TP Woes

A man is stuck inside a public restroom without any toilet paper. He calls over to
the man in the next stall, “Hey, you got any extra toilet paper in there?”
“No,” replies the man.
“You got any newspaper over there?” the stranded man asks.
“Nope,” the second man replies.
After a moment of silence, the first man asks the second, “You got two fives for
a ten?

The scoutmaster

A scoutmaster is out driving a country road near dusk, with his wife in the passenger seat. Suddenly a deer leaps out from the roadside and stands stock-still, frozen in the headlights. The scoutmaster hits the horn, but there’s no noise but the screeching of the car’s tires as it skids to a halt just short of the deer. The deer, finally recovering its wits, bounds away.

The scoutmaster puts the car in park, takes off his seatbelt, pops the hood and roots around in the engine compartment for a minute. He then returns to the driver’s seat, dusting off his hands in satisfaction.

“Did you fix the horn, honey?” his wife inquires.

He nods. “Beep repaired.”

— The Oldest Rater

Sunday, July 18, 2021

My Quest to Find a DC Fast Charger

So if you live in a decent sized city, you might expect to find a DC fast charger somewhere in town, but I live in Dayton, and as I write this, there are currently no “DC fast chargers” in the city of Dayton. There aren’t really all that many “level 2” charging options either. This is kind of ironic given to how “progressive” Dayton tends to be politically. In any event, I’ve had this Leaf since January, and had yet to fast charge it.

The closest DC fast chargers are north of Dayton in Huber Heights and Springfield, neither of which are places I need or even want to go. But I do like to go south and visit Cincinnati from time to time. The good news is that Cincinnati is only a 60 mile drive on the interstate. The bad news is that 60 miles on the interstate would pretty much drain my Nissan Leaf. Good thing Cincinnati has a few DC fast chargers in their greater metropolitan area, eh?

So that’s what Gail and I decided to do this weekend. We would take a trip down to see the Ohio river, and it’s a good thing there was a DC fast charger right off exit 21 on southbound I-75… Except it was out of order. Ah shucks. Fortunately, the slower level 2 charger they had was still working. I plugged the car in for 22 minutes. It wasn’t much, but it did give me an extra 10% on my battery for a whopping 55¢, and the confidence to continue to my destination.

So we drove through Eden park and stopped at the overlook. There we saw the majestic riverboats as they paraded along the Ohio. It’s quite a view from up on that hillside overlooking Kentucky. There were also quite a few people around me too. For some reason people were approaching me and asking questions like, if I come here often, or do I know how to find a certain trail. I’m not used to being that sociable so Gail and I got back in the car and drove around checking out the many amazing examples of Victorian architecture in the neighborhood.

Eventually I felt like it was time to head back. I still hadn’t found a working DC fast charger, so I pulled over and used my phone to search the area for one. Eventually I found one. It was 20 miles away in a Walmart parking lot. Not exactly “on the way” but not entirely out of the way either.

When I got to the location, I had 23 miles left on the “Guessometer”, and naturally there were a bunch of gasoline powered cars parked in front of the DC fast charger. It was totally ICE’d. Another Leaf owner drove by with an angry look of disgust, but to be fair, the entire Walmart parking lot was packed, and this charger was placed in a rather prime parking location with minimal signage. The paint on the asphalt had all but washed away too. I could understand how someone would pull in there and not think there was anything special about that space.

But I needed that charger. With only 23 miles of range left, and nothing else close by, I parked near that space, and waited. It wasn’t long before the Walmart shoppers came back to their car and pulled out of the space. I quickly pulled in. I plugged in my car and accessed the app on my cell phone. The charger came to life.

As this was my first time using a DC fast charger, I was surprised by how noisy it was. You could hear a rather loud fan motor running under the unit as if it were an electric leaf blower. The most concerning aspect was the occasional whiff of a fan belt getting way too hot. Perhaps this is why the working status of fast chargers seems less reliable than a McDonald’s ice cream machine.

Still I waited patiently as the battery was charging. It actually went really quickly, starting at 23% and ending 16 minutes later at 85%. For a mere $4.80, I gained almost 16 Kilowatt hours or about 60 miles of range. Not bad. That was more than enough to get home, and the price is comparable to what you would pay if you were driving on gasoline.

It was a warm day with temperatures in the 80’s. As I left the Walmart parking lot I was a bit startled by the fact that my battery pack temperature indicator had risen from 6 to 8 bars. I heard that these fast chargers generated a lot of battery heat, but seeing my battery that hot was momentarily alarming. It doesn’t red line until 11 bars, so it could probably have stood a second fast charge that day. The car drove fine, and I set in a course to my dad’s house. 20 miles and 30 minutes later we pulled into his driveway with more than enough left over for me to get home.

Of course the rest of the day was the usual visit with Dad. Gail got in plenty of exercise and we had a nice supper. I took a nap on his couch and drove home. All in all a pretty good day.

And Now For The Math

The trip odometer indicated that I had driven 140 miles and I still had 30% charge when I got home. Including the $1.40 worth of electric from my own home meter, it looks like the trip cost me around $6.75. With gas being around $3/gallon in most places, that would buy me 2.25 gallons of gas, which calculates to about 62 miles per gallon cost equivalent. When you do the math, it always comes out significantly cheaper to drive my Leaf than to drive my GMC.

Please keep in mind, the Nissan Leaf was intended as a short range commuter car. Long range EV’s such as the Tesla Model 3 or the Chevy Bolt EV wouldn’t even blink at driving 140 miles on a single charge. They also have active battery thermal management that can handle repeated fast charging as well. When you consider the battery capacity, the heat issue and a general lack of charging infrastructure, taking a Leaf on a road trip is kinda dumb, but I’d still do it again.


Kudos

So thanks to TOR, and reddit for the jokes this week. Next week is another week of reddit jokes, but if you want to get a few jokes in for August, please jump on over to the submission page, and copy/paste or type in a joke or ten. I should have a comic ready for the 24th, so stay tuned!

Pax,

-f2x

Squeeze if You Please

A local bar was so sure that its barman was the strongest man in the town that they offered a standing $1000 bet.
The barman would squeeze a lemon until all the juice ran out and challenge any man to squeeze out another drop.
Weightlifters, arm wrestlers; they all tried and
lost the bet.
Then one day, a scrawny little man, (if he stood sideways you would not see him) wearing scratched glasses, a ten year old polyester suit, walked in and said
“I’d like to take on the bet.”
After the laughter had died down, the barman said, “Okay”; grabbed the lemon and squeezed away.
Then he handed the wrinkled remains of the Lemon Rind to the little man.
But the Crowd’s laughter turned to total silence….as the man clenched his little fist around the lemon….
six drops fell into the glass.
As the barman paid the $1000 bet, he asked “What do you do for a living?
Are you a lumberjack, a metal worker,
a weight-lifter, or what?”
The little man quietly replied:
“I work for the IRS .”

Lecherous Line

A man was in a long line at his local supermarket.
As he got to the register he realised he had forgotten to get condoms, so he asked the checkout girl if she could have some brought up to the register.
She asked, “What size condoms?”
The customer replied that he didn’t know.
She asked him to drop his trousers, reached over the counter, grabbed hold of him and called over the intercom: “One box of large condoms, Register 5″.
The next man in line thought this was interesting, and like most of us was up for a cheap thrill. When he got up to the register, he told the cashier that he too had forgotten to get condoms, and asked if she could have some brought to the register for him.
She asked him what size, and he stated that he didn’t know.
She asked him to drop his trousers, gave him a quick feel, picked up the intercom microphone and said: “One box of medium sized condoms, Register 5″.
A few customers back was this teenage boy. He thought what he had seen was way too cool. He had never had any type of sexual contact with a woman, so he thought this was his chance.
When he got to the checkout he told the girl he needed some condoms.
She asked him what size and he said he didn’t know.
She asked him to drop his trousers, reached over the counter, gave him a quick squeeze then picked up the Intercom and said…
“Mop and bucket, Register 5″

The Engineer in Hell

An Engineer dies and goes to Hell. Dissatisfied with the level of discomfort, he starts designing and building improvements.
After a while, Hell has air conditioning, flush toilets and escalators. The Engineer is a pretty popular guy.

One day God calls and asks Satan, “So, how’s it going down there?”
Satan says, “Hey things are going great. We’ve got air conditioning and flush toilets and escalators, and there’s no telling what this Engineer is going to come up with next.”

God is horrified. “What? You’ve got an Engineer? That’s a mistake – he should never have gone down there! You know all Engineers go to Heaven. Send him up here! ”

Satan says, “No way. I like having an Engineer on the staff.
I’m keeping him.”

God says, “Send him up here or I’ll sue.”

“Yeah, right,” Satan laughs,
“And where are you going to get a lawyer?”

Tipping at the Strip Club

So, me and my girls went to an All Male strip club last night.
A stripper came over and flexed his buttcheeks for us. One of the girls wanted to impress us, so she pulls out a $10 bill, licked it and put it on his butt cheek. Not to be outdone, another friend pulls out a $20 bill, licked it as well and put it on his other butt check. Still attempting to impress the rest of us, my other friend pulls out a $50 bill, also licks it and again puts it on one of his butt cheeks. Now the attention is focused on me. What could I do to top that? I got out my wallet, thought for a minute… and then got out my ATM card, swiped it down the crack of his ass, grabbed the $80 bucks and went home! 😎

Premarital Confessions

A young couple are on their way to Las Vegas to get married. Before getting there, the girl said to the guy that she had a confession to make. The reason that they had not been intimate was because she was very flat-chested. If he wished to cancel the wedding, it would be okay with her.
The guy thought about it for a while and said he did not mind if she was flat, and sex is not the most important thing in a marriage.
Several miles down the road, the guy turned to the girl and said that he also wanted to make a confession. He said that below his waist he was just like a baby, and if the girl wished to cancel the wedding, it’d be fine by him.
The girl thought about it for a while and said that she did not mind and she also believed there were other things far more important in a marriage than sex. Both were happy that they’d been honest with each other.
They went on to Vegas and got married. On the wedding night the girl took off her clothes and she was as flat as a washboard. Finally, the guy took off his clothes and one look at the guy’s naked body made the girl faint and fall to the floor.
After she came to, the guy asked, ‘I told you before we got married, why did you still faint?’
The girl said, ‘You told me it was just like a baby.’
The guy replied, ‘Yes, eight pounds and 21 inches.

Sunday, July 11, 2021

Waffling

So how’s that new job coming along?

Uh well… it’s complicated.

On the one hand, people there are starting to accept me as one of their own, and I hate to admit I’m starting to feel like I belong in this place. It had been a rough start and there are still patches of 20 grit personality conflicts, but when the the most influential bosses say things like, “I want you to do it, because I know I can count on you,” it acts like a soothing lube for when the rest of the place is going in dry.

The pay is also nicer than if I were an Amazon delivery driver, and if I stick around I may just see my way to finally getting out of debt and building up a tolerable retirement account… which would be nice.

Of course the down side is that there is still a lot of policy shifting bullshit, pointless time consuming red tape, unreasonable shitheads, and a physical toll on my body that is extremely difficult to manage at my age. I might have a few hours of relative calm at night, but more often than not I get pulled in three or more directions at once. This results in irreconcilable conflicts and impatient tempers flaring along with angry shouting. Naturally this leads to my nerves fraying beyond the pale. Not fun, but somehow they’re growing on me a little.

So that’s been my week. How’s your week been?


Kudos

So thanks for nothing ya freeloading bums. The submission page has been languishing in neglect for the past two weeks, and there’s only a week of Big D’s jokes left in the queue. Don’t worry about it though. I just ripped a bunch of jokes off reddit so we should be OK for a while. It’s deep into summer here in the best hemisphere, and the heat makes doing things feel unpleasant.

Stay frosty.

Pax,

-f2x