Just need to vent...

like 'intercourse', 'pregnant', and 'abortion', it's hard to use some words in polite company

 

In the 80s we had a somewhat naive criminal procedure Professor make a reference to mean one revealing their whole defense by using a shotgun phrase. He made the statement,
"they just shot their whole wad"
one smart alec in the lecture hall said loud enough for others to hear,
"I beg your pardon?"
Poor guy, laughter broke out

 

Okay...got another terrible report about our local Toyota Dealership. (Which changed owners and name about 5 years ago and has gone seriously downhill)

My friend is the service advisor at a local car repair place (and he's a mechanic but has a bad back...don't all mechanics have that?) Anyway, he had a 5-year old Highlander asking to have his SUV looked at. When asked why, he said he had just gotten the oil change at the above Toyota dealership and, get this, was advised to have the seal in his front Timing Chain replaced because of "the mileage" Yep, apparently you should replace a timing chain seal at a certain mileage! (Only $1,800....want us to start on that for you????)

Can you believe that?

 

Well, I chose to have the timing belt replaced on my 2000 Tundra last year because I did not want to depend on such old rubber. sometimes being proactive pays.

 

While shepherds in Jewry were guarding their sheep,
Promiscuously seated, estrangèd from sleep,
An angel from Heaven presented to view,
And thus he accosted the trembling few:
"Dispel all your sorrows, and banish your fears,
For Jesus your Savior in Jewry appears.​

 

Welp -- guess this is a boon, I am an old dude screaming at clouds, after all

-- drones getting ever more easy to purchase, and sortie times growing increasingly longer w/ ever-more-capable cameras, virtually regulation-free... makes me wonder about the future.

Am an ex-soldier, worked at an org in DC echelon-above-Corps, now defunct 2 generations (early '90s). Back then, the thought one could spend a couple hundred dollars to build the basis upon which you can literally attach grenades / RPGs / small arms, and infiltrate any location with abandon within the controller's range, was cartoon sci-fi... and abuse of which now being on-the-ground reality, chilling to contemplate. Can fly in windows and detonate indoors, chase and catch individuals on foot and vehicles at full-speed, even take out main battle tanks, ffs...

Ukraine's valiant and effective efforts against a more powerful military (and winning anyway) are to be lauded and respected, make no mistake. But tech advances are always double-edged... and everyone can see the arms race and what works, in real time... including all the bad guys -- which aren't restricted to the theatre of war. Even sixth-gen fighters planned for US inventory, will utilise AI-controlled drone escorts -- which if proven enough for combat use, can reconnoiter and even engage targets past the physical horizon of the manned mothership. This massively increases the amt of force one sortie can exert over a target area... and a massive multiplier for force-on-force engagement.

What will the future of combat look like, when you have to wear juuust the right kind of thermal barriers to IR detection (not total, that's what's allowing aforementioned 'stronger' infantry members above, to become targets to good-guy drone sensors -- they're too good at blocking IR, so show up like sore thumbs against higher background radiation)... must wear shrapnel-proof garments in the field at all times (not gonna happen when you have to dig foxholes in them, even at night)... and have no anti-drone weapons but your own small arms to defend with? (good luck trying to hit a well-flown attacking grenade drone with your rifle shots, let alone a sidearm -- unless it's literally hanging still in the air to let you hit it, or already damaged... shrapnel doesn't need nearly the accuracy take you and your closest friends, out of the game).

Doubly so, if a cartel decides to ape tactics from that conflict overseas... and exert such control on a civilian target.

It's all good and fine when it's happening to an enemy force... but what about the other shoe? Scary to think the only thing you can use to defend against even some of these, are shotgun pellets. And current iterations of those weapons aren't doing so well, in the hands of said 'stronger force'...

-- on a lighter note... really dislike most CPAP wipes.

For those not already familiar... CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) is the tech one uses to help with sleep apnea.Was diagnosed and found after nearly 30 yrs of suffering with shorter and shorter restful sleep... had another physical condition which made it worse, so had to get surgery for it. But was shocked at how not like my fellow vets' exps from 20 yrs ago, CPAP was for me -- they told tales of fighter-pilot-like masks strapped over your head that farted pressure past your cheeks all night, and the noise the things make are just as loud as snoring, so needed long hoses and getting out of bed to adjust or turn the unit on/off, just to be able to tolerate them in the room. That was the anathema of this setup, in 2025.

Anyway... all this equipment still needs tidied up regularly, not to make things worse (after all, you do exhale lots of moisture and thus your own bugs, into the hoses esp, so need soap/water scrubs and daily touch-ups to not become quickly pathogenic.

Holy shite -- the OEM main hose is 6' long -- and needs scrubbed the entire length, not to smell like death after a few days. Org that trained me to use this thing, says you need to use a long bottle brush, and scrub it out, every 4 days. After buying the tools and trying this out... holy moly what a PITA this is -- not helped by the claim 'oh, you can let it air dry, will take about 2 hrs' My arse... more like 5 hrs.

So obvi that wasn't going to work. I get 7 - 8 hrs sleep now -- not giving that up for anything / anyone, as my cognitives, mood, and immune response all shot up after not getting effing 3.5 hrs max a night. So had to find what everyone else was doing...

Well, CPAP wipes to the rescue. I can use this to get 90% of the pathogens out of my hoses, just with a probe to push it in to swab with. Non-isopropanol, rather phenoxyethanol, so doesn't degrade the silicone parts. Same kind of fibrous towel-like disposable sheets, so can disinfect the exterior parts I can reach with fingers first, then swab the two hoses with one wipe -- plus this whole proc takes 10 mins, and can hold off the shower-stall full-scrub to every 7 days, w/o any noticeable smell or performance deficit. Very affordbale pack of 200 is less than I thought -- sold.

Well... as usual, there are some caveats.

There's little surprise all the manufacturers of these products, aren't in the US. Turkiye and PRC are the main sources, neither of which give me much confidence for personal hygiene products, tbh (small arms? Sure, make them in Turkiye. Medical products? Nah. Actually prefer them made in PRC, really... which isn't a high bar these days).

One pack arrived with 1/3 of the wipes dried out, due to a failure in the seal, which like baby wipes is just a sticker over a hole in a plastic bag. Who the eff decided that an adhesive sticker was an appropriate seal, when the contents inside are supposed to be sopping wet surfactant? You can't wipe off any dribble that gets on this stupid sticker, because it'll stick to it, and ruin the adhesive. So you're forced to smoosh down this travesty as best you can, and hope it seals. The faster it dries out the more units they sell though... so low-investment plausible deniability in product form.

That'd be enough to bray about... but one mfr makes the hole so small, if the wipes don't peel off their neighbors perfectly (and rarely do), taking 2, 3, 10 more wipes out that thumbtip-sized hole... it tears. Now there's a permanent moisture leak to dry out the lot. They provide a plastic door a la baby wipes... but the adhesive it uses, tears off the plastic bag, negating any function to seal in moisture it pretended to have.

Wet Ones, the mist towelette company, has been using cylindrical soft plastic containers for decades. Roll inside of the wipes, you take the inside end, and pull it through a cruciate hole in the cap. Perforations to tear when they poke through the cruciate. Small cap over the cruciate, to seal moisture in. These have sat in my cars w/ 100F+ afternoon temps all day for a year, and never dried out -- good and moist to the last wipe. Why, tf, don't these goddamned outfits package my CPAP wipes in a way that's been reliable and cost-effective for decades?

Well, my verbosity only allows two bitches today, I guess Thanks for listening -- and thanks again if you can relate... the batshirt one or old man one, doesn't matter

 

Yep.
Since 1989, actually.
Welcome to the struggle.

@CPAP wipes.....
They ARE cost effective......just not for YOU.

@Drones....If you think that they're not regulated, then you may be a little uninformed.
They're like pistols.
You can make and use one at home with very affordable tools and....if you're blessed enough to live on free soil you can make AND own them legally.
It's WHERE and WHEN you use them that can get you across the breakers with state and local authorities.

There's a difference between something being 'legal' and being 'regulated'......or even WELL regulated.....

 

Futurist: Yep, I love my CPAP machine...and so does my wife, no more snoring from me! My insurance did replace my old Resmed 10 with a Resmed 11 but the water tank is just a little smaller so, sometimes, I would wake up early smelling a metal smell....water had run dry. (We can get down to 1-2% humidity here in the high altitude of Colorado.) So I researched and bought a CSpring MK3 tank that automatically refills the Resmed...works pretty good.

Onto my rant:

So my wife's 2024 Toyota Corolla Hybrid seems to need a new battery in the key fob...was acting funny.

So I picked up a package of 8 at the store, figured it's been over a year since I replaced them all....got the CR2032 which has been for every Toyota we've owned since 2008...need 6 for the fobs and the spares.

Think the 2024 Corolla takes 2032? Heck no....has a bigger one, CR2450.

Really, Toyota?