It’s been a week of boring data entry drudgery, but home life has been nice. Baking every day, spending plenty of time with the missus, and doing a few minutes of art every day for Inktober has been good for me. Looking forward to a weekend of Halloween-style activities. We’re Americans and of a slightly morbid bent, so we keep the holiday with a lot more enthusiasm than any of our neighbours. Last year was good for trick or treating, but we’re taking our costumes a little more seriously this year. Can’t wait to try out the new skeleton hand gloves, might post pics on Lemmy since we’re supposed to be testing out our costumes this weekend.
Yeah not bad cheers fella, how about you?
I took the EV out on a fairly long distance trip. Planned in a charging stop halfway along, but didn’t need it.
Had planned out plan A, B, and C’s for charging at the venue… but as soon as we pulled up to the hotel, the other half says “hey that looks like a charger over there”, and sure enough it was. It was a ChargePlace Scotland charger, but strangely wasn’t listed in the ChargePlace Scotland app.
Tapped the card, plugged her in, and off she charged.
Disconnected it the following morning, got the invoice email though:
£0.
Absolutely banging, a free drive!
Could you imagine the mayhem if a petrol station started giving away fuel for free?!
Top result! We’re still making a 10yr old phev work (more because day to day we don’t go far) but I suspect if we leased a runaround Dacia Spring we’d break even with the petrol we’d save
Yeah not bad cheers fella, how about you?
It was OK cheers, mixed bag really. My dad’s health isn’t great and I’m having to do more and more for him. He can barely walk and is overweight but just keeps rejecting any ideas we have that will help him. I fear he’s going to have some kind of accident and the decision making will be out of his hands.
Had a work trip to London for a few days though which was nice, had a bit of a game day one day with various people from across the org so a good chance to meet new people you wouldn’t normally meet, and also an all paid for bar in the evening. Generally just nice to get away for a bit and chat (I work remotely so don’t physically see my colleagues that often!)
I took the EV out on a fairly long distance trip. Planned in a charging stop halfway along, but didn’t need it.
What EV do you have? Cannot complain about free leccy! How much should it have been?
I’ve got an MG5 Trophy, and it does alright. The range is slightly disappointing - from 100% in Eco mode, it says it’ll do 221 miles.
Will it bollocks. If you were going 30mph up and down a flat runway then maybe, but hills and motorway is kryptonite for batteries, and I’m sure it’ll be worse in winter. Rapid chargers - 50kW and above - are fucking incredible mind and the infrastructure isn’t half bad, but you’re not far off petrol rates for the convenience. That said, I’m usually stopping off somewhere for a coffee - so to charge it while I’m doing that means I’m only “losing” five or ten minutes off my journey.
As for how much I saved, obviously depends on the tariff but I’d say probably twenty quid. It was a 7 kW charger in a car park so they generally sit around 40p/kWh. I’m not complaining. In fact I’m still thrilled 😂
Fingers crossed your father will listen to reason too. I hope you have many years ahead of you both 😊
I think all EVs are like this, some worse than others. Carwow on YouTube often do EV range tests across different cars to see how they compare to their claimed ranges and see what happens when they run out.
I wouldn’t mind a Kia EV3 but I want to run our current car into the ground before we even consider a new car!
DIY:
- I’ve upgraded some 1-gang electrical sockets to 2-gang ones. Not hard, I’ve just learned that those white electrical boxes are brittle as hell and you should not screw them in too tight or they will literally crack. I’ve learned what a spur and a ring circuit is, and now I feel like a magic cowboy at the circus.
- Learning how to lay to brick watching some youtube videos. The back wall of the house is teetering over, and I’ve got all the bricks, the trowels, the easy-mortar mix, the will, the time, I’m just lacking the knowhow. There’s a seamless left-right-forward-back motion that every brick layer seems to know in loading a brick and I spend my commute visualizing this method in my head like I’m training for the olympics.
Devices:
- I’ve automated my blinds with a mini-solar-powered blind tilter motor. Not zigbee sadly, but bluetooth, but it works great. I had to upgrade the blind tilting mechanism first so that it’s not just a string but a wand. The motor wraps around the wand and turns it. Plays reasonably nicely with Home Assistant.
- I’ve hooked up frontdoor’s doorbell camera (which offers a nice RTSP stream) to a birdcall identifier utility. It runs day and night and tells me which birds I’m detecting and records their calls. I’m getting a lot of European Robins, and (sigh) Rose-ringed Parakeets, and apparently a (yay) Hawfinch!
- I’m looking to upgrade the front porch halogen (GU10) light with a zigbee one that can display colours, so I can automate evil red lights whenever my camera detects movement past the house on halloween. Bought some hanging ghosts too.
Other:
- I met a young stray cat. He tried to walk himself in. I almost let him, but don’t know where he’d stay. He’s started stalking me every time I walk out towards the bins. I want a cat, but am deeply deeply afraid
Awesome mate. How’s yours?
How’s yours?
Copying and pasting from another comment because I’m lazy 🙈
It was OK cheers, mixed bag really. My dad’s health isn’t great and I’m having to do more and more for him. He can barely walk and is overweight but just keeps rejecting any ideas we have that will help him. I fear he’s going to have some kind of accident and the decision making will be out of his hands.
Had a work trip to London for a few days though which was nice, had a bit of a game day one day with various people from across the org so a good chance to meet new people you wouldn’t normally meet, and also an all paid for bar in the evening. Generally just nice to get away for a bit and chat (I work remotely so don’t physically see my colleagues that often!)
Glad you had an awesome week!
I dropped a chopping board on my foot and the big toe now has a new colour scheme. Not recommended.
It’s Monday…
Yeah I try and post these on a Sunday but I really struggled for time, and it’s not something that’s even on my mind.
So you had a shit week then?
No it was good, just busy!
