My intent is to keep this updated on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. No big grand plans, just some place to jot down my thoughts as I sip my coffee each Saturday morning.
Click on the coffee pot to open the navigation menu! And if you scroll down, you can click the sun in the top left to return to the top of the page.
This weekend is our youngest's birthday! She's been really excited to learn about robots. We've watched a few robot building videos, and in her spare time she's been drawing schematics for how to build a robot. She must be quite the roboticist, because it all looks like Greek to me!
I watched a video this weekend about reclaiming the internet for people, instead of accepting that it's now in the hands of a few corporations. It was titled, A Web Revival: the Internet didn't die, you're just not on it, by the creator onionboots. You can find it
I suffer no such grand delusions that this webpage is countering companies like Meta, TikTok, Google, etc. I know that my traffic here will be effectively zero, except for those that I deliberately send the URL to, like family & friends. But it still feels like something that I need to do, if for no other reason that to teach myself HTML.
I grew up in the era of Geocities & Angelfire pages, but never really knew how to make a page of my own. Back when MySpace was around, my profile page was just copy & pasted pre-fabbed HTML layouts. I didn't really do anything to spruce it up, and that was fine for me at the time. But looking back, that was a great opportunity to make something of my own, and to express myself. It's not really a regret, just something that I know I would have enjoyed, had I taken the time to do it.
Something that I think will become apparent as these blogs continue is my interest in electric vehicles (EVs). I'm a big proponent of them for many people. In my use case, ~15 miles commute each way, around 75% freeway, 25% city, with heavy traffic in the afternoons, our use case works really well for an EV. We can charge at home, we have relatively cheap electricity rates, our gas prices are relatively high, etc. We have a 2021 Volkswagen ID.4 Pro S, the rear wheel drive variant. It isn't stupidly fast like dual motor Model Y's, nor is it as luxurious as a Lucid Air, but it is still a super, super nice car. It has heated seats, heated steering wheel, wireless Apple Carplay & Android Auto, has 4 USB C ports (2 in the front, 2 in the back), Matrix LED headlights, Driver Assist (ADAS), and much, much more. We got it for $21,000 with less than 5000 miles on it. When we charge to 80%, we can easily get 180 miles in the winter, average around 225 miles, and for longer trips, we just charge to 100% and get ~250 miles.
This week, we're having a new 150A electrical panel installed at our house, along with a 60A circuit for a hardwired level 2 charger, capable of outputting a constant 48A, effectively maxing out the 11kW onboard charger. This means that with the ChargePoint Home Flex that our utility company supplied for us (100% paid for), we can charge from 10% to 80% in about 5 or 6 hours. This makes charging just...a non-issue. No matter what, if we can get home, we'll have a fully charged car again the next day. It's simple. With current electricity rates, our car costs about about $0.05 per mile. For reference, my truck, which gets 13.0 MPG for my commute, costs me $0.29 per mile. I know 13 MPG is abysmal, and is not indicative of modern vehicles (our truck is a 2005 Silverado 1500), it just really doesn't matter what MPG you can get; an EV will almost always outperform it, assuming you can charge at home.
I hope in the near future to upgrade from the truck to another EV for my commute. The Volkswagen (nicknamed Eevee) is wifey's car. Hopefully, in the next year or two, I can get a used EV as well; I'm looking at used cars, specifically either the Volvo EX30, a Hyundai Ioniq 5/Kia EV6 (same car, different body), or the new Nissan Leaf. I'm not like, super duper into crossover style cars, but it's hard to deny how good the new Leaf is. I never thought I would say that. If insurance wasn't so brutal, I would absolutely get a Polestar 2. I really like the sedan style, as well as the driving dynamics of a real "driving car". But, we'll see what the future entails. A close friend just got a brand new 2026 Ioniq 5, and damn, that thing is sick as hell.
TEST This is also a test.
TEST This is also a test.