Coconut Monkey Cornerclub

[Zed Clampet]

I thought this was curious. I was talking to CoPilot about a conspiracy theory that I consider ridiculous. CoPilot was running right with me, confirming my points about historical events, etc. When we were done, I said, "You are designed to be a pleasant conversationalist. If I believed in the conspiracy, would you be arguing in favor of it?" So the little sign that it is processing came up, and only for a split second, the text started with "In short, yes..." and then all of the text on the screen flashed, and the beginning few words were, "In short, no...."

It doesn't actually mean anything. There is some sort of system reviewing what it says, I suppose probably another AI, and the first answer it gave could have actually been completely incorrect, so it was just working as intended. I still find it interesting and wish that I had been recording.

 

[Frag Maniac]

As far as Mechanics go, I'd love to just drop my car off and have someone else do it and I probably will work to find a Mechanic I trust when my wife and I finally have more money.

That's a thing that can be tricky to do anymore. I often wonder whether they can relate that I know a bit about mechanics, or wonder if I'm implying they're green at it or are taking shortcuts with the questions I ask. Just trying to find a shop that drains ATF the proper way via the drain plug vs sucking it out with a pump can be a trip down the rabbit hole. It's shocking how many shops think that all people want the work done the quick and cheap way.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I probably shouldn't be corresponding with a crush from 30 years ago, should I. Well, the good news is, if I actually saw her I'd think, "Jebus, she's old. Too old for me!" I would never cheat on my wife, but she doesn't like other women being in my zip code...

 

[BeardyHat]

That's a thing that can be tricky to do anymore. I often wonder whether they can relate that I know a bit about mechanics, or wonder if I'm implying they're green at it or are taking shortcuts with the questions I ask. Just trying to find a shop that drains ATF the proper way via the drain plug vs sucking it out with a pump can be a trip down the rabbit hole. It's shocking how many shops think that all people want the work done the quick and cheap way.

Your tranny pan might not even have a drain plug! My Jeep and my van both do not have one, but on my Jeep I actually upgraded the pan to an aftermarket one with a drain.

But yeah, I dunno. I've got a mechanic nearby I kind of trust, but I'm still a bit suspicious of, because one time they told me I needed to do a bunch of work which I had already done myself. But to their credit, they also spotted an issue I overlooked, so I dunno.

I probably shouldn't be corresponding with a crush from 30 years ago, should I. Well, the good news is, if I actually saw her I'd think, "Jebus, she's old. Too old for me!" I would never cheat on my wife, but she doesn't like other women being in my zip code...

My wife and I regularly tell each other when we think another person is attractive 😕
Neither of us has any intention or motivation to do anything about it, but we're both definitely human.

My windshield wiper arm project on my van turned into something more than I bargained for and I'm very annoyed with it as a whole. Thinking I might just take a break from it today and drive it around missing part of the upper cowl I took off, because I just don't feel like screwing with it.

It's a crap design on Dodge's part. It's interfering wipers, so they can contact each other, which happened yesterday while testing and broke one of the wiper blades. The reason being, the posts the arms mount on look to be stainless steel or some other very hard metal. They were corroded, so I'm in the process of cleaning them up, but the arms themselves are aluminum, so any slippage and they strip the inside of the arm immediately and then start flopping around like a dying fish. Can't even buy new ones, because the van is 22 years old, so if I've stripped the drivers side one, I'm going to have to go to the junkyard and hunt for a new arm that is hopefully in good shape.

Really kind of just feel like setting the car on fire at this point, I'm tired of fixing stuff on it.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Your tranny pan might not even have a drain plug! My Jeep and my van both do not have one, but on my Jeep I actually upgraded the pan to an aftermarket one with a drain.

The only limitation on my Hybrid model is the tranny doesn't have a way of easily measuring fluid level and refilling via a dipstick tube in the engine compartment. It DOES however have both a lower drain plug and upper fill plug/hole on the side of the tranny under a cowling that requires taking out a few bolts to remove. I've also seen videos of both fluid exchanges and top offs being done on this exact model.

My only concern is a lot of shops anymore, especially the quick fluid change ones, will not do ATF changes on vehicles that don't have a tranny dipstick, but Grease Monkey at least will, and they tell me they'll drain it out the drain plug vs via a pump. I don't care if they pump in the new fluid because that's the way it has to be done when you only have a side fill hole vs a dipstick tube to pour into.

I got lost yesterday in a town just north of me trying to find a new drop site the company I buy a bulk grocery item from is using now. It involved having to stop at a parking lot, using the Google Maps GPS voice navigator on my phone, and driving up a fairly long, steep hill. The tranny handled it fine without a flinch, but I was very stressed.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I am going to retire, at least for now, from posting in this thread. Since I entered retirement, I've suffered from an escalation in my depression. I think many would be shocked at the horrible way I talk to myself. Many of my TMI posts on here were actually attempts to defend myself from my awful inner dialogue. In the real world, I hope that I'm not really that awful of a person. Other than myself, I don't have a single enemy in this world (except maybe the road rage guy if he remembers me). But I don't need to make this my personal therapy thread, and the stuff I post makes me look worse and worse, and I don't need people thinking about me the same way my subconscious does.

 

[Pifanjr]

I am going to retire, at least for now, from posting in this thread. Since I entered retirement, I've suffered from an escalation in my depression. I think many would be shocked at the horrible way I talk to myself. Many of my TMI posts on here were actually attempts to defend myself from my awful inner dialogue. In the real world, I hope that I'm not really that awful of a person. Other than myself, I don't have a single enemy in this world (except maybe the road rage guy if he remembers me). But I don't need to make this my personal therapy thread, and the stuff I post makes me look worse and worse, and I don't need people thinking about me the same way my subconscious does.

I hope you'll recover. I've been struggling with depression for a while now and it's rough.

 

[BeardyHat]

I am going to retire, at least for now, from posting in this thread. Since I entered retirement, I've suffered from an escalation in my depression. I think many would be shocked at the horrible way I talk to myself. Many of my TMI posts on here were actually attempts to defend myself from my awful inner dialogue. In the real world, I hope that I'm not really that awful of a person. Other than myself, I don't have a single enemy in this world (except maybe the road rage guy if he remembers me). But I don't need to make this my personal therapy thread, and the stuff I post makes me look worse and worse, and I don't need people thinking about me the same way my subconscious does.

I'm only just recently coming out of a pretty severe episode myself and I have a similar problem. My wife tells me I'm entirely too hard on myself and that's something that happens even when I'm not depressed, but especially now that I'm looking for work and not even getting any responses to the CVs I'm sending out.

Good luck. Those troughs of depression are the worst and all we can do is wait them out.

 

[BeardyHat]

The only limitation on my Hybrid model is the tranny doesn't have a way of easily measuring fluid level and refilling via a dipstick tube in the engine compartment. It DOES however have both a lower drain plug and upper fill plug/hole on the side of the tranny under a cowling that requires taking out a few bolts to remove. I've also seen videos of both fluid exchanges and top offs being done on this exact model.

My only concern is a lot of shops anymore, especially the quick fluid change ones, will not do ATF changes on vehicles that don't have a tranny dipstick, but Grease Monkey at least will, and they tell me they'll drain it out the drain plug vs via a pump. I don't care if they pump in the new fluid because that's the way it has to be done when you only have a side fill hole vs a dipstick tube to pour into.

I got lost yesterday in a town just north of me trying to find a new drop site the company I buy a bulk grocery item from is using now. It involved having to stop at a parking lot, using the Google Maps GPS voice navigator on my phone, and driving up a fairly long, steep hill. The tranny handled it fine without a flinch, but I was very stressed.

The old "sealed transmission" sounds like. "Good for the life of the vehicle", but what is the manufacturers idea of the life of the vehicle?

Ended up just driving my van around yesterday without the cowl, so you could see directly down into the engine bay. I thought it was kind of funny, because it makes it look like even more of a jalopy, so people really keep their distance.

 

[Frag Maniac]

The old "sealed transmission" sounds like. "Good for the life of the vehicle", but what is the manufacturers idea of the life of the vehicle?

The life of this tranny I've seen two opinions on. Generally Ford or especially Escape owners of this model will tell you this tranny (and EV battery) can last the life of the vehicle, based on a 300,000 estimate. There are Ford haters out there though that insist the tranny is lightweight junk. Many of their comments sound like obvious sarcasm.

I've seen actual Ford Escape owners of this model say they've gotten WAY more than what they expected regarding life out of both tranny and EV battery, but the reality of the latter is you can expect to lose engine shut off at stop lights and electric motor power below 40 MPH on flat roads at roughly 160,000 miles of use.

The Assist mode will still function though, where the electric motor kicks in at 3000-4000 RPM, and that IMO is the most useful feature for driving AND gas saving. It's intended to be used on the freeway though. Revving up past 3000 RPM on slower roads, especially when the vehicle isn't warmed up, is not advisable in my experience.

So what I'm saying is it comes down to common sense. Most who are mechanically inclined that have driven any kind of auto tranny know the dos and don'ts of how to use them, and their life is very expectant on that. Like most opinions on the net though, you have to toss out the highs and lows and find the median common sense ones.

For what I paid for this vehicle, I'll be happy to get 240,000 miles out of it (as little as I drive that will be at least 15 yrs from now), and I'm almost at the 180,000 ATF change interval now. I'll add that we can't forget that many vehicle owners get sucked into quick ATF change methods that can cause damage. You have to know your vehicle!

 

[Zloth]

At the rate I drive, it would take me over 50 years to get a car to 240,000 miles!

 

[Frag Maniac]

At the rate I drive, it would take me over 50 years to get a car to 240,000 miles!

Yeah but that's FAR more mileage per year than I average (4,800 mi per yr by my calculations). Right now I'm only driving about 3000 mi a yr, and when I said my car's 240,000 mi point might be at least 15 yrs from now, that's based on roughly 4000 per yr, as I added another 1000 per yr for the mt biking trips I'll soon be making.

 

[Colif]

I bought a game last week and was going to spend entire weekend playing it. Instead I wasted it all after finding my Amazon account was on hold again, and then being proven correct in an assumption it meant they had cancelled my monitor order again. That is the last time I pre order hardware. Lesson learned... at least, from Asus anyway.
Now I don't have anything to do tonight but pointless starting a game now.
spent two months checking an order just for them to cancel it... not amused.
Not like monitor exists anywhere else here yet...

I was happy sitting in line. They removed the line twice.

Nothing I can do about that now. Wait and see when it actually arrives, maybe next month.

lots of pork on forums right now, shame I can't do anything about that.

 

[Colif]

pattern: mum turns on kettle and calls out to me from the kitchen.
I open door and say I didn't hear her.
Her answer is always the same thing "I can't hear you, the kettle is on"...

I pointed it out today, she does it all the time.

Half the time I think she is talking to me, she is on the phone.
I get in trouble if she is actually talking to me...
Can't win.

 

[BeardyHat]

Well shucks, may have killed my laptop yet again.

This time it at least wasn't (directly) my doing...I think. I mean, it was sort of my doing in that my foot snagged the charging cable and yanked it off the couch; it hit the rug pretty hard, but now just won't do anything. It was actually still running when I picked it up, but the power button refused to work and after letting the battery die overnight, disassembling it completely, still no dice.

I won't go into all the steps I took, but I spent 2-hours on it and I'll probably spend some more. Hopefully can fix it, but we'll see. This is mildly disappointing.

 

[BeardyHat]

Looks like it's probably hosed. Had it plugged in and the machine is heating-up pretty dramatically; doing some Googling and asking Copilot, there's probably a cracked capacitor or MOSFET that needs replacement.

Next question is, do I take it to the same guy I had fix it before or should I just junk it/sell it and call it a day?

 

[Colif]

This is the sort of question I don't like to answer.

Remember one guy on TH broke his display by punching it in anger, and posted screenshots and we all had to give bad news.
Still haunts me today. Shattered... ugh

Can't give them any good news.

Next question is, do I take it to the same guy I had fix it before or should I just junk it/sell it and call it a day?

I don't know, its your choice.

I broke a keyboard doing that, its USB connection stopped working after I pulled it out dramatically, and well, even though it was wireless, it still needed USB to charge. I liked that keyboard so much I just got another model from same company but its not the same.
Perhaps not the same but I try not to break my stuff, I have to live with the memory. Some I can do without
. Most of the things I have broken recently are keyboards if I think about it. Easy to drop and break a key

 

[BeardyHat]

This is the sort of question I don't like to answer.

Remember one guy on TH broke his display by punching it in anger, and posted screenshots and we all had to give bad news.
Still haunts me today. Shattered... ugh

Can't give them any good news.


I don't know, its your choice.

I broke a keyboard doing that, its USB connection stopped working after I pulled it out dramatically, and well, even though it was wireless, it still needed USB to charge. I liked that keyboard so much I just got another model from same company but its not the same.
Perhaps not the same but I try not to break my stuff, I have to live with the memory. Some I can do without
. Most of the things I have broken recently are keyboards if I think about it. Easy to drop and break a key

Most things I break, I can fix.

This one, unfortunately, probably not. And I feel extra bad about it because it was my own klutziness (people would absolutely describe me as such, without prompting). I was standing up to get my youngest out of the bath and put him to bed and just wasn't paying attention to where my feet were.

At this point, I think I'll just sit it out and mull it over. I'm not in dire need of a laptop or anything and I tested out the very old MSI one I have with a 4th Gen i7 and 970m and it's working ok with Linux Mint. Glad I didn't sell it. So I'm going to sit on the broken one for awhile and just use the MSI and my Steam Deck for now and mull over my plan.

I've been a little ready to get rid of this laptop anyway, though I enjoy the performance it offered. So maybe I'll get it repaired or maybe I'll sell it on and think about if I really need it or the performance it offers.. I'm actually doing ok between my tablet and my Steam Deck anyway. I'm mostly just annoyed at myself for being so careless and klutzy, but I'm not sure if there's anything to be done about that.

 

[BeardyHat]

The life of this tranny I've seen two opinions on. Generally Ford or especially Escape owners of this model will tell you this tranny (and EV battery) can last the life of the vehicle, based on a 300,000 estimate. There are Ford haters out there though that insist the tranny is lightweight junk. Many of their comments sound like obvious sarcasm.

I've seen actual Ford Escape owners of this model say they've gotten WAY more than what they expected regarding life out of both tranny and EV battery, but the reality of the latter is you can expect to lose engine shut off at stop lights and electric motor power below 40 MPH on flat roads at roughly 160,000 miles of use.

The Assist mode will still function though, where the electric motor kicks in at 3000-4000 RPM, and that IMO is the most useful feature for driving AND gas saving. It's intended to be used on the freeway though. Revving up past 3000 RPM on slower roads, especially when the vehicle isn't warmed up, is not advisable in my experience.

So what I'm saying is it comes down to common sense. Most who are mechanically inclined that have driven any kind of auto tranny know the dos and don't of how to use them, and their life is very expectant on that. Like most opinions on the net though, you have to toss out the highs and lows and find the median common sense ones.

For what I paid for this vehicle, I'll be happy to get 240,000 miles out of it, and I'm almost at the 180,000 ATF change interval now. As little as I drive that will be at least 15 yrs from now. I'll add that we can't forget that many vehicle owners get sucked into quick ATF change methods that can cause damage. You have to know your vehicle!

Yeah, you never know the maintenance records of folks out there. Supposedly the transmission in my van is no good, but it's still going well at 250k. But I do like you do and try to take care of it; fluid changes and filter changes. Relatively recently my parking brake cable snapped, so before I fixed it I was making sure to have a wood block on my driveway and let the car roll back on it a little bit to check it before I threw it in park. I don't like the idea of the transmission holding the weight of the vehicle, especially on an incline like my driveway.

 

[Colif]

This time it at least wasn't (directly) my doing...I think. I mean, it was sort of my doing in that my foot snagged the charging cable and yanked it off the couch; it hit the rug pretty hard, but now just won't do anything. It was actually still running when I picked it up, but the power button refused to work and after letting the battery die overnight, disassembling it completely, still no dice.

That sounds like an accident waiting to happen. Not very good safety you had there. Perhaps this is a lesson, charge the laptops away from your feet. Move cables away from feet.
Accidents do happen, your attention was elsewhere.

Speaking of breaking something while distracted

Lucky I could just clip the arm back on, it appears to stay on now. Need to be more careful

Had two walks today, I walked home from shops after a haircut, and then 3 hours later I had to go an appointment. Both my feet don't like me as they have had it easy in recent months. Probably due for a tablet to remove the pain. They were fine at time, its just now.

 

[BeardyHat]

That sounds like an accident waiting to happen. Not very good safety you had there. Perhaps this is a lesson, charge the laptops away from your feet. Move cables away from feet.
Accidents do happen, your attention was elsewhere.

Speaking of breaking something while distracted

Lucky I could just clip the arm back on, it appears to stay on now. Need to be more careful

Had two walks today, I walked home from shops after a haircut, and then 3 hours later I had to go an appointment. Both my feet don't like me as they have had it easy in recent months. Probably due for a tablet to remove the pain. They were fine at time, its just now.

It is my klutziness and carelessness combined, really. Cords everywhere.

My knees feel like your feet. I went out last night and wore my boots, because it was supposed to be rainy (which it was), but I think I walk weirdly in them or something, because they tend to aggrevate my arthritis much more than my sneakers/trainers.

I may already be picking up a new computer today D: At least if I do, it's a pretty screaming deal.

 

[Zed Clampet]

NOT a TMI post

I've watched 3 supposed histories on the P51 Mustang, and all of them got it wrong.

When the British went to North American Aviation, they needed and asked for a low to medium altitude fighter. This is exactly what they got, and it worked great. In fact, the reason that Rolls Royce sent a test pilot to try it out wasn't an accident. They wanted his opinion on how the plane would perform at high altitude if they changed the engine to the Rolls engine, which is an engine that North American Aviation already had access to through Packard, which had licensed it through Rolls Royce.

It wasn't used because that's not what the British needed at the time and not what they asked for. But as the war advanced, they realized having a high altitude P51 would be a game changer. No one, neither on the British side nor the American side, was stupid. They all knew from the beginning what they wanted, what they got and then, later, how they could change it to update it for how the war progressed. The videos all try to make this sound like some sort of serendipitous miracle. The British didn't know what they wanted/needed/the Americans didn't know how to make a high altitude plane, etc. Just BS. All of this is fully documented.

 

[BeardyHat]

NOT a TMI post

I've watched 3 supposed histories on the P51 Mustang, and all of them got it wrong.

When the British went to North American Aviation, they needed and asked for a low to medium altitude fighter. This is exactly what they got, and it worked great. In fact, the reason that Rolls Royce sent a test pilot to try it out wasn't an accident. They wanted his opinion on how the plane would perform at high altitude if they changed the engine to the Rolls engine, which is an engine that North American Aviation already had access to through Packard, which had licensed it through Rolls Royce.

It wasn't used because that's not what the British needed at the time and not what they asked for. But as the war advanced, they realized having a high altitude P51 would be a game changer. No one, neither on the British side nor the American side, was stupid. They all knew from the beginning what they wanted, what they got and then, later, how they could change it to update it for how the war progressed. The videos all try to make this sound like some sort of serendipitous miracle. The British didn't know what they wanted/needed/the Americans didn't know how to make a high altitude plane, etc. Just BS. All of this is fully documented.

Really quite interesting. I don't know a ton about the Air War, nor do I explore it much right now, so it's fun to read a little fact about it.

I think the philosophies of the different armies was quite interesting, though I can really only relate it to tanks. Obviously the Germans were designing from the top down after a certain point and that philosophy just didn't work, versus the Americans who had a competent, multirole tank that had all these things going for it, but was generally just "good enough." versus the Brits who in the early and mid war kept designing tanks for specific roles, which got expensive and didn't necessarily meet the requirements due to budgets, but also was flawed from the fact that tanks needed to be multiple things on the battlefield.

At any rate, I picked up that new computer. $120 for a Surface Book 2 with an i7-8650u, 16Gb of RAM and a 1060 in the keyboard dock thing. These things seem to run north of $200 on eBay with similar configurations. It's definitely a departure from the Thinkpad though, given I can't upgrade it or repair it when needed, but for $120, I'm not going to complain. It'll get me by for now and I've been damn curious about the Surface Books for awhile now, so to see one pop up on Craigslist this morning was serendipitous.

77% battery capacity on the tablet portion and 81% on the keyboard portion; not terrible for an almost 10 year old machine.

 

[Zloth]

You keep saying TMI! TMI is an image format I invented! Well... 'format' is pushing it. It's just a .JPG with a comment set in such a way that my programs can read it, then lay it on top of a map with the same location/rotation/opacity that it was saved with. Outside of work, it's just a .JPG that isn't named sanely.

Work is aaaaaalmost... sorta done. Semi-retirement after tomorrow! Unfortunately, there's also a massive release going out that night. One I don't think we're really ready to do - but upper management says go, so we go. I'll need to help push it out (very possibly until the wee hours), but then just be part time consulting after that. Feels a lot like, well...

View: https://youtu.be/d9Am7nUiIyU?si=RxCo2MCZUtg_vWbA

OK, it's not so unready that the whole place explodes. Probably.
Pretty probably.

 

[Zed Clampet]

You keep saying TMI! TMI is an image format I invented! Well... 'format' is pushing it. It's just a .JPG with a comment set in such a way that my programs can read it, then lay it on top of a map with the same location/rotation/opacity that it was saved with. Outside of work, it's just a .JPG that isn't named sanely.

Work is aaaaaalmost... sorta done. Semi-retirement after tomorrow! Unfortunately, there's also a massive release going out that night. One I don't think we're really ready to do - but upper management says go, so we go. I'll need to help push it out (very possibly until the wee hours), but then just be part time consulting after that. Feels a lot like, well...

View: https://youtu.be/d9Am7nUiIyU?si=RxCo2MCZUtg_vWbA

OK, it's not so unready that the whole place explodes. Probably.
Pretty probably.

Congrats!