For the past six years, my only car has been a 2016 Tesla Model S. It is a very nice car, but since it is an older model, the battery range is not that great. I believe if I charge the car to 100%, the range would be about 220 miles. This is about half of the distance my Nissan Maxima can go on one tank. I have been looking for a new EV, but all of them suffer from the same short range/long charging issue. Since I have free supercharging on my Model S, it seems like a shame to give that up.

I test drove a Model Y Performance this morning at the Irvine Tesla showroom. It is definitely faster than my Model S, but it is not very comfortable. I know there is a trade-off between performance and comfort, but the ride seemed overly harsh. In addition, the speed difference is most noticeable from a standing start. My Model S is fast enough, and I am not going to drag race a bunch of teenagers in Irvine anyway.

So after further thought, I am including plug-in hybrids as part of my car search. You get the same performance and economy on short trips, and there is no range anxiety on long trips. The only issue is that plug-in hybrid models are not that numerous, especially in the luxury market segment. They are also as expensive as EVs.

For example, Lexus makes the NX with a plug-in hybrid drivetrain. I checked inventory for a few nearby dealers, and everything is over $60k. That is more expensive than the Model Y Performance.

I bought an app called Tessie a while ago that provides a lot of tracking data for my Tesla Model S. From its logs, I can figure out the timeline from last Thursday.

Start	End	Location	Description
7:43 PM	7:57 PM	105 Fwy East	driving home from work
7:57 PM	9:41 PM	Lynnwood Long Beach Fwy	tire blows out and wait on freeway shoulder
9:41 PM	9:57 PM	Lynwood Long Beach Fwy	first tow truck trying to winch car on to flatbed
9:57 PM	10:05 PM	Lynwood Compton	tow from freeway shoulder to next exit then gas station
10:05 PM	10:06 PM	Compton ARCO Station	switch tow trucks
10:06 PM	10:24 PM	Compton	tow from ARCO to 24-hour tire shop
10:24 PM	10:43 PM	Compton Artesia Tire	buying used tire and replacing blown tire
10:43 PM	11:13 PM	Compton Anaheim	drive home from tire shop
11:13 PM	11:22 PM	Anaheim Chevron Station	pull off freeway to check tire pressure and fill tire
11:22 PM	11:42 PM	Anaheim Orange	drive home from gas station

The total trip from work to home was 3 hours and 59 minutes. The scariest part was sitting on the shoulder for an hour and a half, and watching tire shop guy look for a tire that would fit my car.

I ran over something on the freeway last night. I was on my way home from work, and around 8:00 pm, I heard a loud “clunk” sound. At first everything seemed normal, but quickly the tire pressure alarm sounded. Very soon afterwards, I could hear rumbling noises from the right back tire. I tried to pull over, but the next exit was the connector from 105 East to 710 South. I was trying for the next exit but ended up stopping on the shoulder near the end of the freeway connector.

I contacted Tesla roadside service using the app and got a text saying they will get back to me. Then I called my sister, who suggested that I call 511 for motorist assistance. I did, and they suggested I call 911 since I was a road hazard. I did and was forwarded to the California Highway Patrol (CHP). Soon, a CHP cruiser showed up, parked behind me, and the trooper set up some flares. I was still texting Tesla regarding insurance information when the trooper said she will call AAA. I let Tesla know that AAA was coming, and we waited.

After about thirty minutes, the trooper came back, and said AAA was going to be another hour. She could call for a CHP tow just to move me off the freeway. Even though there was an unknown cost, I agreed since it was super scary to park on the freeway shoulder. After another thirty minutes or so, a tow truck showed up. The driver winched my Tesla up the flatbed ramp and towed me to the next exit, then an ARCO gas station.

As soon as we arrived, the other tow truck also showed up. This was the “regular” AAA tow that the CHP trooper called in. The first tow truck driver winched my car down and said the was no charge. I gave him a $20 tip for getting me off the freeway. The second tow truck driver was on the phone looking for a replacement tire for me. He did find a close match for $50, and I agreed. My Tesla uses 245/45 R19 tires and the tire he found was 245/40 R19. Close enough. Instead of winching my car up, he just drove it up the tilted flatbed. Easy.

The tow truck driver said his home base was nearby, so he knew where to get a tire at 10:30 pm. He proceeds to drive deeper into Compton and turn into smaller and darker streets. He finally pulls into a small industrial park and up to this driveway.

The place was a total mess. There were tires strewn everywhere and it looked like the lift had not been used in a long time. But “beggars can’t be choosers” right? The tow driver drives my car off the flatbed, and I also give him a $20 tip while hoping he did not drive me to a gang hideout.

In the meantime, another guy shows up with what appears to be a low-profile tire. I can see from far away that it is not going to fit my Tesla. I think the shop owner is thinking the same, and he starts rummaging to find another tire. Eventually he finds something, a used Toyo 225/55 R19, and he assures me that it will fit.

The owner proceeds to remove my flat tire right in the doorway. He then removes the old, shredded tire and mounts the “preowned” tire in its place. He shows me that they’re the “same” height and dunks the tire into a bathtub just outside the door to check for leaks. Great. I have never seen that at other tire shops. He finally put the repaired tire back on my Tesla and charged me $50. I was wondering why he did not balance my “new” tire, but I kept my mouth shut.

The tire did work, and the car seems to drive fine. Initially, the tire pressure monitoring system (TPM) showed an error in the right back tire. Eventually, the error turned into a reading of 34 PSI. By this time, I was on the 5 freeway and thought the car was pulling right. Fearing that I would get another flat, I took the next exit and pulled into a gas station. Assuming the TPM was still working, I pumped up the tire to 43 PSI, slightly less than the recommended 45 PSI.

Dammit, that clearly says INSIDE yet it was on the outside of the tire. Zero points for attention to detail.

So, four hours after pulling over on the freeway, I finally got back home. I was totally exhausted and just crashed on my bed. I woke up around 2:00 am to schedule a service appointment on my Tesla app. The earliest date was Wednesday, April 19 so I booked it but sent a text to the Santa Ana service center to see if I could walk in. Surprisingly, they answered this morning, and I was able to bring my car in at 9:00 am.

At the service center, the CSR said all the tires are worn so I agreed to replace all four. The wheel, though scuffed up, was still good. However, just buying and installing four tires came out to $1500. The tire pricing was fair, but Tesla charges $65/tire for labor to replace the tire. Not cheap, but I feel a lot safer in my car now.

==========

Here is the Yelp page for the tire shop. Should I leave a review? In my circumstance last night, I would give them ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. They get minus one star for giving me the wrong sized tire installed backwards, and not even checking balance. If it were a normal day, I would not go there for tires. However, I know not everyone can pay $375 for a tire (and service). I can see in my prior life as a poor student, this may be my only option to keep my car running. My Tesla invoice today can get me thirty or more tires last night.

They also have a web address but the page is blank.

I mentioned before that my parents moved out of my house early last year. They still have some items here in the house, but they moved a lot of stuff. For over a year I have procrastinated on reorganizing the house, but for some reason, I felt motivated this morning. I checked the IKEA website and some shelves that were perpetually out-of-stock were in-stock at the Costa Mesa store. I called my sister for help and she came by to pick me up in her SUV.

The KALLAX cube storage shelf. This must be one of IKEA’s most popular items. I already have one, and so do my parents. I also see this exact item in several friends’ houses. I purchased two black 4×2 shelves (as shown) for $100 each. I also bought another office desk. I used to have three tables of different sizes in my home office that were also from IKEA, but my parents took two of them to their new house. I want to set up one of the empty bedrooms into a media room, so I need a desk, some shelves, and maybe a few chairs.

This BEKANT desk was $400, so it is not cheap. My previous office tables from IKEA were purchased in 2003 and they look great after 20 years. Hopefully, this desk is also well constructed. I may need to purchase a corner desk from the same series later.

All these items are sitting in my garage. I just need the energy to cart them upstairs and assemble them, hopefully sooner than another year.

I took a closer look at the work order for my bass, and found the model number for the new pickups.

EMG 40DC

EMC 40JCS

I saved the image from EMG’s website, but it was the same as the 40DC. I hope he jots down which pickup is in each location, but I guess it does not matter. I will probably use both at the same time for a blended sound.

Now I need to find my bass amp and cabinet to see if they still work.

I picked up my guitar today. I cut my finger chopping romaine lettuce for a salad over the weekend so I could not play it, but Paul explained what he fixed. The final bill was the $300 he quoted, and he did not charge me the initial $75 consultation fee.

The bass, however, is a different story. The output from the bass has been low since I purchased it used. My friend did some maintenance, but I do not believe he altered the electronics. Paul said the active pickups are bad, and suggested I replace both with some new EMG ones. I am not too familiar with guitar/bass electronics, being primarily an acoustic guitar player, so I went with whatever Paul recommended. The final bill was $50 for initial inspection, $200 of labor, $100 x 2 for pickups, and $25 for a three-way switch. He is basically gutting the electronics and rewiring everything. The $500 repair bill is likely more than I paid for the used bass, but the body and neck is in really good condition, and he said the bass will sound much better than anything I can buy at that price.

So, the total bill for both guitar and bass is about $800. I really do need to play both instruments more often now.

I am playing this online game called Lost Fortress: Underground. I actually do not like it that much since it turned out to be another pay-to-win clone, but I log in occasionally and try not to spend any money. A big part of these games are alliances that you need to join to survive. Even then, the game dynamics favor high spenders so “strong” players can steamroll all other players and non-spenders have no recourse. Whatever keeps the whales happy, so the money keeps rolling in.

Anyway, there is a huge social media component, which means lots of chats with different groups of players. Our main alliance chat can get kind of raunchy sometimes, but everyone is anonymous, so it is like every other internet forum. Last night, this mysterious message pops up out of nowhere, “Whatever shut the fuck up bitch.” Everyone was puzzled since there were no messages from the player previously. It turns out his wife saw some of the texts in the chat (there are ~90 members) and thought someone was flirting with her husband, hence the mysterious message.

Funny but sad too. The player in question has dropped from our alliance and is probably not allowed to play anymore.

I dropped off both my guitar and bass to Guitar Remedy for possible maintenance and repair. My guitar is a 2003 Taylor 414ceL4, a special edition version of the 414ce. I was given a $300 estimate to fix the frets and neck. It sounds expensive but a new 4-series Taylor is selling for $2500 now. I think I paid $1400 for mine twenty years ago.

Twenty years of inflation.

My bass is an Ibanez SR505. I bought this used many years ago, so I am unsure of its history. The output has always been low for an active pickup bass. Paul (Guitar Remedy) is going to check it out and let me know what should be done. I can get a nice new bass for ~$750 so it will depend on what is wrong with the bass.

I am supposed to go back in one week to pick up my guitar and decide what to do with the bass.

So glad I decided to work from home today. I thought about going into the office this morning but woke up a bit late so stayed home instead.

There are lots of dark red spots on the freeways. I heard there are many lanes flooded.

This past weekend’s weather was pretty extreme for Southern California, where our usual forecast is sunny. We had rain, wind, and even a blizzard warning, which is super rare here.

It was 38°F outside yesterday morning. I had the heat turned up pretty high since it was freezing inside the house.

I typically rely on the iPhone weather app, but it is not really accurate. The app shows that it is currently raining and will stop soon. I looked outside and my driveway was completely dry. Maybe the app is showing me weather at the nearest weather station nearby?

I just realized that a year has gone by since my parents moved out of my house. I lived with them for the past twelve years, so the move does not seem like it was that long ago. They have been back here most weekends to clean out more stuff, either to take to their new house or to throw out as trash. I was supposed to clean out my old bedroom and turn it into a game/music/utility room, but so far, I have made very little progress. I am so tired by Friday that I just end up sleeping the entire weekend every week.

It is also not helpful that IKEA has been out-of-stock on two shelving units. My parents took two shelves in the hallway to their new house, and all my stuff that was originally on those shelves is just sitting on the ground. Since that is the first thing I see coming up the stairs, it feels like I have made zero progress.

I have not had my eyes checked since before the COVID pandemic. I have been to the same local optometrist for several years now. The last time I was there, they prescribed me two sets of glasses: one for driving and one for computer use. The total came out to almost $1,200. I fell for the sales pitch and added a bunch of stuff but ended up not even wearing the driving glasses. This time, I think I will juet get a set for computer/reading and keep using the old driving glasses.

The optometrist also likes to run a thousand tests on my eyes, even though I see an ophthalmologist and a retina specialist every year. It is all covered by my VSP vision insurance, so I let her do whatever she wants.

==========

Prescription eyeglasses are a total rip-off because there is a monopoly. A company called Luxottica owns the market and keeps prices high, much like DeBeers and diamonds. Mark-ups can be as high as 1,000%.

Here is a Los Angeles Times article.

I will probably get ripped-off today too on glasses, but I have over $1,000 left on my 2022 FSA and I need to spend it by end-of-March.

==========

I am back. It was not too bad. My prescription did not change that much but my eyesight is worse due to the beginning signs of cataracts. The optometrist said even with correction, my best eyesight is going to be 20/50. I also found out that they can correct your vision during cataract surgery by putting in a prescription lens in your eye. I was considering contacts again after 35 years but the optometrist suggested I wait until after the surgery, if I get it.

Anyway, I got one pair of glasses. With insurance, it was only $242. I am unsure why I paid over $1,000 last time for two pairs. That means I still have a lot of cash left on my FSA card that I need to burn before the end of March.

KBS World’s YouTube account has all the full episodes of Invincible Youth. I already downloaded season 1 while it was showing, but I have not seen season 2. Since 4k Video Downloader allows you to download playlists automatically (paid), I set it to download all 46 episodes at 1080p, which is about 1.5 GB per episode.

Since I have a data cap on my Internet service, I wanted to check where I was in the billing cycle. Unfortunately, the cycle started yesterday so this ~75 GB will count against my current month data cap. That is too bad since I only used 400 GB out of my 1,280 GB cap last month. Anyway, I saw that there was an identical plan to my current plan for $23 less. I am currently paying $90 for 250 Mbps.

Instead of just clicking, I clicked on the chat option. The chatbot was useless for my question so I asked for an agent. Hearing that it was a pricing question, the first agent quickly passed me to the loyalty department. That is double-speak for “trying to keep you as a customer” department. Anyway, long story short, the loyalty agent claims the offer I saw expired in January 2021, yet was still on the customer website. At least that is what I concluded since his chat answers were not always relevant or coherent. After a few exchanges, I gave up. I did go online to check, and the non-introductory rate is $90/month. Cox must use a pretty persistent tracking cookie since I had to turn off Wi-Fi on my iPhone and use Safari to get “new customer” pricing.

Depeche Mode released a new song. There are only two of them left in the group and they are also sixty years old. The song does sound like vintage Depeche Mode. That is pretty amazing.

They were huge in the 1980’s and would sell out stadium concerts. I remember their music was on constant rotation on KROQ and MTV, when MTV still showed music videos.

Look at how young they look.

Just kidding.

This is the Spectre, the first electric vehicle from Rolls Royce. It will probably come out in Q4 2023. There is no pricing yet, but it is likely to be around $400k. Here is a first look video from Top Gear:

The interior looks super luxurious, and for sure more comfortable than my Tesla Model S.

==========

I did try to make a reservation to test drive a Lucid Air but no one called me back to set up an appointment. I am positive I filled out a webform with all my contact info. Next weekend I am going to a Mercedes-Benz dealer to check out an EQS.

I have been putting this off for a long time, worried that the update would either brick my computer, or previously installed apps will not run anymore. I finally decided to go ahead with the update, and finally got to this point after an entire day. First, I needed to uninstall VirtualBox, but I could not find any installers as it was installed with another program. Then I had to free up some disk space. I “only” had about 22 GB of free storage space, and that was not enough.

I really hope this works. The screen now says 26% so it is super slow but making progress.

==========

It is done and seems to work. Of course, I have a lot less storage space left on my C: drive but that was expected. I am still getting used to the new layout, especially having the Start menu in the middle of the screen.