I’ve lost all track of time. My children have turned feral after hours of unsupervised screen time. I’ve been banished to the basement while working from home. And we’ve been so desperate for streaming content we’ve even subscribed to Apple TV+.1 But none of that really bothers me.
What I really miss is driving.
“Do you think we should pick up some pizza for my dad?”
We were on our way to visit my wife’s parents. Her father had been taking care of her mom in the nursing home and hadn’t had much time for himself.
“Sure, that’s a good idea.”
My wife looked up pizza places in town and started calling. Our kids, lacking internet connection, were in the back seat staring out the window.
“Could you slow down a bit? It’s hard to hear.”
I dropped the Subaru down below 100 mph.
I’ve had many flimsy excuses over the years as to why I’ve had a writing hiatus on this blog. Typical ones include being lazy, tired, or stressed. My new excuse is dieting, which makes me lazy, tired, and stressed.
I was going to write about highfalutin stuff and things like machine learning and autonomous vehicles, but I got distracted by something more important: toys metal diecast models.
A few years ago I posted about three of my cars hitting 148,300 miles at about the same time, something which took 15.3 years of random planning. That led me to look at my driving mileage at different points of my life. I’m doing that again here, but this time looking at my annual mileage. That just makes it easier to see the difference between being single and being married.
My kids (10-, 6-year-olds) sometimes walk 1 km to school here in Germany, and it freaks me out. That’s because we Americans never let our kids out of an adult’s sight, and because I have no idea how far 1 km2 is. German kids here walk or ride their bikes and scooters to school, which must mean German parents think this is normal, or they need to be locked up.
The world certainly doesn’t seem well, but my little part of it got significantly better last night. I was finally able to drive my car in Germany. Yesterday, after weeks of trying, I got the person helping me to understand what I needed for insurance. So as soon as I got home, I gassed up the car.
So I picked up up a new long block engine for my car the other day (more on that later). In the process, I learned something new about motor oils.
I’ve always had a fascination for numbers. Some numbers have always been more pleasing to me, like ‘3,’ ‘12,’ or ‘Seven of Nine.’ This is, of course, very odd, so I’ve had to resort to extremes to hide it, like becoming an engineer, or pretending to use Excel to make pictures.
One of the world’s most successful company right now is Apple. With yearly profits of around $30 billion, it is the most profitable company, earning more money than even oil companies like ExxonMobile.[1]
A big reason for its success is the iPhone, generating more than half of its revenues. The iPhone is a technological marvel, full of magic and made from the tears of rainbow unicorns. With seemingly an App for everything, there’s almost nothing that it can’t do. It spawned a revolution in smart phones. Billions of iPhones and Android smart phones have been sold in the last few years.
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