The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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9:03am on Saturday, 5th April, 2025:
Anecdote
I was reading the manual for our new car (359 pages, but hey, I'm a programmer, I read manuals for fun) and discovered that there's a place for storing sunglasses in some models. I'd looked for such a cubby hole already and not found one, but the instructions said that the panel it's behind wouldn't open unless the car was parked. I hadn't known that when I looked, so I went to check again.
I discovered a button in the roof about where the glasses-holding section should be, so I pressed it. Nothing happened, so I pressed it again a few times. Whenever I press random buttons and nothing happens, I always make sure to press them an even number of times, in case they're a toggle, so I must have pressed this one four or six times.
It looked as if there was some writing next to the button, but the car was in the garage and it was too dark to read it even with the interior lights on, so I got a torch and shone that on it. Now, the writing was clear enough to make out.
It said: "SOS".
Fortunately, you have to hold the button for a second before it actually summons help. Otherwise, I might have inadvertently manifested a paramedic or two, or perhaps three.
I tell my students to read all of the question in an exam before they start to answer it, but I don't tell them to read the entire paper prior to writing a single word.
The manual mentions the "Glasses Box" on page 81. It mentions the "eCall-SOS Emergency Assistance" on page 271. A mention in the former section that there might be another button up there would have been handy.
Oh, and the car isn't a model with a glasses box.
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Copyright © 2025 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).