Monthly Archives: April 2021

Old Lady Larceny

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A young man shopping in a supermarket noticed a little old lady following him around. If he stopped, she stopped. Furthermore she kept staring at him.
She finally overtook him at the checkout, and she turned to him and said, “I hope I haven’t made you feel ill at ease; it’s just that you look so much like my late son.”
He answered, “That’s okay.”
“I know it’s silly, but if you’d call out ‘Good bye, Mum’ as I leave the store, it would make me feel so happy.”
She then went through the checkout, and as she was on her way out of the store, the man called out, “Goodbye, Mum.”
The little old lady waved and smiled back at him.
Pleased that he had brought a little sunshine into someone’s day, he went to pay for his groceries.
“That comes to $121.85,” said the clerk.
“How come so much? I only bought 5 items.”
The clerk replied, “Yeah, but your Mother said
You’d be paying for her things, too.”
Bet you thought this was going to be a tear jerker.
Don’t trust Little Old Ladies!!!

Breaking Breakfast

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A young man on the farm came out of his room one morning, and asked his mom, “What’s for breakfast?”.
She said, “You know you don’t eat until the stock’s taken care of. You can eat when you get back in.”
The boy left in a huff, and his mom watched him as he fed the stock. He kicked the pigs when fed them; he kicked the chickens when he fed them, and he kicked the cattle when he fed them.
He came back in and saw a bowl of dry cereal on the table. He asked if that was all he got for breakfast.
His mom said, “I saw you when you kicked the pigs, so you don’t get any bacon for a week. I saw you when you kicked the chickens, so you don’t get any eggs for a week. I saw you when you kicked the cows, so you don’t get any milk for a week.”
About that time, his dad comes out of the bedroom and kicks the cat out of his way. The son looks at his mom, and says, “Do you want to tell him, or should I?”

Sunday, April 18, 2021

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My Beef with the Leaf

So you’ve heard me rave about how much I love my Nissan Leaf, but it’s time for a little rant. Here are some gripes I have with the Leaf, and why I plan to trade this one in as soon as it is paid off.

First of all, the Leaf has THE worst battery management of ANY electric car currently sold on the U.S. market.

This is the biggest one. and results in Leaf batteries suffering battery degradation much, much higher than other EV’s on the market. All it would have taken is for Nissan to have incorporated some kind of battery cooling. As it stands, when the Leaf battery heats up, the battery’s capacity starts to die.

CHAdeMO is a dead end!

Essentially, there are three fast charging standards. Tesla, CCS, and CHAdeMO. Tesla is doing their own thing, CCS is what almost everyone else uses, and CHAdeMO is the Betamax of the charging world. While one could prossibly write an entire paragraph praising the benefits of the CHAdeMo standard, virtually no one else is using it. Even Nissan’s new SUV is equipped with CCS. Combine that with the fact that CHAdeMO chargers are almost non-existent in the Midwest, and it’s easy to see that the CHAdeMO port is almost as useful as tits on a bull.

No “Hilltop Reserve” anymore.

It’s bad enough that the battery is going to degrade faster than any other, but unless you pull out early, it will always charge to 100%. Older Leafs used to be able to automatically stop at 80%, and this would go a long way towards extending the longevity of the vehicle’s battery. Sadly, Nissan decided they wanted to make damn sure their batteries went South as quickly as possible. Since few people will hover over their car as it charges in order to “pull out” at the right moment, most owners simply acquiesce to fully charge their cars. Great for tomorrow morning’s range, but devastating to next year’s range.

Sorry, there are no aftermarket upgrades.

Of course here is where I should have done a little better research, and this applies to EVERY electric vehicle out there. Unless something goes catastrophically wrong while the car is still under warranty, the battery that comes with the vehicle will stay with the vehicle for the life of the vehicle. Yes, battery swaps exist, but few people will ever have the wherewithal for upgrades and battery swaps. You get what you get.

With a firm understanding of that latest revelation, here is my revised advice for determining the necessary range of any EV you are considering: Think about how far your longest typical drive would be. By typical, I’m referring to the longest drive you actually make on an occasional basis, not a hypothetical what-if scenario. Now double that number. If the number is not greater than 250, do not buy an EV with less range than that. If the number is greater than 250, don’t buy anything less than a 250 mile range.

So you don’t like your Leaf anymore?

No, I am not saying I don’t like my Leaf. I love this car. When my Plymouth Breeze was on its last legs, I knew I wanted to replace it with an EV, and a used Leaf is simply the most affordable EV with the most bang for your buck. But after a few months I’ve realized that while there are many wonderful benefits I adore, there are also a few drawbacks I abhor, and they should be considered before making this kind of major financial decision.

Kudos

Thanks T.O.R. and Darin. The submission page is at your disposal. I’ll keep moving them over to the queue as I find time.

Pax,

-f2x

Addendum

You know, I finally realized the header images for this site were woefully dated. Maybe one of you could give me a heads up some time? And let me know if the new look isn’t working.

Cold Winter

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The Indians asked their Chief in Autumn if the Winter was going to be cold or not.
Not really knowing an answer, the chief replies that the Winter was going to be cold with lots of snow and that the members of the village were to collect wood to be prepared.
Being a good leader, he then went to the next phone booth and called the National Weather Service and asked, “Is this winter to be cold?”
The man on the phone responded, “This Winter is going to be quite cold indeed.”
So the Chief went back to speed up his people to collect even more wood to be prepared. A week later he called the National Weather Service again, “Is it going to be a very cold winter?”
“Yes”, the man replied, “it’s going to be a very cold Winter.”
So the Chief goes back to his people and orders them to go and find every scrap of wood they can find. Two weeks later he calls the National Weather Service again: “Are you absolutely sure that the
Winter is going to be very cold?”
“Absolutely,” the man replies, “the Indians are collecting wood like crazy!”
Happy Monday.

Little Johnny Gets a Job

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Little Johnny leaves school and is looking for a job so he goes to a big “everything under one roof” department store looking for a job.
The Manager says, “Do you have any sales experience?”
Little Johnny says “Yeah. I sold my bike and all my toys.”
The boss was unsure, but he liked the kid and figured he’d give him a shot, so he gave him the job. “You start tomorrow. I’ll come down after we close and see how you did.”
His first day on the job was rough, but he got through it. After the store was locked up, the boss came down to the sales floor.
“How many customers bought something from you today?”
Little Johnny frowns and looks at the floor and mutters, “One”.
The boss says “just one?!!? Our sales people average 20 to 30 customers a day. That will have to change, and soon, if you’d like to continue your employment here. We have very strict standards for our sales force here . One sale a day is not acceptable so you’ll have to improve.”
Little Johnny took his beating, but continued to look at his shoes, so the boss felt kinda bad for chewing him out on his first day. He asked (semi-sarcastically), “So, how much was your one sale for?”
Little Johnny looks up at his boss and says “$101,237.65″.
The boss was astonished and says $101,237.65?!? What the heck did you sell?”
Little Johnny says, “Well, first, I sold him some new fish hooks. Then I sold him a new fishing rod to go with his new hooks. I then asked him where he was going fishing and he said down the coast, so I told him he was going to need a boat, so we went down to the boat department and I sold him a twin engine Chris Craft. Then he said he didn’t think his Honda Civic would pull it, so I took him down to the automotive department and sold him that 4×4 Expedition.”
The boss said “A guy came in here to buy a fish hook and you sold him a boat and a TRUCK!?”
Little Johnny smiled and said “No, the guy came in here to buy tampons for his wife, and I said, ‘Dude, your weekend’s screwed, perhaps you should go fishing.‘

Where Did We Come From?

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A little girl asks her mother, “How did the human race appear?” The mother
answers, “Well, God made Adam and Eve and then they had kids. So all
mankind was made.” Two days later the little girl asks her father the exact same
question. The father answers, “Many years ago, there were monkeys from which
the entire human race evolved.” The confused little girl returns to her mother and
says, “Mom, you told me the human race was created by God, and Dad said man
developed from monkeys. Why do you have different stories?” The mother
answers, “Well, I was referring to my side of the family and your dad was
talking about his side.”

Sunday, April 11, 2021

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The State of Flush Twice Address

It has actually been a while since I have done an introspective write up, so this week’s rant will touch on where things stand. There aren’t any bombshells here, but rather the mundane assessment of the journey so far.

Flush Twice is coming up on its 18th anniversary in a couple of weeks. We are older than Facebook, and I think that alone is something of an achievement. I have also been publishing my own comic here for the last 17 years as well, and throughout that time, the art style has undergone several drastic permutations. I think this is the longest running web comic that has had absolutely zero notability on the internet.

So much has changed since it all began. It started with me building my own web pages using some WYSIWYG abandon-ware on a server in my basement. Today the site is running on a low cost hosting platform with WordPress. From time to time the look has changed, and there have been many, MANY hiatuses, but I have managed to keep things running and have no plans to retire the site anytime soon.

Some things haven’t changed. The jokes are still the same jokes. I have come to accept that there are only so many jokes out there, and then it moves into the realm of variations on a theme and retellings. Every once in a while a new one comes up, but I have not actually heard a new joke in quite a long time, however I still enjoy the old ones.

I am still using Paint Shop Pro 4.14 for all of my comics and graphic designs. PSP 4 was a “shareware” bitmap editor from the 1990’s that due to some oversight could be upgraded to the full version (4.14) with their free upgrade patches. For what it is, it still has a great interface and some highly effective tools. It does have some bugs and limitations that make it a bit dated, but every time I try to use the new stuff, I get frustrated with the rather cumbersome and un-intuitive layouts. I suppose if I were not so set-in-my-ways, I would not have such difficulties, but it is what it is.

It looks like my original partner in crime has finally returned to lurk and contribute jokes. While the former co-sysop from my ancient BBS days isn’t being too conversational, it is good to know he is still alive and well. Thanks for having my back Big D. I missed you old friend.

Sadly, viewership is at an all-time low. Over the past month, fewer than 20 people per day have visited the site. Some days the visitor count has been in the single digits. That is probably due in large part to the lack of effort I have been putting into curating the jokes. Nevertheless, Flush Twice is still chugging along.

I have been periodically moving the submitted jokes into the scheduled queue. I have about a month’s worth of jokes in the queue and almost 2 months of jokes left to schedule. Thanks for your contributions, and please keep ’em coming!

In Conclusion

As usual, our submission page remains up and running for your convenience. I really appreciate all the contributions I have gotten, and look forward to seeing even more.

See you next week!

Pax,

-f2x