I suspect that’s an auto-dimming mirror & it’s on Automagic, meaning it will dim if you get bright lights behind you; pressing the button turns off that feature (& the light) & it won’t dim. I don’t like them as they dim the mirror sooo much I can’t make out anything but the bright headlights behind me; I can’t see the grill at all to know what type of car/truck it is.
Continuing on in the spirit of old dogs learning new tricks, I needed a ride to pick up the Camry. The Lovely Ex-Wife (LXW) offered to send an Uber but I told her I’d just take a taxi. The taxi firm I called had no taxis available for at least half an hour, and they estimated the fare to the residence of the LXW to be at least $55 (it’s technically in a different town). When informed of this, the LXW just ordered an Uber and put it on her account. The Uber arrival time was estimated at “about two minutes” (it was actually more like five minutes), the ride was a new Toyota SUV with very comfortable leather seats, and the cost was half that of the taxi.
My cell phone is too old to run the Uber app and I don’t have a data plan anyway, but I think both of those things will soon have to be remedied. Time marches on, and I guess we old dogs have to march with it.
That was my guess. I still haven’t dug out the daunting Owner’s Manual yet. I think I’ll like that feature because these days these fucking blinding LED headlights are a goddam menace on the road!
When you do get around to that, I’d recommend checking out Lyft as well. Your area may vary, but in mine, it’s not unusual for Lyft to be not much over half what Uber wants for the same trip. I’ve also been informed by people who’ve driven for both that Lyft has a tougher background check for drivers, which makes a woman with hip/back problems and lousy eyesight feel a good deal safer about getting into the car with a stranger who is statistically more likely to be male. You being a big strong male pooch, you probably don’t have the same safety worries. 
But Nettie, you don’t leave the seats fur covered & therefore don’t fret the rolled up newspaper.
I live in a fairly small town and I don’t know if Lyft has much of a presence here. My experience with Uber this afternoon was extremely pleasant, and come to think of it, the first time that I’ve ever Ubered. I appreciate the guidance, but since my son and my LXW regularly use Uber, and they provide great service in this area, I’ll probably just stick with them for now. I mean, after I get a new cell phone that actually does stuff like summon Uber. I’m also pleased by the fact that, as long as Uber is summoned by the LXW, it’s free!
Right now I have the opposite problem. I don’t lack for cars. I have two in the driveway, one of which is a beloved but fading rust bucket. I just started it up today to make more room for the Camry, and something must have further deteriorated in the failing exhaust system because it roared like an angry lion.
Actual conversation I had, with myself, at work an hour or so ago:
“Did I pee? I think I … yeah, I remember now, I definitely peed. So why do I gotta pee again already?”
This whole “getting older” thing sucks donkey nutz and I’d like to complain to management.
Also, I wore a particularly uncomfortable bra to work today, and frankly I’d like a refund on the entire damn evening.
Finally, my cat just took a massively stinky shit just as I’m crawling into bed, and I am way too tired to deal with it, so imma do the responsible adult thing, and smoke part of a joint to cover the smell and make that litter box Tomorrow Shoe’s problem.
Sucks to be her.
Many, if not most, Uber drivers also drive for Lyft, and the service is virtually identical to the customer. And I too have found that Lyft is almost always less money.
Don’t complain too hard; management might just decide you’ve aged enough. 
I thought dogs are supposed to fetch sticks, not shake them!
My complaint for today. My the zipper on my 20 day old trousers split. While I am at the office.
My fault for buying cheap trousers instead of spending the extra money for quality.
I only bought them because I needed a larger size due to healing incisions which demanded a looser fit.
And I threw out the receipt.
My experience as well. Uber has a raft of inscrutable surcharges that they love to attach willy-nilly as well. Plus, if they have customer service, it’s unresponsive.
My son drove for both Lyft and Uber-he vastly preferred the Lyft driver side experience.
However, from the perspective of this Old Fart, both are immeasurably superior to old-time taxi service, at least in this town. The predominant one consistently gets one-star reviews, the most common complaint being showing up late or never. The Uber ride yesterday was fantastic in comparison, and as I mentioned earlier, literally half the cost of what the taxi dispatcher was estimating for a moderately lengthy out-of-town trip.
In any case, I almost never use any of these services. If my car needs to go in for service and it’s not practical to wait for it, I’ll get Enterprise to pick me up in a rental. Gone are the days when my trusty mechanic could just give me a free loaner. Even back then he was complaining about the high cost of insurance.
I’m going to try to keep this short, as I feel I’ve been kvetching about a lot of stuff lately.
Last weekend I had a number of health issues kicking in. I already had an appointment for an ultrasound Monday morning. so I called before going to see if I could schedule what they called a “same-day” appointment, and was able to get one for the afternoon. During the course of the examination it was decided that although I was on lasix (a diuretic) but had not been urinating the past few days they needed to install a catheter. For some reason their attempts to do so at the clinic were unsuccessful so they needed to send me to the hospital. The urologist there was able to install a catheter and instructed me on changing the night-time bag for the day bag, which would need to be emptied as it filled. This had to be done three times yesterday, so I guess the lasix is working.
Tomorrow afternoon I have an appointment with a urologist at the clinic to check on the catheter. I’m hoping it will be removed, as I have a Friday morning appointment with my hematologist, and I’m not looking forward to the possibility of having to change bags before my ride comes to pick me up at 8am.
That’s pretty much the experience worldwide. And is why Uber/Lyft have all but destroyed the licensed taxi industry in so many places.
As to Uber vs Lyft, IME across many US cities the difference from the rider POV was (is?) negligible. In some cities there’s a clear price disparity, usually in favor of Lyft. In other cities the prices are about equal.
When I know a driver drives for both I usually ask which they prefer. There’s no obvious lean one way or the other in their answers. For awhile the consensus was pretty clear: Lyft pays a better fraction of the fare, but they have much sketchier customers going to sketchier parts of town. Whether any driver valued the money more than avoiding the sketchy, was more down to their politics and skin color than any question of economics.
I’ve not bothered to run that survey recently and furthermore I’m doing a lot less traveling than before, so any answer I’d come up with now will be local to my metro area, and mostly local to my small zone within it. So not much use to anyone here but me.
I used ride share apps last month while my car was in the shop. In Portland, Uber and Lyft are pretty much at parity, with Lyft having a slight edge.
Except maybe in Manhattan, where yellow taxis are more populous than rats, and you don’t call for them, you hail them on the street. If you can. Which, when it rains, you cannot. Though even as a newbie visitor to NYC, I learned the trick of getting a cab in the rain by going to a major hotel and getting a red-coated doorman to get one for me!
In other business, the ownership transfer for the Camry has now happened! The visit to the MTO (Ministry of Transport Ontario) was more frustrating than usual because of the two clerks present, one was occupied by an Old Bat who looked to be about 150 years old who had documents with conflicting VINs and couldn’t explain the discrepancy. It was a toss-up whether her issue would be resolved before she died, but fortunately the other clerk eventually came free. My business was done in about five minutes.
Yeah. Manhattan is the exception that proves all most every rule about North American culture.
Congrats on success at MTO.
When we are in Vegas we still use taxis. They do an excellent job. I imagine it’s not much different than NYC. A lot of those guys have been driving the city for decades and are your best bet to get somewhere fast and easy.
Neither of them have figured out how to pick up riders from Union Station. This problem has been going on for two years now - neither service has a map that understands the passenger curb situation there. Annoying.
These issues don’t rise to the level of a Pitting, so this thread is the perfect place to talk about them.
I hereby kvetch about how sports-related YouTube channels, to include the channels of the teams themselves, will title their videos in such a way that gives the score of the game (or at the very least, broadly hints at the outcome). Say I want to watch the highlight reel of the Chelsea v Sunderland match. Chelsea FC’s YouTube channel, or the EPL YouTube channel, or some other channel that hosts highlight reels, will title the video “Chelsea wins in stunning comeback” or “three-goal outing for Chelsea” or what have you, spoiling the outcome for me. I do wish they’d all come to an agreement so as to title their videos in such a way that the outcome isn’t spoiled before I hit “Play.”
I also hereby kvetch about the ads that support the mobile games I like to play. Putting aside the fact that most of them are scams (no, you’re not going to win hundreds of dollars per day playing Bubble Finger Blast, nor is that AI-generated puppy robot an actual puppy robot (these ads are designed to scam kids who don’t know any better)), there’s also the matter that they try to swindle me in other ways. The X to close out the ad will be obscured, or so tiny as to be impossible to close the ad; some ads won’t go away until I play a few seconds of the game; some imitate my home screen so that I think I’m closing the ad but I’m actually opening up its page on the App Store; etc. I really wish Apple would crack down on what ads it will allow companies to play, and what apps it allows on the app store.
And speaking of ads, I hereby kvetch about the absolute flood of commercials (on my mobile device, on YouTube, and on TV) for sports betting apps now that Missouri has legalized sports betting. I voted to allow sports betting, and now I’m wishing I hadn’t.* Besides the overwhelming deluge of ads, there’s also the matter that the expansion of sports books is going to lead to an untold number of Missourians losing tons of money.
*OK, so in the main I feel like people should be able to make their own choices, even if those choices are bad. But gods damn is the sports betting industry predatory.
That reminds me that I’m peeved that The Guardian names the winner of F1 races on its front page on Mondays so that the news aggregator I use on my home page shows me the outcome before I watch the race. 
Here on SDMB it’s easy to avoid reading the F1 thread before I’ve watched that week’s race. But rearranging my browser’s home page on Mondays just to avoid the Guardian’s spoiler would be much more inconvenient.