I was having brake light issues on my truck and figured out the turn signal/wipers/hazards/bright lights multi switch was bad.
Ordered the new part Monday, delivered Tuesday, and I had it installed in under 30 minutes. Needing to pull the steering wheel was the hardest part, and that was easy (truck old enough for no airbag, which would have made me reconsider doing it myself). Oh, and disconnecting 29 year old plastic electrical harnesses in freezing weather is delicate work.
Guys you’re killing me with the Subaru love - It’s dividing my household, Outback vs Mazda CX-5
Answer me this, is it fun to drive?
COngrats love the Orange that’s boldness.
Not really. I mean, it’s not bad or anything, it’s just normal. Mine’s a diesel so it sounds a bit like a truck when it idles, it also gets pretty good fuel economy for a big car (35 mpg). It has fairly high suspension for a wagon so I have no problems with driving off piste. It hasn’t been perfect, it had an issue with a turbo hose, and the airbags were subject to a recall, but even with the benefit of hindsight, it was the right car for us.
The outback is a bigger car than the CX-5. Cargo capacity is 1800 litres vs 1355 with the seats folded down. With the seats up the capacity is 512 vs 455 litres which suggests to me that there is a lot more leg room for the rear passengers in the Outback.
That sounds like a mundane Pyrrhic victory.
This might be mundane, but I feel like it’s a pretty major life accomplishment and one I’ll remember for years.
My first grader told us over dinner that she’d learned in school about cheetahs: “They’re the fastest land animals!”
I had something I wanted to tell her, but I had to think about how to say it. Finally, as we were cleaning up the kitchen, I spoke up.
“Honey, you mentioned how cheetahs are the fastest land animal. But I heard a really interesting radio story, about how some scientists were testing that, and it’s not true. They were racing cheetahs against different dog breeds, and cheetahs were always faster, until they raced them against dachshunds.”
“What?” my older daughter asked, astonished.
“You know, those little weiner dogs, with the tiny legs? Every single time, they were faster than the cheetahs! The scientists at first thought something was going on, like maybe the dachshunds were finding a shortcut on the track or something, but they realized that was ridiculous, because”
and here I paused thoughtfully,
"Weiners never cheat.
“And cheetahs never win.”
I restrung my Fender strat and only poked one hole in a finger. Win!
We just bought a CX-5. Mrs R loves it; it’s quiet and powerful and roomy and that beautiful candy-apple red color. If I were to describe the driving experience in one word, that word would be “serene”. However, we’re still figuring out all the electronics.
I did a GIS for “mundane Pyrrhic victory” and yes, that’s it!! 
Off-topic - in school I called a battle that was won using a lot of fire a Pyrrhic victory… my teacher told me to go look up the term.
I still think it should involve fire
I discovered that one of my favorite episodes of Nova is now available on the Internet Archive, so now when I’m telling people the story, I can just link to the episode.
I figured out why one of the timers that control my showcase lights had been acting wonky ever since we had a momentary power outage a few days ago. Turns out one of the settings got altered, and instead of turning on every day at 3:00, it was set to turn on on Mondays at 3:00. Baffled me for quite a while, it did, but today I sat down with the timer and figured out the problem in about two minutes…
Shhh.
Don’t tell anyone. I opened a zombie thread.
It’s appropriate for the holiday.
(:))
Tasked by Mrs Trep with buying six free range eggs in a local Sainsbury’s, I succeeded. Eventually.
(Note to Messrs Sainsbury - it would be better if you didn’t hire compilers of cryptic crosswords to help design your store layout. Where to locate eggs? Next to the batteries, of course. You can’t make this stuff up.)
j
Successfully changed cable and internet providers. The installer is here now. Yay for internet I can actually access!
ETA: Also BarkBox came and the dogs are very, very happy. They’re going to end up with too many toys, but it’s really great to get new things into the rotation. It keeps them playing for days. 
Yes the rear seats in Mazda look a bit tight, I’m not transporting Little kids anymore but I was hoping to bribe one or both Young adults to take a road trip south with me to see Gparents.
Yes a two seater is what I should really hold out for fun driving. Dang this muddies the waters further.
I know! And what’s with all the music streaming options? Aha, etc etc never heard of em. And no CD player’s in new cars anymore? My 2011 has 6 cd changer!
Not 15 minutes ago, I hung that colored glass thingy I bought last July, in my bedroom window where it will catch the light. Finally, something off the to-do list!
I just updated my to-do list. Does that count as a mundane victory?
I got one of my neighbors to admit that he’s a slob. I won’t go into too many details, mostly because he’s a nice guy, but he’s got the habit of decorating the street with trash: mostly bags and wrappers but also the uneaten food they contain. Again, an otherwise nice guy, but it’s like every day and night he’s got to throw trash from the window of his parked car: half-eaten sandwiches, Cheetos, banana peels, fast food containers, beverage cans, the remains of a family-sized pizza and the box it came in, etc. It all goes from his hands straight to the ground. So, the other day, he was sitting in his car with a pile of trash on the driver’s side, I asked if it was his, he said it was, and he hung his head in shame and admitted to being a slob. He found a paper bag in his car and actually got out and started cleaning it up! So I helped him, which made him feel worse, and then I insisted on carrying the bag to the dumpster at the end of the street, which made him feel even worse! Sometimes you have to be kind to be cruel. Too soon to call it a victory, but we didn’t get in a fistfight (he’s got a nasty temper) and our friendship is intact, and that’s enough of a victory for me.
You’re damn right it does. Every to-do list should start with the item “create or update to-do list,” just to get things rolling.
My current one is that I’ve finally, after all the arcane and borderline useless explanations I’ve read online, figured out how to make rsync do what I want it to do, and I’m making good progress in retroactively applying it to some backups that I have, which were done in the “just zip everything up and we’ll deal with all the duplicate files later” method.