Rants and Stupid shit in Orange County

[QUOTE=PlasmaSpray;6820464]I am old school gas. Do not give crap about what thw wife wants not. It is MY car.[/QUOTE]I'm personally loving not having to pay for gas. Saving about $350/ month on that alone, plus no oil changes or any other maintenance associated with an engine. And I have solar on my house so the electricity to charge the two cars is basically free. EV life certainly isn't for everyone though.

I like to use my two trip comparison. Trip #1 - We drove to Monterey a few years ago for a little getaway. For that trip we rented a Nissan Rougue. From OC we had to stop for gas in Lost Hills. We had lunch during that stop, so we were stopped for around 45 minutes between gas and lunch. A tank of gas cost about $75. We hit some traffic and had to stop to top off the tank just south of the Monterey Bay Area. We figured we could have made it to our hotel but we'd be on fumes, so we played it safe. That fuel stop was about $60. We all had to take a leak so we went to the Starbucks across the street to do that and get drinks. About a 20 minute stop. So in total, two stops, a little more than an hour between them, and $135 in fuel.

Trip #2 was a year later in a Tesla. Same stop in Lost Hills. The difference this time was we went to the supercharger and plugged in, then walked down the street for lunch while it was charging. Still was about a 45 minute stop, and the cost of the super charge was $14. Same pee stop as the last trip for the same reason (traffic and didn't want to sweat the last few miles.) Did a 20 minute charge top-off, walked over to the same Starbucks while it was charging, and the top-off cost was about. $8. So as compared to the last trip in a gas car, about the same total travel time, but $22 in "fuel" cost vs $135 in the gas car.

Again, I do recognize that it's not the end all solution for everyone, so I'm not trying to start an EV vs gas car debate. I love being gas free, but it comes with the obvious drawback of being trackable in this case. I'll figure out a workaround for that.

[QUOTE=Grimmy23;6818815]Well my friend, I hate to break it to you, but most new cars these days are trackable and have cameras. You take the good with the bad.

It's kind of like the good ol' days. I'm aging myself here, but back in the days before the internet and email, you'd be waiting for something to arrive at work that you needed to work on. FedEx overnight delivery was a thing, but that usually meant you had today to screw around because the package you needed wouldn't arrive until tomorrow. And if you were lucky, they missed the FedEx pickup so you also had tomorrow to screw around. Now everything is instant, so you lose your time for screwing around. You have to get right on it and get it done today. Good news / bad news.[/QUOTE]Your dilemma reminds me of another prominent poster on this site. On the Richmond sugar thread, a de facto national place to post. Handle was JZLizard. Really authoritative, and a deep thinker. However, he had a SO, and he said he never sugar dated unless he was out of town, or she was. In the post-pandemic world where we travel for business less than we used to, I am sure this cut into his FC trips. Of course he was also banging the warden still, and had some philosophical questions about sugaring that were interesting to read. For whatever reason, he stopped posting completely. Perhaps he decided to get out of the sugar bowl as he often threatened.

I happen to have a business trip to a well-known party town starting Friday, I am super happy to get some time away for free play. Hope to have a lot to report.

[QUOTE=FarFarAway;6822047]Your dilemma reminds me of another prominent poster on this site. On the Richmond sugar thread, a de facto national place to post. Handle was JZLizard. Really authoritative, and a deep thinker. However, he had a SO, and he said he never sugar dated unless he was out of town, or she was. In the post-pandemic world where we travel for business less than we used to, I am sure this cut into his FC trips. Of course he was also banging the warden still, and had some philosophical questions about sugaring that were interesting to read. For whatever reason, he stopped posting completely. Perhaps he decided to get out of the sugar bowl as he often threatened.

I happen to have a business trip to a well-known party town starting Friday, I am super happy to get some time away for free play. Hope to have a lot to report.[/QUOTE]Yeah, I used to travel a lot, for a lot of years. By a lot I mean 8-10 overseas trips a year with about 79% of those to Asia and the other 30% to Europe. There was some domestic travel in there as well, and some Canada, but the bulk was overseas. I did all of my mongering away from home. What we have available to us locally is shit compared to what you can get in most other countries, so I'd just wait for my next trip to get my pipes cleaned. But then I suddenly lost my corporate job and decided to start my own business. Now I rarely travel without the wife, and certainly don't go overseas without her. I've had to learn to make do with what we can get around here, and nothing really measures up.

I imagine I'll slow down a bit, but I don't see myself stopping completely. It's going to take a lot more effort and expense for me to cover my tracks now, so if I'm going to have some extracurricular fun it has to be worth it.

[QUOTE=Grimmy23;6820169]In my situation, we just got rid of our last gas-powered vehicle. Literally, what we aren't paying in gas every month is a car payment on one of the other vehicles. We ordered the second Tesla with a trailer hitch installed for that exact purpose. Hauling shit, since the vehicle that just died is the one that we used to haul shit. Now it's just a matter of grabbing a $15/ day UHaul trailer and we can haul all the shit we want. I'd never be able to convince the wife that we needed another car for any reason.

A pickup truck isn't a bad idea though if you can pull it off. Definitely solves the problem.[/QUOTE]I was behind a Tesla the other day that had this bumper sticker:

I bought this before we knew Elon is crazy.

On my way to the AMP there's a car accident in the intersection. Cars everywhere. I park 3 blocks down and walk to AMP. I have the sickness. I would have walked even further if needed. The little head out thinking the big head. Keep mongering my fellow mongers!

I've come across that a lot of the Chinese girls you encounter have baby stretch marks or reveal they have a baby or child in China. What's going on an epidemic of single moms?

[QUOTE=BraveNuPengwin;6830727]I've come across that a lot of the Chinese girls you encounter have baby stretch marks or reveal they have a baby or child in China. What's going on an epidemic of single moms?[/QUOTE]They partied in China and got knocked up by a dude who she thought was her savor. LOL.

After, she got preggo she found out she was just another weekend gal or weekly gal used for free s*x by a wealthy China dude.

China has some serious party locations just like Miami and NYC.

[QUOTE=BraveNuPengwin;6830727]I've come across that a lot of the Chinese girls you encounter have baby stretch marks or reveal they have a baby or child in China. What's going on an epidemic of single moms?[/QUOTE]Many of the Chinese girls I've run across at Believe, when it was around, had C-Section scars. Most, a very good job, can barely tell if its a scar or just a mark left by tight clothing.

[QUOTE=BraveNuPengwin;6830727]I've come across that a lot of the Chinese girls you encounter have baby stretch marks or reveal they have a baby or child in China. What's going on an epidemic of single moms?[/QUOTE]90 day Fiance rejects. These girls need do some workouts so they can bounce everything back in place FFS.

I found a potential solution. There are some car sharing apps out there where you can rent cars from other people for a couple hours. The two most prominent ones are Zipcar and Getaround. Zipcar isn't very prominent in SoCal. It's huge in the Bay Area but not so much down here, but there are a few areas that have Zipcar nearby. Getaround seems to be a little more prominent down here. There is a location (a private house) within walking distance of my work where I can rent a vehicle for 3 hours for $15-20. They are "remote rentals" where the app unlocks the car for you, so you don't have to interact with anybody. It's just pay the fee via the app and return the car with the same amount of fuel that you picked it up with. It's of course an additional step to throw up a smoke screen, but in the instances where I have to drive to areas that I just can't risk getting caught in it should do the trick.

Of course there's always Uber, but Uber to most locations that I have historically frequented would add $75-80 to the cost of the field trip, which makes it not worth it. The car share thing might be just what the doctor ordered.

[QUOTE=Grimmy23;6816665]The beater car that I was driving around town finally bit the dust. It needs $3000 in repairs and it's only worth $1600 KBB value so I'm not fixing it. Ironically it broke down just as I was pulling into my neighborhood after some hobby fun. If it had broken down 20-30 minutes earlier I would have had a fun time explaining to family why I needed to be towed from Little Saigon, so dodged a bullet there. Wife and I already knew we were on borrowed time with that car (15 years and 200 k miles) and decided a long time ago that we would replace it with a second Tesla when the time came. Well the time has come and we're abojt to become a completely gas free household.

Awesome, except Teslas are trackable. The last thing I need is for my wife to open the app and see that the other car is in Little Saigon or at some random hotel. It's possible to turn that off, but when you turn it off the app shows that you turned it off. That throws a bit of a wrench into this hobby for me. I haven't figured what my workaround is going to be yet. Maybe I turn it off and call it a "glitch. " But then we have location sharing on our phones too, which I turn off when I'm hobbying. The phone and the car can't both have glitches at the same time.[/QUOTE]The GPS receiver of the M3 is in the rearview mirror. There are instructions on the internet to remove it. You should be able to block it with a faraday bag. Or tape the whole thing temporarily with copper tape. Aluminum tape needs a lot more layers. Test that and then find out if the car uses cell signals to triangulate. You should be able to block the antennas too.

The GPS signal is rather easy to jam. But it's highly illegal. You can buy from overseas but you have to find one supplier to trust.

[QUOTE=Grimmy23;6840803]I found a potential solution. There are some car sharing apps out there where you can rent cars from other people for a couple hours. The two most prominent ones are Zipcar and Getaround. Zipcar isn't very prominent in SoCal. It's huge in the Bay Area but not so much down here, but there are a few areas that have Zipcar nearby. Getaround seems to be a little more prominent down here. There is a location (a private house) within walking distance of my work where I can rent a vehicle for 3 hours for $15-20. They are "remote rentals" where the app unlocks the car for you, so you don't have to interact with anybody. It's just pay the fee via the app and return the car with the same amount of fuel that you picked it up with. It's of course an additional step to throw up a smoke screen, but in the instances where I have to drive to areas that I just can't risk getting caught in it should do the trick.

Of course there's always Uber, but Uber to most locations that I have historically frequented would add $75-80 to the cost of the field trip, which makes it not worth it. The car share thing might be just what the doctor ordered.[/QUOTE]You do have to give your accurate personal info to do this, of course. And it bills onto your personal credit card? Or can you use a prepaid debit?

[QUOTE=SCJohn;6817457]From what I read, Go to Controls / Settings / Safety & Security and turn off Mobile Access. The issue with this is you disable tracking AND all Mobile Access to all devices, including your phone. You'll need to use the Tesla Key Card to start the car. Not sure if this is all that useful. Seems like this is a real issue for guys with SO's.

Any other ideas?[/QUOTE]Mobile data access is disabled but you can still use phone as a key via bluetooth. It's only when the phone is out of bluetooth range, is the mobile data access unable to remotely control and open the car.

[QUOTE=IAmTheQ;6840937]Mobile data access is disabled but you can still use phone as a key via bluetooth. It's only when the phone is out of bluetooth range, is the mobile data access unable to remotely control and open the car.[/QUOTE]You can also just use the keycard to unlock and drive the car.

Last week Tesla had an outage and Maps w / traffic updates was disabled, also I wasn't able to remotely turn on the climate control or check the cameras remotely. I spent some time troubleshooting the car, rebooted, etc. Finally submitted a service request as advised by the troubleshooting steps. Got a message later letting me know there was an outage. I mentioned that they should have broadcasted a text message so we don't waste our time trying to figure out what's wrong.

[QUOTE=SCJohn;6841127]You can also just use the keycard to unlock and drive the car.

Last week Tesla had an outage and Maps w / traffic updates was disabled, also I wasn't able to remotely turn on the climate control or check the cameras remotely. I spent some time troubleshooting the car, rebooted, etc. Finally submitted a service request as advised by the troubleshooting steps. Got a message later letting me know there was an outage. I mentioned that they should have broadcasted a text message so we don't waste our time trying to figure out what's wrong.[/QUOTE]Wow, I didn't even know that. I've owned one Tesla for a year and a half and just got the second one this month and have never seen an outage like that. I was in Europe last week so I missed it.

Once again, the thing with turning off mobile access is that the app indicates that mobile access has been disabled. If your SO looks at the app she might wonder why access has been disabled and try to figure out where you are. We have family location tracking on our iphones turned on as well. When I go on a field trip I turn that off and it's easy to explain that away as a glitch, but it wouldn't be easy to explain both the phone and the car tracking having glitches at the same time. This is the downside of technology. The benefits greatly outweigh the downsides though, at least in my situation. I'm not missing gas stations, oil changes, or any other engine maintenance one bit.