jdeibele

We stayed with friends outside Madrid who owned a home. They had bought it officially for 400,000 Euros.

They also paid a similar amount "on the black", meaning that they had to pay the sellers in cash so the sellers would only pay tax on the official amount.

This was 15 years ago. It seems hard to imagine something like this happening in the US with the Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundering laws but maybe it does. And it might not happen in Spain anymore.

For 14 months, I charged my 2023 Bolt EUV via the Chevy EVSE plugged into a wall outlet. I was getting about 2 miles of range per hour. There's a setting in the Bolt for a "home location" where you say you have a dedicated outlet and that increases the draw from 8A to 12A. That got me to 3 per hour.

We knew we were moving and I have a 240V EVSE at the current house. I found the 120V worked for me with very rare DC fast charging necessary, mostly when I visited a family member downstate. This, though, was a stage of my life where 2 kids were in college and the other had his own car. Much different than when they were on 3 different soccer teams, different schools, etc.

Read somebody saying that they used their phone to take a picture of the stove knobs before leaving the house.

As a person who has returned to the house at least twice to make sure the burners were off, that resonated.

If you're traveling with a SO and have joint accounts, check the account numbers. My wife was pickpocketed in Madrid and 2 of our 3 joint cards had the same number, meaning that even though I had the physical card, it was cancelled until we got the new cards.

We weren't aware of the issue before this happened.

I have a Chevy Bolt EUV and charged it on an ordinary US 120V circuit. Because there was nothing else on the circuit, I could tell the Bolt to charge at 12A at home, otherwise it limits itself to 8A anywhere that's not-home. It seemed to be about 3 miles of range per hour at 12A, 2 mph at 8A.

It actually worked pretty well for me. There were a couple of times I ended up "fast" (the Bolt is slow at DC charging) charging but very few in more than a year. The garage didn't have 240V power and we knew we were moving.

At the new house, I have a 240V 60A hardwired circuit for the EV charger so I can charge much faster, probably 25 miles of range per hour, maybe more. I haven't used a fast charger in probably six months.

It is a shock seeing what cold temperatures do to range in the Bolt. We have an Equinox EV and it seems to do better plus it has a longer range to start with.

In the US, key boxes seem the exception and smart locks are the rule. Nothing to lose, can be programmed to not work past a certain time, etc.

That works well for a single deadbolt. Many years ago we stayed in a friends apartment in Madrid. There were 3 keys for the locks, each at least a foot apart, and the door jamb was lined with metal to make it more difficult to break in. So it might not be simple and/or cheap to replace key boxes with smart locks.

Picking a state that's not California nor New York, Massachusetts, etc.: https://www.indeed.com/career/assistant-professor/salaries/A...

Says $60,000 for University of Arkansas or 2/3rd of what was listed for California.

I'm not an academic nor do I live in California (or Arkansas) but $90,000/year after 6 years working below minimum wage and 6 years barely above doesn't sound that great in <economic terms>. Hopefully people are getting benefits from teaching or research.

Thanks for pointing that out. Unfortunately, the option I'd want - memory utilization - doesn't seem to be one of the choices.

"The cost of alterations is an economically reasonable risk: the above would come in at £1,600 with Terry when they would need £5,000 to 7,000 for a replacement."

Airlines seem to have a policy of passports need to be valid (not expire) for six months after the trip.

Our daughter was going overseas and we had to get her passport renewed because it would expire 3 months after she would have gotten home. The country was fine with that but there was a chance that she would show up at the airport and the airline would not allow her to board because it was less than 6 months.

If the airline lets them fly and they're rejected, the airline has to get them back and the airline doesn't want to risk that.

I set up several websites for non-profits of various types. The thing that WordPress.com has going for it is better security (updates applied promptly), lower pricing than dedicated WP accounts at DreamHost, etc. (typically these kind of providers low-ball the first year), usable by non-technical users, etc.

Trying to teach people to use Git to push an update seems difficult. And teaching them Markdown. And dealing with images.

someorg.wordpress.com is not as nice as someorg.com but there's no domain to be not renewed. There's levels of privileges, etc.

"Idea Man" is by Paul Allen.

"The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man: A Memoir" looks like an interesting book on Paul Newman but I haven't read it.

How can you tell that they're 3d printed? Because they don't have a part number or the manufacturer's name and logo on them?

I don't have a 3d printer myself so maybe it'd be obvious if I printed some.

What I've read is that some/most taxis in Japan have an automatic back door for the passenger. https://musa4trip.wordpress.com/2014/04/04/taxis-in-japan-do...

Searching, I see references to automatic doors preventing robberies but no explanations as to how that would be. Perhaps the barriers between the back seat passengers and driver prevent knife threats? I wouldn't expect robbers in Japan to have guns, like they would in the US.

Oh, maybe you mean the automatic doors are "waiting for you with the open door"? A lot of cars have hatchbacks that close using a remote, either on the dash or on a fob. It was big news that people were demonstrating the CyberTruck cutting carrots or hot dogs because people are used to hatchbacks closing and opening safely. It seems a lot simpler to automate doors opening and closing safely than autonomously driving in Tokyo.

We have an Apple TV connected to an LG OLED. We very rarely use Blu-Rays but we have a Blu-Ray player also connected.

The family has been instructed to never connect the LG TV to WiFi.

Anyway, I'm sure you could use HDMI from your computer and that seems easier than dealing with a USB stick.

We have 2 Chevrolet EVs, a Bolt EUV made in the US and an Equinox EV made in Mexico.

They're great. I have rotated the tires twice on the Bolt and I'm getting some different wipers for the windshield because my wife doesn't like the noise the factory ones make. Oh, and I got floor mats for both cars.

I have Car Play in the Bolt and GM's own system in the Equinox (Android for Autos or something like that, not the standard Android Auto) and they're both fine.

I use SuperCruise whenever I can. That's only on freeways with the Bolt and a lot more other places with the Equinox. I was backseat in an Uber Saturday and it was neat watching the Tesla Model 3's AutoPilot system. Very cool. On the other hand, GM was reporting no accidents with their cars, which include ICE vehicles, too. https://gmauthority.com/blog/2024/02/gm-super-cruise-users-t...

People will mention PiHole and that's a neat solution if you want to maintain a server.

If you don't, https://adguard-dns.io/en/public-dns.html lets you point your DNS servers at AdGuard and let them block ads for you. No maintenance required.

One caveat: once in a while, like maybe once a year, my wife or I encounter a site that AdGuard blocks and we need to set our DNS back to "normal" for things to work. But you'll probably have the same issue with PiHole, which relies on lists of spammers or other undesirables.

PS: no relationship with AdGuard other than happily using their service.

I moved to a home that's part of a small (47 homes) HOA.

Here, the visitor restrictions are aimed at commercial visitors. You're not supposed to run a business like a massage parlor or barbershop out of your home.

I've tended to buy iPhones that are 2 or 3 generations old from eBay and Swappa for my family and use Mint or Tello for cheap cellular service. Our costs might be $350 for a phone and $100 - $150 per year for service.

We do get them a nice new phone when they graduate high school.

I've read a lot of articles saying that the real problem with theft is from employees.

That might be true but it certainly hasn't made me feel good about watching people walk out with a big jug of wine, electronics, a case of toilet paper, etc. That last one provoked some curiosity - are their circumstances so bad that it's worth risking jail time or are there so little consequences that it's the equivalent of self check-out?

We visited somebody in Nairobi. She picked us up at the airport. On the way into her apartment complex, she had to stop her car while the guards ran mirrors under the car to check for bombs.

This was shortly after the Westgate Shopping Mall attack. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westgate_shopping_mall_attack

One thing that with Spotify is that not everything is available. For a while, the soundtrack to "The Bourne Supremacy" was available, then it wasn't for months, now it is again. This has happened with a few songs on other soundtrack albums, presumably all due to licensing issues.

The other thing is that the original version of an album is replaced by a remastered version. Usually the new version has additional songs but the remastering and songs change the experience.

I've been doing 120V for just over a year with the Chevrolet portable charging cable. It's mostly been fine, the main issue is that it stops working every so often and has to be unplugged and plugged back in.

My Bolt lets me say that the circuit is dedicated to it at home and pulls 12 amps instead of the 8 amps it would pull anywhere else. It's trying to make sure it doesn't overload the circuit.

We are moving to a newer home and I already have the 240V charger installed there. Looking forward to 25-30 miles of range per hour (running at 32A normally but have a dedicated 60A circuit) instead of the 3 I'm getting now.

At this house, the 200A panel is full so I would have had to add another panel.

You're using the wrong pricing. AT&T has one price. Utopia has 2 components, the ISP and Utopia itself, making up the total price. If you go to the website link I posted, it's not $45, it's $45 to the ISP and $30 to Utopia. That makes $75, which is slightly cheaper than $80.

"Service from UTOPIA Fiber is billed in <two parts>. One part is for services provided by the Internet Service Provider (ISP) you select, and the other is for the physical network connection provided by UTOPIA Fiber. Check out our price list to help you compare service options from our various ISPs. "

https://www.utopiafiber.com/residential-pricing/

Emphasis mine. The cheapest service available from Utopia is $30 to them + $35 for 250Mbps service, totaling $65/month. There is no $45/month service.

I think there should be a $30/month charge for Utopia added to their service.

https://www.utopiafiber.com/residential-pricing/

So it's slightly cheaper than AT&T for 1Gbps and a more significant difference for their 10Gbps service which AT&T doesn't offer, as you point out.

I use Mint Mobile because it's cheap and has been reliable for my family.

A couple of months ago, I traveled to Belize with my iPhone 14 Pro, which only has eSIM. The websites for the two local companies said that I could buy them at a local store but none of the stores at the airport sold eSIMs or SIM.

Mint Mobile offered me 10GB of data for $40/week. Plus fees, as it turned out, so total of $42 or $43. I took it because I couldn't find a local solution and it was only about $20 difference.

I was happy with the service. My wife uses prepaid Verizon and it was $10/day for their service in Belize which is more in line with what I was expecting. We ended up never feeling like we needed to turn it on.

Half of the time we were in the mountains where there wasn't any cell service so I only ended up using about 1GB of cellular and the rest the resort's WiFi there. But it was nice to be able to search on the road for restaurants, coffee stops, etc.

On a trip to Croatia and Italy a few years ago, the situation for local SIMs was confusing enough that I ended up not using any cell service, just downloading maps from Google Maps in offline mode from the hotel WiFi. Worked great with just GPS but only for places I'd pre-selected - no searching for anything.

Honest question: have you ever run a business? You're talking about setting up millions of accounts to pay them $.02 or $.20 or even $2.00. ACH payments cost an average of $.29/each https://gocardless.com/en-us/guides/ach/ach-fees-how-much-do...

You're dealing with a bunch of people who will try to rip you off, so you need to have anti-fraud protections. Then you need to be able to override the anti-fraud protections because Alex, Alex and Bob, Alex, Bob, and Curt, etc. are all legit performers who want the payments to go to one common bank account even though you'd like one act == one bank account. Etc.

I was going to say that you could do it for free, like I did years ago. But now it requires a payment of $5 to opt out of receiving junk mail.

https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/how-stop-junk-mail says it's free to stop getting mail for dead people. I was executor for my mom and aunt in 2017 and still get mail for them both. Turns out it's now $1 to stop that. https://www.ims-dm.com/cgi/ddnc.php Screw you Hillsdale College.

This is neat. I was curious about the demand for steel that wasn't exposed to atomic explosions, making this a kind of treasure map for scavengers.

However, Wikipedia says that there's much less need because there haven't been anywhere near as many atomic explosions recently.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel

Someone who shows up frequently in my Twitter feed takes pictures of cars where they've put mud or leaves on the license plate to obscure the characters. Also they scrape paint off, put a Back the Blue sticker on one or two characters, use a reflective license plate cover, etc. Almost always there's something that identifies the driver as a city employee, often a police officer.

It would be interesting to know if they'll crack down on that behavior while fighting congestion.