• 8 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • Anecdotal story: I found on a vacation with no lights and no internet but lots of physical activity it just happened by itself.

    Every night I fell into bed exhausted and slept deeply shortly after sunset. Every night in the middle of the night I woke up to go to the bathroom and wandered around for an hour or two like a Shakespeare character, then fell asleep for another shift until dawn.

    Did not notice any effects besides being well rested from getting plenty of sleep which was unusual for me at the time.









  • It’s fun to drive a manual. It’s very engaging in the literal sense of the word; in order to do it well you have to stay constantly involved and pay attention.

    It used to be that there were other benefit to manual transmissions — you could get your fun engagement and also say you were getting better performance or saving gas or saving money. In these modern days though if you still buy a manual you’re pretty much only doing it for the fun factor.

    I guess putting a manual imitation mode on an EV is just the same — fun factor only for nerds who like that. Though how they can take themselves seriously with no clutch pedal to botch the shift I don’t know.

    Me personally I want to see them take that all the way — give me a Ford Model A mode with manual choke, and carb adjustments on the steering wheel! Give me a manual timing advance! Let me know how my forefathers felt while driving!

    I started this post as a mockery but now I actually want that hm…



  • If it cost more than half, get rid of it at the first opportunity.

    I don’t think this part is really right. Buy a newer car because you want a newer car (and can afford it) or because your old car can’t do the job you need anymore. Newer car is almost never going to save you money.

    If you have an old paid-off car that is worth basically nothing on paper but in good shape and runs well for you, and it needs a repair, it’s almost always going to be cheaper to do the repair.

    If you get a more expensive car from a dealer (new or used) the car payments and interest are so much higher than even ongoing frequent repair costs it’s just crazy.

    Even in OPs story replacing the engine — I don’t know what else was wrong with it — but if they put $6K into a new engine and next year $1K into brakes and next year $1K into tires that’s still way less money than just three years of interest payments on a nice new CRV. That’s not even counting the down payment and the principal!!

    You might have lots of reasons besides money to replace a car, but that’s a question whether the cost is worth it, not a question of whether it’s cheaper

    The place in my mind when the old car is no longer economical to repair is when:

    • The repair can’t really fix it eg the body is rusting away etc. Car is done unless you rebuild the whole thing, too bad time to say goodbye

    • frequent breakdowns, even small cheap easily fixed breakdowns, mean you can’t get to work and lose money or risk your job (consider if the breakdowns are related cause though — maybe you need to replace all old rotted rubber hoses and exposed gaskets in the car all at once and it will be reliable again? Making an unreliable car become reliable again requires you or somebody you trust knows something about cars to decide; most people can’t do this)

    • the repair (including rental car or lost work due to downtime, which can be more than the actual mechanic cost but totally counts just the same as a cost to you) is more than the cost of whatever vehicle you’re going to replace it with — this… mostly doesn’t happen. putting $6K repair plus $800 for two weeks’ car rental into replacing the engine on a otherwise-$10K old Versa is still cheaper even than buying somebody else’s $10K old Versa in running condition (by $2200 + tax + registration) — let alone a newer car.



  • Not at all close to death because I had a partner to help me out and was close to a shore near a road, but I think this is the closest I’ve come:

    Capsized my touring kayak in glacial lake water without a wetsuit when a sudden gust of storm wind blew me over. Climbed back in to the kayak just fine but my cold cold arms couldn’t operate the bilge pump to empty out the water from the boat, so it was unsteady and I just blew over again.

    The shore was not far but when I got there I found my insulated pants I chose for just this just-in-case were not at all the right gear; not warm at all when wet and the strong storm winds kept freezing me. (No rain — just big giant wind gusts out of nowhere)

    Lesson learned: when you’re kayaking dress for the water temperature as if you’re planning to fall in because you might. Even if it’s sunny out.