Happiness is a dead-screen L2 charger that works

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bwilson4web

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 30, 2016
Messages
805
Location
Huntsville, AL
In Huntsville there are two "Blink" EV charging stations 3 miles from home. The one with the working screen charges something like $0.02 per 2 minutes and I used it to test my Blink card a couple of weeks ago. The other one has a dead screen ... and works ... and does not (because of the broken screen) ask for a card.

So I loaded up my wife's dogs to take them for a walk. I connected to the 'dead' charger and walked them about ~0.3 mile (~0.5 km) to a well lit, non-smoking, local bar that has sushi and is open to 1:00 AM. Tied the dogs to a handicap reserved sign out front and went in to enjoy the delights. Did you know small dogs are a chick magnet?

So I ordered a club sandwich for my wife and we power walked back towards the car where I of course was now perfectly safe to drive the dogs back to the bar for the sandwich that was large enough everyone got some.

Near as I can tell, my future, daily commutes will cost about 1.6 kW assuming I top off at home. Or I could just consider 98% SOC not just good enough but perfect! (Thank you Dick Hicks.)

Bob Wilson

ps. Many years ago I worked for General Electric and Dick Hicks was a classic GE program manager. We were in the 'war room' giving our status and Hank, the software manager was reporting progress proportional to the schedule until about a week or so before his delivery was due. Then it was 'we had a set back and the software is only 89% done.' The next week, '92%', and the next, '94%'. The fourth week he reported '96%' and Dick Hick announced (think Marine drill instructor voice.)

Ninety Six Percent is not good enough! It's f*ckin PERFECT! Ship it!

Actually once we got the software in the hands of the integration and test team supported by operations including me as the operating system programmer, we were finally able to get a working version up. My modest contribution was diagnosis and fixing the link overlays ... from a time when computers were different.
 
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