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back to work
Oct. 23rd, 2023 04:26 amvia https://ift.tt/PRCBFib
So I drove the new Subaru on its maiden thruway voyage yesterday. Dude had helped me turn off the Lane Excursion Warning or whatever, when it beeps at you for going out of what it thinks is a lane? I found it wildly distracting in Tonawanda with the gratuitous roundabouts whose markings confused the cameras, and it drove me nuts. I know where the edge of the road is! Please let me drive the car, if I am over there it is usually for a reason, and that reason means I probably would not like you to beep to distract me.
Anyway. That’s off and I can see the indicator that it’s off. Great! Also the one where it seizes control of the car if it thinks you’re going to get into an accident, that’s off. Because that would not have saved me any of the three? times in my life I’ve been in an accident, and it WILL cause me to get into an accident I super don’t need to when it stops the car dead in a driving lane for some reason. (it is probably that “feature” in a car ahead of us in traffic that caused the chain reaction rear-ending that totaled the last Subaru, someone stopped TOTALLY DEAD in WILD overreaction at being cut off at 55 mph, and now I know, some cars will helpfully do that for you, and while it will keep you from rear-ending someone it will also ensure that you in turn get rear-ended, but because of insurance this is of course infinitely preferable. One would think no accident is preferable but that is not now insurance works.)
So anyway. More bells, whistles etc wittering behind the cut.
Dude’s mazda has the kind of cruise control where it keeps you a safe following distance behind the car in front of you in preference to actually adhering to the speed you asked it to go, which means you have to be constantly vigilant so that you don’t wind up going 40 in a 65 because it so nicely and gradually slowed you down to follow the boat in the slow lane when the passing lane was perfectly open. But I don’t mind that so much now that I know to expect it, and I at least figured out how to shorten the following distance so that I was within reasonable passing range as I came up on very slow cars, to prevent my having to camp in the left lane the moment a truck appears on the horizon.
(Guess what people do, now. yeah they just pick a speed and camp in the left lane. fortunately traffic is usually light enough on the thruway that you can pass these idiots on the right. Yes I have a low opinion of most drivers but it is warranted.)
The feature I was not expecting to like so much was Lane Keep Assist. Yes, this is using the same features as the Distracting Lane Beep, but on the Thruway, which is flat and straight and unending, mostly the car can in fact find the lane edges, and it will then mostly steer itself to be between them. this is ENORMOUSLY helpful at avoiding shoulder strain, and at letting you take the cap off your water bottle whenever you like.
The thing that’s annoying is that if you don’t occasionally attempt to wrestle control gently back, it decides you don’t have your hands on the wheel, and will abruptly turn itself off in a huff of beeping. The way my steering wheel is positioned, I can’t actually see the bit of dashboard display where it first warns you, so I don’t know it’s starting to feel neglected until it turns itself off. For the record every time it did this I did in fact have my hands on the wheel, so I was easily able to correct it, but it was very annoying. I guess most people have the steering wheel up higher or lower, so they can see the part of the display where it tells you things, but that might as well be a blank screen for me.
Still, though, i much enjoyed having the car occasionally steer itself while I opened packages of crackers and such.
The downside is that I hydrated well in my delight at being able to open my water bottle whenever I wanted, and they still have fully ¾ of the rest stops on the Thruway shut down, so I told myself at 9:30 that I’d stop to pee at the next rest stop, and it was 11:00 before I finally made it to the blessed land of Indian Castle Service Area which was actually open and was a fucking zoo because there’s nowhere else for 150 miles to fucking pee. WTF.
Anyway. (The Thruway had rest stops every 40 miles or so for my entire lifetime, until the pandemic, during which they decided closing them was the thing to do, and then they decided to demolish and replace all of them with other different but similar buildings, and they decided instead of like, idk, working from one side to the other or something, they’d just close all of them at once so that the entire purpose of having rest stops became moot. It’s now year 3 of this project and you can’t fucking stop to pee anywhere but you think you’re going to be able to so you don’t get off the highway because now most gas stations have “out of order” signs permanently affixed to their bathrooms so they won’t have to clean them, which is why the rest stops are so useful– one certainly doesn’t purchase fuel there, it’s much more expensive than if you get off at an exit, and gas stations mostly don’t turn their pumps off. Just their bathrooms. So the rest stops have one job, which they’re not doing.)
I got used to several of the car’s quirks. It has a weird little chime it does, which I eventually worked out was it letting me know it had acquired or lost a target in its following distance calculation. Ah this is how you’re supposed to recognize that it might change your speed, or not. Now I know what the chime means it doesn’t bother me.
It was a bit like having a cranky astromech.
So, I got over to my mother’s house and we did autumn chores, mostly moving furniture and pots and washing windows and putting in storm windows. Farmsister and BIL spent a lot of time on ladders, fixing gutters, cleaning roofs, etc.; Farmsister even got to don her chainsaw chaps and take down / cut up a tree threatening the driveway, which was undoubtedly good enrichment for her.
I got back to my cabin after dark, and walked in the door and smelled… death or… something stale, idk. it wasn’t nice. I checked the mousetraps and nothing was in them, but went out and looked and the bait block had been partly eaten. I think a mouse might have died in my roof. I checked my gas stove all over and decided the smell wasn’t leaking gas, the pilot was still lit, so that was okay. So I lit some incense, and lit the stove, and it warmed up the house quite a bit. I was just settling in, the temperature at 61 beginning to approach that of a normal room, when the fire went whoomph and went out.
I decided the gas must be out, and indeed the cylinder felt light. It’s a 100-lb cylinder, and when it was installed I could barely move it, but now I can rock it easily. Phooey. So I shut off the handle where it comes into the house, and lit a few candles.
The mice were undeterred by the smell of death and made a racket in the ceiling much of the night. i don’t know how they can be so loud. I don’t know. You’d think they’d eat the dead one. Maybe they have, the smell is faint.
Today I have a lot to do but maybe I can get my propane cylinder refilled, it’s not going to be that cold this week but it’s not going to be warm either.
It’s 52 in the sleeping loft, which could be worse, but I’m nerving myself up to 1) go use the loo outside, and 2) get dressed downstairs where it’ll be significantly colder than 52…. (Your picture was not posted)
