Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

A bit of a story. And you know I like telling stories!

In the past, I was using an Alamogordo tire shop to get the oil changes on our two cars done. Then they did one thing that ticked me off, and a second thing that utterly [EXPLETIVE DELETED] me off, so I stopped using them. The first was they used the wrong wrench type to tighten the plug on Russet's car's oil pan, which damaged the threads. It took them absolutely forever to get a correct replacement.

The second was they accidentally drained some transmission fluid from my car, thinking it was the oil fill. This was my 2015 Subaru Crosstrek. The transmission is sealed: you cannot manually add tranny fluid to it without a computer. Which they did not have. I made them bring up a mechanic with the computer from El Paso the next day to service it properly. But what really made me mad was no apology, no discount on the oil change.

So that was it for them. They had another long-standing strike against them regarding some snow tires that I wanted, so that was actually three strikes. Back prior to 2015 I had a Toyota Matrix, good car. All-wheel drive, and I knew I was going to need snow tires. I asked them for a recommendation, and they said and they said "Buy THESE tires!" The time came when snow season was proverbially around the corner and it was time to order new tires. But I decided to do a little online research before calling them to order them. And review after review said 'DO NOT buy THESE tires - they are horrible in snow and mud!' I ended up calling a tire shop in Ruidoso - they're at an elevation of approx 7,500' and told them what I needed, and he said 'Buy THESE OTHER tires, I equip the Ruidoso Downs Police Department with them and they're very happy.' I told him okay, let me do a little internet digging, and I'll call you back. Review after review were along the lines of 'I'm a first responder, and THESE OTHER tires are so incredible that I've equipped every car in my family with them!' After I got THESE OTHER tires on my car, after our first decent snow there was maybe 4-5" of snow on the ground and we decided to go down the mountain for dinner. I had Russet drive my car, and we took the long way out of the village. She very quickly remarked 'These are really good tires!' I ended up buying two sets of tires from them. I now get tires from another place in Alamogordo and have been very satisfied, but all they do for me is tires.

ANYWAY....

Started using another place for oil changes, I'd used them before and they'd been consistently good, and they continued to be good. For whatever reason the site they were in kicked them out, or they went out of business, I don't know what. The guy moved to another location which felt kinda skeevy. I needed new brake pads done all-around: the rears didn't really need 'em, but they were down over half-way, so I figured why not. After I got home, I found out that two or three of my lug nuts had been replaced! I have aluminum rims, it was quite obvious. The factory lug nuts were nice chrome dome caps, these replacements were standard nuts where the remainder of the bolt was exposed.

So that was it for him.

I started using the Toyota dealership since basically an oil change is an oil change, and as long as they used the right filter and weight of oil, it was fine. No worries there.

While driving to/from Las Cruces, I noticed a new oil change place next to the interstate. I looked them up, and they're a nationwide chain that's a drive-up and you stay in your car. I decided to try them, and I've been pretty happy. They give us a fleet discount on our cars since we work for the university, which is cool, and they're going to build a location in Alamogordo - eventually. I know where it's going - I thought, could be a second site that's now under prep - we'll see how soon it opens.

ANYWAY, they do a variety of services. Engine air filters, cabin air filters, wiper blades, tranny fluid, differential fluid, and probably some others of which I'm not aware. Last change, perhaps a month ago, they offered to do the differentials on my Crosstrek, now ten years old with 170,000+ miles on it. In my brain I did an 'OOPS! Shoulda done that a long time ago!' So I had it done. And they showed me the drain plug which has a magnet embedded in it to act as a trap for metal shavings that are kind of a normal thing when you have metal-on-metal contact.

Not long after that, I started hearing a speed-dependent whine from my car. Not a good thing. Speed goes up, whine pitch goes up. No other symptoms: no acceleration hesitation, RPMs are steady, speed is steady, mileage is nominal.

On October 11, I'm heading for Phoenix. I'm probably going to be driving approximately 1,200 miles round-trip on this little jaunt. And I wanted to know what's going on before I hit the road. Today I took my car to Firestone. I figured the probable suspect was that the oil change shop didn't tighten the differential drain plug sufficiently and it was low on fluid.

I was wrong. It's the transmission.

It's a continuously-variable tranny, a CVT. For the most part, Subaru doesn't do conventional manual transmissions anymore, most car makers are moving to CVTs as they're more fuel efficient. (Yes, I can drive a stick, no problem. I've owned three cars with sticks, and driven two of Russet's with manual transmissions.) Anyway, the guys at Firestone took my car for a test drive and heard the noise, but being much more experienced and trained mechanics, decided to test the transmission, and found that it was shifting late. Like when it should have been shifting at around 2,500 RPM, it was shifting at around 4,300.

Not good.

So Russet's car, having just gotten back from a jaunt to Phoenix then on to Las Vegas and back, is returning to Phoenix next week. It changes my planning a bit as I was needing to get a different repair done on my car, and also wanted to get the seats shampooed or maybe the entire interior detailed. Clearly that's not going to happen. The Firestone manager gave me the name of an excellent transmission guy in Las Cruces who has the needed equipment to diagnose and repair CVTs and is really good at them - and specifically has worked on Subaru CVTs before! - I'll be calling him Monday. The Firestone manager said that as far as he'd heard, transmission repairs took about four days, there's no way we can accommodate that before I leave, so it'll probably be late October before we can get my car serviced properly and we'll have to hope for the best. It's not going to be cheap: I've never had to deal with a transmission problem, this will be my first major repair on a car, basically since forever!

But the best thing? FIRESTONE DIDN'T CHARGE ME ANYTHING! They don't do transmission work beyond changing fluid and filters, and what I need is far beyond that. The manager said that they could go ahead and do another flush and fill on the differential, but it wasn't needed, so they weren't charging me for the diagnostics.

I was a very happy customer leaving there. I've used Firestone a lot in the decades that I've been driving, I'm particularly fond of their lifetime alignment and have used that often. Needless to say I shall be going on Yelp and Google to leave five-star reviews for the place.

But Monday and Thursday, I'll be cleaning up Russet's car and my car so hers is ready for me to drive and mine is ready for her to drive.

And after mine is fixed up after I get back, then I'll have to set up the other repair that I need, and the seat shampoo/detailing that I want done, and deal with that. Maybe at the Tucson dealership that we bought it from.

Russet is out of town right now, she's up near Las Vegas at a fanfic gathering this weekend. I stayed home as I have to go to Phoenix in a few weeks to deal with some unpleasantness and didn't want to overly deprive the library of my glorious presence. Fortunately the gathering will rollover my membership from this year to next, so we'll save a little on that. ANYWAY, on Saturday nights normally they'll go out and see a movie if something fun is showing that's particularly fannish or slashy, and not much is out right now of that ilk. So they fired up Netflix and showed K-Pop Demon Hunters!

And since I also have Netflix.... I fired it up and watched it at pretty much the same time they were watching it two states away!

This is an animated movie that released theatrically a month or so ago. And it was a blast. A trio of young women (older teens?) are a pop group called Huntr/x that are hugely famous and popular. Secretly they are demon hunters, keeping Korea (and the world?) safe from the demon horde of Gwi-Ma as their songs reinforce a shield called the Honmoon. Gwi-Ma sends a boy band of demons - the Saja Boys - to interfere with Huntr/x and destroy their plans to finalize the seal of the Honmoon. Things go great, things go bad, total chaos - cats and dogs living together. Well, birds with hats and too many eyes and cat/tigers that look to me like they came from a Miyazaki film (very cool).

It was riotously funny, I was laughing out loud at it (but I have notoriously questionable taste). The music was great, and they did a fantastic job with the mix so that you could actually hear and understand the singing! They really played up the tropes of: girls instantly falling in love with boy band performers, automatic choreography and singing synchronization, etc. But you did actually get to see the girls rehearsing for an important performance.

I thought it was a lot of fun for a very silly, animated movie. Russet didn't care for it as much, saying (via text): "Well. That was. Something". If you're interested but hesitant, I'd suggest watching the four or so trailers that Netflix has with it. That should set your opinion firmly one way or another.

"Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels today ended the professional careers of five 'Aryan' actors and cabaret announcers by expelling them from the Reich's Chamber of Culture on the grounds that 'in their public appearances they displayed a lack of any positive attitude toward National Socialism and therewith caused grave annoyance in public and especially to party comrades.'"
-- New York Times, Feb. 3, 1939

A friend of mine sent me a copy from the archive. Fun times, eh?

What a career! I think the first thing that I remember him from was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but he did so many things! Amongst them: The Way We Were, Electric Horseman, Ordinary People, Out of Africa, Sneakers, Quiz Show, and two Avengers/MCU movies - Avengers: Endgame and Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Not to mention starting the Sundance Film Festival!

In his early television days, as so many actors did, he did a lot of episodic work, including: Perry Mason, The Twilight Zone, Maverick, Route 66, Dr. Kildare, The Virginian, etc. He also did stage work.

And the awards! From Wikipedia: "an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and two Golden Globe Awards, as well as the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1994, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 1996, the Academy Honorary Award in 2002, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2005, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016, and the Honorary César in 2019. He was named by Time as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2014."

An amazing career and quite a legacy of work left for us.

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/robert-redford-actor-director-dead-obituary-1234810387/

This is really cool.

In the town of Pornainen, they've built a 13 meter tall battery of "low-grade" sand that they warm-up to 450 degrees C - that 842 degrees F! - and it can hold that temperatures for weeks if not months, then they can use the hot air from it to heat the town's local heating network!

I think that's a pretty awesome use. They're using excess energy generated by renewable sources - free energy - to heat up the sand, then piping it around town. The former method to warm up the town was a woodchip furnace plant, clearly they're drastically cutting their CO2 footprint with this. And by using low-grade sand, their costs are pretty low.

But let's talk about sand for a minute. Businesses are literally dredging up ocean floors for sand to make more concrete. And you can't recover it from broken-up concrete when buildings are demolished. Now, to use sand to make a thermal battery I think is a worthwhile endeavor. I just wish they'd work out better ways to repurpose and recycle existing demolished concrete.

https://www.the-independent.com/tech/sand-battery-renewable-energy-finland-b2818348.html

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/09/06/027211/a-very-finnish-thing-huge-sand-battery-starts-storing-wind-energy-in-soapstone

Natron had been trying to raise $1.4b in funding to build a mega-factory in North Carolina that would have employed 1,000 people. It failed. Sales for its industrial sodium-ion batteries were not enough to keep the 13-year old company in the black, and an excellent tech company is no more.

Sodium-ion batteries have some great tech advantages over lithium-ion. Most importantly, they don't catch on fire as easily. They don't use lithium, so they're less expensive and don't consume a rare earth mineral. Sodium is much more readily available and cheaper to produce. They also don't use copper, a somewhat rare mineral, and using aluminum instead of copper makes for a much lighter battery.

However, sodium-ion has a lower energy density than lithium-ion, which makes it a bit less desirable than LIon. Whether this disadvantage can be overcome in time, we shall see.

I have no idea if this company's products were targeted for the EV market, or just for industrial use.

https://www.wral.com/story/battery-maker-natron-closes-shop-killing-plans-for-1-000-jobs-in-north-carolina/22144342/

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/09/05/2126200/americas-first-sodium-ion-battery-manufacturer-ceases-operations

My, my, how time flies! But fly it does, and October will see the release of a 4K HDR box set of the newly-restored movie that will have TWO documentaries!

A lot of the movie cast is still with us, though we lost Meatloaf a few years back. Interestingly, the movie was not a success in its initial run, it wasn't until the midnight circuit picked it up and the shadow casting and other fun started and it took on a life of its own that it really became a success. According to the article, RHPS may be the origin of cos-play!

I'll definitely be ordering this when it comes out. As it happens, I listened to the soundtrack just a week or so ago.

https://arstechnica.com/culture/2025/08/celebrating-50-years-of-the-rocky-horror-picture-show/

Well, I think the subject pretty much says it all. A monitor doesn't have to be connected to the internet, and I can't really fathom why it would be aside from functionality like this. I don't think HDMI cables convey IP information. TVs: everyone wants you to connect their TV into to your WiFi so they can monetize what you're watching: LG makes more money off the data they collect from your viewing patterns than they do selling TVs!

You can "sign in to Microsoft for more personalized results". Or you can buy a different brand. And if you use a streaming device and DVD/BR player for your viewing, you don't have to buy a TV: you can buy a nice monitor and just ignore all the connectivity stuff. Or just not connect the WiFi, I've no idea if it will repeatedly beg you to connect to the mothership. My Sony BR player has Netflix and YouTube connectivity, but alas, it's not connected to my router in any fashion: I can access those through my Apple TV if I so desire.

Samsung has never been high on my list of preferred vendors, though I do have a nice little B&W Samsung laser printer that I bought just before HP finalized the purchase of Samsung's printer division.

https://www.theverge.com/news/767078/microsoft-samsung-tv-copilot-ai-assistant-launch

I saw a question that revealed that it is not a voltage converter, so if you're going between 110/220 VAC countries, you'll still need voltage conversion equipment as needed. This will only handle the plug connectors! Some laptop power supplies will automatically switch between 110/220, it's important to know your equipment!

Important safety tip!

According to one source:
Regions that use ~220–240 V AC:
Europe (all countries, including the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc.)
Most of Asia (China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, etc.)
Middle East (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Israel, Turkey, etc.)
Africa (South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya, etc.)
Oceania (Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, etc.)
South America (most of it, e.g., Argentina, Chile, Peru, except parts of Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and a few others)
Some Caribbean nations (such as Barbados, Saint Lucia, and most of the Lesser Antilles)

⚡ Regions that use ~100–127 V AC instead (different from 220 V):
North America (USA, Canada, Mexico, parts of Central America)
Parts of South America (Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, some areas of Brazil)
Japan (100 V, 50/60 Hz depending on region)

I don't normally shill for Kickstarter projects, but this one is pretty cool. I participated in the predecessor project to this one and I think the final product was pretty cool and well-built, and went ahead and bought this one, too.

When we did our river cruise in '05 from Prague to Berlin, we were told our cabin on the ship had a 110 VAC outlet. Well, it sorta did. There was one outlet in the bathroom, and it had unsteady voltage. I think it was run off of the ship's generator and not well-regulated. The cabin had a couple of outlets, but they were EU/German design, and that voltage was much better regulated and filtered. We ended up buying an adapter from the ship's shop which was a very nice device, and could handle what seems like all international AC plugs. And we were able to keep our devices charged through careful use of it.

The one we bought ship-board and this device's predecessor, is a little cube-like thingie with sliders that will produce a variety of plugs to socket into probably any AC outlet around the world, terminating in not only a dual-blade USA outlet (so it also has a step-down transformer) but also in most world outlets, so this is not just a gadget for American travelers!

THIS thingie takes it a step further. It also has three USB-C outlets and one USB-A! There are three models available: a 205 watt, a 175 watt, and a 175 with a retractable USB-C cable. If you have a laptop that can charge off of USB-C, then you can charge it directly off of this puppy!

I put in a pre-order for two. I also ordered two sets of cables for Apple people that include Apple Watch chargers to simplify cable management. It comes with a soft pouch, which should also hold some cables, and a hard case is available for additional $$$.

The project is fully-funded and they expect to ship in November, they say they've already sourced their manufacturer. Europeans and some other places will have to pay VAT on top of the purchase price.

We're tentatively expecting to do another river cruise in Europe next year, I'd love it to be one to or from Vienna. A friend of ours is turning 60 and is inviting other friends to join her, and one of her friends is deathly afraid of sharks, so an ocean/Caribbean cruise is kind of ruled out. We're hoping to talk her into an EU trip.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iblockcube/bolt-205w-and-170w-travel-adapter-with-retractable-cable/