Author Archives: f2x

It’s not COVID

For the past 3 days I’ve been sick as a dog. I did that “at home” test they send you in the mail, and it was negative, so I guess I don’t have to quarantine. I just stepped out of the shower, so for the moment I’m experiencing some relief from the congestion.

If you noticed the picture up above, that’s my new car. It’s a 2022 Kia Niro EV, and it’s been jinxed. Since I got it, it’s already been in a wreck and had a flat tire. Hopefully I’ll be getting the car repaired in a week or two. It needs a new lift gate and the rear bumper needs repainted. I don’t know what the deal was with the tire. It just started going flat, but that was an easy fix.

After I bought this new car, I sold my Leaf. The dealership I bought my Kia from tried to lowball me on the trade, so I took it to the Kelley Blue Book website. Believe it or not, I sold it for over $1000 more than I originally paid for it. The dealer then tacked on another five grand to sell it on their lot. I’ve been watching my old Leaf on the Autotrader site. It’s a nice car, and I really hope it sells soon. (* Just checked. and it’s gone already!)

So yeah, this Niro is a fully electric vehicle (BEV). It’s amazing how many times I’ve had to explain to people that you cannot put gasoline in it. It has an advertised range of 239 miles on a full charge, and more or less, that’s what it gets. I’ve been limiting my charge to 80% and it easily gets around 200 miles of range. I charge it about twice a week.

One of my favorite aspects of this car is when you turn on the lane keep, lane follow, and adaptive cruise control while going down the highway. It’s not quite self-driving, but it’s pretty damn close. When traveling along a well marked road, I only have to occasionally bump the back of my steering wheel with my knee to keep the system active, and most of the time I can just relax and enjoy the ride. You actually can install Comma.ai with Openpilot on this car to get an even more robust self-driving effect.

Kudos

So it’s the strangest thing… Someone or something keeps posting stuff that’s not jokes to the submission page. They are surreal word salads that don’t make any sense. I’m just guessing it’s some sort of bot and added a challenge question to the submission page to try to block them. There is, however, one actual joke for this week. Thank you, TOR.

Pax,

-f2x

A personal update on what’s been going on in my life:

OK, so things have been happening. I’m still working at the same place. I even got a raise. I guess they like me. Lord only knows why.

I sold my Nissan Leaf for $1000 more than I originally paid for it and bought a new 2022 Kia Niro EV. It was rather expen$ive, but it’s a very nice car. I’ll probably do a rant about it soon.

I scheduled all the jokes in the queue. We run out after Tuesday. I’m not really too worried about it. It’s kind of hard to find any new jokes out there that haven’t already been published here, and the last few years have seen a lot of repeats/variations of the same jokes. You can’t publish new jokes when there aren’t any.

I am seeing a podiatrist. My feet are in surprisingly bad shape. The x-rays showed significant arthritis and of course lots of spurs, but thankfully no cancer. With enough cortisone injections and prednisone, I can stand to walk again, but this has some unpleasant and sometimes foreboding side effects. Getting old sucks.

So that’s the basics. I’ve been super busy, but at some point I would like to get back to ranting, making comics, and telling jokes. It’s just going to be a while.

Kudos

Thanks to those who added jokes to the queue. I know things haven’t been very active around here lately, but if you add a joke to the submission page I’ll eventually get around to publishing it

Pax,

-f2x

Big Auto is Big Bullshit

I am really starting to hate the automotive industry. So much of it is a racket, and here’s a little secret: A large part of what you pay for when you buy a car is production scrap. That’s a little fact they fucking hate, but it’s the truth. Ironically, a lot of the scrap is created because of stupid policies so they can claim they’re being “responsible” or “sustainable” or “going green” or whatever buzzword they think will get them a promotion. It really is funny how car executives are so concerned about their image, but they never seem to realize that their narcissism is not very attractive either.

Every month the scrap rate is too high, the production numbers are too low, 12 hour shifts are the norm, burn-out is an understatement, people come, people go, and the pricks calling the shots keep blaming “lazy” workers. It’s funny just how far they will shove their own heads up their asses to avoid the blindingly obvious. Rushing people, overworking them, and deliberately trying to make their work environment uncomfortable because some psycho-dipshit convinced them it would improve productivity… It is all so incredibly myopic and stupid, I would not have believed it, had I not witnessed this farcical nonsense in person.

The amount of waste created by LEAN, Kaisan, Five S, and “the like” is a disgrace, and let me be clear, it is all a fraud. No matter what they tell you, the ideas still come from the top down. If they give credit to someone on the line it was only because they were toeing that line while someone higher up had already been musing the idea all along. The thinking goes that it would look more down to earth if one of their “epsilons” got the credit. In reality, it looks depressingly stilted and forced.

And the saddest part is, they can’t even build the fucking cars anymore. Have you seen the new car lots lately? Pickin’s are fucking slim, folks! They keep blaming it on the chip shortage, and yeah, there is a bottleneck there, but there is far more to this car shortage than a lack of Taiwan microchips. Think about it: After covid hit, industry developed and distributed hundreds of millions of doses of a new type of vaccine based on mRNA that requires only the most sophisticated technology that the world has ever known, but for some reason, they can’t make the fucking computer chips needed to drive a car?

BULLSHIT.

Kudos

OK, well I hope you enjoyed my little angry rant. I just want to say thanks to whoever for putting in a couple of jokes. I went ahead and queued them up for Monday and Tuesday. As always, the submission page is at your disposal.

Also I want to mention that I am still basically on “hiatus”. That just means that for the foreseeable future, updates will continue to be far and few between.

Pax,

-f2x