• 5 Posts
  • 270 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: January 10th, 2024

help-circle
  • I have only ever been able to tell when it was someone I did not want to have a crush on me, someone I was definitely not interested in. If it was a woman I was interested in, or even someone not on my radar but that I probably would’ve seen how things went had I known she was interested in me, I have not figured it out until years later, if ever. My now-wife had to come right out and tell me she was interested. I would not be surprised to find out there were people I’d completely missed hints from decades ago.



  • I only recently learned that in the US not every state has annual inspection requirements. In fact it’s a minority of states, only 14, and it looks like the inspection requirements have been reduced in recent years, such as some states exempting new vehicles for a certain amount of time or only requiring inspections for commercial vehicles. Both states I’ve lived in had annual inspections and I just assumed it was a thing everywhere.




  • This was something I realized when we drive to my wife’s parents. It’s 2,000 km each way from our house in the US to where they are in rural Quebec, Canada and we usually drive it twice a year. The charging times sound long, but even with our petrol car most of our stops end up being between 15 to 30 minutes anyways between fueling the car, taking the dog to grass, taking turns going to the toilet so the dog isn’t alone in the car, getting food and giving me a chance to eat so I’m not trying to drive and eat at the same time.

    I think the real challenge of electric range anxiety is that it still takes planning, at least in some parts of the US. There are areas on our route where it might be 100 kilometers to the next fast charger, and there’s no guarantee that all of them will be working or compatible with a car’s fastest charging speeds. We don’t really have to think about where we’ll get gasoline; there’s pretty much always a station, often several, within the next few miles. Usually if we’re waiting to stop for fuel it’s because we’re looking for the best price, looking for a place that might have decent toilets, and/or might have an appealing food option along with the gasoline. That’s all manageable in electric but might need some advanced planning, and many American drivers aren’t used to doing that kind of route planning in advance anymore.

    How many cars in Europe can drive 1,000 km without stopping anyways? The only ones I can think of offhand are large American pickup trucks intended for towing large trailers long distances. I wouldn’t expect to see them in Europe.















  • I think I only ever needed a white shirt and tie. My younger brother was in band but when they performed with the string orchestra to give more of a symphony I think they actually did have some sort of suit, maybe tuxedo-like. That was all arranged by the school at the very start, of course.


  • Most Linux distributions offer a “live CD” experience (does not actually have to be on a CD nowadays; you can use a USB drive). Basically when the computer turns on you tell it to boot off the USB drive instead of the drive in the computer. That way you can try it out on your computer before installing it and see if it works out of the box for you with its defaults. It will probably be a little slower running off a USB drive. I don’t think you can typically install additional programs or save things to the computer (someone more experienced might chime in), but you can try doing basic things like using the web browser or word processor.