Just need to vent...

money is the only motivation trump-tim-cook-gift-white-house-apple

 

My son-in-law has been keeping an eye out for an older Toyota to buy for his daughter who'll be getting her driver's license soon.

Anyway, he spotted an older Tacoma parked with a For Sale sign so we drove over to check it out.

2003 Tacoma, AT but manual everything else (2-door access cab). 250,000 miles and wasn't near anybody's house. Walking around it, I noticed the driver's window was a few inches rolled down, that's odd...checked the door, unlocked! So looked around and the side, rear window on the passenger side was actually tapped shut, so latch must've been broken. Not a good sign....anybody who can't even get a simple window latch fixed probably didn't take care of that engine, either.

Anyway, then noticed they wanted $7,500 for the thing.....bummer...probably have better luck finding a much better older Camry or even an Avalon for that much!

 

Wow, the once-great Jaguar auto company committed suicide with their insane woke crap and, now, VW is following Mercedes-Benz with their ridiculous monthly-subscription scheme to, get this, unlock 27 hp for around $22 a month! Or you could just pay an extra $875 when you buy the car for a lifetime of sweet 27 horsies!

Oh, in 2023, Mercedes-Benz announced it would lock 60 extra horsepower behind a $90 a month subscription service.

You can't make this crap up!

Forget Netflix, Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription | Auto Express

 

Jaguar -> Ford -> Tata. Tata owns Land Rover in addition to Jaguar, and Daewoo (trucks and busses). Tata continues to make petrol vehicles besides electrics although the latter is their future.

If one is in need of a vehicle from a brand that has no electric cars, here are two mostly overlapping lists:
All the biggest car manufacturers that don't make EVs in 2024 - EV Drive Time
10 Automakers That Still Don't Have An EV On Sale

 

Drove 400 miles round trip Huntsville to Montgomery to visit:

• Left 9 AM and back home, 6 PM
• Manual driving in the parking lots to and from the SuperChargers
  • $6.94+$10.09+$7.74=$24.77 :: SuperCharger fees, ~400 miles, ~$6.20/100 miles
• Tailgaters
  • Getting off at next exit
  • Too lazy to change lanes and pass ... I change lanes and they scoot on by
• "White collar" pickup trucks
  • Full Self Driving doesn't care and I just tilt the rear view mirror to reflect back at 'em
• 100 F and Dog Mode kept them happy and safe
  • Need to keep them on leash at the receiver hitch so folks won't think they are abandoned

Bob Wilson

 

It has rained so much here on the NSW South Coast (Aust) that absolutely everything is water logged, the latest victim seems to be our motorhome. I have spent the day trudging through the mud puddle that was a front lawn at our friend's place, between the house power box, the input RCD in the side bin in the motorhome and the motorhome inside RCD, then repeat .... Even tried plugging into the V2L in our EV MG4, still no win, all in the pouring rain .....

Next will be the house batteries going flat I guess .... and no sign of the rain stopping for the next 24hrs, had125mm (5 inches) over the last week and 75mm today and possibly the same tomorrow .....

T1 Terry

 

A few months ago Nashville TN had hideous amounts of horizontal driving rain - days on end. Saturated the grout between bricks, intrusion into insulation, inner drywall, bubbled inner wall paint off. Several weeks later the mold remediation inner wall repair & new paint got things back in shape - only to have downstairs fire sprinklers go off (for no reason) & now we're starting remediation all over again. As they say, when it rains it pours.
. .

 

We're at slightly less than 44 inches for the year which is about average for our usual 65 or so total.
The signs point to a normal summer and an early cool (and hopefully colorful) fall.
AND....no tropical issues..... (yet...hopefully!)

 

Still raining, wife came up with an idea that just showed me how brain dead I've become "could we run an extension cord in through a window" That was after dark dinnertime, now we have a daisy chain of power boards strung up around the inside, each one running off the main power board so the 10 amp overload trip should keep us from overloading anything, the extension cords are 5mmsq conductor and 3.5mm sq conductor for the second section, so enough to carry 25 amps min, so no problems there, and the house supply for that circuit has a 16 amp RCD ... so no risks really .....

The extension cords are looped over the plastic Wheelie Bin for green waste the local council provides, so they should keep it out of the river/front lawn.

The ground is so wet and soft, I walked a few drain trenches from the house to the street gutter to get the water that overflows the roof gutters away from the house .... just hope we don't get any high winds, the ground is so wet the trees beside us will uproot for sure, but the roads are closed in all directions we could use to escape back to our new home state and town by the river .... we have seen 3 yrs of our new home town rain in the 3 mths we have been here .... well and truly over it, nothing like this when I left here 8 yrs ago, and I was born over here 70 yrs ago

T1 Terry

 

We're very dry and much, much hotter than usual for this time of the year. We haven't had any rain all summer until just a couple days ago. We're also under a stage 2 fire ban with a $1,000 fine just for not complying (and a lot more if one accidentally causes a fire).

 

Yep. I noticed it was 36 °C - 97 °F last Thursday where I was working. This is in the mountains in one of "the coldest" places in all of Colorado. Lots of us remember when it was rare to get into the 80's (27 °C and up).

Another gripe I have: technology. I just forced myself to buy another phone yesterday after using this one for the past 5 years. I feel like maybe it's a huge mistake. I might just send the new one back and keep using the old one, but the new one has features I feel I need.

 

yep, sounds like a mistake if you are on a budget. marketing has many people thinking that they need the latest and greatest.
it helps to keep the lower and middle classes in their place.

 

same weather (climate?) problems here in much of the northeast. drought for the last 5 or 6 years (i blame it on covid)
it's either extremely hot, or extremely cool, day to day.

 

I have a similar issue with an outside receptacle. Years of rain and weathering have made it rotten. It still lights a test light, but that says nothing for the current. Replaced.

 

I wouldn't say it's marketing, at least not completely.

One of the two features, FM radio, isn't even listed on any official site. But looking at the Motorola Moto G Power 2025 reviews, I see there is an FM radio app, and historically the phone has an actual FM radio tuner onboard that needs no internet to function. So this isn't marketing, this is just me wanting a feature this phone I've had for the past 5 years doesn't have.

The other feature is marketed, satellite connectivity.

Long story, not so short, my previous phone, the LG G3, had FM radio. I didn't think much about it when I got this Google Pixel 4a. A couple months with the Pixel and we had a mini natural disaster that wiped out all internet, phone and mobile services in the whole valley, except FM radio and satellite services, which, at the time, most were tuning into FM to see what the authorities were advising.

But the Pixel didn't have FM radio, and my only FM radio was either at my house, not my job, or in my car, and it wasn't safe to be out in a car, even just sitting listening to the radio.

But now that there's a phone that has both FM radio and satellite connectivity for $210 dollars (more like $265 after taxes, shipping and handling), I decided I might as well as get one. After all, I hate that my current phone that I've had for 5 years doesn't have FM radio and often carry around a separate radio on me. But that's just more stuff to pack around and is kind of a pain TBH.

 

Apple vs. Oppo:

Apple Sues Chinese Phonemaker Oppo For Alleged Trade Secrets Theft

Based on that it looks like Team Cupertino has a solid case.

Recast as a vent for here, I complain that 'oppo-research' has come to mean two completely different things