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Jul. 25th, 2018 04:33 amThe total cost of parts and supplies I put into Ai is around $1500, spread out over about 6 months. If I had this done at a mechanic, and all at once, the total bill would have been 2x or 3x that, and even I would have had to reconsider. Which means had I not bought a house when I did, it could have been the end of her. Then again there were a few things that I did that were voluntary on my part, which would have brought the total price down.
As much work as I've done on my cars and as much as I'm willing to do on them, I need to put this out here now: I'm not doing car repairs for other people. There's a giant pile of reasons why, and it has a lot in common with what I've learned from fixing computers for other people. At least with computers, those are much easier to take apart and move out of the way. Cars, not so much. Fixing cars for other people is a much more dangerous road for me to go down. It's one thing if the fix turns out to be incredibly simple/easy, or if a friend visiting from a distance shows up and they find their brakes started screeching mid-trip, maybe I could help with that. It's another thing if it's been doing that for the past year. Or if it has a lot of problems. Or if fixing it requires tools/supplies I don't have. And so on.
Currently, I've been to 34 out of the 50 states in the US. Of the 16 remaining, most of them are in the Northwest, stretching from Wisconsin all the way to Washington and Oregon. Driving through those would require a minimum of 2 weeks for the road trip. Flying to most of them would involve a lot of connecting flights and long layovers, so I might as well drive. Someday! The others are Alaska, Hawaii, and the Louisiana/Mississippi/Alabama cluster. I could drive to that cluster, or I could get a cheap flight to New Orleans, and toodle around that area for the weekend in a rented car. Eh, I need to do something by the end of this year to keep my frequent-flier miles from expiring.
The carnival was in town a couple weeks ago. I didn't go on any rides; they all looked kid-sized, so I just got some carnival food. I got a funnel cake to go, walked home with it, and it was still warm enough. This is a drastic change from where I was living for 14 years, in the middle of nowhere, 3 miles from the nearest anything. As a night-owl introvert, I didn't mind being in the middle of nowhere, and while I was house-hunting, other properties that were similarly isolated (or moreso) were strongly considered, with such a trait weighing in their favor. But on the other hand, it's nice to know that I can now get a pizza, drinks, and some convenience store basics within a few blocks of my house. For that matter, I've calculated that going to the nearest bar would take about the same amount of walking as it does for me to walk from the parking lot at work to my workbench: About 1000ft/300m. Truth be told, I'm way more interested in being able to walk to the ice cream shop another couple blocks away.
Anime: Hinamatsuri, about a time-traveling psychic girl who arrives in our current time by way of landing in the apartment of a yakuza member. It's a comedy. Another anime is Darling in the FranXX, which is kinda like Neon Genesis Evangelion, but with a logical ending. I guess.
As much work as I've done on my cars and as much as I'm willing to do on them, I need to put this out here now: I'm not doing car repairs for other people. There's a giant pile of reasons why, and it has a lot in common with what I've learned from fixing computers for other people. At least with computers, those are much easier to take apart and move out of the way. Cars, not so much. Fixing cars for other people is a much more dangerous road for me to go down. It's one thing if the fix turns out to be incredibly simple/easy, or if a friend visiting from a distance shows up and they find their brakes started screeching mid-trip, maybe I could help with that. It's another thing if it's been doing that for the past year. Or if it has a lot of problems. Or if fixing it requires tools/supplies I don't have. And so on.
Currently, I've been to 34 out of the 50 states in the US. Of the 16 remaining, most of them are in the Northwest, stretching from Wisconsin all the way to Washington and Oregon. Driving through those would require a minimum of 2 weeks for the road trip. Flying to most of them would involve a lot of connecting flights and long layovers, so I might as well drive. Someday! The others are Alaska, Hawaii, and the Louisiana/Mississippi/Alabama cluster. I could drive to that cluster, or I could get a cheap flight to New Orleans, and toodle around that area for the weekend in a rented car. Eh, I need to do something by the end of this year to keep my frequent-flier miles from expiring.
The carnival was in town a couple weeks ago. I didn't go on any rides; they all looked kid-sized, so I just got some carnival food. I got a funnel cake to go, walked home with it, and it was still warm enough. This is a drastic change from where I was living for 14 years, in the middle of nowhere, 3 miles from the nearest anything. As a night-owl introvert, I didn't mind being in the middle of nowhere, and while I was house-hunting, other properties that were similarly isolated (or moreso) were strongly considered, with such a trait weighing in their favor. But on the other hand, it's nice to know that I can now get a pizza, drinks, and some convenience store basics within a few blocks of my house. For that matter, I've calculated that going to the nearest bar would take about the same amount of walking as it does for me to walk from the parking lot at work to my workbench: About 1000ft/300m. Truth be told, I'm way more interested in being able to walk to the ice cream shop another couple blocks away.
Anime: Hinamatsuri, about a time-traveling psychic girl who arrives in our current time by way of landing in the apartment of a yakuza member. It's a comedy. Another anime is Darling in the FranXX, which is kinda like Neon Genesis Evangelion, but with a logical ending. I guess.
