'll be a personalized, curated list, and I can use a different list mañana, it's easy to copy to a thumb drive.

5. Problem with that solution: Autoplay, and the damn car does autoplay of the first song again. Drive for ten songs out of 20,fill up with gas, when you turn the car on again it plays Song 1.

6. So I'm just gonna work on the Connected Services thing, and get Alexa going.

[bill_g]

Can't you turn the USB over and play the other side? Oh, nevermind.

This technology stuff is supposed to save us time and effort you know.

[Foggy]

Can't you turn the USB over and play the other side?

I put it in upside down and it was playing the music backwards.

[bill_g]

Can't you turn the USB over and play the other side?

I put it in upside down and it was playing the music backwards.

I buried Paul.

► Show Spoiler

[Foggy]

... number nine ... number nine ...

[Estiveo]

My 18yo Element has great speakers, including a subwoofer, but I rarely use the CD player, and axed the XM/Sirius subscription when I upgraded to my current, highly advanced, sound system back in 2009:

Estiveoshot_20230830_135536.jpg (43.04 KiB) Viewed 2032 times

[keith]

I did a lot of testing yesterday - I do my own research AND my own testing, that's where most of these scars come from - and I give up on the USB stick approach.

Yeah, the smoke test is always the bestest way.

3. Using the interface to choose a song I want to hear would require me to pull over to the side of the road for safety. I don't want to have to pull over after every song. It's annoying.

I hear you. That is indeed a severe problem. I have learned to just let it play sequentially after I pick the starting point, or to set it to play all tracks in a random order. Usually when I set it to play randomly, it gets to something where I think "yeah, more of that" and I start it playing sequentially from there. That process is simpler and safer than trying to find an album while driving.

5. Problem with that solution: Autoplay, and the damn car does autoplay of the first song again. Drive for ten songs out of 20,fill up with gas, when you turn the car on again it plays Song 1.

Geeze that's even dumber than mine. Mine at least remembers where it left off - across car stops, audio system turn offs, source changes. Everything except USB music stick swaps.

You sure there's no "Audio Settings" where you can tell it to play tracks in random order, or all tracks top to bottom, or repeat, or stuff like that? What happens when you are playing a song, you switch to radio for the news, and then switch back to USB? Does it go back to start again? That is a really, really brain-dead audio system, if so.

[keith]

I just did a search on "Brain dead car audio systems", just to see if this is a wide spread phenomenon.

This is what I found:

PRIUSchat: Brain-dead audio system

(after first describing the order of play issue which is what I jumped through hoops to solve)

...Another annoying issue is that if when I get to my destination and turn off the power, the next time I start up the car, it will randomly lose it's position and re-start the current track. When I'm listening to 3-minute(ish) songs, that isn't a problem, but when I am listening to my Old Time Radio USB, it is annoying to have been 25 minutes into a show, and then have it restart again (and again, and again). The fast forward speed is relatively slow as well.
...

And the reply from another Prius driver:

unfortunately, it's the way all toyota infotainment systems have been, stuck in the dark ages

Didn't you say your new chariot was a Toyota?

[Foggy]

Yeah, a 2022 Camry. That's OK, because:

1. I can carry a lot of my favorite songs on the beer opener, and play them when I decide. It's not heavy, and,

2. The real key is to keep working on ToyotaConnected, then I can tell Alexa to play anything from Amazon Music. They have even more music than I do.

[Foggy]

Yeah, my genius idiot Numbah Two Son Alex Todd Bob (presinut of the Maffs Clubbers at UNCW) ... anyway, I sent him a series of texts last night, planning a road trip to see his genius cousin Mary in Norfolk, get back to me soonest, eh what?

What.

Ol' Wifehorn reports that he dropped his phone in the sink and we have a spare which we will overnight to him mañana. He sent her an email or we wouldn't know (nobody ever confesses to me, not even my own father when he totalled his final car).

But anyway, Numbah Two can't read texts or talk on the phone. His birthday a week fum today. He's supposedly gonna be 22. I don't buy it.

[RTH10260]

*** insert lame joke about long form b.c. ***

[Foggy]

He was born in Fresno four days before 9/11, and he had some sorta elevated protein or sumpin', they kept him in the NICU for ten days. So I was in a hotel room in Fresno with ol' Wifehorn on 9/11, and we watched it on the morning news.

But it's easy to figure out how old he is. He's a four day old 9/11 baby.

[Foggy]

Yeah, my week so far:

Mon: Worked all day. Ack! Shoulder dislocation, maybe two! Ack!

Tue: Hurts like hell. Wifehorn doing everything, and I'm disabled. Bad day (well, lots of time with dad).

Wed: Rode home, ol' Wifehorn drove. Went to the doctor. Yay! Shoulders aren't dislocated, I don't need any more surgery!

Thu: Hay wait a minnit, the doctor is all done and I STILL hurt this much? "Your arms are good as long as you don't actually use them for anything" kinda thing? 'Cuz that ain't cool. I have to use my arms!

Fri: OK, maybe couple days rest will help, then therapy, then start to build muscle again. I'm gonna get through ...

[AndyinPA]

Ups and downs, but as one gets older, the downs seem to outweigh the ups.